The Vanishing Violinist Read online

  In the simple, lyrical second movement she thought, I could probably play most of these notes—until the double stops, anyway—but I could never make them sound like this! The violin began the third movement with afterbeats to the piano’s dancing tune, but soon Nate was dancing in double stops. In the fourth movement his rapid, forceful chords, syncopation, and driving rhythm brought the sonata to a rousing ending.

  “Wow,” Joan said to Bruce. Her palms were sore. “He’s up at your level.”

  “You better believe it.” Bruce was clapping just as hard.

  “Going on suddenly doesn’t seem to have thrown him.”

  “He’s a pro.”

  The pianist left, but Nate stayed onstage and raised his violin even before the applause stopped. The audience quickly hushed, and he began Quigley’s commissioned piece. Like Bruce, he made it music, not a mere succession of unconnected technical feats. His tempo was generally more relaxed, if anything about that piece could be called relaxed, Joan thought. The effect was equally lovely.

  “How can the judges possibly choose when you’re all so good?” she asked when the applause died down.

  Bruce smiled. “At this level, you don’t know how they decide. Not everyone likes the same approach. You can’t read the judges’ minds.”

  “And would you, if you could?” she asked gently.

  “I don’t know. I hope I’d play it the way I think it should be played. Only sometimes I can think of more than one good way to approach a piece.” He grinned. “I wouldn’t mind a little nudge in the direction that would help me the most.”

  Only after Nate returned to the stage with the pianist, and the audience hushed, did Joan realize that she’d forgotten to ask what was wrong with Camila’s violin. Nate tuned to the piano again. In the first movement of the Ravel, the piano rippled while the violin played long, lyrical lines with a warm tone, and some unbelievable softs. Joan watched Nate’s index finger bend into his bow to go from ultra-soft to a mere pianissimo. Like the end of the Quigley, the end of this movement was a long whisper. The second movement was a syncopated blues with driving rhythms, and Nate’s body moved to them. In the last, his bow flashed in a perpetuum mobile with fire and wonderful dynamic contrasts. Before lowering the violin at last, he raised his chin and let out a great breath.

  This time it was Bruce who said “Wow!” Cindy Lloyd jumped to her feet, as did much of the audience.

  “C’est incroyable!” cried a woman behind them, and Bob Osborne was yelling “Bravo!” again.

  “He’s got to be a finalist,” Joan said. “Maybe a medalist.”

  “You never know,” Bruce said. “But if he isn’t, there’s something wrong.”

  When Nate left the stage, Joan chose again to avoid the crush of the lobby. She and Bruce stood to let the Osbornes pass them, and stayed upright to unkink their legs. Toward the back, she noticed the French-speaking couple from the afternoon. Their pregnant friend must have gone upstairs to stand in line for the ladies’ room.

  At last Joan remembered to ask Bruce about Camila’s violin. He answered so softly that she had to strain to hear him over the general chatter, “It’s missing.”

  “It’s what?” Joan couldn’t believe her ears.

  “Missing,” he said, still too softly for his voice to carry to the next row, not that anyone seemed to be paying attention. “There was no violin in her case. Her bows were there, but no violin.”

  “When?”

  “When she arrived here and opened it. I went to wish her luck one more time because she asked me to, back at the house, and she was just standing there, with tears running down her face.”

  “How did it happen?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “You’d think she would have noticed that the case was too light.”

  “If she even carried it. Maybe Harry Schmalz put it in the car for her.”

  “He did. Or maybe it happened after she got here. Someone who saw it in the first round might have made plans to steal it. I just don’t know.”

  “How much is it worth?”

  “Plenty. Camila plays a Stradivarius, from the Golden Period. It’s probably worth a million. Maybe more.”

  “A million dollars?” No wonder they didn’t let people go backstage.

  “Yup. Her father is a wealthy banker in Brazil, and he bought it for her from a collector. Most of us have to mortgage our souls to buy our violins.”

