Ride a Painted Pony (Superromance)

by McSparren, Carolyn

  “Dammit, Taylor, you don’t make that kind of judgment. I do.”

  “Danny, back off, okay? I don’t have to talk to you at all. Not without a lawyer.” She heard her voice from far away.

  “Hey, this isn’t an interrogation, sweet cheeks, it’s merely an interview.” He cocked his head to stare at her. “You okay?”

  She nodded. “Why does everybody keep asking me that? I’m fine. Just fine.”

  “Right. If you say so.” He glanced at Nick, who slouched against the wall by the office. “So how well do you know this man?”

  “Met him today.” Taylor glanced at her watch. One-thirty in the morning. “Yesterday.”

  “You sure he didn’t kill her?”

  She pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes and took a deep breath. She felt as though she’d been running for hours. “Look, Danny, from what I’ve seen today, this place is Swiss cheese. I’ll bet you found the loading dock doors and the back stairway unlocked. Am I right?”

  “Yes.” Vollmer perched on one of the other tables, then grimaced when his hand touched the thin film of sawdust that covered it. Taylor laughed. Danny spent most of his salary on Gucci loafers and the occasional Armani suit. She watched him stand and, fastidiously as a cat, brush off his immaculate slacks and Benetton sweater.

  He had the grace to smile and shrug. “Place is a firetrap.”

  “No, it’s not.” Taylor pointed overhead. “Sprinklers. Extinguishers every ten feet around the wall. No Smoking signs everywhere. Electrical panel box back by the rear exit. All very safe.” She dug her fingers into the knotted muscles at the back of her neck. She wanted to go home, to bed, to sleep for a week. “She was killed here?”

  “With all that blood? What do you think? Assuming Kendall was upstairs, would he have heard someone come in?”

  “I have no idea. He’s got the freight elevator closed off in his apartment. The walls are old and thick. Who was she?”

  Danny shook his head. “No purse, no ID. Why would anyone be back there?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Okay. Sit. Wait. Don’t interfere. I’m going to go talk to this Kendall. Hell, he didn’t need to stab the woman. He could just break her in half and throw away the pieces.”

  Taylor worked her bottom farther back on the table so that her feet came off the ground. She’d have to stay alert while Danny questioned Nick. He had no idea what a tenacious little devil Danny could be when aroused. And Nick would irritate him by his sheer size. Taylor knew how deeply Danny resented big people. He’d told her that one afternoon as they lazed in bed over the Sunday Times. He’d admitted she was the tallest woman he’d ever made love to.

  He said he’d come down here because of her. After eight months apart, she prayed that didn’t mean he still cared about her.

  Kendall leaned against the wall with his hands in his pockets. He looked as tired as she felt. The strong bones surrounding his eyes seemed more prominent; there was a tinge of blue in the hollows of his temples. His broken nose cast an irregular shadow on his cheek, and he had the beginnings of black stubble along his jawline. For all his size, Taylor thought he looked terribly vulnerable. She wanted to go to him, to reassure him that everything would be all right.

  No. She wanted to slip into the curve of those brawny arms of his and let him do the reassuring. Her head would fit comfortably in the hollow of his shoulder... Not at all a professional reaction for an up-and-coming private investigator.

  She sat up and blinked. What she felt was exhaustion, delayed shock—whatever. Maybe even a flashback.

  Murder tilted the world on its axis, screwed up the geometry. She’d found that out when Danny told her Paul had been killed. Nick didn’t understand that yet, but he would. God help him.

  NICK KENDALL TRIED TO CONCENTRATE on Vollmer’s questions. He should be feeling sympathy or grief or horror. Instead he felt bewildered. The body hadn’t looked as though it could ever have been human. It seemed to belong among the wooden animals. Even the blood seemed fake.

  He’d seen death in the army. But Rounders was a sanctuary. Violence shouldn’t be able to intrude here.

  In the hours since he’d discovered the body, his mind had written and rewritten a scenario in which the dead woman was a vagrant—a stray killed by a stranger who picked Rounders by chance and convenience.

