Chapter Thirty-One
CALLUM’S CONDUCTING and performing career had taken him to many unusual places. But a police station had never been one of them.
Until today, anyway.
He sat next to Blair in a conference room at the Peterson police department, where they were due to meet with two detectives Keira had called who’d agreed to take a peek at Iris’s file. Apparently Blair’s father had pulled a few strings with his golfing buddy the police chief.
Callum and Blair had arrived a few minutes early, so he sipped on a Styrofoam cup of terrible coffee while she scrolled on her phone, nibbling absently on her lower lip, the way she always did when stressed.
The door opened and in strode two plainclothes officers: an intense-looking dark-haired man carrying a white cardboard box, followed by a willowy blond woman with a bag from a local sandwich shop draped over her arm.
The woman extended her free hand to Callum. “You must be Callum. I’m Detective Kate Stanton, and this is my partner, Detective Dan Valentine.”
Detective Valentine plopped the box on the table. “We haven’t got much time.” He popped the lid off the box. “We’re kinda on our lunch break.”
“That’s okay.” Callum glanced at his watch. “So are we.”
“Teachers and cops, always behind and eating lunch on the run.” Stanton passed a sandwich to her partner, then put the other one on the table a healthy distance from the box and unwrapped it.
“I glanced through the case a minute ago, and it seems the original investigators didn’t spend a lot of time on it. ”
“Probably ’cause they didn’t need to,” Valentine piped up around a bite of sandwich. “Seems pretty open-and-shut. Suicide note, bottle of pills spilled on the desk, a history of anxiety.”
“Keira McLane mentioned Iris suffering from anxiety.” Stanton pulled a sheaf of paperwork from the box.
“That was a catch-all term for a wide variety of mental illnesses back then. It also encompassed depression,” Blair said.
Valentine peered over his partner’s shoulder. “Says here Iris was prescribed diazepam for her ‘anxiety’ after spending a week in bed. Parents just thought she was being dramatic. Guess they weren’t much help.”
Callum’s heart twinged for Iris. At least Rayne had been surrounded by people who’d believed her and supported her. How devastatingly lonely Iris must have been.
“I think this is our suicide note.” Stanton pulled out a plastic bag containing a piece of paper, and they all crowded around.
Callum’s heart sank as he recognized the handwriting.
Blair read the words aloud. “The waters are come into my soul / The calm, cool face of the river / I am come into deep waters / The river asked me for a kiss / The floods overflow me.”
Wait a minute. Why did those words sound so familiar?
“Original report confirms it’s her handwriting.” Stanton pulled another plastic-covered piece of scrawled-upon notebook paper from the box. “Her parents provided a sample. You gotta admit, the suicide note sounds pretty dark.”
“But I don’t think that’s what this is.” Callum studied the words. Where had he heard those before? Iris was quoting something. “My former fiancée died by suicide, and her note was more rambling and apologizing. This is almost like . . .”
“A song text.” Blair pulled out her phone.
“The ‘calm, cool face of the river’ part is a poem by Langston Hughes. And the other parts, I think those are from Psalms.” Her thumbs danced across the screen.
“Yes. Psalm 69. Iris quoted verses one and two. And while those verses are dark, the psalm itself ends with hope.”
“But the Hughes poem is called ‘Suicide’s Note.’” Valentine held up his own phone, the original title and text of the poem onscreen.
A melody wafted through Callum’s head. Not one of his, though. One he’d heard somewhere else. And the text Iris had written fit perfectly. It was from a song. But which one?
“Vic said in that text I sent you guys that Iris left a suicide note,” Blair pointed out.
“This had to have been what he was talking about,” Stanton’s voice sounded far away.
“Kind of a dark pun if it was,” Valentine commented.
“Unless this was just a song text and nothing more,” Blair said.
That melody. Callum knew that melody. Had he performed it? Conducted it? Was it—
The truth slammed into Callum with all the subtlety of a two-by-four.
“It’s one of Vic’s earlier songs.” Callum had sung it. College, maybe? He couldn’t remember. Over the years all but the most special of concerts had run together. But he knew the melody now. And he knew its source.
Blair jerked her attention to Callum, her eyes wide. “Are you sure? I’m not familiar with that one. We never performed it.”
“We did.”
Callum jerked his head up to see Keira McLane enter the room.
“Thanks for including me, Detectives. Sorry I’m running late.
” She took a seat at the head of the conference table, to Callum’s left, and dug into a bag from a taco place he’d driven by but never tried.
Guess everyone was taking a working lunch today.