  “She’ll have insurance, won’t she?”

  “Oh, sure. But it’s not as if she could run down to the corner violin store and plop down her insurance money for a new Strad. There aren’t any new Strads.” He shook his head mournfully.

  The noise level in the theater rose steadily as people returned from the lobby. Joan saw Bob and Polly Osborne making their way unevenly back down the aisle. They kept stopping to talk along the way, and the noise kept increasing.

  “Look at them,” Bruce said. “They know.”

  “Everybody’s going to know, Bruce. You can’t keep a thing like that quiet.” And why would you want to?

  “Of course not. I was hoping that if there weren’t too much hubbub tonight, she might be able to pull herself together enough not to get bumped out of the finals. She’s a fabulous violinist, Joan. Much as I want it, I thought she’d probably win this thing. But now …”

  She understood. “It’s like Uwe’s hand, isn’t it?”

  He nodded. “I want to beat them, but not like this.”

  “So what violin will she play tonight?”

  “I don’t know. One of the judges, I don’t know who, is lending it. You know, like the concertmaster handing over his instrument when the soloist breaks a string in the middle of a concerto. All the judges have fine violins, but it’s not the same as playing your own, especially hers.”

  Then Polly and Bob Osborne arrived at their row. “Did you hear about Camila’s violin?” Polly said breathlessly, and when they nodded, she said, “The lobby’s full of police. I don’t know what they think they can do now. It’s not as if anyone else had a violin back there to steal.”

  The Osbornes couldn’t tell them anything new, and soon the lights dimmed and the voice announced that Camila Pereira had chosen Prokofiev’s Sonata Number 2 in D major and Sarasate’s Zigeunerweisen. Another flashy piece, Joan thought, but a wonderful one, if she can pull it off tonight.

  The tall, golden-skinned beauty with the flowing hair strode onstage in a formfitting dress, followed by a man who was considerably shorter and rounder. They bowed to thunderous applause—at least partly sympathy, Joan suspected, although many of these people would have heard her in the first round and would be applauding her earlier performance. The pianist turned the little wheels on the sides of his padded bench to raise it and sounded the A for Camila to tune.

  Camila began with the Prokofiev. Wisely, Joan thought when she recognized it by ear, though she hadn’t by name. If the strange violin bothered Camila, Joan couldn’t tell it by her playing. In the first movement, her tone was vibrant and the notes clean and sure. She had set the music on the stand, but turned the pages only between movements, when she also retuned. She took the rollicking second movement at a breakneck tempo. Some of the tension left her face, and when they finished the movement in unison, the pianist smiled at her. Like the man who had played with Bruce and Nate, he was far more a partner than an accompanist. Joan thought their communication was especially nice during the echoing in the third movement. Giving no quarter in the fourth, Camila flew above the piano’s strong beats and ended powerfully.

  The applause thundered again. She’s all right, Joan thought. The little pianist smiled, bowed briefly, and left the stage. Camila set the music stand out of her way, tuned one more time, and began the Quigley piece almost before the applause had died down. She, too, made music of it. By now the notes were familiar enough that Joan knew when the hardest places were coming, but she didn’t worry about triple axels with Camila. Only the harmonic double stops gave her pause,
as if she were making very certain of their position on this unfamiliar instrument. Maybe she would have paused there anyway, Joan thought. It was not unmusical rubato.

  Camila left the stage briefly before the Sarasate.

  “She’s doing it,” Bruce said. “I don’t know how, but she’s doing it.”

  She returned with the pianist for the Zigeunerweisen. Sarasate’s Gypsy airs were even flashier than his Carmen fantasy, but Joan thought there was no comparison between Arpad’s and Camila’s playing. When her bow finally raced to the finish, the audience stood, roared its approval, and generally made it plain that the judges might as well skip the rest of the competition and hand out the gold medal right then and there.

  Whatever she’s feeling about her missing violin, Joan thought, Camila has to be happy with her performance tonight and this response to it.

