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Murder To My Ears
Chapter One
“Not this one. I need the twenty-five gauge E string with the ball. This is a twenty-six gauge with a loop.” Ludwig flicked the little string envelope away from himself with more force than the situation called for.
My glasses were slipping down my nose, but even with the vintage cat-eye frames blocking part of my vision I could see the envelope smack Mairi in the middle of her heart-shaped face.
“This is the only gauge we carry in this brand.” Mairi’s voice was tight.
I should probably step in, but Mairi hated it when I tried to fix problems, even though it was my shop. The look on her face made me think she wished I was five miles away instead of five feet. Maybe if I acted like I wasn’t listening it would be enough. I flexed my bare toes against the cool tiles and reached into the box on top of the glass display case and pulled out more rosin.
“One of these boxes must have the right string,” Ludwig said in that insufferable tone mastered by every snooty musician.
I’m not saying every musician is snooty. That would be telling tales about myself and some of my best friends. But some musicians had more ego than talent.
Ludwig had talent. A lot of it. So when I tell you his ego was twice as big as his talent, well, it’s saying something.
“I’m sorry, sir, it’s not on the inventory list. If you want to try a different brand I could give you a twenty-five. I could probably talk my boss into giving you a discount for your understanding.” Mairi glanced my way, so I pretended I wasn’t watching.
The day I gave Ludwig Baylor a discount would be the day I closed up shop for good.
Okay, so maybe you noticed Ludwig’s not my favorite person. Once upon a time we’d been friendly. That was before it was glaringly clear that he valued his perfect pitch more than any of the people in his life.
“How can you not have this in a twenty-five?” Ludwig’s voice was getting louder. “Everyone knows this is what I use.”
The frustrated vibes pouring off Mairi were seriously messing with my setting-up-shop-for-the-season high.
“Octavia, tell her.” Ludwig turned to me, completely ruining any chance that I could stay out of things.
I pushed the glasses up right before they slid off the tip of my nose. “The only reason anyone knows what strings you use is because you insist on yelling about it. We don’t have the strings because you never shop here, Ludwig. You make a big deal about not shopping here.”
He muttered something under his breath. I only managed to catch the word “hippie,” but I didn’t need the look on his face to tell me it wasn’t complimentary.
Like I said, we had history. And not the romantic kind.
I abandoned the rosin and finally gave him my full attention. “What happened to getting a better deal online?”
He tapped his finger on the counter. The sound set my jaw on edge.
The counter was actually the top of a glass display case. See, my violin shop used to be a gift shop, and I kept the octagon of glass display cases. One edge was missing so staff could go behind the counter.
The display fit the room. Literally. The room was octagonal, and the front half of it was windows. I think it had been a gazebo in a former life. Then a rectangle had been built coming off the back half of it. One room off the back of the shop was an office. Another was an instrument and practice room. The biggest room was a workshop for the luthiers a friend of mine loaned me from his shop each summer.
What? It’s not like I know how to do sound post adjustments or glue seams. It benefited everyone. My shop was where the musicians were. Really. Aerie Pines was the summer home of the Aerie Peaks Symphony.
Not only that, but down the road one way there was a summer music program for college students—not exactly like a summer camp, but calling it one means you’ll have a good idea what it’s like.
If you take the road in the other direction there’s a summer music camp for high schoolers, sponsored by a different college than the other one.
So, see, it was lucrative for my shop and for the luthiers.
Some of the musicians were fun to have around. Others—well, others were like Ludwig.
Insufferable.
“My order didn’t arrive before coming to this compound.” His mouth twisted with distaste. “I’ve asked Cora to bring it up to me once it arrives, but until then, I need a string.”
“Well, you can buy what we have or not, but I can’t make a string appear out of thin air.” I paused. Calling Aerie Pines a compound wasn’t nice—mainly because I knew what Ludwig’s definition of a compound was. But that wasn’t what really irked me. “Did you really ask your ex-wife to drive two hours each way just to bring you a string?”
Ludwig looked at me like I was a bug he wanted to squash.
Just try it, I thought.
“What I do or do not do is none of your business.”
Somebody was touchy.
The big glass doors swung open dramatically behind Ludwig. A short woman with curves in all the right places paused dramatically before practically dancing forward.
Piper’s grand entrance made me grin. We hadn’t seen each other in two months—and I’d missed my best friend. She tilted her chestnut brown modernized Marilyn Monroe hair toward Ludwig with a roll of her eyes.
I tried not to laugh as I turned back to my customer. If that’s what he was. “Are you going to buy something or not?”
