The Vanishing Violin (12 page)

“Eek,” Margaret says. “Run, Sophie, run!”

Where’s Vanna White when you really need her?

My movie pick stinks, but I don’t really care. The weird part of the evening—okay, the other weird part, after an illegal scooter ride across town, and after having dinner with my parents and Raf—is when we’re standing in line waiting to go in the theater and we run into Livvy Klack. She’s with a group that includes three other girls from St. Veronica’s and some boys I don’t know—except for one. That one is Andrew.

“Hey, it’s Andrew, right? I’m Sophie. My mom is your—”

“Oh yeah, hi.”

“You two know each other?” Livvy asks, incredulous.

“We just met,” I say. “He’s in this quartet with Marg—” I try to pull the name back into my mouth, but it’s too late.

Livvy turns the sarcasm knob all the way up to ten. “You know the great Margaret Wrobel? Gosh, Andrew, what’s she really like? Please tell us. Is she as perfect as
everyone says? Where is she, by the way? Off feeding the homeless, or reading to the blind, I’ll bet. She’s just so super.”

I know Andrew just met Margaret and all, but it kind of ticks me off that he doesn’t do or say anything. He just lets Livvy yammer on and on about Margaret. I suppose it’s not fair of me to expect him to defend her, but I can. I get right in Livvy’s grille and say, “Margaret Wrobel is a better person and a better friend than you’ll ever be, Livvy. You’re just jealous because she has about sixty IQ points on you and you know you can’t beat her at anything. She’ll be first in our class at St. Veronica’s, and then she’s going to go to Harvard or Juilliard and she’ll be first in her class there. And you’ll be at Cheap and Mean University, still trying to figure out how to beat her.” I take a deep breath. “And at least everything about her is real,” I add, staring right at her chest, which seems to have grown a cup size or three in the last twenty-four hours.

I take a shell-shocked Raf by the hand and storm inside to watch the stupid movie.

He doesn’t say anything until we are in our seats, sharing a box of Junior Mints. Finally he looks over at me and smiles. “You just make friends wherever you go, don’t you?”

I bury my head in my hands. “What have I done? Margaret is going to kill me. Why didn’t you stop me?”

“Stop you? I was trying to figure out a way to applaud you.”

“What do you think of Andrew?”

“The guy that was with Livvy? I don’t know. Who is he again? And what’s up with that hair?”

“He’s one of my mom’s students. I like his hair, but now I’m not sure how I feel about him. Tell me that you would stick up for me if somebody said stuff like that about me.”

“Of course. But I’ve known you for a long time. Didn’t this Andrew kid just meet Margaret?”

“Well, yeah. But it just seems—”

“Look, Soph, I think you’re thinkin’ too much about this.”

“You don’t get it. Livvy has powerful friends. She can make my life—and Margaret’s—miserable if she wants.”

“Powerful friends? Has the Mafia taken over St. Veronica’s?”

“Trust me, she will get even. The girl can be evil.”

I wait until early Sunday afternoon to give Margaret the icky update on Livvy. But other than the immediate impact on Mr. Eliot’s ill-conceived punctuation project, she doesn’t seem too concerned.

“I wouldn’t worry about it,” she says.

“But see, she’s hated you for years,” I say. “She didn’t hate me until last night.”

“Livvy is all squawk.”

Frankly, that’s what scares me. God only knows what kind of damage that big mouth of Livvy’s can do.

“Anyway, I think I might have a good lead on this new letter,” she adds. “I saw Malcolm and Elizabeth at Mass this morning, and we had a chance to chat for a while. Malcolm suggested I talk to Caroline about the newest code. In addition to all the puzzles and math problems her grandfather used to give her, they also used to make up codes and send messages back and forth. She even thought about majoring in cryptography. Since she’s going to be at Elizabeth’s this afternoon, he said I should drop by with the letter. You want to come?”

“Sure, as long as it’s not going to be late. I’ve been goofing off all weekend, and I need to do some work.”

“All right, I’ll call Becca and Leigh Ann, too. So turn off your computer and your phone, put your guitar away, and get to work.”

“Yeeesssss, Sis-ter Mar-ga-ret.”

Elizabeth greets us at the familiar red door of her townhouse with big hugs, followed by more squeezing, gushing, and questioning. (After we recovered the ring and became practically family, I agreed to start calling Elizabeth by her first name, but part of me still struggles with it.) It has been only a few weeks since that amazing night we handed over the Ring of Rocamadour to Malcolm and Elizabeth’s daughter, Caroline, but this already feels like a reunion.

And even though I met Caroline just that one time, I feel like I know her. After all, it was her birthday card that got the “treasure hunt” for the Ring of Rocamadour
started. Caroline’s grandfather—Elizabeth’s father—had set up all the clues and hidden the ring as a gift for her fourteenth birthday, but then he died before he ever had a chance to even give her the card. When Elizabeth accidentally discovered the birthday card twenty years later, she turned to us for help, because by then, she and Malcolm were divorced and she hadn’t spoken to Caroline in years.

