Bantam of the Opera (19 page)

“Tippy,” mused Renie. “It's too bad you never went through her luggage. You might have found another short negligee.”

“I never thought of it,” said Judith. “Anyway, it didn't seem important. More like a silly stunt.” She stood up. “It's not too late.”

“For what? Silly stunts?” Renie looked askance.

“Come on,” said Judith, heading for the back stairs. “Let's go over Tippy's room with the proverbial fine-tooth comb. Phyliss was in a rush today because she had a dental appointment. Maybe she didn't do her usual bang-up job.”

But rushed or not, it appeared that the cleaning woman had been thorough. Judith looked under the bed, the bureau, even the rug. Renie perused the closet and the drawers.

“Drat,” said Judith, as the cousins craned their necks to see if there was any nook or cranny they'd overlooked.

“What about the bathroom?” asked Renie.

“Tippy shared it with Amina,” said Judith. “I can't imagine she'd leave anything there.”

Renie looked anyway, moving about quietly so as not to alarm Amina next door. Frustrated, Judith scanned the bedroom one last time. The bureau drawer she'd pushed in earlier still wasn't closed properly. Judith gave it another shove. Again, it didn't mesh. Annoyed, she tugged it all the way out. Wedged along the side was a credit card, ap
parently having fallen out of the drawer. Judith picked it up and examined the imprint.

Renie was closing the bathroom door. “Zip,” she said, then stared at Judith. “What's that?”

Judith was wearing a strange little smile. “Blooming-dale's,” she said, holding the plastic between her thumb and forefinger. “Made out to Victoria D. Kerr of Chestnut Street in Boston.”

Renie's jaw dropped. “Huh?”

Judith's smile grew more cunning. “I think,” she said as her black eyes danced, “we've found out who Tippy de Caro really is. Now, we need to find out where she's gone. Maybe it's not going to be as hard as we thought.”

R
ENIE SAT DOWN
on the hundred-year-old wedding ring quilt that covered the four-poster bed. “Hold on,” she said, giving Judith a dubious look. “You're jumping to conclusions. Victoria Kerr isn't necessarily Tippy de Caro. Nor, if I follow your line of logic, which I usually can, is Ms. Kerr somehow related to Justin the Tenor Kerr. Slow down. Think. Have you had any other Kerrs staying here?”

Judith, feeling only a mite deflated, joined Renie on the quilt that their maternal great-grandmother had laboriously pieced a century earlier. “I remember names, but I don't recall any Kerrs. Carr, yes—they were from Wisconsin, last spring. They stayed in the front bedroom. Besides, this credit card must have got stuck in the last day or so. I'd have noticed that drawer being out-of-kilter if it had happened earlier.”

Renie gave a nod. “Okay. A point conceded. Two points, maybe. Now what?”

Judith got up. “We call Woody to see if he's talked to Justin Kerr yet. Then we check to find out where Justin is staying. He might be at the Cascadia. Inez is there, after all.”

Woody wasn't in. A call to the Cascadia Hotel drew
a blank when Judith asked for Justin Kerr. Systematically, she worked her way through the city's other large hotels. After six tries, she was getting discouraged.

“That takes care of the top tier,” Judith said, running her finger down the listings in the Yellow Pages. The cousins had retreated to Judith and Joe's room in the family quarters. “Justin isn't a big star, so I suppose it figures that he wouldn't be staying some place that costs two hundred dollars a night. But damn, there are at least a dozen smaller, but first-rate places in the downtown area. Here, coz, you give it a try. My ear's tired.”

Renie, who was sitting in the dressing table chair, took both the directory and the telephone from Judith. On her fourth try she got a positive response from the Hotel Plymouth. Justin Kerr was indeed a registered guest.

“Now what?” she inquired, replacing the receiver.

Judith was on her feet, heading for the closet where she got out her good red winter coat. “We go browse. Come on, coz, let's hit it.”

“Wait!” protested Renie. “It's after nine, I'm in my grubbies, they'll throw me out for vagrancy.”

Renie was indeed wearing one of her more disreputable costumes, a faded Georgetown University sweatshirt over equally faded black sweatpants, which had a hole in one knee. Judith never understood her cousin's wardrobe, which seemed to consist of seven-hundred-dollar ensembles at one end of the spectrum and semirags at the other. There was absolutely no in-between.

“Here,” said Judith, tossing her brown raincoat at Renie. “This'll be long enough on you to cover up everything but your ratty shoes.”

Renie was still grumbling when they pulled into the Hotel Plymouth's parking garage. “Six bucks this will cost us, and I'll bet we can't find anything but compact parking spaces. That's the trouble in this town, the Japanese own everything these days and they don't allow room for real cars.”

“It's your own fault you and Bill insist on driving an
American car only somewhat smaller than a superferry,” chided Judith.

