“Ray usually does it,” Nicole said, looking at him.
“Yeah,” Ray said, “I do.”
But Nicole’s purse was in the bedroom, so she went in to retrieve it. “I could still see the cart,” she said.
“Could you see the woman?”
A long pause. She stared at the FBI agent, then down at her hands. “No,” she said finally. “I guess I couldn’t.”
“Could you hear anything?”
“I heard her moving plates and glasses.” Her voice cracked. “But I wasn’t really paying attention. I only had a twenty so I had to find Ray’s wallet.”
“How many plates did you hear her move? Did you hear the violin case open?”
“No!” she said. “I was looking for Ray’s wallet. I just heard him taking a shower.” Tears gleamed in her eyes, and she looked at her hands in her lap. Ray wanted to reach out, grab hers. Hug her tight.
“So what happened next?” Bill said. “Did you get his wallet?”
“Yeah. I found it and got five bucks.”
“Where was the wallet? Could you see the cart when you found it?”
“No,” she said, and now Ray could hear the panic in her voice. “His wallet—it was on the floor. It fell on the floor. Between the nightstand and the bed. I had to look for it. It was maybe thirty seconds, but I found it and gave it to her. Gave her the money.”
“Five dollars, you said before?”
“Yeah,” Nicole said. “It was only thirty seconds.”
“How did you know where his wallet was?”
“He always has it on the nightstand. Don’t you?” she appealed to Ray.
“Yeah,” he said, “I always put it on the nightstand at night.”
“But it wasn’t there,” Bill said to Ray, and then to Nicole, “so how did you know to look on the floor? Did you look through his coat first? Anywhere else it maybe could have been?”
“No,” Nicole said. “Why would I not look on the floor? Wouldn’t you? That’s normal. This whole thing is normal.” Now her voice was breaking. “I went into the bedroom, I came back out, I gave her the money, and she left. That’s it.”
“That’s not it,” Bill said. “Somewhere during that time, the violin disappeared.”
Nicole had been inching toward him, as if she could convince him by her proximity, but now she fell back in her chair as if her spine could no longer hold her up. “It was thirty seconds,” she repeated. “It was a minute.”
“Was it?”
“It couldn’t have been more than a few minutes. Three. Five, tops.”
“She probably swapped out the violin in less than a minute. Stashed it underneath the cart. It would have taken her seconds.”
Because the violin, all this time, lay casually in its unlocked case across the chair closest to the wall. The cart would have blocked Nicole’s view of it.
Ray remembered seeing the violin case there when he went to grab breakfast. He’d been slightly surprised, because he usually left it in the bedroom, but the night before they’d all had a bit too much to drink. He’d probably come in, laid the violin on the chair, and collapsed into bed without thinking.
“So she had the opportunity to swap the violin for the shoe,” Bill Soames confirmed.
For a moment no one said anything. Nicole sniffed—a tiny sound, but it seemed very loud in the silence.
“I’m not saying this is what happened,” Bill said, “but it seems very possible.”
“You mean it’s my fault,” Nicole said flatly.
“I didn’t say that.”
“You’re damn right you didn’t say that,” Ray said. “It’s not her fault.”
“It’s not a question of fault,” Bill said. “It’s just a question of opportunity. This was an opportunity, and it’s possible that the woman took advantage of it.”
“All the stars must have had to be aligned perfectly in order for her to pull this off,” Ray said.
Bill Soames shrugged. “You’d be surprised. A lot of crimes really boil down to moments of opportunity. This woman may have been coming by, delivering your breakfast, a bunch of times, with the shoe and the ransom note in her cart. She finally got lucky.”
Ray squeezed Nicole’s hand. Maybe now his luck would change.
* * *
—
He spent the evening practicing, even though it still felt traitorous to be playing the Lehman. Stradivarius violins were unique. They commanded a mystique unlike any other instrument, with what many believed to be the purest, most extraordinary sound a violin could make. But the power and pull of the violin went well beyond its sound and its beauty: his own violin was in his blood, in the pulse that beat in his wrists and temples.