“I suspected.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I was hoping I was wrong.”
“How did you figure it out?”
“Donatucci was in Philadelphia a week or so before the Countess was stolen; I saw the receipt from a tour he took to see the Liberty Bell. The flip phones that were sent to you and Ruland were activated in Philadelphia. Doc Young was in Philadelphia.”
“Intuitive thinking,” Heavenly said.
“Also, you and Ruland were involved with Donatucci in the past. Lamm, who was busted by an insurance investigator while trying to unload stolen jewelry—I bet he was, too. Donatucci knew we were speaking to Ruland in Duluth because I told him several hours before the meeting; Lamm must have followed Ruland instead of us. He knew you were in Bayfield, but I didn’t tell him that you were going under the name Caroline Kaminsky. Did you tell him, tell the Voice, I mean?”
“No.”
“And yet he knew that, too. I thought Maryanne Altavilla was behind it all; at least I was hoping it was her, the way she behaved. I’ll ask her about it when we get home.”
“If you had it all figured out, why didn’t we just stay in Minnesota?”
“What about Trevor Ruland? What about the bullet you’re going to carry in your shoulder for the rest of your life? There’s no hard evidence; nothing that would’ve held up in a courtroom, that’s for sure. Donatucci would have gotten away with all of it. Lamm, too.”
“You’re saying we came here so you could manufacture a little justice?”
“Not really. I just wanted to know for sure if I was right. The justice part I was going to leave for later.”
“Jesus, McKenzie.”
“I wasn’t going to kill him.”
“No?”
“I was going to call Special Agent Beatty at the FBI and make him angry some more.”
“Sure.”
* * *
I had stashed the SIG Sauer in the glove compartment of the Ford Focus. When we returned to the car, I wrapped it in Heavenly’s shredded sling; she assured me she had another at the B&B. I drove to Penn’s Landing and walked along the wharf while Heavenly waited for me. When no one was looking, I let it slide into the Delaware River.
Following Heavenly’s directions, I drove back to the B&B; we were forced to park two blocks away.
Once we were inside, Heavenly moved directly to the rocking chair as if that had been her destination all the while. She sat down, hugging her left arm close to her torso; she rested her right hand on the arm of the chair.
“I’m tired,” she said.
“We need to think about getting out of Philly—the sooner the better.”
“I’ll take care of it.”
“Heavenly—”
“I’m going to sleep here tonight. It’s easier on my shoulder. If you want to use the big bed…”
“The double is fine.”
She closed her eyes.
I made myself ready for bed as quickly and as quietly as I could. When I emerged from the bathroom, I noticed that Heavenly was wearing her spare sling. She had kicked off her shoes and wrapped herself in a quilt that she had taken from the armoire. I extinguished the lights and crawled into the double.
“McKenzie?” she asked.
“Yes, sweetie?”
“I never shot anyone before. I never…”
“It’s not an easy thing to live with,” I told her.
“Goodnight, McKenzie.”
“Goodnight, sweetie.”
EIGHTEEN
The moment the Airbus rolled to a halt, passengers clogged the aisle and gathered their belongings from the overhead luggage compartments—and then stood quietly for several minutes while waiting for the door to be secured. It was a ritual that I did not join. I never minded being one of the last to leave a plane.
Slowly, the aisle cleared. Only a few of us remained, including Heavenly, who sat staring out the window at the Minneapolis–St. Paul International Airport terminal named after Charles A. Lindbergh. She had been the one to arrange our passage out of Philadelphia. From that moment to this I don’t think she spoke more than twenty words.
“I’ll get your bag,” I said.
“No. Thank you. I decided to go on to Phoenix.”
“Why?”
“Visit my mom.” Heavenly gently massaged her shoulder. “Heal.”
“I thought your mother lived in Denver.”
“How naïve you are, McKenzie, believing a liar like me.”
I yanked my bag out of the storage compartment and stood staring at Heavenly’s nylon carry-on for a couple of beats. I had to ask about the $50,000.
“I once told you,” she said. “As long as I came out ahead—that’s the main thing.”
“You’re welcome to stay with Nina and me.”
“I know.”
“Bobby Dunston has a rack of baby backs with your name on it.”
“Tell him he was sweet to offer.”
“Heavenly…”
“McKenzie…”
I leaned in, cupped her chin, and tilted her head toward mine. I came thisclose to kissing her on the lips. Instead, I kissed her forehead.
“Take care of yourself, sweetie,” I said.
“You, too.”
“Don’t be a stranger.”
I turned to leave. Heavenly called my name.
“Will you tell Nina something for me?” she asked.
“Sure.”
“Tell her—we all have to be who we are in this world. Anything else is just pretending. It might be pleasant, but it never lasts.”
“I’m not sure what that means.”
“You’re not supposed to. McKenzie, before you go, just out of curiosity, tell me—do you know who stole the violin?”
“What makes you think it was stolen?”
* * *
Nina was double-parked near the Frontier Airlines sign outside the entrance to the terminal. She was driving my Mustang, which annoyed me, I don’t know why. She offered me the keys, but I told her to drive.
“Where’s Heavenly?” Nina asked.
