Chapter Thirty-Five
THE FOLLOWING Wednesday, Blair stood in a small observation area outside the interview room at Peterson’s police department, Chief Stephens at her right.
Through the one-way glass, alone at a table, sat her former teacher.
Her former colleague. Her former friend.
Waiting for detectives to interview him about Iris’s death.
Normally she wouldn’t even be allowed to be here, but being Peterson royalty had its perks. Chief Stephens, after consulting with his detectives, had given her the go-ahead to observe.
She didn’t really want to be here, but she needed to be.
She needed to see firsthand that Vic Nelson, who’d cared for her and nurtured her and been almost like a second father to her, had only been playing a role.
She knew his every conducting gesture, every nuance of facial expression .
. . she could read his mind. Or so she’d thought.
She only knew the person he’d pretended to be. She didn’t know who he truly was.
By being here for this interview, maybe she’d find out.
The door to the interview room opened, and a suit-clad, silver-haired man walked in and sat down next to Vic.
His lawyer, most likely. They talked quietly to each other, their heads together, and then Vic nodded and straightened.
His hands lay folded on the table, and a cold, fishlike stare deadened his eyes.
She’d seen the look before, usually when he was annoyed with the choir, but never to this extent.
A moment later the door opened again, and Detectives Stanton and Valentine walked in. Introductions were made, and then Vic piped up.
“Am I under arrest, Detectives?”
“No.” Valentine settled into a chair across from Vic. “By no means. We’ve just received new information on Iris Wallingford’s death, and we need to tie up a couple of loose ends.”
Vic’s eyebrows raised. “You mean her suicide. Did Blair and Callum put you up to this? Or that nosy reporter?”
Vic’s attorney rested a hand on his client’s forearm and whispered in his ear.
“We’re just curious about how you came to have this.” Stanton pulled Iris’s music notebook from a bag and set it on the table in front of Vic.
He remained expressionless. “An old notebook? Probably one of my own composition notebooks from back in the day.”
“Open the front cover,” Valentine instructed.
Vic did, and Blair’s stomach churned.
“Says Iris Wallingford on it,” Valentine said.
“So I’ll ask again.” Stanton leaned forward. “How did you get this?”
“How did you get this?” Vic demanded. “I haven’t seen it for years.”
“Your wife brought it in,” Valentine replied. “She says she found it on a shelf.”
“Marilee’s lying,” Vic burst out. “She’s in on this too? Lies. It’s all a pack of lies.”
Blair froze. She’d never once heard Vic Nelson raise his voice. Not even when the choirs’ behavior warranted it. Not even when they were down to the wire and not prepared for a concert. Never, as a student or as a professional, had she heard him shout.
Stanton didn’t blink. “She’s also filed for an order of protection against you.”
An order of protection. Had Vic abused her? Blair’s heart ached for what Marilee Nelson must have endured hidden in plain sight.
Vic let out a bark of laughter. “That’ll never stick. I’ve never laid a hand on the woman. What kind of monster do you people think I am?”
“Well, your former girlfriend wound up dead.” Valentine leaned forward. “And her music wound up at your house.”
“And in at least two dozen of your published compositions,” Stanton added.
Vic’s lawyer side-eyed his client. “You never told me that.”
“Iris was a genius,” Vic said.
“That why you submitted a piece she wrote to the Whitehall Conservatory back in 1969?” Valentine asked.
Vic rolled his eyes. “This again. That was all Iris’s idea. All hers. It never even would have occurred to me if she hadn’t brought it up. She insisted.”
“She made you an offer you couldn’t refuse.” Stanton leaned back, arms folded across her chest. “And once you saw her genius, you needed more of it. No way could you write like she could. Whitehall would’ve seen through your ruse the first day of school. No, you needed her whole notebook.”
“We talked to Whitehall,” Valentine added. “They said you were never a student there.”
“Professor Hochsteiner confirmed it when we spoke with him.” Stanton’s words were casual, but her gaze was anything but.
“That old coot,” Vic scoffed. “What is he, nearly a hundred by now?”
“Still sharp as a tack, though,” Valentine replied. “And he told us Whitehall revoked your acceptance.”
Vic stiffened. “It was a mutual decision.”
