The Vanishing Violinist Read online

  “They already asked him,” Polly was saying. “And they asked us separately. More than once. As if they were trying to catch someone in a lie.”

  “I suppose they are.” Fred, where are you when I need you? “I’ll do my best for him. There’s nothing to lie about.”

  “No. We’ve already told them the truth, and that’s why they came back this morning and put us through it all over again.”

  “They what?” Joan set her cup down so hard that a few drops spilled onto Polly’s oiled walnut coffee table. She swiped at them with her hand. Polly didn’t seem to notice.

  “Don’t you see? Bruce was there by himself at the critical time. He could have taken Camila’s violin when she was upstairs getting dressed.”

  “But he wouldn’t!” Joan was surprised by the passion in her own voice, especially after her first wishy-washy response.

  “I don’t believe it, either,” Polly said. “But of course, we don’t really know Bruce, do we?”

  Fred knows more than the rest of us, Joan thought. And if he could find it out that quickly, the Indianapolis cops can, too. The music had stopped, she realized suddenly, and so it didn’t startle her to see Bruce standing in the doorway to the hall. His hair stood up in a red cowlick, and she thought he looked tired around the eyes. She wondered how much he had heard.

  “Joan!” he said, and came over to her. “Rebecca said she’d call you, but I didn’t expect to see you here on a workday.”

  She stood up and hugged him. “I almost didn’t come. I didn’t see what good it would do you to have me traipse up here, but Rebecca thought it would help. So here I am.”

  “Rebecca’s right!” He hugged her back, and they all sat down, Bruce plopping onto the ottoman to face Joan and Polly on the sofa. “Not that Polly and Bob haven’t been great, but they’re kind of stuck with me.” He shook his head. “I’m sorry to put you all through this.”

  “It’s not your fault,” Polly said quickly. Was she, too, hoping he hadn’t heard her qualify her support?

  “I didn’t take the violin, if that’s what you mean,” he said. “But it was stupid of me to run over there and hold Camila’s hand last night. She even talked me into going backstage right before the concert, when I can’t imagine why she’d want anyone. I sure wouldn’t.”

  She’s a natural flirt, that’s why, Joan thought, and she’s making you feel important to her. Watch out, Rebecca. This guy’s in over his head.

  “Maybe Camila’s got something up her sleeve,” Polly said. “And she wanted you there to throw people off.”

  “You can’t be suggesting that she stole her own violin,” Joan said. “Why would she?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe someone offered her a price she couldn’t resist, and she’s greedy enough to want the insurance money, too.”

  “No,” Bruce said flatly. “I saw her right after she opened that case. It wiped her out.”

  “Not for long,” Joan said, remembering the radiant young woman who had wowed the audience. “A few minutes later, she was playing as if nothing had happened. She must have known someone would lend her an instrument.”

  “I don’t think so,” Polly said. “She’d have to be willing to risk not getting to play. But if she sold it and declared it stolen, she’d be getting twice the value of the violin. The thirty-thousand-dollar first prize is nothing compared to that.”

  “Camila’s father is a wealthy banker,” Bruce said. “How could she possibly need money so badly? You know her violin will increase in value every year. And what will she do for an instrument now? Even if she faked a theft for the insurance and kept the violin, she could never play it in public again.”

  “Neither could anyone else,” Joan said. “So why would anyone buy it from her, once it’s known to be stolen property? For that matter, why would any violinist steal it? Doesn’t that rule you out?”

  “Well, sure,” Bruce said. “I mean, even if I would do such a thing. Who would want a violin he couldn’t play?”

  “Collectors,” Polly said. “For some people, possession is enough.”

  Joan shivered. “Isn’t it bad for a violin, not to play it?”

  “That’s the conventional wisdom,” Bruce said. “But there’s debate about it. Some people believe you can wear them out by playing them. And mine has a wonderful tone, even though it hadn’t been played for years when I got it.”

  “How did you find it?”

