by Todd Borg
The keyboard cover was up, showing the beautiful keys, white and black in that fantastic, iconic repeating pattern.
I knew little about music except the names of the main notes. I struck middle C and immediately noticed that it didn’t seem right. It throbbed in a pulsing way that was uncomfortable to listen to. I went up the scale, hitting the white keys, stopping at the next C. All of the notes seemed out of tune to my ears. They all made the pulsing sensation, some even worse than the others. The piano tuner’s piano sounded out of tune.
Ryan said that Herman had a stroke in the previous weeks. Had he tuned the piano post-stroke only to discover that he no longer was able to tune? I’d never known a piano tuner, but I imagined that they took the same pride in their work as any artisan. I couldn’t picture a tuner purposely mistreating a piano. The only explanation that made sense was that the stroke had caused Herman to lose his faculties.
Still, the idea bothered me. Ryan’s comments about Herman being able to understand speech, to cook for himself, wash his clothes and do other common household activities didn’t fit with a person losing the activity most intrinsic to their sense of identity, their life-long work.
Before I left, I wandered the rest of the cabin. There were two bedrooms behind and to the left of the fireplace. It was clear that Herman slept in one and stored more stuff in the other. Nothing about them seemed notable.
I walked out into the living room, around through the dining room and back into the kitchen, the only room I hadn’t seen.
It was unremarkable, with old appliances, old fixtures, a single bare bulb hanging from the center of the ceiling. I opened a few cupboards and drawers, looking for nothing in particular, and finding the same.
I opened the back door and looked out onto a patio of sorts, created by an indented corner in the log cabin’s design. The patio was private. Herman could sit here and not be seen from the neighbors or the road or even the construction site.
Something bothered me, and I tried to figure out what it was. Then I remembered that Ryan had talked about how Herman never locked his door.
It would be easy for someone to walk up to this private patio and let himself into Herman’s cabin. No one would see him.
If the person came unannounced and uninvited, Herman would be helpless. The intruder could sit inside Herman’s living room and look into Ryan’s windows, watch as people came and went, observe their habits.
If Herman had been tuning his piano when the intruder entered, the intruder could tell Herman to continue, which would provide cover. When the intruder was done with his spying or whatever he was doing, he would no longer need Herman’s tuning as cover. He could stand him up and push him down. Hit his head on the floor. Or maybe just scare him enough to trigger a heart attack.
I found Ryan outside among the piles of construction materials, walking along and looking down into trenches where the rebar network for the footings awaited another concrete pour. Even though he was in full view of the off-duty cop, he kept stopping to look around as if to see if any stranger was near. It was sad to see such a successful young man so consumed with worry and fear. He saw me and brightened.
“Learn anything?”
“Yeah. If Herman retained most of his abilities after he had his stroke, then why would he mis-tune his piano?”
“What do you mean?”
“I played a few notes. They seem out of tune.”
“I doubt that,” Ryan said. “Herman was fixated on keeping his piano in tune. He tuned it every week. He played hymns every Sunday. A well-tuned piano was important to him. Anyway, how can you tell if it is out of tune? Are you a musician?”
“No. Even so, I believe Herman’s piano is not what it should be. We heard him tuning it when we went for our walk with Spot and Lily. Yet even I can tell that it’s out of tune.”
Ryan shook his head. “That makes no sense at all.”
“I only saw sheet music for jazz standards. But you say that Herman played hymns?”
“He didn’t need sheet music for hymns. He was raised on hymns. Knew them all. And he played them in a black Southern Baptist gospel style. This end of the lake really rocked on Sundays. Lily called it God rock.”
“He must have died during that last tuning,” I said.
“After,” Ryan said. “I’ve watched him several times. There was a regular process he followed. I could tell by the look of his tools that he had finished the last tune.”
“How?”
“The felt was out.”
“What does that mean?”
“As he would begin tuning, he’d sit at the bench and unroll the strip of felt. He shaped it into loops and pushed the loops down between the strings. If he’d died during the tune, the felt would have still been rolled, or partially inserted in the strings. Once the felt was in place, he would tune the entire piano before he would remove it, bit by bit as he tuned the last of the strings. When I found him, the felt was out, draped over his toolbox. Once the felt was pulled out, the tuning was done. So I’d like to hear what you mean when you say that the piano is out of tune.”
We walked up to Herman’s cabin. Ryan walked straight to the piano and played a 3-note chord and winced.
“That’s not in tune!” He played the chord again, then played a different chord. “I can’t believe it. I’ve never heard his piano ever sound anything but perfect. Herman was really smart. And except for losing his speech after his stroke, he didn’t seem much different. So it doesn’t make sense.”
Ryan frowned. “The thing is, I’m sure he tuned it the week before, and that was post-stroke. If it had been really out of tune like this, we would have noticed when he played his God rock.”
“I’d like to bring another piano tuner in to have a look,” I said.
“For what purpose?”
“I don’t know. Perhaps another tuner can learn something about Herman’s last tune. If there’s no downside to an action, and there’s a large potential upside...”
Ryan made a little grin that quickly faded. “Be my guest.”
