The Vanishing Violin Page 9

  I take a shell-shocked Raf by the hand and storm inside to watch the stupid movie.

  He doesn’t say anything until we are in our seats, sharing a box of Junior Mints. Finally he looks over at me and smiles. “You just make friends wherever you go, don’t you?”

  I bury my head in my hands. “What have I done? Margaret is going to kill me. Why didn’t you stop me?”

  “Stop you? I was trying to figure out a way to applaud you.”

  “What do you think of Andrew?”

  “The guy that was with Livvy? I don’t know. Who is he again? And what’s up with that hair?”

  “He’s one of my mom’s students. I like his hair, but now I’m not sure how I feel about him. Tell me that you would stick up for me if somebody said stuff like that about me.”

  “Of course. But I’ve known you for a long time. Didn’t this Andrew kid just meet Margaret?”

  “Well, yeah. But it just seems—”

  “Look, Soph, I think you’re thinkin’ too much about this.”

  “You don’t get it. Livvy has powerful friends. She can make my life—and Margaret’s—miserable if she wants.”

  “Powerful friends? Has the Mafia taken over St. Veronica’s?”

  “Trust me, she will get even. The girl can be evil.”

  I wait until early Sunday afternoon to give Margaret the icky update on Livvy. But other than the immediate impact on Mr. Eliot’s ill-conceived punctuation project, she doesn’t seem too concerned.

  “I wouldn’t worry about it,” she says.

  “But see, she’s hated you for years,” I say. “She didn’t hate me until last night.”

  “Livvy is all squawk.”

  Frankly, that’s what scares me. God only knows what kind of damage that big mouth of Livvy’s can do.

  “Anyway, I think I might have a good lead on this new letter,” she adds. “I saw Malcolm and Elizabeth at Mass this morning, and we had a chance to chat for a while. Malcolm suggested I talk to Caroline about the newest code. In addition to all the puzzles and math problems her grandfather used to give her, they also used to make up codes and send messages back and forth. She even thought about majoring in cryptography. Since she’s going to be at Elizabeth’s this afternoon, he said I should drop by with the letter. You want to come?”

  “Sure, as long as it’s not going to be late. I’ve been goofing off all weekend, and I need to do some work.”

  “All right, I’ll call Becca and Leigh Ann, too. So turn off your computer and your phone, put your guitar away, and get to work.”

  “Yeeesssss, Sis-ter Mar-ga-ret.”

  Elizabeth greets us at the familiar red door of her townhouse with big hugs, followed by more squeezing, gushing, and questioning. (After we recovered the ring and became practically family, I agreed to start calling Elizabeth by her first name, but part of me still struggles with it.) It has been only a few weeks since that amazing night we handed over the Ring of Rocamadour to Malcolm and Elizabeth’s daughter, Caroline, but this already feels like a reunion.

  And even though I met Caroline just that one time, I feel like I know her. After all, it was her birthday card that got the “treasure hunt” for the Ring of Rocamadour started. Caroline’s grandfather—Elizabeth’s father—had set up all the clues and hidden the ring as a gift for her fourteenth birthday, but then he died before he ever had a chance to even give her the card. When Elizabeth accidentally discovered the birthday card twenty years later, she turned to us for help, because by then, she and Malcolm were divorced and she hadn’t spoken to Caroline in years.

  “We simply must have some tea,” Elizabeth says. “Malcolm, dear, make a big pot of tea. Flower Power is their favorite.”

  Malcolm grins at us as he heads for the kitchen. “You see what’s happened to me? I’m the new Winnie!”

  “Are you going to spy on us like she did?” Leigh Ann calls out after him. Elizabeth’s former housekeeper, Winifred Winterbottom—wife of the church deacon that we butted heads with—was always spying on us every time we visited Elizabeth.

  “You can count on it,” he shouts from the kitchen.

  “Oh, that Malcolm,” Elizabeth says. “He thinks he is so clever.”

  “Is he at least a better housekeeper than Winnie?” I ask. On more than one occasion, Elizabeth told us of Winnie’s failures as a housekeeper, especially her unwillingness to vacuum under furniture. The horror!

