Dark Rhapsody Read online

  “Like Bush in Iraq, ma’am. You think too much.”

  “I know a horse from a zebra, and I know when something is wrong.”

  Something was off. He heard the tension in her voice, became aware of other sounds in the background. “Where the devil are you?”

  Silence. Then, “At the hospital. But I—”

  Christ. He felt his heart constrict, gripped the phone tighter. “What’s happened, Maggie?”

  “It’s not me, Michael. It’s my stage manager, Jimmy. He was hurt in a mugging. But the doctors say he’s going to be fine. I was just leaving.”

  He heard her cover the phone, speak to someone, her voice muffled. Then, “Let me call you when I get home.”

  Not gonna happen, he thought. What was going on?

  “Listen to me, Maggie, don’t hang up, we need to talk. I need to say I’m sorry.”

  “Sorry? You don’t need to apologize for anything, Michael.”

  “I do. When you received your husband’s mail at the cabin, I told you to stop loving a ghost. I was way out of line, I had no right to say that. I know grief has no timetable. Time never obeys our commands, does it? I have no idea how long it will take. But I’ll wait for you, Maggie. I’ll wait.”

  He heard her deep, shuddering breath. “Can you come to New York tonight? I need to be with you. Want to be with you.”

  He felt as if he’d been punched. “Nothing I’d rather do, darlin’, but I’m going out of town for a few days.”

  “And you can’t tell me where?”

  “It’s work, Maggie, I have to go. It’s better if you don’t know where I am.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s the truth. No questions for once. Please.”

  “Have you met me, Colonel? That won’t fly.”

  “There are just things I can’t tell you. Don’t ask me to.”

  “And yet, here I am, asking.”

  He closed his eyes in frustration. “It’s for your safety.”

  “I know that what you do is dangerous, I’ve seen it. But it’s what you don’t talk about that scares me the most.”

  “Maybe I don’t use words, Maggie, but there’s a place I go when the darkness gets bad. I’ll take you there, if you want, when I get back.”

  “I want.”

  “Okay. I’ll be back in a few days. And then I’ll be on your doorstep in New York.” Kissing you.

  A soft breath. Was she imagining the kiss, too?

  “Maggie?”

  “I’m here.”

  “Just a few more days,” he said softly.

  “I can’t picture where my life will be tomorrow, let alone a few days from now.”

  He smiled. “If you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll end up somewhere else.”

  “Winston Churchill?”

  “Yogi Berra. Where are you now?”

  “Walking to the elevator.”

  He didn’t want to let her go. “Just talk to me, darlin’.”

  “Without you and Shiloh to distract me, I’m all about music now. But I did run three miles this morning.”

  “I tried running once, but I kept spilling my drink.”

  That won a laugh.

  “I like thinking of you playing the piano. Even if I don’t know what a rhapsody is.” He smiled, remembering the day in Paris when she had described a concerto to him in a way that made him want to kiss her.

  Her voice softened. “Oh, no you don’t, not again. A rhapsody is a one-movement work, with episodes, or variations. Free flowing in structure, with highly contrasted moods, colors, and tonality. There is a sense of improvisation, room to express great emotion.”

  “You’ve got the emotion locked, darlin’. But I still don’t get the upside-down part.”

  “Upside down … you’ve listened to the Rhapsody?” He could hear the pleased surprise in her voice.

  “It’s your music, Maggie. Of course, I listened. Read about it, too.”

  “Rachmaninoff composed Variation 18 by inverting Paganini’s original chords, his melody. That’s your ‘upside down.’”

  “Sounds crazy hard.”

  “It is. But—” He heard the shuddery intake of breath, as if she was about to take a leap into the unknown. “My mother played it in Carnegie Hall. So it seems full circle, somehow.”

  Her mother. “Lily, right? You never talk about her, Maggie. What I know about your family would fit on Shiloh’s collar.”

  Silence. One more deep, hurting breath. “It’s too painful, Michael. I was just thirteen when she died. I have no memory of that night. I don’t want to remember.”

