Murder at the Opera Read online

  CONTENTS

  TITLE PAGE

  DEDICATION

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FORTY

  EPILOGUE

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  BY MARGARET TRUMAN

  COPYRIGHT

  To Sam Vaughan, who set the editorial bar high,

  and who has always been there to boost me over it.

  You are, Sam, simply the best editor a writer

  could ever hope for.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  As an honorary trustee of the Washington National Opera, I look with great pride upon the wonderful men and women who have guided it into the top tier of American opera companies. It’s only fitting that Washington should join other world capitals as being home to an outstanding opera company.

  I thank Maestro Plácido Domingo, Washington National Opera’s general director, for allowing me to set this, my twenty-second book in the Capital Crime series, against the soaring splendor of his productions at the Kennedy Center. His remarkable talent and extraordinary artistic vision have inspired the men and women of the Washington National Opera to new heights, and the nation and its opera lovers are better for it. Bravo, Maestro!

  And a special thanks to Jennifer Johnston, a delightful guide to the Washington National Opera, who opened up myriad doors, behind which few are privileged to see; to Bill Wooby, whose knowledge of the Washington arts scene has enriched more than one of my Capital Crime novels; to author and opera aficionado Charles Flowers; to my agent, Ted Chichak, whose knowledge and love of opera is extraordinary; and to opera critic John Shulson, for whom opera is no mystery.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Fifty years ago Day Thorpe, music critic of the now defunct Washington Star, decided along with a few like-minded souls that Washington, D.C., needed an opera company, and founded the Opera Society of Washington, later changed to the simpler Washington Opera, and in 2000 renamed the Washington National Opera by an act of Congress. This Congressional name change was not inconsequential. Not only did America now have its own official opera company, all fifty states had a stake in it, giving those who raise necessary funds for the company a broader potential source of financial support.

  The Washington National Opera (WNO) has evolved and grown over the past five decades from a regional company into one of international acclaim. Its productions rival those of the leading opera companies of America—New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Minneapolis, San Francisco—and the world.

  In the beginning, performances were staged in small, cramped, borrowed theaters. But since 1971 it has staged its performances in the magnificent 2,300-seat Kennedy Center Opera House, and has been the resident opera company of the Kennedy Center ever since.

  So, in reality, this book is about the Washington National Opera specifically, rather than the world of opera in general.

  My decision to have people murdered at the Washington National Opera does not reflect actual events there. Of course, many great operas that have graced the stage of the Kennedy Center Opera House present murder in its most dramatic form, death throes onstage as long and lingering as the musical score calls for. But any relationship between the murdered and the murderers in this book, and those real people who make the Washington National Opera the actual, splendid institution that it is, is happily, purely coincidental.

  Finally, my hat is off to those at the Washington National Opera who made the courageous decision to ignore the protests of curmudgeonly purists, and to use English supertitles to translate operas at the Kennedy Center. English supertitles, or surtitles, came into popular use in the early 1980s and have been instrumental in widening the audience for opera. They’ve also tempered the temptation to present foreign operas in English, as grievous a sin as belatedly coloring classic black-and-white motion pictures. As H. L. Mencken once said, “Opera in English is, in the main, just about as sensible as baseball in Italian.”

  Or, as Sir Edward Appleton wrote in The Observer in 1955, “I do not mind what language opera is sung in so long as it is a language I don’t understand.”

  Margaret Truman

  New York

  2006

  PROLOGUE

  She died quickly and with a modicum of suffering.

  This came as no surprise. Unlike so-called crimes of passion which are invariably messy, drawn out, and painful, I’d planned her death.

  She had to be eliminated because she knew something that I preferred she not know, which raised the possibility that she would pass it along to others. I couldn’t allow that.

  Had knowing the victim made it easier or more difficult for me? Of course, having known her cast me as a suspect, along with dozens of others. Murderers who are strangers to their victims invariably stand a better chance of getting away with it. There was a brief temptation to enlist the aid of another person, someone outside our circle of acquaintances, but I quickly ruled that out. The fewer people who know about a murder, the better.

  That the murder took place onstage at the Kennedy Center Opera House would lead one to believe that I have a flair for the dramatic. But that was not the reason the area was chosen as the place to ensure her silence. I’d considered a number of settings—her apartment, on the street, or in a secluded room in the Opera company’s rehearsal space at Takoma Park. She provided the answer by insisting that we meet on the stage that night, actually in the early morning hours, long after everyone was gone for the evening except perhaps for a couple of Kennedy Center security guards, who wouldn’t come into the theater unless given reason to, which I certainly didn’t intend to provide.

  It should also be pointed out that my choice of a weapon had nothing—absolutely nothing—to do with the fact that the encounter took place on the Opera House’s main stage, where the Washington National Opera would soon present the latest production of Puccini’s warhorse, Tosca. Moments before dealing the fatal blow, I thought of the justified murder of the cruel, lecherous Scarpia in Tosca’s Act II. The major difference was that this slaying was committed in shadows and without onlookers, while Tosca’s stabbing of the cruel chief of the secret police would take place before thousands bearing witness to her defensible action. Of course, Tosca’s dramatic killing of Scarpia is make-believe. This one was very real; I did not break into the aria “Vissi D’arte” before completing the act, as Madame Tosca has done thousand of nights on grand stages around the globe.

