The Vanishing Violin Read online

  Margaret squints at him, still dubious. “Are you sure?”

  He continues to deny all knowledge.

  “Try the key in the front door,” I say. “Betcha ten bucks it fits.”

  Had anyone taken the bet, I’d be ten bucks poorer: the key doesn’t even come close to fitting in the lock.

  “There just aren’t that many people who know I come here. Even if someone knows I play the violin, there are lots of violin shops around the city.”

  “And why send it here?” I remark. “Why not send it to the school? The article mentions St. V’s.”

  Mr. Chernofsky’s eyeglasses are pushed down his nose, and he is examining the bow with a magnifying glass. “Ahh. This is a very nice bow. Well made, and quite old. I will put new hair on it for you and see what I can learn about it. My assistant will research it for you.”

  “Your assistant?” asks Margaret.

  “Yes, a young man who learned violin making in … well, it doesn’t matter where he learned his trade. I have taken him on quite recently. He is very skilled, and also clever, much like you girls. He says he will teach me to use a computer! You will leave the bow here with me, and I will have it like new for you on Monday afternoon. As for the letter, I’m afraid I can’t help you. Quite unusual, even in America, I think, for someone to offer a gift but not tell you where to find it. What is the meaning of these words ‘read between the lines’?”

  “It’s a figure of speech,” Margaret explains. “It doesn’t mean to literally read between what is written. It’s when the words have one obvious meaning and another, more important meaning that is implied.”

  “Kind of like a semihidden meaning,” I add.

  “And this reading between the lines will tell you where to find the door for this key? Well, it is a good thing you are such a bright young woman,” Mr. Chernofsky says to Margaret.

  “Ahem,” I say.

  “Excuse me. Young women.”

  That’s better. Not always true. But sometimes …

  Chapter 4

  When life gives you lemons … write secret messages?

  Maybe this is just a coincidence, but when we get off the train at Eighty-sixth Street, a too-thin-looking man with sunken cheeks and a straggly Abe Lincoln–ish beard is playing one of those done-to-death songs from The Phantom of the Opera. Margaret drops some change in his open violin case and smiles at him. He nods once and keeps right on playing. But as we step through the turnstiles, he plays the opening notes of “Ave Maria,” and the hair at the back of my neck stands up. I sneak a peek back at him on my way up the stairs, and he gives me a little wink. What the—

  Saturday is a busy day at la maison de St. Pierre. Mom has back-to-back-to-back beginning violin students in the morning. Margaret is hanging out with me, waiting for her turn. Dad is in our kitchen, experimenting with some kind of fruit tarts. You’d think someone who spends half his life cooking in one of the best restaurants in town would find something different to do on a day off. When I ask him about this, he glares at me with a wire whisk in his hand and turns on his most outrrrrrraaaaaaageous French accent.

  “Eet ees because I am Frennnnch, you seeellly girl. Any other ridiculous questions?”

  “Uh, yeah. Do we get to eat any of this stuff, or is it just for looking?”

  “That depends.” He dips two spoons into a bowl full of neon yellow custard and holds them in front of Margaret and me. “If you can eat this without smiling, you can have your choice of anything on the counter.”

  “Piece of cake.”

  He looks at me like I have two heads. “There is no cake! These are tarts.” Even though he’s lived in the U.S. for fifteen years and speaks perfect English, expressions like “piece of cake” or “easy as pie” tend to throw him.

  “That’s just an expression, Dad. Sheesh!”

  “Just taste.”

  I shovel the stuff into my mouth. Must. Maintain. My. Composure. But alas, assaulted by the thermonuclear explosion of lemony goodness that is bombarding my tongue, I lose all control over my facial muscles and grin like the happiest idiot. And to Dad’s infinite delight, so does Margaret.

  “Rohmigosh,” she mumbles.

  “Not bad, eh?”

  “What is this?”

  “Un secret.”

  “If you had enough of this stuff, you could rule the world,” I marvel.

  Dad puts his index finger to his lips. “Shhh. Perhaps this is my plan.”

  “More, please,” we both chime.

