The Vanishing Violin (22 page)

“Sophie, that’s awesome!” Leigh Ann says. “You have to finish it, ’cause I really want us to do this song.”

Mbingu looks suspiciously at me. “This isn’t some joke you’re playing on the new girl, is it? You really wrote that? Because I like it!”

“You know, L.A. and Mbingu are right—it’s got potential,” Becca says. “When you said you wrote a song, I’m thinking it’s gonna be some cheesy ballad about Raf’s big brown eyes. But Sophie St. Pierre, punk princess? Who knew?”

“Who is Raf?” Mbingu asks.

“Sophie’s boyfriend,” Becca chides. “He’s sooo dreamy.”

“He’s not my boyfriend.”

Mbingu leans in to whisper to me: “But is he dreamy?”

“Definitely.”

“Well, finish the song, princess,” Becca says. “It’s totally rockin’ and we need it!”

Maybe there’s hope for me yet as a bad girl? Move over, Sid Vicious and Johnny Rotten. Here comes Sophie Sinister!

I’d like to thank the members of the Academy …

In a clear violation of the Geneva Conventions, Commandant Margaret drags her only POW—that’s a prisoner of Wrobel—out of bed and down to Perkatory at 7:45 on the dot. I mean, it’s Saturday, for cryin’ out loud. Even worse, she woke me up right in the middle of a great dream. First, Raf, with slicked-back hair and a leather jacket, picks me up on his scooter and takes me to my dad’s favorite café in Paris—a place I’ve been to many, many times with my parents. (I know that sounds like the most pretentious thing ever, but I swear it’s not like that. It’s just, my dad is French. So we go to France for a lot of family vacations. Makes sense, no?) We’re sitting at a sidewalk table drinking
l’eau gazeuse
(water with bubbles), nibbling on a baguette, and chatting away
en français
about the beautiful evening. When Raf reaches over and takes my hand, I notice that I’m
wearing the Ring of Rocamadour, and I just can’t take my eyes off the gold band with its tiny cross of rubies. Behind me, someone is calling my name: “Sophie. Sophie?
Qu’est-ce que tu attends?
What are you waiting for?”

I look over my shoulder at the waitress, who has the face of St. Veronica (this I know from a very familiar painting in our church). She looks me right in the eyes and smiles sweetly.

“Bonjour, Sophie,” she says. “Time to take the plunge. You are ready.”

I try to say something—I don’t know what—but my lips seem glued together.

Then the phone rings and jolts me rudely back to reality.

Ready for what? I wonder. Some part of me must want to achieve something important, but the semiconscious, sleep-deprived part sitting in Perkatory seems basically contented with the gigantic mug of steaming hot cocoa that Jaz has set in front of me.

“Mmmm. Cocoa good.”

“So, you are alive,” Margaret says. “I was beginning to wonder.”

I shake my head. “No talk yet. Sophie need more cocoa.”

The door jangles, and Margaret sits up stiffly when she sees who comes in. “Oh. My. Gosh. You are not going to believe who just came in.”

“Mmfff. Who?”

“Your old friend Mr. Winterbottom. Winterbutt. Winterpatootie.”

That brings me to life. I haven’t seen ol’ Winter-slimebucket since, well, since the week we recovered the ring, and he and I had a, well, interesting final encounter. And there he is, skin the color of an overripe banana, and dressed in a rumpled suit that hangs limply from his shoulders. “You know, I was just thinking about him, wondering what he’s up to these days. Do you think he’s working at another church?”

“Hmm. Seems doubtful.” Suddenly she turns back to me. “I think he recognizes us. What’s he doing? Is he coming over here?”

“Calm down. He’s just ordering coffee from Jaz. Wait, now he’s leaving.”

“Well, that’s strange. He left without any coffee or anything?”

A few seconds after he leaves, Jaz motions toward the door with her head, and a few seconds later, Sergei walks in. There’s no doubt it’s him; he is about five feet tall, and when he takes off his jacket, his biceps bulge through his skintight shirt like the Incredible Hulk.

And boy, is he all flirty with Jaz at the counter as he orders his caffeine cocktail. “Look at the guns on that dude. I wouldn’t want to get into a fight with him,” I say.

“Wait a minute. Did you really just say ‘look at the guns on that dude’? Good Lord. Did you pick that up watching
WrestleMania?”

I flex my muscles for her. “Nah. Been pumpin’ some iron down at the gym.”

Sergei sits right where Jaz said he would, two tables behind me and right next to the air vent. Margaret scoots her chair a few inches so that she can see him over my shoulder and slides an index card with some writing on it toward me.

“Your script,” she whispers.

Ahem. Places, everyone. Quiet on the set. Time for yet another awesome performance from Miss Sophie St. Pierre. Actress. Guitarist. Vocalist. Composer. Lemon tart taster. Sigh. My public simply can’t get enough. I just hope the script is worthy of—ahem—my extraordinary talent.

I wait for my cue from Margaret. Sergei settles in, reading the paper and humming quietly.

“I can’t believe we have to go into school today,” Margaret says, winking at me. “These morning practices kill me. What are you doing later?”

I check my script. “Oh, I have guitar at five, and then I’m going to a movie with Raf. How ’bout you?”

Margaret looks over my shoulder to make sure Sergei is listening. “Well, my violin lesson is at two, but I’m going to hang out next door, at Chernofsky’s. I feel kind of bad for him ever since his assistant ran off with that violin. He seems kind of nervous, like the guy’s going to sneak back and steal more stuff.”

“But he, like, changed the locks and everything, didn’t he?”

“Oh yeah. That’s the first thing he did. I’ve been trying to tell him that there’s no way the guy is getting back in there. New locks, new alarm codes. And it’s a good thing, too—what?”

