“Well, if it really was Ben, then the police will be all over that evidence, and I’m sure they’ll catch him,” Margaret says. “But if it was somebody else, and the crime was committed in some other way, then how about giving us a chance to suss out that possibility?”
He sighs and smiles. “Okay, girls. You want to investigate, go ahead. What’s the harm?”
No doubt humoring us, he allows us to poke around the shop for a bit while he sands and saws away in the back.
As the artistic one, Rebecca is given the job of making a scale drawing of the interior layout of the shop, to which she’ll add outside details. Margaret and I measure the rooms with a tape measure from the workshop. Rebecca’s drawing shows the size and exact location of the windows and doors, the furniture, the heating vents, virtually anything and everything.
From the inside, we notice the metal tapes for the alarm attached to the two large front windows. We call in Mr. Chernofsky to demonstrate how a broken or opened window will trigger the alarm.
“Are there motion detectors?” Margaret asks, flashing newly acquired security system expertise.
Mr. C. explains that they are not practical because of Pumpkin, the cat, who would set them off constantly. Some might find this irresponsible. I think it’s sweet. So there.
A heavy, solidly built wooden door with three industrial-strength dead bolts separates the violin shop from Perkatory.
“How about this door? Can you open it for us?” I ask.
He turns the tarnished brass knobs of the bolts with satisfying ker-chunks and pulls the door open, revealing the back side of an identical door.
“Where does this go?” Rebecca asks, trying the knob of the second door.
“Think about it, Becca,” I say. “You know that door in the wall of Perkatory? The one with all the coat hooks on it and the table right up against it? This has to be that same door.”
Becca examines the edge of the door frame. “There’s no alarm on this door. Maybe someone picked the locks—” She stops midthought as a slight grin curls the right side of her mouth.
“What? Do you see something?” I demand.
“It’s what I don’t see. Look at the back side of the door into the violin shop. What do you see?”
“Umm. Nothing?”
“Exactly. No one could pick the locks, because there are no locks to pick! These bolts are accessible only from inside the shop. Same thing with the door to Perk. No place to put a key from the outside. I guess that’s why it doesn’t need an alarm. These doors are as good as a wall.”
The door is closed and the bolts turned again.
Leigh Ann raises her hand. “Um, I have a question.”
“Go ahead, Miss Jaimes,” Becca says with a smile.
“The violin was stolen on Saturday or Sunday, right? Well, what if the thief knew about this door, and what if he came in here, you know, pretending to be a customer, and turned those three locks while nobody was looking? Then he could come right through the door from Perkatory, right?”
We all look at Leigh Ann in openmouthed awe.
“Behold the Dancer Detective!” I shout.
“Way to play, L.A.!” Becca raps.
“It is a great idea, Leigh Ann,” Margaret says, “but there’s one problem. Mr. C., were the bolts locked when you came in this morning?”
He scratches his head. “Yes. I remember. I am positive. The police asked me to open the door. I had to unlock all three for them.”
Leigh Ann slaps a palm to her forehead. “Ohhhh! Duh. The only way to relock the locks is from the inside. And there’s no other way out, except for the front and back doors.”
“Which were locked and alarmed,” Margaret finishes.
“The only other opening big enough for a person to get through is this,” Rebecca says. She crosses the room to a circular stained glass window located just above her eye level. It is beautiful; dozens of small triangles of different colors are pieced together to form a geometric pattern that creates the illusion of being three-dimensional. The shadow of the iron grate outside is barely visible through the glass, and Becca points out the unbroken metal tape of the alarm system around the outside edge.
“What about the floor? The ceiling? The vents?” I ask, ask, ask.
Margaret, who is down the hall in Mr. Chernofsky’s office, calls out to Becca. “Did you draw that?” she asks, pointing out a rectangle of wood trim in the corner of the office ceiling.
Becca nods. “Got it, boss. What is it?”
Margaret climbs up on Mr. C.’s desk, but she still can’t reach it. “It’s like a trapdoor. It must go to the second floor.”
