London Harmony: Minuette

By Erik Schubach

Self publishing

P.O. Box 523

Nine Mile Falls, WA 99026

Cover Photo © 2015 Yurka Immortal / Ostill / ShutterStock.com license

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.  This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties.  Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited.  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author / publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review written for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper, blog, or broadcast.

This is a work of fiction.  Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Manufactured in the United States of America

FIRST EDITION

ISBN 978-0-9966241-6-9

I stood back and looked at the unassuming apartment block then at the hastily scribbled note that Fran had handed to me at the office.  She had noting written on it but an address.  I grinned.  Leave it to Small Fry to figure out this mystery that has plagued Nessie and me for weeks.

I'm assuming that she finally figured it out with books, of course, the girl lives and breathes books.  This has been one of the most frustrating couple of months in my life.  Almost as frustrating as getting my wife to admitting she loves me.

An artist that didn't want to be found could be as creative in hiding as they are with their music.  Van and I have been obsessed with this woman's music since we found a thumb drive with one of her songs in our things at a rave last April.  A handful of people there wound up with one on their car.

Minuette.

We didn't know if that was the song title or the artist.  It was the only file on the drive.  Her voice was haunting and the piano accompaniment was a cascade of notes, coalescing into something I couldn't quantify.  The piano music was eerily similar to my mother, Anabella's playing.  My mom, being deaf, can feel the music rather than hear it, and her music is the heart that embodies her emotions.

We had been out scouting at one of Ronnie Marx's old haunts in the underground music scene before he became the manager of our jazz club, Walker's... to hear an a capella pop group.  It was a bust, I didn't see what others were saying about the group, and neither did Nessie.  So we left pretty early.

That's when we found the thumb drive under the windshield wiper when we got to the car.  We sat in the car and looked at it.  It was a cheap purple throwaway with nothing but an “M” written in silver script on it with a permanent marker on one side, and “listen” on the other.

I almost threw it out, people were always sneaking me unsolicited demos.  They should know better, my record label, London Harmony doesn't take unsolicited anything.  We are an invitation-only venue, that's what makes us so sought after.

But alas, curiosity got the better of me when I noted that other cars in the area had the same thumb drive, so we weren't specifically targeted.  I shrugged at my lady and I plugged it into the radio's USB slot.  The track name scrolling on the radio read Minuette.  Then we sat back and had one of the most unique listening experiences I have ever had the pleasure of having.

  A few seconds after the end of the song, the woman whispered, “Minuette out.”

There was something about the music, the words, and the thumping of a drum, or maybe it was someone just tapping the side of a bench or piano.  There seemed to be some sort of pattern I couldn't quite understand.  The lyrics were inspired and invoked a certain melancholy warmth.  But it was the combination of it all that spoke to me.  Vannie agreed.

I wanted... no, I needed this woman and her music at London Harmony.  How had we never heard her stuff before then?  We had dozens of feelers on the street, looking for just this sort of unique music.

We started to head back to our condo at One Hyde Place when we noticed a girl in the alley placing a thumb drive on another car.  I stopped immediately and the girl looked up.  She looked scared.  I rolled down the window and called out to her, “Excuse me.  Could we have a word, please?”

The girl looked to the other end of the alley as if she were contemplating bolting.

I added, “You're not in trouble.  I just have a question for you.”

She exhaled and looked around again then slumped her shoulders and then timidly approached us.  She was average height and build for a girl her age.  She looked to be about Small Fry's age, about twenty-one.  Everything about her just said average.  She was dressed in everyday, run of the mill clothes.

There wasn't anything remarkable about her... except her eyes under her dull brown hair.  I have only seen eyes that color one other time.  Such a vibrant blue they almost glowed a light violet.  The sparkle and sharp intelligence in them made them stand out even more.  You would never forget her for that one reason alone.

I held up the thumb drive. “Where did you get these?”

She said in a quiet voice, “I didn't do anything wrong.”

I nodded.  “I know.  Do you know what's on them?”

She shrugged a shoulder.  I smiled, hoping to help her relax.  I prompted, “There is music on them.  Where did you get them?”

