A poster on the front wall of the performance center identified the festival organizers as James Frost, Veronica Winslow, and Mitchell L. Stone III. He found the trio huddled around a small table in a cramped office at the rear of the building. The blinds were drawn but the room faced west, and on that sunny afternoon the window air-conditioner did little to cool the space.
Cubiak knocked. “Sorry to interrupt,” he said.
The three looked up startled.
“I hope this is important, Sheriff. We have a busy schedule,” Frost said after introductions were made. He was short and stout and patted his forehead with a white handkerchief as he spoke.
“I’m sure you do.” There wasn’t an empty chair, so Cubiak stood and told them about the woman who was found dead on the ferry.
“I heard about that. It’s too bad, of course, but what does it have to do with us?” Winslow said. She was tall and slim and wore a tailored navy suit topped with a flowered shawl. In the heat, the layers seemed incongruous.
“She was here during the enactment, and I hoped that one of you could identify her,” Cubiak said. He showed them the photo.
Winslow replied first. “I never saw this woman before. She isn’t one of our musicians, that’s for certain.”
“Could she have been part of the crew?”
Frost dismissed the notion with a wave. “No. No way.”
“You’re sure?”
“Absolutely. I vetted the whole lot.”
“She was seen on the grounds yesterday, and I’m trying to learn what brought her here. It’s possible someone involved with the event knew her or knew why she was here.”
“And?”
“And I need the names of everyone involved with the festival—extras, film crew, musicians, whatever.”
The AC momentarily clicked off and in the hard silence that followed, the organizers exchanged somber glances.
“Sheriff, you have to realize that we can’t have a dead woman associated with Dixan V. It would ruin everything. Not just this year’s event, which so many people have worked for so hard, but”—Winslow gestured toward the grounds outside the center—“everything.”
“Why? Because four decades ago, a woman died after the first Dixan festival?”
The three stirred uneasily.
“It’s more than that. You don’t understand because you’re not from here,” Frost said, his tone harsh. “Sorry, no offense meant.”
That was the second time in two days that a local had said that. Cubiak nodded to indicate that none was taken. He had lived in Door County for nearly seven years and had served as the top law enforcement officer during most of that tenure, but he knew that the longtime residents still considered him a newcomer.
“I don’t mean to sound insensitive to the poor woman on the ferry, but it’s just that we are trying to live down our own sorry history with the public and the Dixan sponsors. This year’s festival is our chance to salvage the island’s reputation. If we don’t succeed, as Veronica just said, then it’s over for us. Finito. Poof.” Frost blew a puff of air at his empty palm like a child would at the fuzzy head of a dandelion.
Winslow pushed a small brochure across the table. Her nails were neatly manicured, and it was clear from her posture and manner that she was the kind of person who took appearances seriously. “This is from the first—the only—Dixan Festival ever held on Washington Island before now.”
Cubiak skimmed the headline. “I’ve heard a little about it. But that was forty years ago.”
“That is correct.”
“During which a rare violin disappeared.”
Winslow sighed and exchanged frustrated looks with her colleagues.
Mitchell Stone stretched his elongated neck and spoke for the first time. “Not a violin, Sheriff. A viola da gamba,” he said as he adjusted his striped tie. “Shall I assume you don’t know the difference?”
Cubiak ignored the dig. He was out of his league and they all knew it. What had Sister Mary Nicholas told his class of fourth graders: true humility is acknowledging what you know as well as what you don’t know. “You may,” he said.
Stone cleared his throat. With his bald pate and the tortoiseshell glasses perched on his arched nose, he looked like a man who should have a couple of roman numerals after his name, the sheriff thought.
“Stringed instruments have been plucked and bowed since ancient times. I won’t bore you with the ancestral lineage, but for our purposes let us just say that they eventually evolved into two separate families or categories. The newer, more modern family includes the violin, viola, cello, and bass. The other, older family is called viola da gamba, which includes a number of different instruments, from the high-pitched, five-string pardessus to the deeper viola bastarda.”
Stone was showing off, and Cubiak let him.
“Many people argue that the gamba was the precursor of the violin family, but it’s not. What is indisputable is that by the early seventeenth century, the violin had overtaken the viola da gamba as the preferred string instrument in classical music and has maintained a firm grasp on that claim. Meanwhile the viola da gamba faded into the shadows, only to enjoy a revival of sorts over the past hundred years, to the point where it has cultivated its own following and devotees.”
Frost pointed to the picture on the front fold of the pamphlet. The black-and-white photo depicted a rigid and unsmiling man holding an odd-looking instrument.
“That is a viola da gamba. To the uneducated eye it looks like a large violin but there are important differences in size, tenor, material, and just so much more. The sounds are different as well. Even playing is different. A violin is held en braccio, in the arms like this.” Frost swept his up to demonstrate. “And the bow is grasped from above, like so.” He arched his hand with the fingers pointing down. “But a gamba is held with the legs. In fact, gamba means leg in Italian,” he said, leaning over and opening his knees to show how this would be done. “And the bow is held with an underhand grip.” This time the tips of his fingers pointed up.
