“He accompanied Charise when she sang,” the mother said. “He’s a very good pianist.”

“Were they more than just friends and professional colleagues?” Berry asked.

“Meaning, did they sleep together?” Goldberg asked.

Berry nodded.

“I suppose they did,” the older man said. “I warned Charise about that. She was such a naïve young girl.” Tears again formed and he angrily rubbed them away. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I just can’t believe this has happened. It wouldn’t have happened if she’d stayed home and not come here. She had a wonderful voice teacher in Toronto, but Warren and those agents convinced her to audition for the opera school here.” He hit the table with his fist. “And all that talk about saving the world. Her friends were full of that stupid talk. They sounded like Communists!”

“Communists?” Berry said.

“Radicals. Believe me, I know about such things. I lost people in the Holocaust. Family. Radicals! Like Hitler. I told her that if she wanted to save the world, she should become successful and be a good citizen, make money and give some to the poor. That’s the way to save the world, not the way her friends with the long hair and tattoos said. The wrong people. That’s why she’s dead. Always the wrong people.”

His wife touched his hand and said, “Please, Seymour, it doesn’t help.”

“Excuse me,” Mr. Goldberg said, using the tabletop for leverage as he stood unsteadily and shuffled off in the direction of the restrooms.

“I know how difficult this is for both of you,” Berry said.

“You must forgive Seymour,” his wife said. “He had such hopes for Charise. We both did. It has not been easy for him to support her career. He has worked as a tailor all his life, worked hard, and always found the money for her university and the private lessons.”

“Was Charise your only child?” Berry asked.

“Yes.”

Berry was pleased that the conversation, in Seymour’s absence, had turned to something less grim for the moment than the murder of their daughter. He’d graduated with a degree in Sociology and had always been fascinated with the way people lived their lives, the decisions they made, and the paths and many detours their journeys took through this temporary life. That was one of the reasons he’d become a cop. It offered a unique and rich vantage point from which to indulge his interest in the human condition.

“You say he’s a tailor. Does he still do that for a living?”

“No, I’m afraid not. You noticed his hands. Arthritis. He can no longer work with needle and thread. We have a small launderette in Toronto.” She smiled. “I was working in a laundry when we met. I think Seymour thought it was appropriate for a Chinese woman to be doing laundry.”

Berry joined her gentle laugh. “A little typecasting, huh?”

She nodded.

Goldberg returned and resumed his place at the table.

“Tell me more about Christopher Warren and the two agents,” Berry said.

Charise’s mother supplied, “Charise said it was important for an opera singer to have an agent. She said it would open doors for her, doors she herself could not open.”

Her husband started to speak, but his wife added, “Besides, Mr. Melincamp made it possible for Charise to come here to study. He has been paying for where she stayed with Christopher.”

“How did she get along with them,” Berry asked, “the agents and Christopher Warren?”

“We don’t know,” Seymour said.

Berry’s eyebrows went up. “She never confided in you about them and her relationship with them?”

Husband and wife exchanged a nervous glance before she said, “Charise has been estranged from us for some time.”

“Over what?” Berry asked.

“She wouldn’t listen to us,” Seymour said, his voice taking on sudden strength. “She was headstrong.”

“Like young women these days,” his wife defended.

“I know what it’s like out there in the world,” Seymour said, the weary tone having returned. “I didn’t want her ending up taking in other people’s dirty laundry, their soiled underwear and smelly socks. I told her what it takes to succeed, but she had her own notions.”

Berry sympathized with the older man, but wondered whether he’d been too heavy-handed with his only child and pushed her away. It happened, he knew. His own father, a college professor, had been furious when his son announced he intended to go into law enforcement after four successful years in college, and had basically shut down communication between them for the two years before his father died one afternoon of a massive heart attack while lecturing a classroom full of students. Their rift should have been healed, but it was too late for that now. His relationship with his aging mother, while long distance, was good, and he worked hard at keeping it that way.

He checked his watch. It had been an interesting meeting, but nothing tangible had resulted that would aid in the murder investigation.

“Are you sure there’s nothing you can tell me about people in your daughter’s life that might shed light on her death?” he asked.

“Something like whether Warren or the agents might have had a reason to kill her?” Goldberg asked.

“Yes,” Berry said.

Husband and wife looked at each other.

“That couldn’t be,” the mother said.

“Couldn’t be?” Berry said.

“They would not have hurt my daughter,” she said. “Everyone loved Charise.”

Somebody didn’t, Berry thought.

He gave them his card and urged them to call if they thought of anything. After paying the bill, and again offering his condolences, he left them at the table, one half of a cold English muffin the remnants of their having met.

TWENTY

The meeting of the Opera Ball committee was spirited, and at times contentious.

The pressure was on, the date of the gala rapidly approaching. Adding to the sense of urgency was the murder, the tragic nature of Ms. Lee’s death, and rampant speculation about who’d killed her. Since Mac Smith had arranged for the private detective to investigate the crime, Annabel was a target of probes into what progress her husband was aware of.

“I really don’t know any more than you do,” Annabel replied. “I just know that Raymond Pawkins, who used to be a Homicide detective, has agreed to work with us, and that the police are vigorously pursuing it, too.”

“Oh, come on, Annabel,” one woman said, “I just know that you and that handsome husband of yours already know who the murderer is and are just waiting for the right time to announce it.”

Annabel was tempted to educate her questioner about why that scenario was unlikely, at best, but instead simply denied it. Another member of the committee who’d overheard the exchange said, seriously, “It would be wonderful if it could be announced prior to the ball. That would make the evening especially meaningful.”

Another woman disagreed: “I don’t think it would be wonderful at all. It would only deflect attention from the ball.”

As with any undertaking of the scope of the Opera Ball, there were bound to be mishaps, and thorny issues to be resolved. On this day, the ongoing and nettlesome chore of seating arrangements topped the agenda.

The festive evening would begin with sit-down dinners at more than thirty foreign embassies, hosted by their ambassadors. Five hundred leaders of Washington’s diplomatic, corporate, government, and arts communities would pay handsomely for the privilege of attending these relatively intimate, pre-ball dinners featuring food indigenous to each embassy’s home country. Some couples lobbied for seats at the British, French, and Spanish embassies as hard as professional lobbyists fought for pet bills in Congress. Others, who prided themselves on an appreciation of ethnic food, happily signed up for dinners at less popular venues. But no matter where you ended up sitting, the Opera Ball was a yearly social event not to be missed. As Thorstein Veblen’s seminal work on status in America, The Theory of the Leisure Class, had proffered, we’d gone from hunting and fishing skills as signs of social standing to what he termed the “modern-peaceable barbarian” stage, in which social status now involved signs of affluence, tuxedoed men arriving at galas in large, expensive cars with ladies in designer fashions on their arms. See and be seen. It was a lot better than being skilled with a crossbow, Annabel thought when first reading it.