“Professor Whitman!”

Why must she do that, Kevin said under his breath. He had asked the members of his little summer opera company on Crooked Lake to, please, be informal. No titles, just plain Kevin. Most of them had gotten the point. Not Lisa Tompkins, one of too few violins in the small orchestra. She was either the product of an unusually proper upbringing or derived some perverse pleasure in ignoring his wishes.

“It’s Mr. Gerlach,” Lisa shouted from somewhere behind the curtain. “He’s drunk. I can’t get him to wake up.”

Harley Gerlach was a far more serious problem than Lisa Tompkins. If he had passed out from far too many tumblers of scotch, it was hard to imagine that the dress rehearsal would go well. Or even that it would take place at all. Not for the first time Kevin found himself regretting his decision to cast the man in the leading role. He had a beautiful voice when he was sober, but he was rarely sober and he was thoroughly loathed by the rest of the company. To say that he was impressed with himself would be a gross understatement. And obnoxious? The word could have been coined with him in mind. But it was too late now. The first performance of Puccini’s comic opera “Gianna Schicchi’ was due to take place in four days.

“I’m coming, Lisa. Don’t you worry about it. I’ll bring him around.”

Kevin hurried down through the auditorium, its seats now empty, bounded up onto the stage and pushed his way through the curtains.

The sight that greeted him was one with which he was now thoroughly familiar: a barely furnished bedroom which would be the setting for the single act of the opera. In fact, except for a couple of wooden chairs and a handful of knick-knacks, the only furniture in the room was a large bed. The bed in which that rascal Schicchi would pull off his little con.

Lisa Tompkins was standing beside the bed and pointing at the bedspread, which looked suspiciously lumpy.

“He’s there. Under the covers. Drunk as a skunk. I smelled it as soon as I came in.”

“Isn’t that great,” Kevin said sarcastically, as much to himself as to Lisa. It was 5:20 in the afternoon. Dress rehearsal was scheduled for 7:30.

He walked over to the bed and pulled down the spread, something Lisa had apparently been reluctant to do.

“He looks sick, doesn’t he?” Lisa volunteered.

Yes, Kevin thought, he looks very sick. There goes the dress rehearsal. But he was determined to rouse his problem baritone.

“Come on, Harley. Time to wake up. Now! Are you hearing me?”

But even as Kevin shook and hollered at the man in the bed, he realized that something was seriously wrong. Something other than too much liquor.

He bent over his star, looking closely at the the puffy face, and was almost immediately aware that Gerlach was not breathing.

“Lisa, quick, get to a phone and call 911.”

She hesitated, as if waiting for an explanation.

“Come on, girl. This is an emergency. Make that call.”

That Harley Gerlach had been drinking was obvious. But it wasn’t scotch that had given him the tortured face that stared up at Kevin. Around his neck was a cord which looked very much like a piano wire. And it was wrapped tight, cutting deep into the flesh. Deep enough to have choked off all breathing. Gianni Schicchi was not drunk. He was dead.