Mr. Chernofsky comes into his office looking for us, and smiles at the sight of Margaret up on his desk in her stocking feet. “Find anything good?”
“I don’t know. Where does this door lead?”
“It doesn’t really lead anywhere. It’s there so the plumbers and electricians can get to the pipes and wires in the ceiling.”
“But isn’t there an apartment above you?” Rebecca asks. “I’ll bet I could crawl through to there.”
“There is about a foot of space between the ceiling here and the floor of the upstairs apartment,” Mr. C. says. “It has been a long time since I looked in there, but I don’t think you could fit. As I said, there are pipes and wires; it’s very crowded. And even if you could squeeze yourself in, there would have to be an opening in the apartment floor, and I don’t think there is one.”
Margaret hops down from the desk. “So, who lives up there? Any suspicious characters?”
Mr. Chernofsky chuckles. “I think you should meet them for yourself. That will satisfy your suspicions.”
Our suspicions are going to have to wait, though. Mom calls just as we’re leaving Mr. Chernofsky’s shop and tells me I need to come home. Dad has the night off from the restaurant, and we’re going out for sushi.
“Where are you, anyway?” she inquires in a Mom-like way. “Who are you with?”
“We’re, like, just leaving Chernofsky’s. Something big happened. I’ll tell you about it later. Right now it’s, like, just me and Margaret. Becca and Leigh Ann left, like, a minute ago.”
“Well, that’s, like, good. Now get, like, home. And, like, tell Margaret she’s, like, welcome to, like, come with us.”
Mom has apparently been attending the Mr. Eliot School of “Humor.”
“You made, like, your point, Mom. Twice. I’ll ask her. Bye.”
“Ask me what?”
“Sushi?”
She wrinkles her nose. “Me and sushi—not so much.”
“You don’t know what you’re missing.”
“Raw fish?”
“Well, yeah. But when you call it that, it sounds gross. ‘Sushi’ and ‘sashimi’ sound so much better. Come on. You’re always telling me that colleges like students with lots of life experiences, and how you have this ‘insatiable thirst for knowledge’—and all that yakkety-yak-yak. How are you gonna get into Harvard if you won’t even try a spicy tuna roll?”
“I don’t think that’s what they mean,” she says.
“Oh, I think you’re wrong, Miss I’m Too Too Clever to Read Seventeen. I think it’s exactly what they mean. And don’t look at me like that. I know that you know that I read it, and I don’t care. In fact, I may read it out loud to you … on the train. In front of strangers. You might just like it if you gave it a chance. I think you’re afraid to try it.” I take a much-needed breath.
“Sushi or Seventeen?”
“Either! Both!”
She stares at me with that raised eyebrow of hers. “Why are you getting so mad?”
“I’m not mad. I—I’m—never mind.”
In silence, we start walking up Lexington. When we get to the Sixty-eighth Street station, Margaret asks, “Subway or sidewalk?”
“Subway,” I grumble, and we take the stairs down to the platform. Across the tracks, on the downtown side, the old violinist with the Abe Lincoln
beard we saw at Eighty-sixth Street is playing “Master of the House” from Les Misérables, a song that could make an undertaker smile. So I’m grinning like a chimp when suddenly he spots us—and stops in midsong to stare. I’m not exactly scared, but I am creeped out enough to be glad the dreaded third rail is between us.
Without taking my eyes off him, I whisper to Margaret, “Why is he staring at us?”
Before she can answer, a train pulls up and we squeeze into the steamy, crowded car, thankful that we’re going only two stops. While we’re standing there waiting for the doors to close, our fine fiddling friend starts to play “Ave Maria.”
We finally start moving, and I relax. “That guy did exactly the same thing the last time we saw him. He’s wiggin’ me out.”
“Last time he was playing songs from Phantom.”
“I mean the staring. And the other song. ‘Ave Maria.’”
“It’s probably the blazers,” she says. “He sees our Catholic-school uniforms. What if that’s the person sending me the letters? What if that’s the violin? Wouldn’t that be an amazing coincidence?”