“She’s going home.”
“Where’s that?”
“Damned if I know. Nina, when we get back to the condo, I’m going to ask you to take my bag upstairs while I take off. There’s something I need to do, and now’s as good a time as any.”
“What exactly, if I may ask.”
“I’m either going to save a marriage or shatter it into so many pieces it can never be saved.”
“My experience, no outside force can help or hurt a marriage. Only the two people who are married can do that.”
* * *
The first words out of the Maestro’s mouth when I entered his house—“Do you know where the Countess is?”
Renée Peyroux, on the other hand, wondered if I was all right.
“You look tired,” she said.
I asked for coffee, but that was just to get them sitting down. I positioned myself at the head of the kitchen table. Paul Duclos was on my left. Peyroux sat across from him on my right.
“Do you know where the Countess is?” Duclos repeated.
“I think so.”
“Where?”
“Do you have the money?”
“Upstairs.”
“Go get it.”
Duclos left the room in a hurry. I turned to his wife.
“You never filed an insurance claim, did you?” I said. “That’s why Midwest Farmers wasn’t all that concerned about getting back the violin.”
“What are you saying?”
“You were in Duluth on Thursday evening—with the Jacob Stainer violin. You knew that the Maestro wouldn’t have the Countess for Friday night’s concert with the chamber orchestra; you knew at least one full day before it was taken. Didn’t you?”
Peyroux refused to answer. I could hear the Maestro’s footsteps drawing near.
“I need to know right now,” I said. “Do you love your husband?�
�
“Yes.”
“Do you love him so much that nothing else matters?”
“Yes.”
“We’ll see.”
Duclos entered the room carrying a small suitcase. He set it on the table and opened it. The money was inside.
“Put it on the table,” I said.
He did what I told him without asking why. It made for an impressive pile, sixty stacks of a hundred twenty-dollar bills and twenty-six stacks of a hundred fifty-dollar bills heaped on top of each other.
“Just for the record,” I said, “the money came from Heather Voight, didn’t it?”
The Maestro’s eyes found Peyroux’s. He quickly looked away.
His voice was soft. I had trouble hearing it.
“She’s my friend,” he said.
“More than a friend, I think, going all the way back to high school.”
“Renée wouldn’t help…”
“Yeah.”
I put both hands on the bottom of the pile so the stacks wouldn’t spill and pushed it toward Peyroux.
“What are you doing?” Duclos asked.
“Here—$250,000 for the safe return of the Countess Borromeo,” I said. “No. Questions. Asked.”
Peyroux stared at the money.
“Renée?” Duclos asked.
Peyroux rose from the table and left the kitchen.
“McKenzie, what’s going on?” Duclos asked.
Even as I answered, I remembered what Chief Neville told me in Bayfield—was it already nine days ago? You can’t discount the nitwit factor.
“Payback, you dumb sonuvabitch,” I said. “You cheated on her, cheated on your wife with your high school sweetheart. You didn’t think she knew?”
“It wasn’t like that,” Duclos said.
“What was it like? Tell me before she comes back.”
He didn’t. This time it was Peyroux’s footsteps I heard nearing the kitchen.
“Do you love your wife?” I asked.
“Of course I do. This thing with Heather…”
“Do you love her so much that nothing else matters?”
“McKenzie…”
“It’s a simple question.”
“Yes.”
“Then you might have a chance.”
Peyroux returned to the kitchen. She was carrying a violin case. She set it on the table in front of Duclos and moved behind her chair. He hopped to his feet and actually stepped backward away from the table.
“It’s not…” he said.
The Maestro slowly returned to the table and opened the case. He sucked in his breath; it seemed to take a long time before he exhaled. From where I was sitting I could see Harry Potter’s lightning bolt scratched into the maple between the F-hole and the corner. Duclos reached out his hand. It was as if he wanted to touch the violin but was afraid.
“It’s all right,” Peyroux said. “You can keep it. Consider it part of the divorce settlement.”
The word forced his head up.
“Divorce?” the Maestro repeated.
“I’m done, Paul.”
“Divorce—you can’t mean that.”
“I was willing to share you with one mistress, but not two. I went to Bayfield to tell you that.”
“You were in Bayfield?”
“No questions asked, remember?”
“Please, Renée. Please…”
“I knew about you and Heather in Chicago; knew that you drove up to Wisconsin when she opened her new restaurant that time I was in New York. I knew about Bayfield, too. You didn’t tell me you were giving the concert until right before it happened because you didn’t want me to go, but I knew. Herb Voight told me, Heather’s husband. He had had enough just like me. I drove to Duluth, and he met me there; took me to Bayfield on his boat. I brought the Jacob Stainer with me because—I wasn’t going to steal the Countess, that wasn’t my intention—I was going to…”
Peyroux stopped speaking as if she was confused by her own story. She took a deep breath and started again.
“It was my intention to confront you and Heather in flagrante delicto so there could be no denials, no lies. It was my intention to force you to choose between her and me, and if you chose her, I was determined to take the Countess Borromeo home with me—it was mine, after all. I only lent it to you. But I didn’t want to hurt you, either. I did, but I didn’t want to hurt your music, the SPCO, so I brought your old violin, the Jacob Stainer, with me. I couldn’t leave you without a violin. I couldn’t do that to you.
