Exchange high Cs, please. The case (and bow and instrument) of the missing violin has been solved, under the direction of Wil Bremer and Julie Luther, with appropriate accompaniment.

The first movement occurred last September, when violinist Matt Rhody stopped at the Amoco station on East Washington Avenue.

"I abandoned it in the store. I just didn't pick it up when I left. When I went back to get it, it wasn't there. It is super embarrassing to even think about it," Rhody said.

So Rhody--a professional musician and 1996 UW-Madison graduate who teaches violin at the Madison School of Music and plays violin for the Madison Symphony Orchestra and also plays in a "jazz-funk- rock" band called "Bopkaballah"--just left his $10,000-plus "J.B. Vuillaume" violin, case and two bows in a gas station.

"I thought I would never see it again," said Rhody, who reported the loss to police and put up posters and checked music stores to find the violin. In 1987 as a teenager, he had borrowed $5,000 from his grandmother to buy the violin. He paid her back, too, from fiddling fees earned at renaissance fairs. The century-old violin was always with him, strapped to his back.

But it did not surface. Months passed.

"And that's another dumb thing, it wasn't insured," he moped.

The second movement came two weeks ago when a young man made overtures involving a trade of a violin for a guitar to Wil Bremer at Spruce Tree Music and Repair, at 851 E. Johnson St.

"This kid, in his 20s, came in and I could see that he had a fairly good instrument, but his story didn't add up," remembers Bremer.

The young man said he had received the violin from his father seven months ago. It had been stored for many years. He couldn't play it, but he wouldn't feel right selling it, so he wondered if he could trade it.

"He's trying out several guitars and I am looking at this violin, which supposedly has been stored, and it does not add up," Bremer said. "It was a violin that had been actively played."

But the trader had all his details down, so Bremer--and his partner, Julie Luther--hatched a plan. They traded a $1,000 Gibson guitar for the violin, after confirming the trader's name, address, phone number and workplace.

"I called a friend of mine, a violin dealer, and asked if anything had gone missing lately," Bremer said. It didn't take long before the friend called back.

"He said, 'I think we have it.'"

Meanwhile, Bremer and Luther called the Madison Police Department, asking if anyone had reported a violin missing.

Police computer records, however, are not sorted by musical instrument. They could have found it under the victim's name or a serial number, which the violin did not have. So there was no accessible record of a missing, lost or stolen violin.

The violin-teacher calling-tree was making progress. Soon, a nervous Matt Rhody called.

Bremer made Rhody describe the violin, the case, distinguishing characteristics.

There was a peculiar figure in the wood, for example, and a repair label form a shop in Minneapolis. "He knew the violin," said Bremer.

Detectives were dispatched, photographs were taken, Rhody got his violin back and, a couple of days later, police were able to return the Spruce Tree's Gibson guitar. No arrests will be made.

Detective Rolly Squire recovered the guitar and talked with the young man who said he had found the violin. He even produced a flyer he said he had placed around the city, seeking the owner.

That was not the story told to Bremer and Luther, but everyone seems satisfied, even relieved, at the ending.

Bremer said, "We buy a fair number of instruments, but we are a small enough shop that you are not so anonymous when you walk in our door. We take all the information and the identification, and the story has to add up."

Squire said Rhody is lucky to get his violin back.

"How does it feel? I think it is best described as a glazed-over, euphoric feeling," Rhody rhapsodized.