  “I didn’t. It found me. The woman who owned it heard me play, and offered it to me.”

  “Just like that? Free?” Joan was dumbfounded.

  He laughed. “Hardly free. I’ll be paying on it for years and years, unless my career really takes off. She liked my playing, and she was willing to let me have it on a schedule I could afford.” He shrugged. “I didn’t argue.”

  Women fall all over themselves for this guy, Joan thought, suddenly doubting him again. But he is a superb violinist. “How did this woman happen to have it?” she asked.

  “It was her father’s. He played first violin in the New York Philharmonic and the Titan Quartet until he died, years ago. I guess she’d been waiting to find someone—well, worthy of it.” Another shrug accompanied the red rising in his fair skin. He ran his hand over the cowlick, which popped back up.

  Good as he is, he still feels awkward about praising himself, Joan thought, and her doubts receded again. She reached over and patted his hand.

  “I can understand how someone might feel that way, Bruce, about a violin and about you. What I can’t understand is how a person who plays as well as Camila would think of a Stradivarius as nothing more than a piece of property.” A man, maybe, but not a Strad.

  “I suppose not,” Polly said. “It was probably a real thief. People do steal these violins, you know. I seem to remember that Erica Morini’s violin was stolen when she was on her deathbed. And a few years back, someone stole a Strad and another valuable violin out of a Rolls-Royce in midtown Manhattan in broad daylight.”

  “For heaven’s sake, how?” Joan said.

  “I think the driver was using the car phone, and they distracted the passenger.”

  “But no one distracted Camila. And who would know where to find her violin unguarded?” As soon as she’d said it, Joan wished she hadn’t.

  “No wonder they think I took it.” Bruce seemed to shrivel, and his voice cracked as if he were on the verge of tears. “I don’t know how I’ll ever prove I didn’t.”

  Joan wanted to argue him out of it, but the words wouldn’t come. Let’s face it, she thought, the odds are low that the police will come up with the violin or the thief, either one. And if they don’t, Bruce is right. He’ll never be able to clear his reputation, even if they can’t prove he did it. A cloud will always hang over him—and over Rebecca, if she marries him.

  The doorbell made her jump. Feeling foolish, she hoped nobody had noticed.

  “I know,” Polly said sympathetically. “I’ve been like that all morning.” She went to the door.

  8

  It wasn’t the police, but Uwe Frech, smiling broadly and carrying a violin case with his good hand. Setting it down, he greeted Joan with a handshake and a little nod that hinted at German formality of years past. “Are you ready?” he asked Bruce.

  “Sorry, Uwe.” Bruce wore his usual wide smile, but stayed put. “Maybe another time. I’ve got company.” He gestured toward Joan.

  She didn’t see a shrug. Did she hear it in his voice, or was it only her overactive imagination? “What were you going to do?” she asked Bruce, and bit her tongue. I’m butting in. I knew it. Just like a mother-in-law.

  “I was going to visit a school with him, but I didn’t know you were coming. I probably ought to stay here anyway and try to get some practicing in.”

  “You could come with us,” Uwe said to Joan. “The woman who is driving us has a big car. I’m sure she won’t mind.”

  “Go on, Bruce,” Polly said. “It will take your mind off this whole miserable
business.”

  She didn’t have to push hard.

  Bruce shrugged. “I wasn’t going to get any work done today. Come on, Joan.”

  Joan was soon confused by the diagonal streets the Indianapolis volunteer driver negotiated with ease. Arriving eventually at an inner-city elementary school, they were escorted to a large room in which posters from the competition and children’s drawings of violins covered the walls. Almost a hundred children, who looked to be between eight and ten, were crowded into a semicircle on the floor, giggling, whispering, poking each other, and pointing at the new arrivals. Joan found a chair behind the children while one of their teachers introduced Uwe, who parked his violin case on a low table.

