Ride a Painted Pony (Superromance)

by McSparren, Carolyn

  He raised an eyebrow. “I didn’t mean you weren’t competent.” He leaned forward and rested his elbows on the desk in front of him. The sleeves of his sweatshirt rode up to reveal muscular forearms feathered with dark hair. “Ten of my signed pieces have been stolen, maybe more. I don’t have a complete inventory of my stuff. As mine, they’d sell for ten to fifteen thousand dollars. With fake provenance claiming them to be real antiques, they could bring upwards of fifty thou. A few years back a genuine Illions went at auction for over a hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars. Multiply that by ten, and you’ll have some idea of the scope. It may not be cocaine, but it ain’t chicken feed. When that kind of money’s involved, things can get rough.”

  Bigger than either she or Mel had thought.

  “It should have been simple to trace the fake hippocampus Pete Marley bought,” Kendall continued. “Unfortunately before I could talk to Helmut Eberhardt—the owner of the antique shop in Oxford that sold it—Eberhardt was killed.”

  For a moment Taylor thought she hadn’t heard him properly. Then, as his words registered, she strained forward in her chair. The hair rose on the back of her neck as though the door behind her had blown open. One hint of murder and Mel Borman would yank her straight back to the office. He said P.I.’s didn’t mess with murder unless the defense hired them to check evidence after the suspect was arrested and indicted. “Killed? Murdered?”

  Kendall shook his head. “A fire. The Oxford cops called it an accident.”

  She relaxed. Mel Borman wouldn’t mutate into Papa Bear over a simple accident. Maybe she wouldn’t tell him. But that would never work. He invariably knew when she was lying or covering up. “Private detectives spend most of their time on routine tasks, Mr. Kendall, going over the same territory again and again, talking to people until something doesn’t fit. Philip Marlowe and Sam Spade don’t exist. If it were dangerous, I wouldn’t be doing it and neither would Mel. That’s what cops are for.”

  She changed the subject before Kendall could delve any more thoroughly into her experience or lack of it. “We have a more immediate problem.”

  “What might that be?”

  “Mel said I was supposed to go undercover as one of your carvers. I can’t hit a nail with a hammer. Fingernails grow back eventually—fingers don’t. This place is crawling with power tools. I even saw a couple of chain saws. That woman with the rabbit had a chisel in her hand sharp enough to slice marble.”

  Kendall tipped his chair back on two legs and balanced it against the wall behind him. He chuckled.

  Taylor felt that damn tingle again. Kendall’s voice was deep and smooth. The wavy black hair just going gray at the temples, and the unusually large complement of even white teeth, added to his Big Bad Wolf impression. She concentrated on his nose—broken more than once from the looks of it. Dark, dangerous. The better to eat you with. This was the kind of man Mel usually tried to protect her from.

  “Three-quarters of the people who sign up at Rounders have never touched a power tool or a chisel,” he said. “Half of them are women over fifty. I’ve got a lady who flies in from Arizona one weekend a month to work on her jumper. She’s seventy-seven and weighs maybe eighty pounds. Before she started her horse, her idea of a power tool was the emery board her manicurist used. If I could teach her, I can teach you. You look pretty tough.”

  “Not against a power saw.”

  “Maybe we can find some other cover for you.”

  “It’s the perfect excuse to hang around and talk to everyone. Mel says no matter how bizarre the situation is, somebody always knows what’s really going on. It’s just a matter of asking the right person the right question. I’d just like to wind up the assignment with the same number of fingers I start with. I’d like to take it slow.”

  He frowned at her. “How are you at taking it fast?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “You have exactly ten days to find out who stole my animals.”

  She gaped at him. “What if it takes longer?”

  Nick shrugged. “Then I have to cough up thirty-five thousand big ones to Pete Marley, the guy who bought the fake. I don’t have it.”

  “But you didn’t sell him a fake.”

  Nick leaned forward. “Listen, I live or die by my reputation. There are a lot of crooks in the carousel business; it’s a tight little community. Right now everybody trusts me. I do what I say I’ll do, when I say I’ll do it. Period. If Marley doesn’t get his money back within ten days, he’s going public with the fraud. I can’t afford that.”

