“Yeah, yeah. Tick tock, tick tock. Now take a look at these photographs, Mike.”
* * *
“Paris Fucking France.”
Beckett scowled at the Golden, still hunched far under his kitchen table, as the last sounds of the motorboat faded away across the black lake. “And why the devil did I let him leave here without you?”
A low growl.
He looked down at his cane, frowned. “And why in hell would Sugar want me?”
He stood, searched the fridge until he found the leftover brisket, began to cut it into chunks. “You like beef, Dog?” He set the dish down, locking eyes with the snarling Golden, and backed away. “I don’t want you here anymore than you want me,” he muttered. “Eat when you’re hungry, or don’t. Up to you.”
He poured a full glass of Jack Daniel’s, lifted the file of photographs Sugarman had left behind, and limped out to the deck. No sign of Sugar’s boat. The night was dark, starless. Cold.
One photograph was of a woman, and he scowled down at the formal, magazine-like image. Dressed in a long, strapless black dress, she sat on a spot-lit piano bench, her back against the keyboard of the concert grand piano behind her, as if she had just finished playing and turned to face the audience. One graceful bare arm rested lightly on the glowing wood as she gazed into the distance. Wild cloud of dark hair, pensive. Eyes like bright water. Some looker, all right. Photo must have been taken just before her husband was killed. Sugar had said that was her last concert.
What the devil was Sugar thinking?
This was no operation for a goddamned amateur. Sofia Orsini’s murderer had been brutal.
No more deaths on my watch.
He tucked the photograph back into the file with an angry oath. Pulling off the new gold-rimmed glasses, he rubbed his eyes wearily. A sound behind him, and he turned. The dog was sitting in the open doorway, staring past him into the dark sky.
“Guess you need a walk,” he said. “At least you’re not a damned cat!”
A sudden boom, and Beckett winced as the sky lit once more with fireworks.
The dog yelped, hunched down, then jerked back into the safety of the cabin.
Beckett watched the dog cower once more beneath the table. “Maybe we’re two of a kind, you and I.”
He turned once more to gaze out over the black water. Paris, here I come. Ready or not. I just have to figure out what to do with a nutcase dog. And find a way to ditch the O’Shea woman.
Count on it.
He shook his head, trying to concentrate on Sugarman’s plan.
But when he closed his eyes, all he could see was the face of a beautiful woman with hair the color of night, sitting alone at a grand piano.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
MARTHA’S VINEYARD. EVENING, JULY 4
You can do this.
Maggie stood in the gathering darkness staring up at the deck of the Green Eyed Lass. This section of the boatyard was quiet at the end of the day. The storm had blown off toward the east, and she was alone with the gentle sound of lapping water and the groans and creaks of swaying masts. The boats in this corner of the shed, including Johnny’s, were in dry dock, suspended well above the dark water. Above the water. It was the only reason she was able to board. That’s why they call it dry dock, you idiot.
Maggie very deliberately grasped the ladder and pulled herself up and over the railing onto the Lass’ deck. The moment her feet touched the deck, terror uncoiled like a snake in her stomach. She froze, suddenly dizzy, and closed her eyes. Just don’t look down at the water.
She was deathly afraid of the water. It was the reason she’d never been able to sail with Johnny. “And I was right to be terrified,” she whispered into the shadows. “The sea took you from me.”
Anger filled her, fueled her, gave her the strength to fight off the vertigo. After a moment she took a cautious breath. Okay, then. Gradually she became aware of the sounds around her—the gentle lap of water against pilings, the soft creak of wood beneath her, the distant cries of the gulls. She forced herself toward the hatch and clambered awkwardly down the metal stairs into the cabin.
Her fingers found the light switch and the cabin sprang to life. She’d forgotten how beautiful the small galley area was, graced by shining brass and teak and Johnny’s old maps of New England’s waters. It smelled of her husband and the sea. It felt intimate, shadowed with secrets.
