The Ugly Duckling

by Iris Johansen

  She felt a ripple of shock.

  “It was good business. He had more muscle, and a war would have cost me more than a dozen Tang vases.”

  “I see.”

  He shook his head. “No, you don’t. You think I should have taken him on, been like Dirty Harry and fought the bastard in the trenches.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “I learned a long time ago that you weigh the consequences carefully before you dive into battle. I had a fortune to acquire and people who depended on me.”

  “Phil?”

  “He was with me then.”

  “And he still works for you.”

  “Occasionally. When I had enough money, I broke up the network. Some of my associates decided they didn’t want to go to other organizations where their talents would have been welcomed.”

  “So you helped them make new lives.”

  “I couldn’t walk away.” He added simply, “They were within the boundaries of my responsibility.”

  Loyalty. She didn’t want him to have any qualities she admired. When she had started to question him, she had wanted to know only about Gardeaux, but she was learning too much about Tanek. She tried to get back on track. “Backing down didn’t do any good? He still killed your friend?”

  “No, that was later.” He stood up and stretched. “Time for bed.”

  He had shut the door again. She said quickly, “You haven’t told me nearly all I want to know about Gardeaux.”

  “There’s plenty of time. You’ll be here awhile.”

  She stood up. “I don’t want to waste time.” She paused. “You obviously have contacts. If we can’t do anything concrete, will you try to find out why Gardeaux sent Maritz to kill me?”

  “Why?”

  “Why? I have to know because I have to try to make sense of all this. I’ve been stumbling around in a nightmare for too long.”

  “Is it going to change your mind or your purpose?”

  “No.”

  “Then I’d say any motive was of secondary importance.”

  “Not to me.”

  He gazed at her without speaking.

  He wasn’t going to do it. “All right. Then tomorrow will you start teaching me how to do what you did to Wilkins?”

  “Don’t you ever give up?”

  “If I’d known how to fight him, Maritz would never have been able to push me off that balcony. I would have been able to defend myself.”

  And Jill.

  The words were unsaid, but they lingered between them. He nodded curtly. “Day after tomorrow. I have to go to see Jean at the Bar X tomorrow.”

  She stared at him suspiciously. “You’re not just trying to put me off?”

  “I wouldn’t think of it. I’ll teach you anything you want to know about death and mayhem. But it won’t be as much as Gardeaux and Maritz can teach you.”

  “It will be enough.”

  “It won’t be enough. And even if it is, what will you do after it’s over? It takes a certain type of character to survive murder.”

  “It wouldn’t be murder,” she said, stung.

  “You see, you’re shying away from it already.” He repeated deliberately, “Murder. To take a life is murder. No matter what the reason, the act is the same. Nice people like you are trained from childhood to back away from it with revulsion.”

  “Nice people like me seldom have the same impetus I’ve been given.”

  “That’s true, and you’re not the woman I met on Medas. But the core is the same. As the tree is bent …”

  “Bullshit.”

  “Is it? You want to be hard and cold and push everybody away, but it’s not happening. Oh, I’m easy, but what about Tania? What about Peter?”

  “That’s different. They have nothing to do with Maritz and Gardeaux.”

  “But they have everything to do with who you are.”

  “You don’t think I can do it? You’re wrong.”

  “I’m betting I’m right.” He added wearily, “I want to be right.”

  She shook her head.

  “Day after tomorrow. Eight in the morning. Wear workout clothes and don’t eat breakfast.” He turned and left the room.

  He was wrong, she told herself. He had to be wrong. It would be better if she could keep up barriers, but, if she failed, it didn’t mean her determination would waiver.

  “Peter.” She turned toward the far corner. “It’s time to go to—”

  Sam’s head was on Peter’s knee and the boy was stroking the dog’s throat. Peter’s expression was lit with infinite delight.

  It could happen. If he wants it enough.

  She felt a wave of happiness for him sweep over her. It appeared Peter had wanted it enough.

  I want to be right.

