Chapter 2 - THE SEVENTH PIECE
I came back to the mansion the next morning carrying a notebook my mother had lent me.
The cover was faded green, with a music-shop label curling at the corners. Inside were drawings of piano actions, notes about felt, humidity, and the terrible things people did to old instruments when they wanted them to look newer than they were.
I had hardly slept. At five in the morning, I had woken convinced I could hear six ivory pieces tapping against a dinner plate. By seven, my mother had called to ask whether I was going to eat breakfast before leaving.
I made myself a piece of toast. It tasted like cardboard.
Mrs. Carver met me at the service entrance. "You have the morning off," she said.
"I know. I brought something for the conservator."
"Then you can give it to her and go home. Last night was enough for you."
That was Mrs. Carver's way of caring. She had been in the Moretti household nearly thirty years and rarely raised her voice. Somehow, everyone listened anyway.
She led me to the west sitting room, where the piano had been moved under the supervision of an art-handling crew. The shattered shape I remembered from the ballroom looked even more upsetting in the ordinary morning light. The black lacquer shone. The six exposed wooden key levers stood out like missing teeth. Farther to the right, the seventh bare key seemed to point accusingly toward the door.
A woman with silver-rimmed spectacles stood beside the instrument. Her name was Dr. Helena Voss. She restored historic keyboards for museums and private collections.
"You're Emma?" she asked. "Mrs. Carver says you recognized damage that was deliberately made."
"My mother taught me a little."
I showed her the notebook. Helena turned the pages slowly, then smiled at the handwriting.
"I knew Peter Wren," she said. "He retired to Vermont. These are his diagrams."
"You can tell?"
"His drawings always show screws with their heads in exactly the wrong direction. He wanted apprentices to think instead of copying." She closed the book gently. "You may have saved us a great deal of work."
Luca entered before I could answer. He wore a dark sweater and looked as though he hadn't changed his clothes since the engagement dinner. There were shadows beneath his eyes.
"Any news about Isabella?" I asked.
"The police have an active missing-person report," he said. "Her attorney in Boston says she missed an appointment yesterday. Her bank card hasn't been used."
My mouth went dry. "Do you think she was taken?"
"I think something is wrong. That's all I know."
Helena examined the exposed keys with a bright inspection lamp. She photographed every damaged edge and compared the shape of the cuts to Peter's diagrams.
"Six pieces were removed with a fine blade," she said. "The seventh appears to have been lifted more carefully. It wasn't broken."
"Why does that matter?" Luca asked.
"Whoever removed it expected to put something back. Look at the retaining pin. It's been preserved."
She showed us a minuscule hole in the wood.
"Could the seventh piece contain something?" I asked.
"Not inside the ivory itself. It's too thin. But it could have marks on its underside. Peter's drawings might identify it."
We laid the notebook flat across a table and found the page detailing the central octave. Beside one key was a small blue dot, corresponding to Luca's childhood pen stain. Six neighboring numbers were circled in pencil. The seventh key had two symbols beneath it: a tiny star and the letters B-714.
Luca leaned close. "What is B-714?"
"Probably a catalog number," Helena said. "Or a storage label. I can't say from this alone."
A stranger appeared at the sitting-room door: a petite woman in a brown coat, carrying a weathered leather case. Daniel introduced her as Miriam Leong, the jeweler who had made Vanessa's hair comb.
"I came because I need to tell you what happened," she said.
Miriam Shaw joined us. She invited the jeweler to sit and explained that anything she said might later be shared with investigators.
"I understand," Ms. Leong replied. "I've already spoken to my attorney."
Her hands trembled when she opened her case. Inside was a copy of a commission form.
"Miss Bellini came to my workshop six days ago," she said. "She brought seven ivory keytops, not six. I refused to work on them until she could explain where they came from. She claimed they had been removed from a family piano during a restoration."
"And you believed her?" Luca asked.
