“Who said that?” Grimes asked.

“You read Professor Grimes his rights?” Berry asked.

“Yup,” Willie grunted.

“You want a lawyer, Professor Grimes?”

“Please, don’t do this to me,” Grimes said, and began to cry.

“Yeah, I think you need a lawyer,” Berry said, standing. “You think about it, Professor. We’ll be back.” The detectives left the room and joined their boss, Cole Morris, behind the one-way mirror.

“That dude did the deed, man,” Willie said. “Bet my pension on it.” He started to walk away.

“Where are you going, Willie?” Berry asked.

“Get something to eat, a candy bar or something. I’m feeling dizzy. Must have low blood sugar or somethin’.”

Berry shook his head. Johnson laughed.

“Next time you’re in there with him,” Morris told Berry, “ask what he did with that music Musinski’s niece claims was stolen. There’s our motive, a million dollars’ worth of little black notes on paper with lines. Damn, I’m in the wrong business.”

Despite his request for a lawyer, the questioning of Grimes continued until one thirty, when a young attorney from Legal Aid arrived and put a stop to it. Grimes was held as a suspect in the murder of Dr. Aaron Musinski, over the objections of the attorney, who insisted that his client either be formally charged or released.

“That’s up to the prosecutor,” Berry told the attorney as he, Willie, and Sylvia returned to Berry’s office, where Ray Pawkins had just arrived.

“Hey, Ray, have a seat,” Berry said.

“A blast from the past,” Portelain said. “How’ve you been, man?”

“Couldn’t be better,” Pawkins said. “You?”

“Tip-top, babe. ’Course, the man here has been working us into the ground. No rest for the weary.”

“Still cracking the whip, huh, Carl?” Pawkins said with a gentle laugh.

“You know that’s not true,” Johnson said. “Carl uses a carrot, not a stick.”

“And you’re as beautiful as ever, Sylvia,” Pawkins said.

“I’m not easily flattered,” she said. “Say it again.” They all laughed.

“What’s new with the Lee case?” Pawkins asked.

“I was just telling Willie and Sylvia earlier today what you told me about the two agents, Melincamp and Baltsa. They interviewed them.”

“Charming couple, huh?” Pawkins said.

“From what Carl tells us,” Sylvia said, “they don’t have the world’s best reputation.”

“That’s for sure,” Pawkins concurred. “I’ve got somebody in Toronto digging a little deeper into them and their operation. I’ll fill you in when I get something.”

“We’d appreciate that,” Berry said. “How’re things in the opera world?”

“Exciting. Nothing like the murder-a real one-of a beautiful young soprano to spice things up.” To Willie and Sylvia: “You know I’m working for the Washington National Opera.”

“Yeah,” Willie said. “Got your picture in a magazine, too.”

“How’d I look?”

“Ugly as ever,” Willie said, guffawing to take the edge off his comment.

“Willie and Sylvia brought in Grimes this morning, the professor over at Georgetown U,” Berry said. “We’ve talked to him. Naturally, he swears he had nothing to do with Musinski’s murder. Legal Aid sent someone to represent him.”

“He say anything incriminating?” Pawkins asked.

“No,” Berry answered.

“I say he did it,” Willie offered.

“You’re probably right,” Pawkins said. “We had him pegged back when it happened, but we couldn’t put him away.”

“I know,” said Berry. “Willie and Sylvia are going to work the case for a while.”

“I thought you were on the Lee case,” Pawkins said.

“Don’t ask,” Berry said, not attempting to keep the frustration from his voice.

“We’re digging into Grimes’ life, friends, whoever might know something.” To Portelain and Johnson: “Speaking of that, you’d better get started.”

“Good luck,” Pawkins told the two detectives as they left the room.

“So, what’s up?” Pawkins asked when he and Berry were alone. “You said you had some loose ends on the Musinski case.”

“Yeah, we do, Ray. I’ve gone over all your reports from six years ago. You did a good job.”

“Not good enough. He’s been walking around free for six years.”

“And never left D.C.”

“Why should he? He was never charged.”

“But you put a lot of heat on him. I don’t know, if I were in his shoes, I think I’d look for a teaching job someplace far away.”

“You can’t figure people.”

“Did you know him?”

“Sure. I must have done half a dozen interviews with him.”

“No, I mean before the murder. You were taking courses at Georgetown around the time Musinski was killed, weren’t you?”

“As a matter of fact, I was. I’d just started my master’s program, thanks to the Metropolitan Police Department’s largesse. That education program really helped.”

“You never ran across Grimes while you were there?”

“No.”

“But you must have known Musinski. He’d been there a long time, a high-profile guy.”

“I might have met him once or twice. He was in the Music Department, I was art history. But yeah, I think I was introduced to him once.”

“I never saw that in any of your reports.”

“Never occurred to me to include it. Didn’t have any bearing on the investigation.”

“Right. Despite Willie’s conviction that Grimes is guilty-you know Willie, he’s never met a suspect who wasn’t guilty-”

“Not a bad way to police,” Pawkins said.

“That aside, what I can’t figure is why Grimes would have killed Musinski.”

Pawkins thought for a minute and shrugged. “Those missing musical manuscripts aren’t a bad motive.”

“I have a problem with that.”

“Why?”

“A couple of reasons. To begin with, you indicated in your reports-and I remember having conversations with you about it-you questioned whether there ever were such manuscripts.”

“I still do. All we had to go on was a letter from Musinski to his niece, and her claim that he came back from London with them. I never saw them. Neither did anyone else I know of.”

“There was his partner over in Europe, wasn’t there?”

Pawkins nodded. “I spoke with him a couple of times. He mentioned the scores but didn’t press it. If anybody had a reason to raise hell about them disappearing, it was him. The fact that he didn’t raise hell tells me that maybe they never existed in the first place.”

“Maybe you’re right,” Berry said, “but there’s something else that bothers me.”

“I’m all ears.”

“If anybody took those manuscripts-what were they, string quartets written by Mozart and Haydn?”

“So they say.”

“If anybody took them, they would have sold them as fast as possible.”

Pawkins pondered Berry’s analysis. “Not necessarily,” he said. “There are art lovers who steal paintings, or pay to have them stolen, who just want them to look at them every night over a snifter of brandy. Gives them some sort of solace.”

“I can understand that with works of art, Ray, but musical scores? Not much to look at there, brandy or no brandy. I could understand recordings, or if whoever stole them plays the piano. By the way, Grimes doesn’t play-the piano, that is.”

“Still.”

“I’m not ruling out what you said.”

Berry did a decent impression of TV’s Columbo about to leave a scene but having a sudden new thought. “What bothers me, Ray, is that Grimes doesn’t live like a man who’s sitting on a million dollars’ worth of rare manuscripts. He, his wife, and two kids live in university-subsidized housing, nothing fancy. He drives a beat-up old car. His bank account gives him maybe a couple of months of living expenses. No savings, aside from a self-funded pension plan at the university. If he murdered Musinski to get his hands on those scores, what the hell did he do with them?”

“Beats me,” Pawkins said. “What about the niece? Maybe she grabbed them the night she reported her uncle murdered.”

Berry shook his head. “We checked her out, too, recently. Another modest liver, nothing to point in her direction.”