  It wouldn’t wash. When he’d touched her wrist, he felt cashmere. And when he’d stooped to pick up one black leather pump that had fallen onto the floor, Taylor had stopped him before he touched it and left fingerprints, but he could tell it was well cared for and expensive.

  The woman had come here or been brought here for a purpose. Someone with a key had let her in, taken her to the one place her body would be likely to stay hidden for a while, killed her, and gone away again. Easy enough to come back later and remove the body before it began to smell.

  The killer knew Rounders. Knew the storeroom was seldom visited.

  He looked at Taylor. She smiled at him as though the two of them were the only people in the room. In a sense, they were. They were bound by their discovery.

  He felt himself draw strength from her presence. She couldn’t have discovered many dead bodies, but she hadn’t screamed or thrown up. There was a moment when he thought she was going to faint, but she’d wrenched away, dialed 9-1-1, and stared out the window until the first squad car arrived.

  “Excuse me?” He pulled his attention back to the detective, shaking his head as the question was repeated. “I have no idea who she is or why she was here. I didn’t hear anyone come in this evening, but then I probably wouldn’t.”

  “Not even if they used the elevator?”

  “Probably not even then. It’s behind a wall in my apartment. Doesn’t make much noise. And I had a CD on.”

  “When did you lock up?”

  “The last carver left about six-thirty. Veda wanted to finish carving her rose, so I stayed with her and gave her a hand.”

  “Did you lock the loading dock?”

  “Never opened it. Haven’t been down there for three or four days. To the best of my knowledge it was locked, but I can’t swear to it.”

  “Who has keys?”

  This was the question he’d been dreading. He realized he was the obvious suspect. It was to his advantage to implicate as many others as possible. Still, he felt his words were a betrayal. “My partners, Max Beaumont and Josh Chessman.”

  “And you, of course.”

  “Of course. But there’s a complete set on a key hook in the office in case any of the carvers need them.”

  Vollmer stared at him. “Anybody? My God, Taylor wasn’t exaggerating when she said this place was Swiss cheese.”

  Taylor. Not “Ms. Hunt.” Nick glanced over at the table where Taylor sat with her elbows on her knees. Her unwavering eyes stared back into his. How well did these two know one another? He looked at Vollmer more closely and felt the man’s antipathy. He was surprised to realize he returned it.

  Nick hunched his shoulders, felt his stomach muscles tighten. “We’re all friends at Rounders. The place is locked up at night.”

  “Ready to be unlocked with a key anyone could have copied during the day.” Vollmer ran his hands through his thick hair, then moved aside to study his reflection in the window of the office behind him. After a moment he swiveled to peer at the rest of the room. “Hell, you got power tools? Stuff that would be easy to fence?”

  “Nothing missing so far as I can tell.”

  “Right.” Vollmer sighed. “These partners—give me addresses and telephone numbers. And any carvers who were here today.”

  “Is there a car out back?”

  “Why?”

  Nick leaned his head back against the windows and closed his eyes. His eyes burned from the dust that he ignored during the day. He couldn’t get the smell of wood glue and old blood out of his nostrils. God, he was tired. “No woman’s going to walk these streets after dark alone. Either she drove hersel
f or somebody drove her.”

  “Only Taylor’s truck’s out front,” Vollmer said. Both men turned to look at her.

  She raised her hands. “I didn’t walk, Danny. Three steps from the truck to the door, period. And I made sure Nick was watching me from upstairs when I did it.”

  “Okay,” Vollmer said, and turned back to Nick. “There’s a big blue truck by the loading dock that says Rounders Unlimited on the side. That yours?”

  Nick nodded. “No other car?”

  Vollmer shook his head. “So, you mind if we check out your truck?”

  “You don’t have to let him,” Taylor interjected. “Not without a warrant. It’s technically outside the crime scene.”

  Vollmer looked daggers at her. “Get your J. D. when you got your P.I. license, did you?” He turned back to Kendall. “Unless you got something to hide...”