  He holds up a tray of minitarts filled with the world-domination lemon custard. We each take two and run back to my room to lick, chomp, gulp, and sigh.

  Now, if it were a normal Saturday, I would be getting ready for my guitar lesson, but my guitar teacher is out of town with his own band, which means I have time to spend with some new friends—courtesy of a recent trip to the bookstore with Mom. I lie on my bed, trying to decide between I Capture the Castle and The Princess Bride. Castles, princesses. Hmm. And the third book is The Little Prince. Wonder what all that royalty stuff means?

  Meanwhile, Margaret is browsing in my library, her index finger gliding across the spines. She stops on a thin paperback titled Get Started in Magic!

  “Magic?” she asks.

  “Oh, I went through a phase a couple years ago,” I explain. “It started after I read a biography of Houdini.”

  She leafs through the pages, then stops at a chapter entitled “Writing and Reading Secret Messages.”

  “Hmmm. This is interesting.” She stands up, obviously excited. She switches my desk lamp off so that she can look directly at the lightbulb. “This is only sixty watts. Do you have anything brighter?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “We need a bulb that’s at least a hundred watts. And it has to be the old kind. Compact fluorescents don’t get hot enough.”

  “Well, I don’t know how many watts it is, but there’s a bulb in my parents’ room that gets really hot. It’s a halo-something, I think.”

  “Halogen. That will work. Come on, show me.”

  We go into Mom and Dad’s room and turn on the light. Margaret unfolds the letter and holds it really close to the bulb—so close that a little wisp of smoke comes off the paper.

  “It’s catching on fire!”

  “It’ll be okay,” she says, examining the paper. “Look, there’s writing—between the lines of typing.”

  “Oh, I see, the heat from the bulb made it appear. Very James Bond, Agent Wrobel. What does it say?”

  “There’s a date … January 17, 1959 … and something about a story in the New York Standard … page three, column five … and then … ‘If you are still interested, visit King Jagiello after school Tuesday. He will have something for you.’ Well, that’s crazy,” she remarks.

  “What makes it work—the invisible ink?” I ask.

  “Lemon juice. You write the message using a little paintbrush or a toothpick, and it’s completely invisible until you heat it up.”

  “But how on earth did you know it was there?”

  “I think it was the combo of your magic book and your dad’s fantabulous lemon tarts,” she explains. “Remember how we noticed that the package at Mr. Chernofsky’s smelled lemony?”

  “Yep.”

  “And I will never criticize your book-hoarding habit again.”

  “I am a collector.”

  Margaret doesn’t say a word, but that one raised eyebrow of hers sure does.

  I take another look at the letter. “So, what’s the New York Standard, anyway? I’ve never heard of it.”

  “Me neither. But there used to be a lot more newspapers in the city than there are now. We’re going to have to make a library run. Somewhere in New York, they have every issue of every paper on microfilm. The hard part is going to be waiting until Monday to go check. Unless …”

  There’s no procrastinating in Margaret’s world.

  “Unless I go down there now, right?”

  “You�
��re not doing anything, are you? Why don’t you call Leigh Ann? Her dance class will be over by now. She can meet you there. I already know where to find King Jagiello, so you get to figure out the other half of the message. Just be back here by six for the Blazers’ first practice. Come on, Soph! You don’t want to wait all weekend to find out, do you?”

  The thing is, she’s right. And I should probably put some distance between myself and the tarts. I call Leigh Ann and ask her to meet me on the library steps.

  “I’ll be easy to find,” I assure her. “I’ll be the one reading … between the lions. Get it?”

  A long silence, and then, “No.”

  “There are two big lions outside the library. I’ll be between them. Reading. Between the lines.”

  More silence.

  “Never mind.”

  Is it possible that I’m not as clever as I think I am?

  Nah!

  I tell Leigh Ann all about the letter on the way to the microfilm room. She shakes her head in disbelief. “What is it with you guys and mysterious letters?”

