Danse Macabre by Gerald Elias

Author:Gerald Elias
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781429929455
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

FIFTEEN

DAY 5: MONDAY

The phone woke them early the next morning. There was only one extension in the house and that was downstairs. “You get it,” Jacobus shouted hoarsely to Nathaniel, who slept in the guest room, which was the size of a large closet and as well appointed. “I’m still an invalid.”

The call was from Miles Bardon at Intercontinental Insurance Associates, the same company that had insured the infamous Piccolino Stradivarius.

“I’ve got some news for you,” said Bardon. “A Rose Grimes indeed obtained coverage for the Garimberti soon after she secured the evaluation from Boris in New York.”

“Hold on one second, Miles,” Nathaniel said. He shouted the news up to Jacobus.

He returned to the phone. “Did she ever make a claim?”

“No.”

“No? Are you sure?”

Bardon chuckled. “Listen, Mr. Williams, when we pay out more than a dime, we don’t forget.”

By the time Nathaniel finished his call, Jacobus was in the kitchen smoking a Camel as he brewed a pot of instant Folgers in his ancient aluminum percolator, wondering where the paucity of their accumulated information left them. The knowledge that Grimes had never collected insurance money on the broken violin stopped them in their tracks. And maybe that’s where they should be, he reasoned. The weight of the evidence, if not all the suspicions, still pointed to BTower. As he was about to drink his coffee, the phone rang again. Jacobus answered it himself this time. It was Dedubian.

“I have some information for you,” Dedubian told Jacobus. “It seems that the Garimberti has papers, good papers, from Laszlo. He was one of the best.”

“Laszlo!” said Jacobus. “Crusty old fart! He wrote papers for my violin. You know my fiddle. It’s a terrific eighteenth-century Neapolitan instrument, but Laszlo used to give me hell because I never bought a Strad.”

“Yes, he was like that. How did you get him off your back?”

“I told him I did have a great instrument. My ears. What’s he up to? He still live in Passaic?”

“No, not for a long time,” said Dedubian. “Lazlo’s been retired for a few years. His eyesight was going and he was no longer absolutely certain what he was looking at. He didn’t want all his earlier work to be invalidated by making a bad call, so he called it a day. I do believe he is now in your neck of the woods, Putnam County, New York. I hear he has become fond of vegetable gardening, of all things.”

This was good news for Jacobus, because Novak was now only a half hour away, whereas going to New Jersey would have taken another valuable day off their efforts to preserve the life of BTower.

“What do you think about Grimes not filing an insurance claim for the Garimberti?” Jacobus asked. Dedubian rattled off a few possibilities: ignorance, shame, excessive paperwork. There was no way to know. This led to the subject of the previously stolen Piccolino Strad, which had been recovered by Jacobus, but which had also been seriously damaged in the process.

“There aren’t too many pristine Strads or Guarneris anymore, are there?” said Jacobus.

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