Murder at the Opera - Margaret Truman [74]
Montgomery stood and checked his bow tie in a mirror. “We’re making an interesting, and possibly fatal, assumption, Bruce,” he said.
“Which is?”
“That these assassins, if they exist and this plan exists, are of Arab extraction. I’m sure you have as many homegrown nuts in Canada as we do here in the States
“Sometimes I think we have even more,” Colmes said, rising from his chair and slapping Montgomery on the back. “In the meantime, Mr. President, our better halves await us. And if you insist on having your usual martini when so much excellent Canadian whiskey and wine is available, the press will have another sinister plot to conjure.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Ray Pawkins awoke with a start. A shaft of light had managed to find a slit in the drapes and hit him in the eye like a laser.
He turned away from the brightness with the intention of dozing off again. But the body next to him moved, causing him to push up against the headboard and to rub sleep from his eyes. He glanced over. The woman snored softly and wrinkled her nose. He’d forgotten she was there.
They’d enjoyed dinner together following the supers rehearsal and had returned to his house to sample a new port that had been touted by a salesman at Rodman’s, Pawkins’ favorite wine shop, and to listen to opera. They’d argued, but only briefly, over which opera to choose from his expansive collection. She preferred a recording of Bizet’s Carmen with Leontyne Price and Franco Corelli, which she’d heard and enjoyed before. But Pawkins said, “If we must listen to Carmen, I prefer the Callas version with Georges Prêtre conducting. Frankly, though, I’m not in the mood for Carmen tonight.” He chose instead Satyagraha, written by Philip Glass and performed by the New York City Opera Orchestra and Chorus.
“I don’t know that one,” she said, the corners of her mouth turned down at having her selection dismissed.
“A gorgeous work,” he said. “It deserves a better recording than this one, although the singing is first-rate. Unfortunately, the orchestra sounds uninspired, thanks to a lackadaisical conductor. Come. Sit next to me on the couch. Your lesson is about to begin
Now, he continued to look down at her in bed. Her hair was long, and cascaded over the delicate yellow pillowcase. Pawkins was always impressed with the inky blackness and luxurious texture of Asian women’s hair. Her eyes fluttered open and closed immediately. Her hand went to her nose to swipe away an itch. Pawkins noted her fingers, tipped with polish the color of castor oil. Too short, he thought, referring to her fingers. The rest of her was longer. She stood as tall as he did.
They’d first met at a record store, where he purchased the latest opera CDs while she selected from the classical section. Their initial conversation confirmed that she knew something about opera, but only in a popular sense, familiar arias and the biggest names—“La donna e mobile” from Rigoletto; “Un bel di, vedremo” from Madame Butterfly; “Che gelida manina” from La Boheme; and Domingo, Anna Moffo, Brigit Nilsson, Richard Tucker, Caruso, Kiri Te Kanawa, and, of course, Pavarotti. But that was enough for him. So few women he met had ever even attended an opera, let alone had a working knowledge of that most elegant and complex of entertainments.
Their date last evening had been their second; the first involved dinner and a movie, and Pawkins had been certain that an encore would result in sex.
He slipped out of bed and walked naked to the bathroom. When he returned wrapped in a terry-cloth robe, she still slept. He sat in a chair by the window and parted the drapes. It was gray outside, as gray as his mood. He looked across the room at the yellow hills and valleys her body created beneath the sheet and sighed. This was the trouble with bedding a woman. They were there