Cloudy with a chance of.., p.9
Cloudy with a Chance of Murder, page 9
Absorbed in her planning, she recoiled at the sudden tap on her shoulder. It felt like an electric shock, arousing all the anxieties that had built up since “Don’t go there.” Instinctively, she wheeled around, ready to confront her adversary.
It was only Franz Weiss, the second violinist of the Kreutzer Quartet and one of the quiet ones at the festival. He was a few inches taller than she was, making him about five-foot-nine, but excessively skinny. He was bald and wore glasses that made his eyes look too big; and his short-sleeve, white button-down shirt exposed his densely hairy arms and throat to ill effect. Yumi tried not to imagine what his back looked like.
Though she tried not to stereotype, she had pegged Weiss as having the ideal personality for a second violinist in a string quartet. A mixed compliment. While Weiss was a capable musician—more than capable, really—he was unassertive to the extreme. Willing to follow anyone else’s ideas or style, he had little to offer in terms of creativity or originality. He fit in. That, he did superbly. But that was the extent of it.
“I hope I’m not interrupting,” Weiss said.
“Hi, Franz. No, not at all. Well, I was just doing scheduling.”
“Ah, scheduling! Our cross to bear. May I join you?” he asked. His eyes traveled to the second seat at her table.
“I’m leaving soon,” Yumi said. Detecting an expression of being offended, or of being rejected, or of abject disappointment, but in any case, an expression he instantly suppressed, she added, “But sure. Have a seat.”
“Thank you.”
He pulled out the chair, which screeched on the cement floor.
“How did you know I was here?” she asked. It was such an out-of-the-way little place.
“I didn’t,” Weiss said. “I wanted a luncheon and was determined not to visit a Subway, Wendy’s, or KFC.”
Yumi laughed. Maybe Weiss was nicer than she thought, once you got to know him.
“But I’m glad you were,” he added, with a smile that came and went so fast she wasn’t even sure she had seen it. It caused Yumi to reassess her opinion once again.
They engaged in desultory conversation. Weiss was inquisitive. He asked her about her students. She talked about them briefly, mentioning the lesson she had given to Joy D’Angelo earlier that morning.
“Ah, the girl,” Weiss said.
The waitress arrived and asked Weiss what he wanted to order. He said, “Whatever the young lady had.”
The waitress took the order and left.
“May I say,” Weiss said to Yumi, “I find you are very sexy.”
Yumi placed her teacup, halfway to her lips, onto the table. “Sorry, Franz, but I have to leave now. Errands. See you.”
Yumi left three ten-dollar bills on the table, twice as much as the lunch, plus tip, had cost. She grabbed her bag with her new purchases and left.
The sleaze! she thought. You don’t even know me! You’ve just ruined my day.
Furious, she marched back toward the library—damn the heat—but then stopped short, remembering Marcus’s request. She also remembered that Utah only allowed liquor sales at state-run stores. With time running short, she texted Uber to take her to the closest one near the corner of 300 South and 300 East. She quickly bought an expensive bottle of Courvoisier XO—that should cheer Marcus up. It had better!—and returned to the library just in time to meet her colleagues before a very nervous Joy D’Angelo, fearful of more strife with Anita Talbot, was about to leave without her.
Yumi waited to see where Weiss would sit in the three-row van, then took a seat as far away from him as possible. The ride back was livened by stories of the day in the big city, everyone chattering at the same time. But only one thing occupied Yumi’s mind: Was Franz Weiss following me the whole time? If so, why? She shuddered when she considered the possible answers. Could it have been Weiss’s voice on “Don’t go there?” Again, why? Why? Why? Why?
Yumi heard Jamie Barov asking her what she had done in town. She blinked herself back into the present and answered, “Bought some shoes.”
When they arrived back at the ranch, Yumi deposited her new boots and dress in her cabin—she had had enough hiking for the day—and carried the cognac, the hoped-for peace offering, to Renfro’s cabin. There was no response when she knocked, so she took a peek inside. Though his cello was in, he wasn’t. Disappointing. It probably meant he was out hiking. He could be anywhere on the island. There was no sense trying to find him. She left the bottle on his dresser with a note saying “See ya soon?” with a smiley face. She returned to her cabin and, why not, spent the next two hours getting her mind refocused by practicing for the week’s concerts, fully expecting a knock on her door. But, disappointed a second time, there was none.
