“Let’s find out who he is,” Jimmy said.
He minimized the YouTube screen so Lily could keep on singing while he searched.
“Found him. His name is Bob Gunderson. He wasn’t just her lead guitar. When she switched to pop, he cowrote some of her songs and produced her albums. They won Grammys together.”
“So what happened?”
“She got nodes,” Jimmy said, “whatever that is.”
“I’ve heard singers talk about it in meetings,” she said. “They’re all deathly afraid of getting them. Calluses on your vocal cords. You get them from overusing your voice.”
“Lesions,” Jimmy said, already beamed up to the right page online. “Prolonged vocal abuse.”
“It sounds horrible,” I said. “Can they be fixed?”
“Sometimes,” Barbara said. “But it might have meant she would never sing again. So she dropped out of sight.”
“And he dropped out with her,” Jimmy said. “I’m checking. No references to performances or any professional activity later than five years ago, when she announced she had to give her voice a break. His arthritis might have started up by then too.”
“But he wrote songs,” Barbara said, “and he was a music producer. He wouldn’t have needed his hands to be in virtuoso shape for that, not in the digital age.”
“Maybe he didn’t care about all that,” I said. “Maybe he dropped out to take care of her. When they sang together, they sure looked and sounded like they loved each other.”
“Let’s see if I can find one where they sing together,” Jimmy said, “when she was at her peak. Ah, thank you, YouTube. Here.”
It must have been one of the songs they’d written together. It brought a lump to my throat. It sounded the way I would have liked to tell Cindy I felt about her, only I didn’t have the words or the music and never would.
“They might have faked that for a performance on a concert stage like that,” Jimmy said.
“But not for an audience of tourists in Central Park,” Barbara said. “Why would they have bothered?”
“They wouldn’t,” I said. “They must have really meant it. They sounded just like that in Strawberry Fields.”
“Except they took it easy on her voice,” Barbara said, “and on his hands.”
“Okay,” Jimmy said. “Now that we know his name, let’s find Bob Gunderson and get some answers. They wouldn’t have been broke. They must have lived somewhere, and I bet that’s where he’s hiding.”
But neither Jimmy nor the NYPD, because we’d have been crazy not to tell Cindy and Natali what we’d discovered, could find a current address for Robert Gunderson in the tristate area or an active credit card, driver’s license, or utilities or phone bill. Their royalty checks went by a roundabout route to a lawyer who was not only bound by confidentiality but convinced a sceptical Natali that he didn’t know where the money went when it left his hands, but he knew the trail had been expertly concealed five years ago. A similar search for Lily Vidalia led to the same lawyer and the same dead end. He had her will, but since Bob Gunderson was her sole beneficiary, it didn’t help.
Cindy and I were sharing one of those postcoital moments that I used to think would be disappointing without cigarets but was realizing could now be devoted to breathing in the scent and feel of her, with maybe a flash of telepathy now and then, when she said, “If they used another name, what would it have been?”
At the same moment, I said, “Why Strawberry Fields?”
“You first,” she said.
“Why the Beatles?” I asked. “Lennon was beside the point for them. They sang folk and their own songs, and the Beatles were long gone by the time they came along.”
“It was part of their disguise,” Cindy said. “When you heard ‘Eleanor Rigby,’ you didn’t think of Lily Vidalia.”
“Why Central Park at all?”
“The Dakota,” she said. “It’s right across the street from Strawberry Fields. We checked there first of all. They could slip in and out whenever they wanted. All they had to do is duck behind a bush or dodge into a restroom and get out of those conspicuous clothes, and they’d be invisible. But there are no residents under their names, and the Dakota is very protective of its residents’ privacy. We asked what questions we could, but we got nowhere, and beyond a certain point we got told to lay off.”
“We?”
“NYPD. Okay, Natali. He was pissed off, and I sympathize. Suppose they bought the co-op in another name. What name?”
“My gut says it would be in her name. She was the diva. How about Flora? In the song, the Lily of the West is Flora. Flora Gunderson.”
“We checked all the Gundersons — not just the Bobs or Roberts, and not just in the Dakota.”
“West, then,” I said. “Flora G. West.”
“It’s worth a try,” Cindy said. “I’ll text Natali.”
I guessed right. The police found Gunderson, still ravaged with grief, in the Dakota, in the apartment he’d shared with Lily. They found the murder weapon too: a steel guitar string. When she was diagnosed with nodes, she’d thought she’d never sing again. But after surgery and therapy and warming up her voice in Strawberry Fields, she’d healed. She was ready to be a pro again. But his arthritic hands were getting worse. She was going to leave him. So he killed her. I’d been right about that too: He didn’t care about songwriting or producing. He’d had only two loves: Lily and playing the guitar. Without them both, his life was over. He came quietly.
© 2017 Elizabeth Zelvin
Murder at the Mongoose
by R. T. Raichev
“This,” said Dr. Constantine, “is more wildly improbable than any roman policier I have ever read.”
— Agatha Christie
Murder on the Orient Express
R.T. Raichev is the author of nine novels featuring mystery-writer sleuth Antonia Darcy. In an early review of the series, Booklist said: “Antonia Darcy is a terrific sleuth, and Raichev is a very clever writer, indeed.” The series has appeared at book length from Constable & Robinson in the U.K. and Soho Constable in the U.S. Its two most recent entries were EQMM stories!
“Ah, Payne! Just the man I wanted to see,” Captain Jenner said as he entered the smoking room at the Military Club in St James’s, London SW1Y. “Hope you aren’t frightfully busy?”
“No, not frightfully,” Major Payne said in amiable tones.
“Care to hear a rather curious story?”
“Depends on how curious.” Major Payne was sitting in a winged armchair by the fireplace, smoking his pipe, sipping a whisky and soda and leafing through the Times. Jenner — who was the club secretary — had spoken breezily enough, but Payne thought he had had a pinched look about him.
“I believe it’s up your street.”
“In that case, I’ll definitely want to hear it.”
Jenner cast a glance round and seemed reassured that there was no one else in the room. “Um. I had a rather unnerving kind of experience the other day. Feels like a bad dream now. Left me feeling physically cold. Couldn’t sleep a wink last night, actually, thinking about it. You see, I suspect murder. Only murder would fit the bill.”
“Murder?”
Captain Jenner nodded as he saw Payne lower the newspaper. “Knew you’d be interested. Murder, yes. Can’t think of any other explanation. I am not endowed with the kind of powerful and strange imagination you and your wife are reputed to possess. In fact it was Dulcie — my wife — who urged me to consult you. She’s been reading about the Harrogate Hydro Strangler — about your role in the affair — she’s been terribly impressed!”