Butterfly and the Violin (9781401690601) Read online

  CHAPTER SIX

  This was bigger news than Sera was prepared for at the moment. Not in the first hour of her having landed in California. And not as she sat waiting in a chair across from the massive desk, tapping her feet like a schoolgirl who’d been sent to the principal’s office. But here she was, suit-clad Manhattan, waiting for the head of the Hanover clan to step into the estate’s downstairs office and turn her ordered world upside down.

  As promised, Paul had given her a tour of the house before he’d deposited her in his eldest brother’s office. Nine bedrooms. Twelve bathrooms. A pool here, a library and media room there. The house was palatial, with a beautiful view that spanned the California coastline, but she was used to wealthy clients and had prepared herself for it.

  Finding out the value of the family estate, though—that had thrown her a bit.

  It couldn’t be true. The painting was the sticking point? Sera thought she’d been searching for a lost painting that couldn’t have been worth anything to anybody. Now it was worth the equivalent of one hundred million dollars? That was more than the price of an original Monet. And way out of the price range that could make it attainable to her.

  Sera could hear the clock ticking on the wall. She’d come all this way because of the mystery in a painting that had stolen her heart years ago. Now she’d landed in an even bigger mystery and the patriarch of it all was coming in the office—to see her.

  The door creaked and Sera turned toward the sound. What she saw was nothing short of a cruel joke. It wasn’t the fire-breathing Hanover monster that Macie had warned her about. Neither was he the boorish family boss that Paul had described. Instead, in walked one of the handsomest men she’d ever seen.

  Blue dress shirt, matching eyes. Dark hair. He’d discarded the Red Sox hat and had managed a quick change of clothes, but there was no denying it. Her heart sank when she realized who it was.

  Are you the gardener? Sera thought back to the embarrassing question she’d asked him outside and almost melted to the hardwood floor.

  Lovely. What else could go wrong?

  “Miss James, is it?” He walked in the office with a studied air and sat down behind the desk. “I’m sorry to have kept you waiting. As you know, I was busy working with the grounds crew.” He tilted his head toward the windows overlooking the front lawn and flashed a brilliant smile. “So to speak.”

  She nodded politely and tried to return a confident smile to his teasing. “That’s all right. I haven’t been waiting long.”

  Smile. Yes, that was it. If she could smile, maybe she could convince him that she wasn’t a total ditz.

  “I’m sorry to be an imposition at such an important time, but as I said outside, no one informed me there would be a wedding here. I expected to meet with you in person and settle this business of the painting in one afternoon. Had I known the legal troubles surrounding the estate, I’d have opted for a more appropriate time.”

  “Ah,” he mumbled, and leaned back in his office chair until the wood creaked. “Then Paul told you about the inheritance.”

  “He did.”

  “And you think there’s a better time to tell a man you’re trying to take a hundred million dollars out of his pocket?”

  She squirmed uncomfortably. “I’m not sure what you’re referring to. I just own an art gallery. Anything decided regarding the estate is out of my hands.” Those would be the hands that were twisting in her lap at the moment.

  “Well, that is where you’re wrong.”

  “I am?”

  “You’re in an unusual position here. I find that my grandfather, however noble his intentions may have been, has caused a rather deep rift to form between the members of our family. When he passed last November, the family—including my father and his younger sister—well, we all had an understanding about where the money was going. There was a will. It was signed and notarized in 2007 when his mind wasn’t in question. But in the last couple of years, he’d changed. Enough so that we have to believe he wasn’t in the full use of his mind when he made certain decisions regarding the estate.”

  “Is that lawyer talk for ‘He changed his mind and you’re not happy about it’?”

  He opened a desk drawer and took from it a manila folder, which he laid open-faced on the desktop. Then, without hesitation, he leaned in and eyed her directly.

  “May I speak plainly, Miss James?”

  “Is that not what you’ve already been doing, Mr. Hanover?”

  Something tightened in his face. She noticed the almost nondescript twinge of a muscle that flexed in his jaw once she’d decided to answer him with a bit of moxie.

  Score one for Miss James.

  She could see by his response that there was a lot at stake. This guy was polished, comfortable in his own skin, and impossibly good looking. But despite his subtle efforts to see if she’d be intimidated in an office that was bigger than her entire Lower East Side apartment, she refused to fold.

  Sera coughed over the nervous tickle in her throat and notched her chin a little higher in the air. She’d be confident in front of him if it killed her.

  “Do you know what I have here?” he said, drumming the folder with his fingertips.

  “I’m sure I don’t.”

  “It’s a copy of my grandfather’s will. Signed little more than a year ago, stipulating that the entire estate should be left to someone none of us have ever heard of. Someone without a name. The owner of a certain painting. We have a painting in our possession, but it’s a copy of the original. What’s more, we don’t know where the original is or who owns it. Now, you can imagine what kind of surprise this was to us, the unsuspecting family members who now have to keep my grandfather’s business afloat with no assets to do so. Would you think that as president of my grandfather’s company I might be a bit, we’ll say, taken aback by this turn of events?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “Would you say that I have the right to be concerned when some anonymous gallery owner waltzes in with a story that she’s searching for a lost painting, our painting, mind you, and positions herself to clean out the estate my grandfather worked his entire life to build up?”

