A Cat in the Wings: (InterMix) (17 page)

Don’t miss Alice Nestleton’s next mystery adventure

A CAT WITH A FIDDLE

Available now from InterMix

I know an actor who was born on the Lower East Side of New York City. Jerry has always said that the single scariest thing he could ever imagine was being alone on a dark night in the country. As someone born and bred on a farm, I’ve always laughed at his city paranoia.

But that autumn night, lost in rural Massachusetts, I understood what Jerry meant. The darkness seemed to double every few minutes, and there was nothing I could do to hold it back.

I couldn’t figure out which switch on the panel of knobs in my rented car was for the brights. And to make matters worse, Lulu was clawing at my ankles, down near the accelerator. I hadn’t attached the clasp on the cat-carrier securely enough, and she’d escaped from the box.

Of course Lulu wasn’t my cat. Mine were safe at home, being watched over alternately by my friend Tony and my neighbor Mrs. Oshrin. Lulu was a brown tabby Scottish Fold with knockout gold eyes and the sweetest ears on earth—they folded down over themselves. She was my cat-sitting charge and she lived ordinarily with Beth Stimson, a woman about my age, the second violinist with the Riverside String Quartet. Beth had asked me to pack up Lulu and bring her up to western Mass., where she was vacationing—or “retreating,” as she’d described it—for a few weeks. The place where she was staying, Beth said, was overrun with field mice, and Lulu’s talents as a hunter were needed. I knew better, though. I knew she was just lonely for her kitty.

But when she proposed that I turn the trip up there into a little holiday for myself, why did I agree to it so eagerly? I needed a break, is why, a vacation. I needed it bad. Not only had the play I’d been starring in way off-Broadway closed ignominiously after eleven performances, but my performance had been singled out and roundly panned. Not just panned. Excoriated. By a very well known guest drama critic writing in
The New Yorker
.

He had said, among other things:

Alice Nestleton has a deserved reputation as one of the best underappreciated actresses in the American theater, but this performance does nothing to mitigate her dilemma.

Granted, it is very difficult to translate Henry James onto the stage (though some brilliant exceptions prove this rule). Granted that James’s
Beast in the Jungle
is one of the most perplexing of his later works, being a story of two people caught in an opaque obsession that prevents them from consummating their love. All this aside, Miss Nestleton’s claustrophobic, motherly portrayal of the doomed heroine May Bartam is deadly, and the most wrong-headed interpretation of a major role this reviewer has witnessed in many a season.

I had managed to cope. Friends had been most supportive. But I needed a vacation.

Obviously I’d missed a turnoff somewhere, or misread a road sign. The tall trees overhanging the road from both sides seemed to pursue me on this drive to nowhere. And now Lulu was
really
misbehaving.

I pulled over onto a shoulder of the road and got her back inside the carrier. I fumbled around until I could locate the overhead lights and then consulted the maps of the area that Tony had purchased for me at the travel book store near Rockefeller Center.

It was turning cold, and I could feel the wind slicing through the little compact. But as I studied the map, I began to feel a little better about my situation. If the small white sign telling me that I was just entering the hamlet of Hopewell was to be believed, I wasn’t really so very lost. All I had to do was focus on getting to Northampton—which apparently I had overshot by a few miles. Beth Stimson had in fact mentioned Northampton to me before I set out. She was staying at a place called Covington Center—whatever that was—which was on the outskirts of a small village called Covington, which in turn was a forty-minute drive from the larger entity of Northampton.

Now, Northampton I knew because it was the home of Smith College, where I’d not only attended a workshop once but been guest lecturer to a group of drama students—through the good graces of my friend Amanda Avery, who was a professor in the drama department.

I thought of that saying, “You can’t get there from here.” In other words, I was lost because I was trying to find Covington, and the only way to get to Covington was to first find Northampton. So I did.

It was nearly ten when I made the sharp turn off the road onto the grounds of the place. It turned out to be neither a hotel nor a bed-and-breakfast nor a precious New England inn. The roughly weathered sign on a post at the entrance read:
COVINGTON CENTER FOR THE ARTS. ESTABLISHED 1919
.

