Capriccio (25 page)

I peered across the parking lot. “What about Ron?”

“He doesn’t seem real anxious to join the party. He mentioned something about calling his lawyer and the Attorney General when I suggested he shouldn’t leave town.”

“He
will
leave! You can’t just let him go!”

“He isn’t going
far,”
he said and tossed his head in Ron’s direction. Gino had his hand on Ron’s bicep, gently nudging him toward a squad car.

We walked back down the road to Sean’s parked car. The predominant mood was anticlimax, not triumph. “You got tired of waiting for me, did you?” he asked.

“You knew I wouldn’t stay there.”

“That
was
a bit dangerous. Etherington’s gun was loaded.”

“I can’t believe Ronald Strathroy is a crook.”

“He’s not as bad as lots of them. His back was against the wall. He never meant for anything to turn violent. He didn’t want to hurt anybody.”

“You’re not making excuses for what he did? It was terrible—and to Victor, of all people.”

“I feel sorry for the guy. He was pushed to take his father’s place at Graymar, and he just doesn’t have the brains to make money legally. His mother is an expensive lady—big front to keep up. I can see how he’d get pressured into doing what he did.”

“Well I can’t, and I hope Victor presses every charge in the book.”

“We’ll see,” he said and opened the car door for me.

“Nobody’s acting the way he should be!” I sulked. “I thought cops were supposed to be tough on criminals. Victor wasn’t even glad to see me. All of a sudden you’re on Ron Strathroy’s side. And furthermore, I’d like to know how you got into Victor’s apartment without a key before you followed me to Casa Loma tonight.”

“I didn’t.”

“Aha! When you picked me up you said you didn’t find me
in
the apartment.
In!
You were in and furthermore you had a key when we got there.”

“I didn’t get in without a key. I got in with one.”

“Well, where did you get it?”

“The doorman let me have a copy. We’re old buddies by now, Hans and me. Mind you, I’m beginning to feel like the boy who cried wolf, always dragging poor Hans up to open your door and you not even having the courtesy to be dead. I had to give him a tip.”

“How much?”

“On the horses—Flamboro Downs, the sulky races . . . Jeez, are you sure you’ve lived here for a month?”

"Sorry to disappoint you again. Next time the door’s locked, I’ll see if I can arrange to be mortally wounded. Bleeding to death all over the carpet. Hans would like that. You can be a hero, give me a blood transfusion. I’m 0 positive.”

“You’re A positive now. Must be—you’ve sucked me dry.”

“Let’s go. I don’t want to miss Victor’s story.”

“You can catch it on TV. He won’t miss this chance. Now about you and me, Cassie . . .” The moustache descended, looking like two slightly dilapidated toothbrushes and feeling the same. Of course, other sensations came along with it. Quite nice ones. Strong arms around me, warm fingers all over me, very corny but strikingly sincere words of love. There was something about not being able to live without me, a heart attack when he thought I was a thief, and something else about one in a million and knowing as soon as he saw me. Much too good for him. Lots of expense-paid travel, but whether a Mountie was expected to drag his wife along was not clear. I condescended to think about it.

Since we had a bit of trouble finding any cigars big and expensive enough to suit Victor, we arrived late for his story. Marven was just leaving. He had the violin case under his arm which threw Victor into a frenzy. My uncle wasn’t too reluctant to begin his story over again. He was working up to a dramatic presentation for the mass media. He’d changed out of his rumpled suit into a flamboyant, burgundy colored dressing gown made of some patterned material related to satin. He had an ascot at his neck and was preening in front of a mirror.

“Who’s this, another cop?” he asked when we entered. He already had a stogie in his hand. He must have made Marven stop on the way home.

“This is Sean Bradley, Victor,” I said. “He’s a Mountie.”

“My name’s John Weiss,” Sean corrected.

“Right, I forgot,” I said.

“Lloyd’s of London,” Sean added.

“Lloyd’s!” That was me, shrieking. “What about the scarlet tunic! And the funny hat?”

“Don’t mind her, she’s an idiot,” Victor explained. “Phone your mother, Cassie. She’ll be worried sick.”

“She’ll be sound asleep. I’ll phone her tomorrow, and I am not an idiot. Anything you two have to say, I plan to hear and object to.”

“She will, you know,” Victor cautioned, but he wore an approving smile. Whether at John, who I went on calling Sean for a few days, or the fact that I had done the right thing for an Italian niece and found a mate, I wasn’t sure. I don’t even know how he knew I’d landed John, but being Italian, he sensed it.

