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  Murder of the Maestro

  Georgie Shaw Cozy Mystery #6

  Anna Celeste Burke

  MURDER OF THE MAESTRO

  Copyright © 2018 Anna Celeste Burke

  http://desertcitiesmystery.com

  Published by Create Space/Kindle

  All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced without written permission of the publisher except brief quotations for review purposes.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Cover Design by Anna Celeste Burke

  Photo © © Sagasan | Dreamstime.com

  ISBN-13: 978-1979139687

  ISBN-10: 1979139687

  Books by USA Today Bestselling Author, Anna Celeste Burke

  A Dead Husband Jessica Huntington Desert Cities Mystery #1

  A Dead Sister Jessica Huntington Desert Cities Mystery #2

  A Dead Daughter Jessica Huntington Desert Cities Mystery # 3

  A Dead Mother Jessica Huntington Desert Cities Mystery #4

  A Dead Cousin Jessica Huntington Desert Cities Mystery #5 [2018]

  Love A Foot Above the Ground Prequel to the Jessica Huntington Desert Cities Mystery Series

  Cowabunga Christmas! Corsario Cove Cozy Mystery #1

  Gnarly New Year Corsario Cove Cozy Mystery #2

  Heinous Habits, Corsario Cove Cozy Mystery #3

  Radical Regatta, Corsario Cove Cozy Mystery #4 [2018]

  Murder at Catmmando Mountain Georgie Shaw Cozy Mystery #1

  Love Notes in the Key of Sea Georgie Shaw Cozy Mystery #2

  All Hallows’ Eve Heist Georgie Shaw Cozy Mystery #3

  A Merry Christmas Wedding Mystery Georgie Shaw Cozy Mystery #4

  Murder at Sea of Passenger X Georgie Shaw Cozy Mystery #5

  Murder of the Maestro Georgie Shaw Cozy Mystery #6

  A Tango Before Dying Georgie Shaw Cozy Mystery #7 [2018]

  A Body at the Beach Seaview Cottages Cozy Mystery #1

  [For release August 2018 in Summer Snoops & Cozy Crimes multiauthor box set

  And as a standalone novella October 2018]

  DEDICATION

  To the man who makes the music in my life!

  Contents

  1 On the Rocks

  2 Prelude to Romance

  3 A Little Night Music

  4 The Good Agent

  5 The ex-Mrs. Maestro

  6 Sir Jack of Crystal Cove

  7 A Sunday Stroll

  8 Dave’s Devoted Fan

  9 Not a Rollins

  10 Who Gets What?

  11 Follow the Money

  12 Dave was Dave

  13 Catty Critics

  14 Rumors of Her Death

  15 The Wolf Gang

  16 A Sad Reprise

  17 Cookie Interrogation

  18 An Unhappy Chorus

  19 The Two Margarets

  20 Requiescat in Pace

  21 A Brother’s Tale

  22 Begging to be Caught

  23 Coda

  RECIPES

  Chicken Marsala

  Creamy Mashed Potatoes

  Chocolate Mascarpone Brownies

  White Bean Soup

  Sole Meunière

  Roasted Herbed Baby Potatoes

  Sautéed Baby Vegetables

  Chewy Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

  Shepherd’s Pie with a Pastry Crust

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Thanks to my husband who supported my efforts to get this book written and produced even while fighting a prolonged illness. He’s my inspiration for Detective Jack Wheeler as well as the other strong, determined decent and loving men who appear in the books I write. I’m blessed to have him in my life.

  Thanks, as well, to Ying Cooper for tackling another proofreading job with a deadline looming. Her skill as an editor, confidence, and grace under fire are attributes that I greatly appreciate.

  Gratitude to Andra Weis for taking on the task of reading Murder of the Maestro before it had been edited. I’m grateful for her willingness to take this task on at the last minute and for her invaluable feedback. And, to Peggy Hyndman for her keen eye and quick read that spotted a couple of snafus, too!