“Only when I was about to knock on Heather’s door—I became sick, Paul. Physically ill. I thought it was from seasickness, from bouncing around on that damn boat; why we even had to come by boat, I don’t know. It made Herb comfortable, I guess; gave him the sense of being in control. Yet once we reached land it became worse. And standing outside Heather’s door—I was terrified, Paul. Terrified that you would pick her over me. I could barely stand, I felt so ill.
“I convinced Herb that we should leave, that what we were doing was crazy. I stumbled down the driveway; I had to stop and lean against a car because I felt so dizzy. That’s when I saw it. The violin. In its case. I couldn’t believe it. You left the Countess Borromeo on the front seat of your rental? The door wasn’t even locked. I was so angry. I was angry at you. Angry at me. Angry at the damn violin. I grabbed it. I took it out of the case because—I know you told me about the GPS thing, but I didn’t think of that. I thought—I don’t know what I thought. That I was going to smash it. That I was going to throw it into the lake. I don’t know. I didn’t, though. I didn’t do any of those things. All I wanted to do—I wanted to punish you.
“I’m sorry, Paul. I didn’t fully appreciate how much you loved her. I didn’t appreciate how much you needed her. I didn’t know that you would react to her loss the way you did; that it would hurt you so much. I would have returned the Countess right away, except I was afraid if you found out what I had done, you would have left me. And because I was still angry—you told people the Stradivarius was stolen from the B&B instead of admitting where you really were.”
“I did that because I was afraid you would leave me,” Duclos said. “I was more afraid of that than I was of losing the Strad.”
“It’s too late. What I did to you…”
“What I did to you … It’s not too late. It can’t be too late. You taking away the Countess—I deserved that and more, but please, oh God, please, Renée, don’t leave me.”
“We can’t go on like this. I can’t. Heather…”
Peyroux brought her hands up and covered her face. She began to weep; her cries were loud and filled with anguish. Duclos pushed the violin away and rounded the table. He took his wife in his arms.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he chanted.
He began to cry, too.
The Maestro and his wife embraced each other and slowly sank to their knees as one. The sound of their weeping blended into harmony.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
Over and over again.
I don’t know if they could hear me, but I told them anyway—“Whatever happens between you kids, please, at least keep the money.”
I left my seat at the table and crossed the kitchen.
“I’ll let myself out,” I said.
* * *
An hour later, I set the nine-millimeter Ruger I had borrowed in the center of Maryanne Altavilla’s desk. She stared at it for a long time.
“He’s dead,” she said. “I read it in the paper. Three paragraphs on page two; no explanation.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Is this what killed him?”
“No.”
“Did you…”
“No.”
She opened a drawer, placed the gun inside, and closed the drawer.
“I suspected it was him,” she said. “I suspected Mr. Donatucci from the very beginning. I just didn’t want to be the one…”
<
br /> “When did you know he was involved?”
“I suspected him on Friday, the day the violin was stolen. You think I’m lying.”
“I didn’t say a word.”
“Your expression.”
“How did you know?”
“I didn’t know. I suspected. I went to Bayfield as soon as I heard about the theft. I ingratiated myself with the FBI, Special Agent Beatty. You might not believe me, but when I want to, I can be awfully charming.”
“I don’t doubt that for a moment.”
“I meant what I told you, though—if you had recovered the Stradivarius violin, paid off the thieves, I would have had you arrested for receiving stolen property and aiding and abetting an offender.”
“I don’t doubt that, either.”
“I read the Queen Anne’s ledger. I recognized Trevor Ruland’s name. He had attempted an art theft in Omaha several years ago, one of Mr. Donatucci’s old cases—I told you I studied his files at some length.”
“Did you tell the FBI about Ruland?”
“Yes, although I didn’t offer anything else, my early suspicions. I kept those to myself. After all, it was an improbable leap from Ruland’s name to Mr. Donatucci’s.”
“Intuitive thinking is difficult to explain to those linear types.”
“What happened next, though—I received a phone call after Midwest Farmers and the Peyroux Foundation announced in Bayfield, at the scene of the crime as it were, that they would pay only a nominal reward for the return of the violin and only upon the conviction of the thieves. It came within the hour, the call, Mr. Donatucci telling me what a catastrophic mistake it was.”
Heavenly told him about the announcement; told the Voice, my inner voice reminded me.
“His outrage was shocking,” Altavilla said. “His demeanor, his language, echoed his behavior the day he learned he had lost his job. It was—disheartening. It also convinced me that my earlier conclusion had been correct—Mr. Donatucci had stolen the Countess Borromeo and was now angry that he would not receive the payday he had anticipated. Soon afterward, however, I discovered that Ms. Petryk had also arrived in Bayfield. I knew of her from Mr. Donatucci’s files as well, of course, the ones concerning the Jade Lily. It caused me to take a step back and reevaluate my position. If Mr. Donatucci had already acquired the Countess and Petryk was working with him, what was she doing in Bayfield? I became confused, a state in which I am not at all comfortable.”
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