Master of the Opera, Act 1: Passionate Overture (3 page)

This
, she smiled to herself, was why they needed a database.

She unhooked the massive ring of keys Charlie had given her from her belt loop and sorted through it, looking for the correct room number. The lock in the institutional-style door didn’t want to turn but finally gave way to total gloom and a muscular, musty smell reminiscent of the elevator. Feeling around for the switch, she wished she’d thought to bring a flashlight with her.
Please don’t let a spider bite me.
God or a scorpion. Did they have those here?

The overhead light came on with a snick and a whirr, as in the old gym in her high school. The one that hadn’t been rehabbed. Sure enough, it was one of those gray metal kind, with a frame to protect the bulb. Odd that such old lights would be on a motion sensor, but she hadn’t found the switch.

Feeble light chased away most of the shadows, showing a room packed with boxes upon boxes—some cardboard, some wood—and none labeled. With a sigh, she thumbed on the iPad and started a list of things she needed: flashlight, fat Sharpie markers, gloves.

She started with the box nearest the door, sitting on the floor to sort through the contents. Mostly folded cotton kimonos in this one. Or the under kimono, rather. Whatever those were called. Flipping to the correct level and room in the Big Notebook of Doom, she scanned the list for something like that.

This was going to take forever. Maybe this was what had scared Tara away.

She hoped that Tara had indeed run off to Acapulco with her boyfriend. Maybe she’d taken one look at the BNoD and run as fast as she could. If Roman Sanclaro invited
her
on a sexy little beach vacay, she might be entirely tempted.

Tempted, but she wouldn’t do it. After the season is over, she’d tell him. They could go in the winter, when the opera house had closed up.

Half daydreaming about the fantasy beach trip—how good would Roman look in swim trunks?—and concentrating on checking things off her list and entering them into the tablet, she lost track of time.

Humming along with the music, she became aware of the crick in her neck. Then her head snapped up and she winced as her muscles caught. Music? No, there wasn’t ... Yes. There. That golden tenor wafted down the hallway through the open door, now clearly audible, then gone again. She knew the tune but couldn’t place it. Something sweet and sad, a song of longing. Of love lost and never forgotten.

Mesmerized by it, she followed the sound into the dim hall. The bare bulbs opened small gaps of light down the hallway for a few doorways, then gave up against the darkness beyond. Her sneakers making soft whispers against the grit on the cement floor, she chased the tantalizing wisps of song, pulled into the deeper shadows.

Just when they had faded beyond hearing, the golden notes surged again, teasing, beckoning, offering ... something. Like the singer, she longed for what she’d never had, yearned for it with a deep, sexual need, feeling as if she’d lost something precious, never quite grasped, always barely beyond her reach and now—gone forever.

She had to place her hand against the near wall to guide herself in the deep gloom, feeling her way across the floor. Intent on the music, senses roused in response, she barely felt the chill concrete, nearly desperate to find the source.
Wanting
, a bone-deep need, surged through her, overcoming everything else.

Christine
.

Her breath shuddered out, wanting to call back to him.

“Who’s there?” Her voice bounced back, unbearably loud and jangling after straining to hear each whispered note.

“Christy?”

She whirled around, heart clenching, to crash straight into Charlie. A little shriek escaped her.

“What the hell are you doing here in the dark?” His industrial-strength flashlight pointed down toward the floor, light bouncing back up to illuminate his genial cowboy face so that he looked more like a kind of evil gnome. “Who are you talking to?”

“Ah—” Her voice came out on a squeak and she had to swallow it down. What
had
she been doing? “I, um, thought I heard music.”

Charlie looked past her, as if he could see something in the impenetrable black. “Echoes of the techs, probably, from upstairs. The acoustics in this place are funny that way. I came to see if you wanted to break for lunch.”

“Yes!” The prospect of getting out into the sunshine dispelled the sticky web of neediness that still stirred uneasily inside her.

“C’mon, then. I have a hankering for green chile.” Charlie turned decisively back to the weak lighting down the hall, a pale gleam at the end of the tunnel. “And next time bring one of the flashlights. It’s not safe.”

