Free The Vanishing Violin by Michael D. Beil Page B

out loud, as if hearing the words will help make sense of them.
    “Is this supposed to be a poem?” he asks.
    “Allegedly,” Margaret says, “this is a clue to help locate the person who has the violin that goes with the Berliner bow. We already solved the first one—something about a piano player living on Hester Street, but not at certain addresses or apartment numbers. But what all that has to do with the violin, I got nada.”
    Ben hands the letter back to her with a shrug. “Sorry I can’t help. Try looking online—type it in and see what turns up.”
    “He used lemon juice for invisible ink in the first letter,” Margaret explains. “Well, I guess it was too much to ask that he use the same method twice. Still, there must be other things you can use for invisible ink.” She holds the letter up to the light and looks at it from the back and at every angle imaginable.
    “You see anything?” I ask.
    “Not yet. But let’s go to your apartment and take another look at that magic book of yours. And then I suppose we should do some work on this goofy project for Mr. Eliot. I can’t believe we have to work with that Livvy. I would almost rather have Bridget.”
    “At least Livvy cares about getting a decent grade. That’s about the last thing on Bridget’s mind.”
    “True, but at least we now know that Bridget is completely undependable. We don’t know what to expect from Livvy.”
    Over the next two hours, my bedroom is transformed into a forensics lab as we subject the letter to all sorts of tests. My beginner’s magic book had only one more possible invisible ink to check, but a quick online search came up with a few more. First we rubbed the dust from pencil lead over a small section to see if a secret message had been written in milk. Nothing.
    Then we tried a cotton ball dipped in ammonia. Phenolphthalein, the active ingredient in Ex-Lax, of all things, makes another great invisible ink. You grind up a tablet with some rubbing alcohol and write yourmessage. Later, when you touch it with ammonia, it turns red. Pretty cool, and worth remembering for the future, but our letter remained stubbornly black and white.
    Another good candidate for the ink is laundry detergent, which glows brightly under black light, but the only place we can think of with a black light is the shop on St. Marks Place where I bought my mood ring. It’s packed with clothes (polyester!) and albums (vinyl!) from the seventies, along with a collection of those wacky psychedelic black-light posters. However, it’s almost time for dinner, and there’s no way my mom is going to let me go downtown to some sketchy psychedelia shop on a school night.
    “So, tomorrow?” I ask, completely out of ideas. “Maybe something will come to you tonight. It’s probably right in front of our eyes. Between the ring and this case, just think of all the clues you’ve deciphered. You’ll get this one, too. And just imagine, an Italian violin—yours.”
    I thought that would bring a smile to Margaret’s face, but she is frowning stubbornly. “I don’t know. The more I think about the whole thing with the violin, the more I doubt I’m ever going to get it. And I feel bad dragging you all over town when you’re not going to get anything out of it in the end. It’s not like the ring—at least there we were doing something really good. We were even bringing a family together. This time it’s all for me.” She turns away so that I won’t see her eyes watering up.
    “If it will make you feel better, we’ll sell the violinand split the money, and I’ll spend mine on something you’d never approve of.”
    “Growf.”
    While I’m trying to translate that, she reads the new text message on her phone. Wait a second—is that a smile I see just before she turns her back on me?
    “Whoa, whoa, WHOA!” I say. “No secrets. Hand it over, or ve vill be forced to find other vays to make you talk.”
    She holds it up, and this is what I