His derisive glance took in Piper, and Mairi, and me. “This was a waste of time.”
“Don’t let the door hit you on the way out,” Piper chirped.
Ludwig’s nose tipped a few degrees higher in the air as he spun on his heel.
Piper didn’t wait for him to disappear before she started digging into the boxes of stock. “Is this that new kind of instrument polish, Octavia? Where do you want it?”
I looked around the display cases. “Wherever you want.”
Mairi clapped her hand over her generous mouth as a whimper escaped.
She wasn’t a fan of the way I organized the stock.
“Mairi and Xavier will rearrange everything after I leave.” I bit the inside of my cheek to hold back a smile.
Mairi frowned, her cheeks pink.
“Maybe if we put them in good places to start with,” Piper suggested drily, “your staff wouldn’t have to rearrange everything and trust you didn’t remember where you’d put things in the first place.”
Whatever. Rearranging things gave the two of them something to do when I wasn’t there, and they enjoyed watching me search for things that had moved since I’d put them down.
I usually claimed things had sprouted feet, and we all pretended like I didn’t know they were the ones who really ran the shop.
Piper was looking toward the closed doors at the back of the shop. “Where is Xavier, anyway?”
Mairi cleared her throat. “Setting up the office.”
Piper’s shoulders heaved with a sigh. “Oh.”
“He has to be almost done. He’s been in there for ages,” I said, even though I had no idea how long he’d been working on it. “Don’t worry, you’ll get to enjoy the eye candy soon.”
“Shh! He might hear you.” Piper gave me a look I recognized. It was one she wore a lot, at least around me.
I shrugged. Xavier wouldn’t mind the label—he’d enjoy knowing Piper liked looking at him. He had the whole dark, smoldering thing going for him. Dark and smoldering had been Piper’s weakness since she and I met when we were assigned to the same dorm room in college.
That’s right, I went to college. Well, a music conservatory.
I lasted a whole month before realizing all the music theory and solfeggio just distracted from everything I loved about playing the viola.
When they very bluntly told me I was keeping the other students from learning, I handed in my dorm key and left. But the friendship between Piper and me stuck, which meant I’d met the whole parade of dark and smoldering that had marched through Piper’s life. She never met most of them, except through the magic of television and movies.
Xavier chose that moment to sashay out of the office, opening the door in a flurry and making an entrance that almost rivaled Piper’s. “Is that awful man gone?”
“For now.” Mairi waved her hands toward where Piper and I were looking for somewhere to put the instrument polish. “Octavia put the rosin next to the shoulder rests.”
Xavier’s dark eyes widened. He dropped the lock of shoulder-length hair he’d been twirling around a long finger and hurried over, either ignoring or not noticing the way Piper looked at him. “No, no, no. The rosin should be with the polishing cloths and instrument polish. Rosin makes the dust, the cloths clean it up, and you use the cloths for the polish. It all goes together.”
I crossed my arms. “Do you want to set up the shop so I don’t make any other drastic mistakes?”
He nodded as if it was the first thing that had gone right all day. “Yes. Yes, that’s a good idea. You could help Piper move into her summer apartment. Or take a walk around the lake. Or go home and make sure you’re set up for the summer.”
I stepped back, my hands up as if I was about to be arrested. “Chill out, I was joking. Of course I’m going to help set things up here.”
Piper sighed as she stared dreamily at Xavier.
I snapped my fingers in front of her face until she came out of it. “Does your husband know you’re here?”
Startled by the reminder she was staring, she turned away from Xavier.
I should probably tell you Piper was madly in love with her husband, a bassoonist in the symphony. Luckily, he was smart enough to insist he didn’t care who she looked at, as long as she came home to him.
Even if Piper hadn’t been married, nothing would have happened between her and Xavier.
Xavier was in a committed relationship with himself.
Yes, you heard that right.
Xavier was convinced relationships with other people were too much pressure—and judging by the two significant others he’d had in the time I’d known him, he had a point—so he decided to be alone.
“Of course my husband knows I’m here. He told me to run off to visit you while he unpacked.” Piper gave me a triumphant grin. “He’s trying to make sure he gets the bigger closet.”
“You don’t want it?”
“Oh, Octavia. Letting him think he’s winning by getting the bigger closet means he’s going to give me anything else I want when I get home.” Her eyes sparkled. “I’m going to get the second bedroom as my music studio, which means I won’t have to sign up for one of the practice cabins.”
I smiled. “The practice cabins are fun.”
