The Vanishing Violin (24 page)

Perhaps she didn’t quite understand the concept of quitting

Standing still for more than five minutes is considered wasting time in Leigh Ann’s world. So when Elizabeth’s basement is available on Sunday afternoon, she decides that playing some music will be a great way to forget about violins, bows, and codes for a few hours.

We find Ben in the kitchen baking gingersnaps, and although he’s relieved that Mr. C. no longer considers him a dirty rotten thief, he is really upset by the news about Margaret’s bow.

“Mr. Chernofsky said I should give you this.” I hand him his button. “He wants you to come see him tomorrow.”

Malcolm, who is dressed in his “courtin’ clothes,” as he calls his Sunday-best tweeds, shakes Ben’s hand, and Elizabeth gives him a hug.

“Oh, Benjamin,” she says. “Would you consider a trade? At least for a little while? Room and board in exchange for cooking a few meals a week for me? I’ll even
invite Malcolm over. I guess I can bear sharing you with him.”

“Are you serious?” Ben asks. “Because if you are, I would be delighted. Your home is slightly more comfortable than my closet in the school basement.”

“With way less rats,” adds Becca.

“That’s wonderful!” Elizabeth says, squeezing him again. “With you—and Malcolm, of course—I look forward to many future feasts.” She winks at me over Ben’s shoulder.

Sunday night comes and goes with no call from Margaret. No text messages, no e-mails. Nada. Nuthin’. What is going on with my no-problem’s-too-difficult friend?

Monday morning. Six o’clock. Someday I’ll learn to turn my phone off, or at least set it to vibrate, before I go to bed.

“Gralo.”

“Wake up! I’m on my way. We have a lot to do!”

“We do?”

“Yes!”

Nine minutes later—a full two minutes ahead of her usual pace—Margaret whirls into my room, jumps on my bed, and shakes me.

“Come on, Sophie. I’m buying breakfast! Anything you want. You have ten minutes to get ready.”

True to her word, we are out the door ten minutes later and headed for our favorite bagel shop.

“See, I’ve never been wrong so many times about one thing,” she says between bites of a bagel that’s gushing cream cheese from all sides. “So I stayed up all night thinking about it.”

“Does this mean you’re unretired?”

“I’m so back. And this case? It will be toast.”

Ms. Lonneman must be worried that we’re all going to fail her science test, because she spends the whole class period reviewing. And if she’s worried, I’m worried. Margaret, who tends to be a tad jittery before test days, is far too serene, leaving me to wonder when the aliens who abducted the real Margaret on Sunday afternoon plan to bring her back.

And Livvy Klack and her circle of close fiends? No worries at all, mate! They are so confident that they spend the whole review period texting each other.

After school, Margaret takes us all on one more tour of the outside of the violin shop so that she can get a closer look at all the windows, but especially that round stained glass one. She gives the iron grate a good yank, but it doesn’t budge. Apparently satisfied with its structural integrity, she then measures the distance between the window and the outside wall of the building next door. Not counting the church, they are the only two buildings on the block that don’t share a wall, and
Margaret informs us that the space is three feet nine inches wide.

“Fascinating, Margaret,” Rebecca says. “But why is that important?”

Margaret smiles. “You’ll see soon. Now let’s check out the inside.”

A few seconds later, I push on the door to the violin shop and almost break my nose as Becca and Leigh Ann pile into me from behind. Then I notice the new sign (
PLEASE RING BELL
) and the button next to the door.

I press the button, and Ben comes out from the back, smiling when he sees me all smushed against the door.

“Hi, girls. I see you’ve discovered our new high-tech security system. I’ll tell Mr. C. you’re here.”

“That’s okay, you don’t need to bother him,” Margaret says. “Two seconds—I only need to check one thing.”

“Be my guest. Are you hot on the trail of something?”

“Maybe. Hope so.”

She does the
CSI
thing to the stained glass window: magnifying glass, tweezers, even the sniff test.

“She is smelling the window?” Leigh Ann asks me.

Without turning to look at us, Margaret says only, “All right. We can go now.” Then she puts her magnifying glass and other detective tools back in her bag.

“Where are we going now?” I ask. “I need to study for science, and we have a ton of math, too.”

Margaret calls Ben out of the back room. “Is anything going on here Friday at, say, seven o’clock?”

“You mean here in the shop? I can’t imagine. We usually close at six-thirty. Why?”

“I may need to use this room for a little, um, let’s call it a recital.”

Ben looks baffled. “You’re a very mysterious girl, Margaret Wrobel. And I am definitely looking forward to Friday.”

If only he knew. (I know most, but I ain’t tellin’!)

As I sit at my desk recopying my science notes and trying to imprint them on my poor overloaded brain, Friday seems a long way off.

But then the phone rings and everything changes.

“Tell me the truth, Soph,” Margaret begins. “How close to being ready are the Blazers?”

“Define ‘ready,’” I say.

“As in, ready to play in public.”

“We only know two songs,” I sputter.

“That’s okay. It’s perfect, even. So you are ready to play those two?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“But could you play them Friday? At Perkatory? I mean, if I can set it all up? It’s
très
important.”

So I take a deep breath. And I have this funny, déjà vu–ish feeling as I flash back to the dream where Raf and I are at the café in Paris. Is this what St. Veronica
meant by taking the plunge? If so, does my entire future depend on it? Maybe we are ready. But what if we’re not? I mean, what’s the worst that can happen? We embarrass ourselves so profoundly that we have to go live underground in the subway tunnels with the alligators and mole people? Okay, that would stink, but assuming we’re not that bad, then what could happen?

