Murder at the Opera - Margaret Truman [132]
“Want me to?” Pawkins said. “I stole them. Feel better?”
“I’d like to go, Mac,” Annabel said.
“And miss lunch? I make a dynamite onion soup
“In a minute, Annie,” Mac said. To Pawkins: “Doesn’t it concern you, Ray, that you’re sitting here and openly confessing to us that you committed a major felony?”
“Why should it? What are you going to do, run to Carl Berry at MPD and tell him what I just told you? You don’t have any proof, unless you have a tape recorder going, which I seriously doubt. They’ll laugh you out of the place, Mac. I’m a retired Homicide detective. I left the force with honors, enough citations to cover a wall. Besides, defense lawyers like you aren’t the most popular people with cops
Pawkins stood. “Ready for lunch?” he asked.
“We’ll be leaving,” Smith said. “We’ve lost our appetite
“Suit yourself,” Pawkins said, following them from the house to where their car waited in front. “Last chance for Raymond Pawkins’ gourmet onion soup. I won’t be around here much longer to make it again. I’m selling this house back to the guy who originally owned it. He lives over there in that mansion. He wants it for his daughter and her family. Make a nice family compound, everybody close to the old man so he can rule the roost. I’m heading for Florida, Fort Lauderdale. The Florida Grand Opera’s pretty good, not up to WNO’s standards, but not bad. They’ve been around for more than sixty years. Plenty of work as a super. I’ll get my PI license and—”
Mac started the engine, put the car into gear, and drove away, seeing in the rearview mirror a smiling Pawkins waving good-bye.
Annabel’s anger turned to tears. “Damn him,” she said. “Everything’s been so wonderful lately, so perfect, the opening, the ball, everything
“Life’s like opera, Annie,” Mac said as he pulled onto the G.W. Memorial Parkway. “You have to have a villain to put things into perspective. There wouldn’t be a Tosca without a Scarpia. By the way, do you think I should cheat a little more to the right while I’m on the stairs in the last act? It’s my good side.”
Epilogue
At five o’clock, Milton Crowley did what he did every evening at that time since returning to his cottage in Wareham, Dorset, southwest of London, the home of T. E. Lawrence, and the site of his fatal motorcycle crash in 1935. An effigy in St. Martin’s Church of Lawrence of Arabia, in Arab dress, was a popular tourist attraction.
He pulled down a wicker tray with handles from where it perched on a hook in his kitchen, and placed it on the table. Each item he positioned on it was in precisely the spot where he always placed it—a small, cut-glass decanter into which he’d poured enough single-malt Scotch for two drinks; two Venetian crystal goblets that he and Cora had purchased during a holiday in Venice; four white-bread tea sandwiches, two with egg, two with salmon; a compact Grundig shortwave radio; two napkins; and a photograph of Cora in an oval, gold filigree frame with a stand.
He carefully opened the screen door of the cottage with his foot and walked down a short, grassy slope to where a white wrought-iron bench and table sat next to the gently flowing stream that had been the main reason for him having purchased the cottage, which was stoutly made of ashlar blocks of local Purbeck stone.
He set the tray on the table, brushed off the bench with one of the napkins, sat, and drew a deep, contented breath. It was a fair day, the sun warm, the sky all blue and white. The chirping of reed warblers from a patch of wild celery on the opposite bank caught his attention, and he returned their message with a bird sound of his own. Bluebells, rhododendrons, and azaleas grew along the stream’s bank; he imagined painting a still life of them, had he that talent.
He removed the glass stopper from the decanter and poured the Scotch into both glasses. He stared at the photograph for a moment before raising his glass to it: “To us,