A School Custodian Let Me Look Beneath The Concert Grand

The committee chair met me at the school entrance with a visitor badge and a work order.

"Inspection only," she said. "We asked North Lantern for a tuner. They told us their man was busy."

"Who gave you my number?"

"It's on the service card under the lid."

Her name was Ruth Albright. She had a canvas bag full of sheet music and the tired eyes of someone who had sold too many raffle tickets.

"May I take pictures of the repairs and number?" I asked.

"Of course. I'll put that on the order."

I waited while she wrote it. I wanted permission in ink, even for something I had done a thousand times without thinking.

The custodian rolled the grand away from the stage curtain. One front caster squealed.

"That wheel always does that," I said.

He stopped pushing. "You know this piano?"

"I think so."

The walnut case had a new brass rental plate. NORTH LANTERN. A little lighthouse stood above the words.

I lifted the lid.

Our old service card remained in its clear sleeve. Someone had turned it backward. My name faced the wood.

I checked the cast-iron plate. Serial 684217.

The number matched CI-04.

Then I lay on the clean moving blanket the custodian brought me. Under the soundboard, my triangular patch sat between the ribs. Beside it were the three shims and a small crescent-shaped dent from a slipped clamp.

The patch alone might have started an argument. The serial number, repair shapes, old bill, and dated pictures ended the guesswork.

I photographed each mark, then a wider view that showed where it lay. Ruth stood beside the piano and watched.

"Is something wrong?" she asked.

"There may be a problem with who had the right to transfer it. Your recital can go ahead. I'm here to inspect it."

I struck my tuning fork and checked the A. The piano had dropped with the change in heat. Slow beats passed between the string and the fork.

Ruth waited until the sound faded.

"Should we pay our balance?"

"Please follow your contract unless a lawyer or court tells you otherwise. Could I have a copy for our records?"

She handed me one. The rental cost was $1,260 for four days, including delivery. North Lantern had received a $630 deposit.

The payment address was a small office building off Loudon Road in Concord.

Owen Pike had an office there.

I drove back along the river with the heater aimed at my damp shoes. Bare branches scraped a gray sky. At a red light, Lydia called.

"Did you contact one of my customers?"

"A committee called the number inside a piano."

"Those aren't our customers anymore."

"Whose are they?"

"Don't play games."

"I'm looking at a $1,260 rental contract."

She went quiet.

"You need to stop touching things you don't own," she said.

When I got home, a message waited from an old customer. I had asked who kept the books for his little theater. He had sent one name: Selam Tesfaye.

Her office was above a tailor's shop in Concord. She agreed to see me that afternoon.

Selam was forty-six, Ethiopian American, with dark braids folded at her neck. She moved a small plant so I could spread my papers across her desk.

"Tell me what you know," she said.

I began with Lydia's claim that the company had failed.

Selam touched the empty asset schedule.

"Do you know this is false? Or do you suspect it?"

I gave her the old repair folder and the new photographs.

"I know this piano still earns money."

"Good. Let's keep those two things separate. What we know. What we need to ask."

Her voice was gentle. The questions were not soft.

Who owned the company? Who could sign? Where had the rent gone? Had I agreed to a sale? Had I received any part of the price?

"No," I said to the last three.

She wrote each answer down.

Her first review would cost $750. I paid from the separate account where customers sent payments for tuning work I did outside the rental company. There was $3,814 left.

"You need a family lawyer," she said. "And someone who can deal with the company receiving these instruments. I'm a forensic bookkeeper. I can trace money. I can't make anyone produce it."

She gave me a lawyer's number, then opened the state's public business records on her screen.

North Lantern had been formed eight months earlier. Owen Pike was its listed manager.

Attached to a filing was a business address and a contact name.

Selam turned the screen toward me.

Under the words authorized contact, Lydia Fenwick had signed her name.