The Vanishing Violin (13 page)

“Now your name would look like this,” she continues.

Margaret twists her lips as she ponders the new version. “Hmmm. I see what you mean about the different possibilities.”

“When you’re setting up the pigpens, do you always have to start in a corner?” I ask.

Caroline thinks for a second. “Well, you don’t
have
to, but it’s a lot easier to remember that way.”

“Let’s take a look at the first part of the clue,” Margaret suggests.

Elizabeth leans in closer. “Now what?” She looks at me, I look at Leigh Ann, and we all do a unishrug.

Caroline puts her arm around Margaret’s shoulders. “Now comes the fun part. First, you try the easy option and hope they used that one.”

Margaret starts decoding. “That would make the first word … J … B … E. Somehow, I don’t think that’s right.”

“Ah, but it’s more helpful than you think. The most common three-letter word in English is ‘the,’ which is also commonly used to start sentences. And the letter
E
is the fifth letter in the alphabet, so it usually ends up in the center square of the grid, no matter where the
A
is—as
long as there’s a grid in the first position and not one of the X’s.”

“Well, so far both clues have started with ‘the,’” Margaret says.

“Great. So for now, let’s just assume that first three-letter word is ‘the.’”

“Which means we can also find all the other
T
’s,
H
’s, and
E
’s, right?” Margaret asks.

“Wow, you are good,” Caroline says.

After Margaret fills in those letters, Leigh Ann says, “It looks like something from
Wheel of Fortune
.”

“I agree,” Elizabeth adds. “And the seventh word must be ‘street.’”

“Nice work, Mother. I think you’re right,” Caroline says.

“Makes sense,” says Margaret. “The other clues also referred to streets. And that gives us the
S
and the
R
.”

With those letters filled in, it looks like this:

Elizabeth is jumping up and down. “I know another one! The word right before ‘street.’ If it’s in New York, the only thing it can be is ‘Bleecker.’”

Caroline and Margaret consider it for a second and nod.

“Way to go, Mother.”

Elizabeth sticks her tongue out at Malcolm. “See, Mr. Smarty-Pants? And you’re always saying that game show is for simpletons.” Under her breath, she adds, “Old coot.”

Leigh Ann elbows me; we are both about two milliseconds away from totally cracking up.

With those letters, Margaret now has:

“And now I think you have enough to solve the puzzle,” Caroline says. “Start filling in the pens that you know, and you’ll see the pattern. Then you just fill in the rest and you’re done.”

Margaret draws the first grid and neatly prints the
B, C, E
, and
H
in the correct spaces. Her fingers move to her temples, and after some extra-deep thinking, she draws a big X and fills in the
K
and L. Then she adds a second grid—with the dots—and adds the
R, S
, and
T
.

“And now, the X with dots,” she says. “It has to be
W
,
X, Y, Z
, but we don’t have any of those letters, so we don’t know where to start—unless it follows the same pattern as the first X, right?”

“But you can fill in all these other letters, can’t you?” I ask. “The
A
has to go in the bottom left corner.”

“The bottom row in the second grid must be
N, O, P
, with
Q
above the
P
,” Leigh Ann says. “And that means the
D
goes above the
C
, because it’s the same pattern.”

Margaret adds those letters and then fills in everything except the final four letters.

“And now for the final test,” she says, starting on the remaining blanks in the clue.

The rest of us watch in silence as her eyes go back and forth and she copies the letters into the empty spaces. Within seconds, the clue looks like this:

    “Voilà!” Margaret looks at the grids one more time and smiles. “That second word has to be ‘xylophone’—the
X
and
Y
fit the pattern perfectly. The third word is ‘player,’ and that must be ‘two’ in the last line.”

Leigh Ann, Rebecca, and I slap her on the back. “All right, Margaret!”

She waves us off and looks at Caroline. “They should be thanking you. It would have taken me years to get this without your help.”

“I just pointed you in the right direction,” Caroline says. “You did the work.”

“Well, before we go, let me check out the second part of this just to be sure it’s the same.”

“Good idea. Set it up.”

And now, dear reader, it’s your turn. My good friend Margaret already did all the hard work. All you have to do is substitute the right letters for the symbols. Piece o’ muffin for somebody as smart as you, right?

Here you go:

You’d better not be starting this chapter if you don’t know where the violinist does not live. I’m not kidding. Go back right now and do it

When we leave Elizabeth’s, we have four clues in hand and seem well on our way to tracking down a violin, stolen in 1959 by someone who now wants Margaret to have it. Go figure—wait, you did, right?