Free Vengeance is Blind: Three Scott Drayco Short Mysteries by BV Lawson

The Devil to Play
    Blinded by smoke, Scott Drayco crouched in
darkness as alarm bells wailed. He wiped his burning eyes on his
sleeve and strained to hear any sounds the alarms weren’t drowning
out. His companions were surprisingly silent, save for a few
choking coughs from Belinda. Underneath the din, he thought he
heard a faint metallic scraping, a noise he couldn’t quite
identify.
    Drayco’s mind was surprisingly clear despite
the smoke bomb, and he started counting off the seconds, one by
one. The metallic sound came at thirty seconds, and now, at about
forty, the first drops from the sprinklers began raining down.
    The deluge was the last straw for Martin
Mabie, who exclaimed, “Oh for the love of God!”
    Drayco could see a vague outline of Mabie
now. Or at least he thought the blobby shape was Mabie, looking
like a ghost crab as he crawled out from under a table where he’d
sought refuge and started scuttling toward the door.
    Mabie yelled, “I’m going to turn those damn
things off before they ruin the exhibits. I’ll be right back.” As
he growled those words, it had been only fifty seconds.
    Just yesterday, Martin Mabie had contacted
Drayco with a peculiar request. He hadn’t wanted the FBI or police
involved because he feared they would just laugh at him. Who in
their right mind, after all, would take a threatening note against
a violin seriously? But as Director of the Alsberg Museum of Fine
Art, Mabie couldn’t take that chance.
    “A private consultant would be more
discreet,” he’d said, pleading with Drayco to help. “Your music
background makes you the ideal person under the circumstances.”
    Music background. What an innocuous-sounding
phrase, that. He’d avoided anything remotely musical in his
professional life over the past decade, keeping it between himself
and the beloved Steinway parked in a corner of his D.C. brownstone.
Had fate made this Drayco’s first solo case as an investigator
after leaving the Bureau?
    Even though part of him hadn’t wanted to
touch this case, one of the reasons he’d decided to take it on was
the knowledge this was no ordinary violin, the Lady Ambrose
Stradivarius. As had Mabie had explained, “It’s named after the
most recent owner, Lady Amelia Ambrose, but it had a previous
sinister past, including a Russian countess who’d murdered her
lover to get her hands on the instrument.”
    And even more horrible, it was used at
Auschwitz in prisoner orchestras who played as Nazis marched Jews
to the gas chambers. But in the perverse world of collectors, its
grisly history only made the instrument more valuable.
    Babysitting that rare instrument was why
Drayco found himself ensconced with Martin Mabie among Balinese
masks and Greek statues in a side room off the main basement
exhibit hall at midnight. They were joined by curator Jonas
Pancoast and Loncor Insurance rep Belinda Tewksbury, who’d insisted
on coming along to protect her company’s investment. Mabie believed
if the instrument truly were in jeopardy, tonight was the
night—tomorrow it would go on tour with the Lafleur Quartet, before
being sent on loan for six months to a museum in the
Netherlands.
    After Mabie scurried away in search of the
sprinkler shut-off valve, Drayco checked on the two other occupants
of the room, now that the smoke had mostly dissipated. Jonas wiped
his wet glasses on his damp lapel, and Belinda was still holding
her tiny yellow Prada purse over her head in a vain attempt to
stave off the downpour. Seeing they were okay, Drayco grabbed his
pocket flashlight and headed toward the violin display case.
    The case was a stand-alone exhibit on an
ebony pedestal in the middle of the hall, the bottom filled with a
luxurious red velvet lining. Drayco could clearly see indentations
in the fabric where the violin had rested, but the violin itself
was gone. What had the threatening note said? Occasio facit
furem . Opportunity makes a thief.
    Belinda joined him and stared glumly at