Broken Serenade (31 page)

  
A round staircase twisted graciously three levels up to the immaculate ceiling of the entrance room. Timothy recognized his own creation immediately. They had been brought to the Monterey mansion that he had designed. The discovery infused a bit of relief into the stressful situation. At least he knew where they were. On the other hand, it reminded him of a dark, morbid joke that circulated in his field of study.

    “What is the pinnacle of success in architecture? The answer is: To design your own tomb.”

    The secretary brutally pushed them toward the stairs. Caught off guard, Vivien stumbled and almost lost her balance. Timothy came to her rescue extending his elbow and supporting her. He fought the urge to kick LaFontain’s fat ass. Literally! Three loaded guns aimed at him and his Vee cut his enthusiasm. He didn’t know what to expect from these crazy women.

    “Let’s
go, let’s go! Quickly now!” LaFontain barked meanly. “At your age, I was climbing the stairs like a cat!”

    Timothy rolled his eyes in disgust
, as Vivien measured the older woman from head to toe, trying to comprehend why she hated her darling Tee so much. They both started to ascend the stairs registering the piano accords louder and louder.

    At second level, a ramification cut elegantly in the glass railings opened a narrow bridge toward the crac
ked-open door of a gloriously illuminated room. As they stepped on the marble floor of that small bridge, the last musical notes from
Campanella
extinguished gradually leaving behind a heavy, disconcerting silence.

    Miss LaFontain stood motionless in front of that door for
a few seconds. The silence was so profound that Vivien could hear her own heartbeat and everyone else’s breathing around her. She glanced at Timothy. The man nodded, fixing her with a comforting look.
Don’t worry, we’re together, and we’ll get through this
, his eyes seemed to tell her.   

    Finally, LaFontain knocked discretely three times. No answer came for a long time. After almost a minute that
lorded sadistically over the tormenting interval of an eternity, they heard the squealing of a chair being pushed on the floor. Steps immediately followed that noise. There were metallic high-heels rhythmically hitting the marble floor. Vivien’s exceptionally good hearing detected a familiar tinkling. Her heart stopped for an instant, and then it started to beat so fast and strongly that she felt suffocating.

    The tall, elegant door opened. The sig
ht of the woman who emerged in the doorway had on Timothy and Vivien the effect that only the appearance of a phantom would have had on them.

    It was not Mademoiselle Lili. Nevertheless, she did not seem to be
totally
Nadine either. The woman represented – with enough charm though – a bizarre combination of those two women from the past. It looked as though someone had played with their genes and had artificially created this new human being.

    For an instant, Timothy forgot to breathe in. Soon he became aware of Vivien’s shoulder leaning on his arm.

    “LaFontain!” t
he woman burst out. “I told you numerous times that you have a vocation for barbarism. Well, this, my dear, is undoubtedly the best example so far! Untie those dirty scarves. Let these people breathe freely, for God’s sake!” 

    The ugly face of Miss LaF
ontain became less arrogant. Yet, a shadow of insolence persisted under that submissive and quiet mask. She removed the scarves sighing deeply from time to time, as if she disagreed with the order she had been given. Both Timothy and Vivien spited the cheap handkerchiefs that had been stuffed inside their mouths.  

    “Vivien, you turned
into such a beautiful woman!” the woman exclaimed, examining her closely, but deliberately ignoring the contusions on her face.

   
Vivien found no words to reply. She was still in shock. The woman pretended, well enough, to embrace her. She repeated the gesture with Timothy, only practicing more reticence.

    “
Sorry to descend on you at such an obscene hour, Lili,” Timothy said mockingly. Her identity was not a mystery for him anymore.

    “
No need to apologize. I don’t mind late-night visitors as long as I invited them,” the woman retorted.

    “Your manner of invitation reminds me of KGB practice.
What are you up to this time, Lili?” he asked her with courage. “Do you plan to make us disappear as you did with Nadine?”

   
“How can you be so sure that I am Lili and not Nadine?” she asked playfully, motioning them to come in.