“You can’t be an insurance agent,” I objected. “Lloyd’s is in London!”

“That’s where I work out of. Parelli’s the Mountie,” John explained. I remembered those shirts with English labels in his hotel room. “Gino Parelli. He’s a special agent with the RCMP. I’m with Lloyd’s. We both wanted the same thing and worked together.”

“Why did you call yourself Sean Bradley? Insurance agents don’t have to change their names.”

“The famous ones do,” Victor told me. “According to Marven, John here is famous, in his own way. Sorry I didn’t recognize you, John. All Marven told me was your name. And you’re just the man I want to talk to. You can’t reason with the police. They’re just here to arrest people.” I didn’t trust the gleam in his eyes.

“If you’re trying to arrange a deal about Strathroy, it’s the cops you want, not me,” John cautioned. “Of course, I’m interested in anything you might have to suggest. Do you think Strathroy might be willing to hand over the rest of the Carpani take, arrange a deal for some clemency consideration?”

“I don’t give a damn about that milksop,” Victor said. “Lock him up and throw away the key for all I care. It’s the violin I’m interested in.”

“Did you get your money back?” I asked.

“Just like her mother,” Victor repined. “I got it back. Or will—as soon as they no longer need it for evidence. About the violin, Mr. Weiss—John. How do you plan to return it to the contessa?”

“I’ll take it personally.”

Victor’s fingers were nervously massaging his chin. I had a little trouble leading him back to tell us his ordeal but not too much. He made a very good rant of it, like a ham actor in an afternoon soap, but there wasn’t much new. I already knew about his having met Etherington at a party, about buying the violin, going to Bitwell, and so on.

“Where did they take you? Where have you been all this time?” I asked.

“Locked up in a damned little cramped bungalow Etherington lives in out in the boonies. Some place called Port Credit. It was only a stone’s throw from that mall where they dumped me tonight. He kept me doped half the time but let me wake up long enough to go to the can and eat, occasionally. Beans and eggs. Not even a dish of pasta. And my cigars, the son-of-a-bitch smoked them in front of me and wouldn’t let me have a puff. Imagine, being low and petty enough to steal a man’s cigars. Imported!”

“Easy on the sons-of-bitches, Victor. The language I mean, not Etherington.”

He glanced at me impatiently and went on talking. “Somebody—well it was Strathroy, I know that now, though I didn’t at the time—Strathroy took my cigars while he was rifling my apartment for the violin and brought them to the hut. He meant them for me, but that goddamm’d—”

“Easy on the goddams, too.”

“You want to think twice before marrying this one,” Victor advised John. Then his caution was awakened to the occasion, and he tried to rectify his error. “Of course, she’s really not a bad sort of girl.”

“That’s half the trouble right there,” John agreed.

“Tell us about being locked up,” I ordered.

“They didn’t torture me unless you can call hours of Lawrence Welk torture. What upset their little applecart is that I didn’t knuckle under and tell them where I hid the Stradivarius. Clever, eh?” he congratulated himself. “Those two are rank amateurs. They didn’t know what to do with me once they kidnapped me. That wasn’t a part of the plan. Etherington panicked when I went to the conservatory and found out the violin was stolen. He knew it would be all over the papers by morning. He was following me from the moment I left him. He grabbed me at gunpoint in my garage."

“But you’d already escaped him and hidden the violin at the Casa Loma,” I said.

“Yes, and put some sneakers in the case. If they managed to grab it, I didn’t want it to feel empty. I carried the case down to Union Station to fool him, but the amateur lost me in traffic. He was waiting for me back at the apartment garage. The phone calls were flying thick and fast to Strathroy, asking what he should do. Of course, he didn’t use Ron’s name. They have some other—some sucker lined up to buy a necklace and were shaking in their boots in case the whole Carpani story came out and blew their scam into the headlines. I’d told Etherington I was keeping it a secret that I’d gotten hold of the old Italian violin till I had it in tune. We weren’t calling it a Strad then though we both knew.”

“Just as you thought, Sean—John,” I congratulated. “There is one other thing, Victor. Why did you hide your Guarneri in the locker?”

“You found that, did you? Where is it?”

“In your studio. And you didn’t answer the question.”

