Dark Rhapsody

by Helaine Mario

  “Oh, Simon, how those words must have hurt you.”

  “Oh, yeah. They cut. I’m a proud man, Hannah, but I live in a dark world. I carry around some pretty serious demons. Makes me wary of sharing my life, you know?”

  “I do know. Everybody hurts. Bad things happen to all of us. We get knocked down. But what matters is getting up again, in spite of the demons. What is it that you say? ‘We do what we gotta do.’”

  She shook her head. “After I lost Max, I was a mess for a very long time. Maybe if it all had happened slow, I could have seen it coming, prepared somehow. But it happened fast. In the beginning, I hated being alone, being locked in the constant, terrifying dark. I hated not being able to look at photos of my husband, my son. I hated my cane, but I hated falling more. I hated spilling my food or losing my keys or phone, such simple things. Lord, I missed running across the grass in the park, driving my car—my damned independence. I even hated Jac when she first came to me. Can you imagine?”

  “Nope, I guess she’s kind of grown on me.” He grinned, glancing into the back seat.

  “My heart was so angry, Simon. One night I smashed my cello into a thousand pieces, crawled into a cave, and refused to come out.” She shook her head with regret. “Maggie and I, we have that loss of music in common. But we both realized, finally, that it was our music that would save us. Now I thank God every day for my music. The cello has given me back my life.”

  “I’ve never heard anything as beautiful as you playing the Dvorak.”

  “I’m glad. Now I am able to focus on simple pleasures again—the smell of the woods after a rain, the feel of Jac’s smooth head beneath my fingers, the sound of the ocean, sunlight on my face. Memories of Max. Crosswords in braille.” She smiled. “The touch of a soft scarf around my neck. It took me a long time to come out of my cave, but here I am. I even bake cakes again.” She laughed faintly. “And sometimes, when I play my cello, I am able to believe that life is not a tragedy.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  OCEAN HOUSE

  LATE DAY, MONDAY, OCTOBER 27

  THE MAN STANDING in the shadowed doorway of the Music Room stepped toward Maggie.

  “Finn! Good Lord, you scared me half to death! What are you doing here?”

  “Good to see you, too, sprite.” The old, wry smile. He held out his hands to her. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to frighten you. But after you left Salzburg with so much unfinished between us … damn it, Maggie, you’re my daughter. I should have come home a long time ago. Let me make it right, after all these years.”

  “How did you know where to find me?”

  He frowned. “You were closing in on the answers when you left me in Europe. It was only a matter of time.” He waved a hand around the small cottage in the grand gesture of a Maestro. “Where else would you be?”

  He ran long fingers through his wild white hair. “God, this place is exactly the same. I half expect your mother to walk through that door.”

  Finn sat down on the piano bench, stretched his long, jeans-clad legs out in front of him with a regretful sigh, and stared at his boots. “We hung the Matisse right over there, on the wall.” He turned, gestured toward the wall by the piano, now faded and empty. “This can’t be easy for you, Maggie.”

  “No. But at least now I know I’m not crazy.” She took a deep breath. “My mother died here, didn’t she, Finn? Not in the ocean off Manhattan Beach, as the reports said. Please. I feel it. It’s not just a dream. Tell me the truth!”

  A long moment of silence. Then, “Yes. She died here. In the pool beyond those doors.”

  She’d known it. But now she turned away from the doors to sink into the sofa. Wrapping her mother’s flowered shawl around her, she breathed in the faint scent of Shalimar. Then, leaning toward her father, she said, “I don’t know what’s real and what isn’t. I need to know what really happened that night.”

  “Yes, Maggie. You do.” Finn Stewart gazed toward the curtained doors for a long time, as if seeing that night unroll in his head.

  “I told you your mother was very unhappy, that she wanted a divorce. She began to take you to Ocean House every weekend. It became her safe place, her escape. She spent hours here, playing, composing. No one knew about it, except for you, me, Zander, and his dad.” He gave a faint smile. “And my old friend Miguel. I just saw him, up at the house.”