The jeweler met his gaze. "I believed the papers she showed me. They appeared to be signed by your sister, authorizing use of discarded material. I should have verified them."
"What happened to the seventh piece?" I asked.
"Miss Bellini took it back. She said it had sentimental value and must not be polished. I completed the comb using the remaining six."
Ms. Leong turned another sheet toward us. The reverse side held a photograph of the seven pieces on blue velvet. One was different. Across its underside ran a narrow line of blue ink. It looked like two numbers separated by a dash.
"B-714," I whispered.
Helena leaned over the photograph. "That's the key."
Ms. Leong nodded. "Miss Bellini told me I was never to photograph that piece again. That's why I kept my original intake photograph."
Miriam Shaw looked up sharply. "Did she threaten you?"
"She said my workshop would lose all its wealthy clients if I discussed the commission."
Luca stood very still. "My sister never authorized the removal."
"That's what I feared," Ms. Leong said. "I'm sorry."
He did not forgive her immediately, but he didn't shout. He asked her to keep every message and paper connected with the commission. She agreed to provide copies through her lawyer.
When she left, Helena touched the diagram again.
"Whatever B-714 means," she said, "it was important enough to make somebody remove an original keytop and turn the others into an ornament."
I remembered something my mother had told me the night before.
"Peter marked parts for the instrument," I said. "But my mother said Elena wanted Isabella to learn how the piano worked. Would she have written a storage number beneath a key?"
Luca frowned. "My mother collected recordings. Original tapes, sheet music, concert programs. After she died, my father moved most of it to an archive."
"Which archive?"
"I don't know."
The admission seemed to cost him something.
"I was twenty-two when she died," he continued. "I wanted to leave this house. I wanted nothing to do with the piano. Isabella was fifteen. She stayed here and played every evening until our father told her to stop."
I had never heard Luca speak so much about his mother. There was an edge to his words that made me understand how little he had let himself grieve.
"Why would your father tell her to stop?" I asked.
He looked at the keyboard. "He said it upset him. I believed him."
His phone rang. A moment later he stepped into the hall. When he came back, his expression was hard.
"My sister's attorney found a document in her office," he said. "A notice transferring the management of Elena's music archive to a company called Bellini Arts Management. It contains Isabella's electronic signature."
"Did she sign it?" I asked.
"The attorney says Isabella had been preparing to challenge it."
Helena lowered her inspection lamp.
"Then you may want somebody independent to inventory the rest of your mother's music," she said. "Before anything else walks out of this house."
Luca nodded.
I watched him make another call, this time to a preservation specialist unaffiliated with his family businesses. When he finished, he looked toward me.
"Emma, I owe you an apology."
"For what, sir?"
"For letting you stand in my home and defend something I should have protected."
I didn't know what to say. It was easy to admire a man admitting fault when that man owned the house where you earned your living. It was also dangerous to mistake an apology for equality.
"I appreciate that," I answered. "But I'd appreciate it more if every employee could question an order without being fired."
He looked surprised. Then he nodded.
"I'll speak to Mrs. Carver about that."
"And the movers," I added. "They tried to stop the piano being damaged."
"Them too."
Outside, a delivery truck passed beneath the windows. The ordinary sound reminded me that the city was still moving, people still buying bread and catching trains, while the Moretti family stood inside a room full of missing keys.
Just before I left, Isabella's friend Naomi called the mansion again. Daniel put her on speaker with Luca's permission.
"I remembered something," Naomi said. "Isabella left a message before she disappeared. She said that if anything happened, we should check the seventh note. I thought she meant the ending of a piece she was composing."
Luca looked at Helena.
"Did she say anything else?" he asked.
"Yes," Naomi replied. "She said the archive wasn't empty. Someone wanted it to look that way."
I thought of the folded letter, the hidden compartment in the bench, and the keytop Vanessa had refused to polish.
May you like
Somewhere a recording, a ledger, or a document had been given a number: B-714.
And Isabella had apparently found it before the rest of us knew there was something to find.