She was looking past me to Vanessa who had lowered the ridiculous black hood on the hoodie she insisted on wearing when we were scouting music.  Her “Scratch” persona.

She asked past me. “Are you alright ma'am?”

I glanced between the two.  Vannie had the uncertain, confused look she got when she was wondering if something she was seeing was real or not.  Her doctors had changed up her anti-psychotic meds.  It always took time for things to balance out for her when they did that.  I touched her arm lightly and nodded.  Assuring my love that I was really speaking with someone.

She seemed to relax and took my hand.  I told the girl, “She's fine.  It's just been a long night.”  Vannie nodded and pulled her hood back up.  The girl looked genuinely concerned and that marked her as a good person in my book.

Then she looked past our car and said, “Some lady in Hyde Park gave me twenty quid if I'd put these on the cars around the rave.”

I asked, “Do you know her?  Or how we can find her?  Can you describe her?”

She shook her head and said noncommittally, “She was just a lady.”

Damn.  She looked to be overly nervous still so I asked her, as I handed her a card that had nothing but my cell number on it, “I'm June, what's your name?”

She took the card and said cautiously, “Annette.”

I smiled at her and said, “I'm pleased to have met you, Annette.  I'd appreciate if you could contact me if you ever see the woman again.  My number is on the card.  There is a large finder's fee in it for you.”

She nodded and then headed back down the alley, looking back just once before we continued on down the street.

Things only got worse when we contacted Ronnie Marx with a copy of the song.  He chirped out right away, “Oh yeah, rumors about the mysterious Minuette have been circulating for a couple years in the underground.  But since it isn't the type of music I showcased at the raves, I've never heard it.”

I asked, “Mysterious?”

He chuckled. “I think she took a page out of the June Harris-West handbook, and how you handled your J-Card mystery.  I thought all the Minuette shite was all just urban legend, but now you play a song for me.  It is a haunting melody isn't it?”

I agreed and asked, “So she's anonymous then?  That's the mystery?”  I understood the need, I had done something similar with my J8 persona.

He chuckled. “A small part of it.  Nobody knows who she is, but those bloody thumb drives keep showing up all over town at music events, both legit and underground.  They always have a different song.  And people started noticing the strange patterns in the music.”

I nodded to myself since we had noticed that too.

He added, “I heard rumors that a group of sleuthing audiophiles discovered the Phantom Melodies inside of them.  I always wrote it off and not looked into it until now.”

I repeated, “Phantom Melodies?”

He was getting enthusiastic with his response as he sped up as he said, “Those odd off notes, syncopated lyrics, and the thumping, it's all a code.  When you decode it, there is a short message in each with a separate counterpoint melody.”

He went on, “Let's say a song is about beauty and life, and the promise of love.  The Phantom Melody tells of heartache and longing.”

Good lord.  I needed to know more, but that's all he had except for how to contact the group that discovered the Phantom Melodies.  I had to grin when he sarcastically gave me the name of the supposed group's defacto leader.  Edward Canter, from Canter Recording.  Bear and I were good friends.  The giant of a man did our sound bites and overflow recording when we overbooked our artists in our studio.

Bear had all kinds of information for us that told us absolutely nothing about the woman but everything his group had discovered about the music.  Minuette was a friggin' genius to seamlessly embed music within music and make it sound so beautiful and haunting.  He had a couple tracks for us.  It was just as amazing as what we had, and she always signed off with a whispered, “Minuette out.”

For weeks, we tracked her but were no closer a week ago than we were in the beginning.  She would sing at various piano bars or coffee houses in random locations.  The managers never knew any other name than Minuette, and had no other records for her because it was either open mic nights or they paid cash under the table.  We collected recordings from every venue, always one step behind.

We found Annette again placing thumb drives on cars in our own Walker's parking lot.  She again told us that a woman in Hyde Park paid her.  I didn't believe her that time, she knew something she wasn't telling us.  How could she be randomly approached by the same woman twice?

We started paying her to help us locate the woman.  She worked side by side with Fran on it.  Now finally, Fran and Annette have done what we couldn't.

