Death Rides the Ferry

by Patricia Skalka

  “I still don’t think . . .”

  Ubell went on, as if the fake Helen hadn’t spoken. “I knew the sound of the yellow viol like I knew the hum of my own voice, the very murmuring of my thoughts. It was the soundtrack of my life, as they say. My father played his old recordings day and night. Growing up, it was impossible to escape from either the music or his bitterness as he relived the glory days. He drank and listened, drank more and listened more. For a long time, he listened only to his own performances, but later he started listening to new recordings of viola da gamba, playing detective with his ears. You see, he did not believe the authorities who suggested that the yellow viol was at the bottom of the strait. At first, yes, he accepted that theory but when I was around ten he started dreaming about the viol. He said the viol was calling to him, begging to be rediscovered. ‘I know my precious instrument is alive,’ he would say. He knew, too, that whoever had it could not resist playing it, that eventually the temptation would become too great and they would reintroduce the yellow viol to the world.”

  Ubell spoke with icy detachment. “For twelve goddamn years he listened. We had no bread and no heat in the house because the little money he earned from teaching went to buy the records and CDs. Every one that he could get hold of. He was like a man driven by madness or strong fever. But nothing came of his mania. He listened for the sweetness of the yellow viol but heard only the squeak of the pretenders. Nothing, nothing like the beauty of the instrument he had been stupid enough to let slip through his fingers. He killed himself, you know. Eventually driven mad from despair and shame.”

  The German wiped the sweat from his brow. Then he pointed to the empty bottles by the barrel chair and snapped his fingers at his assistant. This time the fake Helen got up without protest and went downstairs. When she returned with another beer, he grabbed it from her and took a long swallow.

  “Payette was a patient man, more patient than my father realized. He waited fifteen years before he dared to make a recording with the yellow viol. It was a studio performance of the third suite from Pièces de Violle by Le Sieur de Machy, the very composition my father had made famous. Can you believe the gall or the utter stupidity? Or perhaps he meant it as a kind of twisted homage to the great but now deceased and infamous Franz Acker? The piece was maddeningly close to my father’s original work. But why should he care? Who would notice? By then the world would have forgotten all about the yellow viol, no one would pay attention.”

  “You did,” Cubiak said.

  Ubell bounced on the balls of his feet. “Not right away. I was in the angry-young-man phase of my life. Ignoring the world of the viola da gamba. Doing anything as long as it didn’t involve music. It was merely by chance that I heard Payette’s recordings. I was on the other side of the world, working on a merchant marine ship out of Australia. The captain, it turns out, had an affinity for Polish brandy, Cuban cigars, and early music. Such an odd sensation, floating in the middle of the Pacific and hearing the music coming from the captain’s quarters as if from heaven, as if my father were serenading the angels.”

  “You were never in the merchant marine,” Cubiak said.

  Ubell laughed and saluted the sheriff with the near-empty beer bottle. “Oh, well, it makes a good story.”

  “Until you came to the States, you never left your homeland. You lived in Cologne, where you were a sound engineer.”

  Ubell sank back onto the round chair. “Ah, yes, you did your homework. You are correct; I was a sound engineer. I spent my life in isolated rooms, staring at blank walls and listening to music, trotting along in my father’s footsteps. How pathetic, eh? As a musician, I was a washout—another disappointment to my dead Papa—but searching for the yellow viol? Well, that was different. I had been trained by the expert, and once I made up my mind to follow his lead, I was determined to succeed where he had failed.”

  The German stretched his legs. “Father kept copies of the program from Dixan I, so I knew the names of the musicians who were at the festival. To me, each player was a potential suspect. Periodically, I checked up on them to see what they were up to. Some were teaching; one had died of a heart attack; another was killed in a car crash. Several appeared to have abandoned the gamba world. One became a yoga instructor, if you can believe it. With the internet it was easy to keep tabs, and to listen in on the performances and recordings of those who continued to play. Always with an ear for the telltale sound of the yellow viol’s own little idiosyncrasy.”

