He Huffed and He Puffed (2 page)

“Not this time. I don't want her to feel she's being descended upon. If she still won't sell, I'll want you and one of the lawyers to pay her a visit.” Strode rarely traveled alone, taking at least a secretary with him so as not to waste time en route. But this time a personal, private touch was called for. “What's a concert violinist doing with House of Glass stock? She can take the money and invest it in something else.”

“She probably just doesn't want to be bothered,” Castleberry suggested. “She leads a pretty busy life.”

“Yes, we're all busy,” Strode said, unimpressed. “Call me when the stock market closes.”

“Right.” Castleberry didn't have to be told which companies to watch. “Shall I tell Mrs. Strode you'll be back tomorrow?”

“Tell her I'll try.”

There'd been a time when A. J. Strode knew Pittsburgh as well as he knew New York. But the town had changed so in the last few years, Strode was no longer sure he could find his way around. It didn't matter; he wasn't planning to stray far from the hotel.

When he checked in at the Hilton, he'd asked the desk clerk for Joanna Gillespie's room number. The clerk replied that Ms Gillespie had requested that she not be disturbed before her concert and suggested he leave a message. Strode wrote a note inviting her to lunch the next day.

In his room he'd tipped the bellboy a hundred to get him a ticket to the concert. The bellboy politely but firmly refused the other hundred Strode offered to find him a woman for the night. Strode took a call from Castleberry and ordered a light meal in his room. Then he left for the concert, his last-minute ticket in his billfold.

Heinz Hall was only four or five blocks from the Hilton, on Penn Avenue, but Strode took a taxi. In the overdecorated interior of the concert hall, he was mildly surprised by the buzz of excitement running through the gathering audience. He knew Joanna Gillespie was considered hot stuff with a fiddle, but he didn't know people got worked up over things like that. He'd been to symphony concerts perhaps a dozen times in his life; on each occasion the audience had been composed and politely attentive. What made the Gillespie woman so special? Strode couldn't tell one violinist from another, or even one piano player from another. He did a little better with singers; he could tell the tenors from the sopranos.

He settled into his red plush seat and looked at the program. That evening Joanna Gillespie was playing a concerto by someone named Bruch. Strode had never heard of Bruch; he'd been hoping for Tchaikovsky. But first he had to sit through something modern and ear-jarring from the orchestra. Then Gillespie walked out on the stage.

Strode watched the audience around him. They were all leaning forward in their seats as they applauded, eyes gleaming and mouths open; that was some reputation she had, to get that kind of response before she'd even played a note. But that couldn't be all of it; these people must have heard her play before. And they
loved
her. No wonder the woman was so damned indifferent to what A. J. Strode wanted.

Joanna Gillespie was dark and intense; very East Coast. It was no secret that the violinist suffered from diabetes, a disability that didn't seem to be hindering her career. She was wearing a sparkly blue straight-up-and-down formal gown, held up by the thinnest of straps over her shoulders and leaving her bare arms free; it was a dress made to allow unimpeded physical movement. Gillespie had that special kind of lean body so many diabetics had, and she looked comfortable with it. Her posture wasn't too great, but the woman clearly felt at home on the stage; Strode couldn't detect so much as a glimmer of self-consciousness.

The concerto began. Gillespie did not caress the violin tucked under her chin, she
attacked
it; Strode had never before seen a musical instrument handled so roughly. And all the time she played, Gillespie's mouth kept working. What was she doing—talking to herself, singing along with the music? Wincing? Her whole body was in motion, a far cry from the sedate image of concert violinists Strode had in his mind. She'd thrown herself into her playing one hundred percent; at that moment nothing else in the world existed for Joanna Gillespie except the music she was making.

What crazy things people get excited about
, Strode thought. The audience was clearly enchanted; he'd had no idea there were so many fiddle-enthusiasts in the world. He tried to assess what it meant. If Gillespie lived for music, that ought to mean she was a babe in the woods when it came to monetary matters. But Strode seldom took anything for granted; besides, getting her to sell her House of Glass stock wasn't so much a matter of exploiting her financial naïveté as it was a matter of personality, of will.

