“I think you can imagine how we felt when it disappeared,” Malcolm says. “Especially Mr. Chernofsky. That caught us completely off guard. We didn’t know what to do.”
“But the Red Blazer Girls swooped in and saved the day,” Mr. Eliot gushes.
Wow. I mean, he has gushed before, but never about us.
Margaret lifts the violin out of its case. Her eyes well up and she sniffs back tears as her parents come closer to hug and kiss her.
Her father’s smile fills his face as he squeezes her. “You see? I tell you that one day soon you will play at Carnegie Hall. Now you have a violin that will show you the way.”
“That’s right, Margaret,” I say. “This thing has already been there, done that. Now it’s your turn.”
“I’m still confused about one thing,” she admits. “Actually, I’m confused about a lot of things, but one in particular. I left the message that we would be here today, that we had solved all of the clues, on Thursday afternoon. We didn’t get the violin back until Friday night. If you didn’t have the violin, what were you planning to do when we showed up here today?”
“Wow,” I said. “That is a good question.” I turn to Malcolm for an explanation.
Ever suspicious, Rebecca says, “You guys set up the whole robbery thing with Jaz, didn’t you? It was just another test for Miss Sherlock here. I always knew there was something funny about it.”
“I wish I could say you’re right, Miss Chen,” Malcolm says. “But believe me, that whole vanishing violin act was a complete surprise. My friend Harvey was definitely not pleased that his client’s final wish would not be fulfilled. No, it was all too real. But in answer to your question, Margaret, we did come up with a Plan B. Frankly, when we learned the violin had been stolen, we didn’t hold out much hope for its recovery. After all, the last time it was stolen, it was gone for fifty years! I called a meeting of everyone who’s here today, and we made a decision. Mr. Chernofsky had one other violin available—a beautiful example of his own work, a masterpiece that he offered at a fraction of its real value. We asked Kate St. Pierre to give it a test-drive to determine whether it would be suitable for your needs, and she gave it a glowing review. And I should tell you: every single person in this room—even your young friend Rafael—promised to pitch in to pay for it. You are a very fortunate young lady, Margaret, to have friends and family like these.”
Poor Margaret. She’s practically hysterical, sobbing and hugging her f’s and f. I take the violin out of her hands so that it doesn’t get tear-warped, and then step back with Leigh Ann and Becca to watch and wonder as we try to put all the pieces of this strange case together.
As the hysteria begins to settle down, people try to persuade Margaret to play something on her new, second-best friend. (I’m numero uno—it’s in my contract.) She’s in no shape to play, however. Not yet.
This gives Elizabeth a chance to stand and get everyone’s attention.
“If I could just have my girls join me here for a moment. Margaret, Leigh Ann, Rebecca, Sophie. Please.”
I see a bag in Elizabeth’s hand and swap my worries for greedy anticipation. You see, it’s not just a bag; it’s a little blue bag. A Tiffany blue bag. Oh, calm down, I tell myself. Just because it’s in a Tiffany bag doesn’t mean it’s from Tiffany. It could be bagels and cream cheese, and that would be nice, too. Right?
Elizabeth pulls the four of us together, facing our friends and families, while she stands behind us, arms on our shoulders. “These four girls have done more for me than you can imagine. In just a few weeks, they managed to find the ring that was hidden so cleverly by my father and helped bring my daughter and granddaughter—and this old coot, Malcolm—back into my life. As you know, the ring they recovered, one of the two Rings of Rocamadour, is now in the Metropolitan Museum, where it belongs.”
Dad leads everyone in a cheer, and as ever, I am Ms. Uncontrollable Blushface. A peek in Raf’s direction (he’s keeping his distance from my dad) confirms it: he is loving this moment.
“However,” Elizabeth continues, “before we delivered the ring to the museum, I took it to an old friend who owed me a favor.” She reaches into her little blue bag and hands each of us a tiny, blue-wrapped box. “Girls, from Malcolm, Caroline, Roger, Caitlin, and me, thank you again, from the bottom of our hearts. Wherever life takes us, I know we’ll always remember the wonderful thing you did for my family. And I hope these help you remember how grateful we are. Go on, open them up.”