  “Okay, darlin’, you’ll talk to me when you’re ready.” Her voice was fading in and out. “You’ll take care of yourself, promise me?”

  A low exhalation.

  “Maggie? You’ll do as I ask? For once?”

  “I’ll do it for you,” she whispered in his ear.

  “That was too easy. What’s going on?”

  Another hesitation. Too long. And then, “I’m at the elevator, Michael.”

  He shook his head, felt the pain shoot through his temples. “Just promise me you’ll be careful while I’m gone—just a few days. Then I’ll come home to you.”

  She took a breath, lowered her voice. He heard the elevator door ping in the background. “I can do as you ask, as long as I know …”

  “You know, Maggie.”

  “Just don’t get yourself shot, damn you.”

  She was gone.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  NEW YORK CITY

  JUST BEFORE MIDNIGHT, SUNDAY

  YOU KNOW.

  Too tense to sleep, Maggie laid back against the pillows and looked up at the ceiling. Did she know? Michael was smart, challenging. Older, battered, with rainy eyes you could fall into forever. He’d played the guitar for her, sung to her in a voice soft as a caress. Told her legends of the mountains. Loved his rowboat. Loved his dog. Loved a wife and young son once, a long time ago, before the son died and the wife left him.

  Since then, he was all about work. A loner.

  She’d known him for almost four months, but—how well did she know him, really?

  They lived hundreds of miles apart. Their work would keep them separated most of the time. And his work—God, would she ever get used to his world, so dangerous and filled with terror and violence?

  And yet.

  She pictured him at the cabin, sitting in front of the fire, the Golden’s head resting so trustingly in his lap. Her heart tripped in her chest. You know what’s important, she told herself. He’s a good man. Honest. A rescuer.

  You know …

  But something was wrong. She knew it, felt it deep in her bones. She’d heard it in his voice. He hadn’t told her the truth. Something big was weighing on him, something he couldn’t talk about.

  Okay, she hadn’t exactly been honest either. Maybe she should have told him about the roses, about her suspicions that Dane had sent them. But he’d have jumped on his white horse and come charging in, determined to save her. Wanting to protect, as always. No, she’d deal with her problems herself, give him the space to deal with his. Maybe it was just as well, since now she was in New York and he was God knows where.

  And she was handling things. The doors and windows were locked, the alarm set. At the hospital, she had told the detectives everything she knew—about the roses left at the theater and in her bedroom, and the security video stolen from Jimmy’s backpack. He had been hit from behind with a blunt weapon. No gun, thank God. The popping sound she’d heard had come from the motorbike. The important thing was that Jimmy was going to be fine. But the sickening feeling of fear, of violation, was still with her.

  Damn, why did everything have to be so complicated?

  And what was troubling Michael?

  She was the only woman he’d ever brought to his cabin in the mountains. Or so he’d told her. But she’d believed him.

  The way he’d made her feel, just by looking at her. Singing Jo
hn Legend’s song to her, against her skin. His breath warm against her mouth. Even tonight, on the phone, she felt as if she’d been kissed. And, God, the man could kiss.

  I just want to see him, she thought. I just want to know he’s okay.

  She touched her lips with her fingertips, then snapped off the light, slipped down under the thick cream quilt, closed her eyes.

  Opened them.

  You know.

  * * *

  The girl is curled on the edge of the low sofa, close to the piano.

  If she reaches out, she can touch the pedals, or her mother’s bare narrow foot. But she stays very still, listening to the music. The chords are haunting, dark with sorrow. She can hear her mother crying.

  Just beyond the piano, French doors swing open to reveal a hidden garden. Shallow stone steps lead down to a long pool filled with shimmering blue water. Night is coming, and dark shadows spill across the pool in wavering indigo stripes. The very air is blue. She cannot tell where the water ends and the night sky begins.

  Someone bangs on the door, shouting.

  “Hide!” her mother warns her. “Hide now!”

  She slips into the closet behind the piano, where her mother keeps her gowns. The closet is dark and warm and smells of Shalimar, her mother’s perfume. She presses back into a deep blue velvet gown and watches through a crack in the door.

