Pun Detectives and the Case of the Missing Music! (Part 10)

“What was inside that box was the violins.”

Striking Eyes’ striking eyes widened for a moment. A series of emotions danced onto her face and then off again, one after the other. The one she finally settled on was complex and hard to read.

“Think about it,” I said, knowing she already was. “What time was all of this? When did you run into Vance?”

“When I first got to school. I was on my way to the music practice room to get ready for marching band. I wasn’t that late today, so I figured I could still make it in time.”

“Kind of have a knack for showing up late, don’t you?” After her showing up late to marching band and this very meeting, that was what I figured.

“I prefer to call it arriving fashionably delayed. Anyway, the time when I saw Vance was only a few minutes after marching band started.”

That meant it was while Lily and I were still in the music room, getting the details from Mr. Treble. If my hunch was right, and I had a separate hunch that it was, we and the rest of the band had missed Vance by just seconds. While we were whittling away time in the music practice room, he was hauling a whole box of violins who knows where.

“Exactly,” I said. “So what if he had just stolen the violins right then and there? What if he was taking them to who-knows-what hiding place and you caught him smack in the middle of the act?”

She didn’t want to accept it. That much I could tell. Heck, I couldn't completely believe it either. Most of the evidence against Vance was still circumstantial, and my hypothesis that he was behind it was still holier than a slice of Swiss at a Sunday service. But what Striking Eyes said next practically sealed the deal.

“No.” Her hair swayed side to side as a single smooth cascade when she shook her head. Her expression hardened, and her hand covered the front of her mouth, the long nails at the tips of her pensive fingers blocking out half her face. “I can’t believe it. But…”

“What? What is it?”

“Well… it’s just. As Vance was struggling with the box, I sort of, you know, heard some noise coming from inside of it. I’d never mistake a sound like that. I thought it was just, like, my imagination at the time, but now that you bring all of this up…”

I was on the edge of my seat. And I still didn’t even have a seat. That was how tense I was. “What did it sound like?”

“It was kind of a rattly sound, and a hollow, woody sound.”

Violins.

“It also sounded kind of like metal latches, and some really soft and velvety and deep sounds too.”

Violin cases.

“Also, Vance kind of fumbled the box as he was walking away, and when he did, it—”

“Made the pluck of snapping string? Sounded just like fingerboards snapping and pegs unscrewing and wood cracking!?” I could barely contain myself. This was it. This was the moment I had been waiting for.

“No, no. It played a multi-violin cover of Für Elise.”

“That’s it! That box was definitely them! Where did he take it?”

“I don’t know.”

Don’t know? How could she not know? She was Striking Eyes. She was supposed to know everything!

“Don’t know? How can you not know? You’re Striking Eyes. You’re supposed to know everything!”

The combined frustration and excitement propelled me involuntarily forward till I was leaning all the way over the cardboard plateau that separated us, practically in her face. She lurched back.

“Wh— What’s wrong with you…? Why are you repeating yourself like that?”

Repeating myself like what? I didn’t have any idea what she was on about. Frankly, I didn’t care. All I wanted to know was why she didn’t know what she was supposed to have known.

“I was already late to practice,” she said. “I didn’t stick around to see where Vance was going. Plus, I thought it would ruin the birthday surprise if I knew any more. I might not have been able to resist telling Marine.”

So that was it. The end of the line. All my hopes and my one lead, smashed. The box was probably still somewhere at school, but with my luck and skill, I’d never find it. Hell, my luck and skill were probably actively counteracting me being able to find it. My legs turned weak and wobbly, like someone had swapped out the bones inside for rubber bands. The thin ones.

The way I slumped over to the window and leaned into the sill must have been a sight to see. I was human sludge by this point, nothing more than a droopy glob of melted wax wearing the skin of a person. I pressed my cheek against the glass. Cold rain pattered the other side of the thin pane, stinging needles that wouldn’t stop.

It was times like these when I could hear grandpa’s favorite saying so clearly he might as well have been whispering it into my ear. “Life sucks and then you die.” The cigarette smell, courtesy of Striking Eyes’ distinct lack of courtesy, didn’t help take my mind off of the old pack-a-day geezer either. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her squash the butt into my table, right next to the gum, and leave it there. A tiny eyesore of a pylon rising, dented but erect, from an ashen stain.

I hated that. All of a sudden and intensely, I hated it.

I wanted her to leave.

“Look.” Striking Eyes eyed me from afar. “Whatever you’re doing right now, it’s kind of disgusting. So could you stop? Just looking at you wallowing like that is grossing me out. Like I need to go jump in a hot shower right now or something. Well, I need to do that anyway once I get home. This weather is almost as disgusting as the expression you’re making right now. You’re a guy, right? Grow a spine. You’re acting like an invertebrate. I really don’t like seeing guys do stuff like that. Even you. So I’m outta here.”

Well, that just about did it. Fifteen straight years of being a complete and total natural-born doormat had steeled me against even the most blunt of verbal bludgeonings. But for some reason or another, I didn’t want to take this one lying down anymore. And I decided that the only way I could hope to fish my pride out of the gutter was to get hooks under her skin. Or at the very least to try. In other words: payback. I knew I should have just let it slide, just let her say whatever she wanted to say and then leave. But something in me had snapped, I guess, and I couldn’t help but open my big mouth.

What happened next wasn’t pretty.

Or at all what I expected.

The end of Pun Detectives and the Case of the Missing Music (Part 10)!
To be continued in Part 11!