The only other time she’d boarded the Lass was a month after Johnny’s death. The sale contract had been drawn up, but Johnny had called the Green Eyed Lass his “other” great love so often that, at the last minute, she couldn’t bear to part with it. So on that day she’d come to the sailboat simply to feel close to her husband. She’d touched his papers, wrapped herself in his clothes, stored his treasures and belongings in an old leather suitcase. Then she’d curled on the narrow bed to grieve.
Her chin came up. Tonight was not about grieving, it was about finding answers. Where had she put it? She searched the small space, finally found the old suitcase stowed under the bed. Still here, she thought, half surprised.
Again she thought of The Piano Cat and her apartment—broken into just days after her husband’s death. And now the cottage? But no one could have known about Johnny’s boat.
Maggie lifted the lid of the old suitcase. Beneath his soft flannel shirts, just as she remembered, was the small brown package from the French policeman that she’d hidden away. It contained the few personal items that had been found in Johnny’s hotel room safe in southern France after the accident. That day she barely had been able to glance at the contents.
Now, very gently, she pulled the stiff paper apart. His passport, currency in euros, a pen, house keys, and a toothbrush spilled into her lap. The gold watch she’d given him on their fifth anniversary—she slipped it over her wrist gently. Tears threatened and her teeth clamped down hard on her lower lip as she lifted his leather calendar book, engraved with his initials, thick with his handwritten notes. She laid her fingers on the pages, his handwriting as familiar as a touch.
There had to be something here, in the items he had left behind. Something that would send her in the right direction.
She opened her husband’s passport. His bright eyes, so electric and blue, caught at her. Trust you, Johnny O’Shea, to be handsome even in a passport photo.
She forced her gaze to the stamped pages. Italy. Of course. In October, concerned that there was still no word of her godson, Maggie had asked her husband to follow his journalist’s instincts and conduct his own investigation into Sofia’s death and Tommy Orsini’s disappearance. Early on a Sunday morning, he had touched her cheek, kissed her lips. I love you. I’ll call you.
And then he was gone.
The passport pages told the story. He’d started in Rome, where he had gone to the abandoned Orsini villa and questioned the shopkeepers and neighbors on the Via Borghese. From there, he had flown to the Breton coast of France, calling her in the middle of the night from the tiny fog-bound convent where Fee and her son had taken refuge.
And after that?
She lifted her husband’s thick, 8 x 10 calendar book, scanned the pages for October. He’d always used his own peculiar shorthand code. Letters, numbers, abbreviations meant only for him, to protect his sources and investigations.
In Paris, he’d written “VD” followed by a local telephone number. And then, for some inexplicable reason, he had flown south and taken a room near the old port of Hyères on the Mediterranean Sea east of Marseilles.
On his first day in Hyères, Johnny had rented a small sailboat in the port. The next day, October 19th, he had drowned in a sudden storm, in the deep aquamarine waters some ten miles off the coast.
Why? Why had he gone to Hyères? Why had he gone sailing that October day? You found out something that day, didn’t you, Johnny? Something—or someone—that made you rent that damned sailboat…
She lifted the hotel bill from Hyères and scanned the numbers. Charges fo
r the room, whiskey, computer link, breakfast room service, telephone. There, her own phone number in Boston, the last time he’d called her.
“Pick up, Maggie. Pick up the bloody phone. It’s me! I’ve got something. Where the devil are you, Lass? I need to tell you—” The message had ended abruptly.
Maggie’s finger ran down the charges, stopped. Johnny had called a local number from his hotel in Hyères. It was close to midnight now in France. She would call both the Paris and Hyères numbers in the morning.
As she lifted his calendar once more, a folded paper fell from the book. On it Johnny had scribbled, Morgan Library. National Library of Israel. Las Palmas Cathedral. G. Black. Vienna.
