Chapter 7 - The Confrontation
By three o'clock that afternoon, the temperature in Scottsdale had climbed to one hundred and four degrees. The desert heat shimmered off the concrete driveway like liquid gasoline.
Edward sat on the stone bench beside the main fountain in the circular courtyard.
He had been sitting there for two hours. He had refused his assistant’s calls, ignored three messages from Wall Street, and sent the gate guards down to the road with instructions to open the outer iron gates and leave them open.
Valerie stood sixty feet away under the shaded portico, her arms crossed tightly over her chest, refusing to leave. She held her tablet like a shield, determined to witness the inevitable disaster she was convinced was about to unfold.
At three-twenty, a low, grinding diesel engine echoed up the winding mountain road.
A massive, yellow commercial flatbed truck turned through the gates. The engine was wheezing from the steep mountain climb, its radiator hissing with steam as it rolled slowly up the cobblestone drive.
Behind the wheel sat Nancy Carter.
Her gray hair had escaped its neat bun, hanging in damp tendrils around her flushed, sweat-streaked face. Her white uniform blouse was stained with brown road dirt and engine grease.
She pulled the massive truck to a halt in the center of the courtyard, engaged the air brakes with a loud *pssshhh*, and cut the ignition.
The silence that followed was absolute.
Nancy opened the high cab door and climbed down backwards, holding onto the iron grab handles. Her work boots hit the pavers with a solid thud. She was visibly trembling from exhaustion; she had been driving a twenty-six-foot commercial rig through mountain passes for six hours straight.
She turned to face Edward.
Edward slowly stood up from the bench. He didn't look angry. He looked terrified.
Secured to the flatbed behind the cab was a massive object wrapped in three heavy, oil-stained canvas tarpaulins, held down by heavy ratchet straps.
Valerie marched forward from the portico, her heels clicking aggressively on the stone. "Four hundred and fifty dollars, Nancy! You rented a commercial hauler, abandoned your duties, and drove across state lines! Do you have any idea what you’ve done?"
Nancy didn't even look at Valerie. She kept her eyes fixed entirely on Edward.
"The shop in Globe bought out the old Holloway inventory twenty-five years ago," Nancy said, her voice hoarse from dry desert air. "They moved the entire warehouse into a disused mine storage barn outside the canyon. Most of the furniture had dry-rotted from the heat. But this was kept in the back, behind three crates of mine drill bits."
Edward took two slow, hesitant steps toward the truck. His heart was beating so violently against his ribs he could hear the blood roaring in his ears.
"Nancy..." Edward whispered.
"I had to help the yardman drag it out with a forklift," Nancy continued, her voice trembling slightly. "He wanted four hundred dollars for the piece and fifty dollars for the canvas tarps. I used your card. The receipt is in my pocket."
Nancy reached to the side of the truck and released the first heavy ratchet strap. The iron buckle snapped open with a sharp *clack*.
She climbed up onto the metal running board, reached high, and took hold of the heavy canvas tarpaulin.
"Nancy, wait," Edward breathed, reaching out a hand as if he were trying to stop a dream from vanishing.
Nancy didn't wait. With one strong, resolute pull of her tired arms, she dragged the heavy canvas away.
The afternoon sun blazed down on the flatbed.
Sitting in the center of the truck was an upright Lester acoustic piano.
The dark walnut finish was faded, coated in a quarter-century of fine copper mining dust, but the hand-carved pine-cone scrollwork on the music desk was unmistakable. It was weathered, scarred by time, but whole.
Edward stopped breathing.
The entire universe narrowed to the square foot of wood beneath the keyboard.
He stepped onto the metal running board of the truck as if pulled by an invisible cable. His polished Italian leather shoes stepped into the grease and dirt of the bed. He dropped to his knees in front of the lower pedals.
His trembling fingers reached out to the lower walnut panel just above the brass sustain pedal.
He wiped away twenty-five years of desert silt with the palm of his hand.
There, carved into the wood with the uneven, deliberate stroke of an eight-year-old girl’s pocketknife, were five letters:
*C-L-A-R-A.*
A strangled, agonizing sound tore out of Edward Townsend’s chest—a sound that was half sob, half scream.
He pressed his forehead against the scarred walnut wood, his hands gripping the iron frame of the pedals, and wept.
He didn't cry like a billionaire who had lost a trade. He cried like a starving boy who had finally, after thirty years of wandering in the dark, found his way home.
Valerie Hale stood frozen in the blazing sun, her tablet slipping from her fingers and clattering onto the cobblestones. She looked at the battered piano, then at Edward crumpled on the flatbed of a rented hauler, and finally at Nancy Carter, who stood quietly in the dirt, wiping the sweat and grease from her face with the hem of her stained apron.
Valerie took two steps back, turned, and walked silently toward her car.
May you like
She knew, with absolute and terrifying finality, that her six years of power in the Townsend estate had just come to an end.
***
