by Sarah Graves
“It doesn’t,” I mumbled around a mouthful of tiny screws, “say Stradivarius.”
And how, precisely, had the story traveled? I centered a screw in a pilot hole and used a screwdriver drill bit to drive it in with a quick buzz of the power drill.
“But Jonathan thought it might be one,” Charmian said. “And for him that was enough.”
I drove the screw at the other end of the lath splice and tested the result: solid. So I went ahead and patched the rest of them, Ellie handing me lath pieces as I needed them, working more quickly now that I thought the method had a chance of being successful.
“And Jonathan knew that no one from around here would talk to him about it if he told them what he was up to or behaved like what he really was,” Charmian said.
“A freelance,” I managed around the fasteners,
“historical daredevil.” And they hadn’t talked, anyway. But I let her go on.
Charmian nodded, sighing. “That's a fair description. So he got up a sort of a disguise. Because otherwise he looked like …”
“A storybook adventure hero.” In the snapshot, without the glasses and the goofy outfit, he’d looked very different, just as he’d said: A thing can resemble one thing, and be another.
“Yes,” Charmian said. “Just like that.”
By now I’d got the rest of the lath breaks patched. It is another standard feature of old-house fix-up: you try things, and if they work you keep on doing them. This time, matters were going swimmingly.
“So basically,” Ellie put in, “what he was up to was just what Jacobia and I suspected from the start: finding the violin, and then stealing it. Getting it out of town to sell, or maybe keep for himself, without anyone ever knowing he had it.”
“Probably,” I said, “for a client. A customer all lined up to take it off his hands, privately.”
Charmian frowned. “No, that's not it at all,” she defended Raines stoutly. “He wanted to protect it.”
Yeah, right. Protect it right out of here. I cleared away the unused wood strips, preparing for the next stage.
“There's someone else who wants the violin. Someone who will destroy it if he finds it”—Charmian's voice rose urgently—“to protect his own reputation.”
She lifted her chin in a gesture of, I thought, misplaced loyalty. By now it was clear that Raines could have bamboozled her, too, with the same hoary old tale he’d tried using on me: the race against the villain.
Unless she was as bad as he was. “Jonathan wanted to get to it first, to stop him,” Charmian declared.
“That's very touching. And who, may I ask, is the ogre we’re talking about here? Whose reputation one violin could destroy?”
“He's … my uncle Winston.”
For the first time she sounded a little embarrassed. I thought she ought to, considering the number of lies she’d told me since she’d arrived.
But I didn’t think she was lying now. For one thing, this part of the story could be checked. “He's an authority on the subject and he's been saying for years that no more Strads will be found,” Charmian went on. “And he's getting old, with younger men taking over the field. So for one to be discovered at this late date in his career would spoil his reputation, not only for the future but retroactively, too. If you see what I mean.”
She took a breath. “It would call into question other things he has said. His whole eminence. And he's not a man to be crossed easily, Uncle Winston. He knew what Jonathan was here for. That's why I’m so afraid … afraid he's …”
“Killed him?” Ellie said, and Charmian nodded.
As a motive it actually had some substance. Unfortunately, it was unrealistic in its practical aspects. “Hand me the pitcher of water, please,” I said.
Charmian did so, distracted momentarily by the process I was getting under weigh. Or way, as non-nautical types misspell it; since moving to a place where boats were almost as numerous as people, I’d become sensitive to such things.
“How do you know how much to put in?” she asked as I began pouring water into a large plastic basin.
I’d bought the basin to use for washing lacy under-things, but since the habit of wearing these items had faded about twenty minutes after I’d arrived in East-port, I was sacrificing it to the old-house cause.
“Recipe on the bag. Give me the mixing spoon.” Stirring the mixture caused clouds of white powder to rise from the basin.
“Don’t breathe the dust,” I warned, cautiously adding more water. The texture is crucial: too thick, and it dries too fast. Too loose, and it falls back out of the wall.