Vienna. The word jumped out at her. City of music, the city where Zachary Law may have mailed a CD of a concerto to his father. She checked the passport quickly. Johnny had gone to Austria twice last summer, in July and again in late August. And then to Naples in September. Next to Naples, the letters BF were circled.
Maggie stared at her husband’s notes, overwhelmed by too much information with too little meaning.
Two libraries, in New York and Israel. A cathedral in—where? Spain? Two cities, Vienna and Naples. G. Black—a person’s name? And the letters BF. What did they have in common? What did they mean? And how were they connected to his search for Zach Law and her godson?
Her fingers touched the letters of his very last entry, on October 19th.
CFSMC, what am I missing?
And then, his final five words, in capital letters.
GO BACK TO THE BEGINNING.
Maggie sat back on her heels, profoundly unsettled. What beginning, what had he missed?
I never fully knew you, Johnny, did I?
With a sigh, she tucked the list of libraries, cities, phone numbers, and codes back into the calendar book, then slipped the leather calendar into her purse. She would look at everything again, very carefully, later tonight.
She looked down at Johnny’s watch, now dangling like a huge gold bracelet from her wrist, and rubbed it thoughtfully. She knew the answer to why her husband had gone to Hyères. He’d found a lead to her godson.
A lead that had led to his death.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
MARTHA’S VINEYARD. EVENING, JULY 4
When Maggie returned to the cottage it was after eight o’clock. The lights were off.
She hesitated on the porch, peering in the window. What’s the matter with you? It was just the storm, knocking out the electricity as it always did.
But the storm had already passed when she’d left for the boat.
She fumbled with the key, entered the kitchen. Stood still and listened. Wind in the firs, and the familiar settling sounds of an old house. She moved cautiously toward the great room. The last embers in the fireplace still glowed, casting wavering shadows across the skylight.
In the splintered light, she saw Sofia’s letters scattered on the table, blue ribbon undone. Had she left them that way?
She found candles and matches on the mantel. Standing in the streaming shadows, she lit the candle.
And the memory struck.
She stood in the streaming shadows and lit the candle...
A sudden flare, and gold flickered across the water in the ancient stone baptismal font. Fee, tense and pale, holding her infant son in her arms.
“You will become a child of light, a child of God,” intoned the old priest with his palm on the infant’s head. He made the sign of the cross and poured holy oil into the water. The scent of incense was strong in the musty air.
They stood in a circle in a small chapel in the centuries-old church of Santa Cecilia in Trastevere—Maggie, the Roman priest in his simple vestments, Sofia radiant as a Madonna with her tiny son in her arms. And behind her, Victor Orsini, his deep-set black eyes locked on his child’s face.
Off to the left, two white-habited Benedictine nuns peered through an iron grate. The only guests, thought Maggie, are those who are uninvited…
Maggie’s gaze returned to the man Sofia had married. The day before, wandering in the villa’s rose garden, she had overheard a frightening argument between Victor and his wife. He had not known that Sofia had invited Maggie to the christening and demanded that Maggie leave at once. His rage was brutal, cruel.
“…from the Greek word for immerse,” said the priest, pulling Maggie back to the church.
Maggie held out her hands and Fee stepped forward, easing her son into Maggie’s arms. The antique white lace baptismal garment draped the child like an angel’s wings. Maggie looked down into her godson’s eyes. Dark, so like his mother’s.
“Hello, you,” she whispered. “We’re going to be great friends, you and I.” The baby stared solemnly back at her.
She felt Orsini’s black eyes on her and looked up. Very deliberately, he smiled. And she knew without doubt that he had known she’d been in the garden that morning—known she’d heard his vicious threats.
The priest lifted a small silver cup, dipped it into the water, and sprinkled it over the baby’s dark curls. “I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,” he said in Italian. “I christen you Thomas James.”
Thomas blinked in surprise as the cool water ran down his face, but he did not cry. As Maggie brushed his cheek with her fingertips, his tiny hand closed tightly around her fingers, and a chord struck deep within her.
