by Gerald Elias
‘Vassari’s younger brother, Paolo, peeled the heavy tape from the seams of the crate. He said, “Bringing a string instrument to Cremona? It’s like what the English say: bringing the Newcastle to the coal.”
‘His cousin Emilio, who undid the metal clasps, said another joke. “Yes, and I think they have filled the crate with a ton of that coal.”
‘Lifting the wooden lid, Vassari discovered a case fitting snugly inside, a string bass case held in place with Styrofoam battens. It was the quality of case used by student musicians, of lighter weight and constructed with reasonable strength. I have some such cases in my shop I can show you, but you know what I mean.
‘Paolo asked, “I wonder why zio Amadeo would send an instrument to us?”
‘“We shall see,” Vassari said, who had to open yet another set of clasps and yet another lid. “Maybe he’s smuggled us a shipment of those Hebrew National hotdogs he’s always talking about”.’
‘The family’s levity began to leave them when they noticed a smell. Their concern increased when they found that the inner case contained not an instrument, but a large, black plastic garbage bag. Then they opened the bag. It wasn’t coal inside, and it wasn’t hot dogs, and assuredly it wasn’t a string bass. No. It was a decomposing body with a bullet in his forehead, and carved into his chest were long, slender f’s, like the f-holes on a string instrument. Yes, I am sure you have guessed by now. It was the body of their Uncle Amadeo. Amadeo Borlotti.’
‘That, my dear friends, and not smuggled wood, is the true reason why the Vassari family was reluctant to open their door for us today. At the farm, Yumi said she didn’t think we looked like authorities, and she was right. The Vassari family was terrified not because they thought we were there to arrest them, but to kill them.’
PART TWO
EIGHTEEN
New Year’s Day, Sunday, January 1
The festivity of the evening, like the remaining crowds, had vanished into darkness. Yumi and Bertoldo were in no mood to make music together at his shop. After much discussion, though, Bertoldo convinced her to stay in Cremona for a few more days.
Jacobus called Benson back to inform him of the gory postscript to the wood-smuggling story. Benson’s secretary, Marge, answered the phone.
‘Do you have any idea what time it is here, Mr Jacobus?’ she asked.
‘Give me a hint.’
‘It’s past dinner time!’
‘Well, sweetheart, where I am it’s almost breakfast time, so if you wouldn’t mind rousting the good man from his beauty sleep I’d be much obliged.’
‘That changes everything,’ Benson said when Jacobus told him the details. ‘I’ll make you a confession, Mr Jacobus. In all my years I’ve never worked a murder case. We’ll need to deal with the Italian authorities, no doubt.’ He sounded shaken, but Jacobus couldn’t tell whether it was more from the former or latter statement.
‘Never mind,’ Benson continued, summoning his inner Scout. ‘We’ll sort it out. Good work, sir. Good work. And a happy New Year to you.’
It was almost dawn and Jacobus worried that if he fell asleep he’d miss his flight, so he stayed up for what little remained of the night. Since day and night were indistinguishable to him, he relied on his biological clock to inform him. But the flight to Milan and the time difference had gotten that so out of kilter he had lost track of how he was supposed to feel. And so he fretted until Bertoldo arrived at the hotel, precisely at 6:45, to take Jacobus to the airport. Yumi joined them for the drive. Bertoldo had already called the Vassaris to commiserate and to offer some advice. He reported to Jacobus that the conversation with them had been productive, now that the family knew the whole story from the American side.
The Vassaris had been paralyzed with indecision since discovering their uncle’s body and almost welcomed Bertoldo’s strong recommendation that they surrender to the local authorities. He convinced them that if they made a clean breast of things and admitted to the wood smuggling, and if by their cooperation the police were able to discover who killed their uncle and for what reason, there was a good chance they would be exonerated of their seeming complicity in the far more egregious crime, the murder of Amadeo Borlotti. And, Bertoldo assured the Vassaris in a deft aside, if everything worked out for the best he would be happy to buy wood from them in the future. No questions asked.
Bertoldo and Yumi embraced Jacobus when his flight to JFK was announced.