The concerto at long last drew to a close, and the audience erupted into applause. Most of them rose to their feet; a few were cheering. On the stage, Joanna Gillespie beamed confidently at the audience, sweating slightly from her exertions. She was good; she knew she was good; she knew other people knew she was good. Strode was unhappily aware that the kind of adulation she was getting was bound to have an effect on her, especially if it was the standard response to her performances.

Strode scowled. He'd have preferred a more insecure adversary.

He slipped out before the orchestra started its next piece, whatever it was. If he remembered correctly, there was a corned beef place nearby—and there it was, right across the street. He ordered extra-lean and sat watching through the front window until the street began to fill with well-dressed people. Strode paid his bill and left, heading back toward Heinz Hall.

He went in through the front lobby and found his way to the backstage area. Some twenty-five or thirty people were crowding around the door to Joanna Gillespie's dressing room, over half of them quite young—music students, Strode decided. A thin young man with a beard that successfully hid his face was saying that Ms Gillespie was changing now and would be out in a few minutes and please don't push. Then he caught sight of two men and a woman approaching and called out a greeting. He opened the dressing-room door and let them in.

There was some under-the-breath muttering among the students that The Beard pretended not to hear. Strode stayed at the back of the crowd; obviously this was not a good time to catch Joanna Gillespie, but he'd only halfway had that in mind anyway. Mostly he wanted a close-up look at her natural habitat and the woman herself when she was not performing. The presence of The Beard told him she felt the need for a buffer between herself and her admirers.

The dressing-room door opened and Joanna Gillespie came out, dressed in party clothes and followed by the two men and the woman The Beard had just admitted. The smallish crowd surged forward, everyone talking at once. Strode listened to her accepting their compliments in a somewhat lackadaisical manner; but when a boy of twelve or thirteen wanted to know why she'd played a certain passage the way she did, she held up her party long enough to give him an answer.

The Beard laid a hand on her arm. “Don't stay too late, Jo. And for heaven's sake,
eat
something!”

“I will, I will,” she assured him. “Don't fuss so, Harvey.”

“You
pay
me to fuss.”

She grinned at him and left with her friends. Once the star attraction was gone, the others started drifting out through the nearest street door. A woman in her forties came out of the dressing room carrying a garment bag and a small suitcase. Strode held the street door open for her and followed her outside.

Three cabs were lined up along the curb. The maid, Strode supposed she was, got into the first one and rode away. Strode went to the second, handed the driver a fifty, and said, “Get lost.” The cab took off.

Strode climbed into the third cab and told the driver to wait. The street door opened and The Beard came out, a violin case in his hand. He headed straight for the one cab in sight, but his face fell when he saw it was occupied. “Oh,
why
is it so hard to get a cab in this town?” he complained. He asked the driver to come back for him.

Strode rolled down the window and said, “Can I give you a lift? I'd be happy to.”

The young man hesitated. “I'm only going as far as the Hilton.”

“Then there's no problem,” Strode smiled. “That's where I'm going too. Please—get in.”

The Beard got in next to Strode, hugging the violin case to his chest. “It's only a few blocks, but I do hate to walk on the streets at night when I have this.” He patted the case. “Thank you for giving me a ride.”

“My pleasure.” The cab driver had been listening and knew where to take them. “That wouldn't happen to be Joanna Gillespie's violin, would it?” Strode asked.

“Yes, it is. It's a Guarnerius, so you can see why I have to be careful.”

Strode had never heard the word; but from the way The Beard said it,
Guarnerius
obviously meant
valuable
. Strode made several extravagantly complimentary remarks about the concert. The young man was pleased, and by the time the cab pulled up to the Hilton he'd agreed to have a drink with Strode. First he had to see that the violin was put safely in the hotel vault, and then the two men went into the bar.