  “Go ahead,” Nick said. He’d noted that Vollmer recognized Taylor’s truck instantly. He glanced at her. She had moved the pig’s head to a corner of its table and now leaned back on her hands. God, what a body the woman had. He felt his groin tighten. Amazing how lust could override even fear and exhaustion. He glanced at Vollmer, who played once more to his reflection in the office window. Vain little bastard, he thought, and glanced over at Taylor.

  The track lighting had turned Taylor’s cropped hair into a shining bronze helmet. Her gray eyes beneath their dark brows were in shadows. Suddenly he wanted to see into those eyes, see what she was thinking, know whether she was watching him or watching Vollmer.

  Vollmer said abruptly, “That’s it for you for tonight. I’ll want to talk to Mr. Kendall some more after we finish working the crime scene.” He turned towards Taylor. “You’ll be going straight home, am I right?”

  Taylor slid off the table. “I want to speak to my client, then you can have one of your guys see me to my car. Suddenly, this doesn’t seem like the safest neighborhood.”

  “Talk to your client tomorrow. And I’ll see you to your car.”

  Taylor caught Nick’s eyes.

  “The lady is my guest, detective. I’ll see her to her car.” He heard Vollmer’s exasperated snort.

  Nick followed Taylor down the stairs and out into the damp autumn air. Patchy fog grasped at them. The asphalt shone like molten tar in the light that spilled from the open door. Taylor gulped the chill air gratefully.

  “I’m sorry about all this,” said Nick.

  “Why? You didn’t kill the woman, did you?”

  “Sure. I try to kill a woman a week. Keeps my creative juices flowing.”

  She touched his arm. “Sorry, that was a stupid remark. I guess I’m more uptight than I thought I was.”

  “This the first time you’ve seen a dead body?” Nick asked.

  “Of course not,” she lied, trying to echo his tone. “I try to see a dead body a week. I’ve got creative juices too, you know.” She added briskly, “I’ll call Mel from the car. You realize you’ll probably have reporters calling?”

  “Yeah. This changes everything.”

  “How?” She could guess what he planned to say and did not want to hear it.

  He waited while Taylor unlocked her door, climbed in and fastened her seat belt. Then he said, “I can’t have you mixed up in murder.”

  “I’m already about as mixed as I can get. Even if you fire me, I’m still involved. And I hope you don’t fire me because I need the job.”

  “Vollmer’s not going to like that.”

  “The hell with Vollmer.”

  “Will you be all right? How far away do you live?”

  “The other side of Collierville.” She shook her head. “I drive it every day. I could drive it in my sleep.”

  “Don’t try that tonight.”

  She smiled and turned the key. “See you tomorrow morning.”

  Nick watched her taillights until they disappeared beyond the railroad trestle and out of sight. She was a new experience for him. He liked women in his bed, but they weren’t central to his existence. He certainly never relied on them for anything important. But he suspected Taylor Hunt would honor her commitments, no matter where they led.

  That might not be good for either of them.

  TAYLOR BEGAN TO SHAKE as she hit the city limits. She fought nausea until she found a well-lighted all-night gas station, pulled in and cut her engine. The car felt stifling and her sweaty palms slid on the steering wheel. She knew she shouldn’t open her window even in this relatively safe location, but she knew if she didn’t get some fresh air, she was going to throw up.

  She realized suddenly that the sour odor of dried blood clung to the inside of her truck. She looked at her hands. She’d washed them but, like Lady MacBeth, she could still feel the spots of blood burning on her palms. She sniffed. They smelled like Ivory soap.

  Her shoes. She’d slid in the blood. The crosshatching on the soles of her Nikes must still carry traces. Frantically, she bent to pull them off. She’d throw them in the open back of the truck and drive home in her bare feet. Anything to get away from that smell.

  A yellow slip of pasteboard was stuck to her right sole, glued there by traces of dark blood. It must have been on the floor near the body. It could only have adhered to the sole of her sneaker after she stepped in the woman’s blood, but before it dried.

  She pulled off the pasteboard, turned on the overhead light and saw that it was a valet parking slip from The Peabody hotel, stamped at 6:45 tonight.

