End Me a Tenor by Joelle Charbonneau Page B

lowered his fluffy white head to the ground in between his paws and looked up at me.
    “Okay, fine. You can have your food.” I stomped over to the mat embroidered with the fancy French version of his name and put the bowl down on the ground. “Are you happy now?”
    Killer got to his feet, barked, and lunged toward my ankle. Yikes. I bolted for the door, trying not to feel embarrassed that a poodle had gotten the best of me.
    By the time I pulled into the parking lot at the high school, I was feeling better, which no doubt had something to do with the extra-large order of fries I’d consumed. My phone rang as I cut the engine. It was probably Devlyn wondering where I was. Normally, I was at least ten minutes early. Today, I was going to be exactly on time.
    Wiping salty, grease-coated fingers on my pants, I slid my phone out of my purse. I hit the on button as I climbed out of the car into the cold.
    “Paige, it’s Bill Walters. I’m calling about tomorrow night’s rehearsal.”
    “Did Maestro Tebar move the rehearsal time up?” I asked, hoping the answer was no. I’d thought I’d have time to work on the Mozart Requiem piece today. My unexpected trip to the police department meant that I needed all the time tomorrow I could get to practice.
    “Maestro Tebar has asked that I send her apologies but she will be unable to attend tomorrow’s rehearsal. The associate conductor will be running rehearsal in her stead.”
    “Why?” I stopped in my tracks, causing a couple of girls to scowl as they dodged around me. “Did something happen to Magdalena?” The idea that someone was bumping off Messiah staff made my mouth go dry.
    I braced myself for the news that Magdalena was dead and instead heard, “Magdalena has been detained by the police. The producers are hoping this is just a minor setback that will be cleared up by Saturday. Otherwise . . .”
    “Otherwise what?”
    “They will have no choice but to cancel the show.”

    The choir room was a madhouse. Music was blaring from the CD player, and a couple of kids practiced dance steps on one side of the room while others flirted, shared makeup techniques, or texted. A red-faced Larry stood in the middle of it all, waving his hands and yelling to get the kids’ attention. Unfortunately, whatever he was saying was lost in the wave of teenage chatter. While Larry was an excellent choral conductor, he had a lot to learn about vocal projection.
    “Hey!” All eyes swung toward me. A moment later, the CD player was turned off and everyone was quiet. If nothing else, my opera training had taught me how to be loud. “Since you’re all so busy doing stuff other than practicing, I’m going to assume it means you’ve perfected the new number—lifts and all. So, let’s see it.”
    The kids scrambled to get into position. I marched over to the CD player and queued up the music, trying not to think about Bill Walters’s news. If Magdalena had killed David Richard, she deserved to be arrested. Still, the prospect of losing both my day job and my potential career-breaking gig in the same week was enough to make me curl up into a ball and cry. But there was no way I was going to lose it in front of Chessie Bock.
    The opening steps went off without a hitch. The harmonies were dead on. Suddenly, I felt as though everything might be okay. The kids would rock this out. The school board would love it. My job would be safe.
    Then the kids reached the lifts and everything fell apart.
    Crap.
    “Okay.” I stopped the music before anyone got injured or worse. “Let’s run both lifts, couple by couple so I can make sure you have the technique down.”
    Thank goodness Devlyn arrived before Larry could insist on helping to demonstrate the moves. While Larry’s current girlfriend had him going to the gym and doing marathon sessions of Yoga, neither had given him the upper-body strength needed to get me off the ground. At five feet seven, I wasn’t the light-as-a-feather