  “But that’s unfair. Mel says Marley’d never have known the horse was a fake if you hadn’t pointed it out to him.”

  “Marley’s mad as hell about being taken. He was ready to fly to Mississippi and kill Eberhardt himself, but by then the man was dead, and so was the only lead we had. Either I find out who stole the animal so that Marley can get the money from him, or I pay it myself. I was lucky to get a two-week grace period.” He sounded grim.

  No wonder. “Won’t your liability insurance cover it?”

  Nick shook his head. “The hippocampus and the other animals I carved were never part of the Rounders inventory. They’re mine and not insured. The only way insurance would pay off is if I can prove that one of my partners is the thief. Rounders has partnership insurance against theft.” He sighed and sat back. Taylor had to strain to hear his next words. “That’s not possible.”

  “Why not?”

  “My partners wouldn’t steal from Rounders.”

  “Then who would?”

  “That’s the hell of it. It’s got to be one of the carvers. Nobody else would know about the animals. I can’t believe any of them would steal from me. They’re my friends, my family.”

  “They’re your students. They pay you to teach them to carve. Not the same thing.”

  “Why do I get the feeling you’re not enthusiastic about what we do here?”

  Taylor sighed. The man was a client. She didn’t want to offend him. Still, he’d asked. “I admit I’m biased. Seems like an awful lot of money to spend on toys.”

  “Some people consider them art.”

  “Some people think collages made out of rotting lettuce leaves and bent safety pins are art.”

  Kendall rubbed the back of his neck and raised an eyebrow. He opened his desk drawer, pulled out a slick magazine and tossed it across the desk. “Hardly rotting lettuce and safety pins. Go ahead, take a look.”

  Taylor thumbed through the magazine, not really focusing on any of the brightly colored creatures that gamboled across its pages. She couldn’t have said why one photo caught her eye. The big horse in the picture was covered with jeweled armor. Its short mane tossed in an invisible wind. It wore a jeweled leather bridle attached to a steel bit that pulled the corners of its mouth back to show its teeth. Lancelot must have ridden such a horse.

  She could imagine herself flying free and invincible on such a great horse.

  But this horse wouldn’t ever fly free. It could only move in a stately circle, three of its four feet forever anchored to a wooden platform, while a calliope tinkled in the background. No martial music; no herald trumpets. An immense sadness and sense of loss welled up in her. She dropped the open magazine on the desk.

  “You like him?” Kendall asked.

  Taylor shrugged.

  “Don’t kid me. I saw your face when you looked at him. Pure lust. I’ve seen it before.” He leaned across the table and whispered seductively, “You can build him.”

  Taylor reared back in her chair. He wasn’t a wolf, he was more like an oversize demon tempting her to exchange fingers for art. “Come on. Even if I had the skill and could avoid doing myself serious injury, something like that would take years to carve.”

  “If you’re willing to work, you can have him on his feet in two weeks.”

  “Now I know you’re crazy.” She stared at the shining horse—a warrior’s horse—out of the corner of her eye. It drew her straight back
into a childhood crammed with knights on horseback, Robin Hood, Odysseus, and Hannibal.

  She’d always resented Rowena in Ivanhoe and all those other wimpy heroines who stood around wringing their hands and either getting abducted like Guinevere or rescued like Maid Marion. She wanted to be the warrior in the books she read. But her brother Bradley always said girls couldn’t be warriors. Oh, yeah?

  She looked straight into Nick Kendall’s dark eyes. He raised one eyebrow and grinned at her. It was as though he could read her mind.

  “You can do it,” he said. “You picked a doozy of a horse, but if you work hard and let me help you, I promise you can do it.”

  For a moment she felt as though she could climb Everest for this man. She gulped. “I don’t have two weeks, remember. I have ten days. Not much time to spend on that.” Taylor slapped the magazine shut. Of its own volition her hand lingered on the magazine; she realized her thumb was still marking her place. “What the hell,” she said casually. “I’ve got to have something to work on if I’m going to stick around here. I can get started and then somebody else can finish.”