Valentine let out a quiet chuckle. “Mutual . . . kind of a funny way of saying they knew you couldn’t hack it as a composer because the audition piece wasn’t your work to begin with. Iris mailed him a letter confessing to what the two of you had done.”
Stanton leaned on the table, locking eyes with Vic. “Postmarked the day she died.”
Vic’s attorney cleared his throat. “What exactly are you insinuating about my client? We’re well past the statute of limitations on intellectual property theft.”
“We’re not interested in Iris’s music,” Stanton said evenly. “We’re interested in how she died.”
“You gotta admit, all this sounds like motive,” Valentine pointed out.
Vic exploded, rising out of his chair. “I didn’t kill Iris!
All I wanted was her notebook. She owed it to me.
She owed me. She came up with this whole cockamamie scheme, and she got me into a situation I had no way out of.
She was supposed to come to Chicago with me, and we were supposed to write music together.
Have both our names in lights. That was the plan all along. ”
“And then she screwed it up by not getting in with the other piece she wrote,” Stanton pressed. “You had to go it alone. So you had to make sure your name could still be lit up.”
“Iris’s music was brilliant,” Vic protested. “Even Hochsteiner thought so. It deserved to be brought to life.”
“But only under your name,” Valentine pointed out. “Her work shows up in a whole lot of your pieces. And your name’s the only one on them.”
“Which brings us back to how this sounds suspiciously like motive,” Stanton said.
Vic sighed and stared at his hands. Was this the moment Blair had dreaded?
“I told you, I didn’t kill Iris,” Vic said softly. “By the time I saw her, she was already dead.”
March 19, 1970
People in Peterson never locked their doors. Even the rich ones. Nobody needed to. Peterson was the safest place around.
So Victor knew, when he crept from his bed just after eleven and walked to Iris’s house, that he’d be able to get in. Knowing Iris, that notebook would be on her desk. He could count on that.
People could be so predictable.
Something was off with her, though. She’d been so moldable. So eager to please. She’d been putty in his hands—until she’d seen what that idiot Hochsteiner had written about Victor’s audition piece. His.
Yes, she’d written the music, but for him. About him. Inspired by him. It might as well have been his. And once he sent that application, it became his. She’d given the piece as a gift. And a gift, once given, became the property of the recipient, to do with whatever they liked.
He’d thought Iris understood that. Apparently she didn’t.
Eventually she’d come around to his point of view. She always did. Sometimes she took a little convincing. Sometimes she needed time to think it over and see that he was right. But he always was, and the sooner she realized that, the better.
Probably the pills were making her act strangely.
Or maybe the lack of pills. Whatever. He didn’t know.
Frankly, he didn’t care. He just wanted his Iris back.
His sweet, malleable Iris. The one who would agree to contribute music when he got stuck, to perpetuate the deception—which she’d started—that he was the compositional genius.
He needed her music. He needed to at least scribble a few copies of some things so, if she never came around to his point of view, he’d be covered.
He’d give her notebook back. Probably. Unless she kept being stubborn and unyielding. Then he just might keep it.
He reached Iris’s house, that pile of white-columned wood, and went around to the servants’ stairs in the back.
Servants’ stairs. How pretentious must someone be to build special stairs just for servants—for people who weren’t highborn enough, rich enough, or good enough to use the regular ones?
No, people like him had to go in the back.
The joke was on them. Going in the back meant he was much less likely to be caught.
The second stair creaked beneath his weight, and he froze. But nothing indicated that anyone had heard.
He slunk along the wall, down a long hallway. He didn’t know which room was hers, since he’d never been allowed in the house before, but he’d figure it out.
Not that one. That appeared to be a guest room. It looked sterile. Unused. Like no one had touched it in quite a long time.
Not that one either. It was lived-in but neat as a pin. A place for everything and everything in its place.
And this one was just another empty guest room. How charming. Iris’s house had more bedrooms than people. Whole rooms for nothing but extras and trinkets.
This exact level of overindulgence justified his actions. Of course Iris had talent. She also had money. Even if she didn’t have talent, or if her talent didn’t get her where she wanted, she could buy any future she desired.
He, on the other hand, would be cannon fodder in the jungle. He didn’t have her money.
So he needed her talent.
It was only fair.
Ah. There. That had to be her room. The one next to the main staircase. The messy desk, the clothes strewn on the floor . . . this room had life in it. This was Iris’s room.