  Rebecca is her usual nosy, sassy self and starts her interrogation of Elizabeth. “So, what’s going on with you and Malcolm, anyway? Are you going to get back together or what?”

  “Becca!” Margaret puts her hand over Rebecca’s mouth. “Sorry. She still hasn’t completed her obedience training.”

  “No, no. Don’t shush her,” says Caroline, laughing. “Actually, Mother, that’s a very good question. We’re all dying to hear the answer, aren’t we, girls?”

  Elizabeth maintains her dignity—well, as much dignity as you can maintain when you’re wearing lime green riding pants with knee-high boots and a paisley blazer (a typically daring fashion choice for her). “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she says, her chin jutting forward.

  “Maybe I should ask Dad.”

  “Don’t you dare. Things are just fine the way they are, thank you very much. And let’s leave it at that. I’ve been living on my own for a long time now, and I’m not sure I’m ready for a change. Believe me, I’ve lived with your father; he can be difficult.”

  “Unlike you,” Caroline says with a teasing smile. “You’re always so easygoing. But fair enough—you don’t want to talk about it. The children are always the last to know anyway. Now, Margaret, tell me about this letter. Dad told me a little about the new case you’re working on.”

  Margaret sits next to her on the sofa and takes out the envelope containing the letter. “Each clue has been in a different kind of code. The first one was invisible ink that turned out to be simply lemon juice. When you heat it up, it turns brown and you can read it. Then we had a series of riddles, kind of like crossword puzzle clues. All the answers were names of orphans from literature. David Copperfield, Anne Shirley, Jane Eyre. Your dad actually helped with that letter. He took us to a bar—”

  “He WHAT?” Elizabeth shrieks. “Malcolm! Come in here!”

  Malcolm appears in the kitchen doorway, looking, as my dad would say, like foie gras wouldn’t melt in his mouth. “Yes, my precious?”

  “Don’t you ‘yes, precious’ me. Did you take these sweet girls to a bar?”

  “Not just a bar. The King Cole Bar. I figure if I’m going to corrupt them, it might as well be someplace with a little class.”

  “It’s not like it sounds,” I say. “We had mocktails.”

  “And what about you, Malcolm? What did you have to drink?” Elizabeth asks.

  “Now you’ve got me dead to rights, but it was all in the name of research. I’m afraid the girls made me drink a martini.”

  Elizabeth snorts. “Ha! Made you. I’ll bet.”

  “Actually, he’s sort of telling the truth, Elizabeth,” Margaret admits. “I needed to know what the bartender would say when somebody ordered a martini. By the way, the answer is ‘Olive or twist?’ which was the answer to one of the puns.”

  “Humph,” Elizabeth says.

  “And the letter just before this one was in a code so simple I’m ashamed I didn’t figure it out sooner. It looked like a twelve-line poem, and I kept looking for something between the lines like the first letter. The poem itself was really just gibberish, but the first letter of each word gave us the clue. That brings us to this next one, which is all symbols. Ever seen anything like it?”

  Caroline looks at the letter and smiles knowingly. “Pigpen.”

  “I beg your pardon,” Margaret replies.

  “It’s what they call a substitution cipher. I think this is the first code my grandfather taught me. It has been around for a long time. They call it the pigpen cipher because each letter is put
into its own compartment, kind of like pigs in a pen, I suppose. Here, I’ll show you.”

  On the back of the envelope she draws two tic-tac-toe grids and two large X’s. In one of the grids and one of the X’s, she makes a dot in each section. Then she adds the alphabet, printing one letter in each of the twenty-six “pens.”

  “To write a message, you simply substitute the lines surrounding your letter and the dot, if there is one, for the letter itself.” She writes Margaret’s name on the envelope and then adds a symbol beneath each letter.

  “Pretty cool, huh?”

  “That’s it? This is easy,” Margaret says.

  “Well, there is one catch,” Caroline says. “Whoever wrote the letter probably didn’t arrange the letters in the pens exactly like this. There are lots of different ways to personalize this code, so even if the message is intercepted by someone who understands the basic idea of the code, it will be hard to break.

