Vengeance is Blind: Three Scott Drayco Short Mysteries

VENGEANCE IS
BLIND
Three Scott Drayco Mysteries

by

Crimetime Press

Arlington, VA

VENGEANCE IS BLIND:
Three Scott Drayco Mysteries

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The
Devil to Play

Drayco tries to prevent the theft of a rare violin
that appears to be cursed.

A suspected serial killer plays mind games with
Drayco, who learns the two men are connected in a most disturbing
way.

Betrayal leads to attempted murder-by-flash-flood in
the American desert southwest.

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 the
naked case. How could she see anything, with the strands of soggy
dark hair plastered to her forehead covering her eyes? In his
annoyance at the whole situation, Drayco raked aside the dripping
locks on his own face and scratched his forehead in the process. He
should have seen this coming, should have checked under the
furniture beforehand. That was a rookie mistake.

Belinda whined, “Maybe Wall Street stock
traders are accustomed to losing two million dollars in under a
minute, but I’m not. And I certainly don’t think my bosses are the
understanding sort.”

Belinda was positively stoic compared to
Jonas, the picture of agitation in motion as he wrung his hands
together and rocked back and forth on his feet. “Oh dear Lord, a
centerpiece of the museum, just—gone. Do you know that violin
brought in thousands of tourists who came to see it? More than one
person has told me it was worth the price of admission alone.” He
glanced up at Drayco, “These exhibits become like our children as
we restore them and care for them. I don’t know what we’ll do
without the Lady.”

Belinda scowled. “At least you won’t lose
your job over it.”

Suddenly, the sprinklers switched off, and
the overhead fluorescents hummed back to life. Drayco said to the
pair, “I’ll take that as my cue and check the other rooms. Keep an
eye out.” He lowered his voice, using the same commanding tone that
had worked well on suspects in FBI custody. “And don’t touch
anything.”

The Victorian room was the first he hurried
through, dodging John Singer Sargent paintings and amethyst-colored
sandwich glass. The smoke hadn’t made it this far, although the
sulfur smell followed him through the halls. He’d memorized the
building layout before the stakeout and quickly checked all access
points and even the bathrooms. The museum designers had planned for
maximum traffic flow—leaving few hiding places, much to the dismay
of small children, perhaps, but at least it made his search
easier.

He didn’t spy any evidence of other life
forms, menacing or otherwise, save a spider in a corner of the Folk
Art room, and his damp shoe prints were the only ones he saw.
Still, Drayco was keenly aware of his lack of a gun, something
Mabie had insisted on. “Stray bullets in a museum full of expensive
artifacts are not a good thing,” he’d said. The knife in Drayco’s
Leatherman tool would have to do, if needed.

After the initial call from Mabie, Drayco
had dug up a recording of the famous Italian artist, Nino Pattillo,
playing Fritz Kreisler’s “La Gitana” on the Lady Ambrose violin.
Like all Strads, it possessed the same famous and
impossible-to-reproduce sound, but with haunting overtones.

Drayco wasn’t the superstitious type. But
when he’d first seen the instrument lying in its case in the
museum, he’d thought he’d heard strains of those exact overtones
echoing in the room, even though he and Mabie had been the only
ones present.

As he made his way through the empty
corridors, he could almost hear whispers of that violin music
following him from room to room.
Get a grip, Drayco
. You’ve
got a multi-million dollar treasure to find. You can read all the
ghost stories you want later, if you ever get any free time again,
Mr. Freelancer.

Drayco made a circle back to the center
hall, where Mabie had rejoined Jonas and Belinda, all three lined
up in a row and staring into the empty case, as if their
concentrated will might somehow blink the violin back into
existence. On Drayco’s return, Mabie started pacing around the
room, hands knitted behind his back. He grumbled, “I had to call
the police. The alarm system alerted the security agency,
anyway.”

He stopped pacing long enough to flail his
arms in the air. “Oh, I can just see the headlines in the
newspapers: ‘Famous violin stolen from under museum director’s own
nose.’ First incident like this we’ve ever had, and it happened
under my watch. Our donors won’t be happy.”

Belinda fished a comb out of the yellow
purse, but that wasn’t going to help the mascara running down her
face like oil slicks in the street after a rain. She queried
Drayco, “Did you find anything?”

He shook his head. “All the doors were still
bolted, no sign of anyone entering or exiting the building. I
checked potential hiding places but found no one.”

Belinda frowned. “Are you saying this was an
inside job? Oh, good Lord. That means the crooks might still be in
here.” She shivered and wrapped her arms around herself. “These
musty museums have all kinds of attics and crawlspaces, don’t
they?” She edged a little closer to Drayco.

Jonas placed his hand on the glass case and
fingered the lock before Drayco could stop him. Drayco quickly
pulled Jonas’s hand away, and Jonas looked like a child who’d been
corrected. Then he gave a half-smile and nodded. “I’m sorry. You
said not to touch anything.” He put his hands in his pockets and
turned to Mabie. “If it’s an inside job, Martin, who would have
keys? I thought you limit those?”

“You and I have the only two. I guess
someone could have made an impression of the key. Or lock. Has your
key ever been out of your possession, Jonas?”

Jonas shook his head. “I keep mine here in
the museum safe. I don’t even take it home.” He groaned. “This is
like a biblical pestilence that stalks in the darkness.”

Belinda snorted. “Pestilence, nothing. This
is greed, pure and simple. Although good luck to whoever tries to
sell the thing. Rare violins aren’t easy to pawn.”

Mabie stopped pacing again. “You don’t think
it’ll end up in a sleazy pawn shop, do you? I can’t bear to think
of the Lady Ambrose lying next to hideous Rolex knockoffs and cubic
zirconia medallions of the Last Supper.”

Drayco tried to reassure him, at least on
that point. “This isn’t a petty theft—someone went to too much
trouble. High-profile cases like this usually involve collectors.
Instead of a pawn shop, the instrument could find its way into
someone’s private study and not turn up for decades.”

Alarms and sprinklers had been replaced by
thunder and a pounding rain reminiscent of an orchestra of snare
drums. Belinda looked toward the one window in the room, high up
toward the ceiling. Drayco almost imagined he could see small bolts
of lightning shooting from the top of Belinda’s head as she fumed.
“You can’t begin to comprehend the paperwork involved. Wish I’d
been assigned to some jewelry account. People always want to steal
necklaces or brooches. But a violin—how am I going to explain that
one? Personally I’d take diamonds over a violin, any day.”