S.V. Redkin – The Great Conductor (страница 9)
Dr. Korpacheff nodded and made a note in her notebook. “What about shooting?”
“I thought we’d agreed that I ask the questions here, Detective,” Dr. Korpacheff said with a smile.
“Right.” They indeed had agreed on that during their first session. Christine did not really need to think about this one. “I have to be ready when a critical situation presents itself,” she said.
“What happens when it does?” Dr. Korpacheff asked, taking her glasses off again.
Christine stopped playing with her bracelet, her mouth twitched with a smile, but her eyes remained serious. “I’ll be ready.”
Chapter 8
Sebastian was flossing his teeth in the second-floor bathroom of their rowhouse. This was where he performed his morning routine every day. He flossed twice a day, in the morning and evening. The process took two minutes and lasted until his gums began to bleed. After that, he rinsed his mouth with water and started brushing his teeth.
Paul complained that it was not healthy to floss so hard, but he could not change this habit that Lydia had hammered into him when he was young. “It’s not clean if it doesn’t bleed,” she would say through clenched teeth as she flossed his gums while he cried and asked her to stop. When Sebastian was old enough, he only flossed when he felt stressed. Then, it became part of his daily routine without him even thinking about it anymore, and the pink water that he spat into the sink became a part of his hygiene ritual.
When he finished flossing, he took his toothbrush and reminded himself once again to get a new one. The bristles on this one were all frayed and worn down, and it looked like it had been used to brush stones, not teeth. Sebastian once read an interesting story about the origin of toothbrushes with bristles, which were invented by the Chinese two thousand years ago and were made from coarse hog hairs. He looked at his brush and wondered if hog hairs would look equally frazzled after a few months of use.
Brushing his teeth properly was another ritual that came from Lydia, who believed that a good musician had to have a nice, toothy smile when they were onstage. “You may play brilliantly, but if your teeth aren’t white and straight, the image will not be complete. It will not be perfect. If you want to be a great musician, you must be perfect in every way,” she used to say. A powerful piece of music came to mind, “Nessun dorma,” from Puccini’s
After he brushed his teeth, still humming “Nessun dorma,” Sebastian went to the kitchen to make a cup of coffee for himself. The house was quiet, and he decided not to bring the cup to his music shrine, but to enjoy the morning silence in the living room.
The Victorian house was built in the early twentieth century in what was now considered a historical district called Reservoir Hill. Sebastian’s grandparents on his father’s side arrived in Baltimore via Ellis Island, New York, in 1903, after leaving the Russian Empire, looking for a more stable environment for their family. They changed their surname from Kopalev to Copeland in order to assimilate into the new world, and with the money they brought, they purchased the rowhouse that Sebastian had called home all his life. Legend had it that they brought most of their wealth in the form of diamonds hidden in a leather pouch sewn into his great-grandfather’s underwear, which he never changed during their journey to America. Sebastian often wondered if those diamonds still smelled like his great-grandfather by the time the family had to make the purchase.
Before Lydia became the owner, the Copeland family had taken very good care of the house. It still had original pocket doors, wooden floors, decorative fireplaces, mantels, window shutters, four bedrooms, two half bathrooms, and just over three thousand square feet of space. This was more than enough for the current residents. The mahogany front door had a mail slot with an unlacquered, polished brass frame. Sebastian used to watch pedestrians through it when he was little. Polishing the thing was one of Sebastian’s chores, for which he sometimes received his ice cream allowance from his father. Lydia did not want him to go out alone in this neighborhood. Although it was not as fun as walking outside, Sebastian made the best of it by imagining himself as a submarine captain looking through his periscope at the “sea.” Dad’s record with “Yellow Submarine” on it helped to enhance the illusion when Lydia was not home.
He did not have to use his “periscope” to enjoy the street view anymore. Sebastian was sitting in Lydia’s armchair in her narrow living room, watching the lazy clouds through the bay windows, with a cup of coffee in his left hand and waving his right hand in time to the famous tune in his head. He was in a good mood, and it seemed as if it was going to be a beautiful August day with no private students today. Instead, he was going to practice, work on his music, take a long afternoon nap, and start looking for a concertmaster for the small ensemble that the Great Conductor had recommended for rehearsals as part of the second condition yet to be announced. He had even graciously suggested specific instruments that would be best for the early stage of rehearsal.
Yes, it would definitely be a great day, but first he had to do some things and needed time to get mentally prepared for it.
Fortunately, Lydia was not going to disrupt this tranquility with her constant demands. “Bring me some coffee, please.” Or “What’s wrong with you today? Why are you being so slow?” Or “Where are my pills?” Or . . . Whatever it was, it would no longer be a problem, because Lydia was sleeping, and she would not wake up anytime soon. In fact, she would never wake up at all.
Sebastian finished his coffee. It was time to make a phone call. He needed to contact emergency services and report his mother’s death. She had died in her sleep.
No more boiling eggs in the morning. No more distractions.
Chapter 9
It was a nice August day, and Christine was looking forward to enjoying her day off with her grandparents. She woke up pretty early in the morning to make sure she had enough time to do her chores.
She felt a dull ache in the muscles of her right hand after target shooting the night before. She’d had a stressful day at work—a witness in a case had changed his mind about testifying—and she’d decided to blow off some steam at the shooting range. It turned out that she’d had a lot of steam to blow off, which this morning manifested as a bruise in the webbing between her thumb and index finger. She would have to take it easy—no shooting for a day or two. She reminded herself not to forget her shooting glove next time.
Christine gently stretched her fingers, wrist, and forearm, and went to make herself a cup of coffee.
Her chores usually took up most of her day: laundry, cleaning the house, grocery shopping, and bead making. Although the work took most of her time, she still managed to get enough sleep. With a salary of forty-five dollars an hour as a homicide detective, she could afford to hire someone to help her clean the house weekly, but she preferred to do it herself.
Her house was big enough for a family of three or four, and she sometimes thought about this while doing laundry. It was something that definitely didn’t align with her income, as she had inherited the property after her parents passed away. Once her chores were done, she drove her nearly antique BMW 3 Series—still in great condition and affectionately named “Lucy”—to her grandparents’ house. The car had once belonged to Christine’s mother and was one of the first things her parents had indulged in when their business took off. In fact, it had been her father’s idea to buy it because he thought his wife looked “so cool in it.”
Today was going to be a special day because her other grandmother—Nancy Brooks—was going to join them. Christine had a small present for her. She’d made a new bracelet with opal triplets—one of Nancy’s birthstones—and was excited about giving it to her, adding to the substantial collection of bracelets that she had already given her grandmother.
Nancy was visiting from Phoenix, where she lived alone and stubbornly refused to move to Baltimore, closer to her family. She was known for her ironclad decisions that she rarely changed.
Fifty years ago, Nancy, a young army nurse, met Robert Brooks, her future husband and a military officer, while they were both stationed in West Germany during the Cold War. There were two Germanys at that time: West and East. Robert had gone to the infirmary for some pills and met Nancy, who he thought was the most beautiful woman in the world. He had been under her spell until he took his last breath shortly after his daughter’s death. Sadly, his heart could not handle it.