The Lost Concerto

by Helaine Mario

  * * *

  From a seat high to the left of the stage, Dane watched Maggie move down the steep aisle. Tonight her hair, lit by the full moon, shone with dark fire. “Gideon’s woman,” he said softly, tasting the words.

  Dane fingered the engraved invitation to the reception. It would be so easy to watch her, see whom she met, follow her to her hotel. And if she wanted to find Gideon, he would surely help her. You will hear from your sweet prince tomorrow, fair Juliet.

  He looked up at the star-strewn night sky. “By yonder blessed moon I swear.”

  * * *

  “Not bad,” murmured Beckett.

  The candlelit Romanesque cloister of the cathedral of St. Sauveur, adjacent to the Archbishop’s Palace, was an arched, roofed passage around an open inner courtyard. In his opinion, the perfect setting for the gala reception.

  Beckett leaned against one of the columns that supported the low roof and watched the flow of faces carefully. No light-eyed man with long, fair hair. But too many darkly bearded faces that could have been Zachary Law.

  He tried to imagine twelfth-century monks wandering in the peaceful garden, lost in reflection. Tonight, the cloister’s atmosphere held a far more worldly beauty.

  Flickering candles were scattered among the monks’ carefully tended roses, while waiters in tuxedos poured champagne for elegant women in long gowns. In one cloistered corner, beneath a sculpture of St. Peter, a woman sang of love and heartbreak. Couples swayed slowly on a circle of smooth stones under the stars. The high parasol pines were lit by fireflies.

  The reception was By-Invitation-Only for festival benefactors, musicians, and their guests. What am I doing in a place like this? Beckett tugged at the too-tight black silk bow tie. A job, he reminded himself—and that “job” was right over there across the courtyard, having her hand kissed by no less than the conductor himself. Then she walked across the courtyard toward him.

  Her gown shimmered like shadows, leaving her throat and shoulders bare. A fringed shawl, knotted loosely around her hips, swayed as she walked. Then she was standing in front of him. In spite of her high-heeled sandals, he towered over her. Under the bright moon, her hair was full of light. Tonight, it was swept up from her neck, caught high with tortoiseshell combs.

  “Am I disturbing you, Colonel?” she asked.

  “You disturb me very much, Mrs. O’Shea.”

  Her eyes held his as his fingers pulled at the offending bow tie until the knot gave. Once again he scanned the crowd as he unbuttoned the neck of the starched shirt.

  “Do you ever get the feelin’, ma’am, that the whole world’s a tuxedo and you’re a pair of brown shoes?”

  She smiled up at him.

  There was something in her expression, and he decided that he must look quite dashing with the open bow tie hanging down the snowy shirt front.

  “Would you like a drink?”

  “I’d kill for one.”

  “I think there’s an easier way.” He signaled a waiter with a silver tray of wine bottles and crystal glasses balanced on his shoulder.

  * * *

  Gideon stood alone, out of sight beyond the shifting swirl of dancers, watching the guests. The air was heavy with the scent of jasmine, and the last chords of the concerto were still singing in his blood. It was a night made for music. He damn well wasn’t ready to leave.

  A woman’s low, throaty laugh cascaded to his left, beyond the roses. His head came up. It was a sound he still heard sometimes, in his dreams. A long-forgotten memory stirred in his chest.

  He swung around.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

  AIX-EN-PROVENCE. EVENING, JULY 8

  Beckett’s hands closed around Maggie’s waist and he lifted her to sit on the cloister’s low stone wall.

  He saw her hands trembling as she smoothed the silky dress over her knees. Her eyes were smoky and flickering, filled with green shadows. Slow down, he warned himself, intensely aware of the feeling of her body, hard as a diamond, under his fingers.

  He let his hands fall and they were both silent, listening to the night song of the cicadas.

  “Van Gogh was convinced the cicadas spoke ancient Greek,” she told him.

  “Van Gogh was mad,” he reminded her. Don’t look into those eyes. He turned away to look out over the crowd. “Have you seen anyone who could be Zach Law?”

