Part 12

CHAPTER 12 — The Last Piece

At seven-thirty on Monday morning, Jenna stood in the back room of the shop with a folder in her hand and her toolbox at her feet and looked at everything one more time.

She had spent Sunday night, after Maisie fell asleep, on the floor of the apartment with the old papers she had kept for eight years in a shoebox under the bed. She had the notice from Linquist, and the severance agreement she had signed without reading, and a copy of the consultant’s report that had been handed out to all of them—forty-one copies on forty-one chairs—that she had never thrown away because some part of her knew that one day she would want it.

The report was eleven pages. It was signed, on the last page, in the smooth professional hand of a man who signed things for a living.

*Prepared by T. Kesler, Sutter Development.*

She had not needed to be told. She had known it since she read the name off the note, and she had been waiting eight years for a reason to open the shoebox.

Graham came in at seven-forty-five, and Claire came in behind him, and neither had slept much either.

“You have it?” Graham asked.

“I have it.” Jenna held up the folder. “The report that closed Linquist. Signed by the consultant from Sutter Development. Same man. Signed eleven years ago, three years before he married into your family.” She set it on the bench. “And I have the name of the man who hired him. Sutter himself—Dave Sutter. He has a pattern. He hires consultants to create the case for a sale, then he buys the building. Trent’s not a rogue son-in-law. He’s somebody’s business model.”

Graham opened the folder and read the last page. His jaw tightened.

“And there’s one more thing.” Jenna laid a printed sheet beside it—the door log, printed out at the panel with Claire’s help. “You keep it for two years. Two years ago, when your old technician retired, someone opened the back door at midnight on the night before he cleaned out his bench. There’s the entry.” She pointed. “Trent’s code. That same night, that same clock, three hammers went into the reject crate and got a red X on them, so he could learn exactly how you’d behave when a piano failed.”

Graham stared at the sheet.

“He’s been practicing on my father’s shop,” Jenna said, “for years, before he ever worked up the nerve to do it to yours.”

Claire made a small sound. Graham put the folder down and was quiet a long time. When he spoke, his voice was very calm, which was the most frightening thing Jenna had heard from him.

“Jenna. When Dave Sutter walks in that door this morning, he’s going to try to buy this shop out from under me with my own son-in-law’s help. I have a folder that proves his firm does this on purpose. What do you want out of this morning?”

Jenna looked at the red crate in the corner. She looked at the bench, at the lamp, at the little pencil mark she could no longer see but knew was under every hammer she had rebuilt.

“I want three things,” she said. “One: the sale doesn’t happen. This shop stays yours and it keeps its name, and if you ever sell it, you sell it to someone who’ll keep the bench warm. Two: the report on Linquist gets corrected. In writing. Public. So the forty-one people who got laid off because of a lie have a piece of paper that says it was a lie.” She paused. “And three: whatever happens, nobody in this building ever calls a child a charity case again.”

Graham nodded slowly. Then he put out his hand.

“Deal,” he said.

——

The door chime rang at eight. Dave Sutter came in through the front like a man stepping off a yacht onto the dock—dark coat, silver hair, the smile of a practiced buyer—and behind him came an appraiser with a briefcase and a lawyer.

Graham was at the bench with the action of the Asheford Grand open in front of him, and he did not stand up.

“Dave.”

“Graham. It’s been too long.” Sutter looked around the shop with the bright, appraising eyes of a man who already owned it. “I hear you had a rough week. A failed piano and a fired technician. Sutter can help you land this.” He spread his hands. “We’re prepared to make this a good day for the Hartley family. Shall we?”

Graham set his tool down and picked up the folder from the bench.

“No,” he said. “Let’s talk about Linquist instead.”