  Sera’s palm flew up on instinct, asking for a pause to the accusation. “Wait—you think I’m here for your money?”

  He didn’t flinch. “Aren’t you?”

  “Of course not!” Surely he wasn’t serious. The man thought she was there on a mission to find the painting so she could cash out on the family estate? “You can’t think I’m capable of doing such a thing.”

  His eyes sparkled a little. “I think anyone would be capable of it given the one-hundred-million-dollar paycheck involved. That’s why we’ve sought to keep this matter quiet. No media. You understand. If it got out that the estate goes to the owner of some lost painting, we’d have every fortune hunter and news outfit in the country descending on the estate in a matter of minutes.”

  It was a difficult situation, no doubt. Having heard a bit of the backstory helped her make some sense of it all. But that was where Sera’s compassion fizzled. This man was a stranger, yet he possessed the ability to stare straight through her.

  Sera could feel her temperature starting to rise hotter than the California sun outside. “Listen. My gallery stumbled across your painting by chance. We’ve been searching for the original for the last two years and had hoped this was the key to finding it.”

  “For two years?” He cocked an eyebrow. “You’ve been after the same painting I’m looking for?”

  “It would seem so.”

  William paused and, tilting his head to the side, said, “Then your explanation for wanting it is . . . ?”

  She couldn’t tell him the truth. Not now. Best to gloss over the fact that she’d do just about anything to find the one link she had to her father’s memory. “The fact that this painting is named in your grandfather’s will has nothing to do with me. I am merely doing my job as an art historian. We’re acquiring Holocaust er
a art for the gallery. My job right now is to find the painting—end of story.”

  “Has someone hired you to find it?”

  “No.”

  “Well, Miss James. It seems you and I have a common interest in this story, then.”

  “And that would be?”

  “Whatever our motives, I want to find the rightful owner of this painting as badly as you do. And when I do find them, I’ll have the pleasure of presenting him or her with a summons to appear in court. Our family has to contest the will. We have no other option.”

  “You’d take someone to court over this?”

  He didn’t answer. He didn’t need to. She could see it all around them. Money. Inheritance. The lavish lifestyle that had been showered upon him. Of course the Hanover family wouldn’t want to give it up. Who would? In fact, William would probably do just about anything to protect his family’s fortune, and she could be instrumental in that.

  “Why did you ask me to come here?”

  “I told you—when I heard you were looking for the painting, I assumed you were after our estate and I figured I’d better have a chat with you.”

  She sat in silence for a moment. A memory flashed before her eyes. Her dad, leading her into a Paris gallery to talk to an old colleague. And there it was, hanging on a back wall. Not in a place of prominence, but tucked away in a dusty corner, as if the lovely violinist had been forgotten by time.

  Sera stood and shrugged her purse up over her shoulder. “Well, if you think I’m of the fortune-hunting type, I won’t stay and dampen your sister’s wedding with my presence. But if you decide you want to talk business, the address of where I’ll be staying is on the back of my business card.”

  Sera walked toward the door with as much confidence as ever. Inheritance or not, she would find the painting. With or without his help.

  “Oh, and if you call the hotel, I’ll be under the name Manhattan.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  December 4, 1942

  Could snow hold memories? Adele wondered. It fell down around her now just as it had on so many other nights she’d waited for him. And though it was years ago, she could still remember the first time she’d sat upon the bench, waiting in the garden hideaway as she watched the minutes tick away until it was time for her first concert. She’d been young, faith untested, so different from who she was now.

  “Here you are.” She could hear Vladimir trudging up behind her, his feet crunching on the ice-tinged grasses with each step. “I know—we were supposed to meet more than an hour ago.”

  “I was going to stay right up until performance time, hoping you’d come.”

  She half turned on the bench then, enough to see him walking up behind her in a pristine black tuxedo. Vladimir Nicolai was steadfast and strong, his dark hair falling over his forehead enough to tip his lashes. He wore an overcoat of black wool and an ivory tucker that danced out on a light gust of winter wind.

  “Tell me you haven’t been out here all this time.” He rubbed his hands together and blew into his palms. “It’s freezing out here.”

  “No. I went in for a while.” She shrugged. “But I don’t mind.”

  And she didn’t, even though her legs felt like blocks of ice. Who ever thought of waiting in a snowfall while wearing paper-thin satin? But facing the painfully cold night was nothing in comparison to waiting, hoping, and praying he would arrive. In truth, she’d have stayed out there all night, concert or not.

  She stood then, watching him, fearful of her own reaction whenever he was near. Adele had been in love with him from the moment they met more than three years before. She’d been young then, and had probably seemed like the kid-sister type to him. He’d been young too. And clueless as to her affection. But something had changed. And now the tall young man had grown up. He had grown up in the midst of war and was taking her breath away with each step in her direction.

  He stopped in his tracks, holding back from her by several feet.