  “You’re probably wondering how I can play the violin with only one hand,” he said, and drew both laughs and sympathetic noises. “The secret is, I brought my friend Bruce along. He’s an excellent violinist, and if he doesn’t try to catch a Frisbee and fall down, the way I did, he has a good chance of winning the big Indianapolis violin competition—the one they call the Olympics of the violin. In a few minutes, Bruce will play for you. But first, I need help to show you my violin.” He had the children help him open his case. Then, holding the violin between his knees, he asked them to pluck the strings while he tuned them. He let them rub his cake of rosin along the bow hairs and even unscrew the bow, so that they could see the loose hairs looking like the tail of the horse from which they had come.

  “You know what the rosin is good for?” he asked. Most of them shook their heads, but a tiny girl with her hair in cornrows waved her hand in the air.

  “Ballerinas rub it on their toe shoes,” she said.

  Uwe nodded. “Why do they do that?”

  “So they won’t slip and fall.”

  “You are right!” he said, and she squirmed with self-importance. “So why do I rub it on my bow? Am I afraid the bow will slip and fall?” They laughed. “But what if I rub butter on my bow instead of rosin? What kind of sound will the violin make then?”

  There was silence. No one raised a hand.

  “That’s absoultely right!” he said. “It wouldn’t make any sound at all, because the bow would slip across the strings instead of rubbing them and making them vibrate. Remember how they vibrated when you plucked them?” Lots of nods and eager agreement. “A bow that’s sticky with rosin can make them do that, too. The vibrations make the music.”

  Uwe’s a natural, Joan thought. He continued to involve the children until he turned the violin over to Bruce, who unhesitatingly flew into a Paganini caprice as exciting as the Gypsy airs with which Camila had brought the competition’s audience to its feet. Chills went down Joan’s spine. Bruce, you’re really good, she thought. Maybe you can beat her, after all.

  “Now it’s your turn to ask us questions,” Uwe said, when the applause for Bruce died down. The dam broke.

  “Is that violin worth a million dollars?” a boy with hair as red as Bruce’s demanded.

  “Yeah,” said another boy, before Uwe could answer. “Like the one that got ripped off?”

  “Naw,” said a third. “That was two million!”

  “Good violins are expensive,” Uwe said, “but mine didn’t cost that much.”

  “Is there gonna be a reward?”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised,” Bruce said. “If my violin were stolen, you bet I’d find a way to offer a reward. Anyone who tells the police something that helps them find this one is going to be a big hero, that’s for sure. Keep your eyes and ears open. Sometimes kids see and hear things that grown-ups miss.”

  They left the children abuzz. On the way back to the car. Joan said, “Put that part about helping find the violin in your act, Uwe, even if they don’t ask about it. The kids loved it. Besides, who knows, maybe one of them really will notice something.”

  After stopping for a sandwich, they repeated the performance at another school in the afternoon. By the time the volunteer driver dropped Bruce and Joan at the Osbornes’ house, Joan had persuaded Uwe to take his act to Oliver, if she could set something up in the school and the senior center, and if she could arrange it with the people running the competition. They agreed on Wednesday afternoon.

  “I think they won’t object,” he said from the car. “They feel sorry for me. But Bruce needs to practice. I’m sure he will be a finalist.”

  “I couldn’t practice this morning anyway,” Bruce said after Uwe left. “Good thing I don’t have to play for a couple of days, even if I make it.” In a little while the melodies of the Brahms violin concerto were floating through the house, but only after Bruce had persuaded Joan to accept Polly Osborne’s urging to stay for supper. She followed Polly into that shining kitchen to see whether there was anything she could do to help and was soon peeling carrots and potatoes.

  “I didn’t want to tell you while he was listening.” Polly was snapping the ends off fresh green beans. “But the police do want to talk to you. They’re coming back.”

  Joan felt oddly better about staying, as if talking to the police were a greater justification for taking a day off than being a comforting presence to Bruce. The more she thought about what she had to tell them, though, the deeper her peeler dug into the carrots.