  Her smile faded as she remembered Tanek’s words. His will was much stronger than Peter’s and he intended to focus that will on her.

  Well, she was not Sam. It would do him no good.

  “Come on, Peter,” she said brusquely. “Time for bed. You can play with Sam tomorrow.”

  Dead. The woman was dead.

  Maritz replaced the receiver of the telephone with a rush of satisfaction. He hadn’t failed. It had taken a little time, but the Calder woman had died. He could tell Gardeaux the job was done.

  Maybe.

  A thorn of uneasiness pierced his satisfaction. Gardeaux had said he had failed, that the woman would recover. The bastard wasn’t often wrong.

  He would look a fool if it turned out the woman’s death records had been fixed and she had been whisked away. Gardeaux didn’t like fools.

  It wouldn’t hurt to make sure.

  He looked down at the information on the notepad. The hospital?

  Too many people.

  John Birnbaum Funeral Home.

  He smiled and stuffed the notepad into his pocket.

  “Here.” Tanek tossed a large package on the couch beside Nell. “A present.”

  Nell looked at him in confusion. “I thought you were going over to the other ranch to see your foreman.”

  “I did. I swung by town on the way back. Open it.”

  She fumbled with the tape on the package. “Peter hasn’t come back from the ranch yet.”

  “He won’t be coming back. Jean has taken a liking to him and gave him permission to stay a few days. If he works out, Jean may take him to the high country when he goes to bring the sheep in.”

  “Will he be safe?”

  “Safe enough. He was crazy to go. Dogs and sheep.”

  She could see how that would prove irresistible to Peter. She began to tear off the brown wrappings. Canvas, easel, sketch pad, pencils, and a box of paints. “What is this?”

  “You said you wanted to paint Michaela.”

  “That’s not what I said.”

  “But you do.”

  “I’ll be too busy.”

  He snapped his fingers. “Ah, yes, I forgot the mayhem. Well, I’ve decided to charge for lessons. I need some paintings to decorate my walls.”

  She asked sarcastically, “To hang beside your Delacroix?”

  “Local art. My people, my mountains.”

  The same possessiveness she had seen in him when they’d arrived. She set the canvas on the floor. “Hire someone else to do it.”

  “I want you. One hour of violence and mayhem for every two you spend on my paintings. Deal?”

  She turned to look at him. “What is this? Am I supposed to undergo some miraculous metamorphosis from this half-baked therapy?”

  “Maybe. I figured it couldn’t hurt.”

  “It can waste my time.”

  “At one point in your life you didn’t think it a waste of time.” He met her gaze. “I’ll keep my promise. You’ll get an hour of training every day from me regardless of whether or not you paint. But the only way you’ll get more is to give me what I want.”

  “This won’t do you any good.”

  “It won’t hurt me.” He smiled. “And it won’
t hurt you, will it?”

  She slowly shook her head.

  “Deal?”

  Why not? It would be a way of controlling the tempo of her training without having to ask Tanek. She glanced at the canvas and felt a faint stirring of excitement. Her gaze went to the direction of the kitchen, where she could hear Michaela preparing dinner. That wonderful face …

  “If you can persuade Michaela to let me paint her.”

  “I never try to persuade Michaela to do anything. You want her, go after her.”

  “More therapy?”

  He smiled. “Terror. She scares me to death.”

  The Birnbaum Funeral Home glowed in the darkness like a small plantation home. Its three columns were lit by a spotlight hidden in the evergreen bushes on the sweeping front lawn.

  What a waste, Maritz thought. Mansions for the dead.

  Well, not only for the dead. Undertakers reaped a hefty profit from disposal of corpses. Fucking bloodsuckers. They had bled him white when he had buried his father.

  But Maxwell and Son had never had a place like this. The mortuary had been on a busy street in the Detroit slums, and he had been too poor and unimportant to rate attention. He had been shuttled to Daniel Maxwell, the son. He had been filled with helpless rage as he had sat there while that acne-scarred pipsqueak tried to steal every dollar he could from him.