Cubiak glanced at the pamphlet. “Is that the instrument that disappeared?”
“Sadly yes. This is the renowned yellow viol, a rare sixteenth-century instrument fashioned by Augusto Fiorrelli. Not quite in the league of a Strad—a Stradivarius—but worth close to a quarter million even back then. It vanished from Washington Island in the midst of the first Dixan festival. The man holding it is Franz Acker, who at the time was among the world’s premier gambists.”
Winslow took up the rest of the story. “The Europeans resented the fact that the Gamba Association picked America to host the festival and then were even more appalled that such a remote location was selected. Ultimately, they consented to attend and perform with our American gambists only because Acker agreed to be the headliner, and he came only because he was assured that the isolated nature of the island enhanced and even guaranteed security. When the viol disappeared, there was plenty of finger-pointing. A chorus of ‘I told you so’ and ‘never again’ erupted, and our reputation was in shreds. In the rarefied world of the gamba, Door County became a pariah, and for four decades the threat or promise, depending on how you look at it, of ‘never again’ held sway.”
“Until now,” Cubiak said.
“Yes, until now.” Stone looked over his glasses at the sheriff. “In one of life’s sweet ironies, George Peter Payette, one of the world’s foremost gambists and the only one to participate in every Dixan festival, lives on the peninsula. It was because of his reputation and his involvement in the festival that the association agreed to return. You understand,” he went on quickly, “that the festival is held only once every ten years—hence the name—making this only the fifth in the history of the society.”
“What became of the stolen viol?”
Stone lost some of his starch. “It was never found. The island was searched immediately and again several times later but with nothing to show. There was a horrific storm the night the instrument wen
t missing, and one theory is that whoever took it slipped away from the island on a private boat that sank in the strait on the way to the mainland.”
“Is there any proof to that story?”
“Absolutely none,” Frost said. “If it’s true, then the viol is lost forever. But if by some means the yellow viol made it to the peninsula and out into the world, I’d say it’s tucked away in the private collection of a discriminating financier or someone of that ilk.”
“It’s worth how much now? A million, maybe?”
Stone gave a rueful smile. “Oh, indeed. That much and perhaps more. Some musicologists would even say it’s priceless. You see, it’s really unique. Most early viols were made of mahogany, but Fiorrelli made the yellow viol from a plank of South American wood that was unknown in Europe. Some historians think it was the kind of wood the Cubans used to make cigar boxes. In any case, it was considered quite exotic on the continent, and the sound it produced was very special.”
“The wood was yellow?”
“A logical assumption for anyone to make, but no, it was not. All the great masters developed their own secret varnishes. Stradivari’s was red in tone and Fiorrelli’s yellow. The finishes provided a mere hint of coloration; they did not actually distinguish the hue of the wood. In the case of the yellow viol, the name comes from the strings. Fiorrelli created the instrument as a gift for his wife, whose favorite color was yellow. To please her, he soaked the strings, which were made of sheep gut, in a solution made from the vermilion flowers that grew in her garden. According to old texts, which may be hyperbole, the strings glowed as if they’d been kissed by the sun. Eventually, of course, they were replaced with ordinary strings, but the name stuck.”
“You’ve all seen it, then?”
“Of course. We were all here for the first festival. We’ve all seen the yellow viol.”
“Did any of you play it?”
Stone regarded Cubiak as if he were a philistine. “Certainly not. Acker was the only person who was allowed to touch it.”
Except for the thief, the sheriff thought. “I still need the lists,” he said.
Frost crossed to a bank of metal file cabinets and tugged at a drawer that refused to open. “And you shall have them, sir. We are not obstructionists. But I hope you understand our position.” He yanked again and the drawer sprang toward him, throwing him off balance. When he recovered his footing, he rummaged through the contents. “Music, like so much in life, consists of tangibles, notes on a page as it were. But musicians, again like so many, are a superstitious lot. Beethoven’s music is monumentally great, but beyond the power of the notes on the page, his compositions are imbued with the tragedy of his deafness. Even though he didn’t lose his hearing until later in life, we are still intrigued by the idea that a man who could not hear could create such magnificent sounds. How? How, we ask ourselves? So there is the man, the music, and in the case of Beethoven the truth of his deafness. And the mythology that arises because of it. It is a good myth. But this story of a woman who dies after leaving the island on the day of the reenactment of Dixan I is a very different matter. It has all the earmarks of a bad myth. If it takes hold and her death is associated with the festival, then it becomes a curse.”
The organizer handed a sheaf of papers to Cubiak. “We can’t allow that to happen.”
There were more than one hundred names on the lists that Frost provided: fifty-six musicians; fourteen staff; thirty-seven extras, all of whom were island residents; eleven people on the security force; and a three-person film crew—producer, soundman, and cameraman. Surely it takes more than three people to make a movie? the sheriff thought.