Nor was Renfro present when dinner was served. Yumi wasn’t particularly hungry after her filling lunch, nor was the evening’s menu—dried-up burgers on stale buns with defrosted French fries, glossily billed as Burger Night!—any more appealing than they had been all along. But it was Renfro’s absence that was most responsible for sapping Yumi’s appetite.
She began to worry. If you injured yourself out there, especially if you went off the trail, it was possible you wouldn’t be found for days. And with the sun going down, it would get cold. And if you ran out of water…and if you encountered a bison or a rattlesnake…there were so many “and ifs.” Though Anita Talbot had never exhibited much concern for the musicians’ well-being, Yumi fretted whether she should nevertheless alert her to Renfro’s absence or try finding him, herself. If it had been someone other than Marcus, she decided, she probably wouldn’t have given it a second thought. It was, after all, their day off. Maybe he had gone to the other side of the island, where the campgrounds were, and met some campers for a cookout. He was good at making new friends. She had found that out pretty quickly, hadn’t she? Or maybe he had gone up to the visitors’ center, miles away, where they had interesting natural history exhibits from which he might now just be returning.
So in the end, Yumi decided to do nothing except go to her cabin. There really was nothing she could do. She undressed, got into bed, and opened up her mystery. After a few chapters, she realized she was so uneasy that she hadn’t digested a thing about the book. She knew she wouldn’t be able to sleep until she knew Renfro was back, so she got out of bed, put on her shorts and a T-shirt, and went to Renfro’s cabin.
She knocked on the door.
“Yeah?”
Hearing his voice was a greater relief than she imagined it ought to be.
“It’s me,” Yumi said. “Want some company?”
“Not tonight. No.”
Now, there was a punch in the gut! Not a moment of hesitation. Not even a reason given. What to do? What to say? She certainly wouldn’t stoop so low as to reclaim her Courvoisier, as much as a finger of alcohol appealed to her at the moment. After considering her alternatives, she simply shook her head and returned to her cabin.
The shadow of negativity wasn’t limited to Renfro. It seemed to have spread like a contagion. After their day off, Yumi had hoped the second week would begin on an upward trajectory, but instead, there seemed to be a downward spiral. Could it be because the programs were more difficult, at least in part? That, as a result, the setting on the intensity meter had been cranked up from comfortable to ultra? The Bartók Sixth String Quartet, the Berg Lyric Suite for string quartet, the Brahms B Major Piano Trio, Tchaikovsky’s Serenade for Strings, the Mendelssohn Octet were all major compositions to be reckoned with. But no, that wasn’t a likely explanation. It was a mere rationalization. After all, everyone there was a professional and more than capable. Yumi’s concerto, Vivaldi’s Summer, would be the easiest music to put together, and for that reason, she had offered to sacrifice much of her scheduled rehearsal time for the more challenging repertoire. But even that selfless gesture hadn’t been sufficient to dispel the malaise. It was like trying to turn the tide using a bucket.
Renfro had become progressively and inexplicably more taciturn, resisting all of Yumi’s efforts at conversation. Yumi even wondered whether he might be seeing one of the other women at the festival. She didn’t think it likely, but the thought—please, not Joy D’Angelo!—lodged in her throat like a chicken bone. But then again, he didn’t seem to be spending any time with anyone else, either. On those occasions she tried to engage him in dialogue, he found an excuse to go elsewhere, citing his need to practice or “work through some things.” When she asked him matter-of-factly what he had done on their free day, he was equally evasive, saying that he’d “just wandered around for a while, nowhere in particular.” And then told her she shouldn’t be so prying, she wasn’t his mother. Recalling their nights of passion together, Yumi had tersely responded, “I should hope not.”
