Authors: Denise Kahn
A true friend is the most precious of all possessions and the one we take least thought about acquiring.
La Rochefoucauld, Maxims, 1665
MIAMI BEACH 1985
PROLOGUE
The villa on the secluded Miami Beach island was peacefully quiet. The house was surrounded by elegant gardens of tropical flowers and palm trees militantly guarded the periphery of the manicured grounds. It was a typically warm Florida night, and the moon serenely bathed the small land mass off Biscayne Bay, but this tranquility was suddenly shattered when Davina Walters felt a harsh pounding in her head. She was trying to understand what it was, and then it stopped. And started again. She had given specific instructions not to be disturbed, but wait, she wasn’t in a hotel, she was at home in her own bed, and the pounding was the phone ringing. This was her first night off after returning from her world tour.
Exhausted after six months on the road, performing in twenty-five countries, for hundreds of thousands of spectators, she was regarded as one of the greatest singers of the century. Davina Walters was fluent in half a dozen languages and sang in at least as many more without the slightest trace of an accent. She was one of the very few in the world who had that wonderful inbred talent, in addition to the velvet and crystal vocal chords. That was her forte, her charm, and her success. She mesmerized her audiences with traditional songs in their native language, and with her original compositions. They were honored that an American was so well versed in their culture and history. Her repertoire was pure finesse. She wrote and composed many of her songs, and sang of love and friendship in a style all her own, and her audience worshipped her. No other entertainer had such a range of devotees and they always were part of the show—and it was their show. The men adored her and the women all wanted to be her friend. The audience never wanted to leave, and the encores were incessant. And that was her high, her natural high, her triumph, and her pride.
But the gongs were still going off in her head and she was still spinning from the last non-stop twenty-four hours.
She picked up the phone. “Yes?” She couldn’t hear a thing. This better not be a crank call, or a lucky fan who had found her number, she thought. “Hello?” She repeated. An uneasy feeling suddenly came over her. She looked at her Piaget. Three a.m. Something was very wrong. “Yes, hello,” she said again.
“Jes,” an agitated voice replied, “dees eez Conchita, Miss Jean’s neighbooor. Jou must come queeckly.” Oh God, Davina thought knowing immediately what was coming. “Very bad ‘appenigs next door, many shouts, many screams, much high voices.” Davina heard a thunderous clap in the background, like a firecracker. “Ay Señora, por favor, pleez queeckly, I think that monsterman, that
hijo de puta
, shoot poor Señora Jean, pleez, pleez...” Conchita started rattling off in Spanish knowing that Davina Walters spoke and understood her language fluently.
“Conchita, calm down…” But the line was dead. Davina’s mind was racing. She jumped out of bed, pulled a sweat suit out of the closet, picked up a Colt .45 from the top drawer of her dresser, hobbled into a pair of sneakers, and ran through the house grabbing her keys from the table next to the front door. She was a sight to behold. Wearing nothing but her shoes and her birthday suit—she always slept nude—she ran out of the house. Her superb athletic body was trying to break the hundred-meter dash in less than nine seconds, all while putting her sweats on. Her amber hair left a trail of luminous silk waves as it followed the firm body running down the driveway. Davina Walters was tall, with sensual curves and perfectly shaped opulent breasts that bobbed slightly as her long legs powerfully carried her to the parked car. With the gun still in her hand, she pressed the remote control on the key chain. The door to the Porsche automatically unlocked and opened. She inserted the key in the ignition and immediately the faithful concoction of engineering sprang to life. Thank God for German technology, she thought. The drive from the villa to her friend’s house usually took ten minutes. She pressed harder on the gas pedal. Already the speedometer indicated 85 mph. Four minutes, she calculated, would be all she needed. Where were the police when you needed an escort? She fumed, already putting a call through to the police station.
“Put me through to Sergeant Alfonso Martinez, this is Davina Walters, she told the police operator.
“The singer?” The operator asked incredulously, an obvious fan.
“Yes!” She answered irritated; “this is an emergency! Please patch me through...”
“Right away...”
“Thank you.”
The sergeant came on the line. “Davina?”
“Alfonso?” She said, hearing a sleepy voice through the cellular phone.
“Yes, what is it?”
“He’s at Jean’s house. I think he’s trying to kill her. I heard a shot. I’m in the car now on my way to her house, I’ll meet you there,” she said hanging up.
“Davina wait! Wait until we get there...Davina? Davina!” He shouted through the mouthpiece, but it was no use, she had already hung up. The sergeant cursed as he put his own call through to the station, and in turn ran out of his house.
Through the windshield Davina could see two things. The road and visions of her friend Jean, and the good times they had spent together. Was she still alive? Had that son-of-a-bitch finally killed her this time? God knows he had tried numerous times before. Had he blown her brains out the way he had threatened so many times in the past? This was Davina’s constant nightmare: Simon holding a gun to Jean’s head and pulling the trigger, the insides splattering all over the wall behind her. Was this cauchemare now reality? She shuddered and pushed down harder on the accelerator. Just a few more seconds and I’ll be there, she thought. Please don’t let her be dead. Please. Through the five thousand dollar Alpine stereo system she faintly heard a familiar melody. She hadn’t realized it was on. Oh God, she prayed, please, let her be alive. Smokey Robinson was singing his heart out:
“Just to see her…”
♫
BRAZILIAN RAINFOREST 1975
CHAPTER 1
She was only fifteen but you could not help but wonder where she was going once she made that inevitable secret slide into young womanhood. Davina Walters was beautiful, but still too young to know it. Such uncomplicated beauty, her father thought, if only it would last forever. She had her mother’s heart-shaped face, with distinct traces of every Athena William Walters had ever seen in his wife’s native Greece. Davina’s eyes were the color of shiny dark jade, and she had a mane of honey-amber hair that cascaded in waves over her shoulders and down her back. She was the only child her parents ever wanted, and they never missed an opportunity to shower her with love and gifts. Her father’s career in the U.S. diplomatic field gave her an entrée to horizons few Americans knew. She had traveled to most of the European countries and several others around the world by the time she was ten years old. By then she spoke five languages fluently. It all combined to make her charming, mature long before her years and altogether fearless and independent.
