MURDER TUNED IN (Allie Griffin Mysteries Book 4) (9 page)

              "Storm coming?" asked Allie.

              The girl nodded. "Several."

              She and Tad walked through the stacks at the Verdenier Public Library. This was her sanctuary. It was like a church, so quiet, so reverent, and so conducive to deep thought. They walked through the 700 section—the Arts—and they spoke quietly.

              "How do you know Angus had good relative pitch?" she asked.

              "Just by working with him," said the tall choreographer. "It's a pure delight when I'm able to stump him. He's normally so arrogant that it's fun correcting him when he's wrong. It happened the day Sally was killed."

              "How?"

              "When were drinking the champagne. He clinked his glass and without even thinking about it, Angus said it was in a certain key. C sharp, I think. I told him it was D natural. I could see the defeat in his face. It was exquisite."

              There was that word again:
glass
. It kept coming back to her. "How many of you got real glasses?" she asked.

              "There were only six of them, so only the people with the top credits got them: myself, Ben, Sally, Angus, and two others, I can’t remember. A stagehand, I think. Ernie is his name? And another person." He snapped his fingers. "Of course, Susanna Comfort."

              "Where did they get them?"

              "Probably from props. I don’t know. Maybe Angus brought them."

              "This is very interesting. Are you forgetting that Sally had a glass? And it was poisoned."

              "I forgot about that. I guess she did."

              "The first murder I ever solved involved a case of switching a regular cup for a poisoned one. I hadn’t even thought that this business with Sally's glass was the first throwback to that case. The letter was the second."

              "What letter?"

              "I can’t talk. I think I'm onto something. Are you going to be available over the next few days?"

              "Honey, I'm out of a job for the time being."

              "Good, I may need you."

              "It's a fact that whoever killed Sally Kane hated her," said Allie, serving a piece of homemade raspberry pie with a dollop of melting chocolate ice cream on top. "There are many different kinds of hate. There's envy, for one."

              "Ok," said Del, leaning forward on the couch to grab the plate on the coffee table. "Talk me through this one."

              "Everyone had a reason to want to kill Sally. Tad hated her and her ideology. Any non-union stagehand probably hated her as well. And Susanna Comfort hated her."

              "Susanna? How so?"

              "The understudy. You said it yourself. She has a great voice. But she's not glamorous like Sally Kane was. She's tomboyish. When you’ve been like that your whole life, it's a lot of work to break people's perceptions to convince them that you can be every bit as glamorous as someone else who seems to go about it naturally."

              "You think Susanna was that jealous?"

              "Jealous
and
envious. Yes."

              "What's the difference?"

              "A subtle one. Jealousy involves a third entity. For instance. I'm attractive. This other girl is also attractive. A guy gives his attention to her and not me. I'm jealous. There's a sense of outrage there. If I don’t feel I'm attractive and someone else is, there's envy—in other words, no sense of outrage or betrayal. Envy involves just two people; jealousy, three. Susanna and Sally Kane were both equally talented, Susanna maybe a bit more. Yet Sally possessed a quality that Susanna would love to have possessed herself and she was overlooked because of that. And there was jealousy there with the third entity being Angus. Not feeling glamorous enough herself and then looking at Sally Kane, it's easy to see how she could be envious of her appearance and poise. Envy and jealousy can be a lethal combination. The poor self-image of one plays against the outrage and feelings of betrayal of the other. Envy is the gasoline. Jealousy is the match."

              "Girl, you need to write this stuff down."

              "I'll do it tomorrow. Right now, I'm dealing with motives."

              "You forgot someone: Angus."

              "Right," said Allie. "Angus." She thought for a moment. "Angus was not in control of that affair. I saw it the first day I laid eyes on the two of them together. The way they sat next to each other. He angled toward her, she turned away. There was motive there. The oldest one in the book, as a matter of fact."

              "Ok, now what?"

              "Access to the weapon. That was everyone. Everyone was in that theater. The trunk with the ropes was open." Allie sprung up. "Tape!"

