Reuben Dabbling in Crime

Death of a Violinist and other Stories
1. Auflage 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4835-7484-4
Verlag: BookBaby
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: PC/MAC/eReader/Tablet/DL/kein Kopierschutz

E-Book, Englisch, 230 Seiten

During the period when Shelly Reuben was investigating arson as a private detective and certified fire investigator, she came across individuals and events that tantalized her mind and touched her heart. Add to this a vivid imagination and an indelible belief that, even if virtue does not always triumph, it will eventually manage to hobble, stumble or stride triumphantly across the finish line-and you have these eleven stories. Originally published in The Forensic Examiner and The Evening Sun. Within the pages of Dabbling in Crime, meet: •Dante No-Last-Name-No-Middle-Initial, a throwaway kid hiding under a music school staircase, with a damaged heart and the talent of a virtuoso violinist. •Wealthy, beloved Jimmy Lillyjohn, burned to death on the top floor of his mansion after a lighted cigarette falls from his fingers onto his lonely mattress. •Mountainous, mean-spirited Hilda Pomfrey, who bullies everyone in her sphere, including her tree-loving, milquetoast husband Herb. •Honorable Police Chief Joseph Steinbeck, who reluctantly participates in a library event, and is almost murdered when he is checked out as a 'Human Book.' •Prosecutor Edward Nygh, who hides evidence of arson to convict the wrong man, and his reluctant assistant who travels through time to revisit her past.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Reuben, Shelly