  “No. No one. Zach loved that concerto, he chose it for his New York debut. He would have been here tonight, if…” Her voice trailed off uncertainly.

  He felt her exhaustion. “There are more performances tomorrow. You need some rest.”

  “When are you going to stop treating me as if I’m made of glass, Colonel?”

  When the haunted look is gone from your eyes. “We’ll stay, then.”

  She looked up at the stars and said, “Do you ever wish that life could stand still, just for a moment?”

  “I suppose I have known, once or twice, that quick feeling of fear that comes when you are so damned happy that you cannot conceive of wanting anything more but this moment to last.”

  He felt her studying him.

  “Tell me more about those blue mountains of yours,” she said.

  * * *

  The sound of the woman’s voice echoed in his head. Where was she?

  Gideon’s eyes searched the crowded cloister. There, by the roses, a tantalizing flash of night-black hair.

  He moved across the stones.

  A hand came down hard on his shoulder, stopping him. A curse in his ear, low and angry. “Nique ta mère, what are you doing here?”

  Gideon turned his head and looked into Dane’s light eyes.

  “Take your hands off me.”

  Just for a moment, Dane tightened his grip. Then his hands fell away. “You shouldn’t be here.”

  “Because you stole my ticket, you bastard? Don’t you ever take anything of mine again.”

  Dane looked at him with an unreadable expression before turning away. “You shouldn’t be here because Celeste needs you at Le Refuge. She called my cell when she couldn’t reach you.”

  Gideon’s chest tightened and he clutched Dane’s arm, his fingers crushing. “What’s wrong? Is it TJ?”

  “A fever, a nightmare, nothing more. She coddles the boy, you both do.” A shrug of powerful shoulders. “But I could go to them if you want to stay—”

  “Like hell you will.” Gideon was already moving toward the exit. He could feel Dane’s eyes on his back. With one last disappointed glance toward the cloister, he ran through the high stone arch toward his car.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

  AIX-EN-PROVENCE. EVENING, JULY 8

  Dane watched Gideon disappear through the arched exit. He waited several minutes, while, across the garden, Maggie O’Shea gazed up at an older, broad-shouldered man. When he was satisfied that Gideon was gone, he dropped the mirrored glasses over his eyes and moved deeper into the shadows of the cloister wall, watching them from behind a stone pillar.

  A handsome young musician stopped to speak with her, then moved on. Dane kept his eyes on Maggie. He wanted to get closer, listen to her voice. But it was too dangerous. He studied the older man with the loosened bow tie. A hard face, eyes that watched the crowd too carefully. Eyes that seemed to burn when they looked down at Magdalena O’Shea.

  Watching them, Dane remembered hiding in Magdalena’s hotel room in Paris. The ringing telephone, her voice arranging to meet someone she called “Colonel.”

  This is her colonel, thought Dane.

  The man bent and whispered. Dane saw the sudden smile light her face.

  He pressed back against the cold rough stone and watched them together.

  * * *

  Beckett watched a tall fair-haired man move slowly among the guests. Then the man swept an older woman onto the dance floor. Not the man he was looking for.

  “Tell me about your mountains,” prompted Maggie.

  Beckett kept his eyes on the dancers. “The Blue Ridge Mountains of V
irginia, ma’am. Born and raised in their shadow. Dad still lives there.”

  “And you live in Washington.”

  “I did, for a long time. But I couldn’t seem to get the country out of the boy. So I bought a place in the foothills of the Blue Ridge.”

  “What is it you do in those Blue Hills, when winter comes?”

  It was a long time since he had talked about himself. “Sour mash whiskey,” he said finally, “fast cars. And a good book to get me to sleep.” That was safe. “Go fishing. Light a fire, cook, see friends. Until last winter I had an old hound dog. Found him as a puppy by the roadside, covered in mud. Named him Red.”

  “You miss him.”

  “I do. But I fill the quiet nights with music. Real music. Country, jazz. Blues—rough and smoky.”

  “You promised to introduce me to B.B. King.”