My pulse is pounding in my ears as I tear away the paper. Inside is a blue cardboard box, and inside that, a black jewelry box. I flip the lid up and my jaw drops open. It is the Ring of Rocamadour: that familiar gold band with its cross of rubies. Becca, Leigh Ann, and Margaret hold out their boxes; they each have one, too.
“They’re perfect copies,” Elizabeth explains. “Made by a friend of mine at Tiffany’s. And guaranteed to be the only ones ever made. That was part of the arrangement we made with the museum—that the ring would never be duplicated except for these four.”
Here’s something else that will never be exactly duplicated: the feeling I have at that moment as I slip the ring onto my finger and look up at my three best friends.
Chapter 31
Maybe not worthy of a chapter all to itself, but epilogues are like that sometimes
After the celebration, I take a cab uptown with Mom and Dad so that I can quickly change and head to Asphalt Green for my first practice with the swim team. Michelle, the coach, greets me enthusiastically as I come through the door to the pool. She is in her fifties, swims a couple of miles a day, and still has energy to burn.
“Great to see you, Sophie! I am so glad you decided to join us. You girls have so many things going on these days that I truly appreciate your commitment. I don’t know if I can promise it will be fun, because it requires a lot of work, but it will be good for you. For the record, I wasn’t just trying to flatter you when I said you have real promise as a swimmer. You were one of my strongest juniors. You look like you’ve grown a few inches, which will help, too. I think we’re going to try you out in the one hundred and two hundred individual medleys and some of the relays. How does that sound to you?”
“Sounds great.” I look around the pool deck at a sea of unfamiliar faces. “Is there anybody here from my old team? I don’t see anybody I know.”
“Nobody from your junior days, but there’s one other girl from your school who will be joining us. In fact, you two will be on the relay teams together. Ah, here she is right now.”
I turn in the direction Michelle is pointing and find myself face to face with—of course—Livvy Klack. My face reveals all, and Michelle immediately says, “Oh good, you do know each other.”
“Oh, I know her,” Livvy says. “Don’t I, Sophie?”
“Um … yeah.”
“Excellent,” says Michelle. “Why don’t we get started? Let’s do an eight hundred warm-up, and then we’ll take it from there.”
I start to bend down to feel the water temperature before jumping in, but stop myself halfway. Nope. I promised I would take the plunge, and here I am—hot or cold, Livvy or no Livvy.
And with a splash, I dive into the deep end of the pool.
Appendix: How to Solve the Final Logic Problem
Start by making a copy of the next page—you don’t want to write in a nice, new book, do you? I didn’t think so.
How to use the chart: Once you determine a street, address, or apartment number, circle it. If you know that a musician can’t live at a specific location, cross it out. The crossing out part is very important! Many of your answers will be revealed by your new best friend, POE (no, not Edgar Allan). “POE” stands for “process of elimination.” If you eliminate all the wrong choices, you will be left with only one possibility—the correct answer!
First, read through the clues for the given information.
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 street address for Apt. 3B on Essex Street is neither the highest nor the lowest (the first grid clue).
The man in Apt. 5C at no. 301 is not on Spring Street and doesn’t play the flute.
Neither 288 nor 770 is the address of the building on Spring Street.
1. From clue 1 we know that the piano player lives on Hester. Put a circle around Hester in the piano player’s row. And if the piano player lives on Hester, that means no one else can, right? So cross out all the other Hester Streets. That same clue also tells us that the piano player does not live in Apartment 4M, or at address numbers 127 or 301, so cross out those possibilities for the piano.
2. Using clue 2, circle Apartment 2J for the bassoon player, and cross out Grand and Essex. Then cross out all the other 2J’s.
3. Clue 3 gives us the xylophone player’s street—Bleecker. Circle it, and then cross out all the other Bleecker Streets, and cross out number 288 as a possibility for the xylophone. By process of elimination, you should see that the bassoon player lives on Spring Street, because it’s the only choice left! Go ahead and cross out all the other Spring Streets.
4. The fourth clue tells us about the violinist. In his row, cross out 456, Grand, and 7A. The violinist must live on Essex, and when you cross out the only remaining Essex Street, we see that the flute player lives on Grand, and we also know that the address is 456. Be sure to cross out all the other 456’s. At this point, you have a street for every musician. We’re almost there!