  “Well, the package and the letter are actually addressed only to Margaret. And it’s not like we went looking for it. We were just minding our own business, and the next thing you know—”

  “You’re reading microfilm in the library on a beautiful Saturday afternoon with me instead of having a picnic in the park with Raf.”

  A picnic? Me and Raf? Hmmm.

  With a little help from a female library employee who refuses, or is unable, to smile, we locate the January 1959 microfilm for the New York Standard. Leigh Ann scrolls through lots of stories about Fidel Castro (how old is that guy?) and the Cuban revolution, and a crazy one about two dogs that survived eleven months in Antarctica after some Japanese explorers abandoned them. When she gets to the seventeenth, we go right to page 3. In the fifth column, there is a story, just a few paragraphs, about an incident from the night before that happened at Carnegie Hall. It seems this German violinist, Horst Wurstmann (hereafter known as Sausage Guy), was appearing as guest soloist with the London Symphony Orchestra. During the intermission, he stepped outside the entrance on Fifty-seventh Street to cool off and have a smoke, leaving his violin unattended in his dressing room. He said he was outside for no more than three or four minutes, and when he returned, his violin, bow, case, and a black cashmere overcoat had all vanished. Although several other musicians were in the area at the time, no one saw anyone entering or leaving the room, and a search of the hall “proved fruitless.”

  Apparently, Sausage Guy refused to answer any other questions, but the article quoted a violinist who said the violin was made in Italy in the early nineteenth century and was likely worth “twenty to thirty thousand dollars.” The police investigated but “admitted to having no solid leads.”

  Leigh Ann scoffs at the last part. “A guy walks out of the place carrying a violin and wearing a long black coat? You’re telling me nobody saw that?”

  “True, but whoever it was probably went out a back door,” I say. “I wonder why they took the coat?”

  “One word: cashmere.”

  “Ahh. Good point.” The girl knows her luxury fabrics.

  “I wonder if it was ever found.” She scrolls down to the next day, and the day after that, and then through the films for February, March, and April, but there is no mention of the stolen violin. “This could take all day. Let’s look online.”

  After printing out the page from the newspaper and returning the microfilms, we log on to one of the library computers. Leigh Ann types in “stolen violin Carnegie Hall 1959,” and we start going through the results. One site is a collection of information about stolen musical instruments of all kinds, from all over the world. Musicians are supposed to check the site before they buy an instrument—especially an old one—in order to make sure it isn’t stolen. There are hundreds of violins listed, everything from cheap student models to a Stradivarius worth an estimated two million dollars. It takes a while, but eventually we find it:

  #216 Violin once owned by Horst Wurstmann

  (Ger., 1918–1967), unknown maker, believed to be Italian, possibly an early-19th-century copy of an earlier instrument

  Provenance: Unknown prior to Wurstmann

  Description: No photo available. No label displayed inside violin. Dimensions and construction details are typical of those of Italian master violin makers of 17th and 18th centuries. Bow is stamped “JSB” near frog.

  Date/Location Stolen: January 16, 1959, New York, New York, USA

  Insurer: Uninsured

  Estimated Value in 2008: Unknown

  Contact: NYPD

  “What’s ‘provenance’?” Leigh Ann asks.

  “I think it means its history, like who owned it before. So the police never solved the case.”

  Leigh Ann smiles as she realizes the significance of that statement. “Wait a minute. Whoever wrote to Margaret and gave her the bow … they want us to find out that this is the violin in the letter?”

  “Which means they must be the one who stole it,” I say. “Or they know who did. Boy, wait until Margaret hears this! Early nineteenth century. If it was good enough for this Wurstmann guy to play at Carnegie Hall, it must be amazing. She is going to freak.”

  And wouldn’t that be something to behold?

  Rather than taking the subway back uptown, we decide to walk so that we can go by the sea lions at the Central Park Zoo—something that Leigh Ann, who lives in Queens, doesn’t get to do that often. I use the alone time with Leigh Ann to ask about Alex, her disturbingly hot brother.

  “So, um, what’s the story with Alex? Is he really a genius? And why didn’t you ever say anything about him? Does he know Raf?”

