Luca rose and continued his chores in the kitchen. He washed the morning dishes, checked the beans, and sent a series of emails from his phone.
Michael emailed a thorough analysis of Dominic’s background. Michael was former Seattle PD. Now he was one of the best analysts The Guardians employed.
I started with the names appearing most often across both Dominic’s professional history and the concert record.
Henri Fontenot surfaced immediately.
The public file was deep. He was a conductor and composer with five decades of experience in the New Orleans classical music scene. His involvement in the Katrina recovery was well-documented. Citations to his work appeared multiple times in grant applications over the past two decades. He had no criminal record.
His name appeared in two profiles about Dominic published in the past decade. Both were generous, carefully worded statements of support and admiration for his work. Nothing about the man. Thirty years of documented professional overlap, and Henri Fontenot had apparently never once spoken about Dominic personally in public.
I flagged the file and moved to Bridget Marchand.
Her record was clean: thirty years in professional music. The reviews I pulled used words like authoritative and structural to describe her performances. Fifteen years with Dominic. Concertmaster for four.
She had made herself indispensable.
Luca stepped up behind me, reading over my shoulder. I let him. He had context I didn’t have . He was close enough to smell the citrus from his soap. I kept my eyes on my screen.
“Dominic put her in the concertmaster’s chair,” he said.
“Directly?”
“He went to the board to make her case. He had something to say about her, and he said it.”
“Their relationship now?”
He straightened. “Functional warmth. She’s one of maybe six people in the city who could tell you precisely where Dominic stands during a performance.”
I typed that observation word for word. No background check would have given me that.
“Anything unresolved between them? Anything that didn’t land cleanly?”
“Not in my seven years. I don’t know about what might have come before.”
I returned to Henri.
He had a few documented grievances, but they led to clean resolutions. What would have concerned me more were disagreements that festered inside and never rose to direct confrontation.
I sent Michael a note asking for everything he could find on Henri Fontenot directly connected to August 2006.
Luca returned to the stove. “What’s the direction here?”
“I want to know everything about the 2006 event. Did it truly arise spontaneously? Was anyone behind the first gathering of musicians? How was that treated after Dominic stepped into the frame?”
Luca turned toward me. “Henri was there in Jackson Square.”
“What did he do?”
“That’s the part I don’t know. Dominic might.”
“I won’t ask him yet. I want the documented record first.”
Luca ladled beans into two bowls and set one in front of me without asking.
I hadn’t eaten since before dawn. We both ate without comment.
The beans were richer than the black beans I grew up with, thicker, almost velvety. Spicy andouille in the broth. Garlic. Bay leaf. A slow heat that built gradually.