              Del, startled by the sudden outburst, spilled her ice cream onto her lap. "Please don’t do that. And could you get me a paper towel and some seltzer? This is going to set."

              Allie got up to fetch the items and spoke while she did so. "There were different colored tapes on the ropes," she yelled from the kitchen. "That guy Ernie told me it's an old stagehand's trick..."

              Allie wore a charm bracelet.

              This is significant not because of the charms themselves, which were perfect models of the original Tenniel illustrations of various characters from
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
—or "Mr. Dodgson's masterpiece", as Allie obscurely liked to call it—but because they dangled from her wrist in such a way that they often knocked against and got caught on things—clothes, fabric, curtains—to Allie's extreme annoyance. She'd been blinded to the possible mishaps that could occur when she’d stumbled upon the bracelet on eBay.

              So here she was, reaching for the paper towels. In order to do so, she had to step over Dinah, who'd found a cat-friendly spot right in the middle of the kitchen between the sink and the island with the paper towel stand on it. Dinah, like all cats, had a habit of plopping her oversized body down wherever she felt served the feline whim. Getting her up would require a shovel. It was much easier to step over her. And this Allie did.

              She had to balance herself against the rack with the Williams Sonoma wine glasses. Not a wise thing to do, for the rack was only big enough and sturdy enough to fit on the kitchen island. It was not manufactured with the purpose of being a grabbing post for anyone wishing to avoid any manner of cat-trampling. So she let go of the rack and grabbed the corner of the island instead. She still lost her balance. And she stumbled a bit. And in doing so, a couple of her charms knocked against the wine glasses. A peal of gorgeous chimes rang out.

              This made Allie think.

              When Allie began to think like this, people sometimes wound up with milkshake stains on their pants that set in.

              Allie reached under the counter cabinets and took out a stainless steel pasta pot. She flicked a finger against it. A wonderful metallic sound rang out. She went to the sink and turned on the tap. She flicked the pot again and then placed it under the tap.

              Something wonderful happened. The sound decreased rapidly in pitch. It made a beautiful cascading sound. She'd been aware of this phenomenon already. A number of times, draining pasta from this very pot, she'd knocked it against the tap while pouring it out, and then that strange sound, the swirling tone like the hum of a space alien, rang out.

              She went back to the living room.

              "Were you making pasta in there?" asked Del. "And where's my paper towel and seltzer?"

              "I'm so sorry. Let me get them."

              "I got it," Del said, rising from the couch. "You have that look on your face."

              "What look?"

              "The one that says 'I can't concentrate on anything because I just discovered a problem that's using up a hundred percent of my brain energy.' So I got this."

              Del disappeared into the kitchen. And Allie paced.

              After a moment, she called out "I'm going out for a bit. You can hang around if you want. I won’t be long."

              "Whatever," Del called from the kitchen. Allie heard the swish of a seltzer bottle opening.

              And Allie grabbed her coat and headed out to see Ben.

              "Teach me more about pitch," Allie said the moment Ben opened the door.

              "Hello to you too."

              "Is this a bad time?"

              "I'm expecting Madonna here any minute."

              "You wouldn’t be this composed."

              "You got me. Come on in."

              The cottage was in its usual state of disarray, but something was different. There was a peculiar smell in the air. Like a combination of sour milk and lemons.

              "What is that," she said, wrinkling up her nose. In trying to discern the origin of the smell, she noticed a stack of books on the coffee table, all of which had to do with the art of cheesemaking.

              "It’s still here? God, I hoped you wouldn’t notice."

              A laugh erupted from Allie's chest.

              "Amusing, is it?" he said without smiling.

              "I'm sorry. You’re making cheese?"

              "From a kit; I think it's defective."

              She laughed again.

              "You want to let the rest of the class in on the joke?"

              "It's just that, Ben, you realize we live in Vermont, right? You can’t throw a stone without hitting a creamery."

              "I know. So what's wrong with trying my hand at it?"