“There. Out of my way, now. This won’t wait.” Turning my head from the basin, I took a deep, fortifying breath and plunged into the crucial part of the job.
With a trowel I slopped a big dollop of mixed plaster onto a metal palette and scooped some up with the spreading blade. Then, quickly, I began spreading it over and between the slats of lath; imagine spreading peanut butter thickly onto an English muffin, working it in, and you will have the idea.
“I don’t suppose this Uncle Winston fellow would show up driving a stolen car,” I mused aloud.
Charmian looked surprised. “Uncle Winston doesn’t drive. He has himself driven.”
So much for that theory. And it would have been too much to hope for anyway that the guy who’d taken the dive off the bluffs could be explained so neatly.
“Stepladder,” I said. Ellie shoved it over, and I went up. “Describe him, please,” I told Charmian. “Your uncle.”
She proceeded obediently. “Old,” she repeated. “Well, not so old; mid-sixties. But old for his age, because he's very large, and he has gout, and smokes a pipe though his doctor forbids it, and drinks red wine.”
She paused, thinking. “He uses a cane, and wheezes climbing stairs, and sometimes won’t take his pills, so his blood pressure gets to be terrible.”
Fascinating. “Hold the basin up here.” I scooped out more plaster; it was already stiffening. I would have to work faster or mix a whole new batch. I chose the first option: slap-slap.
“He's also very stubborn, ill-tempered, and opinionated,” she ended with a flash of anger. “And he has an enormous ego. And he despised Jonathan for being what he couldn’t be anymore.”
“So in his youth, your uncle was just as devil-may-care as Jonathan in the finding-the-goodies department?”
She nodded. “More so, even. What else do you want to know about him?”
“Plenty, actually. But that's enough for now.” I climbed down from the ladder. “To sum up, you believe that a very large man, of more than middle age and with serious health troubles, has sneaked into Eastport without anyone noticing him and murdered Jonathan Raines.”
I finished pressing plaster into the lower part of the hole and began scoring the surface of the material with the spreader. This gives the next layer, which I could apply by this evening, I hoped, a good surface to cling to.
“By,” I continued, climbing the ladder again to score the top part, “scrambling out under the end of the pier, or taking a boat out there, which for him just getting onto one would be a good trick, if he's as large as you describe him. And, once he’d got purchase on the slippery dock, casting a barbed line up to snag the front of Jonathan's vest and pulling”—I demonstrated, giving the spreader a sharp yank downward—“so as to make Jonathan topple off the pier, and cutting the line as he fell past.”
The plaster surface was fully scored. “It would all take,” I finished, “a considerable amount of agility, and familiarity with that dock. And you’d need some way to get him to meet you there; Jonathan, I mean. I gather that under ordinary circumstances, he would not have been eager to meet your uncle Winston for a chat.”
Charmian and Ellie followed me as I carried the plaster basin past them into the kitchen and ran hot water into it, and all I have to say about this process is that if you don’t do it immediately after you finish plastering, you are going to wish heartily that
you had, next time you want to use that basin.
“Jake, that's quite a theory,” Ellie said.
“Thank you.” I ran hot water until it began steaming. “It certainly has all my favorite qualities in a theory: far-fetched, poorly strung together, with many loopholes for other perfectly good explanations …”
That Raines had put the mackerel jig onto the vest himself, for instance. He’d been in the marine store, and he might have just wanted it for a souvenir as Bob said.
“… and physically impossible, to boot.”
I left the powder mix standing on the newspapers spread on the dining room floor for good luck, but took the palette, the spreader blade, the spoon, and the drill to the sink, also.
“But if you like it, you’re welcome to it,” I finished.
The drill I disassembled and set up on the hall shelf where it lives because I always need it for something; the rest of the things I began scrubbing.
Ellie took the tools from me and dried them with paper towel after I rinsed them. Last came the basin, which cleaned up nicely, so there was still hope for frilly underthings.