‘Ciao!’ Yumi called out as he boarded the plane.
‘Yeah, arrivederci,’ Jacobus said, and took his seat. He put on his seatbelt and slept the whole way back.
Nathaniel met Jacobus at his arrival gate at JFK. Because of the time change it was only two hours later than when he’d departed Milan.
‘Hail the celebrity!’ Nathaniel said in greeting.
‘What the hail are you talking about?’ Jacobus said. ‘You’ve been drinking too much eggnog.’
‘The news about Borlotti’s body. It’s already on the airwaves.’
‘How’s that possible? We just found out ourselves last night.’
‘News travels faster than planes, Jake. An anonymous source leaked it. The Carabinieri didn’t deny it. WCBS mispronounced your name, though. They called you Daniel Jacobs.’
‘I’ll sue.’
‘It’ll be in all the papers by tomorrow.’
‘Anonymous source?’ Jacobus asked.
‘That’s what it said.’
Bertoldo? No. Why would he do that? Who else? Jacobus thought. He decided he might have a private chat with Marge, Benson’s receptionist. Or not. He was finished. Spent. He had done his job and had handed it over to Benson. Let him figure out the who’s and the why’s. Now he could return to real life: listen to music and play the violin. Finish the jigsaw puzzle.
New Year’s Day traffic was light into Manhattan as America slept off its collective hangover and prepared for football bowl games. Nathaniel offered to put Jacobus up in his apartment, but after the exhausting weekend he declined. He just wanted to go home and rest. So Nathaniel dropped him off at Grand Central Station, where Jacobus boarded a Metro North train to Wassaic Station, which was about an hour from his house. Roy Miller met him there and offered to stop by at his own house to pick up Trotsky. Again Jacobus opted to go straight home and asked Miller to bring Trotsky the next day.
Back in his living room, Jacobus collapsed on to his couch. He had no idea what time it was, only that it was late. The house, having been unoccupied for four days, was freezing, but he didn’t even care. He was exhausted.
‘Pour me a drink,’ he said to Miller. ‘And help yourself. And may the New Year be less of a pain in the ass than the old one.’
For the next half hour, while starting the fire in the woodstove, Miller took vicarious delight recounting the blow-by-blow of the sensational Borlotti story, as if it were the first time Jacobus had heard it. Egremont Falls hadn’t been in the news since an article about organic hay farming two years earlier. Now the place would be crawling with local sleuths and Benson was no doubt in his situation room designing a strategy to deal with it all. Too tired to object, Jacobus let Miller spew.
‘His problem,’ Jacobus said, smacking his lips after finishing his scotch. ‘His problem.’ Jacobus’s only loose end was a visit to Dahlia Maggette.
‘Yep, glad it’s not mine, either,’ said Miller. ‘Well, I better be going. I’ll turn the lights out on my way out.’
‘Thanks for nothing,’ Jacobus said, with a laugh.
After Miller left, Jacobus put a few more logs on the fire and sat on his living room couch, listening to Yumi’s recording of the Four Seasons. He closed his eyes and smiled.
Jacobus woke with a snort. The scratches of Yumi’s LP had roused him. He shook the cobwebs from his head. Something was not right. Yumi’s recording isn’t an LP. It’s a CD. There shouldn’t be scratches. Even more, there was no music.
The scratching was icy snow crunching under the tires of a car coming d
own his driveway. It wasn’t Yumi’s car. It wasn’t Miller’s or Benson’s, either. It was somebody who wanted his arrival to be unheard. The car coasted slowly, engine off. Maybe the car’s headlights are dashed as well, Jacobus thought.
He made an instantaneous decision. In his own house he had the advantage as long as it remained dark. He stole through the living room and kitchen, sidestepping the floorboards he knew creaked, and opened the door to the basement. On the wall was the circuit box. He felt for the main breaker and pulled it down, shutting off everything. Below the box was where he kept his cane. He clutched it tightly and positioned himself next to the kitchen door, praying the intruder would enter without a flashlight and would turn on the light switch.
