Murder with Strings Attached Page 20

  “Wait!” I shouted over the passing traffic noise. “Please start at the beginning.”

  “Sure. Well, you remember I told you that, according to Rafael, Ballard said he had the violin, but it would be a couple of days before he could give it to Sanders and get his ‘reward’?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, I got this crazy idea. I’d get to Ballard first, while he still had the violin, and offer him twice what Sanders was paying for the violin. In cash. He could just disappear and when Rafael showed up with the money, he’d be gone and twice as wealthy. Rafael would report back to Sanders that when he got to Ballard’s place, he wasn’t there.”

  Sara whistled and said, “It was worth that much to you?”

  “Yeah, it was. I knew stealing it back was both dangerous and chancy. Rafael had told me how much Sanders was paying for it, and to me it was well worth twice that to get it back with no risk, either of harm or failure.”

  “Okay,” I said, “but we know Sanders ended up with the violin and Ballard ended up dead. So what happened?”

  “Well, Rafael told me where Ballard was staying, which was in Redwood City, not far from Los Altos. So I told you I had business to attend to and I caught a flight to San Francisco. But the plane was delayed, and by the time I arrived it was the middle of the night and I had to wait until the next morning to drive to Redwood City. But when I finally got there and found Ballard, it was too late. Sanders had arrived back earlier than expected, and the exchange had already been made.”

  “So obviously you didn’t shoot Ballard to get the violin,” I said.

  Aaron turned and gave me a rather severe look. “Of course not!” he said. “How could you even suggest such a thing?”

  “Sorry. I’m just trying to follow the story. If the violin was already gone, why did you shoot Ballard?”

  “I didn’t shoot him. Well, yes, I did, but not like you’re thinking. Let me finish the story.”

  I shut up and put my finger across my lips.

  “When I found out the violin was gone, I said something like ‘Thanks, anyway,’ and started to leave. But Ballard was, of course, not a businessman, but a hardened criminal. I should have suspected he would realize that, thinking he still had the violin, I came there carrying a shitload of cash to pay for it. He decided he wanted to relieve me of that considerable amount of money, and he took out a gun from a holster under his arm and told me to put the cash on the table in front of me.”

  “Jesus,” I said.

  “Right. So now I’ll remind you that, as an Israeli citizen, following university I spent two years in the Israeli army. I was trained in, among other gentle pastimes, hand-to-hand combat. It was almost too easy to disarm Ballard, but the gun fell to the floor and Ballard dove after it.”

  Sara almost squealed. “God, this is like a real-life movie.”

  Aaron smiled, then finished his story. “I went after it too, and in the ensuing struggle, the gun went off and killed Ballard. A useful tip: If you’re ever fighting over a loaded gun, even if you can’t fully get hold of it, always try to make sure the barrel is pointed toward the other guy.”

  No one spoke for at least thirty seconds as we absorbed what Aaron had said. I broke the silence.

  “So you were that close to…to not coming back with us.” I didn’t know whether I wanted to laugh or cry. I decided just to give Aaron a hug.

  “I guess so,” he said. “And it would’ve been my own fault. I should’ve figured a crook like Ballard would try to hold me up, knowing I was carrying so much cash. So I was lucky to get away with it.”

  Suddenly something occurred to me. “Just a minute,” I said. “Why didn’t you just take the gun away from Marianne when she was holding it on us? Too chivalrous to hit a lady?”

  Aaron laughed. “Maybe. No, it was because, first of all, Benny was there and armed, so the odds weren’t very good. And you were there, and I wouldn’t have risked your getting hurt in whatever melee followed.”

  “Hmm, okay,” I said. “That sounds plausible.”

  “One other thing,” Sara said. “That article in the newspaper said they didn’t find the gun that killed Ballard. What happened to it?”

  “Oh, I’ve still got it. I took it because I thought at the time it might be the gun that killed Martin. I wrapped it in a handkerchief like I see the cops do on TV to preserve Ballard’s fingerprints on it. But of course we now know that Marianne killed Martin, not Ballard.”

  “So what will you do with the gun now?” Roger asked.

  “Throw it in San Francisco Bay as soon as we get back to the city. I sure don’t want it. And I sure don’t want it found on me. As far as I can tell, nothing else connects me with Ballard or his death, and I want to keep it that way—an unsolved mystery.”

  “And only we know the solution to the mystery,” Sara said, clapping her hands. “How neat.”

  Okay, so if you’re reading this, now you know, too.

