Melody of Murder Read online

  MELODY OF MURDER

  A Scott Drayco Mystery

  BV Lawson

  Crimetime Press

  Copyright © 2022

  Melody of Murder is a work of fiction. All the names, characters, places, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  For information, contact:

  Crimetime Press

  6312 Seven Corners Center, Box 257

  Falls Church, VA 22044

  Trade Paperback ISBN 978-1-951752-10-1

  Hardcover ISBN 978-1-951752-11-8

  eBook ISBN 978-1-951752-09-5

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Harp of Wild and Dreamy Strain

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  To My Readers

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Connect with BV

  Harp of Wild and Dreamy Strain

  Harp of wild and dreamy strain, when I touch thy strings,

  Why sound out of long forgotten things?

  Harp, in other, earlier days, I could sing to thee;

  And not one of all my lays vexed my memory.

  But now, if I awake a note that gave me joy before

  Sounds of sorrow from thee float,

  Changing evermore.

  Yet, still steeped in memory’s dyes, come sailing on,

  Darkening my summer skies,

  Shutting out my sun.

  poem by Emily Brontë, music by Lothar Klein

  Chapter 1

  Friday, November 19

  Scott Drayco opened his eyes and saw nothing but pitch blackness. Why was it so dark? Why couldn’t he move? What the hell was going on?

  As his senses came back online, he became aware of a scratchy fabric over his eyes, a rough cord cutting into his wrists, and the roaring of an engine. He forced himself to focus, to take stock of the who, what, where, when, why, and how.

  The good news was he was alive, and nothing seemed to be broken. But judging by the engine noise and jarring bumps, he must be in the trunk of a car.

  He inched his body around the space as best he could since his hands and legs were bound. It was a pretty tight fit. Whose car was this, and how did he even get here?

  He struggled to shake off the brain fog and nausea. After several minutes of pounding his bound fists against the side of the car in hopes the pain would shake him out of his haze, the evening came back to him in bits and pieces.

  He was in Georgetown walking down the street to meet a new client for dinner at a restaurant. It was night, it was crowded, someone jostled him . . . and he felt a stinging in his hand. Couldn’t be a wasp or bee in late November, could it?

  He’d shrugged it off, and then he got a call on his cellphone telling him to go around the next block to meet his client. The “client” had advised him to take a shortcut—an alleyway—to avoid a large group of noisy street partiers.

  He’d headed down the alleyway and made it as far as a couple of blocks. Then his legs turned to rubber, and he felt as if he were in a descending elevator plummeting to the ground. The next thing he knew, he was waking up in the trunk of this car.

  Definitely not a bee sting, then. More like some kind of drug, maybe propofol?

  The scratchy fabric was apparently a blindfold, and Drayco started working on it, rubbing his face against a piece of plastic sticking out from the side of the trunk. The cloth was pretty tight, but he got it to ride up a bit. It was enough to tell him it was still nighttime because no peeks of sunlight streamed through cracks in the trunk latch.

  Good thing he had on his jacket since the forecast called for near-freezing temps. Even so, he could feel the cold seeping through his pant legs.

  He struggled to get his bearings. Must be an older sedan, fairly large, judging from the roomier space not found in an economy car. As he moved, he could tell from the rough material that the floor had a carpeted surface, not plastic, reinforcing his hypothesis about the older-model car. But it should be modern enough to have a safety release. If he could operate it.

  He took some deep breaths to quiet the rising tide of panic as his claustrophobia bubbled up despite his best efforts to shut it down. He’d had to deal with that not too long ago on another case, and he was getting sick and tired of being stuffed into confined spaces.

  Breathe in, breathe out. Breathe in, breathe out. He focused on the icy sensation from the cold air and also the sounds around him—in case he got out of this ordeal and needed to retrace his route. It was largely quiet with no traffic noise, so he couldn’t still be in Washington, D.C. Must be out in the country somewhere?

  He worked on the rope around his wrists to see if he could free himself, but just then, the car began slowing down. Moments later, he heard the crunch of tires on gravel as the car pulled to a stop and the engine cut off.

  The banging of car doors soon followed, and then the sound of footsteps. The trunk creaked open, and he was hauled out of the car and onto the ground, where someone cut the rope around his legs so he could walk.

  He noticed his blindfold-removal efforts created a gap at the bottom, and he tilted his head up toward the sky—just in time to catch a glimpse of one man’s face staring back at him. The man called out to one of his companions, and someone slipped a hood over Drayco’s head.

  Two men, one on either side of him, grabbed his arms and dragged him toward the building he’d also glimpsed briefly. He got the impression it was nothing out of the ordinary, a simple house-like structure with nondescript siding and plain windows.