With the island’s claustrophobia and the increasingly oppressive heat, as the musicians approached the end of the second week, Yumi was more than ready to put the festival in her rearview mirror. That feeling seemed to be one of the few instances of unanimity. The scuffles that were so common among great musicians when they rehearsed and which usually went by the boards became inflamed, like dry tinder, in which one spark could ignite an entire forest. That spark would be shortly forthcoming.
Chapter Six
“But it’s my emotional support stick,” Jacobus insisted. “FAA regulations.”
“I’m sorry, sir,” the JFK gate agent replied. “We don’t have a designation for emotional support sticks. Our policy does not allow sticks of any kind on board.”
“It’s either my emotional support stick or my emotional support dog, and my emotional support dog is a monstrous bulldog, slobbers like a drooling idiot, and is not sufficiently compressible to fit in the overhead storage bin, so you’d be well advised to let me take my emotional support stick instead. Policy notwithstanding.”
“Wait one moment, please.”
The agent made a phone call, consulted with his superiors, and in the end allowed Jacobus to bring Hocus with him. He had left Trotsky back at his house in the Berkshires, anyway, along with his violin. Both were left in the able care of Emily Miller, his friend Roy’s teenage granddaughter, who had agreed to house sit. She had also offered to house clean, as it was also much needed, but Jacobus declined because if she moved things around he’d have to relearn where everything was. Dirt and grime didn’t offend him, regardless, since he couldn’t see it. Another advantage of being blind. How lucky can you get? he thought once again. All those cleaning bills he never had to pay.
Jacobus, as a blind geriatric, was a member of a privileged category of airline passengers. Afforded the honor of being among the first to board a plane, he always booked an aisle seat in the rear of the cabin. This was to enable him easy access to the lavatory without needing to navigate past a hundred pitying passengers who would no doubt be staring at him, and over whose thoughtless feet he might well trip. And these days, with his residual gastric distress, close proximity to the toilet was more than an idle convenience. Seat 34C fit the bill.
According to daily reports from Yumi and Nathaniel, the first weekend’s concerts went splendidly. Jacobus couldn’t decide whether the gushing superlatives were the truth or, in a devious ploy to ensure he would actually show up, merely sweet talk. Like the government briefings on “progress” in Afghanistan: “According to four-star Gen. Malarkey, Commander of the Whosie-Whats Division, ‘Training of the Afghan armed forces is not yet complete, but we’re making excellent progress.’ ” A little truth, Jacobus concluded, can be a dangerous thing. At least he wasn’t going into a war zone.
Like Yumi, Jacobus usually packed lightly, partly out of habit and partly because he generally wore the same outfits, day in and day out, winter or summer, rain or shine. Three flannel shirts, all well broken in and rotated on a weekly basis, and an extra pair of corduroy pants. He had no idea what colors or patterns any of it was, colors and patterns having become useless concepts not worthy of his consideration. All he knew was what made him comfortable, and if anyone had a problem with that… Yumi, the sweetie, had bought him new flannel shirts after his house was burned to the ground, incinerating all his belongings. That was more than five years ago, yet already the new shirts were reaching their prime. They were making “excellent progress.” He had made a slight concession to Nathaniel, who wanted him to look smart while attending Yumi’s special summer concert. Nathaniel bought him a seersucker suit.
“Seersucker? You?” Yumi had to Jacobus said when she heard the news. She sounded pleasantly astonished. “That’s just right for summer. You’ll look great in seersucker!”
“As you would imagine,” Jacobus replied, “how I look is of no importance to me. I told Nathaniel he’s the seer-sucker for paying for it and I’m the unseer-sucker for wearing it.”
“You and your blind jokes,” Yumi said.
“Blind people are allowed to tell blind jokes. But don’t ever let me see you telling one behind my back.”
“What kind of jokes am I allowed to tell?”
“Deaf people jokes.”
Because of the suit, he had to pack a larger suitcase than his usual carry-on, which required him to check it. But that was not an inconvenience, as he normally checked his bag anyway, rather than having to lug it through an airport and then rummage blindly for a vacant spot above the seats in the cabin. As he was traveling neither with a carry-on nor his violin, he felt entirely justified to take Hocus on board as his personal item, since it was indeed a personal item. Very personal, in fact.