Leseproben

DEATH OF A VIOLINIST I would not describe myself as a tough man. Left to my own devices, I would rather grow cucumbers than flowers and watch the Super Bowl than go to a ballet, but I don’t kick puppies, and when my wife was alive, I would have knit booties out of barbed wire or listened to Frank Sinatra (I hated the guy; he was a bully), just to make her smile. Our daughter Beth looks exactly like Caroline. Same laughing green eyes. Same pug nose. Same freckles. Same crooked grin. That’s why, even though she sounds like a dying frog when she plays, I paid for her overpriced violin lessons with Mr. Schoenbaum, because he’s supposed to be one of the best teachers in town. Beth took dance lessons, too. Her ballet teacher was Miss de Lafontaine. As near as I can figure, music and dance teachers don’t have first names. Right after they pop out of the womb, their nurses stammer, “Yes, sir” or “No, ma’am,” and then back subserviently out of the room. Funny about people becoming who they are, though. Throw all of it into the pot: The hope. The ambition. The envy. The joy. The heartbreak. The emotions we’re stuck with and can’t seem to get through life without. Mr. Schoenbaum must have felt them, too, but he never became a Jack or a Bert or a Phil or a Joe. Mr. Schoenbaum he was born (or so it seems), and Mr. Schoenbaum he stayed. He’s a tall man with a thick head of dark brown hair. Hawk nose. Preposterous eyebrows. Slate gray eyes. Age? Somewhere north of forty and south of who cares. When Beth started her lessons, he was teaching his private students out of a cramped fifth floor walkup on East 21st Street in Manhattan. I met Dante (no last name no middle initial), heard him play, and became peripherally involved in his life…all because Beth decided to study the violin. I’m a cop. Rank. Division. Assignments…not relevant to this case. It wasn’t my call and I didn’t make the arrest. But I was there. Beth and I were both there when it happened, and we both saw the boy die. Beth says that she’s all right with it. She isn’t, but that’s okay, because I’m not all right with it either. Neither of us are very good liars. The first week in April, Mr. Schoenbaum left a message on our answering machine. He stated that he had made some changes, and would now be giving lessons out of his new apartment in Brooklyn: Two bedrooms. Two bathrooms. Music studio (formerly dining room) with windows overlooking Joralemon Street. And only one flight up. Big improvement. Why the move? Because, Mr. Schoenbaum eventually told us, he had met a boy. A very special boy. A ragamuffin. A throwaway kid. But a genius. A prodigy. Turns out that other than having private pupils, Mr. Schoenbaum is also the Dean of Music at Lancaster College. The college’s school of music occupies an old red brick building on Seventh Avenue in Park Slope. Big rooms. Giant double-hung wood framed windows. Tongue and groove oak flooring scuffed by thousands of students carrying musical instruments up and down six flights of stairs. The practice rooms are on the top floor. You get there by climbing a narrow staircase that looks like something out of a black and white movie where a psychopath lurches past a 40-watt light bulb and attacks a deaf mute serving girl somewhere between the second and the third floors. That’s not what happened here. In fact, nothing bad happened, even though Dante No-Last-Name-No-Middle-Initial was hiding in the shadows beneath the stairs. He had made himself sort of a nest up there: A ratty army blanket that he’d gotten from God knows where; a plastic water bottle that he refilled at the water fountain; a knapsack crammed with a clean change of clothes (blue jeans, t-shirt, socks, underpants); a roll of masking tape; and a neat stack of sheet music, all stamped with the words, “Property of the Lancaster College School of Music.” Long story short, Dante was living up there, on the seventh floor, under the stairs. He roamed the neighborhood during the day. Stealing food. Hanging out at libraries. Biding his time. But at 4:00 p.m. on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, he was back at his post, because that’s when, in Rehearsal Room E about seventeen feet away, Mr. Schoenbaum began to teach his first student of the day. I encountered Dante maybe six or seven times before the attack. He was a handsome fourteen-year-old male, a year older than Beth, and almost as tall as Mr. Schoenbaum…maybe five-eleven or six feet. He had light brown skin. Long fingers. High forehead. Aquiline nose. Thin lips. His mouth was immobile and inexpressive. His eyes were big, black, and haunted. It was right before Beth’s first lesson in Mr. Schoenbaum’s new apartment that I met the kid. He opened the door. We walked into the foyer. Mr. Schoenbaum was inside waiting. He said, “This is Dante,” turned, and led us into his studio. It was sparsely furnished with four chairs, two music stands, an upright piano, and a small desk between two windows that overlooked the street. After her lesson, Beth and I caught another glimpse of Dante walking away from us down the hall. We turned toward Mr. Schoenbaum. I asked, “Who is he?” Later, Beth told me that she thought Dante was “gorgeous.” So, girl’s eye view, Dante was a good-looking kid. But he never talked about his past, and other than six scars on the backs of his shins and thighs, the story of what must have been a gruesome childhood never made it into any social worker’s casebook. Back to the seventh floor of the music school at Lancaster College. Dante had a violin. He didn’t explain how he got it, but Mr. Schoenbaum believes that he must have attended an elementary school sometime in the past, that the school had music classes, and that in one of those classes, he was exposed to the instrument. Maybe Dante took a few lessons. Maybe he just listened outside a door. Either way, he stole it from that class. As plausible a theory as any. Dante would tear off a piece of masking tape from the roll that he kept in his knapsack, and tape his sheet music at eye level to the riser at the back of one of the stairs. He would position himself at a diagonal to Rehearsal Room E, so that he could watch Mr. Schoenbaum teach. Then, trying to follow the lesson, he would do the necessary bow and finger work, but without his bow actually touching the strings, in a silent and surreptitious pantomime of what was occurring seventeen feet away. Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, Dante mimed Mr. Schoenbaum’s violin lessons, and every night after the custodian locked up, he stole out from under the stairs, entered Rehearsal Room E, and played, really played, the pieces that he had learned earlier in the day. He couldn’t refer to his stolen sheet music, because he couldn’t run the risk of turning on a light. So he played by memory. He played by heart. Dante maintained this lonely vigil for thirteen months, two weeks, and almost five days. On the fifth day, he blew his cover, and his lessons, at least the ones that nobody knew he was taking, came to an abrupt halt. I have no idea which student Mr. Schoenbaum was teaching that night. I only know that he was as bad a violinist as Beth. I also know what he was playing: Jules Massenet’s Meditation from Thais. I know this because it’s one of Beth’s favorite pieces, and she drilled it into me. Whenever I forget the name (regularly), my beautiful pug-nosed daughter rolls her gorgeous green eyes, sighs, “Oh, Daddy,” and tells me again. So that’s the way it was. Mr. Schoenbaum, scowling while his pupil butchered Massenet, glancing at the clock every few seconds, and praying for the session to end. Which was exactly when Dante screwed up. In the past, the bow of his violin stroked nothing more substantial than air. But that day, he got lost in the romance of the melody, and his fingers not only danced up and down the fingerboard of the violin, his bow touched the strings. When Mr. Schoenbaum heard music coming from down the hall, he assumed that it was a recording of the same selection that he was teaching. Annoyed at the intrusion, he stalked out of the classroom. As he moved closer to the sounds, he realized that the style of playing was unlike anything he had ever heard before. That was when his annoyance turned into curiosity. In seconds, he came upon Dante no-last-name no-middle-initial, oblivious to his surroundings and completely unaware, not only that he was playing out loud, but that he was doing so in the presence of his idol. The instant Dante finished the piece, he lowered his bow, opened his eyes, and saw Mr. Schoenbaum. He gasped in horror. Then he tried to bolt past the teacher down the hall. But a fourteen-year-old street urchin who lives under the stairs is no match for a tall, fit, domineering Dean of Music. Surrender was inevitable. What came next was not. Mr. Schoenbaum realized immediately that he had stumbled upon the rarest of rare in a world dominated by harmony, melody, and skill. A genius. A prodigy. A boy whose soul not only understood music, but...