  He pictured her curled on the easy chair in his cabin. “I haven’t forgotten. I give Mozart a chance, and you have to spend a night with B.B.”

  “Does your offer include dinner?”

  “You expect me to cook?”

  “Do you?” She smiled.

  “We’ll take Shiloh, then, and catch our dinner in the lake.”

  “Who’s Shiloh?”

  “The Golden.” He gazed down at her. “Okay, you were right. Dog needs a name. He’s got a brave heart, was injured in a bad war. Needs a home, a safe place, like all of us, I guess.” Light, not darkness. “Shiloh just seems fitting, somehow.”

  “Oh, Colonel. I’m glad. He’s going to love your mountains.”

  “Watching the light change on those blue mountains, ma’am, you feel alive.” He looked around the glittering cloister. “I’m a long way from home tonight.”

  * * *

  Maggie liked the deep, easy sound of his voice. “Music and nights by your fire…” she encouraged him.

  “Those winter nights staring into the flames, a man gets to thinking. About the men who’ve fought beside him, the friends he’s lost, the women he’s known.” Beckett flashed a look at her. “The roads not taken. Hopes and dreams. The times he’s hurt someone.”

  The wavering candlelight caught the hard planes of his face. “How did such a country boy ever get into this line of work?”

  Wine swirled like smoke in his glass. “My family fought in every war since the Civil War,” he said. “To an idealistic kid in a military prep school, West Point was honor, bravery, patriotism—and escape, in a way—all wrapped up with a big red, white, and blue bow like a giant gift under a Christmas tree.” He shook his head, as if amazed by the innocence of youth.

  “Then all of a sudden I was a scared-shit lieutenant in Vietnam, and every day I saw a new bunch of children ripped to pieces.” He stopped. “I don’t talk about those days.”

  “You can trust me, Colonel.”

  He was silent before taking a deep swallow of wine.

  “One night patrol, there was an explosion, just ahead of us. Running through the smoke, I found a bleeding kid. He’d stepped on a land mine. He asked me to take him home.” He took a harsh breath. “Christ! Walking into that hospital tent, with a dead kid slung on my back—I knew it was time to get out.”

  His dark, desolate anger frightened her. But the yearning to comfort him frightened her far more. “You took care of him.”

  “Tell that to his mother. We took baby-faced boys from their parents and put M-I6s into their hands. Told them to aim at other kids. Other mothers’ sons.” His voice was like cold stones. “They come to war as bright-eyed kids, and then they see every horror. Their eyes grow hard and haunted. They write messages on their helmets that break your heart. We give them medals, and then we bury them.”

  His voice changed. “One Christmas Eve, there were no bombs. It was so quiet. A homesick soldier started singing ‘Silent Night.’ Then my men joined in, until the words echoed over the hills.” He looked at her. “It’s the only moment of solace I can remember in that desolate place.”

  “And then you came home…”

  “To an America I didn’t know. A woman in a black armband spit on me in the airport when I landed. The people and places you left behind aren’t the same. All of a sudden, home is more baffling and tormenting than war.”

  She knew what his next words would be. “You turned around and went back.”

  “Someone had to take care of all those green kids. Libya, Iran, Iraq. Afghanistan. So many damned wars. In Afghanistan, there was this one kid…” He stopped.

  What had happened to him there?

  “Is that why you’re still watching over kids in trouble?”

  “Maybe. But finding Tommy Orsini will be the last song for me.” He gazed down at her. “You are dangerously easy to talk to, Magdalena O’Shea.”

  He poured the last of the wine into their glasses. Once more he studied the faces of the guests drifting through the cloistered garden. Then he turned to her.

  “Now it’s your turn,” he said.

  * * *

  Dane moved slowly toward them, keeping well within the shadows of the columned cloister. What were they talking about, that seemed to close them away from the rest of the glittering night?

  He needed answers. He needed to talk to her. He had to get her away from her colonel. He had to get her to Orsini.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

  AIX-EN-PROVENCE. EVENING, JULY 8

  The breeze rocked the pines as Maggie gazed at the dancers in the candlelit cloister. “You already know more about me than I want you to know, Colonel.”