    “For start, Nadine would not have been able in a million years to interpret Paganini like that,”
Timothy specified with a nervous smile. “I know that she was your favorite student. Her qualities excelled in many, many things. However, playing the piano was not one of them.”

    The room was enormous
and spiritually cold. It was equipped with white, heavy furniture and white marble statues representing life-size female nudes, and it reminded of a museum. The exterior wall was made of glass and followed the bold contour of a circular curve. From place to place, miniature palm trees and huge ferns struggled to cheer up the atmosphere. A black piano reigned in the center of the room, positioned precisely between two marble pillars. Modern, abstract paintings were hanging on the interior walls.

    “In what dirty business are you involved, Lili? You seem to enjoy prosperous times,” Timothy said disdainfully, as he easily recognized a Picasso.

    The woman did not answer his question. She glanced at him with superiority. With a severe motion, she threw over her shoulders the extremities of the yellow silk scarf hanging around her delicate neck. Her absent gesture reminded Vivien of Arlene’s dead body, and she felt chills down her spine. The young woman took a deep breath. She refused to give in to the terror that chocked her, and she decided to confront their abductor.

    “What do you want from us, Mademoiselle Lili?
Regrettably, your nocturnal ‘invitation’ is beneath a courtesy call’s standards, and I find it hard to believe that you want to kill us. What would you gain from it?”

    Lili postponed the answer.
She pulled open the drawer of a small glass table and took out a revolver.

    “
Galina, keep Vivien company, would you? But don’t touch her, my dear. She’s out of your league! LaFontain, you tie Tim by the pillar on the right side of the piano. Secure his hands behind his back. You may use one of those two scarves.” She snickered. “Tim, for your own comfort, I suggest that you sit down on the floor.”

    “Why Lili? Do you feel the need to talk down to me?”
 

    “Don’t forget, my darling boy, that I have the
gun or guns rather,” she bragged, undoing the first button of the black, expensive dress that tightly hugged her thin body. She aimed the gun to his chest and cocked it.

    “Mademoiselle Lili,” Vivien cried desperately. “I’ll d
o anything, absolutely anything!”

    “Don’t worry, Vee!” Timothy said quickly. He locked eyes wi
th Lili. “I’ll sit, OK?” he stated firmly.

    Miss LaFontain tied him up as well as she could.
At the end of her job, she came back by Vivien’s side.

    “What do I do with her?” she asked confused.

    “
Untie her,” Lili demanded. “But keep her under control. She’s your responsibility, and I’ll handle him,” she explained. “Galina, you guys can leave now. You know what you have to do.”

    “Yes, ma’
am!”

   
The young women saluted and left the room like two robots.

    With
the two gigantic Russians gone, Timothy experienced the first rush of hope since they had left his garage almost two hours back.

    Lili spoke again.

   
“Vivien, my dear child, do you remember my favorite musical piece? I want you to play it for me,” she required, approaching the girl and delicately touching her face.

   
Vivien’s lips turned purple with disgust as Lili’s fingers descended daringly on her neck, and then on her décolletage.

   
“You’re so beautiful, so fine,” the woman whispered in trance, as the smallest distance separated them. “You’ll be my bijou!” 

    “Yes, I will,” Vivien forced the lie out of her mouth. “Just free Tee
, and I’ll be yours.”

    “Lili, let Vivien leave!” Timot
hy intervened smoothly. “It’s me you hate. It’s me you want to get revenge on.”

    “
Of course, Timothy! You’re perfectly right. I hate you more than I ever hated anyone. Actually, when I think of you, I feel like I’ve never hated anyone in my entire life before you.”

    “I know.
It’s the hungry, hideous worm of jealousy that eats at you, Lili. You hate me because Nadine loved me.”

    “No!
No!” She screamed out of control. “I hate you because you killed her!”

    “You know damn well that it wasn’t I who killed Nadine.”

    Her contemptuous laughter reverberated ominously inside that tall, large room.

    “If I remembe
r well all the gossip after your memorable wedding, you got there late. And you were sporting a new, deadly masculine scent: gasoline!”   