  He stopped for a moment. “And you know what? The funny part of all this? Despite all my diligent searching, I finally stumbled on it totally by accident. Mere luck really. I was online, buying a Vivaldi CD, when I hit the wrong button and by mere chance purchased one of Payette’s recordings, one that I had somehow missed. When the CD came, I realized my mistake immediately but it was hardly worth returning the disc, and since it was probably something I would have bought eventually, I opened the package and played it.

  “You can imagine the sensation when I realized what I was hearing. It was the de Machy piece, of course, and at first, I thought it couldn’t be right, that like my father I’d gone mad from all those years of listening and imagining just such a moment. Still, I couldn’t trust my ear, not completely. I didn’t dare. The next day, I took Payette’s CD and my father’s recording to the studio and compared them. I knew what I was looking for. The yellow viol had a quirky vibration peculiar to the G-sharp, similar to what is now called a wolf tone. Despite the flaw, my father chose to play the instrument because it was so good otherwise. And there the wolf was on Payette’s recording, the same exact mother-fucking thing. I sat at my console sweating like a pig, listening like I’d never listened before. As this familiar, peculiar sound washed over me, I knew—I knew without a doubt—that George Peter Payette was the man who had stolen the yellow viol.”

  Ubell lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply. “Bastard!” he said. The word came out low and guttural, and the look on his face put him far away from Door County and Cate’s condo. He smoked until he filled the room with the stench of burning tobacco. “Goddamn fucking bastard,” he said.

  The German dropped the nub of the cigarette into an empty beer bottle. When the sizzle subsided, he pushed to his feet.

  “I began stalking Payette. Oh, not in person but online and through whatever means I could find. I started a file and hunted down every performance, recording, and photo I could find of him. Never, not once, did he appear with the yellow viol. Well, of course not. He was too clever to let the instrument be seen in public. Someone might recognize it. And he never played it before a live audience. Never. Only on his recordings. And on every one, the wolf tone appeared. The critics didn’t mind. Such rave reviews he received. They drooled over the warm ‘golden’ sound of Payette’s viol. The rarefied delicacy of his touch. The sound of angels, one commentator said. The sound of a thief!” Ubell spat out the word.

  “Are you going to tell me crime doesn’t pay, Sheriff? George Payette was making a name for himself with the yellow viol. He had destroyed my father and ruined my life and now the thief was rising to the top on the crumbling ruins of my family.”

  “Why didn’t you go to the authorities?” Cubiak said.

  “With what, my theory? That’s what they would have called my accusation. I had no tangible proof. Yes, yes, I know the sound matched, but there are experts who would dispute my findings. They would say there was something off in the recording or something amiss in my equipment. Without the actual yellow viol, there was no irrefutable proof, just the ranting of a man who wanted to avenge his father. And I would be dismissed as a delusional, sentimental fool. You see my dilemma. I knew Payette was in possession of the yellow viol, but I could not prove it because he kept it well hidden and I did not know where. Even the recordings—how could these be made without someone seeing the stolen instrument?”

  “You assumed he had accomplices?”

  “Initially, no. I suspected only Payette. But the mo
re I considered the situation, the more it seemed reasonable, necessary even, that he had to have had help.”

  “The GAR group.”

  Ubell frowned. “The three rising stars of the gamba world. Why not? They were friends. They had worked together, probably slept together. Trusted each other, as often happens. I assumed their breakup was a ruse, a convenient cover to divert attention from them, but it didn’t fool me. I widened my focus to all three and was determined to learn everything I could about them in the years since Dixan I. I wanted to destroy them all.”

  “You didn’t have to worry about Annabelle. She’d done a good job of that herself,” Cate said.

  Helen-Marlene hissed menacingly and rose to a half-standing and half-sitting position.

  “Save your energy,” Ubell said.

  She sighed and dropped back down on the bed.