“I thought you said Tara ran off—that she couldn’t have ...”
don’t say died
“
...
disappeared down here.”

Charlie grunted but didn’t reply.

T
hey rode in Charlie’s rattling pickup down the road to Tesuque. Under the overpass, the Native American symbols in colorful shapes danced on the walls.

“What do they all mean—do you know?”

“Some of ’em. Some are so old even the tribes don’t know.”

“How can that be?”

“Well, nobody around here is original to the place, if you go back far enough. Santa Fe might be one of the oldest cities in the U.S.—just had our four-hundred-year celebration—but that’s when the Spanish arrived. The tribes that were here at the time—the Nambe, the Tesuque, the Pueblo, among others—they moved into the abandoned dwellings left by even more ancient Indians.”

“Like the Anasazi at Mesa Verde.”

Charlie chuckled. “Yeah, same people, but you’re not supposed to use that name anymore because it means something along the lines of ‘ancient enemy,’ and modern folks figure that’s not really fair. Go visit Bandelier and read up on it.”

“I thought we’re not supposed to say ‘Indian,’ either.”

“True, true.” Charlie pulled into a dirt parking lot alongside the road, in front of a ramshackle building with a wooden porch. “But the Indians all say it, unless they’re being formal, so I slip into it over time.”

The small dining room looked like the inside of a log cabin cook shack, which it probably started out as. By the register, a long hall took a crooked turn to become a sort of grocery store/gift shop. People were crowded in around linoleum-topped tables, a mix of locals and tourists armed with maps and brochures.

Charlie nodded at them. “People come over here to see the ironworks and the sculpture garden. Worth a wander through, if you haven’t yet.”

The menu was as simple as the setting. No steak tartare here. Christy ended up ordering a burger with guacamole and green chile strips, which Charlie assured her would warm her right up. Those lower levels could be cold this time of year.

“Not a five-star place, but the food is good and you can’t beat the prices.”

“Mr. Sanclaro took me to Geronimo last night,” she told him, deciding to answer the question he wasn’t asking.

“Nice.”

“It was.”

They lapsed into silence. She suspected he was torn between treating her as any apprentice and standing in for her father.

“We’re old friends—as you know—but if it gets to be more, um, I mean, if it’s not kosher for me to see a patron, you know, romantically ...” To her horror, she found herself blushing, remembering that very yummy kiss. In front of her new boss.

“No, no. It’s not that.” Charlie drank from his mug of coffee and wrinkled up one side of his mouth, chewing on the words. “I feel I should warn you. Which is all kinds of inappropriate and you have the family connection and all. But if you were my daughter, I’d want to tell you that fellow is—well, he has a bit of reputation around here. He sniffs around all the pretty young apprentices, and the actresses, too. He gets around.”

Okay, that was a fair warning. “I’ll be very careful not to let him break my heart.” She tried to sound solemn, but Charlie shook his head with a wan smile.

“All right. Make fun of an old man.”

“You’re not old.”

“Old enough to know some things.”

“Do you believe in the theater ghost?” The question sprang out before she realized she was thinking it.

Charlie sat back in his chair and scratched an ear. “Depends,” he finally said.

Not the answer she’d expected. “Really? On what?”

“Well ...” He gazed at the ceiling, shifting to the side when the people clearing the table next to them brushed past. “See, I believe there’s more to this world than meets the eye. Like the opera house—there’s all these levels below levels and hidden crannies. You don’t live in a place like this without knowing that the intangibles make it special. You know the artists all moved here because of the light?”

“Like Georgia O’Keeffe?”

“Yeah, she was one of the first, but they all followed because they agreed. There’s something special about the sky and the light.”

“Okay.”

“But how can that be?” He nodded thanks to the harried woman who refilled his coffee. “I mean—same sun, same atmosphere, same planet. How can the light be any different here than, say, in Denver? Or Reno—any of those places with the same altitude?”

“I don’t know.”

