Capriccio by Joan Smith

and that would take some dinner, when there was a pair of very tall western boots that had to blow before the socks.
    “Try not to worry,” he said, just before he got back in the cab. I wanted to offer to pay the bill, or at least split it, but I knew his Nebraska blood would be offended, so I kissed him on the cheek instead, and he handed me the violin case.
    The last glimpse I had of him through the window, he was smiling like a teenager with his first set of wheels. I felt insensibly cheered to know he’d be coming back in a few hours. Being human, I also wondered just how small his “little” store was and realized very well the impossibility of being either a diplomat or Sybarite in North Platte, Nebraska. I wouldn’t even have anyone to speak French to. C’était trop mal, ça.
     

CHAPTER 8
     
    I had the very best intention of providing Sean a Grade A gourmet dinner. The restaurant had duck à l’orange and everything that they’d deliver. That we eventually ended up eating leftovers at nine o’clock was not my fault. The phone was ringing when I stepped into the apartment, and between it and the doorbell, I didn’t have time to draw a breath, much less plan our gourmet meal. During my absence, Victor’s disappearance had escalated to a city-wide scandal.
    The first call was from Rhoda asking if Mr. Mazzini was back yet, and when I said no, she asked if she should come in tomorrow. I was uncertain how much privacy my quest for Uncle Victor might require. Casting an eye around the apartment, I decided it could go another day without dusting and gave her the day off. I hadn’t got more than two steps away from the phone when it rang again. That time it was Eleanor.
    “Is there any word, Cassie?” she asked in her throaty voice that sounds as though her vocal chords had been marinated in brandy and smoke.
    “No, nothing.”
    “I’ve been calling and calling all day long. Where on earth have you been?” she asked accusingly.
    “Out looking for my uncle.”
    “Where?” she asked, mystified.
    “All over. I drove up to the cottage,” I said, as a for instance.
    “That shouldn’t have taken all day. What are you going to tell the press?” was her next question.
    I was surprised at the trivial nature of her concern. “I’m not planning to tell them anything.”
    She asked me a few more fairly pointless questions, and as soon as I got rid of her, the phone rang again. It was a reporter from the least respectable of the newspapers wanting the inside story on Victor’s disappearance. How did he get an unlisted number? Victor had probably sent it around to all the newspapers and radio and TV stations. “No comment,” I said briskly and hung up.
    Those newspapermen have ways and means of inveigling themselves into places they’re not wanted. He must have been calling from somewhere nearby and sneaked into the building on the coattails of a legitimate resident. I only had time to take my Adidas out of the violin case and stick the case in Victor’s studio when the reporter appeared at the door in person, scaring the life out of me.
    I was trembling when I looked out the peephole at a man I’d never seen in my life before. The fact that he had a pen and pad in his hand alerted me to his probable identity, and I didn’t let him in. He stayed there for ages, ringing and trying to talk through the door, asking questions. His persistence brought Betty Friske out, and he walked down the hall to talk to her.
    While he was still there, the phone rang again. It was the manager of Roy Thomson Hall, also giving me hell for not being home all day to answer the phone. Naturally he was curious to know whether Victor planned to perform for the evening concert. Did I realize the media and orchestra had to be notified if the performance was to be cancelled? What could I say? I said I still hadn’t heard from Mr. Mazzini and suggested that any sane manager would have taken the necessary steps to cancel hours