The studio was locked when they found him.
That detail stuck with Raoul from the start. Someone had taken the time to bother locking the room. It was almost stranger than the body slumped on the grand piano. Almost, but not quite. Raoul had a working theory about people who lock doors behind them. They're either very careful or very frightened. Sometimes both.
Virgil Vale, twenty-two, pianist and guitarist. The young man was a kind of hidden gem talent. Even his shower rehearsals sounded like a studio production, and never once did he let anyone forget that.
With his talent and passion for his work, his absence was bound to be noticed immediately. Virgil had missed a rehearsal, which was just enough of an anomaly that people started making calls. By the time anyone came looking for him, he was already long past the point of answering.
The studio itself was a private space. A well-kept part of the Vale family's rehearsal complex, accessible to a short list of people and nobody else. Good acoustics, good light, a grand piano that took up a third of the floor. It had clearly been chosen by someone who understood quality mattered more than the aesthetic. Virgil had always been just that meticulous. But for as neat as the space was, it also looked lived in.
Half finished sheet music sat on the stand, an unfinished piece no no doubt. A jacket lay on the back of a chair, folded neat and tidy while it's owner lay sprawled on the massive woodwork.
No wounds on the body. No signs of struggle. Nothing knocked over or out of place. Only a young man, a locked room, and a café cup on the far end of the grand piano that had no business being there.
Raoul stood in the doorway for a few short minutes before he went in. He had a habit of doing that, even though his supervisor always called it a waste of time. Raoul had always thought it was the opposite. A usually room told you things in its first few seconds that can never be repeated again. Usually.
But this room told him nothing. In fact it seemed to mock him, practically screaming 'nothing happened here.' Not a speck of dust looked out of place at first glance, literally and figuratively.
This looked like it would be an impossible case, and before any detective entered this room it was treated as such.
The case landed with Raoul because no one else wanted it. Just hearing the names of those involved caused several other detectives and officials to pass out up. But not Raoul. He was young and unproven, given a homicide case surrounded by money and red tape. If Raoul could solve this it would be amazing for his career. But not a soul in that station thought the prestige was worth the risk. That's why everyone threw it his way like a hot potato.
It was a risk Raoul was willing to take. He had a habit of paying close attention to things that didn't add up, and this case was nothing but.
He stepped inside, put on his gloves, and looked at the café cup without touching it. It bore the logo of a local family joint just down the block. Ordinary. Unremarkable. Raoul had probably been there a handful of times himself.
The question was what it was doing here, on the piano, in a locked room, next to a young man with no apparent reason to be dead.
Raoul he took out his notepad and got to work.
He noted everything in the scene that seemed out of place, which was precious little. It was more suspicious that anyone had the ability to get into the room than not.
Seeing nothing of value immediately available in the scene, the detective had the scene swept for forensics and the tea taken off to toxicology. Just because the scene was clear on the surface didn't mean there was no 'invisible' cause of death.
He didn't expect to learn anything from the scene itself, so he'd turn over to witnesses.
He has chose to start with Violet.
You see, there's a particular kind of grief that turns people brutally honest. They're so busy trying not to fall apart that they forget to be careful. In Raoul's experience, you wanted those people first. They're most honest before the shock wears off and the lawyers show up.
Violet Vale, twenty-four, Virgil's older sister. She sat in the green room of the Vales' private rehearsal space with her shoes off and a mug of something she clearly wasn't drinking. She looked up when he came in and didn't bother pretending to smile. He appreciated that.
"You're the detective?" she said. The faint surprise in her voice and expression suggested she'd been expecting someone older.
"Raoul Boa." He pulled a chair and sat across from her rather than standing over her.
She looked at him for a while. He looked no older than Virgil, but something didn't quiet seem right about him. The eyepatch covering his left eye. He didn't seem to have a scar, and seemed too young to naturally need it.
Violet observed it for a moment longer than was polite. "Is that real?"
"Occupational." Not exactly a yes or a no. "I heard you two performed together. I'm sorry."
She looked at him for a moment like she was deciding whether the apology was worth acknowledging. Then: "We perform together, you know. Performed." She caught the tense and didn't quite recover from it. "Here, mostly. Sometimes venues. I sing, he played. For years."
Raoul didn't say anything quite yet Silence did more work than any question would have. So she continued
"He was good," she began. "Better than people gave him credit for. He had this thing where he'd finish your sentences musically. It was like he could hear what you were saying before you did." She stopped and sighed. Her shoulders seemed to curl in somewhat. "I don't know why I'm telling you that."
"Because it's true." Raoul said. He meant it.
Violet shot him a strange look. "You talk like you know him. What makes you so sure?"
Raoul's lip quirked up. "Virgil seems the type." He waited a moment before continuing. "At least, from how you describe him, anyway."
"I could be lying to you." she noted.
"You could." The detective agreed with a brief nod. "Now then, when did you last see him?"
Something shifted in her face. It wasn't grief exactly but the good detective knew whatever she'd say next would give him something to grab into. His interest was clear, so he leaned forward.
"It was Tuesday. Yesterday."
"The 5th?"
"Yeah. We went out to lunch. Just the two of us." She said flatly. "I was the only one who'd seen him this week. Vincent found him a day later. He said that Virgil wasn't responding so called in for help."
Vincent Vale. He's the eldest sibling, worked in the private sector, the kind of man you apparently forgot two seconds after meeting. Raoul wrote the name down. She'd offered it without being asked, which told him she'd been thinking carefully about the order of things. Who saw him last. Who found him first.
"Oh, and a brief aside if you don't mind," he said, almost as an afterthought. "The will reading. It's coming up soon, isn't it?"
Violet's icy blue eyes shot up to meet the detective's gaze. Before she could hardly bother to take him all that seriously. But now she felt like she'd been woken from a dream. "How did you know that?"
"A little swan told me." Raoul hummed, his one visible eye staring Violet down. She didn't seem to be going through the motions anymore. That did him some good. "Now then, about your mother's will."
She laughed, an icy chuckle. "Oh, that." She set her mug down. "Mum had a rule. She called it the no-poison rule. Sound mind, good health, clean record. Don't have that, no inheritance for you. Her words, more or less." She paused for a while then sighed. For a moment Raoul could've sworn she was scolding herself for sounding the way she did. "She came from nothing, so she thought about these things."
She didn't elaborate. She didn't seem to know how to, and he didn't really need her to.
Raoul leaned back a bit. "Any tension around it? Conflict at home, maybe cold shoulders or curt responses?"
"I don't know. I really couldn't say." Violet murmured under her breath.
"Not even from Virgil?" Raoul asked a little more gently than he'd expected to sound. Violet shook her head. "So how was he exactly, the last time you two met?"