  The victim was eventually foun
d, of course, although it took almost a full day. I’d placed the body in such a location where few would have reason to go under ordinary circumstances. When her body was discovered, there was a flurry of media and law enforcement activity, and much was made of the fact that the homicide took place inside the revered Kennedy Center, and in that institution’s Opera House, where betrayal, passion, intrigue, and murder take place on a regular basis—but only during performances on the main stage. The press had a field day with opera analogies, the weapon used, the setting, and the connection of the deceased with the Washington National Opera.

  In the meantime, Tosca, and the larger comic opera that is Washington, D.C., itself, but that too often turns deadly—must, and did—go on.

  And so must I.

  ONE

  “Mac, you must do it.”

  “No.”

  “It’s an honor, for you and for the school.”

  “I don’t see anything honorable about middle-aged men dressed in loincloths strutting around carrying spears. I thought we’d progressed beyond that.”

  Annabel knew her husband wouldn’t be an easy sell. But his flippant comment meant she was making progress. There would be an obligatory protest before caving in.

  “I’m not an actor,” he added.

  They’d finished breakfast and had taken refilled mugs of coffee out onto the balcony of their Watergate apartment. It was a warm, muggy morning in early June, a harbinger of another sweltering summer in D.C. The sky was a milky blue. Below, the rippling waters of a cleaner Potomac River danced in the sunlight. Farther up the river, the familiar spires of Georgetown University rose proudly into the air.

  “Of course you’re an actor,” Annabel said. “You can’t be a high-powered trial lawyer without being an actor. I saw you in action when you were trying cases. You were Olivier in a gray three-piece suit.”

  “That was then,” he said. “Today I am just a stodgy professor, and happy to be.”

  She considered her next argument. She’d practiced her own share of theatrics while representing clients in high-profile domestic disputes. That was then, too. She’d given up matrimonial law to open a pre-Colombian art gallery in Georgetown, which was doing nicely. Giving up their respective law practices had been a decision they’d come to at different times, and for different reasons.

  For Annabel, attempting to mediate wrenching battles between warring spouses had become almost unbearable, especially when both sides were engaged in self-destructive behavior, domestic suicide bombers intent on injuring each other.

  For him, the death of his first wife and only child at the hands of a drunken driver on the Beltway one rainy night had tipped the scales in favor of his escaping what had become one of Washington’s preeminent criminal law firms, abandoning it to his three partners, and becoming Mackensie Smith, professor of law at the prestigious George Washington University.

  Neither Mac nor Annabel had regretted their decisions, not even fleetingly.

  “Mac,” she said softly, touching his arm, “using prominent people as supernumeraries in productions has gotten the opera lots of good press, which translates into ticket sales. You’ll be in good company. Last year, two spear-toting Supreme Court justices wore costumes in a production. You read about them in the Post. And the Secretary of State and his wife did, too, the season before. This time it’s professors from the area’s universities. Besides, it’s Tosca, Mac. Puccini. You’ll love it.”

  “You know I’m not an opera fan,” he said.

  “But you’ll become one. I guarantee it. Tosca is the perfect intro for you. It has all the elements of great drama—sex, betrayal, corruption, and murder—and gorgeous music.” She checked his expression. She almost had him. Time to go in for the kill. “Besides,” she said, “I’ve already committed you.” Before he could respond, she added,

  “It’s important to me, Mac. I’m new on the board and want to make what contributions I can as quickly as possible.”

  He grinned. “And your first contribution is to sacrifice me?”

  “You’ll do it?”

  “Sure. Anything for a good cause.”

  “The National Opera is a good cause,” she said.

  “I was thinking of you, Annie. You’re the best cause I know.”

  He got up from the table, kissed her on the cheek, and headed inside, saying over his shoulder, “I’m running late for a faculty meeting. Busy day.”

  “Leave time for your fitting,” she said, following him.

  He stopped, turned, and said, “Costume fitting? My loincloth?”

  “Yes. And stop saying it’s a loincloth. It’s not.”

  “When?”

  “This afternoon. I told Harriet you’d be free after four.”

  “Where?”

  “Takoma Park, the company’s rehearsal facility. All the costumes are done there. Oh, and there’s a meeting of supers tonight at the Kennedy Center. Seven o’clock. I’ll go with you.”

  He embraced her, kissed her again, this time meaningfully, picked up his briefcase, and stepped into the hall. She stood in the open doorway admiring his purposeful stride in the direction of the elevators. He was halfway there when he suddenly stopped, turned, pointed a finger at her, and said, “You owe me one, Annie.”

  “Oh? When?”

  “I’ll collect tonight. And it will be more than just a rehearsal.”

  She giggled, and said just loud enough for him to hear but not the neighbors, “I love it when you talk dirty.”

