The Violin Conspiracy(100)

He’d called Alicia the moment the plane had touched down at JFK and the seat belt sign had gone off. “I know where it is,” he told her.

It was three days after the conversation at the Moskva. Janice and Nicole had returned together to the United States the day after; Ray was supposed to be in Moscow to begin the Tchaikovsky Competition tour. Instead he’d taken a flight to America a day later—after they’d both left.

He hadn’t said anything to either Janice or Nicole; he didn’t want to arouse any suspicion, especially if he was wrong. He was desperate to tell Janice, but she was traveling with Nicole. It was too risky.

Now that he was back in the United States, he called Alicia, who was still in Europe, tracking down leads to other violins which, Ray now knew, were not his Strad.

“What do you mean?” Alicia asked him. “How? Where is it? Where are you?”

“Nicole has it. Just landed at JFK.”

“What? Where is this coming from?”

“She said she drove.”

“What?”

“She drove. She said she drove back to Erie. From New York. She didn’t fly out of Newark like she said. She drove.”

“Hold on,” Alicia had said. “Let me get my notes.” Computer keys tapping. “You know of course that she had the most access of anyone, so we’ve been looking at her the hardest.”

“Still?”

“Yep. Following her credit card bills, phone calls. Nothing. No unusual charges, nothing out of the ordinary. Hold on, here it is. No, she flew. She definitely flew from Newark to Erie. I have confirmation from the airlines. Plus we have surveillance footage of her in the airport. And the X-ray footage of her suitcases going through the scanner.”

“That doesn’t make sense,” he’d said. “She told me that she drove from New York.”

“It must have been some other time,” Alicia had said.

“There was no other time. She hates to drive her car as it is. She was complaining about needing an oil change. She said that she was putting too many miles on her car after the trip from New York. She has never driven to New York since I’ve known her. Never. She never drives anywhere if she can help it. She takes public transportation. She’s like the queen of public transportation. She knows every bus route from here to New York. You should hear about the complicated way she gets from Manhattan to Newark Airport to save four dollars.”

“I can’t possibly get a warrant to search her house based on a drive back from New York.” It was hard to hear her over the noise of the plane: people talking loudly and the thrum of the engines. Then the engines started powering down.

“There’s no other explanation,” he’d said. “She has to have it. She drove back with it to Erie, which is why it didn’t get flagged in the airport. It must have been in one of her suitcases. She had two—I remember really clearly that she had two. I’m going to confront her. I’ll wear a wire, I’ll get it on tape—”

“You will do nothing of the kind,” Alicia told him. “If she doesn’t have it, you won’t get anywhere. If she does have it, you’ll tip her off.”

“How am I going to get it back, then?”

“Don’t do anything rash, you hear me? I know you’re upset, but—”

“Upset? Are you fucking kidding me?” His voice was getting louder. His seatmate was staring at him. He ducked, whispered into the phone, “My girlfriend stole my violin and you don’t want me to be upset?”

“Look, I hear you. I’m still in Belgrade. Let me get back and we can regroup. I’ll put the art team and the FBI on it in the meantime, and I’ll dig in from here. I can get a flight out tomorrow. It’s waited this long, it can wait a little bit longer. Let me think it through.”

“Great idea,” he said. “Can you get a warrant in the meantime?”

“There’s not enough for a warrant,” she repeated. “Yet.”

Around him the other passengers were standing, grabbing luggage, moving down the aisle. He seized the violin case. “Okay. I’m heading to Erie now. I’ll wait for you there.”

“Don’t you dare,” she said. “Just stay where you are and don’t do anything to tip her off. If she has it, she’s hidden it for this long. Don’t blow it. Just go back to Charlotte like you planned.”

“Okay,” he said “I gotta go,” and hung up.

Ten minutes later, in the customs line, he thumbed through his Delta Airlines app. Yes, there was a flight to Erie in two hours. He could make it.

That had been four hours ago. Now he stood in Nicole’s living room, staring at her living-room walls. Where to start? Over the past year, he’d spent days here. Weeks. Often alone. Was the violin here, all along, in a closet? In her basement? In the attic? How could he search now without giving himself away? How could he have been so close?

Six p.m. He’d timed his arrival after she’d left for rehearsal at the symphony: the Erie Philharmonic had a major performance in a few weeks, which meant that the earliest she’d be back was ten fifteen, ten thirty. Unless they let out early, which they also might do. He had four hours.

He thought back to those days at Grandma Nora’s, hunting for PopPop’s fiddle in the attic. He’d started by randomly looking in boxes, opening drawers, but soon enough became systematic: proceeding stack by stack, box by box, no matter how unlikely a hiding place. In the end, his system hadn’t worked—who knew where Grandma Nora had hidden it all that time; she’d just beamed at him and never told him—but perhaps this time the system would hold him in good stead.