“Exactly!” Charlie thumped down his mug. “Because there isn’t any reason, but it’s still true. We see it. We feel the difference in our bones. Same as the new Indians who moved in and took up the sacred symbols of the ancient Indians before them. Something in us recognizes magic when we encounter it. Whether we believe in it consciously or not. It affects us and the choices we make.” That same expression of worry crossed his face, as it had when he spoke of Tara.

The waitress dropped off their food with a cheerful exhortation to enjoy it. Finding a way to open her mouth wide enough to bite into the thick burger, dripping with green chile stew, gave her some time to think. Charlie seemed to forget his somber thoughts and happily plowed into a smothered burrito.

“So, you’re saying the theater ghost exists whether we believe in him or not?” She wiped her mouth on a paper napkin.

“I’m saying there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

“Horatio,” she inserted automatically, and Charlie tossed off a two-fingered half salute. “And I don’t think I have a philosophy.”

“Well, you’re young yet. It takes experience and paying attention to build a good philosophy.”

“What’s yours?”

“Just told you, didn’t I?”

“I think I heard him—the ghost. Singing. That’s what I was doing.”

“Ah.”

She waited, only halfway through her burger and already stuffed. But he didn’t say anything else. Didn’t call her crazy.

“That’s it?”

“Well, I already told you to be careful. And to take a flashlight. What else can I say?” Charlie no longer seemed his cheerful self but defensive. Resigned? Maybe afraid.

“Did Tara hear the ghost?”

“Now why would you ask that?” Charlie snapped up the check in uncharacteristic irritation. “If you’re done, let’s go. My treat.”

While he waited in line to pay at the register, Christy browsed the shelves of the market. The place was kind of like those out-of-the-way convenience stores, with odd assortments of necessities, comfort foods, and items you couldn’t imagine anyone needing—like tapioca pudding mix.

A ceramic bowl held polished stones that fit in the palm of her hand, inscribed with different animal symbols. She recognized one from the bridge—a humpbacked bear—carved into a shining black rock. Charlie waited impatiently by the door while she paid her five dollars and change for it.

“You shouldn’t buy that Indian crap,” he huffed.

It lay in her palm, surprisingly warm. “Why not? Maybe it’s good luck.”

“Maybe it’s a rip-off, too. Not all of ’em feel friendly to white folks either. Could be they wrapped some bad juju in there, to make you a little miserable.”

“Which is it, Charlie?” She laughed, hoisting herself into the truck, glad not to be in yesterday’s narrow skirt. “Bad luck or worthless?”

“Don’t get smart with me.”

“I think it’s lucky. It feels lucky,” she decided.

Charlie pointed the truck up the river road and the early afternoon sun streamed in on the cracked dashboard, illuminating the dusty old blue so it glowed. The budding limbs of the trees stood out against a sky of the same creamy color. It all looked otherworldly, beautiful and full of sensual promise.

“You might find—” Charlie cleared his throat, staring steadfastly at the narrow road. “If you think you hear the ghost, go the other way.”

“You
do
believe in him.” She pounced on his words.

“Didn’t say that, did I?”

Oh, but he had. That much was very clear. “Do you think—is it possible he hurt Tara, after all?” The stone burned hot in her palm, a tiny sun of its own.

Charlie glanced at her before turning up the winding drive, past the gated communities of the wealthy, that led to the opera house. “There’s no reason to think Tara did anything but run off. It didn’t surprise me because she was the type to be easily spooked.”

He pulled into the backstage lot and cut the engine. Reaching over, he tapped the back of her hand, and she opened it, showing him the polished stone. “Are you easily spooked?”

The carving of the bear seemed subtly different. Had one paw been curled up, as if about to take a step, before? And its head was turned in semiprofile, looking up at her. A wash of hot-cold ran over her scalp and her skin prickled with golden sparks, that feeling of being crazy, of blood draining away.

“C’mon. That inventory beckons, kiddo.”

She had to scramble to catch up with him. “Thanks for lunch!” she called to his back.

He turned, holding the door open. “Remember what I told you. And take a damn flashlight.”