Eventually, Renie found a spot on the last level. After much fighting of the wheel and a great many swear words, she managed to get the car parked. In the lobby, the cousins gazed around somewhat furtively. The hotel seemed quiet, with only a handful of guests chatting among the tasteful old-world appointments.

Gathering her courage, Judith approached the desk and asked to see Justin Kerr. The clerk, a young black man who looked as if he were either working his way through college or on the first rung of a management trainee program, rang Justin Kerr's room. There was no answer.

Judith asked the clerk for an envelope. She slipped the credit card inside, sealed it, and wrote Justin Kerr's name on the exterior. Then she handed the envelope to the clerk. “You can put this in Mr. Kerr's box, but we'll wait a few minutes in case he shows up.” As the young man turned away, Judith nudged Renie and nodded toward the row of message slots against the far wall. With a smile of thanks for the desk clerk, Judith led Renie over to a beige divan flanked with huge bouquets of fresh flowers.

“Boy, this is sure fun,” muttered Renie, wrestling with the folds of Judith's too-large raincoat. “What do we get to do next, put alum on our tongues and pucker ourselves to death?”

“Justin won't be late,” replied Judith in a complacent tone. “He has a performance tomorrow night, remember?”

The metal hands of the Roman numeral clock over the lobby archway inched toward ten. People drifted in and out of the lobby. The young desk clerk occasionally cast a surreptitious look in the cousins' direction. Renie squirmed inside the raincoat, bored and impatient. Judith watched the main entrance, but also glanced now and then at the door that led to the bar.

At two minutes after ten, Renie got to her feet. “Hey, let's forget it, coz. He may already be up there, not an
swering his phone. I got up at seven-fifteen this morning, in case you've forgotten.”

Judith didn't spare her cousin any sympathy, but she did stand up. “Let's try a more devious approach,” she said, heading for the elevators. “Did you notice the number of Justin's room?”

Renie sighed with resignation. “Yeah, 722. When are you getting your eyes checked?”

Inside the elevator, Judith punched the button for the seventh floor. “If we can't find a maid to bribe, we'll have to resort to my lockpicking skills.”

Renie rolled her eyes, but offered no comment. It wouldn't be the first time that Judith had made an unlawful entry. The corridor on the seventh floor was empty. The only signs of life behind the rows of closed doors were an occasional tray of dirty dishes or a stack of clean towels. The cousins proceeded to Room 722, which was almost at the end of the hallway. Judith produced a crochet hook from her handbag.

“I came prepared,” she said with an off-center grin.

Renie sighed again. “Great,” she muttered. “Did you bring targets we could put on our backs so somebody can shoot us?”

With her ear to the lock, Judith didn't reply, but gave a sharp shake of her head to silence Renie. Although most of the hotel had been renovated in the last decade, the management had retained the original doors, and, surprisingly, the original, comparatively unsophisticated locks. In less than two minutes, Judith heard the satisfying click that signaled the inner mechanism's release.

The room appeared to be dark. Judith slipped inside, with Renie at her heels. On the right, Judith found the light switch.

“All right,” she breathed, taking in her surroundings. It was a standard room, with a double bed, a desk, TV, two chairs, a small table, and three lamps. The only unusual feature was the woman who threw open the bathroom
door. She was stark naked. She screamed—and so did the cousins.

Judith was the first to regain her composure. “Hi, Tippy,” she said, feeling foolish. “I'm glad you're okay.”

But Tippy had fled back into the bathroom. She emerged a moment later, wrapped in a big white towel. “What the hell is this?” she demanded, sounding not much like her usual bouncy self.

“We thought you'd been kidnapped,” Judith said. It was not as big a fib as Judith had been known to tell in a good cause. If one of her guests had been murdered, it wasn't impossible that another could have been carried off by force. “In fact, I notified the police that you were gone.”

“Great.” Tippy glared at Judith, securing the towel around her bosom. “Well, I'm fine. I decided to get the hell out of your stupid B&B. It didn't strike me as a healthy place to stay.”

“Mario Pacetti wasn't poisoned at Hillside Manor,” Judith asserted, wishing she could feel free to sit down. “At least he didn't die there,” she added, thinking about the thermos that had been buried in the backyard. “The problem with trying to find you was that we didn't know which name to look for—de Caro or Kerr.”

Tippy's eyes widened. “What do you mean?” she gasped.

“Oh, I don't suppose you've done anything illegal,” Judith responded breezily. “It's a stage name, right?”

Tippy had padded over to the bed where she perched on the edge. “You could say that.” Her tone was dry, her voice much sharper than the cousins were accustomed to hearing from her previous persona. “All right, how did you figure it out?”

Judith risked sitting in an armchair; Renie followed suit, still struggling with the raincoat as she sat down on the other armchair. “You left a credit card in the bureau,” said Judith. “It's in an envelope downstairs at the desk.”

