what you’re thinking and feeling behind that cool exterior of yours?”
“You don’t seem to have any trouble.”
Aunt Sarah grinned at the resentment in Carol’s voice. “I’ve known you since you were a baby, that’s why,” she said with a hint of complacency. “You’ve always been as transparent as glass to me.”
She handed Carol a mug of tea. “And don’t ask for sugar. It isn’t good for you.”
“I don’t take sugar.”
“Good thing, too.”
Carol ran her finger around the rim of the mug. “Aunt Sarah, what do I tell David?”
Her aunt didn’t dissemble. “Tell him the truth.”
Carol sighed. “Justin’s pressuring me. Says David has to know about me and Sybil, about what I am.”
Showing both impatience and concern, Aunt Sarah said, “What you are, my dear, is very important to him. You’re his mother and his friend and he trusts and loves you. Tell him what he needs to know-no more and no less.”
“How much is that?”
Aunt Sarah threw up her hands. “I don’t know. How can there be a hard and fast rule? You’ll have to play it by ear, Carol. There isn’t any other way.”
Sipping her tea, Carol thought,
CHAPTER NINE
Corinne Jawalski was not impressed by an early Sunday morning visit from Carol. She yawned as she pushed the heavy brown hair back from her face. “I was hoping to sleep in. I’ve had a very heavy week.”
“There’s one little matter I’d like to clear up.”
“Oh, yes?” said Corinne, unimpressed.
Carol looked around the apartment. The flatmate was nowhere to be seen, but piles of magazines, empty bottles, and one high-heeled shoe next to a saucer with several lipstick-stained butts indicated her presence.
“No, I don’t smoke,” said Corinne, following her glance. “And I’ve told Beth not to, but she’s too selfish to stop.”
“May I sit down?” asked Carol, convinced that it would be pointless to wait for ordinary courtesies from her.
Corinne nodded ungraciously. “All right, but you won’t be long, will you?” She began to pace impatiently.
“I imagine you were angry after Collis Raeburn’s call on Saturday night,” said Carol conversationally.
A shrug. “Nothing to be angry about.”
“He told you that Alanna Brooks was to continue as his singing partner for the foreseeable future, didn’t he?”
“Who told you that?”
“It’s been corroborated.”
Carol’s confident tone convinced Corinne. “All right, ” she said sulkily. “So he said that. So what? He’d have changed his mind the next day.”
“He was dead, then.”
The intentionally brutal words brought tears to Corinne’s eyes. As she turned her face away, Carol said gently, “Were you lovers?”
The truculence had gone from her voice. “Yes-until the last month or so, when he wouldn’t have anything to do with me.”
Appalled, Carol thought,
There was pain in her voice. “I couldn’t get him to talk to me. He said he’d tell me later, but he never did.”
Carol was torn between the desire to warn her, and relief that she couldn’t. She said, “You didn’t leave the concert and go to see him at the hotel to discuss why he’d changed his mind?”
Corinne sat down, putting her face in her hands. “What was the use? He wouldn’t discuss anything… I think he’d begun to hate me…”
Carol resisted the impulse to comfort her. She murmured a few platitudes, then escaped into the warm Sunday morning, her thoughts about Collis Raeburn savage. Guilt had made him cruel; pride and arrogance had kept him silent.
She went into work to find Mark already there, looking incongruously young in a sports shirt and shorts. He followed her into her office waving the photograph of Raeburn in the gay bar. “Bingo,” he said. “Turned up two of these guys last night.”
“And?”
“And Collis Raeburn was a regular. Called himself Col and, I gather, was regarded as being a risk-taker. Sniffed a bit of cocaine, but wasn’t a heavy user. He’d try any new designer drug that was around, just for kicks. Lot of sexual partners-as long as they were good-looking and young, he didn’t care who they were.”
“Graeme Welton ever on the scene?”
Bourke grinned. “We think as one, Carol, but in this case to no avail. Had Welton’s photo shown around the bars last night, but no one recognized him. Any relationship he had with Raeburn was strictly private.”
“And Amos Berringer?”
“Madeline Shipley was absolutely right. We couldn’t find him, but he’s still around, trying to keep a low profile. The little prick’s too stupid to keep totally quiet, but all he’s saying is that he’s got some money for keeping his mouth shut and he knows where to get some more.”
“Bring him in, Mark.”
“The payoff’s probably from Kenneth Raeburn, trying to plug the leaks.”
“It could be someone else. Let’s find out.”
“Almost forgot,” said Mark. “You haven’t had time to read the Sunday papers, I suppose? No? Well you’re going to be very interested in an item of gossip. Hold on, I’ll get it for you.”
Mark had circled it in heavy black ink. Under the heading SINGING AND SUING? the columnist declared, “An impeccable source tells me that all is not well in the Eureka Opera Company. Hit by the tragic loss of Collis Raeburn last week, the company is reeling as top prima donna Alanna Brooks threatens legal action against her leading man, Lloyd Clancy, citing defamation and slander. Is this the end of Edward Livingston’s dream of an opera company for the twenty-first century?”
“It’s all that deep breathing when they sing,” said Bourke. “It drives them mad.”
Carol sent Mark home, went out for a brief lunch, then spent the best part of the afternoon wading through the paperwork that had all but buried the in-tray.
Aunt Sarah called to say that David had inveigled her into taking him to a movie: “I’m just a pushover for your son, Carol. He’s promised me popcorn and a movie about a big dog, so how could I resist?”
Carol was quite aware she wouldn’t have resisted either, but she said, “Don’t let him talk you into anything else, Aunt. He’ll be demanding McDonald’s next. I think you’d better put him on so I can straighten him out.”
She grinned at David’s elaborately casual tone. “Yes, Mum? We’re leaving in a minute.”
“You’re spending the money I gave you, aren’t you?” she said with mock severity. “You’re not letting Aunt Sarah pay for everything?”
“Oh, Mum!”
Suddenly feeling weak with love for him, she said softly, “Darling, have a good time. I wish I were going with you.”
A few minutes later the phone rang again. “You work too hard, Carol,” Madeline Shipley said. “I just caught your aunt and she said you were there. I’m at home, alone. Will you call in? Have a drink with me?”
Carol felt an unsettling combination of wariness, grief, indefinable longing, and sexual hunger. “I’m tired, Madeline, and I’ve got another hour here, at least.”
“You’re not that tired. It’ll only be for a while…”