There was a huge main house, with lights burning. I could see only the outlines of the darkened smaller buildings behind it. I drove slowly up to the house, parked on what had once been a lawn, grabbed the cat, and started toward the door.

“Where do you think you’re going?”

I turned, startled by the voice, and found myself staring at a weary-looking woman about to deposit a plastic garbage bag in a large wooden receptacle at the side of the house.

“I’m looking for Beth Stimson,” I answered rather gruffly, matching the woman’s tone.

“Oh. Well, go in,” she said impatiently. “Don’t just stand there—go in.”

I knocked loudly and then opened the heavy door. Coming to meet me was Beth, her long brown hair pulled away from her face and spilling down the back of a black turtleneck sweater.

“Here you are!” she called out. “I was worried about you—just about to call for the Mounties.”

“I just got a little lost, Beth.” I stooped to undo the clasp on the carrier, and Lulu and friend were reunited.

I heard music from somewhere inside the house. Schubert. I looked past Beth and Lulu, through the dark parlor all the way to the enormous kitchen. I could see a corner of a great oak table, at which another woman sat holding a drink. There were others back there, too. I could hear the low rumble of their voices.

“Come this way, Alice.” Beth had let Lulu out of her arms and was now taking hold of my elbow. “I’ll introduce you to the guys.”

The “guys” weren’t really guys. They were three lovely women, Beth’s associates in the Riverside String Quartet. I was presented, one by one, to Roz Polikoff, first violinist; Darcy Wilson, the violist, and Miranda Bly, cellist. Also in attendance was Mathew Hazan, the cherubic manager of the group, and Ben Polikoff, whose face I recognized from the newspapers, because he was a powerful New York businessman.

When Beth had invited me up for a respite, it hadn’t even occurred to me that her entire group would also be in residence. I wondered what kind of vacation she was having, and what kind I’d have. Of course I’d heard of all the women in the group, though I might not have been able to name them individually. After all, the Riverside was one of the first successful all-women classical groups; they had been around for quite a while, since the late 1970s. They were all, in a sense, celebrities.

“And this is our cook, Mrs. Wallace,” Beth said, gesturing toward the tart woman who had accosted me outside. Mrs. Wallace had a better opportunity to run her appraising eye over me in the light. She nodded curtly and withdrew. I had apparently come in in the middle of a party—or perhaps a brainstorming session—or maybe they were all just relaxing after a late dinner. At any rate, the table was a riot of cheese rinds and fruit peelings and dessert plates and coffee mugs, and there was a giant bottle of Martell cognac in the middle of it all.

Darcy Wilson, who was black and petite and extremely pretty, picked up Lulu and began to inspect her. “She doesn’t look like the champion mouser of North America to me, Beth.”

“Have faith,” Beth answered lightly, and it was only then that I remembered the ostensible reason for Lulu’s presence in the house.

“We have another hand around here, Alice,” Beth said. “But he appears not to be on deck at the moment. Where
is
dear Will, anyway?”

“Probably off somewhere admiring his own reflection.” It was Miranda, the cellist, who had spoken. She lit a cigarette.

The cryptic reference, I learned a minute later, was to Will Gryder, the concert pianist who often appeared as guest soloist with the quartet. That was Will, Roz Polikoff informed me, playing Schubert. An old performance of his had just been resurrected and issued on compact disc.

“You know Will,” Mathew Hazan said, chuckling. “He’s probably in the studio brooding.”

“Well, I’m going to show Alice around a little,” Beth said, steering me toward the kitchen door that led outside.

“Come back for a drink, Alice!” Ben called.

“I will, thanks.”

“Carry on, children,” Beth said. But before we left, she pulled a beautifully worn sheepskin coat off a hook near the pantry. “You’ll need this,” she said, handing it to me. “You’re not dressed warmly enough.”

She was right. It had grown colder. But it was a beautiful night, the stars all around. “You can see more tomorrow,” Beth said. “In the light. This is a wonderful place. Let’s walk up the hill, okay? I’ll introduce you to Will.”

“Fine,” I said. “What is this place, Beth? A religious retreat or something like that?”

“Hardly. It’s a working artist colony. You know, painters and writers and sculptors and composers and so on—a lot of them on grants. But money’s tight now. They only operate in the spring and summer and the rest of the year they rent it out, month by month, to private groups.”