I stuffed the note into my pocket and stepped into the lobby of the old brick structure.  There was an old freight elevator at the end of the hall, but Nessie and I headed up the stairs.  2H was at the far end of the hall, and my smile grew as I got closer to the door.  I could hear the cascading piano music through, rich, full and inviting.

This was it.  I took a J-Card from my pocket.  I really hoped the woman would be receptive and accept my invitation to sign with our label.  I wanted to share her genius with the world.  There was a piece of tape with “Buggered” across the doorbell.  I grinned at it then knocked.

When the door opened, my eyes went wide at the girl who was standing there, music coming from the grand piano I could see in the room behind her.  Then I started laughing at her sheepish grin as I asked, “Minuette I presume?”

When I got back to my apartment block, I was still shaken a bit at being caught putting thumb drives on the cars near the rave by that June lady.  I walked to the stairs, counting.  Thirteen?  I had done something wrong, I was a little keyed up so I must have been lengthening my strides.  I ran quickly back to the door and turned back and walked to the stairs.  Fourteen, that was better.

I ran up the stairs and then hurried down the hall to my place.  I grinned as I approached our door, I could hear Mindy composing her next piece on the piano.  Twenty-two, twenty-three, twenty-four.  Perfect, twenty-four steps.

I had to grin at the tape with “Buggered” that Mindy put across the doorbell to stop me from ringing it three times.  The sad part is that it works even though I know that it isn't true.  I retrieved my keys and knocked three times and then unlocked the door and stepped in.

Mind glanced up from her playing and shot me a teasing grin.  My heart fluttered.  She always teases me for knocking, but it is a door, I can't help it.  It was in an etiquette book I read once.  It is always polite to knock before entering. She's the only person in my life besides my parents who puts up with my eccentricities.

I placed my jacket carefully on its hook by the door, kicked off my shoes and made sure they were directly below it.  Her brow creased, paused in her playing, and checked the time on her mobile.

She said in her strained, raspy voice, “You're back early Annette, everything ok?”  She ran her fingers through her long, sandy brown hair.

I shrugged as I placed my bag on the sideboard, making sure it faced North.  “I got caught seeding the music.  My bloody heart was threatening to beat its way out of my chest.”

She looked worried as she pulled the fallboard down over the keys on that beautiful grand piano of hers.  It took up three quarters of our living room.  One day we hope to be able to afford a two bedroom flat so she can have a room dedicated to creating her works of auditory art.

I was sad anytime she covered the keys like that, it meant I had interrupted her creativity and I always feel bad about that.  I took the eight paces over to the kitchen as she asked, “What happened?”

I poured a cup of coffee, and placed it on a plate with the handle to the right.  Then a second the same way.  Two spoons of sugar in one, tapping the rim three times to get the droplets of coffee off of it, and laying it across the lip of the cup,  I then paced back over to her to sit on the piano bench, handing her her coffee.

If I didn't bring her coffee to her, she'd forget.  She always starts a pot before she sits down to play, but then gets lost in her music and never gets around to it.

She grinned at the saucer, she always teases me about it, but that is how to properly serve coffee, I had read about it in that etiquette book, and now I couldn't serve it any other way if I tried.  I'd go off my trolley if I did.  I know I sound like a bloody git, but that's me, Annette Lenore Corrick, nut case.  I get things in my head and I can't seem to ever get them back out.  I'm extremely compulsive that way, that's my damage.  I mean, everyone has little quirks don't they?

The kids in school took to calling me Pavlov because of it.  Which to me was right silly, I mean, it was his dogs, not Pavlov who was conditioned.  Then Mindy would read them the riot act.  Bringing the hammer down, she calls it.  She's been my protector all my life.  She may be small but so is a stick of dynamite, and look at the punch it packs.  I've been on the receiving end of her rants on many occasions when I am hard on myself, so I should know.

She stirred her coffee and then just put the spoon on the saucer without tapping it.  The sly smile on her face told me she was teasing me.  Oh dear lord, I just stared at the spoon as she sipped her drink.  I realized she was looking at me, and I blushed and explained.  “A woman saw me seeding and was asking questions about Minuette.”

