Without seeming to move at all, the detective was now between them. Erin struck at him with her fists. “Get away from me!”
She might as well have beat against a stone wall. The detective suggested calmly, “Perhaps we should be going, miss.”
“Yes.”
Erin reached for Kirsten, but was blocked by the detective. “That’s right! Run while you still can!”
Kirsten edged down the side wall, unwilling to turn her back on such wrath. “Run back to that stinking hole of a town! You think I can’t reach you there? You think you’re safe?”
Erin did not seek to move around the detective so much as to use him as a prop. She flayed at the air between them, then took the court order and shredded it. “You pitiful little creature, you’re nothing. You’ve spent your life running from anything that might even resemble pleasure! You’re a worm in human form, and you’re soon to be squashed. I’ll see to that personally!”
The detective kept his arms outstretched and gently nudged Erin back toward the door. She jerked her head toward the ceiling, spilled her hair back over her shoulders, then spun about and marched into her suite. The door slammed.
The detective hefted his briefcase and offered, “I’d say that went rather well, wouldn’t you?”
CHAPTER
———
24
THE SCHWANENSPIEGEL was a place out of time. Flanked by a trio of five-lane city thoroughfares in the heart of Düsseldorf rested an eighteenth-century marvel. Beyond the walking paths ringing the twin lakes and their thick veil of summertime trees, the city flew at its furious pace. German drivers drilled their Mercedes and Porsches and Audis toward the Kö, while to the south rose the mammoth Rhein Knee Bridge and the even more awesome satellite tower with its revolving restaurant atop the hundred-and-forty-meter-high needle. But here it was possible to turn one’s back on the rumbling traffic and the city’s pressures, and almost believe in the myth of historic tranquillity. The old Landtag, or state parliament, anchored the park’s far end, flanked by Venetian bridges and monitored by hundreds of swans. It was the perfect place for a diva to live. Even on the days when Reiner detested Erin Brandt the most, he could not fault her choice of residence.
Lining the lakes were twenty-one precise little houses, whose inhabitants liked to pretend they were utterly untouched by any contemporary offal. This one street was the single segment of all central Düsseldorf which had been completely unscathed by the British bombers. The houses were fabulously expensive. Erin’s house was one of only five that had never been chopped into apartments or office warrens. She probably had no idea how much it cost, or what it was worth today. Reiner knew because he had bought and paid for it. Erin Brandt had enormous difficulty paying for her own coffee. She took the act of bringing out her credit card as an affront. Just as Erin didn’t drive, even though she owned a Mercedes SL 500 which Reiner was required to keep pristine. Erin Brandt felt she deserved a palace on the Schwanenspiegel. And whatever she wanted, she received. That was one of the unshakable axioms of Erin Brandt’s world.
Which made the current state of affairs all the more baffling.
Even before Reiner fitted his key in the antique oak front door with its carvings of vines and figs, even before he rang the bell, he heard. As he entered, the sound of an infant’s mewling filled the marble-tiled foyer. The baby’s whimperings were everywhere. The stabbing little sounds endangered what was already going to be a massively difficult day.
Reiner shut the door overloud and called out, “Erin?”
“In here, darling.”
He slid open the double doors and entered her parlor with its two-hundred-and-fifty-thousand-dollar antique Steinway. “Where is Goscha?”
Erin lifted her hand from stroking the young man’s neck and waved toward the floor overhead. Goscha was her Polish housekeeper, and had been with Erin for as long as Reiner had known her, which that morning seemed like several lifetimes and counting. “Why are you so late?”
“Your investigators were delayed with their reports.”
“Do they have something?”
Reiner merely waited.
Erin uncoiled from the Parisian fainting couch which occupied the central position beneath the front bay windows. She drew the young man up with a caress to his cheek. The lad was quite handsome in a raw and unfinished manner. He was also utterly bewitched by Erin. “You do understand, don’t you, darling. I’d love to spend the entire day in your delicious company, but all the pressures I face just now.”