Can’t argue with that.
“Shoot! That reminds me—I forgot to go over to the park to leave the message that we solved that pigpen code. I guess I’ve been preoccupied with that other violin.”
“So, how’s your plan coming along?”
“My plan?”
“Your plan for getting inside Mr. Chernofsky’s upstairs neighbors’ apartment.”
Margaret grins. “You know me too well, Sophie St. Pierre. As a matter of fact, I was just starting to think about that. You have any ideas?”
“Girl Scout cookies?”
“We don’t even know any Girl Scouts.”
“Suspiciously underage census takers? Jehovah’s Witnesses?”
“Actually, I’m thinking we could be reporters for the school newspaper, doing a story about people in the neighborhood. They’ll let us in; people automatically trust kids in parochial-school uniforms. They shouldn’t, but they do. We ask them a few questions: how long they’ve lived here, what they remember about the old days, that kind of thing. We take a few pictures. And while we’re there, one of us asks to use the bathroom and does a little snooping.”
“Aren’t you jumping to a little bit of a conclusion? I got the impression that Mr. C. thinks it’s funny that you might even consider them. It’s probably a ninety-year-old lady.”
“I bet there are ninety-year-old thieves. Right now everyone is a suspect. I just saw this guy on the news pulling a tugboat out in the harbor, holding the rope in his teeth. He’s eighty-five.”
“His teeth?” My jaw tightens up just thinking about it.
His orthodontist must be very disappointed.
Chapter 17
Personally, I like my revenge served with a glass of ice-cold milk–and cookies
“You know, I’ve been stewing about this for two days,” Leigh Ann says between bites of dry, slightly burned cafeteria toast. “I know that you guys want to help out Ben and Mr. Chernofsky, and, Margaret, I know you’re busy trying to figure out all these clues to find this guy who wants to give you that violin … BUT I think we’re forgetting something important.”
The rest of us look at each other, confused. “We are?”
Leigh Ann has a diabolical look in her eyes—a look I’ve never seen before. “It’s a little thing I like to call revenge,” she says. “Guys, Livvy Klack totally burned us. Well, not you, Becca, but the rest of us.”
“No, count me in. I love revenge.”
“My, this is an interesting development,” Margaret notes. “Leigh Ann, I had no idea you were so devious. I like it.”
“I just think we have to get her back somehow.”
Margaret chews on her thumbnail. “You know what they say about revenge, don’t you? It is a dish best served cold.”
“I’ve heard that but never understood it,” Becca admits.
“It means that it is most satisfying when some time has passed after the reason for the revenge. When it’s completely unexpected.”
“So, you agree we should do something really heinous to her, but not quite yet,” Leigh Ann says.
“Precisely,” says Margaret.
“Public humiliation,” I suggest.
“She’s a witch! Burn her!” Becca shouts a little too loudly, earning a shhh-and-scowl from Sister Eugenia, seated two tables away.
“Nah,” Margaret says firmly. “There are sprinkler systems and fire extinguishers all over the school. We need to get her back in a way that shows exactly how much smarter we are. Sophie, remember how you felt the moment when you knew you just had your old buddy Mr. Winterbutt? That perfect instant when you snapped his picture? That’s the kind of revenge I’m talking about.”
Leigh Ann nods enthusiastically. “I have an idea, but I need a day to think it through. We will make Livvy Klack regret even thinking about messing with us.”
She used to be such a nice girl.
Margaret is waiting for me to cram my coat into our locker before English class when she leans in close and whispers, “Guess who I heard from last night.”
By the smile on her face, I figure it out. “No way. Andrew?”
She nods. “We texted back and forth for about twenty minutes. He’s coming today.”
“Coming where? Here?”
“Remember? Basketball?”
One of Sister Bernadette’s latest brainstorms is to invite kids—boys included—from other schools for “some fun, coed, no-pressure basketball.” She is generally opposed to school dances, so this is her compromise with the student council. Today, seventh and eighth graders from three schools will invade St. Veronica’s smelly gym-natorium.
