Chapter 8

Aaron had to leave Seattle for a short engagement down the coast, but he promised to be back in a day or two. After this gig, he said, he had nothing scheduled for at least two weeks and he had reserved his Royal Suite, no doubt at considerable expense, for the duration “as our base of operations.” Not quite an army field office.

On the following Monday we began our quest in earnest.

Riding up in the hotel elevator with Aaron that morning—this time, of course, the guest rather than the service elevator—I couldn’t quite shake the feeling that I was still an interloper. I was no longer in my frumpy housekeeper disguise, but I still wondered whether anyone would recognize me from my previous foray to the ninth floor. But in reality there wasn’t much chance that anyone, even eager Assistant Manager Larry, would connect that menial servant with this well-dressed woman on the arm of the hotel’s foremost celebrity guest.

Context—like timing—is everything.

Before we stepped out of the elevator on nine, I looked to see if any of the housekeepers who had been there on my previous visit were in the hallway now. But as it was well past the time for cleaning the suites, none of the maids were on the floor. Getting on the elevator as Aaron and I got off, however, was the bitch from room 914 who had complained to me about her un-emptied wastebasket. Would she recognize the maid she had so recently abused at close range? I almost winced when we passed the woman, but I managed a curt nod, and in return I received a broad smile and a welcoming look that seemed to be evenly divided between good manners and envy. Context is indeed everything.

After Aaron poured drinks and we had settled into chairs on either side of the coffee table, I got out the sheet on which I’d written my conditions and turned it over to the blank side. Fishing out a pencil from my handbag, I looked up at Aaron and said, “Okay, now comes the hard part. How we’re going to do this.”

“You’re the boss,” Aaron said. “Where do we start?”

“I guess we start at Donny Martin’s apartment,” I said. “We’ll have to find out where it is, then do a little reconnaissance.”

“Right. So how do we find where Martin lives?”

I thought about that. How indeed.

“Well,” I said, “I do know a few what you might call shady characters in town.”

“Oh yes? How shady?”

“Let’s just say we share some mutual business interests. Nice people, just engaged in questionable activities.”

“Like yourself,” Aaron said. But he was smiling when he said it.

“Like myself. To put it bluntly, if Martin is some kind of petty crook, he just might be known to other petty crooks.”

“Then by all means get in touch with your crooked—sorry, I mean petty crooked—friends.”

I took out my phone, checked the “contacts” list, and started calling. Surprisingly, it took only two phone calls to find Donny Martin’s address. Or, as my friend Rolf put it, “That’s assuming Donny ain’t back in the slammer.” There was always that possibility. I wonder whether they let you keep your priceless violin with you in your cell.

Rolf added that Martin lived with a roommate named Fred Ballard. He knew Ballard only casually, but from his tone he didn’t think much of him.

“I think Ballard’s been doin’ time recently, attempted murder if I’m not mistaken, so he maybe ain’t around. Or maybe he’s out by now. Why’d you wanna know? I can assure you it ain’t worth breakin’ into that apartment—neither Martin or Ballard’s got anythin’ worth stealin’.”

I laughed, both at Rolf’s joke and the fact that if we were right, he was so wrong!

I thanked Rolf, promising to buy him a drink sometime.

Aaron said he would pick me up the next morning for step one in Operation Violin Recovery.

****

At eight a.m. the next morning we arrived at the apartment building where, according to my friend Rolf, Donny Martin and his roommate lived. I say “apartment building,” but that probably dignifies the hovel a bit too much. Its tenants seemed to prefer bedsheets as curtains and its owner, perhaps too embarrassed to be seen there, apparently kept himself and any of his employees—such as painters and repairmen—far away.

But we weren’t there to rent an apartment, and probably the rundown condition of the building meant there were unsophisticated locks (if any locks at all) and no security cameras or burglar alarms. I wouldn’t have been surprised if there were no doors, but that at least proved to be incorrect.

Aaron got out of the rented car and came around to open my door, a gesture, like his pulling out that chair for me in the restaurant, that I had seldom experienced and found quite charming. I’m sure when my mother was my age, it was still standard procedure. But I digress.

Martin’s apartment was 2B, presumably on the second floor, and that’s where we headed. This was only reconnaissance, so we merely strolled in through the (unlocked) front door, took the stairs to the second floor (there was an elevator, but I doubted it could be trusted), and walked down the corridor until we found 2B.

As I’d suspected, the apartment door had a lock set only one step above the antique skeleton keys you see made into jewelry these days. Of course, there might be a secondary night latch on the inside, and that could be dealt with if necessary, but I thought it unlikely given the state of the visible hardware.

Back downstairs, we left the way we’d entered and walked around to the back of the building, which faced an alley. A dilapidated fence, with several boards missing or leaning precariously, enclosed a mixture of trash cans and un-canned trash. Through the fence we could see two back doors, neither of which appeared to offer much resistance to a determined, or even an apathetic, burglar. There was also a fire escape outside each apartment’s back window, which might serve just as well to escape from the law, should that become necessary.

Satisfied with the layout, Aaron and I made our way back to his car and returned to the hotel to plan our little escapade. I was still very nervous about letting Aaron come along, but I’d agreed to it and couldn’t back out now. I wondered whether later, in retrospect, I would regret that decision.