The sleek black town car pulled up to the curb of a brand new condo building in the expensive part of town. There was a gated entry way that opened up to the small garden out in front.
Christine slowly walked up to her new temporary home.
She thought about the interesting way the evening had turned.
Her meeting up with Mr. Crown, err,…Erik.
Maybe practically saying he was the main suspect wasn't the best way to handle things, but it got the job done.
He had looked every bit the stylish rich playboy he probably is, wearing a black and grey Armani pin striped suit, with a black bowtie and and a white scarf around his neck….the first three buttons of his shirt undone so you could get a hint of the bottom of his throat and his smooth chest underneath.
None of her marks before had looked that good.
She slipped out of her fancy dress and put on some soft cotton pajamas before she slid onto her futon.
She looked forward to hearing from him about dinner tomorrow night.
She needed to get all of her facts straight before she rushed in and put the blame on Erik…
even though she's damn sure she knows he did it.
The only other thing that made her curious, was the black half mask covering the right side of his face…..
"So what have you got on her," Erik asked his friend and private detective Nadir.
Nadir paused from looking at the papers beneath him and looked up at Erik.
"Well from what I could find, she seems harmless enough. She lives alone, no really close family. She has always found the people that she's gone looking for because she has no distractions in her life. Her mother passed when she had Christine and her father died about 6 years ago from heart failure. He was some sort of violinist for the opera house..other than that there's not much else on her."
Erik paused in his pacing and over at Nadir his eyebrows slightly raised.
"So she likes being independent. She does well for herself. Do you think she's intelligent enough to figure out who did what with the paintings?"
Nadir shrugged his shoulders and stood up slowly. He stretched his arms over his head and yawned.
"Well…I'm beat I'll speak with you tomorrow…Good bye Erik."
Erik walked over and shook his hand and then watched as his friend left his penthouse apartment.
He sat down in front of the piano and placed his hands over the keys…no sound came from the instrument.
Erik hadn't felt the need to play or do anything remotely related to music ever since that terrible night that he first murdered the love of his life. The passion that he had for music had fizzled without the real life motivation to compose.
He slowly pressed down on the keys.
And let the haunting music fill his head and heart with its daunting melody.