Dark Rhapsody

by Helaine Mario

  Maggie raised an eyebrow. “You seem to know quite a bit about this secret society, Zander.”

  “It’s public record, Maggie. Several books have been written about Skull and Bones.”

  “Does the membership include musicians, by any chance? Or Supreme Court Justices?”

  Her godfather just smiled at her and shook his head. He drank his wine, then said, “It bothers me that you didn’t have a chance to see your father before he died. Did you know he was in Vienna?”

  She stared at him. “No. Why would I? He chose to leave, to leave me behind, a lifetime ago. I’ve been done with his explanations, his justifications, for a long time.” Maggie shook her head, moved away from Zander to stand by the piano. Closing her eyes, she trailed her fingers slowly over the smooth keys and pictured her father.

  The last time she had seen Finn Stewart, just a month before her husband died, she had glimpsed his face in the crowd at the stage door in Milan, late at night after an exhausting performance. Tall and reed thin, he’d been standing on the edge of the well-wishers, gripping a huge bouquet of roses. Red. He’d been in shadows, but she would have known that face anywhere. The shock of long white hair, the brows like a wild bird’s wings above the bright-blue eyes.

  She had stopped to sign a program for a fan. When she’d looked up, he was gone. She’d found the roses later, left on the steps near the stage door. There had been no note. And then, just days later, the blindsiding obituary in the newspaper. Had he been saying good-bye?

  She shook her head to dispel the stab of pain.

  “Something’s wrong,” said Zander. “I see it in your eyes. What’s going on, Maggie?”

  She turned away as the images flew into her head like arpeggios flying across piano keys. Hundreds of blood-red roses, a shadowed face in an empty, darkened theater. A threat whispered in a silky voice on a rain-swept French beach.

  I will come for you.

  But Dane was long gone. He had to be.

  Suddenly apprehensive, she set her wineglass on a table and moved to the window. Rain thrummed and clattered, running in silver ribbons down the windowpane.

  “Maggie?” Zander came to stand behind her. Caught her eyes in the rain-streaked glass. “I’m your godfather. If something is wrong, I want to help you.”

  “Someone is stalking me. Sending me roses. Hundreds of roses. I found one on my pillow …”

  “Good God. That settles it. You are coming to stay with me at Ocean House. You’ll be safe there. And there is a Steinway grand piano, Maggie. Please. Come to Ocean House.”

  * * *

  Her godfather had been gone for an hour.

  Unable to sleep, Maggie stood at the window gazing at her ghostly reflection wavering in the rain-swept glass. A sudden lash of rain blurred the image. Watching her face vanish into the watery darkness, she thought of Finn Stewart, disappearing into the night. All the years of unasked questions. All the years of hurt. Of loss.

  Why did he disappear so long ago, when she’d needed him so much? Was Gigi right? Had he had a good reason for leaving? And what had her father known about her mother’s death?

  Too late now. And yet. One very deep, secret part of her wished that she had been able to see him one more time.

  What was the matter with her? She turned away, saw the week’s mail, once again forwarded from Boston, on the desk. Anything to distract her thoughts. She began to shift through the pile. Please, no more mail for her husband. Okay, safe. A BSO magazine, sheet music for sale, two bills for the rental apartment. Electric was so high here in Manhattan and—a postcard fell from the pages of the magazine.

  She froze.

  Postmarked just days earlier from Salzburg, Austria, it was a colorful photograph of several narrow shops lining a cobbled, twisting alley in the old town. At the end of the street, a clock tower glowed against a bright blue sky. Ornate, medieval iron guild signs hung above the shops. One sign, high over a blue doorway, said, “Musik. Instrumente.” A music shop.

  She turned the card over. On the back, just two words, written in her father’s spidery hand. Ghost Light.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  THE BLUE RIDGE MOUNTAINS

  TUESDAY NIGHT

  “COME ON, SHILOH. You’re acting like a turkey on Thanksgiving morning. I’ll only be gone for a couple of days. Three at the most. And you like the Traymoors. They’re good people, good neighbors, you’ll be safe with them.”

