Chapter 6 - TWO COPIES MUST AGREE
By the time detectives obtained the first archive records, somebody had already tried to destroy the second set.
The commercial storage firm was based in a converted industrial building on the South Branch of the Chicago River. Its employees had received a request from Alder Music Holdings to dispose of several boxes labeled obsolete. A supervisor named Ruth Calder refused to release them without a complete authorization chain. When two men arrived with a rented van, she called her manager and then the police.
I learned about it from Helena, who had come to the mansion to supervise repairs to the piano's damaged keyboard bed.
"Ruth was one of Elena's former students," Helena said. "She recognized the trust's name and knew something was wrong."
"Are the boxes safe?" I asked.
"For now. An inventory is under way."
I pictured cartons of yellowed paper traveling from one warehouse to another, unnoticed for years until someone decided they were inconvenient. The thought made me angry in a way I had rarely allowed myself to be angry at work.
Luca had arranged for an independent lawyer to review employment practices at the mansion. Vanessa had been barred from directing staff while the assault investigation and the dispute over the damaged property proceeded. My wages continued, and Mrs. Carver made it clear that my role in the inquiry would not affect my hours.
Those changes mattered. They were also things that should have existed before a ballroom full of witnesses forced anyone to notice.
On Friday morning I took my mother to her orthopedic appointment. She walked slowly with a cane, refusing my arm until the curb became uneven.
"You have that face again," she said.
"What face?"
"The one where you're carrying other people's worries like grocery bags."
I laughed, but I was too tired for it to sound convincing.
I told her about the threatening message. Detective Chen had advised me to save it and vary my route for a while. The police were checking its source, and a victim-support advocate had provided practical advice. Luca offered private security. I accepted help with transportation for appointments but declined guards outside my mother's door.
"You don't have to prove anything by refusing help," my mother said.
"I know. I just want to decide what help looks like."
She squeezed my hand. "That part I understand."
At the clinic, I saw three children in a waiting area beside a music therapist. One boy played a short melody on an electronic keyboard while his sister counted the notes with her fingers. Their mother watched with tired delight. I found myself thinking about Elena's scholarship fund and what it meant when money intended for children like them vanished into administrative invoices.
It was not an abstract fraud anymore. It was missed lessons, unpaid instructors, instruments never repaired, and children who might assume music was something only rich families deserved.
When I returned to the mansion, Isabella was there with Naomi. She had chosen to visit the piano for the first time since her release. She stood very still before the keyboard.
"It hurts to see it like this," she whispered.
Helena handed her photographs of the damage. "The original pieces are evidence. We can stabilize the action, and when the investigation allows it, we can fit ethical replacements that are clearly documented as later material."
"Will it sound the same?" Isabella asked.
"The touch can be restored. Sound depends on more than a keytop. We'll take time."
Isabella looked relieved. "Mother would have wanted it played. She hated instruments kept only for show."
I watched them discuss options. I had expected Isabella to demand a perfect restoration, an attempt to erase what Vanessa had done. Instead she wanted the repairs recorded honestly. The missing pieces would remain part of the piano's history even after new ones were installed.
Harriet joined us with copies of the archive inventory. She was careful to say that the records had not yet been authenticated. Several ledgers named the same compositions, tapes, and scholarship accounts. The figures did not match.
"One set says the recordings were licensed to educational institutions," she explained. "The other shows assignments to Alder Music Holdings. We need to establish which entries are original and which were changed."
Luca studied a column of dates. "These transfers happened while my father was ill."
"Some did," Harriet replied. "Others are more recent. The newer entries may have been made by people now controlling the accounts."
Isabella pointed to a name. "Silvio Bellini chaired the foundation's fundraising committee until last year."
"And approved vendor relationships," Harriet added. "That gives investigators a reason to examine his role. It does not establish what he knew about each transaction."
Luca rubbed his forehead. "I should have attended those meetings."
"You should have," Isabella said. "And I should have insisted on independent audits sooner. Neither of us gets to change that. We do get to stop signing things we haven't read."
Her bluntness made him smile faintly.
That afternoon the foundation's former choir director, Nadia Chen, came to speak with Harriet. She was unrelated to the detective, a coincidence that led to a brief exchange of amused introductions when they met in the foyer.
Nadia had led music workshops in three public schools until the funding was unexpectedly withdrawn. She brought attendance sheets, lesson plans, and emails showing that her program had been described as fully funded after she stopped receiving payments.
"I kept teaching for six weeks," she said. "I thought the payments were delayed. Then I had to tell forty children the program was closing."
Luca looked ashamed.
"Why didn't you contact me?" he asked.
"I did. Your office referred me to Bellini Arts Management. They told me the schools had requested cancellation. The principals said that wasn't true."
She slid a photograph across the table. It showed children holding paper music stands in a classroom. A boy in the front row smiled at the camera, missing two front teeth.
"He asked whether he had played badly enough for the lessons to stop," Nadia said. "I don't want him to believe that."
Nobody spoke for a moment.
Luca promised to fund temporary lessons, but Nadia stopped him with a raised hand.
"Not through a personal gift that disappears when your attention moves elsewhere," she said. "We need independent oversight, written commitments, and a program that doesn't depend on whether your family is in a generous mood."
I had never seen a guest speak to Luca that way. He listened.
"You're right," he said.
Later, I took Nadia to the service entrance. She thanked me for helping protect the instrument.
"I didn't know about the scholarship money," I said.
"You didn't need to," she replied. "You saw someone destroying something that mattered, and you refused to pretend it didn't."
Her words stayed with me throughout the afternoon.
At five, Detective Chen called Harriet with a development. Police executing a court-authorized search had recovered a blue velvet pouch from a Bellini-controlled office. Inside was the seventh ivory keytop, still marked B-714. The pouch also held a folded shipping receipt dated two weeks earlier, naming the storage firm on the river.
Vanessa's explanation, relayed through her attorney, was that she had been planning to return the piece after the wedding. Investigators would examine that account alongside other evidence.
Luca asked whether he could have the keytop back.
"Not yet," Detective Chen answered. "It's evidence. When it's released, there should be a documented conservation plan."
He accepted it.
Isabella requested a copy of the photograph. When she saw the keytop on the screen, she touched the blue mark with one finger as though the glass could carry her backward in time.
"Seven," she whispered.
Then she took out her phone and played an old recording of Elena practicing a short melody. The sound was tinny, but there was warmth in the uneven notes. Near the end, Elena stopped playing and laughed.
"Wrong note, Isabella," the voice said. "Try again. Listen for the rest."
Isabella smiled through tears.
The recording ended, and for a moment the damaged piano seemed full of music again.
That evening, Harriet received a preliminary account from the storage firm's independent auditor. The original inventory showed that the trust's recording collection had generated licensing revenue for years. Only a fraction of that revenue had reached the scholarship accounts. Large sums had been routed through companies tied to the Bellini family's business network.
The figures were provisional, subject to forensic review. They were still enough to make the room quiet.
Luca stared at a photograph of his mother on the piano lid.
"She built something for children she'd never meet," he said. "And people turned it into an opportunity."
Isabella laid a hand beside his on the polished wood.
"Then we find out who did what," she said. "And make sure the children aren't forgotten while we do."
May you like
I looked from one of them to the other. For years their mother's piano had stood as a monument to the music the family could no longer bear to hear. Now it was teaching them to do something much harder than mourn.
It was teaching them to listen.