Now in her teens, she sat cross-legged among a group of dark-skinned youngsters in a Brazilian rainforest, listening to them sing. They were singing to her of course. Not to her father William Walters, the distinguished American diplomat, and not to Carlos da Cunha, arguably the wealthiest and one of the most powerful men in Brazil, or to Carlos’ son Zeferino, who was Davina’s age, or even to Melina Malandros Walters, her elegant and sophisticated mother. No, they sang to her. It was she who had enchanted them, who had captured their hearts. In no time, she was humming along with the tune and clapping to their rhythm.
“What do the words mean, Zeferino?” Davina asked.
Zeferino, his blue eyes watching her intently, took this as an opportunity to get closer to her. He squatted beside her. “The song says they are proud of the beauty of our land. They say they are noble like our land.” He turned and saw his father and Mr. and Mrs. Walters walking together toward the Jeep that had brought them to this mountaintop village in the lush jungle. “I think it is time to go.”
As Davina stood, a little girl with two missing front teeth pulled on Davina’s shirt and presented her with a flower the color of the sunset. “
Obregada
,” Davina said taking it from the girl. “
Muito
obregada
, thank you very much,” she said, sounding as if the child had given her something much more precious than a wild flower from the jungle.
“Daddy, what’s this flower?” Davina asked. They had a tacit understanding between them, as every father and only daughter must. It was simply this: that every father knew the answer to every question his daughter asked, no exceptions.
“This,” he said, “is a very special flower. I’m sure Zeferino knows what it is.”
Zeferino shrugged, wondering why this flower was so special. There were a million of them in the mountains. But he said, “Yes, a special flower.”
Melina found a tiny vase from the da Cunha’s curio for Davina’s flower. “What about we put this on the piano,
agapimou,
my love
.
” She asked, using a Greek term of endearment. Melina always knew how to make her little girl happy. The vase was fine with Davina, and when she was asked by Senhor da Cunha to play a song after dinner, she could see the flower as she touched the keys of the baby grand.
“Mozart!” Zeferino suggested.
His father hushed him. “Don’t make her nervous,” he scolded him in Portuguese.
Davina played at the keys, slowly humming the song she had heard in the village that morning. With one hand she delicately played a chord, and then another and another. When she brought her other hand to the keyboard, she had worked out the refrain, and now she sang the words of the rainforest people, adding a bit of samba here and there but keeping to the heart of the tune. She had pried the words out of Zeferino, made him teach her the words when he only wanted to kiss her.
“Not now, Zeferino, you have to teach me the words,” she insisted. “We’re too young to fall in love. You don’t really know me. You know only what you see.”
He was crazed with his new desire and helpless but to please her. So they went through the words of the song.
Davina had the melody and this Senhor da Cunha appreciated. He almost stood at attention, transfixed, as she played and sang, mixing the melody of a folk song with the other heartbeats of Brazil. When her fingers finally came off the keyboard, a solitary tone of her voice lingered. And when there was silence finally, Davina opened her eyes to the applause, to the flower, to the glow on the faces of her father and mother and the da Cunhas.
Before they boarded the private jet taking them back home to Washington D.C., Carlos da Cunha took Melina’s hands in his. “I must tell you Melina, ever since my wife died, we have been somewhat lonely, but you always bring this wonderful feminine energy with you. It makes us men appreciate beautiful ladies like you and your daughter. It brings the spark that makes life’s details so worthwhile.”
Melina gracefully kissed Carlos on the cheek. “
Obregada,
Carlos. In our lifestyle, you know, constant, constant moving, good friends are very special. Thank you, be well.”
Once boarded, the Walters took their seats and Davina asked her father if she could ride in the cockpit with the pilots. William Walters raised an eyebrow and smiled. She knew better. He made a fist, thumb out, and motioned upward. Only after takeoff could Davina sit with the pilots.
Walters turned to his wife. “You know, the government thinks I’m a great diplomat. Do you know why?”
Melina waited for what she knew would be an interesting answer.
“Because I have a secret weapon.”
“Is that right.”
“You. I have you.”
“I’m your great weapon?”
“Yes, you’ve won the respect of Carlos da Cunha, and we’ve won the bid on his equipment. Mainly thanks to you, my darling.”
“You may have a point, William, but I also think that your daughter may have had something to do with it this time.”
William Walters looked into his wife’s warm dark eyes. “I am the luckiest man alive. I have the most beautiful and remarkable wife in the world, and a daughter who is just like her mother.”
“And just like her father.”
As expected, William Walters was promoted to become the U.S. Ambassador to France. He and his family left their home in Washington, D.C. for their new home in Paris.
♫