Read Deadly Overtures: A Music Lover's Mystery for Free Online Page A

successful composer.” She blinked against a welling of tears. “Except now she won’t be, will she?” A single tear escaped and rolled down her cheek.
    “No,” I said with a heavy heart. “She won’t.” I thought of Pavlina’s loved ones, and the loss they would now have to endure. “Do you know anything about her family?”
    Dongmei wiped a tear off her cheek. “She mentioned that her parents still live in Toronto where she grew up. They weren’t able to come out here for the concerts. But other than that, no, I don’t know anything. This will be terrible for them.”
    I nodded, a sharp pang of sympathy cutting through me.
    Catching sight of JT returning to the lounge, I gave Dongmei a hug. “I’ll see you next week.”
    Again she tried to smile, but it was weighed down by sadness.
    Leaving Dongmei, I met up with JT in the middle of the lounge. “All done?” I asked him.
    “Yep. There really wasn’t anything I could tell them.”
    “That’s probably true of most people who were here,” I said.
    I was about to tell him about the blood on Fred’s hammer, but then remembered that Constable Ryan had asked me to keep quiet about that news. It would be tough to keep the information from JT, but I’d do my best. At any rate, even if I did end up telling him, the musicians’ lounge wasn’t the place to do so. The crowd had thinned out significantly over the past half hour or so, but there were still several people lingering in the room, either because they were waiting to give their statements to the police or because they were talking over the terrible events of the evening with their friends.
    “Ready to go?” JT asked.
    “Yes.” I turned in the direction of my locker. “I’ll just grab my things.”
    Once I’d donned my coat and gloves and had gathered up my instrument case and tote bag, I waved goodbye to a couple of my friends who were still in the lounge and headed for the door with JT. Cameron fell into step with us and I realized that I’d temporarily forgotten about him. He’d spent much of the past half hour in a corner of the room with his phone, but if he was leaving with us he must have spoken to the police at some point.
    “Did you already pack up all the rest of your equipment?” I asked JT, eyeing his laptop and the recorder in Cameron’s charge.
    “Yep. It’s all in the truck.”
    JT pushed open the stage door and held it while Cameron and I passed through. The three of us walked down the short side alley to the parking lot at the back of the theater, our breaths forming little clouds in the cold night air. Although my coat and gloves warded off the worst of the chill, I still shivered as I walked, and I looked forward to getting home so I could snuggle up beneath some warm blankets.
    When we reached the parking lot Cameron veered off to the left, in the direction of JT’s truck, while JT and I continued on straight ahead to my blue MINI Cooper. After years of riding the bus everywhere I was still getting used to the fact that I owned a car. But after a scare a couple of months earlier when a man grabbed and threatened me while I was walking alone at night, I no longer felt comfortable making my way to and from bus stops after dark.
    With some encouragement from JT, I’d looked into getting a secondhand car. Fortunately, I didn’t have to look far. My cousin—who went through vehicles at what I considered a ridiculous rate—had wanted to offload her five-year-old MINI Cooper so she could get something new. She’d offered me the car for a somewhat decent price and I’d taken her up on it. It certainly made my life easier to have a car, and I knew JT was less anxious about my safety now. He still watched out for me, though, like he was at the moment, walking me to my car.
    I was grateful for that, and his concern for me always made me happy. Not for the first time, I wished I could express my true feelings for him, wished I could let him know how much I appreciated