CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Elaine was nervous at the prospect of setting someone up for the slaughter, but it didn’t seem to bother Silas at all. Bringing Carl’s assailant to justice was how he planned to honor his father’s memory. The will was to be read at two that afternoon, but all Silas could think about was settling scores.
After baiting the three associates as she’d been told, Elaine went into the conservatory and closed the glass door behind her. Silas was in there, and he had a violin tucked under his chin. He was wearing a pair of brown knickers and a white, high-collared shirt. A beautifully interpreted rendition of a minuet by Boccherini was what he played, and it never sounded better than it did in the acoustics of that hexagonal room. The Brugmansia suaveolens were in bloom, their white, trumpet-shaped flowers standing open before him like the arms of heaven stretching wide to receive his gift of music.
The quarter-size violin’s varnished, silken body shined bright in the sunlight streaming in through the south windows. Silas’s fingers sailed up and down the scale, from a sweet soprano to a conspiring contralto, and then back again. Causing the instrument to whistle as his fingers drew near the bridge, Elaine could only compare the sound to a siren. Brazil wood attached to the bow flashed over every string above the finger board. Horsehair was pulling up from the frog, and it dangled wildly about as Silas thrashed the stick so fast, at times it became hard for the eye to follow.
As Elaine leaned against the French double doors, he never turned around but somehow knew she was there. Perhaps he’d caught a glimpse of her reflection in one of the windows. After a time, he stopped playing and said, “Dad bought me an original Stradivari when I was five, but it’s a full-size violin and I’m still too small to play it. In the meantime, this respectable Italian antique has to do.” Lifting his head from the chin-rest, he took the instrument away from his collar and held it at arm’s length, giving it a good look. “He told me that a Stradivarius was an expensive piece of equipment and that I should learn how to play it faithfully, or he’d give it to somebody who would.”
“So you learned how to play one,” Elaine said, folding her arms. “And when you grow into it, it’ll be yours.”
Silas smiled. “I did learn how to play a violin, but in my own way. Dad always insisted that I learn classical music, like Tchaikovsky and Mozart, Beethoven and Strauss. My last formal lesson was Andantino cantabile in F major, and Molto Allegro in A major. If I could play those well, I wouldn’t need to know how to do anything else, would I?”
“I guess not.”
“Instead, I made the mistake of admitting to him that I prefer Harry Chapin and John Denver.” He shrugged as if he found the confession distressing. “Thank God I’m a Country Boy is a mighty happy song, you know?”
“I like those artists, too.”
“You do?”
“Yes,” she said. “And I’ve liked every song you’ve ever played. You’re very good.”
“For a seven-year-old.” Running his hand over the scroll seemed to comfort him somehow, as if he considered the instrument an old friend. “This scroll is maple and so are the back and ribs. The belly is Swiss pine, the finger board is ebony, and the pegs, rosewood.”
“It’s beautiful.”
“Yes,” he agreed, running his thumb down one edge of it. “It’s modeled after the body of a woman.”
Hearing him say that surprised her, so she added playfully, “I didn’t realize you’d noticed.”
“I noticed,” he said, putting the violin and bow back in the case and then closing it.
The conservatory was considered a happy room, from its skylights way up high to the red brick floor underfoot. Perhaps that’s why Silas elected to spend more time there these days. Exotic flowering plants and all sorts of light-filtering greenery surrounded them. Various desert plants were scattered along the back walls. Rosy purple bracts of bougainvilleas added brilliant splashes of color against a multitude of supple, green leaves. Pink, funnel-shaped flowers of the oleanders, with their leathery, narrow leaves and creamy yellow edges were dynamic among those plants whose short flowering lives had passed with the spring and summer months. Those oleanders were a lot like Silas; they were harmless to look at, but fatal if tampered with.
“Do you have something to tell me?” Silas asked her.
“I did it,” she said, whispering despite the slim chance of being overheard in a room built as well as the one they were in. “I told Marlon, Nicolette, and Alex that John Linton had been stunned, and I also told them about the missing name card. Marlon says he can account for his badge holder not being in the box. He says he has it and will bring it in before Connery comes back today.”
Silas nodded, looking slightly amused. “I bet he will,” he said, touching a pink oleander petal with the tip of his finger.
“What about the computer idea?”
“That won’t work,” he said. “I’m sure the killer is too wise to be duped so easily.”
“Then you’re sure it’s not Marlon,” Elaine said, not trying to be funny but inviting Silas to chuckle anyway.
“You’re right to think that Marlon isn’t bright enough to have instigated such an elaborate plan,” he said after composing himself.
“What about Alex?”
“I don’t think Alex cared enough to let Dad’s cynicism get to him that much.”
“And Nicolette?”
“Nicolette is a very intelligent woman. She’s also very proud and has enough tenacity to fill a silo.”
“Her badge holder was in the box with the rest of them, though.”
“Was it?”
“Yes, it was.”
“I’d like to see it,” he said. “Alex’s, too.”