  “Not why you decided to become a concert pianist.”

  “I couldn’t play the cello.”

  “Van Cliburn didn’t play the piano for eleven years. He came back.”

  “How did you know that?”

  He shrugged. “Tell me how you found music.”

  “My mother, Lily,” said Maggie. “She was a pianist, too. Her piano was the first sound I heard in the morning, the last lullaby as I fell asleep.”

  Lost in early memories, Maggie said, “When I was four or five, I would nap on a pillow beneath the piano while my mother rehearsed. She taught me how to sit at the piano, move my arms, position tiny fingers. All those hours of exercises. But then Mozart practiced so much that all the cartilage crumbled in his fingers.”

  “Ouch.” He gazed down at her hands. “But it was what you wanted?”

  “More than anything. I still remember the first time I wrote ‘Pianist’ on a form. I don’t regret those missed dances. The piano was my choice, from the time I could reach the keys. Music was all I ever wanted.”

  “And so you became a concert pianist.”

  She almost choked on the last swallow of wine. “Good God, Colonel, it took years. Brian’s homework and swimming lessons and PTA took precedence over the piano for a long time.”

  She felt the memories light her smile.

  “Imagine a gleaming nine-foot monster made of sitka spruce and eighty-eight keys, and there you are with only ten fingers. Polish the repertoire at dawn, feed my little boy, press the black dress while you recite nursery rhymes. And practice—my instructor told me I only had to practice on days when I’d eat.” She laughed. “Even when you think you’re ready, still you need to learn how to listen to an orchestra, get along with the prima donna conductor, relate to an audience, overcome stage fright.” Her hands fluttered gracefully in the air. “I had to learn how to walk on and off a stage.”

  “I think you’ve got the walk down, ma’am.”

  “I’ve been given a profoundly precious gift, Colonel. I’ve always believed it’s an artist’s responsibility to share that gift.” She shook her head. “But now…”

  “You’ll play again. Just remember Van Cliburn.”

  “Thank you,” she said. “You’ve reminded me why I got into music in the first place. Mozart, Chopin, Liszt, Beethoven. The great pieces. This is music I love, music I still want to share.”

  Beckett flexed his fingers and broke a white-globed rose from the tan
gle of blossoms on the wall. “Mes hommages,” he said with a bow.

  * * *

  In the deep shadows of the ancient cloister wall, Dane’s hands clenched and unclenched around the icy glass of Evian as he watched them together.

  He could still feel her nails in the bird market, sharp against his skin. She would find a way to meet him alone. If she had good reason.

  He watched as the man held a pale flower out to her. Saw how she lifted her face to his. You like flowers, my Juliet?

  I know how I will get to her.

  CHAPTER SIXTY

  AIX-EN-PROVENCE. EVENING, JULY 8

  “Rachmaninov,” murmured Maggie, holding the rose to her cheek, “received white lilacs from a fan before every concert in St. Petersburg.” Her eyes held his. “I always secretly hoped someone would send me white lilacs before a performance.”

  “I’d bring you the whole damned bush if it would help you.”

  “It’s been months now since I’ve touched the piano. After my husband drowned.” She faltered. “Have you ever been given a choice, Colonel—and made the wrong one?”

  “Yes.” And then, gently, “Your turn to trust. Tell me what happened.”

  She closed her eyes. “On the day Johnny drowned, I was home, totally absorbed in the Grieg concerto. I’d asked him to go to France, to look for Tommy…”

  Her hands clenched, bone-white in her lap. “That day, when the phone rang, I kept playing. I didn’t even answer.” Her eyes flew open, desolate, inconsolable. “My husband was calling me, and I didn’t answer the goddamned phone.”

  “Maggie…” The longing to take her in his arms was overwhelming.

  “The next morning, there was a knock at the door. There was a vase of tulips on the Steinway. I have no memory of that officer’s face. But I remember falling to my knees… and I can still see the sunlight shining on those damned yellow tulips.”