5. Clue 5 is very important. Here we find that the violinist’s apartment on Essex Street is 3B. Circle it, and cross out the remaining 3B’s. Then cross out the highest (770) and the lowest (127) for the violinist, according to the clue.
6. The sixth clue reveals that 301 is not the address at Spring Street and that the person at 301 is not the flute player. We also learn that the apartment at 301 is 5C. Because you know that the bassoon player lives on Spring Street, cross out 301 and 5C for him. The next part is a little tricky: At this point, the only musicians that could live at 301 are the violinist and the xylophone player. But since you already know that the violinist lives in Apartment 3B, he can’t live at 301, so cross it out. That means that the xylophone player must live in Apartment 5C at 301 and the violinist must live at 288. Circle those answers, and then cross out the other possible addresses and apartments for the xylophone player. By POE, you’ve also revealed the piano player’s apartment to be 7A. Circle that, and cross out all other 7A’s, which, in turn, reveals that the flute player lives in 4M. Circle that answer.
7. According to clue 7, the building on Spring Street (the bassoon player) is neither 288 nor 770. Therefore, the address must be 127.
Aaand, the answers are:
Hey! You’re not trying to sneak a peek at the answers before you finish reading, are you? I didn’t think so. Because I just know you wouldn’t want to do anything to disappoint me, would you?
Seriously, don’t do something you’ll regret later! I have total faith that you have the, um, smart-itude to solve the problem without resorting to peeking. So sharpen your pencil and get to work!
Oh my goodness. You again? Haven’t we been through this already? NO PEEKING! On the other hand, if you have read the whole book and figured out where the violin was–good for you! You may turn the page!
Bassoon: 127 Spring Street, Apartment 2J
Flute: 456 Grand Street, Apartment 4M
Piano: 770 Hester Street, Apartment 7A
Violin: 288 Essex Street, Apartment 3B
Xylophone: 301 Bleecker Street, Apartment 5C
Did you solve this? Nice work! Maybe you should think about getting your own red blazer.
About the Author
Michael D. Beil’s first Red Blazer Girls installment, The Ring of Rocamadour, was hailed as “a PG Da Vinci Code … with a fun mystery, great friends, and a bit of romance” (School Library Journal).
Mr. Beil is a former attorney who now teaches English and helms the theater program at a New York City high school. No mere mild-mannered academic, he has also sailed, written plays, and climbed Mount Kilimanjaro. He finds literary inspiration in horror films, Encyclopedia Brown, and Rumpole of the Bailey and earnestly hopes that readers will try to figure out the puzzles and codes in The Vanishing Violin even faster than the Blazers’ brainy Margaret.
Mr. Beil has every confidence in his readers’ tenacity and, uh, smart-itude.
In a starred review, Booklist called for “more Red Blazer Girls, please!” Mr. Beil suspects that further mysterious mayhem is inevitable. He and his wife, Laura Grimmer, share their Manhattan home with two dogs and two oversized cats.
THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2010 by Michael D. Beil
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Visit us on the Web! www.randomhouse.com/kids
Educators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools, visit us at www.randomhouse.com/teachers
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Beil, Michael D.
The Red Blazer Girls : the vanishing violin / Michael D. Beil. — 1st ed.
p. cm.
Summary: Seventh-graders Sophie, Margaret, Rebecca, and Leigh Ann follow a trail of cryptic clues to locate a rare violin, catch the person sneaking into St. Veronica’s School for late-night cleaning and redecorating, and outsmart a conniving classmate.
eISBN: 978-0-375-89627-9
[1. Puzzles—Fiction. 2. Friendship—Fiction. 3. Catholic schools—Fiction.
4. Schools—Fiction. 5. Mystery and detective stories.] I. Title.
PZ7.B38823495Reg 2010
[Fic]—dc22
2009023984
Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.
My, isn’t this très puzzling?
The author wishes to acknowledge his debt to Martin Gardner’s Codes, Ciphers and Secret Writing (Simon & Schuster, 1972; Dover Edition, 1984).
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