  I’m a fortunate author to have this kind of support and don’t take it for granted for even a minute! That goes for all the readers who read and review this book and the others I write. THANK YOU!!

  1 On the Rocks

  My heart raced when my cell phone belted out the Marvelous Marley World ringtone before dawn. Like a cult member, my brain involuntarily chanted along with the familiar tune: “It’s a marvelous world, a Marvelous Marley World.” Not one word of that could be true. A phone call at the crack of dawn is never marvelous, is it?

  I can’t entirely blame that ringtone for my racing heart. Seconds before my phone blared, Miles bellowed. I don’t know how he does it, but my Siamese cat anticipates lots of the action that goes on around here. That’s especially true about doorbells, alarms, or phones about to ring. Is it an acute sense of hearing he possesses that picks up tiny sounds humans can’t detect, or does he have an uncanny ability to anticipate trouble?

  Not just one, but two Siamese cats stared at me now. Their blue eyes shimmered in the shadowy light cast by the creeping dawn as I typed in my passcode. Not fast enough since that theme song played again. Mighty-mouth, who regularly demonstrates that naming him after the jazz trumpet player, Miles Davis, was a good choice, sat Sphinxlike. The lovely Ella posed next to him. My cats who love routine almost as much as their creature comforts, were not happy with the disruption—as if I were the one who’d raised the alarm!

  “Don’t blame me,” I said, answering the call before I had to listen to the ringtone a third time.

  “Why would I do that?” my sleepy husband asked. “Carol did it, didn’t she?” My clever, technologically savvy Executive Assistant takes great delight in playing pranks on me, like changing the ringtone on my phone. I’m a diehard fan of all the marvels at Marvelous Marley World, but even I have my limits. That ringtone had to go.

  “Yes, sweetheart, but I wasn’t talking to you.” I gave Jack a reassuring pat. “I’m trying to get the cats to stop eyeing me like I’m up to no good.” That I was chatting with my cats didn’t strike my new husband as odd at all. I catch him talking to them too, even though he’s only been “owned by cats” for a year. I preferred the conversation I was having with them to the one that began the moment my caller had me on the line.

  “Slow down, Max, please!” I implored my frantic boss moments later. He was beside himself with news that his “old friend,” Dave Rollins, was missing. I could understand his concern since Max’s old friend is well into his seventies. Maximillian Marley, the founder of Marvelous Marley World is no spring chicken either. He needed to calm down, not that I could make that happen.

  Max has had decades of practice running around with his hair on fire when he’s worried or upset. You never could tell how seriously to take his fretfulness. His tantrums are legendary, too. I could barely handle the panicky episodes and tantrum-throwing when fully awake. I wasn’t sure what I might do if he went into Rumpelstiltskin mode before six a.m. and without my usual fortification with strong coffee.

  When Jack heard me utter Max’s name, he covered his head with a pillow and turned over with his back to me. Both cats swung their heads in Jack’s direction, their eyes boring into his back freeing me for a moment from their steely-blue gazes. I peeked out through the large bedroom windows and scanned the horizon
where the Pacific Ocean meets the sky. The glow of the morning sun had just begun to cast its light on the placid sea. A measure of calm returned as I took a deep breath.

  “Start over, please, and tell me everything that’s happened.”

  According to my distraught boss, someone had called the police sending them to Dave Rollins’ home several hours ago. Music was blaring from open windows in the middle of the night. Every light in the house was on, as if he was having a party.

  There wasn’t a party. In fact, no one was home. Not even Dave Rollins, master musician, composer, and, until recently, Chief Creative Officer for the Marvelous Marley World Music Group. When the well-known local celebrity didn’t answer the door, the police pounded on the door loudly, announced themselves, and then went inside. The door was already unlocked, and not even completely latched, so they had no trouble getting in once that’s what they’d decided to do.

  “It sounds horrible. Just horrible what someone did to his place!” Max cried and then rambled on about what he meant by that. “His magnificent home is in disarray as if it’s been searched. Vandalized, too. The police are searching for the intruder, but what good will that do? They should be looking for Dave.”