  In the mountain cabin kitchen, Beckett squatted down, peering under the old farm table. The Golden, hunched as far back as possible under the wide oak table, looked mournfully up at him, then turned his face to the wall.

  “You’re killing me, big guy. Okay, so I know I promised we would stay together. We’re a team, you and me, I get that. It’s what I want, too. And when I get back, we have that appointment with Dr. Gallagher for your prosthesis fitting.”

  Shiloh ignored him.

  “I know, one thing at a time. Right now I’ve got to get to Rome. I’ve got to find Dane. The two of us, we’ve got to take care of Maggie, don’t we?”

  He bent lower, reaching a reassuring hand under the table. “Come on, boy. This is a tough one, a needle-in-the-haystack trip. Sugar and I don’t even know where Dane is going to be. I can’t be worrying about you, too. We’re too old for separation anxiety. I need you here, to hold down the fort. Just in case.”

  His computer dinged with an alert signal. Beckett raised his head in surprise, whacking the table hard. “Christ! Damn!” With a last look at the dog, he rose slowly to his feet. “We’re not finished. And just so you know, Jill Traymoor bought those crunchy biscuits you like.”

  The words on his MacBook screen flickered in the shadows. Hours earlier he’d punched in key words for a very specific search. Rome, the dates for the end of the week, public events scheduled. The art dealer Angelo Farnese and his gallery. Nothing unexpected, nothing raising any alarms. He had added Maggie’s name. Again nothing, thank Christ.

  Think outside the box. Okay.

  Sugar was looking at the art scene in Rome. So he would begin from the other direction. Start with a Tuscan village in the middle of nowhere. With a suddenly dead under-the-radar plastic surgeon named Guiseppe Falconi.

  Once more he typed key words into his Mac.

  “Ka-ching!” he murmured. Then, to Shiloh, “You’re looking at the master, big guy. Seems Doc Farnese had a daughter named Beatrice. One more thread to follow.”

  Shiloh glared at him from under the table.

  Reaching for his duffel bag, Beckett said, “Okay, we’ll share a steak before I leave. But then it’s time for me to find Dane. Time to jump into the deep end of the crazy pool.”

  Shiloh snorted with skepticism.

  * * *

  Standing at the brownstone window, Maggie’s eyes followed the raindrops that slid in wavering ribbons down the glass. Shining in the lamplight like silver tears. Her own tears threatened and she took a shuddering breath.

  Only her father knew he’d told her the story of the ghost light, so long ago.

  What am I going to do?

  You are going to Vienna, she told herself. You are going to help Gigi find the true owner of Dark Rhapsody. And maybe, just maybe, if you can find the courage, while you are there, you will try to find your father.

  Because he is still alive …

  She shook her head, squared her shoulders, and went into the bedroom. The midnight-blue suitcase was in the back of the closet where she’d left it. Lifting it to the bed, she unzipped the case and searched the side pockets. There—the small yellow satin jewelry case that traveled with her wherever she went, the bag that had belonged to her mother.

  Maggie sat down on the bed, opened the case, and tipped the contents into her lap. An old black-and-white photo of Zander and her parents, standing, arms linked, in front of the Yale School of Music’s Sprague Hall. Her slight mother, Lily, in the middle, a cloud of dark hair framing her beautiful face, smiling up at Maggie’s father. Fi
nn, serious and long-haired even then, looking down into Lily’s eyes. And Zander, gazing at Finn over the crown of her mother’s head.

  Maggie touched the photo to her heart, then lifted the second item in her lap—a delicate necklace with a golden treble clef charm. She held it up, watched it sway like a pendulum in the lamplight. She remembered the necklace sparkling against her mother’s throat, spinning tiny points of light into the shadows. It was one of the special memories she had of her mother.

  She always told herself that someday, if she ever had the answers she sought, she would wear the necklace. But not yet.

  Was her father alive in Austria? Had he faked his death? Why? Because he was in trouble?

  With a shake of her head, Maggie slipped the items back into her mother’s jewelry case and zipped it closed. Too much to think about tonight.

  A faint ping from her cell phone. Oh, no, did I miss a message?