  His grin said that he knew she was hooked.

  She felt that telltale flush spread up her throat and into her face. “So how do we work it?”

  He sighed. Obviously he’d forgotten for the moment why she was here. “Normally you’d pay a fee for tuition and the raw wood we’re going to use to build your horse. In your case, of course, we’ll just let everyone assume you’ve paid. You will have to buy a set of chisels and one of those small handheld drills with the interchangeable grinders and cutters. You can charge them as expenses I’m paying Mel and leave them behind when the job is done.”

  Taylor nodded. She slid the satchel from her shoulder, dug around in it and came up with a miniature tape recorder. “I find it’s easier to get the details on tape. Then I can transcribe my notes later. Okay with you?”

  Kendall shook his head. “Not now. We’ve already been in here too long. Most people who come to Rounders are so pumped up to get started they can’t wait to get their checkbooks out and choose their animals. You’ve already picked your animal, but if you’re going to be a regular pupil, we’ll have to get you started immediately.”

  “Can I have a moment alone with my fingers? I need to say good-bye.”

  “The sharpest tool you’ll use today is a grease pencil. You’re going to trace that horse, then we project the tracing onto a large piece of paper on the wall and you trace that. Then you glue up the wood for the body and legs. You won’t be carving anything for a couple of days.”

  “With luck, maybe this will be wrapped up by then.”

  His face went dark. “Yeah. Sure.”

  He stood, and so did she. “Look,” he said, “we’re supposed to close at six, but Veda generally stays late.”

  “How come she’s the only one out there?”

  “It’s Monday. You should have been here Saturday and Sunday.”

  “You’re open seven days a week?”

  “I have an apartment upstairs. I’m not always down here but I’m usually available.”

  Taylor sat on the edge of the desk and stuck her Nikes out in front of her. “Let me get this straight. You leave a bunch of perfect strangers down here for hours at a time?” She shook her head. He really didn’t have the first clue about security. “I’m surprised you’ve got a single power tool left. No wonder they stole your animals.”

  He had the grace to flush. “I told you, they’re family. Nobody even steals a cup of coffee. This is the first time in the five years we’ve been open that anything has been taken.”

  Taylor didn’t believe that for a second, but she could see from the set look around his mouth that he did—and would fight her if she suggested otherwise.

  “If you’re free tonight we could go someplace for dinner, then we can come back here. I’ll give you the whole story and the grand tour in private. That way you won’t have to pretend to be gaga over carousel animals.”

  She shook her head. “No dinner, thanks. I can come back tonight, however.”

  He nodded and opened the door. “Come on. Bring the magazine.”

  Taylor realized her hand still lay on the cover. She picked up the magazine and followed Nick into the warehouse.

  “WELL, OLLIE, HERE’S ANOTHER fine mess you’ve gotten me into,” Taylor said into the telephone.

  Mel Borman’s rumble—his nearest approach to laughter—vibrated down the line.

  “All your appendages intact?”

  “So far. My neck hurts, I’ve got writer’s cramp, and there’s grease pencil embedded under my fingernails. I don’t know a damn thing more than I did this morning except that tracing is not my long suit.” She outlined the day and reported her conversations. “I came home to feed Elmo and take a shower, then I’m going back for a nice long chat with Kendall and a guided tour.”

  “What do you think of him?”

  “I think he’s a certifiable lunatic with a deadly combination of male hormones, charisma and a holy mission.”

  “What mission?”

  “He wants the entire population of the United States to carve knockoffs of wooden animals originally intended to entertain children, and to treat them as though they were each the Mona Lisa.”

  “I like ’em.”

  “Fine. For grandchildren on Sunday afternoon. Not as the Holy Grail.”

  “They’re fun, Taylor. People have fun carving them and looking at them. You remember that word fun?”

  “From another lifetime.” Taylor massaged the sore muscles at the back of her neck. “If what I did today is your idea of fun, I’d rather have a root canal.”

  “They’re also big business and big money. Or at least Nick Kendall’s are. In the world of carousel animals, his are the Mona Lisa.”