His name was Harvey Rudd, the bearded young man said, and he was Joanna Gillespie's personal assistant.
Dogsbody
, Strode translated. He ordered bourbon while Harvey asked for an Australian lager Strode had never heard of. “I don't like this town,” Harvey confessed after tasting the lager. “I'm never comfortable here. Jo likes it. She knows people here, and they're always making a fuss over her. But I feel at loose ends in Pittsburgh.”

Strode mentioned having seen the maid leave. “Are there just the three of you?”

“At the moment, yes. Jo's manager will be joining us later in Boston. And when she gives a recital, we have her accompanist and his valet. We're at half strength just now.” Politely he inquired why Strode was in Pittsburgh.

A business deal he anticipated closing tomorrow, Strode told him, and turned the conversation back to Joanna Gillespie. “I was delighted to find she was playing here tonight—a real stroke of luck. Have you been with her long?”

“Three years. You know, I've just realized I'm hungry. Do you want something to eat?”

Since Strode was still digesting the corned beef he'd had only a short time earlier, he declined. When Harvey Rudd had some food and a few more lagers inside him, he relaxed and began to chat easily. He seemed happy to have found someone to talk to, in a town he considered less friendly than New York.

“I just hope Jo remembers to eat,” he worried, pushing back his empty plate. “She doesn't always. When she's practicing or sometimes just out having a good time, like tonight, she doesn't always remember. Did you know she's diabetic?”

“Yes, I'd heard,” Strode said. “Amazing how she manages to do so much.”

“Well, everything doesn't always get done. Diabetics are supposed to eat on a regular schedule, and when she forgets—she's going along just fine and then
bang!
It hits her. The shakes, cold sweats, dizziness. Really knocks her out. It takes her a couple of days to get back in stride again. And that makes it hard on everybody.”

Meaning yourself
, Strode thought. “Does she ever have to cancel a performance?”

“Very rarely. But it shouldn't happen at all. Then I have to notify her manager if he's not with us and change all the transportation arrangements and hotel reservations and the like. And it's all preventable. I dearly love Jo Gillespie—she's a terrific person and the greatest violinist in the world and if she'd just remember to eat when she's supposed to, she'd be
perfect.”

Strode laughed. “I wonder why she's so careless about something as important as that?”

“I have a theory. Her mother insisted on treating her like an invalid when she was a child, and I think Jo is still proving Mama was wrong. Even though the poor woman's been dead nearly two years.”

“Did you know her? The mother?”

“Unfortunately. Mustn't speak ill of the dead and all that, but I swear that woman enjoyed playing the invalid herself. She was diabetic too, you know. And Jo's father as well. Both her parents were diabetic.”

“That seems odd—two diabetics marrying? Or is that something the blood tests don't test for?”

“According to Jo, they had two different kinds of diabetes. Her father didn't develop his until he was well into middle age. He was one of those sluggish, overweight people who sometimes get it late in life. But Jo's mother had juvenile diabetes, and Jo inherited it from her. It was just a nasty coincidence that Papa became diabetic too, later on.”

Strode shook his head. “What an unlucky family. That's a lot to overcome.”

Harvey nodded vigorously. “You bet it is. But Jo's kinda sick of hearing about it. Nobody seems able to write up an interview without mentioning that she's the diabetic offspring of diabetic parents. It makes Jo sound as if she's pitching for sympathy, you know?”

So Joanna Gillespie wants to play down her diabetes
, Strode thought.
Interesting
.

“But the really dumb thing is,” Harvey Rudd went on, “it wasn't
that
that made the most trouble for her. I'm not telling tales out of school, everybody knows about it. I mean her parents.
They
were her biggest obstacle.”

“Mmm … I think I read somewhere they didn't want her to play the violin?” Where he'd read it was in the file Castleberry had prepared.

“They didn't want her to play
in public
. It was Papa, mostly. He was adamantly opposed to her ‘displaying herself'—as he so charmingly put it. Papa thought music was a perfectly acceptable hobby to pursue in the privacy of one's home, but that's all. Just a little skill that one develops for one's own amusement.” Harvey uttered the last sentence with all the disgust such philistinism warranted. “Even when she emerged as the premier violinist playing today, he never really understood what a special person his daughter was.”