  Maggie found the phone in the living room, just where she’d left it on the sofa.

  Damn. Michael had called her. Damn, damn, damn!

  She clicked on the phone and held it to her ear. Beckett’s voice, low and easy, as if he were lying close to her in the cabin’s big bed.

  I just wanted to hear your voice, darlin’. I’ll be out of touch for a few days. Don’t worry about me, or Shiloh. He’ll be with the Traymoors down the road—they spoil him rotten. And I’ll be coming back to you as soon as I can.

  A breath. Then …

  Sunday. Me and Shiloh, we’ll come to New York and find our way to Carnegie Hall. Five p.m. Sunday, at the stage door, okay? Like that movie where Cary Grant promises to meet Deborah Kerr at the top of the Empire State Building? I’ll be there, Maggie. Carnegie’s stage door. Wait for me. I will always show up for you.

  A click. Dial tone.

  “Oh, Michael,” Maggie whispered, thinking of An Affair to Remember. “Deborah Kerr gets hit by a bus and never shows up to meet him.”

  I will always show up for you. She closed her eyes and tried to breathe, because she knew in her bones what Michael was planning.

  He was going after Dane. Because of her. She had made him vulnerable.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  A VILLAGE IN TUSCANY

  THE SUN WAS setting beyond the village wall, turning the Tuscan hills to ochre and deep gold, when Beatrice climbed the steep attic steps. She could hear the CD whirring on the ancient player, filling the small room with the beckoning chords of Mozart.

  She stopped in the doorway, watching the patient as he stood alone at the arched window. For hours every day, he played classical music while staring out over the hills. She wondered what he was remembering. She had asked. But he never answered.

  Today, unable to bear the waiting, she had hurried home, still dressed in her nursing uniform. Now she pulled the starched white cap from her head and shook her hair free as he turned to look at her.

  White bandages completely swathed his head after his last surgery, the only openings for nostrils, mouth, and eyes. A strange golden iris, like a cat’s eye, stared back at her. The other was still purple and swollen shut.

  “Mon Ange. Bella Beatrice.”

  He had always called her that, in private, after the first time. And she had called him by the name he’d chosen for himself. Dante.

  She smiled shyly at him as she moved to the table, stepping over a faint, reddish stain on the stone floor. “Did you spill your wine?” she asked him.

  He shook his head. Sharp scissors glinted in his hand.

  She hesitated for an instant, unsure, then reached for the scissors.

  He sat down in the straight-backed chair. As she bent toward him, she saw the empty CD case on the table next to the player. “Piano concertos today,” she murmured. Curious, she lifted the small case with the pianist’s photograph on the cover. The eyes of a beautiful, dark-haired woman seated at a grand piano stared back at her. “She plays so beautifully. Who is she?”

  The room was suddenly quiet as he pressed the eject button on the player. Very gently, he took the case from her hand and slipped the piano CD inside. “Someone I know,” he said softly. “A woman with hair the color of night. She—” He stopped abruptly.

  She took a step back, inexplicably frightened by the blaze of hatred that flamed in his eye. “What is it, Dante? What is wrong?”

  “Betrayal,” he murmured. “It is the worst sin of all. Your poet Dante understood. He composed a whole circle of hell for those who betray us. That was his vengeance. As for my own—” He turned away, and his voice shifted. “This moment calls for Schubert, I think.”

  The patient dropped a CD of the Unfinished Symphony into the machine. He smiled, and turned up the volume. The symphony began, very loud in the tiny room. He held out his hand to her.

  “Beautiful Beatrice,” he murmured. “In thy breast are the stars of thy fate.”

  “And yours,” she whispered. Very slowly, she began to remove the bandages.

  When the last bandage fell to the floor, he raised his head. Dusky light fell in bands through the narrow window to stripe his face with light and shadow.

  She caught her breath and willed herself not to step back. Raising her hand, she touched his scarred cheek gently. “Father could have done so much more, if only he had had more time …”

  The patient turned away from her to stare into the cracked mirror above the washbasin. “I am unfinished,” he said softly. “Like this symphony.”