  Chapter 40

  When we arrived back at the Fairmont, Roger dropped me and Aaron off, then asked Sara if she’d like to come over to the Mark Hopkins with him for a drink. “These two must be pretty tired,” he said, “so they won’t be any fun tonight.”

  Sara probably was tempted, but she declined. “To tell the truth,” she said, “I can’t wait to hear what happened down there. Obviously things didn’t go the way Flo planned, or we wouldn’t have had to come to their rescue.”

  Roger nodded. “I understand. Maybe tomorrow? Then you can tell me what happened too. At least the unclassified parts.”

  “Would you like to come along now and listen?” Sara asked. It wasn’t a good idea, but she probably felt obligated to offer.

  Roger waved the idea away. “No, thanks. I’d just be intruding. I’m sure you three have lots to talk about, and some of it probably shouldn’t go any farther. I’m just a stranger who was available to help out.”

  Sara leaned over and kissed Roger affectionately on the cheek. “You’re not a stranger anymore, but I guess you’re right. I’ll see you tomorrow. Maybe we can all have that drink together.”

  Aaron and I joined in agreement at this plan, and our little band of conspirators got out of the car. Aaron, still treating his violin like a newborn baby, thanked Roger again, and we walked up the steps and into the hotel.

  We headed straight for the elevators, but on the way we stopped at the concierge desk, where Aaron asked the clerk, “Is this where I bring something to have it put in the hotel safe?”

  “Yes, sir,” the clerk said. “And there’s no charge for that service.”

  “Good. I’ll want this violin put in the safe as soon as I get the case from my room.”

  “Very wise, sir,” the clerk commented as Aaron departed for his room. “You’d be surprised the valuable things some of our guests have left in their hotel rooms, just asking for them to be stolen.”

  Aaron nodded in agreement, then directed a wink in my direction. “Someday they might just walk into their room and find a burglar there.

  “No telling what might happen then.”

  ****

  It was nine o’clock in the evening. Aaron, Sara and I had showered and changed in our respective suites, and we had all gathered in Aaron’s for the debriefing. Aaron sat on a loveseat, across from us girls, who sat next to each other on a sofa. On the coffee table between us was an open bottle of champagne, and each of us held a partially-filled glass of bubbly.

  This was not simply a chance to satisfy Sara’s understandable curiosity about what had gone wrong—and what had gone right—at Chez Sanders, as well as get the full story behind Roger’s appearance in the cast of characters, but also a necessary opportunity for me to assess, in a less stressful, more relaxed setting, just why Aaron and I had found ourselves in such dire straits. Was it all because of my clumsiness with the fake violin? Was it also poor planning? Should I have anticipated the gallery being off limits? What if it had been the real Guarneri that got crushed when I fell o
n it? Maybe everything turned out for the best.

  Sara sat spellbound as I related the details of our exploits in the Sanders house, at first seemingly successful but ending with the wrong violin, then seemingly unsuccessful but ending with the right one. Sara asked an occasional question, and Aaron inserted an occasional detail, but mostly I told the whole story.

  Well, perhaps not the whole story, if one considers my omission of the details of our little episode in the Terrace Inn. But from Sara’s expression as I told this part of the story, her eyebrows arching and eyes widening tellingly, it was unlikely she was fooled by my sanitized version of the facts, especially after Aaron’s unfortunate statement in the car. And face it, Sara is hardly a stranger to impromptu sexual encounters herself.

  When I had reached the events that included Sara, I stopped.

  There was a long silence as Sara digested the details.

  “Whew,” she said at last, “I’m sure that was about as close as you ever want to come to getting caught.”

  “Absolutely,” I said.

  “And as for me,” Aaron added, “that was enough of a crime spree to last me a lifetime. From now on I don’t even intend to risk jaywalking.”

  Sara laughed. “That’s what I always say after getting involved in one of Flo’s little capers; but I always seem to come back for more when I’m called. I guess I’m either spineless and can’t say no, or I’m a glutton for punishment.”

  I leaned over and kissed Sara on the cheek. “No, you’re just a wonderful friend who wouldn’t stand by and let me drown if she could save me.”

  Sara took my hand and squeezed it.

  “Hey,” Aaron protested, “don’t I get a little love here too? I was the one who pushed Flo in, remember. She didn’t even want to go swimming with me. Turns out she was right.”

  As one, Sara and I got up and crossed over to where Aaron was sitting. We sat down on either side of him and kissed him on both cheeks simultaneously. He in turn put his arms around our waists, and we sat together in silence for at least a minute before Aaron turned to me and asked, “While we’re explaining things, how about telling me how you opened that lock? I’ve always wondered about that.”