  “My faithful helper,” the German said. “How can I not succeed with such a devoted assistant?”

  Helen-Marlene blew him a kiss, and Ubell went on. “I worked another year, saving money and planning. I knew that I had to come to the States to find them. There was no other way.” He turned to Cubiak. “I’m sure you have tracked my steps.”

  “You know I have,” the sheriff said. For Cate’s sake, he filled in the blanks. “New York, Madison, and, finally, Chicago.”

  “The Windy City! Big, beautiful. And that magnificent lakefront. So much to celebrate. Except that Annabelle was dead by the time I got there, and that made it a little less enticing. But, of course, there was Lydia. In some ways she was second best, but in others even better. Lydia was an ignorant, pliable girl. She was gullible and hungry, a perfect combination for my purpose. And she had her mother’s diary and the box of mementoes. Bonus prize for me.”

  “You’re forgetting about Helen Kulas.”

  Ubell sneered. “The pesky, mousy friend with the little dog that would sink its teeth into your ankle and not let go no matter how hard you tried to shake it off. Dearest Helen. I went to her, of course. I tried to be nice. I needed to befriend her and make her my ally, but Helen did not like me. She did not trust me. She resented my closeness with Lydia and urged her to ignore me. The old woman was an obstacle in my path, as tenacious as that ugly dog of hers.”

  “So you killed her.”

  Ubell ran the barrel of the pistol along his jaw. “I moved her aside. I had to, and not just because she was a nuisance. She knew a man named Eric Fielder, but he no longer exists, and for him to remain a nonperson, there must be no one who can connect him to me or this place. To the people at the festival, I was nothing, another peon, a face in the background. They would not remember me. But Helen Kulas would.”

  “So would Lydia. Which is why you killed her too.”

  “What does it matter, Sheriff? People like those two are not missed. Lydia was a lost child, a loony-tune adult. She had no skills, no education, no value in the world. And the same with the old crone. She had no family, no friends other than the deceased Annabelle, nothing beyond that stuffy apartment and her boring job teaching a bunch of dumme kinder to read music. They were two people of no consequence. Their lives didn’t matter.”

  “They did to them.”

  “Oh, Sheriff, what a softie you are. And why? You know as well as I that people like that woman die every day and no one cares. They are forgotten, curled up on park benches or warehoused in nursing homes, talking to the walls. Don’t waste your time trying to make me feel any regret for what I did.”

  Ubell was on his feet again, pacing between them. “My father was the victim. He suffered the great injustice of his life and because of that I, too, suffered injustice. What I did, what I am doing, is simply to even the balance.”

  He swiped at his face with a dingy handkerchief, and then he threw open the balcony door to a stream of cold night air.

  Helen-Marlene shivered and pulled the spread up around her shoulders. “It’s freezing,” she said.

  “It is good to change the air,” Ubell said. He breathed in deeply and then turned back to his audience. “Last spring I rented a car and drove to Door County to see firsthand the place where Payette had settled. By then he had become quite famous and prosperous. He had acquired an estate and a collection of rare instruments. I was curious and timed my visit to coincide with his monthly tour. To him I was just another tourist. The man had an enormous ego; he had to show us everything. That’s how I learned about the private recording studio. As soon as I saw that room, all became clear. That’s where he made the recordings with the yellow viol. In private, where the world could not see.”

  “But where did he hide the instrument?”

  Ubell shrugged. “A secret chamber; a special room. It had to be kept somewhere on the grounds. Perhaps it was secured behind a false wall or at the bottom of a hidden staircase. The place is immense and has several levels that would make it easy to construct a climate-controlled chamber for the viol.”

  “Eventually you found out, of course.”

  Ubell snickered.

  “What about the GAR group? How involved were they in the scheme?”

  “I think that is an aspect I got wrong. Annabelle knew nothing, and thus she got nothing. Left out in the cold, as they say.”

  Ubell started to say something else but instead he glanced at his watch. His face clouded, and he slammed the door. He’s wondering why the boat is taking so long to get here, Cubiak thought.

