Love Kills (9 page)

“I don't have a family. Yet.”

He gave me an oddly knowing look.

“Tell me more about Vanessa. What's she like?”

I am always careful to refer to the recently deceased in the present tense when talking to survivors. Hearing a loved one referred to in the past tense for the first time often results in an emotional meltdown best avoided—unless, of course, you are a crass television reporter whose goal is to make people cry on camera. Besides, no body had been found. Until you know the worst, you can continue to hope.

He hesitated, brow furrowed.

“How did you meet?” I asked.

He nodded slightly. “I was alone in Boston, didn't know a soul. The city is famous for being musically rich. So I picked up a ticket and went to the symphony. That was the first time I saw her, in that bright beautiful hall. She was seated with her cello, up front, close to the conductor. The lights glinted off her hair. She was wearing a simple long black dress, with sleeves down to the elbow.

“She looked so graceful, making music that was so grandiose and spectacular. I kept watching her, couldn't take my eyes off her, and thought about her later. Kept hearing that lush romantic music and seeing her face as she played. I wished I knew how to meet her. It seemed like a dream when I did.”

“How did you manage it?”

“Went back to see a rehearsal two days later. She looked different, more approachable, wearing blue jeans and a ponytail. I overheard the musicians talking. She was part of a chamber music group that was to perform at a museum fund-raiser later in the week.

“There were just four of them at the museum that night, two violins, a viola, and the cello. They played light, cheerful, optimistic music from Beethoven and Haydn, the sort of music that lifts the spirits—and the wallets—of subscribers, donors, and philanthropists.

“I saw her outside afterward, wrestling her instrument into her car. The bumper sticker said ‘Music Is Magic.' I offered to help. We were in public, on a crowded street, otherwise I'm sure she wouldn't have talked to me. I said I'd heard her play. She said she'd seen me inside. I was flattered that she'd noticed me. She said it was because I was the only person who appeared to be listening. Everyone else was busy mingling, chatting, drinking, ignoring the music. I said that surprised me, and she laughed again. There's a special warmth in her laugh.

“‘That's our fate at these gigs,' she said. ‘We're just there to be background music.'

“I invited her for a drink. She said no, but I did persuade her to give me her number.” He pinched the bridge of his nose, his expression pained. “If she'd blown me off, she'd be alive. I was the worst thing that ever happened to her.”

“I know how you feel,” I murmured sympathetically.

“No,” he said sharply, “you don't.” His eyes flashed. “You couldn't possibly. You may experience a lot in your line of work, Ms. Montero, but you have no idea what it's like to find your soulmate—and then suddenly she's gone.”

My lips felt dry. “You're wrong, Mr. Holt. I know exactly what it's like.”

He stared at me, stony eyed.

“My fiancé and I returned home from a trip to the islands, planning our wedding. He was killed in an explosion and fire a few hours later. I couldn't work, couldn't think. That's why I went back to the islands, to feel closer to him and our best times, while trying to figure out how to live in a world without him.”

Holt said nothing for a long moment. “I'm sorry. When you said you had no family
yet
, I thought you were one of those career women who choose to become a single mother, to raise a child without a father.”

“I couldn't do that.” I shook my head. “It's unfair. I lost my father very young, but I have a few vivid memories. Our child won't even have that…. I related to what you said because he would still be alive had he not been with me that day. But you can't second-guess life. You can't beat yourself up for events you can't control. I
can
share two things I've learned the hard way: Running away doesn't help but talking about it does.”

He exhaled audibly, then shoved his barely sipped drink aside. “I don't think either of us is very hungry,” he said. “Let's get out of here.”

We walked the pink neon streets of South Beach and talked for hours.

“Vanessa gave me a crash course in the three Bs.” He smiled at the memory. “Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms. She believes that making music that's hundreds of years old sound fresh and new is like dipping into eternity. She says playing a Beethoven string quartet is unlike anything else a human being can experience.

“She taught me so much about her world. Some people start each day with calisthenics, speed walking, or a morning jog. But did you know that Pablo Casals began each day by playing one of the six suites for unaccompanied cello? She loves to tell me those stories.”

At the tender age of ten, Vanessa attended the pre-college conservatory at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. “‘Music calls you,' she always says. ‘You don't call it.' She always knew exactly what she wanted to do with her life. You can feel her passion.

“Music was a tough rival. The two of them had a long history. She was only five when she started to play. When we began to see each other, I had to convince her that she wasn't cheating on her art.”

“How could she play the instrument so young?” I asked. “Her cello must have been bigger than she was.”

“I asked the same question. Who knew there are tiny little cellos for tiny little kids?”