  “He brought me here, to the cottage. I didn’t remember it on my own.”

  Her father nodded, not surprised. “I didn’t want you to remember it,” he said. He stopped by the old vinyl records, ran a hand over them, his intense eyes lost in memory. “That night, I showed up here, unexpectedly, at the cottage. Lily was sitting at the piano, playing that damned rhapsody she’d composed. She was wearing a long green silk robe, and she looked so beautiful … I’d been drinking. I’d brought her roses. But I was angry, so damned angry with her. Of course, I didn’t know you were hiding in the closet. If I had, everything would have ended so differently. Your mother would still be alive …” His eyes filled with blue rain. “But we fought. She flung the roses back at me, they crashed to the floor. She ran out of the room, into the garden, and I followed her.”

  Maggie could barely breathe, could not take her eyes off her father. “And then?”

  Her father held out his hand to her. “Come with me, Maggiegirl. Come with me through those doors. You’ve come this far. It’s time we both face the memories. It’s why I’ve come home.”

  * * *

  “I can’t.”

  Maggie stood facing the curtained French doors, her hand on the silver knob. “I can’t go out there, Finn.”

  “We can go back to the house, sprite. Or you can open the door. Let me be here for you.”

  You’ve waited so long. Just do it. She threw him a look, squared her shoulders, and opened the doors.

  The first thing she saw was the twisted face of the stone creature she remembered, guarding the hidden garden.

  Beyond it was the pool. The pool in her dreams.

  Empty now, the lap-pool was almost fifty feet long, narrow and rectangular in shape, lined by dark blue tiles. Huge scattered leaves were caught in the pool’s blue depths, swirling and spinning like water.

  Maggie stepped through the doors.

  It was the blue hour—L’Heure Bleu—that time of day when edges blurred and sounds muffled and the air shimmered with a deep blue light. Shallow stone steps led down to a small terrace. Surrounding the pool, just as she remembered, were the wild rose bushes, immense now, their dark green leaves and thorns tangled like Sleeping Beauty’s castle.

  Maggie stood very still. And the memories washed over her like waves from a storm-tossed ocean.

  The scent of roses fills her head.

  Voices, shouting.

  Afraid for her mother, she opens the French doors.

  Indigo shadows. The air is blue, chilling.

  Her mother, spinning in a long, narrow pool.

  Blue light swirling like fog over her naked body.

  Somewhere music is playing, the melody haunting and dark with sorrow.

  Her mother begins to spiral down into the depths, to disappear …

  No!

  The blurred outline of a man’s face appears, pale and angry, half hidden behind the roses.

  A face without features, but one she knows …

  Maggie became aware of her father, standing just behind her. She spun around.

  “It was you, Finn! You were there, when my mother died. I saw your face! The dream was real, it was a real memory! Oh, God—”

  She clutched his shirt, looked up into his eyes, her grief accusing, inconsolable. “Tell me!” she cried.

  Her father gazed down at her, eyes full of sorrow, regret, and terrible pain.

  “Yes, Maggie. God help me, I was there, at the pool, the night when your mother died.”

  The terrible words hung in the air between them.

  Her father stood silently, looking at her, unable to speak.


  “Damn you, Finn!” Unable to face the pain, Maggie turned and ran from the pool, through the French doors, and out into the night.

  * * *

  The water in the shower was hot, stinging. Maggie lifted her face to the stream of water, letting it wash away the tears. But the tears wouldn’t stop, mixing with the shower water to run down her face.

  A sound behind her, the shower door opening. Knowing, unafraid, she turned.

  Still in his shirt and jeans, Michael stepped into the shower and wrapped her in his arms. “Darlin’,” he said against her hair, holding her close.

  “Oh, Michael,” she whispered. “It was my father …”

  “Just breathe, Maggie. We’ll take this on together.”

  “Hold me, Michael. Just hold me.”

  He wiped the tears from her eyes, pushed the heavy wet hair back from her face. “My pleasure, ma’am.”

