But unexpectedly, the Lehman felt familiar to him. Like the violin he’d had back in high school: he’d made that one sound good, too. Playing that violin hadn’t been a betrayal—playing the Lehman wouldn’t be, either. Both were just tools. They were the means of making music.
He started with the Mozart, the Violin Sonata no. 21 in E Minor, trying Nicole’s suggestion of slowing down the second movement. Mozart had written it around the time that his mother had died, and the dark minor key reflected his mourning—and Ray’s, too. The piece felt like an appropriate way for Ray to begin. He tucked the Lehman under his jaw and imagined fat little cherubs tiptoeing across clouds, borne up by the music lingering below, jumping from cumulonimbus to cirrus, sunlight slanting through the blue. Nicole was right: slowing down the tempo meant that the cherubs didn’t have to zip around frenetically—they could glide from cloud to cloud, rolling in an upward current of warm air.
He didn’t even hear her return, but eventually became aware that she was standing in the doorway. Almost two hours had disappeared inside the Mozart.
“Wow,” she said. “You’re doing Mozart proud.”
“You’re right about the second movement,” he said. “Ben Amundsen could take a tip from you.”
“I’m really feeling it. Sounds like you are, too. Don’t get too cocky, son.” She disappeared into the living room, and he lifted the bow again to the Lehman’s strings.
* * *
—
An hour later Bill Soames brought them news. “We checked out one of the people who didn’t show up to work yesterday. The woman who brought you breakfast the morning you left.”
Hope leaped blindly, like a fish jumping out of a lake. “Where is she?” Ray asked.
“We’re checking her residence now. Her name is—allegedly—Pilar Jiménez.” A bloom of razor burn coated Soames’s neck, and he scratched at it.
“What do you mean, ‘allegedly’？” Nicole said. “Don’t you know her name?”
“There is a possibility that she didn’t provide her real name.”
“That doesn’t make sense. Doesn’t the hotel have to get passports, visas, something?” Ray said.
“Yes, we’re reviewing her documents now,” Bill said. “But there are red flags. It looks like a fake passport. False social security number.”
“Fake? You’re fucking kidding me,” Ray said. He wasn’t sure if he was furious or elated.
“How long has she been with them?” Nicole asked.
“Almost two months.”
Ray said, “And you went to her house?”
“We went to the apartment she listed as her residence, yes. She wasn’t there. Nobody would say where she was, only that she left yesterday.”
“So what are you doing?”
“We’re talking to everyone. Checking everywhere she might have gone,” Soames said. “Buses, cars, planes, trains. Door to door to the neighbors. Her church. We’ll find her.”
They hashed out various possibilities: that someone had bribed Pilar Jiménez to swap the violin for the Chuck Taylor shoe. That Pilar was maybe a violin aficionado and had targeted the violin herself. That she’d infiltrated the hotel for the express purpose of stealing the violin, since Ray regularly stayed there. “Ten million dollars is a very good motive,” Bill said.
Bill Soames drilled Nicole again for her version of the breakfast delivery that morning. Ray had heard the story several times by now—each time she seemed slightly more broken, her voice even shakier, as if she were reliving the part she may have played in the violin’s loss: the fatal mistake of letting the housekeeper out of her sight, if only for a moment.
Nicole was sitting in the armchair next to the window when the knock came: “Room service.” She let the small, dark-haired woman in. Nicole didn’t really get a good look at her behind the breakfast cart. The woman kept her head down. Her hair was smooth, with straight bangs, caught in a bun at the nape of her neck. She pushed the breakfast cart past the bathroom on the left where Ray was showering; past the kitchenette, also on the left; into the living room. She’d stopped the cart in front of the small dining-room table and started transferring the plates.
“I should have stayed right there,” Nicole said. “I never should have tipped her.”
“Why didn’t you have the tip ready?” Bill asked. “You knew she was coming. Don’t you normally give a tip?”