I turned pages more quickly. Nothing. Nothing. Then, the last movement.
Someone had re-marked the crescendo building into the final page turn as a diminuendo. Not clumsily. It was a precise, musically literate alteration. Instead of opening to a moment of cathartic release, the passage folded inward.
I sat down on the floor with my head on my knees. The score lay open beside me. Shelves rose behind me. The little climateunit hummed in the wall above the door. Someone had been in this closet.
They had walked to the correct shelf, identified a specific box among a dozen similar ones, and replaced one particular score with a forgery. That was bad enough on its own: access, timing, knowledge of the house. The rest was worse. The closet was mine. I maintained it. I knew what lived there without checking.
I closed the score, stood, and carried it out.
Dominic looked up from his desk when I crossed the study.
“What happened?”
“I need to speak to Thiago.”
He looked directly at the score under my arm. “Is it one of mine?”
“Yes.”
“Bad?”
“Yes.”
He set down his pen. “Do I want details yet?”
“Not until I’ve shown him.”
A pause. Then, with the same composure he used for hospital calls and board resignations: “Very well.”
I went downstairs.
Thiago was in the kitchen with Michael’s notes spread across the table in a fan of paper and his tablet resting beside them. He wore the pale blue shirt he had bought the day before. One forearm rested on the table. In the opposite hand, he held a thick slice of bread from the loaf I had bought that morning on Magazine Street .
The loaf came from the little bakery near Sixth, the one that sold out by noon if the weather was decent. Dominic liked the crust and claimed the interior needed more salt. Thiago had taken one bite earlier, said nothing, and then cut himself three more slices.
He looked up the moment I entered. “What is it?”
I set the score on the table and opened it to the last movement. “Look.”
He put the bread down and wiped his fingers on the napkin beside his plate before looking over the page.
“It’s not original?”
“No.”
“How do you know?”
“The dynamics. The orchestra fades instead of expressing joy.”
“When did you last handle it?”
“Thursday.” I kept one hand on the score. “Routine maintenance. I checked the shelf, not the contents. The box was in the correct place.”
He glanced up. “The walk-in off the study?”
“Yes.”
“Walk me through the box. Position, order, what you expected.”