Strolling amid visitors, tourists, and strangers on the street, I learned more than I ever expected to about the musical instrument that he compared to a resonant tenor voice.

Vanessa's cello was made of maple, from Bosnia. Professional cellists pay for two seats when they fly.

“The instrument is cumbersome, but I'd never complain,” he said. “We always joke that if she'd played the flute, we never would have met.”

Their wedding march was Mendelssohn's from
A Midsummer Night's Dream.
At the reception they waltzed to Strauss.

I told him how I met then–homicide sergeant Kendall McDonald across a bloodstained barroom floor after a shooting. How we'd fallen in love despite the obstacles our conflicting careers created. How we had split up and reunited.

And how it ended. How Onnie and her son, Darryl, six, were stalked by her abusive ex-husband, Edgar, after his premature release from prison. Mother and son hid out in my apartment while McDonald and I vacationed in the islands.

“Couldn't she have gone to the police?” Holt asked.

“She tried. She did everything right. They advised her to take out a restraining order against him. She did. The problem is that a restraining order is just paper, and paper can't stop a bullet or a deranged man. He followed them back from church and burst into my apartment to take Darryl.

“Onnie tried to stop him and they struggled. My dog, Bitsy, a little dog with a big dog's heart, attacked Edgar, who stomped and kicked her, breaking several bones. Edgar left Onnie on the floor, battered and bloody, and took Darryl, who was kicking and screaming.

“McDonald and I arrived home shortly after, totally unaware of what had happened. All I wanted was to show off my engagement ring. We found Onnie hurt and terrified. Edgar had called from his mother's house warning that he'd kill Darryl if she called the police. She knew he was crazy enough to do it. The three of us drove over there. Edgar's distraught mother came running out. She said he'd sloshed gasoline all over her living room and was threatening to ignite it, to kill himself and Darryl. There was no time to wait for SWAT, a hostage negotiator, or the fire department. McDonald went inside.

“Moments later, Darryl flew out the front door screaming for his mother. He leaped into her arms as the house erupted with a gigantic roar. The roof lifted, the windows shattered, and fire shot from each opening as a ball of flame hurtled out the front door with a loud
whoosh.

“Darryl was safe. No one else escaped.”

Neither of us spoke for a long time, as we walked in silence side by side.

“When my time comes, I want to be buried at sea,” Marsh Holt said at last, as we lingered in front of a Lincoln Road art gallery.

“Makes sense to me. I've been thinking about cremation,” I said. “Bright as fire for a moment, then ashes.”

My parting advice to Marsh Holt was not to dwell on his own pain. “You're not alone. Everyone since Adam and Eve has suffered heartache and loss. If they haven't yet, they will. You survive by doing what you do best. And when you're really down, repeat to yourself:
I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.
Make it your mantra.”

The last thing he said to me was a quote from Thoreau:
Listening to music makes one invincible.

I pecked Marsh Holt on the cheek and left him at the hotel. In the morning he would face the Coast Guard and the charter boat people. I hoped they would be kind.

I watched him walk into the hotel and then drove away, alone.

I had shamelessly passed along Lottie and Onnie's inspirational advice, as though it was my own, advice I had ignored. But when I searched my heart for positive words of comfort it suddenly became valid.

No one else could understand our innermost feelings. Holt was right about that. Fate had thrown us together and I was grateful.

 

I labored over the story the next morning. The poignant material was a writer's dream of star-crossed love. I knew he would read it, as would Vanessa's parents and friends. I hoped it would become part of their history, a keepsake to fold into the family Bible. I called Marsh once to clarify a date. He sounded weary.

The Hansens had overnighted a professional portrait of Vanessa at the cello, her lovely long hair swept over an ivory shoulder, her profile pristine.

I was about to turn in my copy when everything changed.

The sea had burped up one of its secrets.

Vanessa Holt was no longer lost. U.S. Coast Guard Public Information Officer Skelly O'Rourke kept his word this time and called. The body of a woman had washed ashore on a remote out island.

Badly damaged by sea life and decomposition, the corpse had been positively identified by dental charts. She was being brought to Miami.

The changes necessary to my story included updated reaction from her family. Her father sobbed unabashedly, his wife wailed and wheezed in the background.

My own eyes swam when he thanked me “for all you did.”

I tried to call Marsh Holt at his hotel, but a frosty front desk clerk said he had asked not to be disturbed. Who could blame him?

He called me a short time later. “You heard the news?”

“Yes. Are you all right?”

“No. I'll never be all right.”

