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program and had attended their recitals. He’d not seen her before. “An opera singer,” he said sadly. “She’ll sing no more.”
    He followed Jacoby down the torturous route to the main stage and looked out over the house, where Mac and Annabel Smith and the others sat. Genevieve Crier was with the Smiths. Pawkins went to them and slumped into a chair between Annabel and Genevieve.
    “Well?” Genevieve asked. “Was someone murdered?”
    “Yes,” Pawkins replied, not looking at anyone in particular.
    “Who?” Genevieve asked, a lump in her throat catching the word as it came out.
    “Evidently a Ms. Charise Lee,” Pawkins said.
    Genevieve gasped, clamped her hands over her face, and sobbed. Annabel put her arm over her shoulder and whispered comforting words.
    “I knew it,” Genevieve managed. “I just knew it.”
    “How was she killed?” Mac asked.
    “Stabbed,” Pawkins said, “but that’s unofficial. Happened a while ago, perhaps last night. Certainly not this afternoon or tonight.”
    Zambrano appeared from backstage and came to the stage apron. “What is taking so long?” he asked loudly.
    Mac stood. “There’s been an unfortunate incident somewhere upstairs. The police will want to talk to everyone who was here.”
    “I don’t have time for this,” Zambrano said, and stormed back into the wings.
    The laconic Pawkins chuckled softly. “I was a super here at the Kennedy Center, Don Giovanni directed by him a few years back,” he said. “He’s volatile, but he has a wonderful creative sense. I was looking forward to being in another one of his productions.”
    “Do you think what’s happened tonight will cause Tosca to be postponed?” Annabel asked.
    “I’m sure not,” Pawkins said. “They put on a production right after September eleven, which was the right thing to do. Baseball and football teams played, and life went on, as it should.”
    “Much of life,” Mac corrected softly.
    It was an hour before Detective Berry and his partner came downstairs. The group were told they were free to go, but their names and contact information were collected: “We’ll want to be in touch with you in the next few days,” Berry announced.
    Genevieve pulled herself together before all the supers departed. “This changes nothing,” she told them. “Rehearsals will go on as scheduled. Sorry about tonight, but the show must, and will, go on.”
    The Smiths and Pawkins had started up the aisle toward the doors when Mac suddenly stopped and grabbed Pawkins’ arm. “There’s something the police should see,” he said. “Back in a minute, Annie.”
    He led the former detective back onto the stage—he doubted if he’d ever call it a deck—and pointed to the stain on the floor.
    “Blood,” Pawkins said.
    “I wonder…,” Smith started to say.
    Pawkins finished his thought. “Wondering if she was killed here and moved upstairs?”
    “Yes.”
    “A good possibility,” Pawkins said.
    Mac’s eyes followed a route from the stain to the nearest exit into the wings. “No blood aside from the stain,” he said, “no trail.”
    “I might have an answer for that,” Pawkins said. He waved over a uniformed officer, pointed out the stain to him, and suggested he inform Detective Berry of it.
    “Drink?” Mac asked Pawkins as they rejoined Annabel and left the Kennedy Center’s air-conditioned coolness. It was an oppressively humid night.
    “Love it,” the retired detective replied, “as long as food accompanies it. I haven’t eaten since breakfast.”
    “I’ve lost any appetite I might have had,” Annabel said as they agreed to meet in fifteen minutes at the bar on the lobby level of the Watergate Hotel, decidedly more quiet and conducive to serious conversation than the 600 Restaurant.
    Pawkins’ laugh was rueful. “The only thing that sets my stomach on edge is a bad performance of a favorite opera. I’ve seen and, worse, heard a few of those, and the thought of food is anathema