Murder at the Opera - Margaret Truman [8]
“She wasn’t in Italian class today,” Warren told Harriet. “Yesterday, she said she was getting a cold
“She could have at least called,” Harriet said, not attempting to hide her pique.
“If our agents are in town, they might know what happened,” the pianist offered.
Many in the class had already hired agents, and Charise and Warren’s reps had accompanied them to Washington from Toronto. Agents accompanying young artists to the WNO program were viewed with a certain disdain, seemingly always in the way, demanding things for their young clients, hovering over their chicks like mother hens. Of course, there was no way to banish them. They came on their own and paid their own way.
Charise and Warren’s agents, Philip Melincamp and Zöe Baltsa, had seen to it that their promising young stars were properly settled in a secure, two-bedroom apartment they shared, with a pullout couch for guests. When the agents weren’t in D.C., they were back in Toronto at the agency bearing their names, their client roster a mixed bag of young, somewhat talented opera singers with potential fame and fortune on the horizon and second-tier veterans whose better singing days were behind them, yet who still managed to land supporting roles with companies around the globe.
Naturally, there was some resentment of Warren and Lee’s situation. Most of the other students were expected to pay their own rent and buy their own food out of their $1,900 monthly stipend. It wasn’t a secret that Melincamp and Baltsa were picking up their two clients’ tabs, which left the young Canadians with spare cash with which to enjoy the city’s abundant nightlife.
“There’s no answer at the apartment,” Harriet said. “Thanks for being on time,” she told Warren. “If you see or hear from Ms. Lee, please urge her to call me. I’m under enough pressure without having to deal with no-shows
Later that night, as she sat in her living room with her husband, Harriet felt a chill that had nothing to do with the air-conditioning.
“Something wrong?” he asked, noticing that she’d wrapped her arms about herself.
“No,” she said. “I just have a bad feeling
“About what?”
“I don’t know
Her husband frowned. Over the twenty-three years of their marriage, Harriet had displayed occasional moments of what she called “visions,” premonitions of misfortune befalling others, family members, friends. She’d been right on at least two occasions, awaking in the middle of the night with a vision, then receiving a call the following morning confirming it.
“Like a little brandy?” he asked, touching her hair as he passed on the way to the kitchen.
She grabbed his hand, looked up, and smiled. Her husband’s answer to almost everything was a little brandy.
“That would be nice,” she said.
He continued into the kitchen, leaving her alone with her chilling vision.
CHAPTER FOUR
The 600 Restaurant, at the base of the Watergate complex, was bustling as Mac walked in. The vast, three-sided bar was lined with stagehands, electricians, carpenters, basses and baritones, cooks and painters, and sopranos and mezzos from the performing arts center across the street, and Watergate residents for whom the restaurant was a neighborhood haunt. Ulysses, the bartender, was a large, gregarious man wearing a large, gregarious green-and-white-striped shirt and a flamboyantly colored tie and suspenders. He moved with a dancer’s grace as he took drink orders, mixed, stirred and shook, delivered the concoctions, and engaged in a nonstop dialogue with his customers without missing a step.
Mac spotted Annabel at the far end of the bar chatting with another woman. He joined them and was introduced to Genevieve