“Of course.” Stanton smiled at the reporter.
“You performed a piece with this text?” Callum indicated the sheet from the evidence box as he dug for his phone. He searched his favorite choral music website. “It’s definitely one of Vic’s. Here’s the sheet music.” There it was. Right in plain sight.
“The phrases are in the same order as in Iris’s note.” Blair studied the tiny screen, then met Callum’s eyes.
“Vic didn’t write these lyrics.” Callum’s chest grew tight. “Iris did.”
“Did he credit her?” Blair asked.
Callum glanced down at the screen. “Nope. Nowhere. Vic’s is the only name on here.” His head spun. Did Vic . . . Was this . . .
“Do you two think Vic Nelson stole Iris’s work?” Stanton asked.
Callum had almost forgotten the detectives were even in there.
“Funny you should mention that.” Keira unwrapped her taco.
“Because I’ve been in contact with the Whitehall Conservatory.
The person I talked to confirmed that Victor Nelson received an acceptance letter in 1970, but his acceptance was revoked a few months later due to some ‘uncertainty with the origin of his audition piece.’ That was all the information they had. ”
“Uncertainty . . . because maybe he’s not the one who wrote it,” Blair said softly.
Leaden truth landed in Callum’s gut. “Because maybe Iris is.”
“Detectives?” Keira piped up. “What’s the statute of limitations on murder?”
“There isn’t one,” Stanton replied.
“Wait.” Blair stared at the detective. “So if Vic killed Iris, he could still be charged, even after all this time?”
“Yep.” Valentine tapped the table with his fingertips. “That’s why a lot of bigger-city police departments have a couple dedicated cold-case detectives. They specifically work on old murders.”
“In a small city like Peterson, we’re not so lucky,” Stanton finished.
Callum leaned forward. “If Vic stole Iris’s work and she found out about it, threatened to rat him out . . .”
“That would be motive.” Valentine’s mouth was set in a grim line.
Stanton raised her hands. “Look, I love a good murder mystery as much as anyone else, but without solid evidence or a confession, all this is circumstantial at best. It wouldn’t even be enough for a warrant, let alone a conviction.”
Keira’s chair creaked as she shifted. “Okay, Grandma said Iris always carried around a spiral notebook of staff paper. And that piece you guys found in the choir library was torn out of a spiral notebook.”
Callum glanced over the edge of the box. “Any chance we’re lucky enough to have a spiral manuscript notebook in there?”
Stanton pulled out the rest of the items. “Nope. Just the clothes Iris was wearing, a necklace, and a little cash. These would’ve been offered to her parents when the case was closed, but I guess they never came to claim them.”
“Or maybe they only cared about the notebook and not the clothes.” Valentine wadded up his sandwich wrapper and tossed it into a trash can in the corner. “Can we check with them?”
“Unfortunately, no.” Stanton flipped a page in the file. “It says here that they moved to North Carolina a few months after Iris died and then they died in a boating accident three years later.”
Blair gasped. “Maybe Vic has it.”
“He may have had it fifty-plus years ago,” Stanton pointed out. “But what are the odds he hung on to it all this time?”
“For your sake,” Valentine said to Blair and Callum, “I hope they’re pretty good.”
Blair couldn’t believe it. She’d spent the whole car ride back to school trying to wrap her mind around it, and she still couldn’t.
Vic Nelson—her teacher, her mentor, her friend—had at the very least stolen an idea from Iris. And at the very worst, he may have been responsible for her death. Despite that text he’d sent insisting he wasn’t.
It was unbelievable . . . but it explained a few things that hadn’t added up. Why Vic had never mentioned his connection to Whitehall to her. Why he’d always been in such a dark mood while composing.
“This just confirms it for me.” Callum broke into her thoughts as he put his car in park in the school lot. “I believed all along that Iris didn’t die by suicide.”
Blair unbuckled her seat belt. “From someone who doesn’t know as much about this topic as you do, how did you know?”
“She was still writing music,” Callum said as they climbed from the car. “Regardless of the text, the fact that she was still composing meant she was still living. Still fighting against whatever demons she had. She hadn’t lost that battle yet.”
Pain flashed across his face, and Blair slipped her hand into his as they walked into the building. “Do you want to talk about Rayne? You don’t have to, but if you want to, I’m here.”
“Not too much to tell.” The door gave its familiar beep-click as Callum unlocked it with his badge. “Just your fairly typical tragic love story, I guess.”
Blair gave him a compassionate smile as he held the door for her. “I’d love to hear it anyway.”