The car door opened and was pressed closed with delicacy. Cautious footsteps made their way to his front door. Jacobus breathed as silently as he could, through his mouth. The door swung open slowly and Jacobus took a step back. Cold air and the skittering of dry leaves in the night’s breeze swept in. Jacobus waited. Whoever it was stood still inside his house. Waiting? For what? Move, damnit! Jacobus couldn’t be sure where the person was until he moved. They were both waiting. Then he heard a hand fumble along the wall for a switch, and finding it, turn it on. Jacobus heard the click. Then, the lights not going on, several more desperate clicks followed in quick succession.
Jacobus now knew exactly where the intruder stood. He swung.
‘Shit! My shoulder!’ the intruder screamed.
A woman!
Jacobus was surprised for a moment. But only for a moment.
‘Ah! Ms Forsythe. May I call you Minerva?’
‘How did you know?’ Forsythe said, through gritted teeth.
He had heard the voice once before. The midnight caller who’d hung up.
She had not identified herself then – at least not explicitly – but in reality she had. He just had to mentally rearrange a little chronology. Jacobus’s ear, memory, and mental discipline – three ineradicable benefits of his early musical training – enabled him to identify this unexpected guest. And why she was here. This was a new piece of what was beginning to finally resemble an organized jigsaw puzzle. He just hoped he wasn’t mistaking another pomegranate for Jesus’s face.
‘I’ll tell you what I know, and you tell me what you know,’ Jacobus said. ‘Fair enough?’
There was silence.
‘I asked you, fair enough?’
‘I nodded,’ she said.
‘I don’t do nods. I do yes or no.’
‘Yes,’ she said.
‘Good start,’ Jacobus said. ‘Stay there a minute, I’ll switch the lights on for you and get you an ice pack. Like a drink?’
They were soon seated in the living room. Forsythe didn’t think her arm was broken but willingly accepted the ice bag and three aspirin, which she downed with a scotch on the rocks.
‘May I smoke?’ she asked.
‘Be my guest. Secondhand smoke is one of my few remaining pleasures.’
To his surprise, the tobacco he smelled was from a pipe. Mac Baren, he thought. Expensive. Just like the perfume she was wearing. He inhaled as deeply as he could. The intoxicating combination of the tobacco and the pine in his woodstove was as pleasurable as a good dinner, though he could have done without the perfume or the several aromatic products she had sprayed or rubbed on to her body.
He exhaled and began.
‘This is what I know. When my companion, Nathaniel Williams, recently contacted various insurance companies to track down claims involving a violinmaker named Amadeo Borlotti, they hemmed and hawed, as insurance companies are wont to do. The loudest hem came from Concordia, which clearly did not want to discuss the matter. But when friendly manager Sean Larson finally fessed up that Borlotti’s agent, one Minerva Forsythe, was, to put it bluntly, on the lam just around the time that Borlotti’s house gets burned down and Borlotti himself goes missing, that raised a red flag. Your turn. Tell me about you and Borlotti.’
‘Yes, I was his agent. He got me in a lot of trouble.’
She stopped.
Jacobus said, ‘That’s not exactly even-steven, honey. Tell me more. How did he get you in trouble?’
‘I showed him a violin. He convinced me it was a genuine Stradivarius and wrote a certificate for it. He stood to make a lot of money for writing that document. You see, when a dealer writes a certificate, he can charge a percentage of the value of the instrument.’
‘Don’t treat me like a babe in the woods, honey. I’m familiar with the ins and outs.’
‘I’m sorry. I just wanted to be clear. And then, because of Mr Borlotti’s authentication, I was able to sell the violin to someone and paid Mr Borlotti a big commission.’
‘Except it wasn’t a Stradivarius? Was that the trouble?’
‘I didn’t know that at the time. But the person I sold it to found out and now he’s very angry. That’s why I had to sneak in like this. I’m afraid someone’s been trying to follow me.’
Jacobus scratched his head. He put a thought in his back pocket.
‘And the sales price of that violin was two-and-a-half million dollars?’ he asked.
She gasped.
‘How did you know?’
‘That’s immaterial for now. I want to know more about your relationship with Borlotti. He’s dead, you know.’