They were. They had more space than any musician needed, and were furnished with comfortable couches. And every year there were at least a couple musicians whose cabins saw as many trysts as practice sessions.
Piper took in my smile, and her eyes widened. “I want to talk about this. Later.”
“Ladies.” Xavier’s voice jolted me back to the shop. “Go. Do things. Let us take care of the shop.”
“They never give up, do they?” Piper asked.
I shook my head.
“You could go find Mr. Baylor and tell him not to come back,” Mairi suggested.
“What was he upset about this time?” Xavier asked.
“We didn’t have the string he wanted.” Mairi rolled her eyes and started pulling out all the stock I’d tried to organize.
They weren’t even going to wait for me to leave this year.
I tried to be offended, but I didn’t really want to embrace those negative vibes.
Piper whistled. “Ludwig’s in high dudgeon today.”
Xavier leaned across the display case until he was as close to Piper as he could get. “What’s he done?”
It took Piper half a dozen breaths and at least a hundred eyelash flutters to get herself under control.
She doted on her husband, really she did, but she could never seem to keep herself from flirting with anyone dark and smoldering.
“Ludwig went into a rampage at rehearsal this morning.” Her eyelashes fluttered again, but whatever juicy gossip was involved meant Piper was as oblivious to those eyelashes as Xavier was. “It’s all anyone can talk about.”
“Do tell.” From Xavier, this was practically begging.
Mairi stopped undoing all my work and crossed the few steps to join us.
“Rehearsal was a disaster. The first one after we move up here for the summer always is. Everyone’s caught up in the move, but that brings a lot of excitement, too. Some of the musicians were goofing off, which is basically an unspoken tradition at this point.”
I remembered that from my season with them. That’s right, I made it a whole season before realizing playing with the symphony wasn’t for me.
But really, you can only take getting told off for being late or missing rehearsal so many times. I decided to find a job where time wasn’t so important. Since this shop is only a summer gig, and since Mairi and Xavier were really the ones running it, I’d made it work for three years now.
Okay, this would be the third, but who’s counting?
“The next rehearsal should be a little easier,” I offered. I reached into a box and started pulling out mutes. I could at least unpack boxes while we talked, even if my ever-so-capable staff wouldn’t let me organize things.
“Who cares if rehearsals are easy? Get to the juicy part of the story.” Xavier trailed a finger in a long, winding path across the glass in front of him.
Piper’s eyes took on a dreamy quality as she watched his finger. As soon as it stilled, she shook her head and started talking again. “Ludwig stopped the conductor and yelled at us. None of us are worthy of his excellent leadership, or of performing on his stage, or breathing his air, yada, yada, yada. If we don’t turn things around, he’s going to get each and every person fired.”
“Can he do that?” Mairi asked. “I thought there were contracts and a union.”
“He can’t, but he likes to think being concert-master gives him more leverage than the other musicians.” I said, catching my glasses on the tip of my finger and pushing them back up the bridge of my nose. I’d hate to see what Ludwig would do with any real power. “I don’t know how you put up with him as your stand partner.”
“You get used to him.” Piper paused as she thought. “I mostly just ignore him. Anyway, rehearsal ended early after his hissy fit, and everyone’s either laughing or grumbling behind his back.”
At the back of the store, the door leading into the instrument workshop opened. Xavier’s hips started to sway to the Latin beat that spilled out.
Eli, one of the luthiers I’d borrowed for the summer, paused in the doorway. He was so tall his salt and pepper hair brushed against the lintel. “Octavia, didn’t you need that bow?”
Eli specialized in bow repairs, and it was a good thing he did. You’d be surprised how quickly a musician needed a rehair when they played so many hours a day. Or when they just liked to break hairs during a performance because they were too aggressive. Besides, it looked groovy to have those loose bow hairs floating around the performer’s head.
Okay, fine. Sometimes hairs just break, and it’s not because people played too hard, or wanted to look groovy. Unless you’re a string musician yourself, you’ll just have to take my word for it.
“Octavia?” he prompted.
“What?”
“The bow. The one that lost the plug and needed to be rehaired. Didn’t you need that at noon?”
Now, you might be thinking Eli was starting to sound annoyed, but you’d be wrong. He was laughing. Somehow all the people who worked for me were easily amused by me.
Go figure.
“Oh, right.” I finally remembered the bow he was talking about. “I’m supposed to meet Tatiana at the amphitheater with it at noon.”
“It’s a quarter past.”
Impossible.
My stomach grumbled that he was right.
“You’d better hurry,” Piper piped in. “You never know what kind of a mood Tatiana’s going to be in.”
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