Douglas Flint Had Me Escorted Past Three Empty Piano Spaces

I checked the room with one whistle before I opened my tool bag. The note came back sharp off the brick wall, then died where three grand pianos should have stood.

Only their caster cups remained. Nine little wooden bowls on the floor.

I was thirty-five, a Puerto Rican woman with brown skin, a broad nose, and black curls clipped above my collar. My name was Zuleika Melendez. I tuned pianos for schools around Worcester, working out of a blue hatchback with a bad heater.

At Ash Brook School, I charged $185 for a tuning. I had cared for those three donated grands for eight years.

I knew the scratched bass lid on one, the loose music desk on another, the third one's stubborn middle E. I also kept the original gift schedule in a fire box at home. That was a separate job, though Douglas Flint often forgot it.

That October morning, he stood by the rehearsal room door with a security guard.

Douglas Flint was a white man of fifty-eight with silver hair combed flat, pink cheeks, and a navy jacket that pinched above his belt.

He glanced toward the open hall before speaking.

"Set the bag down."

"Where are the grands?"

"That's what I intend to learn."

I put my bag on a chair. My tuning hammer lay inside beside strips of red felt. Nothing in there could lift a seven-foot piano.

"My inventory shows all three present on September twenty-third," he said. "You had access after that."

"I prepared them for crating on the twenty-fourth. Your office ordered it."

"Do you have proof of that?"

"Yes."

He looked annoyed, as if I had answered a different question.

Two students stopped near the door. He raised his voice.

"These were gifts worth $186,000. Three grand pianos are missing, and the contractor with keys cannot account for them."

"I just told you. Check the move order."

"There was no approved move."

The guard, a young man named Leon, watched the floor.

"Doug, should we do this in your office?" he asked.

"I want transparency."

Douglas straightened a framed photo of himself cutting a concert ribbon. He had built his job around pictures like that. Every donated instrument needed his hand resting on its lid.

"You are suspended from the premises," he told me. "I've contacted the police."

My face grew hot. One of the students held a phone at chest height.

"Please record all of this," I told her. "Especially the date he says they were last here."

Her phone went down.

Douglas held out a small envelope.

"Your keys."

I took the school key off my ring. The little brass key to my fire box stayed beside my car key.

"And your access card."

I gave him that too.

"My $740 invoice is due Friday. Four tunings in the lower building."

"Payment is under review."

"Those pianos aren't missing."

"Leon."

The guard walked beside me down the stairs. He did not touch my arm, but he stayed close enough that everyone understood.

Outside, damp leaves stuck to the walk. The school stood on a side street off Main, where the hill made every delivery harder than it looked.

"I'm sorry," Leon said.

"Write down what he said. While you remember."

He looked back at the door.

"Can I get fired for that?"

"Write it for yourself. Keep it."

In my car, I held the steering wheel until my hands stopped shaking.

Then I opened my calendar. September twenty-fourth: crate preparation, three instruments, $360 flat fee. I had photographed each serial number, each leg wrapped in felt, each lid brace set in place.

There were two kinds of paperwork in my work. The kind people signed to feel finished, and the kind I kept because a cracked soundboard could start an argument five years later.

I kept both.

My work order called the move temporary storage during floor repairs. It did not name the carrier. The office had arranged the truck for the next morning, when I was tuning an upright in Millbury.

I called the school receptionist.

"Who took the grands on September twenty-fifth?"

She breathed into the phone.

"I'm not supposed to discuss the incident."

"There should be a freight bill."

"Zuleika, he sent an email to the whole staff."

I let her finish.

"He said your access had been ended because of suspected theft."

Across the street, a delivery truck ground uphill. I waited until it passed before I answered.

"Please save that email."

At home, I set my fire box on the kitchen table. Beneath the gift agreement lay my dated crating sheets. On the top one, Douglas had written a dispatch number in green ink.

I dialed it.

A woman answered, "Anika Shah. If this is about my driver, give me a load number before you give me a problem."