She tilted her head a bit, prompting for more with her awesome hazel eyes.  “I told her our cover, about a woman in Hyde Park paying me to pass them out.”

I stood, setting down my cup and saucer and paced to the door, stopping half way, scolding myself and retreating back to the bench and taking normal strides to the door.  I fished out the card from my bag and returned to Mindy, eyeballing her spoon as I handed her the card.

She looked at both sides.  “It's just a number.”

I nodded. “She said her name was June.”  Then I added because it still bothered me.  “She had another lady with her who was haunted by something, I think she was hurting inside.  But that June woman seemed to calm her.”  I'm always veering off topic when things bother me.

Speaking of.  I growled and grabbed her spoon and licked it clean to her giggles.  I told her as I shook the spoon at her.  “You are just mean sometimes!”

She nodded in smiling agreement. “What are best mates for?”

I put the spoon back on her saucer and dared her to say more.  Then I went back on task.  “They are looking for Minuette, I don't know why.  I got out of there as fast as my legs could carry me.  I still have six drives to hand out.  It is going to drive me absolutely bonkers if I don't get them out there soon.”

My knee was bouncing, now I really really wanted to go back and do just that.  I froze when Mindy laid a hand on my leg to stop it.  Bloody hell, didn't the woman know what that did to me?  Like a git, I found myself falling for my best friend back in secondary.  I'll never ruin our friendship by telling her.

She was silent until I looked up at her, knowing she had my attention, then she said, “It's fine Nett, I can put the new track on them or you can hand them out with the new ones when you're out next.”

I fidgeted and took a sip of coffee then asked her, “Can I put one of these along with a new one... so that I don't feel out of sync?”

Did she look sad just then?  Wait, had she just said that?

She tilted her head, “Of course.”

I let out a breath and relaxed.

She stared hard at me until I relaxed more and nodded, then she smiled.  “I don't know how much longer we can do this before someone finds out.  You're going to have to come out as Minuette one day.”

I shook my head violently, I hated when she did that, saying I was Minuette.  I responded forcefully, “I am only your voice, Mind.”

Even as little girls, Mindy had a gift for music.  When she first sat down at her grandmother's grand piano with me and experimented on the keys, we were just in year five in primary school.  In a matter of minutes, she was playing music, mirroring some of the popular music of the time, some Amber LaLanie hits.  She could hear music and then just play it.

She would encourage me to sing as I dusted the piano, and the tables, and furniture, and picture frames... whatever, compulsive remember?  A clean house is a happy house, ok?  With the trouble she has with her vocal cords, she can't sing or talk for very long or they get strained and hurt her.  So I was always her voice.  I would sing for her.  To my surprise, I'm not terrible.

Her love of music just grew from there and she started composing her own music.  But it was never right to her.  Her style evolved and she began combining two melodies together, she was a genius to make them work together.  That seemed to soothe her, but she still said something was missing.

Then she added lyrics to her music and the embedded melodies, and again, I was her voice.  The complexity and subtle nuances of her music kept evolving and became these haunting tunes that I could sing forever for her.  She jokingly said that together we were one full musician.  So she smashed our names together and Minuette was born.

We wanted to share her music, but neither of us wants to be out in public.  So we started putting a couple tracks online in hidden files, but I wanted people to know the amazing creations that Mindy could weave.  Share the music and the emotions they evoke, with like-minded people.  So I started printing fliers with links to the music, to put on people's cars around karaoke bars and concerts.

It was amazing how many people were downloading her music after that.  It encouraged her to compose even more for me to sing for her.  I am always mesmerized by her playing, the cascade of notes soothed me because I can hear both melodies as I sing, as clear as if they were separate songs.  I knew her heart and what caused each and every one of the emotions that inspired her to write them.

People were starting to post on London music communities about the mysterious Minuette and they wanted to know who she was and wanted more tracks from her.  We had a good chuckle about that since we weren't about to come forward, but it did encourage us to continue on sharing her music covertly.