TWENTY-ONE
I called tuners out of the Yellow Pages and found one in Reno who could come up the next day at ten a.m.
That morning, Ryan had work to do, and Street had a meeting, so I volunteered to be in charge of Lily. After breakfast, Spot and Lily and I went for a walk. We ambled out the drive and down the neighborhood road that paralleled the highway above us. Lily talked about Herman and asked most of the big and small questions about life and death. Her tone wasn’t maudlin. She didn’t seem to be referencing her own sickness. She just abounded with the curiosity of a child.
Why don’t people live forever? Is there a god? What is cremation? Why do we have funerals? Are angels boys or girls? Can dogs smell ghosts? Can Herman hear us talking about him? What does it feel like to be buried in the ground? Can you tell when you’re going to die? When we die, is it forever?
I fumbled answers for a couple of her questions and I’m-not-sures for most of them. After a good distance we turned around.
It was getting close to ten o’clock. The tuner was due, so we headed back.
I used the key Ryan had given me and unlocked Herman’s door as a 20-year-old Buick, shiny clean despite its sun-damaged blue paint, turned off the street and came down the drive. The driver parked, and turned off the engine.
“Is that the piano tuner?” Lily asked.
“I think so.”
The driver’s door opened. The man leaned his head out and looked at the ground for a moment. Then he stepped a highly-polished brown wingtip out onto the ground, moving slowly so as not to kick up any dust. He got out of the car and glanced down to be certain that his brown trousers were hanging just so, the creases straight and true. His movements were so precise that they seemed choreographed. He moved like a mime, as if his car didn’t exist except in the viewer’s imagination.
The man had dark-brown hair the same color as his wingtips. It was medium length, parted down the mi
ddle, and was so shiny with hair cream that it sparkled in the sunlight. A small handle-bar moustache featured the same treatment. His long-sleeved shirt was white and stiff as if it had been starched. Over the shirt was a tailored vest, wingtip brown. A gold chain arced from a gold clip into a vest pocket that probably boasted a gold pocket watch.
I stepped off the porch to greet him. Spot jumped off with me and trotted up to the man.
The man froze.
“It’s okay,” I said. “He’s friendly.”
“The last time someone told me that, I needed six stitches to close the wound to my arm.” He spoke through clenched teeth, like a robot, careful not to even twitch as Spot sniffed him. Spot’s tail wagged slowly, like a windshield wiper on one notch of delay.
“But I’m telling the truth. Spot, sit.”
Spot turned and looked at me, then turned back to the man and resumed sniffing. His nose was at the base of the man’s throat. The man’s eyes were white.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “Spot, sit,” I said again, this time touching Spot on his back. He sat. “My apologies.”
The man still stared at Spot as if Spot were waiting for me to avert my eyes so that he could have breakfast.
I held out my hand. “Really,” I said. “He’s friendly.”
He shook my hand, his hand and arm rigid as if he were made of wood and had stiff joints.
“Martin Wellsley,” he said.
“Owen McKenna. This is Spot. Up on the deck is Lily.”
Wellsley glanced at Lily, then turned back to Spot.
Spot turned to look at me. He was panting in the sun. Little drops of saliva flipped off the tip of his tongue.
One of them hit Wellsley’s pants near the waistband. He flinched as if he’d been slapped. The glistening tips of his moustache shook.
“Tell you what,” I said. “Spot will stay outside with Lily, while you and I go inside.”
“That would be good,” Wellsley said. “Let me get my tools.” He turned and opened his car trunk. Inside was a large tool box, which he lifted out using both hands.
I brought him up to the front deck of the cabin. Spot ran over to where Lily sat on the chairlift seat, her feet swinging in the air eight inches above the decking.
“Officer Lily,” I said in an important voice, “I’m taking Wellsley below decks for an equipment inspection. You and your trusty hound are to stay on the bridge and keep an eye out for pirates. Do I make myself clear?”
Her response was a mischievous grin and devious eyes.
“Lily, the proper response is, ‘Yes, sir.’”
“Yes, sir!” she shouted.
I saluted her, then led Wellsley into the cabin.
“I was a bit confused on the phone,” Wellsley said. “You’d like me to tune a piano, correct?”
“No. Your confusion is understandable. I want more of an analysis of a tuning. This Steinway was recently worked on by a tuner who is now deceased.”
Wellsley frowned and made a slow nod. “I see. You’d like an appraisal of his tuning ability.”
“Not exactly. I believe the last tuning he did was bad, although I want you to verify that. If I’m correct, I’m looking for some kind of explanation for why.”
Wellsley’s frown deepened. He held the look for a long five seconds. He set his tool box on the floor, then sat down on the piano bench. He lifted both arms, held his hands above the keys with fingers arched, paused for effect, then plunged into a chord that rolled from his left little finger, through his hand, then into his right hand, finally ending at his right little finger. It was a fast movement. He jerked his hands away as if the keys were hot.
“Not even the most incompetent tuner would do that to a piano. You said he died?”
“Yes.” I said. “He’d had a stroke some weeks before. Then he tuned the piano just before he died.”
“Well obviously the stroke burned out his brain so that he couldn’t hear, but he could still go through the motions of tuning.”