  He held her for a long time, as the water poured over them in a hurling waterfall of heat and steam. Slowly, slowly, in the safety of his arms, the tears stopped.

  She lifted her head and, without speaking, began to undo the buttons on his shirt. Loosened his belt. He smiled down into her eyes. His jeans fell to the tiles; he kicked them out of the shower. Very slowly, he put his hands around her back, and pulled her against him. The touch of his hands scorched her skin.

  Her pulse quickened.

  His hair brushing her face. Lips almost touching, just a breath of air, asking.

  She slid her arms around his neck, drew his head down to hers.

  He kissed her deeply. She felt the unfurling begin, murmured words into his mouth. “Love me,” she whispered. “I want—I need—something good and true and beautiful.”

  “You are good and true and beautiful,” he told her, pulling her closer to kiss the hollow of her neck.

  He lifted her against him and she wrapped her legs around his waist. His profile was etched dark against the shadowed half-light, his silver eyes burning into hers.

  The hot water cascaded over them, and she did not know where her body ended and his began. She closed her eyes and let herself fall with him.

  Finally, when the storm was over, he folded her in a huge soft towel, lifted her against his chest, and carried her to the big bed.

  “I’ve never kissed a woman like that in all my life,” he whispered against her neck.

  They were the last words she heard, just before the darkness took her.

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  CARMARGUE, FRANCE

  TUESDAY, OCTOBER 28

  “WELL, TALK ABOUT another world!”

  Simon Sugarman eased the rented Audi to a stop and gazed with astonishment through the windshield. He had left Hannah at the airport in Marseilles over an hour earlier and texted her flight plan to Beckett. Then he drove west to the northern edge of France’s Carmargue region, just south of Arles—an isolated, surreal land of gypsies, marshes and ponds, wild white horses, bulls and flamingoes.

  He stopped for directions to the chapel in the medieval, walled town of Aigues-Mortes—Dead Water, some name for a town. No one could—or would—help him. Then he remembered that TJ mentioned a windmill, and he stopped by the local gendarmes. A quick flash of his badge, and now here he was, driving down a twisting, rutted dirt path through a heavily wooded forest, so tangled and dense that he needed his headlamps to guide him through the shadows.

  The forest opened up just as the road dead-ended at a crumbling stone wall. Sugarman eased from the car and looked across the low wall at the remains of an old windmill, its huge wheel wedged deep in a high, rushing stream. A medieval gristmill? And there, beyond the water, the centuries-old chapel ruin, set on a gentle rise in a field of lavender.

  La Chapelle du Santo Rosario. The Chapel of the Holy Rosary. Bingo.

  He fingered the necklace with the coin and key, tucked safely in his pocket. The unusual cross on the coin—a Carmargue cross—and the name of the chapel had led him to this peaceful, hidden glade. Thank you, TJ.

  He took a deep breath, suddenly wishing Hannah was by his side. He pictured her smiling at him, the silken scarf glowing against her skin. First gift he’d given a woman in—well, forever. In another life, maybe …

  But here he was, alone again, in the middle of a French forest staring at a centuries-old pile of rocks. But—admit it—the ruin was very beautiful, an old abbey of ancient stones, its roofless, vaulting arches and empty rose window frames now only a dark tracery against the bright blue sky.

  Climbing over the wall, he hiked closer. Over the decades, nature had reclaimed what was hers, the 11th-century abbey now overgrown with dense foliage. The remnants of a lantern tower, its silver stones in a broken pile on the grass. Flowers spiked from niches in the walls, green vines climbed the stones and carpeted the area where the nave had once been. A cracked, lichen-covered tomb stood to one side, and there—the remains of a cloister, where an ancient, gnarled olive tree now bloomed.

  His gaze searched the ruin as he moved with care among the stones. A crumbled door sat against rock. The remains of a transept. He stopped, gazing down at the toppled Carmargue cross with its three emblems of the region—the anchor, the cross, and the heart. He thought of TJ’s coin. Right on the money, kid. Pun most definitely intended.

