1st
Dead True
A friend of mine told me this story the other day:
His great aunt, a relatively wealthy woman, had been getting on in years. She lived in Georgia, far from the rest of the family, with whom she had a rather strained relationship. She took on a caretaker, a woman to help her around the house with various everyday tasks. As time went by, though, this woman systematically acquired more and more control of my friend’s great aunt’s life, eventually managing to gain power of attorney over the elderly woman’s estate. During this time, several valuable family assets also went missing, and suspicions rose surrounding this caretaker. But she had power of attorney now, and nothing could really be done. Then the great aunt passed away.
With her death, the power of attorney ended, and the authority passed on to the executor of her estate. The members of the family were allocated certain items and assets, of course, and were also given the right to choose any un-allocated assets before they were sold at auction. One of the items that had been un-accounted for in the will was the woman’s upright piano.
Now, my friend is a great lover of music. He is a musician and a knowledgeable authority on many music-related things. He’s worked at several music stores, taught guitar, played with a number of bands; basically, he’s the quintessential “music guy.” And for years and years and years, he’s wanted a piano. When his father told him there was an unclaimed piano among the estate, my friend’s response was, “I don’t care about the rest of the furniture, Dad. If you get nothing else, get the piano.”
There were still some legal quandaries being dealt with, regarding the caretaker and her steady acquisition of power over the great aunt’s life, but my friend’s dad flew down to Georgia, gathered up the items he had been bequeathed - as well as the piano – and loaded everything into a moving truck, which he drove back to Richmond.
My friend went over to help unload the truck, and the last thing they unloaded was the piano. I’ve never moved a piano, myself, and neither had he, before that day; but I know, as I’m sure you know, pianos are heavy. This one was an upright, so smaller than a grand or baby grand, and on rollers, but still, it posed some difficulties. There was a ramp on the back of the moving truck, but gravity became an issue, and the moving of the piano was, to put it lightly, an undertaking.
“The piano…” said my friend’s dad, shaking his head.
“The piano,” my friend replied.
“The one thing you wanted. The heaviest thing in the house,” said his dad.
“The piano,” my friend repeated.
“Do you want to see what the mover and I discovered when we loaded this into the truck?” His dad squatted down in front of the piano, and exhibited some screws holding the front panel in place. He removed the screws, pulled the front panel away, and stood back.
Revealed behind the thin wooden barrier were stacks and stacks of fire-proof security boxes. All of the assets and jewelry from his great aunt’s house, everything that had gone missing, were there, stashed inside the piano. While the caretaker had been gathering her power around her, taking more and more control of the aunt’s life, she had, at the same time, been protecting herself and her estate, quietly gathering the valuables and hiding them… inside the piano.
The piano. The one thing my friend insisted his dad bring home. The one thing, which otherwise would have been sold at auction for probably $200, complete with many thousands of dollars (somewhere in the upwards neighborhood of $80,000) of jewelry, cash and other items hidden inside.