  A man enters the room and strides toward the piano. Only his back is visible. She sees a white shirt, dark narrow jeans with frayed hems, black sneakers.

  A low murmur. There is something about the voice …

  Suddenly afraid, the girl shrinks back behind her mother’s gowns, her hands clasped tightly over her mouth so that she will not make a sound.

  The music stops without warning. The words are sharp now. Angry. She cannot understand what the man is saying.

  Her mother cries out. A crystal vase filled with deep red roses topples to the floor and shatters, scattering shards of glass and petals like drops of blood onto the carpet. The scent of the roses fills her head.

  Her mother runs out through the French doors. The man follows.

  The girl cannot see his face.

  All she can see is blue. The long blue pool beyond the open doors.

  Then fog, a deeper blue, swirling toward her like water. The pool disappears.

  The French doors slam shut.

  Maggie cried out. Opening her eyes, she looked wildly around the dim room. No chilling blue fog. Just the antique writing desk, yellow reading chair in the curve of the tall window, books, and framed photographs crowded on the round bedside table. The Brownstone bedroom on West 65th. No pool, no blood-red roses. No angry, faceless figure by the piano.

  A nightmare.

  But still the dream’s music, in that most haunting of minor chords, drifted in her head. What was it?

  Flowing and emotional, moody, full of dark colors. That sense of improvisation. A rhapsody. One she has only heard in her dreams.

  Maggie sat up, hugging her knees to her chest and staring into the darkness. This time she had not dreamed of Dane, or her husband, Johnny.

  The roses, the French doors, the chilling, opaque blue fog. And the dark, aching music. The nightmare from her childhood had returned.

  For the first time in many years, she was dreaming again of the night her mother drowned.

  PART II

  “There is a rapture on the lonely shore …

  By the deep sea, and music in its roar”.

  — Lord Byron

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  NEW YORK CITY

  MONDAY, OCTOBER 20

  THE SMALL GOLD plaque announced PH #1. Maggie stood in front of a wide, carved wooden door and pressed the polished bell. Chimes playing Bach echoed somewhere in the distance.

  She glanced at the gold watch circling her wrist like a bracelet. Almost noon. Lord, it had been a long night. The nightmare—spilled roses, haunting music, the terrifying blue. But this was the first time she’d dreamed of a pool beyond the French doors. What had happened beyond those closed doors?

  The pool, she was sure, was a real memory. Where was it? She knew only that she had seen that pool before. Somewhere. A very long time ago …

  She had not dreamed of her mother’s death in so long. Why now? The trigger had to have been the roses left at the concert hall, and then later on her pillow.

  Maggie sighed. There was just no sense of why. Jimmy had been hurt, someone had broken into her apartment. Been in her bedroom. It was no wonder she was unsettled and scared. No wonder the nightmares were back.

  Once more she glanced at the doorbell as she shifted the leather bag slung over her shoulder. What had she been thinking, to ask a classical music legend to give her a lesson? No one was answering. Thank God. Just turn around and leave before—

  The door swung open and Gisela Giulietta Donati smiled at her, banishing the darkness. “Welcome, my dear. I’m so sorry you had to wait.” The woman waved a beautiful lacquered cane in the air. “They say eighty-two is the new seventy-five, but you can’t prove it by me!” A glissade of laughter. “Please come in.”

  Tall and regal, today the aging pianist was dressed in a deep magenta dress with long flowing sleeves, a bright silken scarf at her throat. Five-carat amethysts, the color of her eyes, dangled from her ears. She reminded Maggie of the British actor Dame Maggie Smith, a woman “of a certain age,” dramatic and elegant.

  Maggie stepped into the hallway and Madame Donati took her hand. “Your mother was a beautiful woman. You look so much like her that it feels like yesterday.”

  Maggie squeezed the gnarled hand gently. “Thank you, that means more to me than I can say. I’m hoping you will tell me more about her. There’s so much I don’t remember, so much I missed. So much I still don’t know.”