  Now if only he could find—there! Beyond a centuries-old sarcophagus. Bushes and vines, crowded together. Hiding an entrance? He made his way across the rock-littered grass, pulled hard at the tangle of dried leaves. Yes. Stone steps, disappearing into the earth. The entrance to the crypt?

  Be there, baby.

  Sugarman pulled a flashlight from his jacket and descended into the gloom.

  Fifteen steps below ground, the air musty with age and stone dust, he came to a door. A solid door, with a modern lock. Built within the last years, not centuries. And he knew without a doubt that someone had built a room here, beyond the door. He reached into his pocket and removed the chain TJ had given him. The gold coin caught the light from his lantern and flung bright sparks against the cold black walls, like diamonds in a mine.

  The silver key was on the chain, next to the coin. He inserted the key into the lock and twisted. With a smooth, quiet click, the door opened.

  The air inside was comfortable, climate controlled. Sugarman raised his flashlight and swept the interior of the room, the cone of light piercing the shadows like a sword. He judged the cubed room to be approximately twelve by twelve feet, with clean, gray-painted walls and a tiled floor. And on the floor—

  Canvases.

  Dozens of canvases, of every size, stacked and leaning face-in against the walls.

  There had to be forty or fifty pieces.

  He stepped inside, reached for the nearest canvas, and tilted it toward his light so that he could see the subject. Color! The colors struck him first, scarlet and cerulean blue, peacock and ochre, and deepest emerald, brilliant and glowing.

  He bent closer. Five dancers—ballerinas—backstage. The movement. The luminosity of the pastels. The intimacy. Had to be—Degas?

  Where had he read that the artist used to sit on the backstage stairs, trying to capture the very personal moments of the dancers. Christ. Degas.

  He turned the next canvas, and the next, to the light. Okay, he was no expert, but he’d bet his mama’s secret fried chicken recipe that he was looking at original works by Monet, Caravaggio, Pissarro, Goya …

  Felix Hoffman’s collection, stolen by Victor Orsini. Some pieces hidden here for over thirty years.

  He’d found them.

  Sugarman gazed at another painting, and then another, filled with an unfamiliar exultation. A feeling that he was experiencing a moment few men would ever know.

  Finally, he blew out his breath, released his shoulders, turned to the door. Too late, he sensed the sudden dark presence, glimpsed the raised arm arcing toward him in the shadows.

  A crushing pain.

  Blackness.

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  OCEAN HOUSE<
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  TUESDAY MORNING, OCTOBER 28

  THE EARLY LIGHT was soft, pink, filtering through the high glass roof of the Ocean House conservatory. Somewhere, the slow music of water dripping in a fountain. The scent in the air was heavy, redolent with the lush tropical scents of lilies and jasmine, plumeria and gardenia.

  Unable to think clearly, Maggie had fled from the bedroom, needing to run—somewhere, anywhere—away from the devastating image of the nightmare. Morning stars glimmering on the conservatory glass had drawn her across the wide lawns. Michael and the Golden had followed her, and then Michael had wrapped her shoulders in his jacket and gone to find her father. Now, more than ever, she needed answers. Needed Finn.

  Clasping Michael’s jacket tightly against her body, comforted by his scent, Maggie wandered down an aisle of bright, impossibly colored orchids, stopping to touch one, then another, with a gentle finger. Her eyes dropped to Shiloh, staying so close to her side, and her fingers twined in the comforting ruff of his neck. “I remember being here with my mother,” she said in a soft voice, “so long ago, gathering bouquets of blooms to make fairy crowns.”

  “Sprite.”

  She turned. Her father stood very still, just down the aisle, looking at her. The new light touched his face with gold. “Your colonel said you needed me.” He stepped closer, his eyes questioning.

  “I know, Finn. I know what happened.”

  “Come here, Maggie.” He took her hand, drew her to a small stone bench surrounded by clematis vines. “Talk to me. What do you think you know?”

  “I need the rest of the truth, Finn. The whole truth, for once!” She locked her eyes on his.