I took his hand in mine. “We’ll do this together.”
I made the call, and James arrived a few minutes later. We let him in the backdoor, then led him to the stage.
“Thanks for meeting me,” I said. “I found a cassette tape in a coat pocket and thought it might be yours.”
“Why would you think that?” he asked, tensing.
I shrugged. “Since you don’t have a smart phone, I figured you were the most likely to use an old tape recorder.”
He opened his mouth, but I pressed on before he could speak. “I wanted to ask you something. Myabuelotold me that you and Paolo were friends as kids, is that true?”
“Yeah, we were in a little choir group together.” His voice was clipped, tense.
“He also told me about the accident when you damaged your voice. Did Paolo have something to do with it?”
“It was a long time ago,” he said.
“I know, but the consequences of it are permanent. If Paolo was involved, he should be held accountable. Maybe he deserved what he got.”
James swallowed. “He didn’t hurt me on purpose.”
I needed to push harder. “Tell me what happened the day you got hurt.” I forced my body to relax, trying to ignore the drop of sweat that ran down my back. “I just want to understand.”
James pulled away his scarf and it dropped to the floor, exposing a row of jagged white scars down the column of his throat, almost all the way to his clavicle. “We were sledding. I told him I didn’t think the hill was safe and that I wanted to go down the easier track, but Paolo was always a bully. He waited until I was just about to go down the safer hill and he shoved my sled down the steep side. I was going so fast I sailed down the hill and halfway across a field, right into a fence. A barbed-wire fence. I was never able to sing again, and Paolo got everything.” Bitterness coated his words.
“I’m sorry that happened to you, James,” I said. “But you shouldn’t have killed him.”
“I didn’t kill him. I was practicing the whole time, you heard me.” His words were clipped, defensive.
I pulled the tape recorder from my pocket and pushed play. The sound of the glockenspiel rang out, echoing through the room. “I heardthis. But you weren’t in the room practicing at all, were you?”
James folded his arms across his chest. “Of course I was in the room. I waslisteningto the recording. But I was there the whole time.” The muscles in the corners of his eyes tightened and his pulse beat erratically in his neck.
“No, James. You killed Paolo. You saw that he wasn’t going to experience any consequences for his actions, so you decided to take care of it yourself.”
He expelled a breath. “Of course I did. You’d have done the same thing, Anne. I killed him and I’m not sorry. I convinced Fred to invite him to be a guest singer so he would come back to Austen Heights. He was a jerk who deserved everything he got. But if you turn me in, you’re going to ruin the concert.”
“You really think I care so much about the concert that I’m going to just let you get away with murdering Paolo?”
He snatched the tape recorder and threw it to the ground, then stomped on it. “And how are you going to prove that I did it? That was flimsy evidence to begin with, and now you don’t even have that.”
I shrugged. “I guess I’m going to have to rely on the taped confession and eyewitnesses. I stepped aside so he could see the sound booth, which two police officers were exiting.
James looked at them, face draining of color, then back to me. “You can’t do this to me, Anne. Music is my life.”
“You should have thought of that before taking Paolo’s.”
The next day, we went forward with the concert. Neto called in a favor from his friend Mathis, the Grey Doors’ drummer, who took over James’s parts. Every rehearsal with Neto had been electrifying, but singing with him in front of an audience was magical. We received a standing ovation, even from my mother, who I’d never seen stand for any performer. She was accompanied by a distinguished fae gentleman, no doubt the man she’d been seeing. We still had a lot to work through, Mamá and I, but we were getting there, one step at a time.
Neto looked over at me during the thunderous applause, his eyes smiling, and my heart skipped in my chest. He took myhand in his and put his other hand to his heart, bowing to the crowd. I bowed with him, and we exited the stage hand in hand.
There was a reception afterward, catered by Cupid’s Confections, where we mingled with members of the audience.Abuelocame, kissing my cheeks and telling me how proud he was of me and how good I sounded. Neto’s family was there too, and I grinned as I embraced each of them.
Fred found us in the crowd and clapped Neto on the back. “You’re welcome,” he said proudly, looking from Ernesto to me.
I laughed. “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me that the guy you were trying to set me up with was Ernesto Garcia!”
He grinned. “I didn’t want you to stress out or be too intimidated to say yes.”
