The Vanishing Violin (17 page)

“After everything you girls have done for me, it’s the least I can do. After all, I hardly knew you when I trusted you with that letter from my father, and that certainly turned out well. If you say he’s innocent, and you bring Sister Eugenia along to vouch for him, who am I to argue? I spoke to Malcolm and he’s firmly opposed, but I’ll unruffle his feathers. He can be such a ninny.”

“Just don’t be surprised if you hear Ben vacuuming at two in the morning,” I say. “And let him know if
you want your kitchen remodeled or if Teazle needs a manicure.”

Elizabeth smiles at that possibility. “I certainly won’t stop him if he decides to do any of those things.”

Leigh Ann gives her a kiss on the cheek. “We’ll be in touch.”

As the red door closes behind us, I check my phone and see that I have missed four calls from Margaret and one from Rebecca. I call Margaret.

“Where are you?” she asks.

I look at my watch. Oy squared. School has been out for forty-five minutes!

“I’m with Leigh Ann. We’re just leaving Elizabeth’s. Boy, do we have news!”

“Well, Becca and I are leaving Perk right now, on our way to the violin shop. Meet us there?”

“Ten-four.”

Outside Mr. Chernofsky’s shop, Leigh Ann and I spend ten minutes explaining the events of the past hour and a half to the envious-but-impressed Margaret and Rebecca.

“That was quick thinking, taking him to Elizabeth’s,” Margaret says. “You two rock. But we’re back to square one in our investigation. Since you two found him, you get the last word, but I vote we keep Ben’s location secret for now.”

“Sounds good to me,” I say. Becca and Leigh Ann chime in, agreeing to keep mum.

“But if it’s not Ben, who?” Becca asks.

“And how?” I add. “We need to get a good look at the outside of the building. There’s gotta be another way in.”

The two front windows have iron security grates bolted right into the brick. Rebecca reaches up and gives each one a good shake and then hangs from them while screeching like a monkey; thus we confirm that they are solidly attached. Scribbling in a small spiral notebook, Margaret notes that the front door has three levels of security. It has double locks, both with serious-looking dead bolts, plus a hinged iron grate with a padlock that Mr. C. closes every night. Next to the door is the alarm system keypad, where the word “Ready” flashes off and on.

Mr. Chernofsky welcomes us with a tired smile. “Hello, ladies.”

“Anything new from the police?” Margaret asks.

He shakes his head. “Afraid not. And still no word from Benjamin. I’m afraid he is long gone by now.”

“You know, Mr. C.,” Margaret begins, “we were thinking. What if it wasn’t Ben?”

“Yeah, there could be a perfectly reasonable explanation for why he hasn’t shown up for work. Like, he could be in the hospital,” I say.

“Or maybe he has amnesia?” Leigh Ann offers. “Like those people on soap operas.”

Mr. Chernofsky rubs his beard. “I know you girls are fond of Benjamin. You don’t want to believe something
bad about him. But there is no one else, no other explanation. The doors were locked. He has keys. The alarm was set. He knows the code. He discovered the violin is valuable, and now the violin is gone. He carries around a button, and where do I find that button? Right here. Ach. My insurance company is not happy with me right now.”

“Well, if it really was Ben, then the police will be all over that evidence, and I’m sure they’ll catch him,” Margaret says. “But if it was somebody else, and the crime was committed in some other way, then how about giving us a chance to suss out that possibility?”

He sighs and smiles. “Okay, girls. You want to investigate, go ahead. What’s the harm?”

No doubt humoring us, he allows us to poke around the shop for a bit while he sands and saws away in the back.

As the artistic one, Rebecca is given the job of making a scale drawing of the interior layout of the shop, to which she’ll add outside details. Margaret and I measure the rooms with a tape measure from the workshop. Rebecca’s drawing shows the size and exact location of the windows and doors, the furniture, the heating vents, virtually anything and everything.

From the inside, we notice the metal tapes for the alarm attached to the two large front windows. We call in Mr. Chernofsky to demonstrate how a broken or opened window will trigger the alarm.