  “Me too,” Sara added. “What’s the secret?”

  “It’s no secret. You just have to understand how a lock works. That’s what I learned in the locksmith course I took. It’s a little hard to explain.”

  “So give us the simplified version,” Sara said.

  I did my best to explain, in a few words, about tumblers and pins and cylinders and how a lock pick imitates a key.

  “Sounds pretty difficult to me,” Aaron said when I was finished.

  “It just takes a lot of practice,” I said.

  Aaron took my hand and said, “Do you think we could schedule a private lesson or two when I’m next in Seattle?”

  “Absolutely,” I said. I’d been hoping our extracurricular encounter was more than just a temporary testosterone rush on Aaron’s part.

  “Which reminds me,” Aaron continued, “that I haven’t practiced my violin in several days now, having spent entirely too much time playing cops and robbers. Well, robbers, anyway.”

  Sara, who had been leaning back and had begun daydreaming a bit about locks and violins and Roger, suddenly sat straight up and said, “Wait a minute. I just thought of something. Didn’t you have a car when you left here, a rented car? Where is it?”

  Somehow in the euphoria of the violin recovery and our successful escape, we had all forgotten about the Chevrolet in which Aaron and I had driven down to Chez Sanders. And left there, the keys having been confiscated by Benny.

  I was having visions of yet another foray to the Sanders estate, this one to steal a car. It was not a pleasant prospect. In fact, it was more like a nightmare.

  “Okay,” I said, “let’s not panic. They’ve got the rental car. I see at least two problems. First, we have to explain that to the rental people and somehow get it back to them. And second, what will having the car tell Sanders about who took his violin?”

  “MY violin,” Aaron corrected me again. He didn’t sound worried. “And what it will tell him is that I took it. You’ll be in the clear, of course, because the rental contract papers in the glove compartment have only my name on them. So he’ll know the person who ‘stole’ his violin is the same person from whom he stole it first.”

  “So is that bad?” Sara asked. “I mean, he might’ve figured out who took it anyway, or recognized you from the description Benny and Marianne would’ve given him.”

  “Actually, I don’t know that it’s either good or bad,” Aaron said. “That is, even if he knows for sure I took my violin back, like we agreed earlier, what’s he gonna do about it? He can’t call the police, and he can’t sue me.” He paused. “Well, technically, I suppose he can sue me for trespass or something, but I can’t imagine he’d want it coming out in the trial that he traffics in stolen artwork. No, I think he’ll be smart enough to concede this round to me.”

  “But there’s still the matter of the rental car itself,” I said. “What do we tell the company? That it got impounded while we were committing a burglary?”

  Aaron laughed. “No, I don’t think so. I think we’ll tell them it broke down while we were visiting friends in Los Altos, and it was too late at night to try to get it towed, so it’s still there, and we’ll be glad to pay to have it towed back to San Francisco, or some closer place if possible. It might even be covered by that insurance I purchased with it.”

  “And what happens when they try to get it from Sanders?” Sara asked.

  “Well, let’s see. He might deny he has it, in which case we’ll say it must’ve been stolen, from where we left it. Then he’s stuck with it, because he can’t sell it if it’s hot. Or he might say it was left by burglars who got away, but that incriminates me and drops him right into the same public mess as if he’d called the police on us. No, I think he’ll let them come and get it. And worst case scenario, I end up having to pay for the damn thing. Not what I want to do, but it’s still cheap considering the value of my violin. Not to mention the adventure that came with it.”

  “So all in all,” Sara said to Aaron, “I take it you would consider your first burglary—”

  “First and only,” Aaron inserted.

  “…your first and only burglary to have been a success.”

  “I would.” He lifted his champagne glass and said to me and Sara, “To the beginning and end of my life of crime. And to the continued success of yours.”

  That seemed to satisfy everyone, and when the champagne was gone, we called it a day. A day, a night, a week, and a job.

  A job with more than a few strings attached.

  A word about the author…

  Mark Reutlinger has published both cozy mysteries and political thrillers, under his own name and his pseudonym, M. R. Morgan. He is also a reviewer for the New York Journal of Books.

  Mark is Professor of Law Emeritus at Seattle University School of Law. He and his wife Analee live in University Place, Washington, where his hobbies include tennis, biking, the clarinet, and exotic cars.

  Find him at:

  http://MarkReutlinger.com

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  this publication of The Wild Rose Press, Inc.

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