‘Yes. I heard. It’s very sad, but there’s really not much to say. From our business dealings, everything had always seemed on the up and up.’
‘Such as?’
‘Such as his appraisals, certificates of authentication, claims for repairs. Our reimbursements to him and his customers were consistent with the industry. I had no reason to doubt his integrity. You can check my track record. I was with Concordia for seventeen years and made them a lot of money. You mention red flags. I could spot them before my esteemed colleagues even saw flags.’
She tapped her pipe on his ashtray, pressed in some more tobacco, and puffed on it aggressively, its pungent aroma embraced by Jacobus’s nasal cavity. For her, it was a pause in her narrative. For Jacobus, it was a red flag.
‘Clearly,’ she continued, ‘when I read that someone had burned down his house I became very distressed. It seemed evident that someone wanted to do him harm.’
‘Why did you jump to the conclusion that it had anything to do with the Stradivarius? After all, up to that point, weren’t you still under the impression it was genuine?’
‘In the insurance industry we have a term called risk-benefit analysis. I knew there was a likelihood the whole sordid business might have nothing to do with the violin, but I was unprepared to take the risk if it did.’
‘Here’s another question? You just said you were distressed when you read someone burned down Borlotti’s house.’
‘Of course I was. Who wouldn’t be?’
‘Indeed. But at that point in time when you first called me, no one had said someone burned it down, because no one knew that. All the media said was that it burned down. Why did you think otherwise?’
‘Can I have another scotch?’
‘Help yourself.’
‘Well, maybe I did jump to conclusions, but it certainly seemed like arson. Especially when he went missing. Wouldn’t you agree?’
Jacobus muttered something that could have been taken for yes or no, depending on what one wanted to hear.
Forsythe said, ‘You’ve told me how you gathered I was incognito, but you still haven’t told me how you knew it was me who called you and hung up. I didn’t give you my name.’
‘It’s very obvious. The day after it’s on the front page that poor Amadeo’s house burned down, I get a call. I asked myself, who would be in a position to have such a keen interest in Borlotti’s situation to be able to say “I know about Borlotti? He got me in trouble.” There aren’t all that many likely possibilities. Could be a customer. Could be a violin dealer. Could be a business person. Sometimes a few words paint a thousand pictures. The voice didn’t have th
e inflection of a violin player or a violin dealer, but it did sound a helluva lot like a business person! And when Nathaniel later determined that one Minerva Forsythe, who had been Borlotti’s agent, had created some discomfort with her colleagues at Concordia … Well, it seemed pretty self-evident.
‘And now with the news he’s been murdered, it became much more urgent to contact me. Whatever ‘it’ is. Which explains your presence tonight. Right?’
‘I’m nodding,’ she said.
‘Good. Now explain to me why, if you’re afraid you’re being followed and of being harmed, you’re telling me this all hush-hush and not going straight to the police?’
‘That’s a very reasonable question,’ Forsythe said.
‘Frankly, Ms. Forsythe, whether you think it’s reasonable or unreasonable is immaterial to me, but it is a question and what you’ve given me is not an answer.’
‘I’m afraid that …’ she started. ‘I’m concerned that the police will think that I was involved in the deception. Conspiring with Mr Borlotti to defraud.’
‘It’s convenient that Borlotti’s not around any more to contest that, don’t you think?’
‘That did occur to me, yes. The authorities might even have the preposterous idea that I was involved with his murder.’
‘So your risk-benefit analysis of the situation directed you to me.’
‘Exactly. I knew they had asked you to help them investigate.’
‘How did you know?’
‘Through some contacts who Mr Williams had been calling at the agencies. The connection to you was clear. Williams said as much. I felt it was my duty to tell you what Borlotti was trying to get away with. I don’t even need to get the money back that I gave him. I just want to help you.’
‘You can,’ Jacobus said. ‘All you have to do is tell me who you sold the violin to.’
‘That’s the problem. I can’t,’ Forsythe said.
‘And why not?’
‘If you knew him, you would know why not. It would put both of us in too much danger. He can be a dangerous man. You have to believe me.’