“Are there motion detectors?” Margaret asks, flashing newly acquired security system expertise.

Mr. C. explains that they are not practical because of Pumpkin, the cat, who would set them off constantly.
Some might find this irresponsible. I think it’s sweet. So there.

A heavy, solidly built wooden door with three industrial-strength dead bolts separates the violin shop from Perkatory.

“How about this door? Can you open it for us?” I ask.

He turns the tarnished brass knobs of the bolts with satisfying
ker-chunks
and pulls the door open, revealing the back side of an identical door.

“Where does this go?” Rebecca asks, trying the knob of the second door.

“Think about it, Becca,” I say. “You know that door in the wall of Perkatory? The one with all the coat hooks on it and the table right up against it? This has to be that same door.”

Becca examines the edge of the door frame. “There’s no alarm on this door. Maybe someone picked the locks—” She stops midthought as a slight grin curls the right side of her mouth.

“What? Do you see something?” I demand.

“It’s what I don’t see. Look at the back side of the door into the violin shop. What do you see?”

“Umm. Nothing?”

“Exactly. No one could pick the locks, because there are no locks to pick! These bolts are accessible only from inside the shop. Same thing with the door to Perk. No place to put a key from the outside. I guess that’s why it doesn’t need an alarm. These doors are as good as a wall.”

The door is closed and the bolts turned again.

Leigh Ann raises her hand. “Um, I have a question.”

“Go ahead, Miss Jaimes,” Becca says with a smile.

“The violin was stolen on Saturday or Sunday, right? Well, what if the thief knew about this door, and what if he came in here, you know, pretending to be a customer, and turned those three locks while nobody was looking? Then he could come right through the door from Perkatory, right?”

We all look at Leigh Ann in openmouthed awe.

“Behold the Dancer Detective!” I shout.

“Way to play, L.A.!” Becca raps.

“It is a great idea, Leigh Ann,” Margaret says, “but there’s one problem. Mr. C., were the bolts locked when you came in this morning?”

He scratches his head. “Yes. I remember. I am positive. The police asked me to open the door. I had to unlock all three for them.”

Leigh Ann slaps a palm to her forehead. “Ohhhh! Duh. The only way to relock the locks is from the inside. And there’s no other way out, except for the front and back doors.”

“Which were locked and alarmed,” Margaret finishes.

“The only other opening big enough for a person to get through is this,” Rebecca says. She crosses the room to a circular stained glass window located just above her eye level. It is beautiful; dozens of small triangles of different colors are pieced together to form a geometric pattern that creates the illusion of being three-dimensional.
The shadow of the iron grate outside is barely visible through the glass, and Becca points out the unbroken metal tape of the alarm system around the outside edge.

“What about the floor? The ceiling? The vents?” I ask, ask, ask.

Margaret, who is down the hall in Mr. Chernofsky’s office, calls out to Becca. “Did you draw that?” she asks, pointing out a rectangle of wood trim in the corner of the office ceiling.

Becca nods. “Got it, boss. What is it?”

Margaret climbs up on Mr. C.’s desk, but she still can’t reach it. “It’s like a trapdoor. It must go to the second floor.”

Mr. Chernofsky comes into his office looking for us, and smiles at the sight of Margaret up on his desk in her stocking feet. “Find anything good?”

“I don’t know. Where does this door lead?”

“It doesn’t really lead anywhere. It’s there so the plumbers and electricians can get to the pipes and wires in the ceiling.”

“But isn’t there an apartment above you?” Rebecca asks. “I’ll bet I could crawl through to there.”

“There is about a foot of space between the ceiling here and the floor of the upstairs apartment,” Mr. C. says. “It has been a long time since I looked in there, but I don’t think you could fit. As I said, there are pipes and wires; it’s very crowded. And even if you could squeeze yourself in, there would have to be an opening in the apartment floor, and I don’t think there is one.”

Margaret hops down from the desk. “So, who lives up there? Any suspicious characters?”

Mr. Chernofsky chuckles. “I think you should meet them for yourself. That will satisfy your suspicions.”