  Smiling broadly now, the young woman tucked the violin under her arm and bowed again and again. They were still calling when she left the stage.

  “Bruce, I don’t know how you can fight that,” Joan said when they stood to leave.

  “It’s all right,” he said. “I’m not done yet. At least I won’t feel I have to hold back.”

  “You’d do that?”

  “Probably not.” He grinned. “But I might feel I ought to. Now I’m free to lay into her and everyone else in the finals. If I even get to the finals.”

  No wonder Rebecca loves him, Joan thought.

  Polly was right—the lobby was filled with police officers, who added to the heat and crush of the crowd. Bruce tried to go backstage to Camila, but not even his ID admitted him. Polly’s wrong about one thing, Joan thought. There is at least one fine violin worth protecting back there tonight—the one Camila borrowed.

  While they waited for Camila to appear, the Osbornes congratulated Harry Schmalz, who responded as warmly as if she were his daughter.

  Joan congratulated a beaming Cindy Lloyd on her son’s performance. “You must be so proud of him.”

  “Yes,” Cindy said. “And relieved that I got to hear him. I was on such a tight schedule after showing a house in Louisville that I had to fly low on the drive back. It’s a good thing I didn’t know he was going to play first. I would have been a nervous wreck.”

  At last Camila emerged from the locked door, violin case in hand. The crowd surged toward her and followed her outside. Joan thought it was odd that the police made no attempt to hold them back. She waited near the front doors, welcoming the cool evening air whenever anyone left. Two young women who looked vaguely familiar—from the picnic?—pushed their way out, making catty remarks about Camila’s dress and hair and even her playing, which they categorized as overdone. Her standing ovation, they said, was nothing but sympathy.

  “I wonder who stole her violin,” one said.

  “I don’t know, and I couldn’t care less!” said the other.

  “Did you see the way she was carrying on with my boyfriend at the picnic? She didn’t even know him, but she knew he was mine, all right.”

  Bruce came, then, and walked Joan to the parking garage. He told her that the case Camila was carrying contained only her bows. No one would send her home right now with a precious instrument belonging to someone else.

  “How will she practice for the finals?”

  “I don’t know. If it turns out that I don’t have to practice for them myself, I could lend her mine.”

  Joan smiled. “That’s sweet of you, Bruce, but I believe you’re going to need it.”

  “I sure hope so.”

  7

  The disappearance of Camila’s violin made the national news. The live broadcasts of the finals would be carried on public radio stations, though only the awards ceremony and concert would be televised at all. But this kind of news brought out the networks and put the competition on the front page of the Oliver paper, which until now had run only one routine story listing the countries from which the competitors came and the awards for which they were vying.

  Much was made of the value of the missing violin, variously estimated from five hundred thousand to five million dollars. Joan wondered whether the press and broadcasters made up their figures as they went along.

  “Such an instrument can’t be replaced by money,” said an impassioned official of the competition in a plea for the return of the violin. “It’s a priceless treasure that should be played by a master musician, in this case the fine young Brazilian violinist from whose hands it was torn.”

  “Is that the way it happened, Mom?” Andrew asked at breakfast. “Did they come right up to her and tear it out of her hands?” With expertise born of experience, he caught the toast that flew out of their old toaster and began slathering jam on it. No wonder he had good hands for a Frisbee.

  “Not according to Bruce, and he talked with her. He said she didn’t even know it was missing until she opened the case to play it last night.”

  “Good.” Andrew scribbled on a scrap of paper. “I needed an example of hyperbole for class.”

  Joan still had one ear on the radio, but in the excitement over the violin, the announcer hadn’t mentioned the names of the finalists. No, this was only Monday. The judges’ decision wouldn’t be made public until Tuesday morning.

  She was leaving for work when Rebecca called. “Mom, can you go up to Indianapolis?” she said. There was panic in her voice. “They’re accusing Bruce of stealing that girl’s violin!”

  Bruce? “Who’s accusing him?”