Like maybe in some other life.
“So you don’t really think that's what happened,” Charmian said, crestfallen.
I turned from the sink. “No, I don’t. It's ridiculous. No gouty, old, overweight uncle climbed out underneath those dock pilings and hung there, waiting and wheezing. The water is cold, the surface is precarious, and the exertion would be tremendous.”
“He could have paid someone,” Charmian countered.
You had to hand it to her; she didn’t give up easily. And it was the other thing I’d been thinking: that if it had happened, it was probably someone local, as Bob Arnold had also said.
Not a welcome notion, or very real-world likely, either, which was why Bob had barely touched on it; Eastport is not well supplied with killers for hire.
But: “He has money enough? And people to ask?”
“More money than God,” she affirmed. “And over the years, he's had to deal with some pretty slimy characters. He's the man you go to, or he used to be, if you have had valuable art stolen and you want to get it back.”
Then all at once I made the connection I should have made a lot earlier: valuable art. “Good heavens. This is the Winston Cartwright we’re discussing?”
Oh, for Pete's sake, of course it was. She nodded. “Why, do you know him?”
I nodded back. “By reputation.”
Suddenly the idea of someone paying for a murder didn’t seem quite so outlandish. “The same Winston Cartwright who got back the Terra Forma? That big silver …”
Well, I didn’t know what it was, actually. It was a silver something, meant to be hung on a wall, and it had been worth a fortune when it was stolen off the airliner transporting it from an exhibition in St. Louis back to its home in the Big Apple a half dozen years earlier.
“The same,” she replied gravely, meeting my eye.
Offices in Cambridge, with branch offices in penitentiary visiting rooms all over the country: if a con had a secret and it involved stolen art, Winston Cartwright could coax it—or threaten; one time he was said to have sent a thief's family to Disney World for two weeks, keeping them incommunicado while telling the thief that they were chained in a rat-infested basement, and faking torture tapes to convince him—out of the miscreant. Among owners of valuable art he was legend, which made it all the more curious how few people could actually say they’d ever seen him.
I hadn’t, for instance. “He keeps a low profile,” Charmian said, apparently catching my thought. “But when you do meet him, he's … impressive.”
“Another reason I doubt he's here,” I said.
On the other hand, it didn’t have to be someone local. In summer when the town is full of visitors an ordinary-looking guy could blend in. A minion: do the dirty deed, stick around to find the violin if he could. Then he could spirit it away.
Or she could. But I didn’t say that part out loud.
“One more thing. I don’t quite see what this all has to do with you.” I took the dish towel from Ellie and dried my hands on it.
“I don’t mean finding his body and taking it home,” I added as Charmian opened her mouth to protest. “Or,” I went on, “wanting to know who killed him. If someone did. Because we don’t know that, either, do we?”
She’d have protested that, too, but I didn’t let her. “What I mean is, you seem pretty urgent about this whole situation. And I get the sense Uncle Winston isn’t just some distant relative you see at Thanksgiving.”
She was shaking her head in denial but her face said You’ve caught me. I pressed on.
“So what's the deal, Charmian? The minute you got the call about Jonathan, you chartered a plane like your hat was on fire and your pants were catching.”
I hung up the towel. “Also, you know a lot about a lot of things they don’t teach in finishing school. Invisible inks, old languages. You learned from your uncle, I imagine. Probably you share his interests. So, are you sure an old violin isn’t really all you care about, here?”
By now she was very near tears, and furious at me. Which was exactly the way I wanted her: ready to hit back with anything and everything she had in her.
And in her anger, she might tell me the rest of the truth.
She took a shuddering breath. “All right. My parents died when my sister and I were very young. Uncle Winston took us in and raised us. He's still my sister's legal guardian; she's only sixteen. When I got out of college, I went to work for him, in his … Well.”
She straightened. “Everyone calls it a research firm.”
