I shifted in the chair and pulled my legs up under me. “He was a last-minute replacement for Zinia Young.”
“Now, your festival would be Zinia’s type of event.”
“She had to bow out at the last minute, so Easton volunteered to fill in.”
“Volunteered? I don’t think so.”
“That came straight from someone on the festival board,” I said. “I guess he offered because he and Zinia are close friends.”
An inelegant snort of laughter came through the receiver. “Gregor Easton doesn’t have friends,” Lise said. “He has—had—sycophants and people he was using. Easton and Zinia were not friends. Trust me, if he volunteered, there was something in it for him.”
The man Lise was describing did sound like the man Ruby and Maggie had talked about in class, like the man I’d encountered at the library.
“What else do you know about Easton?” I asked. I kept waiting for Lise to ask me why I was asking for information about the man.
“He wasn’t well liked in the classical music world,” Lise said. “He was arrogant—even for a conductor.”
“So I’ve heard.”
“Now, to be fair, he was considered to be a first-rate composer, deservedly so, from what I’ve heard. But technically he wasn’t anywhere near as gifted.”
“What do you mean, technically?” I asked. I heard Lise’s feet drop to the floor and I knew she was probably reaching across her desk for her coffee.
“His playing—and conducting, too—weren’t close to the caliber of his composing. Do you remember Dr. Mitton?”
I thought for a moment. “Wasn’t he musician in residence a couple of years ago? He was English.”
“That’s him.” I imagined Lise nodding on the other end of the phone. “He once compared Easton’s piano playing to that of a three-year-old on a toy keyboard.”
“That’s harsh,” I said.
“That’s the kind of response Easton generated in people,” she said. “I heard him play once, years ago, and while he was good, he wasn’t great. The music was beautiful, but he didn’t seem to connect with it. It was almost as though he hadn’t written his own score. It was so much better than his playing. The best versions of his compositions have been played by other people.”
That was interesting, though I had no idea how it might help me. I glanced at my watch. There was a lot more I wanted to know, but I was running out of time.
“Lise, do you know anything about Easton’s background?” I asked. “Where he grew up, where he got his first degree?”
“I don’t.” I pictured her shaking her head, blond curls bouncing. I felt another sting of homesickness. “But I can ask around, discreetly, of course, if you’d like me to.”
“Please,” I said. I gave her my home phone and my cell number. If we missed each other, I didn’t want a message about Gregor Easton left for me at the library.
“So, Kath,” Lise said. “Why all the interest in a dead conductor?”
So I wasn’t going to get away without answering some questions myself after all. “This stays between us?”
“Absolutely.”
“I found his body.”
“Oh, Kath, I’m sorry. Are you all right?”
“Yeah, I am. Thanks,” I said. “The thing is, the police still have some questions and so do I.”
“Do you mean there was some kind of accident, or are you saying someone killed him?” I heard the surprise in her question.
“Lise, I honestly don’t know for sure,” I said. “I can tell you that it looks like the library is one of the last places he was before he died. Somehow he got into the building after hours.”
“And you want to know why a renowned composer was breaking into your library.”
That, and why would someone want to kill him at all, not to mention who did. But I didn’t say that out loud.
“I thought the biggest problems you’d see out there would be grizzly bears and killer mosquitoes.”
“Maybe I’m just being nosy. It’s probably going to turn out that Easton had a stroke.”
“Well, let me see what I can find out and I’ll get back to you.”
I thanked her and we both said good-bye. I hung up the phone and stood up, giving my right foot—which had fallen asleep—a shake. I stood in the doorway of my office. And looked down to the main floor of the library. In the time I’d been on the phone, Will Redfern’s men had taken the temporary circulation desk apart. One of the workers was spreading a heavy canvas tarp over the floor where the desk had sat. The front doors were propped open and another man came in, carrying what looked to me like pieces of steel staging.
Something was up. I headed down the stairs. “Excuse me,” I called, walking quickly over to them. “Are you setting up staging?”
The man spreading out the tarp turned at the sound of my voice. I recognized him as Eddie, a cousin I wasn’t sure how many times removed, of Abigail’s. He was a big, barrel-chested man with a great, booming laugh, but as Abigail had observed wryly, he wasn’t very “work brittle.”
“Yes, ma’am, we are settin’ up stagin’,” Eddie said. “We brought this ’cause we didn’t know if we could get into the storage room to get the other stagin’.”
The other worker set the pieces he’d carried down on the tarpaulin. I knew from watching Eddie work, or, more correctly, not work, who’d be assembling that staging.
“What’s the staging for?” I asked.
“Well, we need to reach something up to the ceilin’ and the ladder don’t go that high.”
Talking to Eddie could be maddeningly slow. I wasn’t sure if he doled out information so slowly just because he truly was literal-minded or whether he secretly enjoyed playing people.
I blew out a breath and rubbed the knot that was forming between my shoulders. “Why do you need to reach the ceiling?” I asked.
Eddie scratched his stubbled chin. His hands were huge. One of them could have covered my entire head. “Well, ma’am, the ceilin’s where that big, old plaster medallion goes.”
Plaster medallion?
I looked up. The front entry of the library ran up two floors. I could see where a ceiling medallion could fit, but I hadn’t signed anything to order one and it wasn’t part of the original renovation plans.
The knot at the base of my neck tightened.
“Where’s your boss, Eddie?” I asked.
He scratched his ear and frowned. “Well, I can’t exactly say,” he said. I noticed he hadn’t said he didn’t know.
His cell was tucked in his T-shirt pocket. “Give me your phone,” I said. I knew if I called from the library phone Will Redfern wouldn’t answer.
Eddie hesitated. “This is a work phone,” he said.
“Good.” I grabbed the cell from his pocket and flipped it open. “Because this is a work conversation.” I stepped away from Eddie and punched in Will’s number. He answered on the third ring. “Hey, Eddie boy,” he said, all macho good humor.
“Hello, Will,” I said. “It’s Kathleen Paulson. Eddie very kindly let me use his phone.” I looked back over my shoulder and smiled at Eddie, who looked as if he were still trying to figure out how I’d managed to get his cell.
There was silence on the other end of the phone. “Will, are you still there?” I said.
“Umm, yes, Miss Paulson, I’m here. What can I do for you?”
“According to Eddie there’s a ceiling medallion to be installed in the front entry of the library.”
“That’s right.”
Like Eddie, Will could stonewall. “There were no ceiling medallions on the renovation plan.” I was certain of that. I’d gone over the list of renovations, as well as the actual plan, before the work started. And I knew how to read a floor plan.
“Well, you see, the medallion is from before.”
“Before what?” I asked, struggling to keep the growing aggravation out of my voice.
“Before you got here,” Will said. “Roof leaked, right after Thanksgiving last year.”