  As they made their way inside, Drayco heard a buzzing noise not too far away . . . and the faint ringing of bells in the distance. Not a siren or cowbells or church bells. This sounded more like a carillon. Very few of those around, so which one could it be? Were they even still in the Washington metro area? They could have been driving for hours, as far as he knew.

  He didn’t have time to ponder any of that as his captors guided him down a hallway, pushed him into a room, cut the rope around his wrists, and shut the door behind him. He also heard the distinct sound of a deadbolt lock as it engaged.

  When he ripped off the hood and blindfold, he saw he was in a tiny, windowless room that was bare save for one twin bed, a desk, and a chair. The lamp on the desk cast light onto a small tray with a mug perched on it. N
ot exactly the Ritz, but at least there was heat coming from somewhere, so he wouldn’t freeze to death. Still, his feet were cold, and he stomped them on the floor to boost his circulation.

  He spied a tiny bathroom, but it had no door. He looked around for security cameras and didn’t spot one straight away. If there were any, somebody would get a peep show out of it. He hoped that wasn’t the motive behind all of this, but quite honestly, he hadn’t a clue why he was here—wherever “here” was.

  He patted his pockets. No cellphone, keys, or wallet. Of course.

  The patches of mold and mildew on the otherwise bare white walls stood in silent testament to the fact the bleach he was smelling hadn’t entirely done its job. But the bleach did cover up most of the dankness and smelly neglect of the room.

  Studying his prison more closely, he noted the tray and mug weren’t the only items on the desk. Out of curiosity, he walked over to take a better look. There was also a pile of papers, and the one on top had a list of instructions.

  He read the words on the paper with growing disbelief. He was brought here to solve a puzzle, which was attached, and the rules were simple: solve the puzzle, ring the bell, and he’d be returned home safely and unharmed.

  Bell? Surely they didn’t mean the carillon he’d heard? He looked around for a bell and spied one hanging over the door with a pull rope. Hopefully, he’d be ringing that damned thing very soon. Then again, the “instructions” hadn’t said what would happen if he didn’t solve the puzzle.

  He rubbed his eyes. Perhaps the puzzle itself would give him some of his answers, like who was behind this stunt and why. The brief glimpse of one unfamiliar man’s face and the equally unfamiliar building hadn’t helped at all.

  He caught only fragments of whispered voices when they removed him from the car—along with the carillon bells—but one voice had a familiar color and tone. He just couldn’t quite put his finger on it. But maybe it was a sedative hangover at work, and it would come to him later.

  The question bugging him the most was that surely there were easier ways to get his help than kidnapping? Couldn’t they have merely asked? Even a rogue intelligence group would have found another way.

  He got a whiff of an aroma more pleasant than bleach and mildew wafting up from the dark liquid in the mug on the tray. Taking a chance, he dipped a finger into it and tasted it. Black coffee. A plastic spoon sat next to it . . . and a little packet of salt. Okay, now this was getting even weirder. What kidnapper in the world would know he liked salted coffee?

  The desk had one drawer, which he pulled out, noting they’d “thoughtfully” given him a writing pad, pencils, pens, and erasers. He flipped over the instructions page and studied the next paper in the pile that he assumed must be the mysterious puzzle.

  It comprised a bunch of letters, both English and French—with grave and acute accents and diereses—arranged in small groupings. The puzzle filled up an entire legal-sized page. At first glance, it seemed like a simple substitution cipher where one letter stood for another. But it couldn’t be that easy, could it? Why in the world would they have needed his expertise, if so?

  The instructions didn’t say how long they would give him to solve this code. Hours? Days? Weeks? Did he have an expiration date?

  With his adrenaline level still kicked into high gear, he knew he wouldn’t get much sleep despite the sedative hangover. He might as well tackle the puzzle first. The sooner he solved it, the sooner he’d get out of here—unless they had no intention of “returning him home safely and unharmed,” as the note said.

  Still, it wasn’t like he had a lot of options at the moment. With a sigh, he sat down in the chair and grabbed a pencil. Time to get to work.

  Chapter 2

  Saturday, November 20

  Drayco awoke with his heart racing, and it took him a few moments to realize he wasn’t in his own bed. Right. He’d been drugged, kidnapped, and dropped off in this smelly, clammy dump.

  After working unsuccessfully on the puzzle for several hours, he’d tried to get a few hours of sleep, hoping it would help his thought processes. But the bed felt like it was stuffed with rocks—make that ice cubes—so he hadn’t slept much.

  At least, he didn’t think he had. His internal chronometer was usually pretty good, and under ordinary circumstances he’d guess it was about five-thirty in the morning. But how could he be sure with no windows and no way to tell time?

  He hoped the mattress didn’t have bedbugs, although he’d checked for signs before lying down, prepared to sleep on the cold tile floor if he had to. He could always use his coat as a blanket.