  “Let’s hope the maestro has gone off somewhere, even if it’s just for the weekend. That would explain why someone broke into his home without Dave calling the police himself.”

  “You know Dave, he’d never just take off. Even if he did, why wouldn’t he answer his cell phone when I called?”

  I didn’t take the bait by responding to that question. A dozen reasons sprang to mind for not taking a call from “Mad” Max Marley; the early hour only one of them. Max didn’t give me time to say anything anyway.

  “I couldn’t believe it when the Lost Hills police officer had the gall to suggest Dave had simply gone off on a jaunt. Lost Hills is the right place for that officer, alright, since he’s the one who’s lost! To treat Dave’s sudden disappearance as if he were an errant teenager staying out past curfew or a college kid off on a backpacking trip is reprehensible! With his house in the state they found it, how could anyone say a thing like that?”

  “I understand you’re upset. I’m sure the Lost Hills police officer was trying to reassure you since they couldn’t possibly have enough information to even guess at what went on there. A burglary must be high on their list. If Dave had been home at the time of the incident, he would have locked himself in his panic room, and called the police, don’t you think?”

  I tried to sound calm and confident as I asked Max that question. I skimmed over the fact that before I asked Max to start over he’d mentioned that the police suggested a struggle might have contributed to the wreckage found at Dave Rollins’ home. That raised the specter of a home invasion, kidnapping, or worse. Apparently, Max was having a conversation with himself since the next words out of his mouth had nothing to do with my question about Dave Rollins using his panic room.

  “No blood, no body, indeed! That still doesn’t mean no foul play!”

  “What do you mean no blood, no body?” Jack, who had already taken the pillow off his head and rolled back over to face me, made eye contact when he heard that question. I gave him a little shrug in return.

  That was it. Detective Jack Wheeler tossed his pillow to the foot of the bed. The cats bolted as Jack sprang to his feet, grabbed his phone, and placed a call. I heard him asking for someone with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department at the Lost Hills/Malibu station.

  “That’s what the young fool from Lost Hills told me. I demanded they organize a search for Dave Rollins immediately. Since there was no blood and no body at the location, they had no reason to put out an APB, or whatever they call it, for Dave Rollins or anyone else. He actually told me to cool it!”

  Uh-oh, I thought. That sounded like an order. Max loves to give orders, but no one tells him what to do. An inspired dreamer who’d invented a private world with an odd assortment of fantastical creatures that inhabited cartoons, movies, theme parks, and resorts, Max often behaved as though he ruled the real world too.

  “Hang on a second while I tell Jack what no blood, no body means.” I relayed the information quickly just as our morning alarm went off. I shut it off, rolled out of bed, and slipped on my robe while continuing my conversation with Max.

  “Dave didn’t say a word to Jack or me about planning to go anywhere. I take it he didn’t tell you he had travel plans, either, and there’s no way the mess at his house could be from packing in a hurry.”

  “No, he did not! In fact, he told me all he wanted to do for the foreseeable future was sit and ponder the music of the waves or some nonsense like that. I tried to get him to commit to creating a special composition for our Catmmando Tom Jubilee Commemoration in two years and he turned me down!”

  Imagine that, I thought, keeping my sarcasm to myself. “Well, it wouldn’t be much of a retirement if he started on a new project right away. That sounds like an ambitious one, too,” I said, walking down the hall to the kitchen. I was desperate to make a pot of coffee. I’m pretty sure what I heard in response to my statement was a harrumph from Max.

  By the time I reached the kitchen, Miles and Ella were already seated on barstools at the large granite kitchen island, ready to assume their supervisory roles. For the moment, they patiently waited for service—morning treats of gourmet canned food, tuna, or turkey.

  “Dave has never been one to shun ambition,” Max sputtered.