Then I read an article about how easy it is to track someone down on the Internet, even if you use anonymous file sharing websites.  I panicked and took down all of Mind's stuff.  If she didn't want people knowing it was her, then I'd move heaven and earth to protect her.

Chatter online just increased, with speculation as to the disappearance of all the tracks.  There were postulations ranging from it being just a promotional mystery a studio had been doing, to Minuette being killed in a car accident.

We had to admit to ourselves that we loved the feedback and the excitement of the intrigue.  We were sharing her music and people were enjoying it the way it was meant to be enjoyed.  So we wanted to figure out a way to continue doing it without the possibility of being traced online.

That was around the same time I was doing a temp stint, organizing and taking inventory at an electronics warehouse when I was seventeen.  I came across a case of old 8-megabyte thumb drives that was not on their inventory sheets, nor on their online store listings.  Not gigabyte, but megabyte, just how ancient was the case?

When I showed the warehouse manager, Jerry, he had snorted.  “Just throw it out.  Those were written off over a decade ago, I didn't know we even had any left.  We've done inventory every year and nobody ever found them.  How did you?”

I blushed. “Well I was in the attic crawlspace, and there were these and a case of four Sony WebTVs that I couldn't carry down the ladder.”

He snorted again. “WebTV's?  Bloody hell, those are from the nineteen nineties.  I know your uncle said you were a little obsessive compulsive, Annette, but you don't need to be crawling around every nook and cranny of the warehouse.”

I fidgeted, Uncle Skip said that?  I murmured, “I'm just being thorough.  The instruction sheet I was handed for taking inventory said to be thorough and not miss a thing.”

He paused a second and looked at me a little oddly for a moment, then his tone changed.  I hated when people did that.  Sure I'm a little odd, but it always sounded like the “poor little girl” tone to me.  “No, you did a wonderful job, I don't think anyone has organized our shelves, or database, or lunch room, or supply closet so well.”

Then he looked at the case of thumb drives and grinned. “Sheesh, 8 megabytes, couldn't put more than one or two mp3s on them, not even a whole album.  Just toss them.”

My internal antenna pinged when he said one or two tracks, and I kicked into idea-mode as I asked quietly, “May I have them?”

He looked at me then the box and cocked an eyebrow.  “Knock yourself out.”

I held the laptop out to him and he looked at the inventory control database, where I had created a complete entry for them.  Trek 8mb Flash Drive, 1,000 count.  Status, Inactive.  Location, Crawlspace.

He snorted and typed in his supervisor override and marked them as DIF, for destroyed in field for the official writeoff.  He assured me that he'd send someone up to get the WebTVs and throw them out when I was insistent about it.  I wanted all my data to be correct and he marked them as DIF when he marked the thumb drives that way.  It was a relief because I was mentally trying to figure out how to bring the case down myself when it weighed half of what I did, and it would kill me to leave them there.

I went home that night with my prize in tow and over to Mindy's.  I had my hand poised to knock three times before I stepped in, even though Mr. Stevens tells me just to walk in when the door had swung open to reveal a grinning Mr. Stevens. Gah!  I hated that.  I'd have to knock three times on something in Mindy's room or I'd explode.

That's when I revealed my evil plan of just putting tracks on the old thumb drives that weren't much use for anything else, they were such low capacity.  I'd hand those out instead of fliers.  This queued our evil laugh.  The rest is history.  Believe it or not, we handed out all one thousand in less than two years.  I gave out twenty of them at fifty venues.  We ran out about when we moved into our own flat here when we turned eighteen.

I save all year then buy old drives in bulk from Jerry after the holidays every year now for pennies.  We use little one gigabyte throwaways now.  Last year he offered to just keep me in supply if I help him do inventory after the holidays on a weekend each year instead. He says that nobody has ever done such a good job since I had done it.  I think I heard someone cough out “anal” in the background of the call.

Sorry, I digress, back on topic.

She looked at me and tilted her head, sussing out my thoughts before I knew them myself.  “Well, it isn't like we are doing anything illegal.  So there's no trouble to be had.  Let's not worry ourselves.”

Then she grinned in an overly cute manner, then sipped her coffee before saying, “It's your birthday Tuesday after next.”