Well, one thing I do know: Becca will go ballistic if I agree to this without discussing it with her first.

“Hey, are you still there?” Margaret asks.

“Yep.”

“Well?”

“Two conditions. One, you tell Becca.”

“Deal. And?”

“Two—you spill all.”

“Sophie, I have really, truly, positively figured out who did it and how they made my bow and the violin vanish into thin air.”

“You got the how and the who?”

“Finally. We’ll invite everyone to Perkatory at seven on Friday night for the world-premiere performance of the Blazers. You guys will play your songs, and then we’ll gather everybody together—Agatha Christie–style—next door in the violin shop. And then the stumbling detective,
moi
, will unveil the murderer. Or, well, the thief.”

“Wow, I mean, you’re putting it all on the line, aren’t you?”

“Uh-huh.”

“And you’re not gonna tell anything more to your faithful best friend, are you?”

“Nope.”

As I turn my phone off and return to my science notes, I start to sweat. I mean, what have I done? Who was the crazy girl who promised Margaret that her band would be ready to play in four days?

And just like that, Friday seems a mere minute away.

Not that there’s anything wrong with Cleveland

Ms. Lonneman’s science test covers everything she promised during her review, plus a clever little more. She has a knack for coming up with questions that make me doubt myself every time. Just when I’m feeling pretty good about my first choice, she throws in a “both B and C” or a “none of the above” or an “all of the above” just to jumble things up in my feeble brain. If I hadn’t spent two and a half hours of my life recopying notes and studying my butt off (in between bouts of performance panic), that very brain would have melted into a puddle of gray goo.

When Ob-Livvy-ous and the rest of the Klack clique stroll into the room, confidence oozes from them like cream from an éclair. Mmmm … anyway, Livvy sits in the row next to me during the test, and she doesn’t even break a sweat. After finishing up long before the period ends, she stares at the clock and taps out a rhythm on
the desk with her pencil until Ms. Lonneman gives her a pointy look.

When the bell rings, I feel a little brain-drained, but noncrushed. Maybe not an A, but a B for sure, and on this test, I can live with that. Margaret gives me the “okay” nod, and Leigh Ann whistles a “whew” as we gather our bags to leave. The
clique de Klack
cackle like silly geese as they waddle out.

In the cafeteria, Margaret tells Becca and Leigh Ann that the Blazers will be playing their first gig on Friday. Becca’s reaction? Let me put it like this: I am really happy there are four feet of table and Margaret between us. She swears. She pounds the table. She sticks her bottom lip so far out it’s like a stubborn, fleshy shelf.

“Okay, I’m picking up on something,” I say. “You’re a teensy bit mad because I made a tiny decision without consulting you. But it’s just two songs. And remember, Margaret is our manager. She knows what’s best for us.” I skate on the thinnest ice with this argument.

Leigh Ann steps in. “Actually, I think we can do this. Sometimes you do have to just, you know, dive into the deep end.”

Rebecca takes a breath. “On one hand, I know we’re not really ready, but on the other, I guess, yeah, ya gotta go for it.”

Margaret is beaming. “Thank you, Rebecca, for that calm and sensible reaction.”

“Too easy for you to say,” Becca snorts. “You won’t
be falling on your butt in front of a crowd. You’ll just be sitting there with Andrew, laughing at us.”

Margaret takes out a notebook and adds Andrew’s name to a long list. “Thanks for reminding me. I’ll invite Andrew to come on Friday.”

“You can’t!” I protest. “What if he brings Livvy? When she figures out what we did to her, she’ll probably light my guitar on fire!”

Becca, who took Ms. Lonneman’s test the period before us, giggles deviously. “Tell me again how cocky she was when she came into the classroom. I just love that part.”

We have only an hour after school to practice, so we hurry over to Elizabeth’s basement to twist and shout for Margaret, who is properly impressed and finally gets to meet our drummer, Mbingu. Even though Margaret is more classical than classic rock, she knows music, and with her suggestions, we’re even better the second time through.

Then we play my song—which she loves!

“It’s perfect. Don’t change a thing. It is so punk!”

“You really think we sound okay?” Leigh Ann asks.

“You’re awesome.”

A few more times through the set, and we are feeling more and more like a band. Now that Mbingu has some actual drums, it is obvious how lucky we are to have her.

“That’s it for me,” Becca says, leaning her bass against the wall and unplugging her amp. “I promised
my mom I’d be home by four. Mbingu, you headed downtown?”

She nods. “Is it okay if I go with you? My parents don’t like me riding the subway alone.”

“No problemo. You get off at Spring, right? I go to Canal, so I can protect you,” Rebecca kids.

“I am so relieved,” Mbingu says with just a trace of a smile.

“Yeah, I should go, too,” Leigh Ann adds. “My dad’s taking me out for dinner tonight to my favorite place. Which has to mean he is saying yes to Cleveland.”

I put my arm around her shoulders. “I’m sorry. But don’t worry—I have a plan to keep your brother nearby.”

“Sophie, what are you up to?” Margaret asks.

“Hey, I’m allowed to have secrets, too. And right now I’m going home to snack and snooze.”

“Can we just run into the school really fast?” Margaret asks me as we climb the stairs to Elizabeth’s front hallway. “I want to see if Ms. Lonneman is there. Maybe we can find out how we did on her test.”

It’s a challenge to do anything quickly when Elizabeth is involved (she does like to talk), but we manage to thank her yet again for letting us use her basement, and Margaret invites her and Malcolm to attend our first show.