Chapter 2 - THE MAN WHO TUNED THE WRONG PIANO
The ballroom emptied slowly.
People pretended not to stare.
Caroline was among the last to leave.
She stopped beside me.
“Congratulations.”
“For what?”
“You've discovered the fastest route from housekeeping to family history.”
Her smile was beautiful.
Her meaning wasn't.
Before I could answer, Dominic said:
“Caroline.”
She looked at him.
“Go home.”
Her face hardened.
Then she left.
Nora passed me my gloves.
“You okay?”
“No.”
“Excellent. I'd worry if you said yes.”
I almost smiled.
Then Dominic took me into the music room.
Not alone.
Nora came with us because I insisted.
Dominic seemed annoyed.
I didn't care.
He placed the photograph on a table.
“Twelve years ago, my father was meeting with three business partners at Hawthorne.”
“What does that have to do with Dad?”
“The piano had been serviced that afternoon.”
“By him?”
“Yes.”
Dominic looked toward the ballroom.
“Your father found something inside it.”
“What?”
“A recording device.”
I stared.
“Hidden beneath the soundboard.”
Dad had never told me.
“Someone was recording your father?”
“Not only recording him.”
Dominic sat.
“My father was preparing to expose a financial scheme involving one of his own partners. Daniel found the device accidentally while repairing a pedal.”
“What happened?”
“He warned my father.”
“And?”
“The meeting was moved.”
Dominic paused.
“The room where it had originally been scheduled caught fire forty minutes later.”
My skin went cold.
“Fire?”
“Electrical, according to the report.”
“You don't believe that.”
“No.”
“Was anyone hurt?”
“No.”
“Then how did Dad save him?”
“Because investigators later found accelerant.”
I stopped breathing for a moment.
Someone had planned to burn the room during the meeting.
My father had accidentally interrupted an assassination attempt.
“Why would Dad hide that from me?”
“He didn't want you involved.”
“You knew him?”
Dominic looked away.
“I knew him afterward.”
“How well?”
“Well enough that he taught me that concerto.”
I stared.
“You play?”
“Badly.”
Nora coughed.
It sounded suspiciously like a laugh.
Dominic ignored her.
“My father asked Daniel to come back several times. Daniel refused payment.”
That sounded like Dad.
“He said he'd done what anyone should do.”
That sounded even more like him.
“But before he left, he taught me the piece he'd been testing the piano with when he found the recorder.”
“The concerto.”
“Yes.”
“And those three notes?”
Dominic looked at me.
“Daniel changed them.”
“Why?”
“He called them the Carter turn.”
My throat tightened.
Dad had never called them that with me.
“He said someday, if I heard someone play it exactly that way, I'd know they learned from him.”
I sat down.
Dad had left a fingerprint inside music.
And I had just played it in front of the one man trained to recognize it.
“Why were you trying to find him?”
Dominic's expression darkened.
“Because my father died seven months after the fire.”
I looked at him.
“How?”
“Car accident.”
The answer came too quickly.
“You don't believe that either.”
“No.”
“Do you think my father knew something?”
“I think Daniel disappeared because he did.”
I stood.
“My father didn't disappear. He raised me. He worked. He paid taxes. He got cancer. He died in a hospital.”
“To you.”
Anger hit me.
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“It means Daniel Carter stopped existing in every record connected to the Vale family twelve years ago.”
“He was a piano tuner.”
“He was also the only witness who could prove who was inside Hawthorne before the fire.”
“Who?”
Dominic looked toward the closed door.
“My uncle.”
“Which uncle?”
“Raymond Vale.”
I knew that name.
Everyone in Chicago did.
Raymond Vale had helped raise Dominic after Vincent died.
He was currently chairman of the Vale Foundation.
And he was upstairs in Hawthorne Estate.
He hadn't left with the guests.
A knock came.
Dominic's security chief entered.
“Sir.”
“What?”
“Mr. Raymond wants to know why the party ended.”
Dominic and I looked at each other.
Then the security chief added:
May you like
“And he specifically asked who the woman at the piano was.”
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