  “I have wonderful memories of your mother, Maggie, and I will tell you all of them. Come.” Madame Donati drew her down an artfilled hallway toward a huge front room filled with light. The faint scent of Chanel drifted behind her. “We all lost Lily far too soon. When I think of all the glorious music she would have given us, given to the world …”

  She shook her head. “And then there’s that damned father of yours. Another great loss to the music world.” Her gaze was distant, remembering. “He was called ‘the bad boy of the classical world,’ did you know that? Parties, alcohol. He was devastatingly handsome, passionate, charismatic. He once stopped Mahler’s Second Symphony to turn and throw a handful of cough drops at a man in the first row. My God, you could hear a pin drop in the audience after that!”

  “Just like him.”

  “Well, of course, his first love was music. He was a decade younger than I, but that never stopped him from shouting at me. ‘Give it all you’ve got, Gigi darling,’ he would demand. ‘And then—crescendo!’”

  Maggie smiled in spite of herself. “He would come off the stage drenched in sweat. The stagehands had to help him remove his soaked tux. I remember …” Her voice faded, went silent.

  Gigi touched Maggie’s arm gently. “I know, child. Music was his drug. But he was crazy in love with your mother. And you. When he spoke of you, his voice changed.” She leaned closer. “That’s why his leaving never made any sense to me. To any of us. Did you ever find out why he left? Did you ever hear from him?”

  Maggie stiffened. “Other than the occasional postcard from somewhere in Europe, and a glimpse in a crowd, once, at a stage door? No.”

  “Knowing Finn as I did, I believe your father must have had a very good reason for leaving you, child.”

  “Can there ever be a good reason to abandon your young daughter?”

  “I wish you could have found your father, Maggie. I wish you could have talked to him before he died.”

  “I wish it, too, Madame Donati. More than you know.” They came to the long, light-filled living room. “Oh.” Maggie gasped. “How beautiful. It’s like discovering a secret wing in the Museum of Modern Art.”

  “MoMa is a
lovely compliment, thank you. My husband, Emmanuel, loved art—he collected these pieces over many years. And please, call me Gigi. Only my students call me Madame Donati.” She gestured to a long, low tuxedo sofa. “Shall we sit?”

  “In a moment, please.” Maggie did a slow pirouette, gazing around the room. The eighth-floor penthouse apartment, in a prewar building facing Fifth Avenue and Central Park, was like stepping back into the elegance of turn-of-the-century Paris. A velvet sofa in peacock blue on a huge Aubusson carpet, tall tasseled lamps, a low antique table set with an ornate silver tea service and small iced cakes. Every available wall space was covered by photographs and oil paintings in thick gilt-leafed frames—beautiful, glowing pieces that seemed alive. Beyond a wall of floor-to-ceiling windows, the cloudless sky was the color of lapis, the treetops shivered with gold and russet leaves.

  And there—in its place of honor in front of the windows—a gleaming Bösendorfer concert grand piano. Drawn as if by a huge magnet, she approached the Bösendorfer. “May I?”

  “Of course.”

  “Hello, beautiful,” whispered Maggie, touching the shining wood, depressing the Middle C. The tone was perfect, filling the room with the long true note.

  “My God, Gigi …”

  The older woman appeared at her shoulder. “I know what you are feeling. This is an Imperial, with ninety-seven keys rather than the usual eighty-eight. The spruce comes from the same Austrian forest that Stradivari chose for his violins.” Gigi’s slender, age-spotted hand caressed the keys. “My lady here has a crystalline clarity, a singing sustain, and the most majestic, dark rich sound. As you will see …”

  A crystal vase on a small table next to the piano held a dozen bright yellow roses, their scent spicy sweet in the morning air, stirring old memories. Maggie touched a velvet petal, trying to ignore the images of the scattered rose petals in her dream.

  “Your father always gave your mother roses,” said Gigi. “Scarlet roses. Do you remember? She would set them by her piano.”

  A Waterford vase, glowing crimson petals. Was that part of the dream real? Maggie turned to Gigi with a startled look. “I remember roses near a piano. My father gave them to her?”