  He had wanted to squeeze the bastard’s throat until his eyes popped.

  But that was before he had found the knife.

  The door of the mortuary was opening and a number of people were streaming out. Swollen eyes, quiet voices, furtive relief at leaving the dead and joining the living again.

  He checked his watch. Nine o’clock. Closing time. He’d give the stragglers fifteen more minutes.

  He watched the mourners get into their cars in the parking lot and drive away. He had been a mourner. He had loved his father. It should have been his mother who had died, the vicious bitch. He had not meant it to happen. He had just pushed his father a little and he’d fallen down those steps. It should have been her.

  A young man in a dark suit came out of the mortuary and cut across the lawn to the employee parking. A trainee to the vampire? Or maybe Birnbaum had a son too. The kid was whistling as he jumped into a blue Oldsmobile parked beside a sleek Cadillac hearse.

  A new hearse, one that had been purchased in cash a week after the Calder woman’s supposed cremation.

  Maritz had found the record of that purchase very interesting.

  The entry lights went out in the vestibule.

  Maritz waited until the Oldsmobile had disappeared around the corner before he got out of the car and walked across the street. He rang the doorbell.

  No answer.

  He rang it again.

  He waited a minute and rang it again.

  The entry lights went on, the door opened. Cool air and the heavy scent of flowers surrounded Maritz.

  John Birnbaum stood in the doorway—sleek gray hair, a little plump, dressed in a sober gray suit. “Do you wish to view the body? I’m sorry, we’re closed.”

  Maritz shook his head. “I need to ask you some questions. I know it’s late, but may I come in?”

  Birnbaum hesitated. Maritz could almost see the wheels turning in his head and coming up dollar signs. Birnbaum stepped aside. “Have you had a loss?”

  Maritz entered the foyer and closed the door. He smiled. “Yes, I’ve had a loss. We need to talk about it.”

  Nell stood watching Michaela from the doorway of the kitchen. The woman’s arms were smeared with flour as she rolled out a circle of dough on the butcher block. Every movement was swift, graceful, economical.

  “You want something?” Michaela asked without looking up.

  Nell jumped. She said the first thing that came to her head. “What are you making?”

  “Biscuits.”

  “The ones we had for breakfast were wonderful.”

  “I know.”

  This wasn’t going to be easy. “You’re very busy.”

  Michaela nodded.

  “It’s very kind of you and your husband to let Peter stay with you at the ranch for a while.”

  “He won’t be in the way.” She put aside the rolling pin and began to cut out the biscuits. “If he’d been trouble, we wouldn’t have done it. Jean has no time for fools. The boy has the mind of a child, not a fool. Children can be taught.” The words were spoken as crisply as the movement of the cutter in the dough. “Now, what do you want?”

  “Your face.”

  Michaela’s gaze lifted. “I’d say yours was good enough.”

  “I mean … I’d like to sketch you.”

  Michaela began to put the biscuits into a pan. “I’ve no time for posing.”

  “I could sketch you while you’re working. I might not need you very much at first.”

  Michaela didn’t speak for a moment. “You’re an artist?”

  “Not really. I don’t have the time. I do it only when I’m not—” She stopped as she realized she was automatically giving the same answer she had given everyone before Medas. But there was no Jill or Richard to occupy her time now. She smothered the jab of pain. “Yes, I’m an artist.” The words sounded strange and lonely to her own ears.

  Michaela studied her and then nodded curtly. “Sketch away. Just don’t get in my way.”

  Nell didn’t give her a chance to change her mind. “I’ll go get my sketch pad.”

  “I’m not going to stay still.”

  “I’ll work around you …”

  It was easier said than done, she realized after an hour of trying to capture Michaela’s features. The woman was never still. For a woman whose face had the serenity of a Nefertiti, she was a dynamo of energy. After discarding several full-face sheets in despair, Nell decided to concentrate on one feature at a time. She started on those deepset eyes.

  That was better. She was getting it. Maybe she could combine the features later.…

  “Why are you here?”