She endured his lingering kisses of farewell. To Reiner’s trained eye, the young man was not long for this parlor. Reiner never bothered to even ask their names unless they lasted more than a week. Which, since Erin’s return from the dreaded Swampville, had happened with less and less frequency. Erin had always shown a voracious appetite toward virtually every pleasure. But since her return to Düsseldorf, her cravings had been alarming.
The situation in London was a perfect case in point.
“Well?”
Reiner seated himself on the polished piano bench. “She has decided to follow you.”
“Kirsten?” Erin swiveled around to face the bay windows. The lakes shimmered in uncommonly strong July sunshine. Even the swans looked smug this morning. “She is here?”
“She is on her way.” Reiner pointed out to where the city loomed beyond the lakes’ fringes. “Your minions reported that she has booked herself into that ghastly hotel by the Kö.”
As if to punctuate his news, the baby began squalling in earnest. He demanded, “What is the matter with that child?”
Erin responded as she normally did, which was to pretend the baby did not exist. “Does she know where I am?”
“One can only assume so.”
“What about my trip to New York? Does she know about that too?”
“Erin, you cannot possibly be serious about traveling to America. Not now. Not with all—”
“Answer my question!”
Her screech was so loud it momentarily silenced even the child. Then the baby began screaming back. Erin pounced up and marched to the doors, sliding them back so hard they hammered the side walls and accordioned back toward her. “Goscha!”
The Polish woman was not even Reiner’s age, yet appeared closer in years to his mother. In many respects she reminded Reiner of his wife, a silent specter who was far more comfortable with life’s back rooms. Goscha padded down the stairs, her silver-blond hair bundled into the tight knot she always wore, her limp sweater and housedress some color that always seemed scarcely able to pull itself from drabbest gray. Like her voice. “Madame?”
“That screaming must stop!”
“I fear she has a cold.”
“Then call the doctor! Take her to the hospital! Whip her until she understands! Do whatever you must! But make her stop!”
Goscha’s one unfailing habit was absolute obedience. Her means of avoiding life’s confrontations was to anticipate Erin’s every need and serve them in advance. It was rare even to hear her speak, much less speak back. But this morning, Reiner was drawn to his feet by the impossible happening. The woman showed such fury it drew her features back into a slit-eyed snarl. Even Erin was forced to retreat toward the study’s safety.
Goscha lashed out, “Celeste is a baby. A beautiful child.”
Erin drew the doors shut against Goscha’s glare. She then declared, “Something must be done.”
Reiner studied her face, and realized the impossible was happening. Erin Brandt was afraid. Which only strengthened his plea. “You can’t go to New York. You heard the attorney’s warning. There is every likelihood that you will be ordered to appear in the Raleigh court. If they learn that you are traveling to America, they can issue an arrest warrant.”
She did not even seem to hear. She stood frozen to the spot, seeing nothing.
Reiner found himself thinking back to their earliest days together. He had been managing a few other sopranos, good voices and fa
ir actresses, but none of whom would ever make the world’s top ranks. That evening Erin had been singing a lesser role in Turandot in Vienna, where the oldest of his ladies had the lead. To have any role at Erin’s age at the Vienna house was a coup, and he went as much to see what the fuss was about as to attend his own star’s performance.
Before the performance he found himself listening to the conversation around him. Which was something he never did. But tonight every voice he heard was about Erin Brandt. They were not here to see a new production by perhaps the finest opera company in the world. They were here to see her.
Reiner Klatz found himself completely spellbound. Erin sang the role of Liù, a slave girl from another country, and should have merely polished the star’s luster. Erin’s voice was exactly what Reiner would have predicted—underdeveloped and somewhat thin, the standard weaknesses of every young soprano. Yet every time Erin entered the stage, the audience waited breathlessly for her next note. In the last act, the diva broke with stage instructions and marched angrily to the stage’s far corner. Still everyone’s eyes remained focused upon the real star. And when Liù died and Erin was carried offstage, the night dimmed somewhat and the performance turned pallid.