  “So I’ve been told. I’ll let you know tonight after I’ve seen them whether or not I agree.”

  “Who cares if you agree? Collectors are paying upwards of fifty big ones for animals that they think are original. Kendall’s are probably every bit as good as the originals except that they were carved twenty years ago rather than a hundred. The man has an international reputation to protect, and whether you like them or not, he’s paying us to protect it.”

  “Oh, boy, do I know that.”

  “You might have fun learning to do it yourself.”

  “There’s that word again. Fun. You’re paying me to do a job, not to have fun. Mel, there’s something hinky about the setup.”

  “Hinky? You sound like a real cop.”

  Taylor propped the phone between her shoulder and cheek and rummaged in the kitchen junk drawer until she found an orange wood stick, then began to dig the grease pencil from under her nails. “Thanks, I think. He hired us to find out who stole his animals; I get the feeling he’d rather not know.”

  “Not surprising. He’s got to realize it’s an inside job.”

  “But the carvers are just students paying for the privilege of using the warehouse. Why would he want to protect them? If one of his partners is guilty, his insurance pays off. I’d think he’d want to find the rotten apple.”

  “Maybe he knows who did it.”

  “And doesn’t want to be certain,” Taylor said. Should she tell Borman about Helmut Eberhardt’s death? She took a deep breath. “Mel...”

  “What?” he asked.

  “Nothing.”

  Elmo wound himself around her ankles. She picked up the cat and set him on the kitchen counter beside her. “The place is a sieve, Mel. Carvers drift in, carve a while, drift out, and may not be back for weeks or months. Nobody checks in. Nobody disturbs their stuff. Nobody keeps to a schedule, Kendall least of all. He’s turned the top floor of the warehouse into a loft apartment so he’s always available if a carver needs help. This comes from the only carver I’ve met, a semi-retired nurse practitioner named Veda Albright who’s been working on this damn six-foot rabbit for six months and thinks Nick Kendall is a combination of
the Dalai Lama and Michaelangelo. I suspect they all do. He’s the rarest kind of con man—women fall in love with him, men respect him. You obviously do, and you’re a tough sell.”

  “Yeah, I like the guy.” Borman grumbled a moment. “You gonna fall in love with him?”

  “Absolutely, positively not in this lifetime. No thanks. The next time around for me—if there is a next time—I want a tubby, balding CPA with glasses. Mel, the man worships carousels the way Druids worship oaks. He has built his career on objects that play loud music, flash lights, and are filled with wooden animals painted garish colors that go around in circles and never ever get anywhere. And most of them were built before nineteen-twenty.”

  “Don’t lose track of the essential point, Taylor. Somebody went to a great deal of trouble to steal the things. Watch your back. And don’t trust anybody—including Kendall. It’s just possible he’s behind this himself.”

  “Why would he hire us?”

  “Double bluff. Trying to protect his reputation. Insurance? Who knows? Just don’t trust him too far.”

  “Mel, dear, you’ve taught me well. I don’t even trust you too far.”

  “Thank you very much, Ms. Hunt. Call me the minute you get home after this meeting, no matter how late.”

  “Yes, mother.”

  As Taylor hung up, Elmo rowled at her in his deep Siamese voice. Absently, Taylor ran her hand along his sleek golden side and scratched behind his dark ears. He continued to berate her for his empty food dish.

  “You’re an unforgiving so-and-so,” she told him, leaning down so that he could butt his triangular head against her cheek. She scooped him up, draped him around her neck like a feather boa, then dropped him on the couch. She poured dry cat food into one side of his dish and dumped a can of his favorite canned liver into the other. Elmo dug in.

  Then she fixed herself a tuna sandwich.

  Elmo protested. Filled cat dish or no, any available tuna was supposed to go down his gullet, not hers. She ignored him, cleaned up the kitchen and padded barefoot across the brick floor into the bathroom under her sleeping loft. In the large closet attached to the bathroom, she peeled off her clothes and dropped them into the hamper in a pouf of dust. Elmo sneezed daintily and regarded her with malevolent blue eyes.