“We simply must have some tea,” Elizabeth says. “Malcolm, dear, make a big pot of tea. Flower Power is their favorite.”

Malcolm grins at us as he heads for the kitchen. “You see what’s happened to me? I’m the new Winnie!”

“Are you going to spy on us like she did?” Leigh Ann calls out after him. Elizabeth’s former housekeeper, Winifred Winterbottom—wife of the church deacon that we butted heads with—was always spying on us every time we visited Elizabeth.

“You can count on it,” he shouts from the kitchen.

“Oh, that Malcolm,” Elizabeth says. “He thinks he is so clever.”

“Is he at least a better housekeeper than Winnie?” I ask. On more than one occasion, Elizabeth told us of Winnie’s failures as a housekeeper, especially her unwillingness to vacuum under furniture. The horror!

Rebecca is her usual nosy, sassy self and starts her interrogation of Elizabeth. “So, what’s going on with you and Malcolm, anyway? Are you going to get back together or what?”

“Becca!” Margaret puts her hand over Rebecca’s mouth. “Sorry. She still hasn’t completed her obedience training.”

“No, no. Don’t shush her,” says Caroline, laughing. “Actually, Mother, that’s a very good question. We’re all dying to hear the answer, aren’t we, girls?”

Elizabeth maintains her dignity—well, as much dignity as you can maintain when you’re wearing lime green riding pants with knee-high boots and a paisley blazer (a typically daring fashion choice for her). “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she says, her chin jutting forward.

“Maybe I should ask Dad.”

“Don’t you dare. Things are just fine the way they are, thank you very much. And let’s leave it at that. I’ve been living on my own for a long time now, and I’m not sure I’m ready for a change. Believe me, I’ve lived with your father; he can be difficult.”

“Unlike you,” Caroline says with a teasing smile. “You’re always so easygoing. But fair enough—you don’t want to talk about it. The children are always the last to know anyway. Now, Margaret, tell me about this letter. Dad told me a little about the new case you’re working on.”

Margaret sits next to her on the sofa and takes out the envelope containing the letter. “Each clue has been in a different kind of code. The first one was invisible ink that turned out to be simply lemon juice. When you heat it up, it turns brown and you can read it. Then we had a
series of riddles, kind of like crossword puzzle clues. All the answers were names of orphans from literature. David Copperfield, Anne Shirley, Jane Eyre. Your dad actually helped with that letter. He took us to a bar—”

“He WHAT?” Elizabeth shrieks. “Malcolm! Come in here!”

Malcolm appears in the kitchen doorway, looking, as my dad would say, like foie gras wouldn’t melt in his mouth. “Yes, my precious?”

“Don’t you ‘yes, precious’ me. Did you take these sweet girls to a bar?”

“Not just a bar. The King Cole Bar. I figure if I’m going to corrupt them, it might as well be someplace with a little class.”

“It’s not like it sounds,” I say. “We had mocktails.”

“And what about you, Malcolm? What did you have to drink?” Elizabeth asks.

“Now you’ve got me dead to rights, but it was all in the name of research. I’m afraid the girls made me drink a martini.”

Elizabeth snorts. “Ha! Made you. I’ll bet.”

“Actually, he’s sort of telling the truth, Elizabeth,” Margaret admits. “I needed to know what the bartender would say when somebody ordered a martini. By the way, the answer is ‘Olive or twist?’ which was the answer to one of the puns.”

“Humph,” Elizabeth says.

“And the letter just before this one was in a code so simple I’m ashamed I didn’t figure it out sooner. It
looked like a twelve-line poem, and I kept looking for something between the lines like the first letter. The poem itself was really just gibberish, but the first letter of each word gave us the clue. That brings us to this next one, which is all symbols. Ever seen anything like it?”

Caroline looks at the letter and smiles knowingly. “Pigpen.”

“I beg your pardon,” Margaret replies.

“It’s what they call a substitution cipher. I think this is the first code my grandfather taught me. It has been around for a long time. They call it the pigpen cipher because each letter is put into its own compartment, kind of like pigs in a pen, I suppose. Here, I’ll show you.”

On the back of the envelope she draws two tic-tac-toe grids and two large X’s. In one of the grids and one of the X’s, she makes a dot in each section. Then she adds the alphabet, printing one letter in each of the twenty-six “pens.”

“To write a message, you simply substitute the lines surrounding your letter and the dot, if there is one, for the letter itself.” She writes Margaret’s name on the envelope and then adds a symbol beneath each letter.

“Pretty cool, huh?”

“That’s it? This is easy,” Margaret says.

“Well, there is one catch,” Caroline says. “Whoever wrote the letter probably didn’t arrange the letters in the pens exactly like this. There are lots of different ways to personalize this code, so even if the message is intercepted by someone who understands the basic idea of the code, it will be hard to break.

“Here, I’ll show you another example, and this time we’ll start with an X. For the X’s, you have to decide where to start and which direction to go. The trick is to be consistent—always start in the same place so that you’ll remember the sequence. Same thing with the grids—start in a corner and then follow a set pattern. For example, you might do something like this.”