The next day Reiner made an appointment to meet this astonishing young woman. He was thrilled to discover that her allure in person was even stronger than upon the stage. She entranced him such that, when this too young singer with almost no record asked him to manage her career, Reiner Klatz had felt honored. Only his wife remained untouched by Erin Brandt’s spell. His wife was not a person to have many opinions about anything, which was one of the reasons why she made such an excellent wardrobe mistress. She did exactly what was expected of her, and never revealed an opinion contrary to the artistic director’s. But she despised Erin Brandt. The worst argument Reiner could recall ever having with his wife had been over his decision to take Erin on.
Reiner now watched as Erin crossed to the small locked corner cabinet. This in itself was astonishing. The first time he had seen the cabinet had been the day he had arrived with her contract. She had been residing in a tiny walk-up flat on the outskirts of Cologne. Reiner had spotted a photograph within the cabinet and asked about the stolid, formal, utterly Germanic family staring coldly at the camera. Erin had responded with cold viciousness, ordering him never to ask about her past. Why she even kept this locked cabinet, he did not know. But it had followed her from that cramped apartment to Koblenz where she had her first standing contract, then Brussels, then Munich, and finally here. Always locked, never mentioned. Yet here she was, extracting a key from a mock Fabergé egg and opening the cabinet.
“Erin?”
She plucked a diary of some kind from the top shelf. The volume was so worn she had to hold the pages in place. She leafed through a series of letters bundled in the front. She found what she was looking for, unfolded the yellowed page, and reached for the phone. When someone answered, Erin switched to French and said, “I wish to speak to Sister Agnes, please.”
Whatever it was she heard, it was enough for Erin to spill the diary in a heap of tattered pages at her feet. “You can’t be serious.” Then, “No, no, forgive me, that was not what I meant at all. It’s just, well the news is so unexpected.”
Erin hesitated a moment, then decided, “No, please do not tell the Mother Superior anything. I want this to be a surprise for her as well.”
She hung up the phone, and resumed her blind stare out the front bay windows.
“Erin, you must permit me to call New York and cancel—”
She turned to him and revealed a smile that would only have confirmed his wife’s worst fears. “Go and bring the car around,” she ordered. “Then come back for the baby.”
From the safety of his Mercedes Reiner witnessed a remarkable departure scene, something that truly belonged upon the stage. The Polish housekeeper was transformed into a dreadful maniac by the realization that Erin was going off with her own baby. Goscha followed Erin down the front stairs of their jewel-box home, wailing and shrieking so loud the baby had no choice but to scream in reflected fear. Erin marched with determined fury toward the car while the housekeeper played the diva herself, gripping the wrought-iron railing and clawing the air and shrieking her grief to a cloud-flecked sky.
The journey south held to a travesty of calm. By the time they passed Neuss on Düsseldorf’s southern border, the baby had cried itself to sleep. Erin fed Reiner instructions in terse little bites. But underneath, the diva raged as Reiner had seldom seen.
Reiner felt his heart wrenched by the baby’s occasional whimpers. His own father had remained a closet Nazi all his life, his mother a hapless Rheinlander hausfrau who relied on her husband for all strength and every opinion. One of the things Reiner liked most about his own wife was her fervent desire never to have children. Yet there was no mistaking the gentle pull this child exerted. Only Erin remained obstinately aloof.
South of Bonn, Erin instructed him to exit off the A61 and head west toward nowhere. Reiner cast her a quick glance and said, “Are you sure?”
Erin said nothing. She had aged twenty years that morning, and carried her silence with the determined grimness of one being fitted for a future shroud.
“I have lived in the Rheinland-Palatinate all my life,” Reiner said, steering his way up into the forest and the sky. “And I have successfully managed to avoid ever entering the Eifel.”