  It was a dreamless sleep, a pity. If he were luckier, his subconscious would have worked overtime while he slept to solve the puzzle, and he’d be done with it. But instead, he had more of his paralyzing hypnopompic nightmares on waking—this time, being trapped in dark, brackish water and running out of oxygen. Wonder why you’d had that one? His recent near-drowning case loomed in his memory.

  With a sigh, he swung his sock-clad feet onto the hard concrete floor, trying to ignore the pervasive bleach-mildew stench in the room. It was showtime again. That puzzle wouldn’t solve itself.

  He rubbed a hand through his hair in lieu of a comb. Then he hopped up to splash some water from the toilet tank on his face, since the faucet in the sink didn’t work. He found he was wistfully hoping for more salted coffee when he noticed someone had placed a new tray just inside the door during his slumber.

  Lukewarm coffee, cold bagel. Better than nothing.

  He sat down on the bed to “enjoy” his breakfast, hoping it would be a welcome distraction from the tiny room. The dank space wasn’t helping the leftover claustrophobia from the car trunk.

  One thing Drayco hadn’t heard again were the carillon bells. Either he was in an interior room, which made sense because of the lack of windows, or he’d imagined the bells during his half-drugged state while being dragged out of the car.

  Coffee in hand, he picked up the notepad, where he’d sketched out different ways of solving the puzzle, and sat down again at the little desk. The puzzle had to be a substitution cipher, but what about the French characters mixed in with the English letters? Not very characteristic of a typical cipher.

  Okay, that skewed the whole basic cipher idea, but surely it couldn’t be all that hard. He’d worked on far more complicated codes than this without any problem solving them. But he hadn’t been abducted, cold, hungry, thirsty, and sleep-deprived, had he?

  After what felt like several hours of fruitless labor, he got up and paced in his little cell. The room was so tiny, he could barely get three strides in one direction. Even if he weren’t six-four, he doubted he could have paced more than four steps at a time. But the pacing did nothing for his problem-solving.

  If only he had his Steinway, he could pound out some Bach fugues and have this thing solved in a half hour. Bach’s counterpoint never failed to spark his imagination. It had served him well during his ill-fated piano career, then his thorniest cases at the FBI, and later in his private practice. It was a miracle of the universe.

  Frustrated and angry, he flopped onto the bed and looked up at the ceiling, playing through some Bach in his head, hoping it would suffice. Sure enough, after a few passages from the D major fugue, he had a brainstorm.

  This time, he knew he was on the right track, and it was a “simple” cipher, except the extra French letters were crucial to fill in the key. He’d already tried several combinations and thought he was close. But with this new idea, he figured out what appeared to be a solution.

  Or was it? With dismay, he looked at his handiwork. The results were a string of words for numbers, like “three,” “nine,” and “two,” followed by two Latin words, caelesti and amplexus, and then another group of numbers starting with “six,” “five,” and “nine.”

  He leaned back in the chair, staring at those words and feeling irked at both the situation and himself. He wa
s certain he’d solved the cipher, that it must be the only correct solution, yet he didn’t know what in the world the results could mean.

  Was this the complete answer to the coded cipher? Or was there something more, some other critical aspect he was overlooking? More importantly, would it placate his captors enough for them to release him?

  His stomach made rumbling noises. He was suddenly ravenous. His kidnappers had kept him juiced up on caffeine, but hadn’t left him much in the way of food other than the one bagel. So he decided to go ahead and ring the bell. What did he have to lose at this point?

  Moments later, he heard steps outside the door, followed by the sound of the deadbolt being clicked open. A man walked in, wearing a hood and mask and not saying anything as he carried in a tray with an opened bottle of soda and a sandwich. Even though Drayco couldn’t see the man’s face like he had with the guy outside last night, he was pretty sure this was a different captor, because this fellow was taller and heavier.

  Drayco said, “I think I solved it, at least part of it. But you’re going to have to help me interpret the results.” He walked over to the table and picked up the paper he’d been working on, which he waved in the air.

  The man didn’t reply and put the tray on the floor before turning around to leave. Before he shut the door, Drayco heard music playing in the background. Not carillon bells this time, but a big band arrangement of “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star,” a version he’d never encountered before. Were they holding a dance party out there?

  The silent jailer closed the door. Once again, the lock clicked into place.

  That went well. So much for the solve-the-puzzle-and-be-released promise. Or maybe the masked delivery boy was just a lower-level flunky who was reporting the news back to his master.

  Drayco examined the newly arrived tray of food. It was one of his favorite types of sandwiches, pastrami on rye. Another coincidence, like the salted coffee? And what about the opened soda—poisoned? Drugged? He could go for days without eating. But he was so thirsty, he wasn’t sure he could avoid drinking the soda. He wasn’t quite ready to guzzle water from the toilet tank without being able to boil it first.