  “How would I know! But he’s so scared.”

  “Did they arrest him? Does he have a lawyer?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think so. Please go, Mom. I would if I could. You’d go if it were Andrew.”

  Below the belt, Rebecca. But I hear you. “I’ll call work. If I can, I’ll go up. But, honey, I don’t know what good I can do him.”

  “Just be there, all right?”

  Andrew had already left for class. Come on, Fred, Joan thought while she dialed his number on her mother’s old, slow kitchen wall phone. At least she wouldn’t have to fill him in. She had called him after making it home in one piece Sunday night. Fred, not generally overprotective, had seen too much carnage on the road to take any highway driving for granted, and so she’d promised. After the events of the evening, it had been good to know he was expecting her call, and to be able to unload the full story.

  He picked up on the third ring.

  “I was halfway out the door. What’s up?”

  Joan told him. “Can you help him?”

  “I don’t know anyone in the IPD. But we ought to try—the kid’s squeaky clean.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I wasn’t going to say anything, but I ran a background check on Bruce after we went up there, and I couldn’t find so much as a parking ticket. Don’t be mad.”

  “Mad!”

  “I didn’t want to interfere, but hell, Joan, it’s Rebecca’s whole life.”

  “Fred Lundquist, I think you’re turning into a father.” She smiled into the mouthpiece.

  “That’s the general idea.”

  She could imagine his eyes. But was she so possessive, to have made him worry like that about how she’d react to his concern? Never mind, she thought. “So you think I should go.”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Good. I’ll call the center. And I’ll see you when I see you.”

  She left a note for Andrew and told the Oliver Senior Citizens’ Center she had to be gone for the day, knowing, but not caring, that some of the old women would confabulate romantic reasons. At the last minute, just in case, she threw an overnight bag into her Honda. She didn’t have to tell anyone it was there, but having it gave her some feeling of control.

  Having been a passenger instead of the driver until now, Joan wasn’t sure she could find the house where Bruce was staying, but she had kept Polly Osborne’s good directions and made it to the neighborhood without difficulty. Once she recognized the Schmalzes’ cu
rving limestone porch, which matched the porch out back on which Uwe Frech had broken his hand, it was easy to find the Osbornes’ house next door.

  Polly opened her front door only a crack at first, and then held it wide.

  “Come in,” she said. “I’m so glad it’s you! I keep expecting to see a TV truck in the front yard, or the police with a search warrant, or worse.”

  Worse? Mobs, maybe? “I should have called,” Joan said. “My daughter phoned this morning, and it sounded as if I’d need to bail him out of jail.” She could hear a violin playing Mozart somewhere in the house. At least Bruce was still a free man.

  “No, no, he’s here. Trying to keep his mind on his music and practice for the finals. I’ll tell him you’re here.”

  “Couldn’t you fill me in first? I hate to break his concentration.”

  Polly took her into the comfortable living room, where Joan reclaimed the ottoman. She had to accept a cup of steaming coffee before Polly would sit down and talk. It smelled fancier than any coffee she ever bought, and tasted as good as it smelled.

  “Well, you know almost all of it,” Polly said. “After you left, there was lots of talk about Camila’s violin. We were all too tired to hang around, so we went home. Before we went to bed, though, the police came to our door, asking for Bruce. They asked us all about his movements last night, and they read him his rights before they talked to him. They’ll want to talk to you, too.”

  “I don’t know anything about Camila’s violin!”

  Polly laughed. “No, of course not. But you were here. You know that Bruce went over to the Schmalzes’ house before we left for the concert.”

  “I saw him go,” Joan said carefully. “All I know about what he did there—all you know—is what Bruce told us. The police can ask him that for themselves.” Why am I backing off? she thought. Am I afraid to talk to the police? But I can’t testify to what I don’t know for myself, can I? Is giving information to the police the same as testifying? Or am I fooling myself? Don’t I trust Bruce? But he’s such a sweetheart. Even Fred says he’s squeaky clean.