Chapter 2 - THE PHOTOGRAPH UNDER THE PIANO
Maestro Falk still had his hand on my arm.
“Samuel Weiss,” he repeated. “Your father actually studied with him?”
“Studied is a generous word.”
My voice sounded steadier than I felt.
“Dad tuned his pianos. Weiss showed him things. Dad showed me.”
Falk stared at me.
“That pause in the second movement wasn’t published.”
“I know.”
“No recording contains it either.”
“I know that too.”
Behind him, Cassian Voss stopped moving.
Vivian Ashcroft let out a soft laugh.
“Oh, please.”
Everyone turned.
She had recovered from the humiliation of watching the maid receive a standing ovation, and now she wore that polished smile wealthy people use when they’re about to cut somebody without raising their voice.
“Are we really pretending her father was Samuel Weiss’s secret musical heir?”
I looked at her.
“My father repaired pianos.”
“Your father was accused of stealing from the Bellweather Theatre.”
The room went quiet again.
This silence felt different.
Ugly.
Prepared.
My stomach tightened.
“What did you say?”
Vivian lifted one shoulder.
“You heard me.”
Cassian stepped between us.
“Vivian.”
“What? She deserves to know what everyone else knows.”
“I don’t,” I said.
That stopped her.
Mr. Hayes appeared beside the service door.
His face had gone gray.
I looked at him.
“You know something.”
“Elena—”
“You looked scared when I said Samuel Weiss.”
His eyes dropped.
Vivian took a sip of champagne.
“Thomas Marlow was the last technician allowed into Bellweather’s music archive before an original Weiss score disappeared.”
“That’s a lie.”
“It was in the papers.”
“My father never mentioned it.”
“Perhaps because thieves rarely make bedtime stories out of their best work.”
I moved before I thought.
Cassian caught my wrist.
Not hard.
Just enough.
“Elena.”
“Let go.”
He did immediately.
That surprised me.
Vivian’s smile flickered.
Falk spoke quietly.
“The score she means was not simply sheet music.”
I faced him.
He looked uncomfortable now.
“It contained Weiss’s handwritten performance markings. Fingerings. Phrasing. Tempo alterations. Notes no publisher ever received.”
My chest tightened.
The pauses Dad taught me.
The strange breaths between measures.
The violent little acceleration before the final run.
“How valuable?”
Falk gave Vivian a look.
“At auction today? Perhaps seven figures. Historically? Impossible to replace.”
Vivian’s eyes stayed on me.
“It vanished fifteen years ago.”
I was thirteen.
Dad had come home one winter night with blood on his lip.
I remembered that suddenly.
He told me he had slipped on ice.
I had believed him.
Cassian glanced toward the guests still pretending not to listen.
“This conversation is over.”
“No,” I said.
His eyes returned to mine.
“For them, maybe. Not for me.”
I pointed at Hayes.
“You knew my father.”
Hayes closed his eyes.
For half a second, he looked seventy instead of sixty.
“Yes.”
The word landed harder than Vivian’s accusation.
“How?”
“I worked at Bellweather.”
My mouth went dry.
“You told me you spent your whole career in private service.”
“Most of it.”
“You knew Dad?”
“Yes.”
“How well?”
Hayes looked toward the grand piano.
“Better than I’ve had the courage to admit.”
Cassian said nothing.
That was almost worse.
I walked toward Hayes.
“Why did you never tell me?”
“Because Thomas asked me not to.”
“My father has been dead two years.”
“I know.”
“So whose secret are you keeping now?”
His face crumpled for one instant.
Then he looked toward the piano again.
“Thomas serviced that instrument the night Bellweather closed.”
I turned.
The black Steinway beneath the chandelier suddenly looked different.
“That piano?”
“Yes.”
Falk stepped closer.
“That can’t be right.”
Cassian answered him.
“It is.”
Everyone looked at him.
Cassian put his wine on a passing tray.
“My father acquired the Bellweather assets after foreclosure. That Steinway was one of them.”
Vivian’s expression changed.
Only slightly.
But I saw it.
Fear.
I stared at Cassian.
“Your father bought my father’s piano?”
“It wasn’t Thomas’s.”
“Dad practically lived inside the thing.”
“Elena—”
“How much did Victor Voss pay?”
Cassian’s jaw tightened.
“For the instrument?”
“For Bellweather.”
A pause.
“I don’t know.”
Vivian laughed softly.
“Of course you don’t.”
Cassian looked at her.
She stopped laughing.
I reached into the pocket of my uniform.
The brass tuning key was still there.
Dad’s last gift.
Warm from my body.
Hayes saw it.
His breathing changed.
“Where did you get that?”
“My father.”
“Thomas kept it?”
“It was beside his hospital bed.”
Hayes walked toward me.
“Elena, may I see it?”
“No.”
He stopped.
Good.
I was tired of men asking for pieces of my father.
Falk leaned toward the key.
“That isn’t a standard tuning tool.”
“I know.”
Dad had modified it himself.
One end fit tuning pins.
The handle was old brass, heavier than necessary, engraved with three tiny letters.
S.W.
Samuel Weiss.
I had never known what they meant.
Hayes did.
“That belonged to Weiss,” he whispered.
Vivian went pale.
Cassian looked toward the Steinway.
“What does it open?”
Hayes didn’t answer.
I did.
“Nothing. It’s a tuning key.”
Hayes shook his head.
“Thomas added the tuning head. The handle was something else first.”
He approached the piano slowly.
I followed him.
So did Cassian and Falk.
Vivian stayed where she was.
Hayes crouched beside the keyboard.
Under the left cheek block, nearly invisible against the carved wood, sat a narrow brass circle.
I had cleaned that piano dozens of times.
I had never noticed it.
Hayes pointed.
“Try the other end.”
My fingers trembled as I pushed the brass handle into the circle.
It fit.
I turned.
Click.
Something released beneath the keyboard.
A shallow wooden panel moved half an inch.
Falk whispered, “Good God.”
I pulled it open.
There was no treasure.
No stolen million-dollar score.
Only three things.
An old theater ticket.
A folded photograph.
And a child’s blue plastic bracelet.
My bracelet.
I knew it instantly.
I had worn it the summer I turned thirteen.
My father told me I lost it at the public library.
I picked it up.
On the inside, in fading silver marker, Dad had written:
ELENA M.
My knees almost gave out.
Hayes caught the edge of the piano instead of touching me.
“Thomas hid these.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
“That’s becoming a very convenient sentence.”
I unfolded the photograph.
Four men stood beneath the Bellweather marquee.
My father was younger, smiling.
Hayes stood beside him.
Samuel Weiss leaned on a cane.
And the fourth man wore a dark overcoat, one hand resting on my father’s shoulder.
Cassian stopped breathing.
I looked at him.
“You know him.”
“Yes.”
“Who is he?”
“My father.”
Victor Voss.
On the back, in Dad’s handwriting, were six words.
Not a confession.
Not an explanation.
Just a date.
And underneath it:
VICTOR KNOWS WHO CHANGED THE CONTRACT.
Cassian read it over my shoulder.
His face hardened.
Vivian whispered from behind us.
“That’s impossible.”
I turned.
She wasn’t looking at the photograph.
She was looking at the date.
Cassian noticed too.
“Why?”
Vivian’s glass shook in her hand.
“Because that contract was signed the night Victor Voss bought Bellweather.”
Cassian looked from her to me.
Then he said the words that changed everything.
May you like
“My father bought Bellweather for one dollar.”
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