My Uncle Priced the Organ Before I Could Hang My Coat

The first thing I heard inside the Bellweather Theater was a breath where no breath belonged.

A low hiss came from the organ chamber behind the screen. Someone had left the blower running. One loose valve was letting air slip past its seat.

I knew that sound before I knew which pipe would speak.

At thirty-eight, I was a white woman with pale freckles, gray eyes, and brown hair cut blunt at my jaw.

My work coat had leather dust on one sleeve. I restored cinema pipe organs for a living, which meant I spent more time under keyboards than at them.

Uncle Roland stood in the aisle with two men and a tape measure.

Roland Fenn was a broad white man of sixty-seven, with brushed silver hair, pink cheeks, and soft hands that made his black suit look borrowed.

"There's our little musician," he said.

Grandmother Vera had been dead for six weeks. He still used the voice he had used when I was twelve.

I had come home to Tacoma, Washington, to claim the theater Vera had promised me, carrying a suitcase and the keys she'd mailed the summer before.

"Why is the blower on?"

"The buyer wanted to hear it."

I put my bag on a seat. Outside, Tacoma rain ran down the old ticket window. Inside, the theater smelled of wet wool and warm dust.

"Buyer?"

One man folded his tape measure.

"Martin Pike. I restore instruments in Idaho. Your uncle said the estate owned this one."

"It doesn't."

Roland laughed softly, as though grief had made me confused.

"Elsie, the organ is attached to the building."

"So is the electric meter. That doesn't settle who owns it."

He put a hand against his chest.

"Your grandmother wanted this place kept alive. The roof needs work. We have to make hard choices."

"She left the theater to me."

"She changed her mind."

He took a folded court paper from his inside pocket. A new will, dated four months before her death, left him the theater and its contents. A court stamp marked the copy. He had been appointed personal representative the day before.

Under my name was a gift of $500.

"For music lessons," he said, almost kindly.

I had rebuilt the theater's regulator at seventeen. Last winter, I had spent twenty-three nights replacing cracked leather in its wind chests.

I read the page again.

"May I photograph this?"

"Of course. Nothing to hide."

He held it flat with two fingers. His watch shook against his cuff.

"How much?" I asked.

Martin answered before Roland could.

"One hundred eighty-four thousand. Forty-six thousand down. Balance after inspection and loading."

Roland gave him a sharp look.

"Shipping Friday," Martin added.

It was Tuesday.

I walked toward the stage. Roland followed, still talking about Vera's wishes, the price of roofing, the sadness of empty seats.

Behind the screen, a blue chalk crescent marked the faulty valve cover.

Vera had taught me to leave that mark wherever a problem needed another look. A little moon meant don't close this up yet.

I switched off the blower.

"You don't need to sulk," Roland said. "I'll let you play it before they take it."

"I didn't come for a turn at the keys."

My bag held the builder's original installation contract. Vera had given it to me the previous summer, inside a flour tin.

"Keep the dull pages," she'd said. "People throw those away first."

The contract listed every rank of pipes, both wind chests, the console, the blower, and the percussion traps. A later signed assignment placed that whole numbered instrument in her separate Rowan Musical Trust.

Behind it was my copy of a recorded deed. When Vera bought the theater building, that deed expressly reserved the trust's ownership of the organ and its right to remain there.

I had read those pages. I had even called the county to check the recording number.

But I hadn't brought the trust's full terms. I had never met the trustee who had taken over after Vera's old friend died.

That was the gap Roland had found.

"Where are Grandmother's office files?" I asked.

"Safe."

"I'd like to see them."

"You're not the executor."

Martin looked between us.

"I need clean title," he said.

"You'll have it," Roland told him. "She's upset. She always thought this place was a promise."

I took out my phone and photographed the organ's serial plate, then each open panel. I included the floor, where fresh pry marks showed beside the cable trough.

"What are you doing?" Roland asked.

"Recording its condition."

"Don't make this ugly."

I put the phone away.

"Send me the sale agreement."

"My lawyer handles that."

"Then send me your lawyer's name."

He moved closer, lowering his voice.

"Take your five hundred dollars, Elsie. You'll thank me when the bills arrive."

I picked up my bag. Through its canvas, I could feel the square edge of the flour tin's old paper packet.

At the loading door, a driver had just pasted a bright orange notice onto the glass.

It said pickup had moved to Thursday, six in the morning.