“Are you ready, Magdalena O’Shea, to assist in raising this child?” asked the old priest. “Are you ready to take responsibility for guarding his life?”
Orsini’s eyes burned into hers, with something so dark behind the fire, and for a brief instant she hesitated, inexplicably afraid. Then her chin came up.
“I am,” she had promised.
Maggie opened her eyes, blinking in the half-light of the cottage.
The memory had been so real. She gazed down at her outstretched arms, almost expecting to find an infant draped in white lace, nestled close to her heart.
Leave him, Fee. Victor is dangerous. You’ve got to leave him. Now!
“Oh, Fee,” she whispered. “I begged you to leave him that night. I should never have left you and Tommy alone with him.”
We are responsible for the lives we save...
She was still for a moment, then reached for her cell phone.
Deep down, she’d known the answer all along. In a small stone chapel in Rome, holding her tiny godson close, she’d promised to guard his life. It was time to bring him home.
She’d given her word.
* * *
Sugarman’s phone buzzed to life. “Speak to me, pal.”
He listened. And then, “Okay, so airport security found an abandoned car, good for them. Why are you bothering me with a local—where’d they find it? D fucking C? What did you just say? Goddamn it to hell! Get there. Now!”
He closed his eyes. The GPS in the stolen Corolla held Magdalena O’Shea’s address in Boston.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
BOSTON. EVENING, JULY 4
Luze Jacobs switched on the Victorian lamp in The Piano Cat and looked around the large front room. Tonight the shop smelled spicy and sweet.
The silk of her dress rustled as she moved toward the music cabinets, competing with the jangle of her silver bracelets. She’d better hurry. Her husband would be back with the champagne in a minute. But it was a good idea to pick up the Berlioz scores tonight. Now she could stay up late with her husband to celebrate their anniversary. She grinned at her thoughts and smoothed the purple silk over her hip.
A sound.
She stopped, lifted her head. No, all quiet. Just the settling sounds of the old brownstone.
Wait.
Standing still in the darkness, Luze tilted her head, listening once more. Not quiet, after all. A faint sound in the back room. That old sink again? Dammit, she’d thought that was fixed. The last thing Maggie needed when she returned was a flooded office. Luze walked quickly down the shadowed, famili
ar hallway.
A shaft of moonlight fell through a high window, lighting a path along the carpet.
She was smiling at the pattern of light when the stranger stepped from the small rear office.
“Ill met by moonlight, proud Titania,” he said softly.
She froze, saw him raise his hand.
A flash of silver. She felt the scream catch in her throat.
A crushing blow to her chest.
Darkness.
* * *
One hour later, at Boston’s Logan Airport, a tall, fair-haired man with narrow, wolf-like features sat in the first-class lounge, staring down at the flickering screen of his cell phone. The digital image he’d requested just moments earlier began to take shape. He watched, fascinated, as the woman appeared before him. Arched brows framing huge shining eyes, high cheekbones in a heart-shaped face. The mass of dark hair.
“She comes more near the earth than she was wont,” he said, “And makes men mad.”
Othello’s words. After all this time, he still found himself slipping back into Shakespeare’s characters. But why not? For almost one year he had been Othello. Six nights and one matinee, every week. Such an intimate relationship forms when one plays a character for so long, he reminded himself. No wonder the lines between the role and reality blur.
The loudspeaker called his flight. He had to get home. To prepare.
The pianist was coming to Paris. It was time to warn Victor. He punched a number into his cell phone, listened to the distant ring as he gazed down once more at the photograph.
He flexed his hands. He’d gone to The Piano Cat music shop for information, nothing more. But it had been very late, and dark, and the woman working inside had taken him by surprise. No matter. He’d found out what he needed to know. The brochures, travel documents, and hotel reservations had been on her desk.
Magdalena O’Shea was coming to Paris.
Why?
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
SOMEWHERE IN FRANCE. DAWN, JULY 5
The Lost Concerto Page 10