Tippy, her wet red hair hanging around her face, gave the cousins a look of chagrin. “Careless of me. But I was
in a hurry. As you know, there's a killer on the loose. How the hell did you get in here?” The sudden alarm on her face indicated she hadn't excluded Judith and Renie from the list of possible suspects.

The cousins exchanged furtive looks. “It was sort of sneaky,” Judith admitted, “but we were genuinely worried. Especially when the desk clerk couldn't get through to the room.” Judith hoped her half-baked explanation would obscure the illegal method of entry.

“I was in the shower,” said Tippy irritably. “I didn't hear the phone ring. Justin—my cousin—is out to dinner.” She dropped her eyes, glanced at her wrist, realized she wasn't wearing a watch, and looked over at the TV where the digital clock showed that it was now ten-seventeen. Fine lines appeared on her forehead. “Justin ought to be back soon, though. It's getting late.”

Noting that Tippy was swinging one foot in an impatient manner, Judith calculated that the other woman's mood was precarious. “If you're sure there's a killer at Hillside Manor, do you know who it is?”

Tippy clutched at the towel as if she were not only protecting her modesty, but her very life. “No! That is, I'm not even sure the killer is actually staying there. But I could make a pretty good guess, all things considered.”

“So guess.” It was Renie, speaking for the first time since the cousins had entered the hotel room.

But Tippy vehemently shook her head. “That would be slander, if I'm wrong. And worse, if I'm right. I told you, that's why I left the B&B.” She was eyeing the phone, which stood on the desk near Judith's chair. “Look, I think you two had better go. If you don't, I'll call security and have them throw you out.”

Judith gave a sad little shake of her head. “Sorry, Tippy. Then we'd have to call the police. They're looking for you. It's just a matter of time. Are you
on the run?
” Her face assumed a dire cast.

“Oh, for Christ's sake!” Tippy threw back her head, the damp hair flying. “Of course not! My name
is
Tippy. My
nickname, I mean. When I was little, I couldn't say Victoria. I used de Caro because…well, because I didn't want Mr. Pacetti to think we were
obvious
. I suppose Plunkett's having a brain seizure about now. Is he the one who called the cops?”

Suddenly at sea, Judith gave an uncertain shake of her head. “No. He was concerned, of course. But let's face it, you're involved in a murder investigation. The police don't like losing track of suspects.”

A light glimmered in Tippy's gray eyes. “Wait a minute—you mean Winnie hasn't figured out who I really am?” She saw the blank expression on Judith's face and laughed aloud. “Ha! That's rich! The poor twit!” Her merriment was interrupted by the arrival of Justin Kerr, who promptly froze upon seeing their visitors.

“Relax,” said Tippy. “It's my landlady from the B&B and her cousin. They're cousins, too—like us.” She gave Justin a meaningful look.

“We've met,” said Judith, with a wry smile for Justin. “Twice.”

Justin glanced at Tippy, who was suddenly looking uncomfortable. “My cousin forgot we'd been introduced. Our stay has been overly eventful. And tragic.” He gave all three women a dismayed look, then zeroed in on Renie. “I'm sorry, I've forgotten your name…”

“Serena Jones,” said Renie. “Hi, we were just grilling your cousin. What's up anyway? You two were conspiring to get into Pacetti's good graces? What were you after, a patron?”

Judith threw an admiring look at Renie. All along, she'd figured that her cousin was in a semimoribund state, merely trying to figure out how to beat a hasty retreat in the oversized raincoat. But Renie, with her superior knowledge of the opera world, had obviously been grappling with some conjectures. Judging from the Kerrs' resigned expressions, she was right.

“It's not a crime,” asserted Justin Kerr, setting his
shoulders and jutting his chin. “Great singers often sponsor protégés. Who better than Pacetti?”

Enlightenment dawned on Judith. She turned to Tippy. “So you wormed your way into Pacetti's entourage trying to get him to help your cousin's career. Why not just come right out and ask?”

Tippy laughed again, though on a different, more sardonic note. Justin's pleasant face twisted with irony. “You didn't know Pacetti very well,” he declared. “The direct approach wouldn't do it. That's why Tippy used another name. First, she had to convince Plunkett that Pacetti should have a protégé, then she had to see that he got through to Pacetti.”

“And I damned near did,” insisted Tippy. “Winnie heard Justin sing in San Francisco. He was impressed. We figured that if he heard my cousin sing here, he'd be ready to go after Pacetti's patronage. It should have all worked out—if the little creep hadn't died. Justin's damned good.” She gave Justin a look that conveyed more than mere pride.

Justin, however, appeared faintly embarrassed. “Tippy's very loyal,” he said. “She'd do anything for me. She put up with the Pacettis for almost four months.”