Page 85 of Echoes of a Silent Song

Blair jerked her attention to Callum, her eyes wide.“Are you sure?I’m not familiar with that one.We never performed it.”

“We did.”

Callum jerked his head up to see Keira McLane enter the room.“Thanks for including me, Detectives.Sorry I’m running late.”She took a seat at the head of the conference table, to Callum’s left, and dug into a bag from a taco place he’d driven by but never tried.Guess everyone was taking a working lunch today.

“Of course.”Stanton smiled at the reporter.

“You performed a piece with this text?”Callum indicated the sheet from the evidence box as he dug for his phone.He searched his favorite choral music website.“It’s definitely one of Vic’s.Here’s the sheet music.”There it was.Right in plain sight.

“The phrases are in the same order as in Iris’s note.”Blair studied the tiny screen, then met Callum’s eyes.

“Vic didn’t write these lyrics.”Callum’s chest grew tight.“Iris did.”

“Did he credit her?”Blair asked.

Callum glanced down at the screen.“Nope.Nowhere.Vic’s is the only name on here.”His head spun.Did Vic ...Was this ...

“Do you two think Vic Nelson stole Iris’s work?”Stanton asked.

Callum had almost forgotten the detectives were even in there.

“Funny you should mention that.”Keira unwrapped her taco.“Because I’ve been in contact with the Whitehall Conservatory.The person I talked to confirmed that Victor Nelson received an acceptance letter in 1970, but his acceptance was revoked a few months later due to some ‘uncertainty with the origin of his audition piece.’That was all the information they had.”

“Uncertainty ...because maybe he’s not the one who wrote it,” Blair said softly.

Leaden truth landed in Callum’s gut.“Because maybe Iris is.”

“Detectives?”Keira piped up.“What’s the statute of limitations on murder?”

“There isn’t one,” Stanton replied.

“Wait.”Blair stared at the detective.“So if Vic killed Iris, he could still be charged, even after all this time?”

“Yep.”Valentine tapped the table with his fingertips.“That’s why a lot of bigger-city police departments have a couple dedicated cold-case detectives.They specifically work on old murders.”

“In a small city like Peterson, we’re not so lucky,” Stanton finished.

Callum leaned forward.“If Vic stole Iris’s work and she found out about it, threatened to rat him out ...”

“That would be motive.”Valentine’s mouth was set in a grim line.

Stanton raised her hands.“Look, I love a good murder mystery as much as anyone else, but without solid evidence or a confession, all this is circumstantial at best.It wouldn’t even be enough for a warrant, let alone a conviction.”

Keira’s chair creaked as she shifted.“Okay, Grandma said Iris always carried around a spiral notebook of staff paper.And that piece you guys found in the choir library was torn out of a spiral notebook.”

Callum glanced over the edge of the box.“Any chance we’re lucky enough to have a spiral manuscript notebook in there?”

Stanton pulled out the rest of the items.“Nope.Just the clothes Iris was wearing, a necklace, and a little cash.These would’ve been offered to her parents when the case was closed, but I guess they never came to claim them.”

“Or maybe they only cared about the notebook and not the clothes.”Valentine wadded up his sandwich wrapper and tossed it into a trash can in the corner.“Can we check with them?”

“Unfortunately, no.”Stanton flipped a page in the file.“It says here that they moved to North Carolina a few months after Iris died and then they died in a boating accident three years later.”

Blair gasped.“Maybe Vic has it.”

“He may have had it fifty-plus years ago,” Stanton pointed out.“But what are the odds he hung on to it all this time?”

“For your sake,” Valentine said to Blair and Callum, “I hope they’re pretty good.”