  “I doubt it. I mean, Aquinas is a big school, and he is a senior. I can’t imagine he knows a lot of seventh graders. And I don’t know if he’s really a genius, but he’s pretty smart.” Then her eyes get a little watery. “A lot smarter than me. Kind of like everyone else I know.”

  “Leigh Ann—what’s the matter?”

  And suddenly her face is like Niagara Falls. I guide her onto a park bench and try to calm her down.

  “Gawd, I’m so sorry, Soph. It’s just me being stupid. I’m all right. Really,” she sobs. She’s standing, trying to pull me to my feet.

  But I’m not budging. “We’re not going anywhere, Ms. Jaimes, until you tell me what’s going on.” I pull her back down onto the bench and dig through my pockets until I find a napkin from Perkatory so that she can blow her nose.

  “You must think I’m crazy,” she snuffles.

  “Well, no, but you always seem so … together. I’ve just never seen this side of you. So, are you going to tell me what’s up? Or am I going to have to tickle it out of you?”

  At least that gets me a smile.

  “Is it your brother? Are you bummed ’cause he’s going away to college next year?”

  “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but part of me is kind of glad he’s going,” she admits. “He’s always been ‘the smart one,’ and the older I get, the dumber I feel around him. You don’t know how lucky you are, being an only child. But then I feel all guilty about that because he is my brother and I do love him. And when he’s gone, I really do miss him like crazy. Man, I sound like a psycho.”

  “Actually, that sounds relatively normal,” I say. “But I don’t have any brothers, so I don’t really know how you’re supposed to feel about them.”

  “All the way through elementary school, I was never the smartest kid in my class, and all my teachers would always say, ‘But you’re still a good student’—and I always knew what that meant: ‘not anywhere near as good as your brother.’ I actually transferred to St. V’s to get away from all that. And then I meet you and Margaret and Becca, and once again I’m not even close to being the smartest. You guys, it’s like you know something about everything. The only thing I’m good at anymore is dancing. And I’m probably kidding myself about that; maybe I’m not really go
od enough at that, either. What if I’m just… good-average?”

  I have to laugh at that one. “Leigh Ann, if you think you’re not a good dancer, then you really are crazy. I couldn’t do the things you do in a million years. And neither could Margaret. Or Rebecca, for that matter—she stinks! Seriously, Rebecca Chen dancing is like a fish flopping on a pier. You’re a great dancer. As far as the smart thing, I’ve just been around Margaret longer, and some of her brains have maybe just rubbed off. I’ll be honest: I don’t know if you’re smarter than Margaret. She’s a freak of nature. But is that really what’s bothering you? Because if that’s all—”

  Leigh Ann blows her nose again. “N-no,” she blubbers. “That’s not all. It’s everything else, too. My life is falling apart.”

  “What are you talking about? I thought you liked it at St. V’s. And now we’re getting the band started—”

  “No, that’s not it. I love St. V’s, and you and Margaret and Becca are the best. That’s the only part that’s normal.”

  “So, what’s the problem?”

  “Everything’s changing too fast, Sophie. I mean, I’m not even thirteen, and I feel like life is just zooming right past me. First my parents get divorced, and now Alex is going off to college. And he’s going to go someplace far away, I just know it. Then, this morning, I found out my dad got a new job—he’s moving to Cleveland. I’ll hardly ever see him. He’ll probably get married again and …”

  By now she’s full-on sobbing, and I’m trying desperately to help her. As I put my arm around her, I remember a conversation we had about the legend of the Ring of Rocamadour—how St. Veronica is supposed to visit you in your dreams and answer your prayers. The night we found the ring, Margaret had asked each of us what we wanted, and Leigh Ann didn’t even hesitate before saying she wanted her parents to get back together.

  “First of all, your brother won’t be leaving for college for almost a year, and second, he could go to NYU. Or Columbia. Or a million other places that are a mere bus ride away. And your dad? That is a bummer—but it doesn’t mean you’re not gonna see him, or that he’s gonna get married again. Cleveland isn’t even that far away, and he’ll want to stay close with you, right?”