    He didn’t reply on the spot
but turned his head to Vivien. The girl studied him intensely for a couple of seconds.
Vee, please
, his eyes begged.
Don’t let suspicion sting your heart again.
And she didn’t. She smiled lovingly, and he read trust on every cell of her face.

    “A clown at the gas s
tation sprayed me with gasoline,” he explained. “I had the impression that he did it on purpose, because I was dressed up. A practical joke, I guess. Some people with a twisted sense of humor enjoy that.” He sighed and continued. “At that time, I didn’t even know about the nature of your relationship with Nadine. I just learned about it a few days ago. Can’t you see, Lili? I didn’t even have a reason to do it!”

    “Excuses, darling, excuses,
and nothing more than that,” Lili waved her hand, bored.

    “OK, Lili. Then what is your excuse? It is obvious that you killed Nadine
, and then you took her identity. You planned everything very thoroughly.”

    “I didn’t kill Nadine!” the woman yelled wildly. She leaned by the piano. “I loved her,” she admitted softly. “In fact
, I’ve never stopped loving her, not for a second. All these years, and she’s still the one for me.” Her tone turned venomous again. “Unlike you, Tim! You’ve got over her quite fast, haven’t you?”

    Timothy shrugged his shoulders.

    “From what I was led to believe, she left me at the altar.”

   
Lili gave a short, hysterical laughter. She twirled and faced Vivien. 

    “Men, Vivien, are superficial. You keep that in mind
, young lady!”

    Vivien
confronted her bravely.

    “Don’t spend your poisonous advice on me in vain, Mademoiselle Lili! And don’
t try to change the subject of discussion. I was in your house only two hours before the wedding. I heard you and Nadine speaking. Apart from you, I was probably the last person to see Nadine alive.”  

    “And you think
I
killed her? You think
I
burned her angelic face, her gorgeous, perfect body beyond recognition? Vivien,” the woman uttered disappointed, “not you too.”

    She heaved a heartbreaking sigh and turned her back on all of them. When she started to talk, her voice expressed more than emotion. She was sobbing.

    “You’re right, Tim. Indeed, I had everything nicely planned. I was sure Nadine would marry you. I knew her way too well to delude myself with the idea that she would change her mind at the last moment.” She chuckled. “I wanted to ruin your party at least. I drugged her, and I left her sleeping on the sofa in the living room. After that, I called Igor, and I gave him the letters – mine written for Logan, and Nadine’s farewell letter to me. Only, on Nadine’s envelope, I decided to write your name. I had a moment of bizarre inspiration. Nadine had not written any name on her letter to me. Totally à la Nadine! Always walking around with her head in the clouds! I would’ve liked to see your face when you read the letter – I thought that it would be the farce of the century,” she snickered, and then she paused for a few seconds and took a long breath. “After that, I got in the car, dead set to put an end to my life. I had been in an accident before, and I knew that, at that speed, no seatbelt on in a collision meant certain death. So I didn’t put it on intentionally. But, damn it! The day was so glorious as I drove sobbing on the scenic California Highway 1, on the Pacific coast! I can remember the sunrays penetrating the fog, the ocean’s blue waves calling on me, and the picturesque rocks with exotic vegetation. God, it’s all coming back to me now! Like it was yesterday! In a euphoric moment, I turned the car and headed back home. I drove like crazy! I passed every single vehicle in my way. It was a miracle that I didn’t run into the highway patrol.” She threw her head back and chuckled, amused at the memory. “The thing was… a new plan was filling my soul with joy and hope. I was contemplating getting Nadine into my car - sleeping as she was - and eloping with her into the wide world. Far away from you, far away from that weird Igor, far away from anyone who had ever known us. Start a new life. Nadine would’ve forgiven me. In time, she would’ve forgotten everything about you. I don’t believe she really loved you. You were only her ticket to a life she had always wanted for herself.” She folded her arms, as if to brace herself for something terrible. “When I got home, it was too late. The house was engulfed in flames. I lost my mind,” she whimpered. “After the accident I had that day, an old friend helped me get back on my feet.”