  She clasped his shoulder. “No, Dante.”

  “Do not trouble yourself, Bella. I was a handsome man once, but not a happy one. This face will do.”

  He smiled strangely and led her out onto a small balcony into the dying light.

  She looked out over the umber valley, leaning back against him with a shuddering sigh as his fingers began to unbutton the white uniform. His right palm had been badly burned, and she could feel the ridged scars like sandpaper against her skin.

  The chords of the symphony filled her head and she closed her eyes, giving herself over to the sensations in her body.

  He tangled his hands in the black silk of her hair, pulling her head back, as the final notes of the symphony crashed around them.

  His hands moved to her neck. Powerful fingers closed in a lover’s caress around her pulsing skin.

  “Mon ange,” he whispered. “This is the last time we will be together. It is time for me to leave you.” His thumb brushed her pulse.

  “You’re leaving? But—why?”

  “I have unfinished business. I must go to Rome.”

  “No, no. You cannot leave me. Not now.” She shook her head back and forth.

  “Someone has taken something from me. I need to get it back. I need justice. I need vengeance.” Very slowly, almost imperceptibly, his fingers began to tighten.

  Suddenly wary, she tried to pull away from him. And at that moment saw the familiar onyx rosary beads, broken from their chain, scattered across the tiles.

  God’s black diamonds.

  Fear gripped her. Her eyes flew to his face. “What have you done?”

  He smiled. “I broke my rosary beads, Bella. A simple accident.”

  She twisted, trying to run, but his hands were locked on her neck. Tightening.

  She clawed at his hands, forcing the words from her lips. “You cannot hurt me,” she gasped. “I am with child.”

  His fingers froze on her throat as the symphony ended.

  PART III

  “When the cello enters …”

  — Mstislav Rostropovich

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  ROME

  THURSDAY

  THE MAN WANDERED past the outdoor cafés that lined the centuries-old piazza, his wooden cane tapping on the cobblestones. He looked as if he wanted nothing more than a quiet aperitif in the soft Roman twilight. Only his eyes gave him away—they were alert and watchful, constantly moving. Cold as river stones.

  He paused by the splashing Fountain of the Four Rivers to rest and admire
Bernini’s bronze statues, glowing in the dusk. The huge Piazza Navona, built on the remains of Domitian’s Circus, was bathed in light and shadows. He felt, suddenly, that if he closed his eyes he would hear the echo of horses’ hooves coming from the narrow alleys. What had Rome been like when chariots spun across the ancient stones and women filled tall urns with water from the fountains?

  A black Vespa roared close, forcing him back to the present.

  Colonel Michael Beckett watched the dark-eyed Roman girl thread her way through a flock of shrieking pigeons as he turned his attention back to the bustling square.

  It all seemed so normal.

  He shifted the strap of the black leather satchel slung over his left shoulder, easing the weight, as his eyes scanned the spired church and surrounding balconied buildings that glimmered red in the last of the light. Just past the church, the glass windows of La Galleria dalla Chiesa—the Gallery by the Church—reflected the busy square like a Roman painting.

  At this time of day, the long rectangular piazza was filled with camera-laden tourists and mothers with baby strollers, street performers, and hunched old women with their small dogs. A pair of solemn, black-robed priests, their heads bowed, were deep in conversation.

  One by one, his eyes found the members of his team.

  Sugar stood in an arched doorway, Chicago Cubs cap pulled low over dark eyes, his cigarette a blazing arc in the shadows. And the others. A tired Midwesterner and his souvenir-laden wife; the Italian cleric holding out a hand to the fortune-teller in her bright robes; the movie-star-handsome waiter in his tight black vest serving the crowded café tables at Tre Scalini’s; the young woman on the roaring Vespa. All alert, waiting for his signal. Waiting for the first sign of danger.

  Beckett checked his watch, then turned slowly, searching the cafés, apartments, and shops. Bakery, gelato shop, leather boutique. His eyes were drawn once more to his destination—the art gallery in the heart of the piazza. Green door, large plate glass window showcasing a single religious painting. La Galleria dalla Chiesa.