We walked slowly uphill in the black night, rocks crunching under our feet. She was surefooted in the dark, never once glancing over, as I did from time to time, at the rustling woods surrounding us.

“You’re probably wondering what we’re all doing up here,” she said after a minute.

“I assume you’re practicing—or whatever.”

“Not exactly. At least, not
just
that.”

There was something elliptical about the remark. I waited for her to continue.

“Being up here is . . . oh, kind of a remedy . . . a recuperation for us . . . after that European tour. Which was, in a word, awful. It was a real disaster. We played abominably. We fought. We were almost crucified by the critics. And we came back just beaten and exhausted. They said we had lost it, Alice. That we might be four good musicians, but nothing resembling a quartet. Not a single entity. It hurts when you get notices like that. It really hurts.”

“Oh,” I said, “I think I know what it feels like.”

“Hmm. But the sad thing is, who could argue with them? We were just burned out, I guess. So when we got back, Mat said it was to time to regroup—no pun intended. He thought it would be good for us to get away, away from all pressure, rethink what we’re going to be about next season, perfect some things that have just kind of gotten away from us. But more important, he wants us to just get to know each other again, get back in touch with how much we all . . . need . . . love each other. So he rented this heavenly place and got us a cook to stuff us with good food. We were just supposed to do an old-fashioned retreat—no husbands, no lovers, no—well, no pets. We’re just supposed to talk and play and relax. But as you can see, little by little we’re bringing our city lives up here. One item at a time.”

Beth stopped explaining the situation then, and began to point out the overgrown paths to the various cabins and studios on the property. I heard a brook somewhere in the woods, running back down the hill.

We could see the outline of Will’s studio in the moonlight. It was a large converted barn, with dormered windows running all around the second story.

Beth picked up the thread of the previous topic. “I guess this
was
supposed to be a spiritual retreat, in a way. But I don’t know if it’s working. Maybe we’re too old, too cynical. Anyway, like I said, one item at a time. First Roz’s, husband Ben—but that was to be expected, I suppose. Roz is a genius at getting what she wants.”

I held in my mind the image of the pale-skinned violinist Roz: a magnificent mane of impossibly curly strawberry-blond hair, impossibly piercing blue eyes, a perfect, hungry mouth with impossibly perfect teeth, a voice exactly the one you wish could sing you to sleep at night.

“Then Will shows up,” Beth went on, “then Lulu. Darcy’ll probably ask her sister’s kid up next week. Oh, well . . . I guess nothing ever works out exactly as planned, does it? Except maybe Bach.”

We were standing on the grass outside the barn by then. “Are you sure Will won’t mind being disturbed?” I asked. “Perhaps he wants to brood alone.”

Beth laughed. “I doubt that. I’ve never known Will to pass up an opportunity to meet a beautiful woman. And vice versa, pretty much.”

She swung in through the door of the studio. I followed. The interior was breathtaking with its high vaulted ceiling, from which hung enormous, rich tapestries. The indirect lights, hidden behind ceiling lanterns, were invisible from outside, but inside they lit the huge space with glancing beams.

“There’s our hero,” she said, quickening her step. “Napping on the job. And nowhere near the piano.”

Gryder was seated in an armchair, in that space in the barn cut off from the rest of the studio by two antique sofas placed at right angles to each other.

“Willy, I want you to meet my . . . ”

The introduction became garbled. Beth turned toward me and her eyes were huge, terrible.

Then she was screaming. Clawing at me as she fell forward.

I tried to right her, hold her up, looking over to the quiet man in the chair for help.

He could offer no help. A sharp object with a wooden handle had been driven deep into the center of his chest. The flannel shirt he was wearing was drenched with blood. Blood. Blood.

***

Click here for more books by Lydia Adamson

Lydia Adamson
is a pseudonym for a noted mystery writer and cat lover in New York City.

Alice Nestleton Mystery Series eBooks from InterMix

A Cat in the Manger

A Cat of a Different Color

A Cat in Wolf’s Clothing

A Cat by Any Other Name

A Cat in the Wings

A Cat with a Fiddle

Look for
A Cat Tells Two Tales

Available now in print from Obsidian