  “Uh huh,” I murmured to Max as I multi-tasked in my quasi-conscious state. I pulled items from the cupboards and began my morning rituals with my mind still operating in low gear.

  I went over my most recent encounter with Dave. Jack and I had just seen him the night before at an elaborate gala held in his honor to celebrate his retirement. He’d been the consummate showman, as always. With his mass of white hair, longer and even more unruly than Max’s, he was the quintessential orchestra director decked out in a traditional tuxedo with the long tails.

  He’d been presented with a lovely gold conductor’s baton and had wielded it with apparent delight as he posed for pictures with Marvelous Marley World colleagues. There was no hint that anything was wrong as he clowned around with some of our associates dressed as beloved Marvelous Marley World characters. A well-known ladies’ man, he’d also flirted his way through a gaggle of adoring women—young and old alike.

  Over the years, the maestro had composed dozens of songs, many of which had become identified with the iconic characters for whom they’d been written. He’d also created lovely arrangements of his work and the work of others, scored live-action feature films, full-length animated films as well as cartoons and film shorts. Those efforts had earned him Oscars, Grammys, and Emmys along with other honors and awards. Many of his tunes were as catchy as the Marvelous Marley World theme song he’d penned early in his career when only a handful of people worked in what eventually became the Marvelous Marley World Music Group.

  When the aroma of fresh-ground coffee hit me, I realized that Max had been speaking. There had been more after my “uh huh,” and I’d missed it. The last few words that made their way into my brain had something to do with “a jubilee like no other.” If I had to guess, I’d say that Max had just delivered a long soliloquy about the project he envisioned to commemorate Catmmando Tom’s debut decades ago. That must have included a reference to the great honor it would have been for Dave Rollins to participate. Maybe the maestro made a hasty departure for parts unknown, trying to outrun Max’s inability to take no for an answer.

  “I hear you,” I muttered, sort of lying. “I’m sure he understood the opportunity you were offering him. Dave told us last night how much he was looking forward to doing nothing for a while.” Before he could respond, I changed the subject. “How did you find out that Dave was missing? Did the police call you?”

  “Pat contacted me. One of Dave’s neighbors knows she’s been his Personal Assistant for years and called her to comp
lain about the loud music rather than filing a complaint with the police. When she couldn’t get Dave to answer his phone, she drove to Malibu and found the police already in Dave’s house after other neighbors had complained. She called me hoping Dave had changed his mind and decided to spend the weekend here at my house to discuss the jubilee project. When I got off the phone with Pat, I went right to the source, and called the officer on the scene rather than rely solely upon her version of events. That’s what I want you and Jack to do.”

  “Sure, I’ll give Pat a call.”

  “Yes, yes, of course. You should do that right away. I’ve told Pat that she is not to leave Dave’s house under any circumstance. What’s more important is that you two go to Malibu while Pat and the police are still there. That’s the only way to get to the bottom of this impossible situation right away. Don’t let them give you the run around either. I want answers!”

  Let the eye-rolling begin, I thought, glad that Max couldn’t see my reaction.

  “We can’t just barge in there. Jack’s trying to reach someone with the County Sheriff’s Department, but Malibu’s outside his jurisdiction.”

  “I don’t care about jurisdictions. You two need to get over there now!” That order had been delivered loud enough to rattle my nerves.

  Here comes Rumpelstiltskin, I thought as I held the phone away from my ear. I could picture Max jumping up and down like that angry little fairytale troll.

  Tempted to lay my phone down on the counter, I struggled to pop the top on a can of cat food with one hand. Miles bellowed, either in response to the commotion on the other end of my phone, or in irritation at my lack of agility while doing something as simple as opening a can of cat food. He does not appreciate slow or sloppy service. Just then, Jack stepped up behind me and wrapped his arms around me.

  “Tell Max we’ll get there as soon as we can.” My mouth fell open when Jack said that. I turned to face my husband who awed me, once again, with his ability to cope with mornings and unwelcome surprises. Clean-shaven and fully-dressed, he was ready to roll.