              "Nothing, I gues—, wait, you want to become an artisan cheesemaker?"

              "Astute of you. And what's wrong with that?"

              "Nothing at all. It's never too late to change occupations. You've already done it once, Mr. Lawyer."

              What makes you think I want to change occupations? Why can't it just be a hobby?"

              "A hobby is fine. A stack of books isn’t a hobby; it's either an obsession or a focused effort to master something. You’re not the obsessive type. But you do focus intensely on something you’re trying to master."

              "Want to learn about pitch?"

              "Only if you crack a window."

              "Done."

              As Ben opened the window, Allie put her bag on the couch and then walked over to the piano. The lid was up, and she hit a few keys.

              "How does someone with relative pitch guess which note is which without knowing?"

              "Relative pitch? You just have to hear something once, maybe twice. It gives you a bearing. Let me show you." He hit a note on the piano. "This is middle C. I know it's middle C because I just watched myself hit it. So I now have a bearing. Go ahead and hit another note. I'll close my eyes."

              Allie plunked another key on the piano.

              "That was an E flat," said Ben, still with his eyes shut.

              "I'll take your word for it."

              Ben counted up the keys for her by letter name and, when he reached E flat, confirmed that it was indeed the key she'd struck.

              "Now how did you do that?"

              "It's easy. Once you know one note for sure, you can use that as your guide for feeling out others. It's like knowing exactly where you're standing in a familiar place and then closing your eyes and walking. If you're familiar enough with the place, you'll be able to stop anywhere and make a pretty good guess at where you are, confirmed once you open your eyes. That's relative pitch."

              "Interesting. And so someone who's able to do that can, say, hear a wine glass clink and take a guess at the note?"

              "Provided they heard another note beforehand that they could identify as being a specific note. Someone with relative pitch can hear a note once. If they know what note it is, they'll be able to use it as a guide to find their way around the scale for a while. After a while, you forget and have to be reminded."

              "And perfect pitch?"

              "Folks with perfect pitch always have that reference note in their heads. It's like being able to see the notes on a movie screen in your brain, is how it was once described to me. You never need a pitch pipe or anyone to tell you which note is which. You automatically know."

              "Like being able to measure an inch from a mile away."

              "Very good."

              "So when a wine glass is filled, its pitch changes. Is that right?"

              "Right. You can clink an empty glass and get a note. When that same glass is filled, it changes what they call the resonant frequency of the glass. If you clink it then, the pitch will be lowered."

              "And so someone with relative pitch could hear the glass clinked when it's empty, find out what note it is, then hear it when it's full and guess the note correctly. Does that make sense?"

              "This is a typical Allie Griffin line of inquiry for sure. Yes, that makes perfect sense."

              Allie sighed contentedly. "Benjamin, my beautiful friend, that's all I need to know."

              She took him by the temples, pulled him down, and kissed his forehead.

              He chuckled. "Anytime."

              She grabbed her bag with an apology for not hanging around longer and headed out the door. In the threshold, she stopped and turned around.

              "You're an incredibly sweet man who deserves to do what he loves to do. I'm sorry for laughing at you."

              He smiled and waved. And Allie Griffin walked out toward the coming storm.

#

              From the warmth and comfort of her home, she called Tad Mills.

              No answer.

              She texted him.

              No response.

              An ugly feeling came over her. She called Sgt. Frank Beauchenne at work.

              "Yeah?" he answered gruffly.

              "I'm sorry, I know you don’t like me calling you at work, especially to discuss cases that I shouldn’t be meddling in, but I need to know if you've arrested Tad Mills."

              "Listen, can I get back to you?"

              "It's ok, Frank, but can you just answer yes or no?"

              There was a pause, then, "Yes."

              Allie uttered her favorite curse, one she'd tried again and again to break the habit of uttering. Then she hung up.

              She thought hard, and she paced, and she thought quickly. And then it came to her. There
was
one way to exonerate him. And she went out to do it now.