  Nell looked up. It was the first time Michaela had spoken for over an hour. “I’m just visiting.”

  Michaela shook her head. “Nicholas said you were staying through the winter. That’s not a visit.”

  “I’ll try not to be a bother to you.”

  “If Nicholas wants you here, I’ll put up with a little bother.”

  “Nicholas said that you and Jean belonged here more than he did.”

  “We do, but he’s getting there. He needs only a little more seasoning.”

  “Seasoning?”

  Michaela shrugged. “I think it’s hard for him to belong anywhere, but he wants it. We’ll see.”

  “You want him to stay?”

  She nodded. “He understands us and lets us go our way. The next owner might be stupid and untrainable.”

  She smiled. “And you’re training Nicholas?”

  “Of course. He’s not difficult. He has great strength of mind and will. He will meld with this country, given time.”

  “I’d think strength of will would keep one from melding.”

  “This land is strong. It doesn’t like weaklings.” She looked at Nell. “It chews them up and spits them out.”

  Her pencil stopped in mid-motion. “You think I’m a weakling?”

  “I don’t know. Are you?”

  “No.”

  “Then you have nothing to worry about.”

  “You don’t want me here, do you?”

  “It doesn’t matter to me if you’re here.” She took the biscuits out of the oven. “As long as you don’t try to take Nicholas away. Talk to him. Smile at him. Sleep with him.” She set the pan on the butcher block. “But when you go, leave him here.”

  She felt a ripple of shock. “I don’t intend to sleep with him. That’s not why I came.”

  Michaela shrugged. “It will happen. He’s a man and you’re closer than the women in town.” She took a spatula and gently pried the biscuits from the pan. “And you’re the kind of woman
who would stir a man.”

  “He doesn’t see me like that.”

  “All men see women like that. It’s their first reaction. It’s only later that they see us as people with minds as well as bodies.”

  “And he’s the only one who has anything to say about it?”

  “You like to look at him. You watch him.”

  Did she? Dammit, of course she looked at him. He was a man who drew attention. He had stood out like a lighthouse in that crowded ballroom. “That doesn’t mean anything. There’s nothing between us.”

  “If you say so.” She turned away. “I’ve no more time to talk. It’s nearly lunchtime. I have to get this food on the table.”

  Nell breathed a sigh of relief. Michaela was entirely wrong, but the conversation had been disconcerting. “May I help? I could set the table.”

  “No.” She opened the cabinet and took down the plates. “But you can go to the stable and get Nicholas.”

  Nell set her sketchbook down and hopped off the stool. “Right away.”

  Nicholas was grooming a bay stallion when she entered the stable. She stopped just inside the door. “Lunch is ready.”

  “I’ll be there in a minute.”

  She watched him as he brushed the stallion with long, clean strokes. He did everything with that same power and clean economy, she thought. He was dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt and he looked totally at home doing the menial task. If she hadn’t known better, she would have assumed he’d been born to it. It was hard to connect the Tanek on Medas to this man.

  He didn’t look up. “You’re very quiet. What are you thinking?”

  “That you do that very well. Do you know a lot about horses?”

  He smiled. “I’m learning. I’d never seen any horse before I came here but the ones the British moguls at the polo club rode.”

  “You belonged to the polo club?”

  “Not likely. I was a dishwasher in the kitchens when I was a boy.”

  “I can’t see you as a dishwasher.”

  “No? I looked on it as a step up. My job before that was scrubbing floors in the whorehouse where my mother worked.”

  “Oh.”

  He looked over his shoulder. “What a polite little exclamation. Did I embarrass you?”

  “No, but I—” She was stammering, she realized in annoyance. “It’s none of my business. I didn’t mean to intrude.”

  “No intrusion. I scarcely knew my mother. I was closer to the other whores than I was to her. She was an American hippie who came to China to seek the true light. Unfortunately, the only light she saw was when she was stoned. So she stayed stoned. She died of an overdose when I was six.”