“What else did he say?”
“He wanted to know if we were going to play.”
“We are, aren’t we? And I’d better text Raf and remind him. He probably forgot.”
“Kind of like you did?”
“I didn’t forget. And stop trying to change the subject. I want to hear more about Andrew.”
“Come to think of it, he did mention that he’s quite curious about something you said the other night.”
“Me?” Gulp.
“Uh-huh. He said to ask you if you really think they’re fake.”
Because the four of us and Raf are standing there in our gym clothes at 3:01, Sister Bernadette picks us to play the first game against some girls from Faircastle Academy. The FAs have recruited LaShawn Taylor, a kid from Raf’s school, St. Thomas Aquinas. He is a year older and a full head taller than Raf, and he looks as if he’s a minute away from playing for the Knicks.
Raf is our best player, followed by Becca, who can at least dribble without constantly losing the ball to the other team. Margaret, Leigh Ann, and I occasionally rise to so-so-ness.
The game starts, and Becca spends most of it yelling at us to move or to pass the ball or to shoot. Raf is stuck with the impossible task of guarding LaShawn. And though the four girls on his team honestly stink, LaShawn single-handedly destroys us, 21–9.
Andrew, who’s with a few friends from Davidson, is waiting for us as we walk off the court.
“Already?” he asks. “What happened?”
Raf, whose tongue is hanging out like a golden retriever’s, points at LaShawn. “He happened.”
“So, it did not go well.”
Leigh Ann elbows me and jerks her head toward the door. “Uh-oh. Incoming.”
It’s Livvy, and she is aiming right for us. Well, right for Andrew, anyway.
“Anybody got a match?” I say.
“I’m so glad you came! God, can you believe how many losers are here? It’s like some kind of convention for geeks from Queens.” Livvy says “Queens” like it’s a leper colony.
While Margaret is stuck standing there next to Andrew, Leigh Ann pulls Rebecca, Raf, and me together. “Did she just call us losers?”
“And she called you a Queens geek,” Rebecca says. “Jeez,
what would she say if she knew I live in Chinatown?”
Leigh Ann fumes. She starts making a move toward Livvy. “I’m going to slug her.”
Rebecca and I grab her by the arms and pull her away. “No, no, no, you’re not,” I say. “You’ll just get in trouble, and Livvy will come out on top. Remember what we talked about this morning? Wait till it’s colder.”
“Just one punch,” Leigh Ann says. “I promise I’ll make it count. I’ve never punched anybody, but man, she really needs one.” She finally calms down enough to be safe to herself and others, and then tells us with a straight face, “You know, I’ll bet your first punch is way more memorable than your first kiss.”
Becca and I both burst out laughing at the absolute sincerity she says it with and at the thought of our graceful, stunning friend punching anybody.
“Maybe,” Becca says. “But we’re not gonna find out about either today.”
Me? I’m not so sure Leigh Ann is right. In order to beat out my first kiss, it would have to be one heck of a punch.
Margaret escapes Livvy’s laser beam and leaves Andrew with her to be led around the gym like a prize bull.
“Do I appear solid?” she asks. “Because just now I was invisible. Livvy stood there talking to Andrew for five minutes and never once so much as flicked a fake eyelash at me.”
“What did Andrew do?” I ask.
“He kept looking at me, and I think he rolled his eyes at her once when she wasn’t looking. Do you think he knows what she’s really like? I gave him the text-me sign when I left. I’m dying to know what he thinks about her.”
I don’t say anything, but for me, that’s two strikes against this guy. I mean, how could he just leave Margaret standing there like that?
“There’s no way he likes her,” Leigh Ann says. “He looks too smart to fall for her.”
“Maybe. But what was going on over here with you guys?” Margaret asks. “What did I miss?”
“Remember that sweet, innocent girl named Leigh Ann?” I say. “Well, she’s gone. This girl, who took her place, was ready to clobber Livvy right here in the gym, in front of Sister Bernadette and everybody.”
The Vanishing Violin Page 12