I asked if he had anything he wished to add to the story, and he did: “Vanessa's death is a terrible loss—to the world, to music, and to me. She can never be replaced.”

To me he said, “Thanks for your help during the worst time of my life, especially our talk last night. It meant a great deal.”

Lottie was right, I thought. Think of others, not yourself.

But it didn't help my sleep that night. Instead of fire, the girlish face of the dead bride haunted my dreams. Her long hair streaming in the tide, eyes wide, arms outstretched, her torn wedding veil billowing around her on a windblown seabed. Her lips formed words and frantic phrases. I saw her eyes, heard her voice, and strained to listen, but I could not discern the words.

Awake before dawn, I considered my pep talk to Holt and what a hypocrite I had become. If you talk the talk you should walk the walk. I hadn't attended church since McDonald's funeral, and today was Easter Sunday. Onnie's words had sounded comforting when I repeated them to Holt.

So I went to church. It was early enough to make the sunrise service on the beach. But after my vivid dreams, I had no desire to see water, yearning instead for the rock-solid brick-and-mortar of my church.

Easter, of course, is the holiday above all others to arrive early. Those who forgo church the rest of the year suddenly appear on Easter, herds and hordes of them. They fill the parking lots, the pews, and the collection plates, to a lesser degree, then vanish again until Christmas Eve.

I imagined them the rest of the year, propped on pillows, sipping Bloody Marys, curled up in bed with the Sunday newspapers.

I wore a loose blouse but had to fasten my skirt with an extra-large safety pin because I couldn't close the waistband. Another pressing problem I needed to address. Soon.

I slipped into my favorite pew with a good view of the choir. The delicate scent of lilies filled the church. There were hundreds of them, tall, serene, and graceful, some in pots, others in gigantic bowls mixed with yellow forsythia. They covered the huge cross behind the altar. The shadows of palm fronds outside reflected in the stained-glass windows, and the church was alight with a soft natural glow.

The pews and extra folding chairs set up in the back filled fast with pushy strangers.

“Never in my life did anyone ever shoot at me before,” an elegant middle-aged Grace Kelly type pouted to a well-dressed young man in the pew in front of me. My reporter's instincts kicked in. Ears pricked up, I managed to catch the words “Jackson Memorial Hospital” and “courtroom,” as the Cameron Diaz look-alike behind me described a recent date to her companion; she liked him, but “He's a gun runner.”

Glad I was there, for more than one reason, I didn't know which way to lean. To my regret, trumpets sounded at that moment and a great swell of organ music obliterated their conversations. Beside me, a raven-haired model type with big blue eyes turned, watching for someone. She waved at a tall handsome black man who squeezed into our pew to join her. They were obviously a couple. I smiled. This church, Miami Beach's oldest place of worship, built by pioneers, had changed in so many ways, like everything else in this city. I was so glad to be home. I didn't realize how much I had missed it.

The words of the hymn resonated: Love's redeeming work is done; fought the fight, the battle won. The sermon focused on live dreams, fresh starts, and new beginnings; the prayers dealt with how the lost may be restored. As the pastor primed the universal pump, I wished Marsh Holt had been there to hear it too. Why didn't I invite him?

Later, scores of squealing children scrambled across the grassy lawn, filling their straw baskets during the annual Easter-egg hunt.

I had little chance to exchange more than Easter greetings with my pastor, who did take note of my no-longer-girlish figure. He smiled reassuringly, as though it was a good thing. As happy parents snapped pictures of their excited toddlers, I began to think so myself. Somehow, everything would work out.

Back at my apartment, I brewed myself a cup of herbal tea, then called his hotel to tell Marsh Holt what he had missed, and thank him, too, for our talk. I had nearly forgotten what important threads chance encounters can be in the great tapestry that is life.

Holt had already checked out, the clerk said. Must have left early for the airport, I thought, checking the kitchen clock. I saw him in my mind's eye, a sad and solitary figure amid strangers, waiting to accompany his dead bride home. My eyes misted—not for me, this time, but for him. Too bad we had no chance to say goodbye. I wished him a good life and hoped I had been of help to him. Meeting him surely helped me.

I was still thinking about Holt, whom I would probably never see again, as I walked Bitsy along a path beside the rolling green-velvet golf course, amid warbling birds and the lush scent of flowers. A mounted police officer, helmeted and intimidating, materialized unexpectedly, cantering toward us on the green path. I gasped, startled, with my psyche still so wrapped around the Easter drama that for an instant I mistook him for a Roman soldier.

He waved, then bent low in the saddle to avoid the overhanging branches of a sea grape tree, as I stood transfixed, heart pounding.