  She caught her breath. According to Nick, no one from Rounders would have been in the storeroom at that time, so the slip probably belonged either to the dead woman or to her killer. The dead woman did not look like the sort of person who would drive casually into the Rounders neighborhood if she could get someone else to drive her. In this case she picked the wrong chauffeur—her killer. The chances were good that the car that belonged to the ticket also belonged to the corpse.

  The Peabody was notoriously strict about letting cars go without parking tickets, particularly for valet parking. If the car had left the valet parking lot, the attendant would have kept the parking slip. That car still had to be there unless someone—probably the killer—had raised an almighty stink to get it out. And no killer in his right mind would do that, would he—or she? And risk identification?

  For a moment Taylor considered driving straight back to Rounders to give the slip to Danny.

  But only for a moment. She told herself she might have picked that slip up anywhere—anywhere, that is, after she stepped in blood. All right, and before the blood dried. So maybe she was fudging. Her first loyalty was to her case and to her client.

  Taylor threw her shoes through the back hatch of her truck into the bed, and drove off. She felt considerably better and only slightly guilty.

  She called Mel Borman from her car phone and offered no apology for waking him up. After he heard about the murder, he didn’t ask for one. Taylor concentrated on her driving, speaking into the car mike that hung from the sun visor. She knew Borman hated the tinny sound, but she needed both hands on the wheel. She clicked off her brights to accommodate an oncoming truck.

  “One more thing.”

  “Here it comes. I knew there was something you weren’t telling me.”

  “You know me too well.” Taylor clicked her brights on and negotiated a sweeping curve down the narrow sunken road. “I just found something.”

  “One of these days, Taylor, I’m going to be visiting you in jail or identifying your body. I don’t look forward to either eventuality.”

  “Never happen. Listen, you old bear.” She concentrated on avoiding the pin oaks and scrub locusts encroaching on the shoulder. The road was treacherous in the daytime; at night it was an obstacle course. She told Mel about the ticket. “Should I take it back to Vollmer right now?”

  Silence. Then Mel said, “Check it out first, then make sure he discovers it. Could be nothing. You have no way of knowing where you picked it up. Your shoes stayed wet for some time.”
r />   She let out a contented sigh. “Danny will be wild.”

  “Yeah. But he can’t do much about it.”

  “Okay,” Taylor said, “first thing tomorrow I’m going to find out if that car is still there. If it is, I’ll get it out, take it down to Mud Island, and go over it with a fine-tooth comb. Can you meet me?”

  “I’ve got a meeting at eight.”

  “Then I’ll ask Kendall. He might recognize something I don’t.”

  “Taylor, he’s the obvious suspect in this thing. Remember Occam’s razor.”

  Taylor laughed. “Yeah, yeah, yeah. Your favorite theorem. ‘Keep it simple, stupid.’ The obvious solution is usually the correct one. I remember. But somehow, I don’t think the obvious suspect is the correct one in this case. Nick seemed genuinely stunned.”

  “Still, watch your back.”

  “That’s what I’ve got you for.” She turned the wheel. “Damn. Mel, I’ve just remembered something else. A car nearly ran into me as I turned into the Rounders parking lot. Going fast.”

  “How long before you discovered the body?”

  “Maybe half an hour. The timing works out. The blood was congealing but still wet when we found the body.”

  “What about the car? Get a license number?”

  Taylor snorted. “I wish. No license number, no model, no color. Just know it’s a car and not a truck or van.”

  “You tell Vollmer?”

  “I told you I just remembered,” Taylor said. She sighed wearily and turned into her driveway. “I’m home and I’m whipped. I’m not going to get more than four hours’ sleep. I’ll let you know what we find. Good night, you old grizzly.”

  “Taylor, this is murder. I ought to yank your butt out of there.”

  “My butt stays where it is until I find out who stole those horses.”

  Before Mel could answer, Taylor hit the “end” button on her car phone.

  She punched in the code that opened the heavy iron gate at the top of her lane. The gates swung open silently. She drove through, hit the button on the clicker and waited while they closed behind her. Behind these gates she was even safe from her mother and her brother—at least until they wormed the gate code out of her again. She shrugged. She’d change it the minute that happened.