  “Why are you wearing that?”

  She looked down at the fur shawl that draped over her satin gown. “What, this?” she asked, holding the edge of the fur out.

  “Yes. That, the dress—all of it.”

  “Is there something wrong with it?”

  “No—” He almost smiled, but instead tilted his head to the side as if in thought about something. “Where did you find satin?”

  She lifted her shoulders in a light shrug. “My mother.”

  After what had happened moments before she’d left for the concert, she hated to even think of her. But the rest needed no explanation, she guessed. Everyone knew Marina Von Bron and her taste for over-the-top finery. Adele had never felt so ridiculous as she did wearing satin and pearls in the midst of a war zone.

  “Doesn’t she have you wear black for a performance?” He took several steps forward again, but this time seemed distracted and stopped just short of the tips of his shoes touching hers.

  He looked down at her.

  She hadn’t remembered him being that tall. Had he always looked down on her like that?

  “It’s a victory celebration to honor the Führer, as you know. And I have a solo,” she said, nervous all of a sudden. Why was this night so different from all the others? “Is it too much?” She had to ask. Lavish satin, pearl earrings—she’d grown up around her mother’s taste for them but had never found a liking of them for herself. No doubt she looked like a child playing dress-up.

  “No. Not too much. Not too much at all.” He looked down at her still, curiously quiet. “So, are you able to play? Your hands?”

  She’d been twisting them without even noticing. The pain medicine the doctor had given her must have been doing the trick, for she scarcely felt a twinge. “Dieter gave me some pain medication to get through the performance.” She held up a gloved hand, which he took and cradled in his own.

  “You hide your hands in gloves because of me.” He brought it to his lips and pressed a brush of a kiss against her palm. “I am so sorry. You can’t know how sorry I am.”

  She looked away, finding that his gaze was too intense.

  “Did you hear me, Butterfly?” Butterfly. He’d given her the nickname the first time they’d ever played onstage together. “Everything will be all right.”

  Vladimir always said that to her.

  He was older, had played with the orchestra many times. She was barely seventeen that first night, and inexperienced, and scared out of her mind. He’d been late for the performance, but just in time to keep her from passing out before she took the stage. He’d been running in the back entrance and had bumped into her as she came outside to the very garden in which they stood now. It had been spring then, and warm, their view of the world warm and innocent with it. She couldn’t help but think how everything had turned cold now.

  “Do you remember how nervous you were? That first performance?”

  She nodded. So they were thinking of the same memory.

  “Of course I do. You told me that I would have to play like I did in rehearsals—to feel the music, to let it float from my soul in honor to God. And we saw a butterfly. It was doing the same thing, floating around, dancing from perch to perch right here in our garden. It landed on our bench.” Her fingertips grazed the back of the bench as she spoke, recalling the memory like it was yesterday. “You said that I had to go in there and not be afraid to play, to share the gift that God gave me.”

  “I did say that.” He smiled. “And what did you do?”

  “I went inside and played.”

  “And showed all of Austria what a beautiful genius you are,” he said, a laugh escaping his lips. “I was impressed by the youngest member of our troupe. She showed them that a little butterfly of a girl could upstage a group of arrogant men. And that, Adele, is when Vienna found her sweetheart.”

  “I don’t remember it like that.” She turned her eyes and, in distraction, looked down at her strappy heels, their gold color sparkling in the moonlight.


  “Adele, I won’t let you be put in harm’s way. I meant what I said this morning.”

  “I know you did.”

  “Then why won’t you look at me?”

  “Because I am afraid you did mean it and I will never see you again.” Her chin quivered. She felt it, was moved by her own unconscious reaction to saying the words aloud.

  “Adele, look at me.” He tilted her chin up until her eyes met his. “I’m leaving right after the performance tonight.” He paused, perhaps knowing that he should ease into the admission, that this was a moment they wouldn’t get back for some time to come. “I’ll be gone until this war is over. But I will come back.”

  “You’ve been called into service, then?”

  He shook his head. “You know my health makes me ineligible. That won’t change, Adele.”

  “Then why do you have to leave?”

  “Because so many young musicians were conscripted into service, they elevated a musically inclined merchant’s son to play in one of the world’s greatest orchestras. I’m told that I can play the cello for Austria. That is my purpose. It is for the Third Reich, they tell me. To show my allegiance. And all while I’m looked at as a coward.”

  “You’re not a coward. You can’t help a heart condition you’ve had since childhood.”

  He shook his head in defiance. “You don’t understand, Adele. Whether others look at me as a coward or not, I’d not have fought for Germany. No matter how much I love my country. But I have to use my life for something. I have to fight in some way. And playing on a stage in front of Hitler’s stooges isn’t the way to do it. A ticker that beats out of sync can’t prevent me from doing what I know to be right.”

  “And what is that?”

  He shook his head. “I can’t tell you.”

  She didn’t ask where he would go, or what he would be doing. He wasn’t likely to tell her no matter how many times she asked. Instead, she needed to know only when he would return.

  “But what if this war never ends?”

  “It will.”