Right; that was a nice, socially acceptable term for what good old Uncle Winston did. Other people might call it fighting fire with fire.
Or hand-to-hand-combat. She turned the opal ring on her finger. “That's where I met Jonathan. He's like Uncle Winston, smart and adventurous. But not so …”
“Ruthless,” I supplied, and she nodded gratefully. “You’ve met Jon. He couldn’t hurt anyone, not for anything, no matter how valuable. To get back the Terra Forma, Uncle Winston actually …”
Her face creased in remembered horror. “I can’t say it.”
But I already knew. He’d kidnapped the baggage guy who’d had the keys to the airline storage warehouse. And then, using a pair of ordinary hardware-store pliers, he’d pulled out one of his own teeth.
If the guy wanted similar dental work done, Cartwright had said, well, Uncle Winston would be happy to oblige. Otherwise, he should spit out the identities of the men who’d stolen the Terra Forma, and its current whereabouts, or he’d soon be spitting out one of his own incisors.
As in, right this very goddamned minute.
“It wasn’t a real tooth,” I said, and Charmian gazed at me in astonishment.
“But…” Obviously even she had thought that it was.
“Sorry, but I can’t tell you how I know,” I said.
It was my old buddy Jemmy Wechsler, onetime banker to the mob, now a man with a price on his head—especially if the head was “severed off,” as the man who’d put the price on in the first place had expressed it—who’d told me the story. Jemmy and I had crossed paths fairly often back in the city and a few times since then; now he was evading the Mafia, whose money he’d stolen, with humor and élan.
But to everybody else's knowledge, he was dead. And far be it from me to contradict this—for Jemmy—convenient notion.
“Trust me,” I said, “it was a fake tooth.” With a realistic-looking fake root. Jemmy was hilarious about it.
“Anyway, the rest of your involvement. This is all personal, you mean? Between you and your uncle?”
She nodded. “As I said, Uncle Winston didn’t like Jonathan. He didn’t want us to see one another. We fought over it all the time, my uncle and me, until in an angry moment I made him a bet: if he got to the violin before Jonathan did, or if it was never found, I would go on working for him for as
long as he wanted me to.”
“And otherwise?” Ellie put in, though by now we both knew what the answer to that must be. Charmian didn’t disappoint us.
“If Jonathan won, I would marry him, and he and I would be a team. Traveling all over the world, finding exotic items that no one ever thought could be found. Having adventures,” she finished wistfully, “together.”
“And that's what you and Jonathan fought about,” Ellie said acutely. “The bet you made with your uncle.”
Charmian nodded brokenly. “He said, what if he failed? But I was so sure he wouldn’t, and now … now I can’t welsh on the deal because of my sister. I can’t stay with Uncle Winston after what I think he's done. But if I leave, he’ll make her life hell just to punish me. I’ve got to find that violin.”
She pressed her clenched fists to her lips. “Jon was awfully angry when we met last. So was I. But how could he have believed me when I said I never wanted to see him again?”
She twisted the ring. “How could he?”
Interesting question, I thought as I went upstairs to clean up for my meeting with Victor. But it was not among the questions that I now most wanted answers to.
Those were: (a) could I believe Charmian? And (b) why did I care so much? Because …
(c) darn it all, I definitely did.
The Cannery Restaurant was built on the remains of the old sardine-processing factory at Rice's dock overlooking the ferry landing. From a window table you could look past the decorative buoys, heaped lobster traps, and the tiny gift shop operated out of the hut where the sardine tins used to get their labels pasted on, to the blue water spread out like somebody's daydream of a Maine island summer.
Victor was already there, drinking what he liked to call a “martooni.” He would pronounce the word with an impish smile as if no one had ever thought of calling it that before; then with his eyes still on you he would eat the olive, crushing it between his strong white teeth as if daring you to try to stop him.
He glanced pointedly at his watch as I sat down. It was the classic black Movado museum piece, black face and no numerals on it, just the gold dot. Victor loved that watch.
