My Wife Changed The Workshop Locks Before The Buyer Came

I heard the bad note with my eyes closed.

"Middle D," I said. "Play it again, Howard. Soft this time."

The hammer rose, rubbed its neighbor, and fell short. A dry little click came from the action, the wood and felt parts that carried a finger's touch to the strings.

I was thirty-eight, an Irish American man with pale freckles, reddish brown hair, gray eyes, and thick forearms marked by small burns.

My name was Ciaran Doyle. I rebuilt piano actions in a brick workshop on the south side of Peoria. Some men knew an engine by its knock. I knew a bad flange by the note it failed to make.

Howard Bellamy lifted his hands from the keys.

"I do hate to bring you something so small."

"Small is what keeps me fed."

At sixty-two, Howard was a retired bank operations officer, a Black man who wore a pressed shirt even to carry out his trash. He had been my customer for twelve years. He asked before setting his hat on a chair. He could not be hurried by traffic, weather, or anyone else's temper.

I slipped a green felt square between two hammer heads to hold them apart.

"There," I said. "A swollen center pin. I'll ease it."

"And charge me."

"You brought soup when I had the flu."

"That was soup. This is your living."

My wife heard that from the office.

Delia was a white woman of thirty-nine with a smooth blond bob, thin pink lips, and neat hands she kept folded over her purse.

"Someone finally said it," she told me. "You gave away three hours last week."

"One hour. A school piano."

"And who covered the light bill while you played saint?"

She kept a count of every kind thing she had done. A ride to the dentist could become a reason I owed her a Saturday. Buying my mother flowers had cost me two years of hearing about them.

Howard took his time putting on his coat.

"I will collect it Thursday," he said.

"Friday," Delia said. "He needs to finish paying work first."

He looked at me.

"Thursday," I said.

After he left, she stood over my bench.

"Alder Room called about their deposit. Tell them it's received."

"Is it?"

"I handle banking, Ciaran. You handle felt."

The Alder Room job was $31,000. Its deposit was $15,500. We had other concert halls waiting, some across the river in East Peoria, two farther downstate. Yet we had been late paying our parts bill twice.

"I'd like the statements," I said.

"You'd like another thing explained while I do everything."

She went back to her office and shut the door.

I had let her keep the books because she liked doing them. That was different from giving her the business.

Doyle Action Works was an Illinois company. I was its sole member. It owned the building and the benches. Delia drew a salary and had access for bookkeeping.

When our bank set up a lockbox for concert-hall checks, I had spent an entire morning reading the terms. The bank collected checks from a post office box and put the money into our shop account.

The agreement named me as the only person who could approve a new destination. A change needed my visit to a branch and an identity check. Delia had called the meeting a waste of billable time.

I kept my signed copy in the bottom of my tool chest, beneath a set of old key weights. The chest was at home that week. I was replacing its broken casters in our garage.

That evening, I brought my copy inside with an old packet of tax records. Delia watched me pass the dining room.

"Planning to fix a bank now?"

"Planning to read."

She laughed without looking up from her phone.

On Monday morning, my key would not turn in the workshop door.

A new silver lock caught the weak May light. Across the street, a truck went by with wet gravel ticking against its sides. I tried my key once more, slowly.

Delia opened the door on its chain.

"We're separating," she said. "You can stay at the house until we sort that out."

"Open the door. Howard's action is on my bench."

"The company has new management."

"Since when?"

"Since I stopped waiting for you to understand numbers."

She slid an envelope through the gap.

Inside was a demand to surrender my keys. Under it sat a copy of a purchase agreement for $410,000. Delia had signed for my company. A separate page gave the buyer early access to clear the site.

"Clear what?"

"The building. Wade has permits moving."

I could see my green felt square through the door, still lying beside Howard's piano action.

"Those instruments belong to customers."

"Then arrange collection through me."

She shut the door before I could answer.

The last sheet in the envelope was a contractor's notice. Demolition was scheduled for Friday at six in the morning.