"You shouldn’t have killed him," Gabriella Whitten spouted to her boyfriend, Hendrix. "Irwin was a nice old guy."

    "A nice old guy who recognized you," he snapped. "Besides, it was self-defense. Crime isn’t pretty, Gabe, but these guys are beauts."

    Hendrix gestured toward the marble busts of famous composers lining the battered coffee table: Bach, Beethoven, Chopin, Liszt, Mozart, and Palestrina. "I don’t know music, but I do know quality. These will fetch a pretty penny."

    "I’m going to bed," Gabriella muttered irritably, knowing he was right. Times were tough, and they desperately needed cash. Between Hendrix’s gambling and her own penchant for finery, they’d squandered his inheritance, and her own paltry paycheck was a joke. Lucky for them, she remembered the valuable statues lining her childhood piano teacher’s music studio. After all the money her parents shelled out to Ms. Crenshaw over the years, Gabriella figured she deserved a kickback.

    A spinster who lived alone, Dolores Crenshaw traveled the world collecting the stunning busts. During lessons, she often talked about her prized collection. Palestrina: hand-carved in Italy by a renowned twentieth-century sculptor. Mozart: crafted from the rarest marble in the world. Gabriella couldn’t remember everything, but one fact stuck: those statues were worth a bundle.

    After Hendrix, with his shady connections, located a high-paying collector downstate, the plan quickly fell into place. Gabriella recalled that Ms. Crenshaw taught Saturday master classes in the city. Sure enough, the teacher’s web site confirmed she was teaching one this week. Crenshaw’s house was secluded on a country lane with no close neighbors. If she still hid a spare house key in the window box, as she had years ago when Gabriella cat-sat, they wouldn’t even have to break a window.

    Late Saturday morning the duo had driven to Ms. Crenshaw’s and peered into her garage. No car. After locating the spare key, Gabriella and Hendrix donned latex gloves and entered the back door, duffle bags in hand. As they neared the music room, the unthinkable happened ... a toilet flushed! Seconds later, an elderly man walked into view.

    "Irwin!" Gabriella gasped.

    "Gabe Whitten? Is that you?" His bright smile faded when he saw her angry-looking companion, their latex gloves and bags.

    Hendrix stepped forward but Gabriella grabbed his arm, restraining him.

    "I’ve been tuning the grand piano," Irwin murmured uneasily. "Dolores will be back any minute."

    "We all know she’s away in the city, Irwin," Gabriella sighed. "Where’s your car?"

    The man’s shoulders sagged. "My wife dropped me off."

    "When will she return?"

    "When I call her."

    "Are you telling the truth?" Hendrix demanded fiercely.

    "You think I want my wife showing up while you’re here?"

    Gabriella’s heart pounded. She knew and liked Irwin Martin – he tuned her parents’ piano. But, today, he presented a problem.

    "I’m almost finished, Gabe," the tuner said shakily. "Five more minutes, tops."

    "You got that right," Hendrix muttered ominously.

    "Let him finish," Gabriella pleaded, knowing how fastidious her former teacher was about tuning. She fidgeted nervously as her old friend adjusted four low bass notes. After tuning a piano, Irwin usually broke into a dazzling display of chromatic scales to check things out. But this time, obviously rattled, he just stopped.

    "Finished," he sighed, slipping each tool into its chamois-lined pocket. "May I write out the bill? My wife will need the money."

    "You think I’d trust you with a pen?" Hendrix mocked. "You’d probably write down Gabe’s na..."

    Suddenly Irwin stormed Hendrix with a mallet.

    But the younger man was ready for him. One quick blow to the head with Mozart’s bust, and the old man dropped like a rock.

    "Get moving, Gabe!" Hendrix yelled, hearing choked sobs. "Hustle!"

    Quickly, they bagged the marble busts and carried them to the car. Minutes later, their bounty was safe within their first-floor apartment.

    Gabriella tossed and turned all night. The next morning she found Hendrix on the sofa just starting to stir, empty beer bottles and busts still sitting on the table.

    "You shouldn’t leave them in plain sight!" she snapped.

    "Why not?" he replied groggily. "The blinds are closed, and nobody ever comes here. I just wanted to look at them."

    Suddenly, heavy pounding erupted at the back door. Instinctively, Gabriella reached for Beethoven, then saw a cop peering in through a sagging blind and knew the gig was up.

    "Gabriella Whitten, you’re under arrest," the officer intoned coldly when she opened the door. His partner headed for Hendrix.

    "How’d you know?" Hendrix screamed. "Our plan was perfect!"

    "Hardly," the officer snorted. "Last night Dolores Crenshaw came home and found her tuner dead and her house burglarized. After spending the night with friends, she returned home this morning and checked the upper notes she’d specifically asked Mr. Martin to fix. They were fine. Yet when she sat down to play the piano, she was horrified. Out of eighty-eight keys, all were perfect ... except four."

    "So what?" Hendrix fumed.

    "Help your non-musical buddy out, Ms. Whitten," the officer drawled. "Recite the music alphabet."

    "A, B, C, D, E, F, G," Gabriella mumbled uncertainly.

    "Bingo! When Ms. Crenshaw heard four totally off-the-wall notes in the lower octaves – notes which hadn’t been problematic before – she wondered if Mr. Martin purposely had monkeyed with them. After isolating the offending keys, she became convinced her tuner was sending her a message."

    That’s why Irwin didn’t test the piano afterward, Gabriella suddenly realized. He didn’t want me to know he’d tampered with it!

    "We decided to check out Crenshaw’s hunch," the cop continued, "because those four bad notes, when read consecutively, form an unusual word – make that, name. She’d taught two kids with that particular nickname over the years, but only one still lived locally."

    "G-A-B-E," Gabriella whispered.