Our suspicions are going to have to wait, though. Mom calls just as we’re leaving Mr. Chernofsky’s shop and tells me I need to come home. Dad has the night off from the restaurant, and we’re going out for sushi.

“Where are you, anyway?” she inquires in a Mom-like way. “Who are you with?”

“We’re, like, just leaving Chernofsky’s. Something big happened. I’ll tell you about it later. Right now it’s, like, just me and Margaret. Becca and Leigh Ann left, like, a minute ago.”

“Well, that’s, like, good. Now get, like, home. And, like, tell Margaret she’s, like, welcome to, like, come with us.”

Mom has apparently been attending the Mr. Eliot School of “Humor.”

“You made, like, your point, Mom. Twice. I’ll ask her. Bye.”

“Ask me what?”

“Sushi?”

She wrinkles her nose. “Me and sushi—not so much.”

“You don’t know what you’re missing.”

“Raw fish?”

“Well, yeah. But when you call it that, it sounds
gross. ‘Sushi’ and ‘sashimi’ sound so much better. Come on. You’re always telling me that colleges like students with lots of life experiences, and how you have this ‘insatiable thirst for knowledge’—and all that yakkety-yak-yak. How are you gonna get into Harvard if you won’t even try a spicy tuna roll?”

“I don’t think that’s what they mean,” she says.

“Oh, I think you’re wrong, Miss I’m Too Too Clever to Read
Seventeen
. I think it’s exactly what they mean. And don’t look at me like that. I know that you know that I read it, and I don’t care. In fact, I may read it out loud to you … on the train. In front of strangers. You might just like it if you gave it a chance. I think you’re afraid to try it.” I take a much-needed breath.

“Sushi or
Seventeen?”

“Either! Both!”

She stares at me with that raised eyebrow of hers. “Why are you getting so mad?”

“I’m not mad. I—I’m—never mind.”

In silence, we start walking up Lexington. When we get to the Sixty-eighth Street station, Margaret asks, “Subway or sidewalk?”

“Subway,” I grumble, and we take the stairs down to the platform. Across the tracks, on the downtown side, the old violinist with the Abe Lincoln beard we saw at Eighty-sixth Street is playing “Master of the House” from
Les Misérables
, a song that could make an undertaker smile. So I’m grinning like a chimp when suddenly he spots us—and stops in midsong to stare. I’m
not exactly scared, but I am creeped out enough to be glad the dreaded third rail is between us.

Without taking my eyes off him, I whisper to Margaret, “Why is he staring at us?”

Before she can answer, a train pulls up and we squeeze into the steamy, crowded car, thankful that we’re going only two stops. While we’re standing there waiting for the doors to close, our fine fiddling friend starts to play “Ave Maria.”

We finally start moving, and I relax. “That guy did exactly the same thing the last time we saw him. He’s wiggin’ me out.”

“Last time he was playing songs from
Phantom
.”

“I mean the staring. And the other song. ‘Ave Maria.’”

“It’s probably the blazers,” she says. “He sees our Catholic-school uniforms. What if that’s the person sending me the letters? What if that’s the violin? Wouldn’t that be an amazing coincidence?”

Can’t argue with that.

“Shoot! That reminds me—I forgot to go over to the park to leave the message that we solved that pigpen code. I guess I’ve been preoccupied with that other violin.”

“So, how’s your plan coming along?”

“My plan?”

“Your plan for getting inside Mr. Chernofsky’s upstairs neighbors’ apartment.”

Margaret grins. “You know me too well, Sophie St.
Pierre. As a matter of fact, I was just starting to think about that. You have any ideas?”

“Girl Scout cookies?”

“We don’t even know any Girl Scouts.”

“Suspiciously underage census takers? Jehovah’s Witnesses?”

“Actually, I’m thinking we could be reporters for the school newspaper, doing a story about people in the neighborhood. They’ll let us in; people automatically trust kids in parochial-school uniforms. They shouldn’t, but they do. We ask them a few questions: how long they’ve lived here, what they remember about the old days, that kind of thing. We take a few pictures. And while we’re there, one of us asks to use the bathroom and does a little snooping.”