“What about food service?” he said.
“I have no idea. We contracted out with a local company.” Frost scribbled the contact information on a piece of paper. “You’ll have to talk to them about their employees.”
Cubiak stopped at the door. “By the way, how’s the festival going?”
“What do you mean?”
“Did you get the musicians you wanted? How are ticket sales going?”
“Yes, we’ve got the top names here, and tickets are selling well. You’ve seen the crowds.”
“It’s a success, then.”
“Indeed.”
“Congratulations.”
The musicians were in rehearsal, so the sheriff questioned the support team first. No one recognized the dead woman in the photo.
He struck out again with the security team. None of the men and women on detail remembered seeing the victim or noticing anything unusual.
“Nothing, huh? I could’ve told you that before you started,” the head boss said when Cubiak stopped at the security tent. “These classical music fans are a pretty sedate crowd. Anyway we’re really not that focused on the people.”
“Then why are you here?”
“Mainly, we’re guarding the instruments. You wouldn’t believe what some of them go for. A musician from Missouri told me she had to take out a second mortgage to buy her violin.”
“Viol,” Cubiak said.
“Whatever. The guy who’s doing the master workshop? His viol is insured for more than two hundred grand. All told, there’s a couple million dollars’ worth of stuff up here.”
“What happens at night?”
“They got a choice. Some of them leave their instruments in the performance center, where we keep them under lock and key. Others take them with. If they do that, they’re responsible. We only look out for items on the festival grounds.”
Cubiak held out higher hopes for the members of the film crew, professionals who would be focused on filming people. He fancied himself a bit of a movie buff. From his Chicago life, he remembered when it seemed as if entire neighborhoods were taken over by Hollywood film crews. The streets were lined with convoys of unmarked trucks with black cables spilling out the back doors, and generators pumping electricity into forests of blinding lights.
After considerable searching for the Dixan V film crew, he was directed to the producer, a slender, fortysomething woman who was unloading lights and tripods from a beige minivan.
“This is it?” he said, trying to keep the disappointment from his voice.
She laughed. “We’ve got a cameraman, he’s our cowboy, and a nerd working the sound board and mixer. As the producer, I’m the ‘mom,’ the person who makes sure that what needs to get done gets done, tells people where the toilets are, and has a pocket full of candy.”
She pointed to the small assemblage of equipment. “We’re shooting a fifty-minute PBS documentary, Sheriff, not a major motion picture. Combining our footage with stills and video clips from the first fest, we’ll have more than enough to capture the essence of the story.”
He showed her Jane Doe’s photo.
“Sorry, no. I never saw her but if you leave that with me I’ll show it to my colleagues when they’re done working. We shot all day yesterday so it’s possible we caught her on some of our footage. It’s all digitalized, and I’ll upload it tonight. If I send you the password, you can go through it.”
“How much do you have?”
“Six or seven hours’ worth, maybe more.”
There went his evenings. “Thanks,” he said. Again he handed out his card.
The musicians were still in rehearsal when he got back to the performance center, so he headed to the food service.
The tent was closing when he got there. Again he missed lunch—croissant sandwiches, judging from the discards on the tables. He showed the photo to the two cooks. Cubiak didn’t expect any positive results and wasn’t surprised when they didn’t recognize her, though he was grateful for the sandwich they gave him. He ate and waited another fifteen minutes for the three servers to wrap things up. When they went off duty, he met them outside the tent.
The servers were a cheerful lot, two women and one man, whose bright smiles dimmed only momentarily when he identified himself.
He talked to the women first. They were blonde
and fair skinned, and both were second-generation Polish from central Wisconsin and seniors at UW–Madison.
“Sorry, I don’t recall seeing her,” the first helper said, looking at the photo.
The second woman was only slightly more helpful. “I think I saw her the other day, but I can’t be certain. There are so many people here. After a while, it’s all a blur.”
The man had stepped back and waited until Cubiak finished with his coworkers before he introduced himself. Eric Fielder was darker and had the high cheekbones of someone whose ancestors hadn’t escaped the marauding Mongolian hordes seven centuries ago. He also had the toned body of a twentysomething athlete, but the creased forehead and the faint lines around his eyes told a different story. He had done many things, including a stint in the merchant marine, he told the sheriff, and, yes, he had seen the woman. “She was loitering over there”—he indicated a stand of maple trees at the edge of the meadow—“yesterday at lunch.”
“You fed her even though she wasn’t crew.”
Fielder shrugged. “She looked starved, and I didn’t think it was right that she go hungry. By then everyone else had been served, and I knew the leftovers would be thrown out. It seemed a shame to waste food, and giving it to her did no harm.”
“You’re not from here,” Cubiak said.
“No. Germany. I was hired for the summer. The businesses are always short-staffed during the tourist season, and they like Europeans like me. We work hard and our accents add an exotic touch to the scenery.”
“Did you talk with the woman, before or after you gave her lunch?”
Death Rides the Ferry Page 4