“That was one of my thoughts. I want you to figure out if that is what happened.”
“I just said as much. The piano is worse than if it hadn’t been tuned in five years. It’s clear that he completely lost command of his faculties.”
“Maybe,” I said. “But maybe not.”
Wellsley stared at me. “You think he tuned it bad on purpose? Like he was trying to be mean to the owner of the piano? I don’t think so. Even when we tuners dislike an owner, we still have enormous respect for their pianos. Pianos are our most trusted friends. Speaking for myself, I care more about pianos than people. More than I care about animals.” Wellsley glanced around to make certain that Spot was still safely outside. “I would never hurt a piano.”
“This was his own piano. He lived here.”
“Then his stroke caused major brain damage. There’s no other explanation for why he would so mistreat a piano.”
“I understand. But I met him. He didn’t seem that compromised by his stroke. So I’d still like you to investigate. I’ll pay your normal fee.”
“What’s to investigate? The piano isn’t tuned. It’s worse than simply not being tuned. It’s like the guy wanted to make it bad. He wanted to abuse his own piano.”
“As I just said,” I reiterated. “I’d like you to take a look. You’ve driven up from Reno. Spend some time with this piano. See if you can figure out what the tuner was doing.”
Wellsley shook his head in disgust as he stood up and walked around the right side of the piano. “It’s practically a crime to mistreat a piano. Especially a beauty like this.” He ran his hand along the smooth curves of the piano’s case, caressing it.
“Of course, I can fix it,” he said. “I can make her sing again. But it will take two tunings at least. One to bring it into proper range, then another in a couple of weeks after it has had time to adjust.”
“Don’t do that. I’d like you not to change a thing. Just analyze.”
“Analyze what?” He came back to the keyboard, played the notes of the scale, and winced with a big show of distaste, his eyes shut, cheeks scrunched up into a sneer, head turned as if the piano would ruin his ears. He pulled his hands away.
“Just do what piano tuners do, but without adjusting it. See if something strikes you. See if you can get any sense of what he was doing.”
“I’m sorry, but that doesn’t make sense. What piano tuners do is tune pianos.”
“Then go through the motions as if you’re going to tune it. Check the mechanism or whatever the different components are called. Try different note combinations. I don’t know what you’d look for.”
“A clue?” Wellsley said with a sneer.
“Herman may have done this on purpose. So look for something that would indicate why he did this.”
“Herman? You’re not referring to Herman Oleson.”
“Yeah.”
Wellsley’s eyes widened. “But he was famous for his tuning ability. We always heard about him down in Reno. I never met him, but I felt that I knew him anyway. He was a real musician’s piano tuner.”
“What does that mean?”
“Just that you can tune a piano by the book, set each string to the proper mathematical frequency. But it can still sound somewhat dead. Tunings need stretch, especially in the highest octaves, to counteract the relative stiffness of the shorter strings. In fact, that’s why serious pianists use grand pianos, because their strings are much longer than those in uprights. That minimizes stiffness and minimizes the need for stretch in the tuning. This is a Parlor Grand, with longer strings than in a Baby Grand or an upright, although nowhere near as long as a Concert Grand.
“The best piano tuners have a musician’s ear. Combined with masterful technique, we can hear exactly how much we need to stretch the tuning. We can make a piano sing, give it life, make the harmonics soar. I count myself as one of the best tuners in Nevada, but I never had the presumption to think that I was as good as the famous Herman Oleson.”
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br /> Wellsley shook his head. “It is doubly sad, that a great tuner would lose his tuning ability. I hope he wasn’t aware of what he was doing. Maybe at the end he was completely demented, and he just cranked on his tuning hammer like a child would.”
“That’s what I want you to determine. Was Herman rendered incompetent by his stroke? Or was something else involved?”
Wellsley nodded. His demeanor was somber now that he realized the tuner was the great Oleson. “All right,” he said. “I’ll look. I have no idea what for, but I’ll see if I can tell anything about what he was doing.”
He opened his tool box and pulled out some long, narrow, black rubber wedges with thin wire handles, similar to the ones that Herman had left on the top of the piano. Wellsley also removed a roll of red felt stripping, almost identical to what Herman had draped over his toolbox. Wellsley unrolled the strip of felt and lay it across the strings, then inserted it here and there between the strings so that it looped up and down as it traveled left to right across the center group of strings.
Wellsley played middle C, then played each note, white and black, up the scale until he reached C an octave above. With the felt stuck into the strings, the notes, to my ear, sounded good. Wellsley frowned. He moved down to what I thought was the A note below middle C and played all the notes, both black and white, up to the next A. His frown increased.
Wellsley reached into his toolbox, and pulled out two tuning forks and an electronic device. It had a dial and a digital readout. He held one fork by its base, bounced it on his knee to make it vibrate, then held the end of it against the wood case of the piano. The tuning fork seemed to project its sound into the wood, and became much louder.
Out the window, I saw Spot immediately lift his head up off the deck. He perked his ears and tipped his head. Lily reached down from the chairlift to pet him.
Wellsley played the A note. It sounded the same pitch as the tuning fork. He did the same with the other fork and the C note.
Spot tipped his head the other way, then moaned.