  “And Richard Mayes,” the sheriff said, bringing the German back to his story.

  “I don’t know if he was involved from the beginning. My guess now is that Payette would not have trusted anyone. But Mayes had to find out at some point. The two were too close all those years. Whether Payette told him or Mayes discovered the truth on his own is of no relevance. The fact that Payette kept him on as his assistant indicates that he knew about the yellow viol. Mayes’s salary and comfortable lifestyle were his payoff for keeping silent.”

  “And you threatened to expose him unless he told you the whereabouts of the yellow viol. But he didn’t give you what you wanted, and so you poisoned him too.”

  “If you like.”

  “With selenium. Tell me, how’d you know about it?”

  Ubell grinned. “I had a job once working for an antique dealer who kept the stuff in the back room. He’s the one who told me about its magical properties.”

  The German was being provocative but Cubiak refused to react. “It must have been easy enough for you to slip the poison into the food you gave Lydia, but how did you manage with Mayes?”

  “Piece of cake, as you say here. I was in charge of boxing up the lunches for those on special diets, and among them was your Mister Mayes. Vegetarian, gluten free, allergic to nuts and soy. Every day, I laced his food with my own special ingredient.”

  “He was dead whether he cooperated with you or not.”

  “Precisely. Everything I did was part of my plan.”

  Ubell had just confessed to killing three people. His disregard for human life was chilling. He saw himself as strong, but Cubiak suspected that the arrogant façade hid not so much strength as a robotic rigidity. What wouldn’t bend could be broken. Small comfort under the circumstances, but the only hope he had.

  “What about Lydia’s bag? Whatever became of that?”

  “Poor Lydia’s dying wish was for me to have her mother’s precious memoirs. She gave the bag to me.”

  “Or you took it out of her dead hands.”

  The German shrugged. “Whatever you wish. It makes no difference to me.”

  “Where is it?”

  Ubell laughed. “I had no more need for that drivel. It’s gone, sunk to the bottom of the deep, blue lake.”

  Cubiak arched his stiff shoulders in a pretense of nonchalance. “And now what? You have the yellow viol, but you can’t do anything with it. You certainly can’t sell it.”

  “Not publicly, but privately there are always possibilities. Big possibilities. Don’t play the naïve innocent with
me. You know as well as I that there are fantastically wealthy people who would give a fortune for the pleasure of owning something so rare and beautiful. They are connoisseurs, people of impeccable taste who are more interested in possessing a coveted treasure than in knowing how it came to them.”

  Cubiak pointed to the black instrument case behind the barrel chair. “That’s assuming the instrument you have with you is the yellow viol,” he said.

  Ubell’s eyes narrowed.

  “How do you know that the viol you’ve stolen from the thief is the authentic instrument? Perhaps it’s a copy or just a well-crafted imitation. The original may still be hidden on Payette’s estate or sequestered God knows where in Door County or beyond.” Cubiak gestured with his hands. “America is a big country.”

  Ubell approached Helen-Marlene. He pointed the Glock at Cubiak and then aimed it at Cate. The fake Helen was pale and jittery with excitement. She grew more wide-eyed when he held the gun out to her. “Now you have two. One for each hand. If the sheriff moves, shoot his wife first, and then shoot him,” he said.

  She took the Glock and Ubell pressed his mouth to the top of her head. “Good girl,” he said.

  Cubiak’s instinct was to leap up and tackle the man but he forced himself to remain still. It would be foolish to try anything now. In his other life, he had held his dying wife as her blood ran onto the cracked pavement of a city street. He had loved Lauren beyond all measure, and now he loved Cate. He would not do anything to cause her harm.

  The sheriff slowed his breathing and glanced at the women. Cate was watching Ubell cross the room, and Helen-Marlene was watching Cate. I will protect you, he promised silently, hoping that somehow his wife could hear his thoughts and trust him to keep his word.