The Violin Conspiracy(99)

“You should take this letter for what it is,” Nicole said. “Validation. You’re doing the right thing with your life. Your great-great-grandfather wasn’t a thief. Your family has gone through some crazy stuff. Your grandmother has always been with you. Oh, and one more thing.”

“What?”

“Oh, nothing special. Just that this Ray is much nicer to be around than that super stressed-out one.”

Ray let out a belly laugh. “Now comes the easy part. Traveling around the world as the Tchaikovsky Competition silver medalist.”

“That’ll be a breeze,” she said. “But at least you can get on with life without these crazy lawsuits.”

“You’re right.” He closed his eyes for a beat, smiled into the sunshine. “The next few months are going to be crazy,” he said after a while. They’d seen the schedule: the “busy and interesting” itinerary included touring China, Russia, France, Germany, and several other countries.

The relief continued to pour off Ray, wave upon wave. He hadn’t realized how much the Markses’ craziness had depleted his mood.

“You know,” he said, “I’m going to have to get a manager.” Several music management companies had reached out to him, and several record companies kept bugging him about a record deal, but he hadn’t called any of them back yet. He felt it would be traitorous to perform without his own violin. Now that he was getting close to the $5 million ransom, it might be only a couple weeks until he had it back. Only $275,000 more to go.

“You really should,” she said. “It’s stupid for you to spend your time figuring out hotel bookings and car pickups. Managers charge ten percent, right? I wonder if we should look into sharing a part-time personal assistant. It might be cheaper.” She really was getting into this. “And we could see who used him—or her—more,” she said. “If I used her more, I could pay more, or reimburse you. And vice versa.”

“You’re really serious,” Ray said, looking at her.

“Yeah, why not? Someone to just help make life run more smoothly. Pick up dry cleaning and pick up groceries, and schedule your trips, and pick you up at the airport instead of taking an Uber. I wonder if they’d do laundry and get my car’s oil changed?” She looked out across the river, said dreamily, “It really sounds kind of awesome. The question is, who pays for her time when she’s sitting at the mechanic’s getting my oil changed and she’s booking your latest excursion to the Berlin Philharmonic?”

“You pay,” he said. “She’s getting your oil changed.”

“Yeah, but it’s your concert.”

“She can schedule my concert after she’s done with the oil change.”

“I wish we could hire her today,” Nicole said. “I need to have my oil changed when I get back.”

“Didn’t you just get one?”

“Yeah, but I’m almost a thousand miles overdue. I’m going to have her keep track of that, too. When my car needs an oil change.” Nicole hated putting miles on her car—she loved public transportation and took it as often as possible.

“A thousand miles? Good grief. Why do you drive so much?”

“Don’t act like you don’t drive a lot.”

“Sure I do, but jeez. Was this the last trip to Cleveland?” She’d performed as a substitute for the Cleveland Orchestra a few weeks ago.

“No, when I went to New York that time.”

“When did you drive back from New York?”

“When you were with Leonid at Juilliard,” she said. “Remember I drove?”

“Oh yeah,” he said. “Right.” Something curled in the back of his head, a question mark.

“Anyway,” he said after a moment, “I really think we should think about the personal assistant thing.” He searched on his phone. “Looks like they’d charge between fifteen and thirty dollars an hour. How many hours do you think you’d need?”

“Say, ten hours a week,” Nicole said. “If we each did ten, that would be three hundred dollars a week, or fifteen thousand a year. I think that’s way cheaper than a management company. But is it worth spending fifteen thousand dollars to pick up my dry cleaning? Then again, if it’s fifteen dollars an hour, it might be worth it.”

He wasn’t listening anymore, thinking about her driving back to Erie from New York.

She’d flown, not driven.

And then it all made sense.





Chapter 35


    Day 56: Marcus Terry


Ray stood in Nicole’s living room, staring blankly at a print over her living-room sofa: three cows in a field, a barn, and a few trees on the horizon.

Where to start the search?

She’d rented a house on Windview Place Road in Fairview, a quiet suburb of Erie a couple miles from the Lake. Being so close to Lake Erie made the properties in the area highly sought after. The family of a wealthy orchestra patron actually owned the house—the only reason that Nicole could afford it was that the patron had died, and the family had offered to rent the house to one of the symphony musicians for a couple years while the patron’s will worked its way through probate. The house was big for one person: two levels, three bedrooms, a yard that Nicole would mow, complaining, with a push mower once a week. She wasn’t much of a homemaker—Erie was clearly just a stepping-stone to bigger orchestras in bigger cities—but she kept the house clean and neat.