“Then you were very lucky indeed.”
“You lived here?”
“Nine measureless, miserable years.”
Between the Mosel and Ahr rivers, stretching from Koblenz westward to the four-country juncture of Luxembourg, Germany, Holland, and Belgium, lay the Eifel. Time-softened hills rose and fell in forested waves, drawing the visitor into a hoary land which mocked Germany’s high-impact industrial might. From Aachen southward the region was little visited, save for morel hunters and local hikers. Even the road signs, such as they were, were inscribed in the old cursive script. But Erin’s directions remained bitterly constant.
“Why did your parents choose to live here?”
“Did I say my family? Did I mention them at all?”
“Erin, softly please, the baby.”
“My mother never came here. Not one time.” She was silent so long Reiner assumed it was all he would learn of her past. Which was already more than she had ever said before. “My mother was a true Prussian blueblood. My father was Belgian. They divorced before I was born. I never met him. He was rich, an industrialist. Textiles, I believe she once said. When he left, she kept the money, which was all she wanted from him. She hated me.”
“I doubt very much—”
“She loathed the sight of me.” Erin used both hands to sweep her hair back, tilting her head in the gesture he had come to know so well, dismissing everything about the world she did not find to her liking. “Summers we moved to Antibes. Every September when my mother returned to Germany I was sent off to a horrible school in the middle of a forest. The driver brought me down. He never spoke. I hated him. I hated every one of them, my mother and all her little playmates. But I hated the convent most of all.”
A few kilometers past the Belgian border, they entered a valley with a lake at either end. The middle portion was well-tended pasture, with horses gamboling in the knee-high grass. Wildflowers shimmered in an earthbound rainbow ballet under the light summer breeze. The air was fresh and full of country smells. The road was rough and poorly kept. The tires scrambled around a tight corner and entered through a high stone wall. Beyond, the tree-lined drive seemed endless. Erin’s hands were gripped fiercely in her lap as they halted before a second stone wall. Somewhere in the distance a church bell rang a doleful welcome or dismissal, he could not tell which.
“A convent,” Reiner murmured. “So the rumors are true.”
Erin was already climbing from the car. “Come with me,” she said curtly. “Bring the child.”
They crossed a curved stone bridge ov
er a stillwater moat. Birdsong sounded loud and raucous. The wind was a mysterious undertone that only accented the quiet.
Reiner felt pressured from all sides by the city’s absence. “Horrid,” he declared. “Utterly hideous.”
Erin remained upon the stone bridge, staring eastward to where the high wall bowed inward to permit a tiny garden. Watched over by a pair of moat-fed willows were three flower-bedecked graves. “You can’t imagine.”
“Why are we here, Erin?”
She marched past him to where a bellpull dangled. She wrenched it down, once, twice, three times, pulling so hard the cord almost touched the earth. From within the bell sounded strident.
A narrow portal set within the massive front doors opened to reveal an elderly nun in formal black habit. “Yes?”
“We are here to see the Mother Superior.”
“Do you have an appointment?”
“The Mother Superior,” Erin declared, “will see us.”
Something in her tone did not sit well with the nun. “Your name?”
“Erin Brandt.”
“One moment.”
But before the nun could shut the door, Erin was already pushing through. “We will wait inside.”
“But you are not—”
“Will you tell the Mother Superior we are here? Or shall I?”
Within the compound, the silence was only more intense. The nuns Reiner could see moved without disturbing the serenity, as though they had already been swallowed and lost. He wanted to shout, rage, scream, burn. Anything to add a bit of comforting chaos.
By the time the sister returned, Reiner’s skin felt attacked by a million roaches, all crawling and scrambling with a shared urge to flee. The nun gave him a look that suggested she knew exactly what he was thinking, but all she said was, “This way.”
“I know precisely,” Erin announced, striding rapidly away from the nun, “where the Mother Superior’s offices are located.”
Winner Take All Page 18