Chapter 2 - The Stolen Ivory
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Vanessa froze halfway to the door.
I walked closer to the piano. The movers had opened the heavy wooden fallboard to secure the keys for transport.
That was when I saw it.
Right in the center of the keyboard, six white keys had been damaged. The thin ivory tops had been completely stripped off, leaving behind the raw, yellowish pine wood underneath.
I leaned in closer. They hadn't fallen off from age.
My mother had repaired church pianos when I was growing up in Southside Chicago. Nothing expensive—mostly sticky keys, loose felt, or broken pedals. I had spent half my childhood handing her screwdrivers and jars of hide glue while she worked.
I knew what a broken piano looked like. And these keytops had been pried off with a thin blade. Recently. Fresh, splintered tool marks showed along the edges of the wood.
Vanessa marched back over and immediately slammed the fallboard shut. The loud crack echoed in the quiet room.
“It’s an eighty-year-old piano,” Vanessa said quickly, her voice a pitch higher than usual. “Things fall apart.”
One of the movers scratched the back of his neck. “Still want us to take it, lady?”
“Yes,” Vanessa snapped. She glared at me. “And I want it gone before Luca comes downstairs for the dinner.”
They began wrapping the thick blue blankets around the piano. I stood frozen. I should have walked away. I should have gone to the kitchen and polished silver.
Instead, my eyes drifted to a small console table near the window where Vanessa had set down her purse and a small, white velvet jewelry case.
The case was open.
Inside rested a stunning bridal hair comb. It was shaped like a crescent moon, made of six narrow ivory pieces curved perfectly across a gold wire frame.
My stomach tightened violently.
One of those ivory pieces, near the edge of the comb, had a tiny, unmistakable blue mark.
I looked back at the wrapped piano. Before Vanessa had slammed the board shut, I had noticed something on the bare wooden key beneath middle C. It had the faintest smear of blue ink on the side.
I remembered the photograph on the mantel. Eight-year-old Luca beside his mother. I had dusted that frame a hundred times. I knew every detail. Luca wore a little white button-down shirt.
And in his shirt pocket, there was a leaking blue fountain pen.
I walked over to the mantel and picked up the photograph, bringing it closer to the light.
May you like
There it was. A tiny blue stain on one piano key, right where the boy’s hand was resting.
The exact same mark now sitting inside Vanessa’s bridal comb.