  “Here, I’ll show you another example, and this time we’ll start with an X. For the X’s, you have to decide where to start and which direction to go. The trick is to be consistent—always start in the same place so that you’ll remember the sequence. Same thing with the grids—start in a corner and then follow a set pattern. For example, you might do something like this.”

  “Now your name would look like this,” she continues.

  Margaret twists her lips as she ponders the new version. “Hmmm. I see what you mean about the different possibilities.”

  “When you’re setting up the pigpens, do you always have to start in a corner?” I ask.

  Caroline thinks for a second. “Well, you don’t have to, but it’s a lot easier to remember that way.”

  “Let’s take a look at the first part of the clue,” Margaret suggests.

  Elizabeth leans in closer. “Now what?” She looks at me, I look at Leigh Ann, and we all do a unishrug.

  Caroline puts her arm around Margaret’s shoulders. “Now comes the fun part. First, you try the easy option and hope they used that one.”

  Margaret starts decoding. “That would make the first word … J … B … E. Somehow, I don’t think that’s right.”

  “Ah, but it’s more helpful than you think. The most common three-letter word in English is ‘the,’ which is also commonly used to start sentences. And the letter E is the fifth letter in the alphabet, so it usually ends up in the center square of the grid, no matter where the A is—as long as there’s a grid in the first position and not one of the X’s.”

  “Well, so far both clues have started with ‘the,’” Margaret says.

  “Great. So for now, let’s just assume that first three-letter word is ‘the.’”

  “Which means we can also find all the other T’s, H’s, and E’s, right?” Margaret asks.

  “Wow, you are good,” Caroline says.

  After Margaret fills in those letters, Leigh Ann says, “It looks like something from Wheel of Fortune.”

  “I agree,” Elizabeth adds. “And the seventh word must be ‘street.’”

  “Nice work, Mother. I think you’re right,” Caroline says.

  “Makes sense,” says Margaret. “The other clues also referred to streets. And that gives us the S and the R.”

  With those letters filled in, it looks like this:

  Elizabeth is jumping up and down. “I know another one! The word right before ‘street.’ If it’s in New York, the only thing it can be is ‘Bleecker.’”

  Caroline and Margaret consider it for a second and nod.

  “Way to go, Mother.”

  Elizabeth sticks her tongue out at Malcolm. “See, Mr. Smarty-Pants? And you’re always saying that game show is for simpletons.” Under her breath, she adds, “Old coot.”

  Leigh Ann elbows me; we are both about two milliseconds away from totally cracking up.

  With those letters, Margaret now has:

  “And now I think you have enough to solve the puzzle,” Caroline says. “Start filling in the pens that you know, and you’ll see the pattern. Then you just fill in the rest and you’re done.”

  Margaret draws the first grid and neatly prints the B, C, E, and H in the correct spaces. Her fingers move to her temples, and after some extra-deep thinking, she draws a big X and fills in the K and L. Then she adds a second grid—with the dots—and adds the R, S, and T.

  “And now, the X with dots,” she says. “It has to be W, X, Y, Z, but we don’t have any of those letters, so we don’t know where to start—unless it follows the same pattern as the first X, right?”

  “But you can fill in all these other letters, can’t you?” I ask. “The A has to go in the bottom left corner.”

  “The bottom row in the second grid must be N, O, P, with Q above the P,” Leigh Ann says. “And that means the D goes above the C, because it’s the same pattern.”

  Margaret adds those letters and then fills in everything except the final four letters.

  “And now for the final test,” she says, starting on the remaining blanks in the clue.

  The rest of us watch in silence as her eyes go back and forth and she copies the letters into the empty spaces. Within seconds, the clue looks like this:

  “Voilà!” Margaret looks at the grids one more time and smiles. “That second word has to be ‘xylophone’—the X and Y fit the pattern perfectly. The third word is ‘player,’ and that must be ‘two’ in the last line.”

  Leigh Ann, Rebecca, and I slap her on the back. “All right, Margaret!”