With a five-hour flight ahead of him and a starched, squirmy biddy in 34B who was clearly uncomfortable sitting next to a blind person, Jacobus didn’t bother to carry on a conversation, either civil or uncivil. That suited him just fine. Why waste his time bantering with a stranger who most likely had nothing interesting to say when he could be thinking deep thoughts about Bach, Beethoven, and Barbecue? His thoughts, though, gravitated to the daily calls he had received from Yumi. As the festival’s second week of rehearsals progressed, it was perceptible to him, if not to her, that her reports had become less and less sanguine. It was apparent to Jacobus that her enthusiasm waned as the days went by. It amused him how Yumi always tried to maintain a positive front with him, because they both knew very well he couldn’t be fooled.
It also concerned him. Something was troubling her, and Yumi was not one to be easily troubled. But, in order to keep her anxiety level down—she had enough to worry about, performing with a gaggle of prima donnas—he played along with her and reassured her that, yes, he would be there to hear her performance of Summer. Don’t worry about me.
The plane landed ten minutes late at the Salt Lake City International Airport. The dame in 34B claimed she had a tight connection to Bozeman and so felt justified to climb all over him and knock his glasses off for the sole reason of being ahead of him on the exit line. So now, if his calculations were accurate, she would be the one-hundred-sixty-sixth person instead of one-hundred-sixty-seventh to disembark. More power to ya, honey. Jacobus took his time, not only because he was in no hurry, but because that made it easier to follow the masses through the terminal toward the baggage claim area rather than being trampled by them. Balancing himself with Hocus as he descended the escalator, Jacobus heard Nathaniel call his name from Carousel 4.
“How was your flight?” Nathaniel asked.
“Best granola bar I ever had.”
“Well, at least you made it safe and sound.”
“And I can’t overstate how underjoyed I am to be here.”
Though his flight had arrived, it soon became apparent his luggage hadn’t. As the carousel circled and as the frequency of thudding, cascading roller bags diminished, so too did Jacobus’s hopes that his suitcase would appear. Passengers collected their bags and the chatter around them dissipated. Eventually, the whir of the carousel thumped to a halt. There was no telling how long they’d have to wait for the bag, and the concert was scheduled to start at seven. There was still plenty of time, but knowing JFK’s track record, one of the world’s more chaotic airports, Jacobus’s suitcase could have been sent to Timbuktu, where some lucky Tuareg would soon be sporting a new seersucker suit. Jacobus and Nathaniel began to discuss potential alternative strategies.
“Gentlemen, I couldn’t help but overhear your conversation,” someone said.
The voice was smooth, a little too smooth for Jacobus’s liking. Mormon missionary? was his first thought. What is this guy trying to sell? Maybe he was being too judgmental. Still…
“Actually, you could have helped it,” Jacobus said, his missing luggage having soured his mood. “All you would’ve had to do is go somewhere else.”
“I think you’ll be thankful I eavesdropped,” the man continued, seemingly unruffled. “Let me introduce myself. I’m Sunny Flox, artistic administrator of the Antelope Island Music Festival. Just got in myself and it sounds like you have a bit of a logistical problem on your hands.”
Flox offered to give them a lift to the island. His assistant, Joy D’Angelo, was picking him up and there was plenty of room in the company van. But what about the suitcase? Nathaniel asked. Could someone come back and get it? That would be so much trouble. Maybe it could be delivered to their hotel?
There was no one in baggage service able to answer that question. In fact, there was no one at all in baggage service. A decision was made. Nathaniel would wait at the airport for Jacobus’s suitcase and then drive up in his rental car, but in the meantime, Jacobus would accompany Flox. Jacobus quickly agreed. He couldn’t stand waiting, anyway. For anything. Never could.
What he couldn’t know was that he was about to endure an hour-long travelogue about the Great Salt Lake, Antelope Island, and the history of the festival. What made it worse was that it was also unnecessary. Jacobus had been to this festival once before, and that occasion almost led to his demise. Well, lightning won’t strike twice, Jacobus thought, but history was only the second reason he hadn’t wanted to come, the first being he hadn’t wanted to come.