Margaret lowers her voice a step. “I’m not supposed to tell anyone, because he is a little wigged out by it, but one of Chiang Li’s bows is in the shop. He showed it to me—it’s worth about fifty grand.”

The script tells me to react loudly—I can do that. “Fifty grand for a bow! You can buy a car for that.”

“Shhh! I know, it’s crazy.”

“Whose bow is it?”

“Chiang Li. He’s playing at Carnegie Hall next week, and I guess it needs new hair or something.”

“He brought it to Mr. Chernofsky?”

Margaret shrugs. “He has a good reputation.”

Sergei pushes his chair back and stands, draining the last of his coffee. Then he brushes past our table on the way to the counter to flirt a little more with Jaz. When he leaves a few minutes later, Jaz joins us at our table.

“Well?”

“I think he’s our guy,” Margaret says. “He was acting a little too much like somebody who’s not listening.”

“But what if he really wasn’t?” I ask.

“Nobody’s that good an actor.”

“Ahem.”

“Present company excepted.”

“I would think so.”

Jaz has been eavesdropping on our exchange. “You two should be on TV.”

I stick my nose in the air as high as it will go. “I don’t do television. I am a thee-ah-tuh actor.”

“Oh, par-don moi, ma-de-moi-selle,”
Jaz says. “I deedn’t know I was een the presence of one so great and powerful.”

I hold my hand out to her, turning my face away. “I accept your apology. You may kiss my hand.”

“All right, all right,” Margaret says. “Applause. Curtain. We have work to do.”

Mr. Chernofsky is leaning over his workbench, sanding the neck of a violin, when we come in. He looks up at us over his glasses and glances at his watch.

“So early, and on a Saturday.”

“Tell me about it,” I say.

“The early bird catches the worm,” Margaret says. “Or in this case, the thief. Mr. Chernofsky, we have a plan to catch the thief in the act.”

Mr. C. turns the piece of wood over and over in his hands, looking for imperfections.

“This thief, who is it this time?”

“Remember the guy we told you about? Sergei? He’s going to break in here again tonight.”

That gets Mr. C.’s attention. He sets the violin neck
on the bench. “Again? You know that he is the one who stole the violin?”

“Well, we don’t have proof yet, but we kind of set a trap for him,” Margaret says. “We told him, er, actually, he overheard us talking about this great bow you’re working on here in the shop. We said it belongs to Chiang Li. We’re going to put a repair tag with Chiang Li’s name on my bow—the one that my ‘friend’ sent me—and we’re going to leave it right out in the open.”

“And then what? You are going to sit here all night and wait for him to come? No! It is too dangerous. You girls are too young for such a plan. I will not allow it. I will nail the hole in my ceiling shut and we will be done with this forever.”

“No, Mr. Chernofsky, you can’t! Listen to the rest of the plan first. We won’t even need to be here. Not physically.” She takes a miniature webcam out of her pocket and holds it out for him to see. “We’re going to attach this little camera to your computer and hide it in your office. That way, we’ll be able to watch what happens from Sophie’s apartment. And we’ll record it so that we can show it to the police.”

He takes a handkerchief out of his pocket and wipes his forehead. He squints at the camera in Margaret’s hand and shakes his head.

“Look, even if we’re wrong about Sergei,” I say, “and Ben—or someone else—did steal that violin, and nothing happens tonight, then we’ll quit and let the police try
to solve the case. But if we’re right …”

“Okay. One night. But tomorrow I nail the door shut and hope for the best.”

Margaret gets right to work setting up the camera and the link on the brand-new computer in the office. Perkatory has wireless Internet, so we go back there with Margaret’s laptop to make sure everything is working.

“What are you two up to now?” Jaz asks, peeking over my shoulder at the screen. The ceiling and desk in Mr. C.’s office are clearly visible. “Looks like a weird movie.”

“We’re hoping it gets better later,” says Margaret.

“Yeah, it’s supposed to have a wow ending,” I say.

On the way back to the violin shop, I ask Margaret the question that’s been bugging me since we conceived the plan.

“Shouldn’t we use another bow? Like a really cheap one? I mean, according to Ben, yours actually is kind of valuable. What if Sergei takes it and just disappears?”

“I thought about that, but if he knows anything at all about bows, he won’t be fooled by a cheap one. We have to hope that mine is attractive enough. And besides, he’s not going to disappear and desert Anna and Natalia. And don’t forget his crush on Jaz. The power of love and all that. Have some faith, Soph.”

The final step is to have Mr. C. fill in the information on the tag so that it looks authentic. When he’s
done, Margaret sets her bow on the top shelf of the rack in the front room with the tag hanging just so.

“Voilà. We’re ready. When you leave this afternoon, make sure you don’t touch anything in the office. I have the camera aimed perfectly, and it’s completely hidden. We’ll be able to watch him when he comes through the ceiling and when he goes back up again.”

“Tomorrow we take the evidence to the police,” I add. “And pray he hasn’t sold that violin already.”

“I have a customer coming in early tomorrow morning,” Mr. C. says. “You will call me first thing, then?”

“No matter what happens,” Margaret promises.

We’re not quite out the door when he calls us back in. “Ach, I almost forgot. I have something for Margaret.”

“You do?” we ask in perfect harmony.

“This came for you last night. Slipped under the door.” He hands Margaret a large manila envelope, and for the first time in too long, I see him smile. Printed on the outside are Margaret’s name and the words
FINAL CLUES
.

“What is it?” I ask.

“Just a guess, but it looks like it might be the final clues,” she says.

“Brilliance!”

She carefully tears it open and takes out several pieces of paper. One is a photograph of a typical New York apartment building; the other six sheets are
six-by-six grids with a letter in each of the thirty-six squares. Naturally, the letters don’t seem to form words. That would be too easy, I suppose.