  She waves us off and looks at Caroline. “They should be thanking you. It would have taken me years to get this without your help.”

  “I just pointed you in the right direction,” Caroline says. “You did the work.”

  “Well, before we go, let me check out the second part of this just to be sure it’s the same.”

  “Good idea. Set it up.”

  And now, dear reader, it’s your turn. My good friend Margaret already did all the hard work. All you have to do is substitute the right letters for the symbols. Piece o’ muffin for somebody as smart as you, right?

  Here you go:

  Chapter 13

  You’d better not be starting this chapter if you don’t know where the violinist does not live. I’m not kidding. Go back right now and do it

  When we leave Elizabeth’s, we have four clues in hand and seem well on our way to tracking down a violin, stolen in 1959 by someone who now wants Margaret to have it. Go figure—wait, you did, right?

  And here’s what you know:

  The piano player lives on Hester Street, but not in Apt. 4M and not at no. 127 or no. 301 (the orphan clue).

  The bassoon player lives in 2J, but not on Grand or Essex (the first-letter clue).

  The xylophone player lives on Bleecker Street, but not at no. 288 (the first pigpen clue).

  The violinist does not live in the building located at 456 Grand or in Apt. 7A (the second pigpen clue—the one you were supposed to solve on your own).

  “You do see where this is going, don’t you?” Margaret asks.

  “Um, I think so,” I lie.

  “It’s a logic problem. These clues are like lights on an airport runway. Except he’s turning them on one at a time instead of all at once. Right now we’re in a holding pattern, metaphorically speaking, but at some point we’re going to have enough information to know where this goes.” She holds up the key that was taped to the back of that very first message wrapped around the bow, and that now hangs from a black cord around her neck. “We just have to figure out how to put it all together. I assume we’re looking for the violinist’s address, but we definitely don’t have enough information to find it yet. There must be at least one more clue.”

  “I kind of like that pigpen code,” Leigh Ann says. “We could use something like that to send each other secret messages.”

  “Um, Leigh Ann,” Rebecca says, “you can send text messages. Why do you need a secret code? Do you really think anybody wants to snoop on anything we
have to say?”

  “All right, so maybe we don’t need it. But it seems cool.”

  “I’m with Leigh Ann,” I say. “If we’re serious about being detectives, we need our own code. No pigpens, though. Our code will be based on ice cream. Twenty-six flavors.”

  “What flavor is A?” Leigh Ann asks.

  “Fudge swirl?” I suggest.

  “I don’t know—fudge swirl has more of a consonant feel to it,” says Margaret. “How about mint chocolate chip?”

  “Yuck!” Becca shouts. “Mint chocolate chip is, like, X. Or Q. Definitely not a vowel.”

  This could take a while. So I’ll get back to you. Someday.

  Monday. Hoo boy, what a day.

  Here’s how it starts for me: I’m already late as I scuttle out of the building and toward the subway stop at Eighty-sixth Street. Halfway there, it starts to drizzle. I don’t have an umbrella, but no worries, right? Here in New York, the trains run underground. C’est fantastique!

  Except when I get there, the station is closed. I hear something about a police investigation as I start the trek down Lexington to the stop at Seventy-seventh, and just to make things special, it starts to pour. Luckily, a few doors down Lex there’s a shoe repair shop advertising umbrellas for sale for five bucks, and I duck in the door and out of the rain. Which is when I realize my wallet and all my cash are on the corner of my dresser and not in my book bag. Zut alors! Deep breaths, Sophie.

  The Seventy-seventh Street station is open, but there’s a cop in an orange poncho announcing that the 6 train isn’t running, and if we head back up to Eighty-sixth, the 4 and the 5 are moving. Thanks, Officer!

  By this time, I’m mega-soaked, so I schlep the remaining twelve blocks down to the school at Sixty-fifth Street, swearing and shivering every step of the way. I walk in the door two seconds after the first-period bell rings, and—bingo!—Sister Eugenia stands before me.

  “Just a moment, young lady. You’re tardy. You’ll be needing a late pass.”