“I needed it for the performance at Roy Thomson that evening. But first I needed the case to protect the Stradivarius, so I had to leave my own fiddle at home. You don’t leave a Guarneri sitting on display in a car for some crook to steal. I planned to dart back and pick it up before I went down to the hall. Rather than having to take the elevator up to the apartment to get it, I decided to stick it in the locker. It’d save time.”

“I see.”

“Now quit interrupting. Where was I? Oh, yes, I was telling you about Etherington. He’s posing as a gentleman down on his luck,” he continued. “When they kidnapped a famous person like Mazzini, they knew they were in over their necks and didn’t dare harm me. I told them, lay a finger on me, and you’re a marked man. They think I have friends in the mob. And between the two of them, they couldn’t find the violin,” he crowed.

“I found it, though,” I said and received not a single nod of approval.

“As I said, John,” Victor continued, “it’s the violin I’m really interested in. Do you think the contessa would consider selling it?”

“It’s a family heirloom. She was very upset about losing it,” John told him doubtfully.

“Good looking woman, is she?”

“Not bad.”

“How old?”

“The right side of forty. Red-haired, full-figured lady, very stylish.”

The more John talked, the wider Victor’s smile grew. “A Balzacian figure. A real woman,” he beamed. “And a widow, I understand?”

“For a few years now.”

“What’s her phone number? What time is it in Italy? Is it too early to call? Cassie, is there any pasta in the house? Make me some spaghetti. This woman can’t make gnocchi or fettuccini to save her soul,” he added aside to John.

“I’ll give it a try,” John offered.

Victor was much too excited to go to bed. He kept popping his head into the kitchen, as often as not catching John and myself simmering, but not pasta. “CBC is sending over a reporter at eight tomorrow morning,” he announced on one trip.

Later it was, “The
Globe
and the
Star
both want exclusives, Cassie. Which shall I give the honor? Exclusive be damned, I’ll let them all come, including the
Sun.
I hope you saved all the papers. There should have been good coverage.”

I assured him they were all awaiting his perusal. The next time he came, he had dragged the manager of Roy Thomson Hall from his bed and had gotten a promise of a new concert series. “This one will be a sellout,” he crooned. “They’ll be lined up for tickets as if I were a rock star. I’ll make real music popular for the masses. More garlic,” he added without even tasting the spaghetti sauce.

When the spaghetti was ready, Victor opened some of his best red wine, and we sat down to celebrate. We heard a great deal more self-congratulating from Victor about how he had handled his incarceration, and his plans to have the story ghost-written into a best seller.
“The Vanishing Violinist
I’ll call it. No, that sounds like Perry Mason, and I’ll want my name in there.
Mazzini Is Missing
—make that
The Great Mazzini Is Missing.
That has a nice ring to it. Speaking of ring, I can call the contessa now,” he said, glancing at his watch.

I was a little suspicious when he went into his bedroom to make the call. Once he got the contessa on the line, however, he became so excited that his voice carried through the walls. He spoke in Italian, along the following lines:

"My dear contessa, I hope I haven’t gotten you out of bed? . . . Oh, having lunch? Terribly sorry. I’m calling from Canada and didn’t realize, but I have good news for you. I’ve found your violin. . . . It’s fine, I guarded it with my life—literally. I’ve been held captive and tortured for days. Oh, I’ll live. Kind of you to ask. . . . A wonderful instrument, the finest violin I’ve ever played. . . . Do I play? Ha ha, I forgot to introduce myself. This is Victor Mazzini speaking. (a very gratified little laugh)
Grazie.
Yes, the one they call the Great Mazzini. I’m surprised you’ve heard of me all the way in Italy! I’m flattered. Yes, a native son. . . . Too kind. No, really!
All
my records? You’re making me blush, Contessa. Oh, very soon, you’ll have it very soon. I insist on taking it to you personally. We don’t want some bourgeois insurance agent taking it, using it for a doorstop. (I smiled apologetically at John.) Not at all, a pleasure. . . . Well, there is one little thing. If you could put up with its absence for another month. Oh, the very best care! I’ll hire a special guard to watch it. And a violin needs to be played, you know. But then I don’t mean to tell
you
anything about violins. . . . A concert series. The world deserves to hear the great Carpani Stradivarius. I’ll send you a copy of the record. Including a little surprise. . . . Don’t like surprises? What an unusual lady. Well, if you insist, it’s the little piece I wrote to honor the Carpani Strad. . . . I write a little, I’m not a serious composer. I call it unofficially
Capriccio Carpani
—a capricious little thing, just in fun, you know. Very modern and youthful.”