  When a single soft-spoken detective arrived to take her statement before supper was ready, she was glad to get it over with. Yes, Bruce had gone out before Camila’s concert. He said he’d gone next door to wish her well. No, Joan didn’t know whether he’d spent time alone with Camila’s violin. No, he hadn’t been carrying anything when he returned. No, she hadn’t seen or heard any unusual activity over at the Schmalzes’ house.

  “I didn’t see or hear anything over there at all,” she said, but promised to report anything that occurred to her later. After the man left, she was sure that nothing she’d told him could have made a difference one way or the other. So why were her hands shaking?

  It’s not as if I were afraid of policemen, she thought. Maybe I do think of Bruce as family.

  Right now there was nothing she could do for him. He was working on the cadenza from the first movement of the Brahms, one of her all-time favorites. With the table set and the stew on the stove, Polly had changed into running shoes.

  “I’ll be back,” she said. “But you don’t have to do a thing.”

  I ought to move my body, Joan thought. She’d never been a runner, but ordinarily at this hour she’d be walking the mile home from work. She wandered into the living room. I’m a little tired, she thought. Maybe I’ll put my feet up for a minute first.

  The cadenza sounded wrong. Technically wonderful, and beautiful, to be sure, but the familiar notes led into others that were not what she expected to hear. What was he doing?

  And then Bruce was patting her shoulder. “Wake up, Joan,” he said. “Supper’s on the table. You’ve been sleeping for almost an hour.”

  Embarrassed at falling asleep in the living room of people she hardly knew, but feeling rested, she joined the Osbornes in the dining room, where they kept the conversation away from what was on all their minds. At last Joan heard more about Bruce’s family. His father, she already knew, was a general practitioner in Canton, Ohio. His mother, she learned now, was a serious amateur violinist who played in the Canton orchestra.

  “She loves it that I’m into music. Both Sally and Tom care more about science, like Dad. And they’re both jocks. Sally’s on the high school track team, and Tom plays football. But they all cheer for me.”

  “Sounds like a great family.”

  “I’m lucky,” he said. “And so is Rebecca. She’s really happy about you and Fred, you know.”

  After supper Nate stopped by and offered Bruce encouragement. “It’ll all blow over,” he said.

  “I hope so.” Bruce smiled. He sounded doubtful, but Joan thought he looked more cheerful than he had all day, except while he was helping Uwe with the schoolchildren. The afternoon had done him good, she was sure.

  “Hello, Nate.” Polly Osborne
came into the living room drying her hands. She’d shooed Joan out of the kitchen once the dishwasher was loaded. “How’s your mother?”

  “She had to go home to work. She’ll come back if I play in the finals.”

  “You will,” Polly said. “You and Bruce and Camila. I’m sure of it.”

  Nate and Bruce looked at each other. Nate shrugged, but he didn’t toss his hair.

  “I wish I were sure,” Bruce said.

  “Well, I am,” Joan said loyally, even though she hadn’t heard many of the other semifinalists.

  “If they don’t arrest me first.”

  “Bruce, they can’t arrest you on no evidence,” Nate said.

  “They can’t have any evidence, because I didn’t do it.”

  “So who do you think did?”

  “I don’t know. But you’re safe, Nate. You and Camila were out together until right before you both had to change for the performance.”

  The two violinists began to speculate, but came up with no ideas Joan hadn’t already heard. Catching herself yawning, she thought she’d better not wait much longer to drive home. It was past nine.

  “Thanks so much for coming,” Bruce said when she told him. “It meant a lot.”

  “Anytime. You take good care of yourself.” It felt perfectly natural to reach up and hug him.

  She was in the front hall saying good-bye to Polly Osborne when the doorbell rang a few inches from her ear.

  “Another one?” Polly said. “All this visiting is unusual. Mostly they all shut themselves up to practice.” She opened the door to Harry Schmalz, whose forehead was wrinkled up into what must once have been his hairline. “Hello, neighbor,” she said.

  “Is Camila here?” he barked instead of greeting her.