  TWO

  Mac Smith sometimes thought that if he were president of the university, he would ban all faculty meetings. Occasionally, a meeting went smoothly, accomplished something, and consumed a minimal amount of time, but that was the twice-a-year exception rather than the rule. It all depended, of course, on who chaired the meeting. This day it was the new dean of the law school, a nice enough fellow with impressive credentials—and a tendency to posture. Had there been a fireplace in the room, Mac was certain that the dean would lean an elbow on the mantel and smoke a pipe, allowing for photographs, had smoking been allowed.

  The meeting lasted forty-five minutes, thirty-one minutes longer than was necessary to cover the agenda. Mac was first out the door, closely followed by John Renwick, a teaching colleague who shared Mac’s abhorrence of wasted time. Renwick came into Mac’s office, tossed his briefcase on a small couch, and said, “Did anything useful come out of this, or did I miss something?”

  Mac laughed as he opened the drapes that covered his only window and raised the blinds. “Scuzzy day out there,” he said. He turned to face Renwick. “We just learned from our new leader,” he said, “that someone on Capitol Hill, obviously of the right-wing variety, is considering convening a committee to investigate whether young attorneys being turned out by esteemed institutions like ours need a better grounding in old-fashioned legal principles; translation, more conservative ones. Our leader wants to be on the record as having heeded the call and explored with his faculty this alleged problem—which, of course, isn’t a problem. What’s new with you?”

  “Not a lot. Lois wonders whether you and Annabel are free tonight for dinner, a last-minute thing. A college buddy of mine and his wife blew into town, also last-minute. Haven’t seen him in years. You’d enjoy him. He’s—”

  “No can do,” Mac said, “but thanks anyway. Prior engagement. I’m being fitted for a loincloth.”

  “What?”

  “Annabel has ensnared me in this opera project cooked up by Public Affairs. I’m going to be an extra in Tosca.”

  “I think that’s wonderful,” said Renwick, mirth in his voice. “You do have good legs.”

  “I suggest you leave it right there, my friend.”

  “I envy you,” Renwick said. “I love opera. You’ll be in heady company, Mac. Our leader is donning a loincloth, too, isn’t he?”

  “So I hear.”

  “Well,” said Renwick, retrieving his briefcase, “good luck. By the way, you won’t be an
‘extra’ in the cast. Extras in opera are called ‘supers’—supernumeraries—supernumerárius in Latin.”

  “I know, but I prefer plain old ‘extra,’ for the same reason I refuse to play that pretentious game at Starbucks of calling a medium-size coffee a grande. I always ask for a medium coffee when I go there, which isn’t often. I make better coffee than they do and it doesn’t cost me the month’s mortgage.”

  “We have to make our stands where we find them,” Renwick said, laughing and shaking his head. “I was a spear carrier in an opera while working my way through college. Aida. Loved it. Sorry you can’t make dinner. Another time. Give my best to Annabel.” He left the office, closing the door behind him.

  Mac spent the next few hours fine-tuning a lecture on habeas corpus he would deliver that afternoon, taking a break from time to time to think about less solemn subjects, namely Annabel, dear sweet Annabel, who’d entered his life a year after having lost his wife and son and giving him a reason to live again. That she was a beautiful woman was beyond debate, hair the color of Titian copper, fair unblemished skin, and a figure that was at once sleek and voluptuous. He needed only to look at her in dark moments to feel his emotional tide rise. Wrapped in that package was a vigorous, surprisingly poetic mind (for a lawyer) that was seldom swayed by trivial or self-serving manipulations. That she’d readily agreed to make him her first and only husband awed him at times. Sometimes you do, indeed, get lucky.

  Although they’d structured their married life to maximize time alone together, they were wise enough to know that too much togetherness could prove to be detrimental, and so they pursued the things they loved aside from each other, she her gallery and participation in a few selected arts institutions, he his tennis matches despite an increasingly bothersome knee, consulting commitments to an occasional government agency, and a twice-a-month poker game.

  The Washington National Opera was Annabel’s latest involvement. A couple with whom they were friendly—husband and wife both ardent opera lovers—had tried to entice Mac and Annabel into buying season tickets at the Kennedy Center. As much as Annabel would have enjoyed having her husband escort her to the productions, she knew she would be unsuccessful, and contented herself with buying a single season ticket and accompanying their friends. She hadn’t been steeped in opera up until that point, and wasn’t sure she would find it as enjoyable as they did. But after that first season of five lavishly staged and magnificently performed productions, she was hooked, and not only couldn’t wait for the next season to arrive, she became active with WNO itself, contributing a substantial sum of money and becoming a member of the Medici Society, one of many organizations devoted to sustaining and enhancing the company’s financial and artistic goals. After two years of fund-raising and softly suggesting artistic visions and practical ideas to the company, she was surprised and flattered to be offered a seat on WNO’s board, which she readily accepted. At the moment, she was immersed in plans for the annual Opera Ball, one of Washington’s premiere formal fundraising events.