Part 6

CHAPTER 6 — What the Numbers Say

Trent smiled. It was a patient, practiced smile, the kind a man wears when he has been accused of something silly at a dinner party.

“Claire. I work here. My code opens that door fifty times a week.”

“Not at midnight on a Monday.” Claire’s voice was steady and strange. “Not on a night the shop was empty and the only job on the bench was yours to review.”

“Someone can use a code. Codes get copied.”

“Then whose?” Graham asked. He had straightened up. The closed thing in his face had opened a crack, and what was behind it was not what Jenna had expected; it was not anger, not yet. It was the look of a man watching a bridge he had trusted begin to shift. “Whose is it, Trent?”

“I don’t know. Ask the cleaners.” Trent’s eyes moved to Jenna, and he let them sit there. “Ask the woman who was fired yesterday and then got herself hired into the one job in this building worth sabotaging.”

“I was in Ridge Road at four-fifteen.” Jenna did not raise her voice. “Tuning a widow’s upright. She’ll tell you. She cried. She hugged me. I have her address and her number and her signature on the work order in my truck outside.”

“You could have come back.”

“Ask Walt Brennan. He drove me out. He waited in the truck with the radio playing.”

“Walt’s your friend.”

“Walt’s an old man who used to run the floor at Linquist,” Jenna said, “and who has no reason to lie for me, and who would tell you the truth if you asked him nicely, which I doubt you’d manage.”

“Enough.” Graham came around the bench. He walked past all of them to the far wall, to the wooden cabinet with the drawers, and he pulled open the top one, and then the second, and he stopped.

He stood there staring into the drawer for a long moment. Then he pulled it out of the cabinet entirely and set it on the bench, and Jenna saw what was in it: a folder, the corner of a document, a checkbook. And the room went silent in a different way.

“Claire,” Graham said, without turning around. “Get me the drawer above that.”

“It’s locked, Dad.”

“I know it’s locked.”

He put out his hand. Claire went to the office, came back, and put a small key in his palm. Graham unlocked the drawer, reached in, and drew out a single sheet of paper. He held it to the light. His hand was shaking now, just slightly, the way an old hand shakes when it has decided not to be steady.

“Four million dollars,” he read. “Sutter Development. A letter of intent for this building and this shop, signed by a member of the Hartley family.” He looked up over the paper. “Trent. There’s your signature.”

“Now, Graham—”

“Four million.” Graham set the paper on the bench and smoothed it flat. “A hundred and five years. My grandfather put our name on that door in 1921. You’d put it on a sale contract for four million dollars and a promise to keep the lights on.”

“You’re one loss on the books away from the bank taking it anyway.” Trent’s smile was gone now, and what was underneath it was not ugly, exactly; it was tired, and sure, and very cold. “I did the math, Graham. You never do. We lose ninety thousand a year. That shop is a museum with a mortgage. Crestline would fold us in six months anyway.”

“So you didn’t just plan to sell it.” Claire’s voice cut through. “You broke a piano older than my grandfather to force the deal.”

“I didn’t break anything.”

“Twenty-two hammers in that action have your red X on them, Dad,” Claire said. “Not one has Jenna’s mark. You said it yourself—nobody uses the reject crate. Nobody but the man who put them there.”

“I didn’t—”

“You crept in here at midnight,” Graham said, low and terrible, “and you broke a piano older than my father in the dark. You got a good woman fired in front of her child.” His voice rose. “You looked that girl in the eye and told her nobody believes the cleaning lady over family.”

“I said—”

“And you’d have my name on the paper.” Graham picked up the letter of intent and tore it down the middle. Then he tore it again, and again, and let the pieces fall across the bench among the dead hammers. “I’m your family, Trent. And I believe her.”

For a moment Trent did not move. Then he laughed, once, a short expelled breath, and put his hands in his pockets, and looked around the room like a man settling a bet.

“Fine,” he said. “You want to lose the hall and the shop both? Be my guest. Crimson’s going to walk on Saturday, and then it won’t matter whose code opened what door.” He looked at Claire. “Come home when you’ve calmed down.”

“I’ll come home when you’re gone from it,” Claire said.

Trent’s jaw flexed. He turned to the door.

“Your keys,” Graham said. “On the bench. Your code dies at eight. Then get out of my shop.”

Trent took his keys out, slowly, and set them on the bench with a soft silver clatter. He looked at Jenna last, and there was nothing in his face at all, which was worse than anger.

“Miss Walsh,” he said pleasantly. “Good luck with Saturday.”

He left. The door swung twice and settled, and the shop was quiet again, and it was the deep quiet of a thing that has just been broken and is now waiting to see how badly.

Diane Ror gathered her coat. “Miss Walsh. I want to tell you something, and I want you to hear it plainly. I have had Crestline in my office every month for a year. I’ve been close to signing. What kept me from it was a man named Hartley who promised me a piano that would sing on the fourteenth.” She looked at the Asheford Grand, at its dead middle, and then at Jenna. “That piano doesn’t sing right now.”

“No,” Jenna said. “It doesn’t.”

“I’ll hold my board until Saturday at seven.” She put on her coat. “After that I sign with Crestline on Monday, and I don’t look back. Can you make it sing, Miss Walsh, or am I wasting three days?”

Jenna looked at the action. Twenty-two dead hammers. Three days. Two cracked shanks she’d already fixed, and now twenty-two that were never hers to fix, and a set of felt at the back she’d need to voice from scratch.

“I can make it sing,” she said.

Diane looked at her a long moment. Then she nodded, once, and was gone.