Ride a Painted Pony (Superromance)

by McSparren, Carolyn

  “YOU’RE EARLY,” said Max Beaumont. He stood aside to let Nick into his front hall.

  “Needed to talk to you before Josh got here.” With an ease born of long familiarity, Nick walked to the sunporch at the back of the house and dropped into a white wicker armchair.

  Max followed and took a seat opposite him. “Want a beer?”

  “Later, maybe.” Nick ran a hand down his face. “Vollmer thinks I killed that woman.”

  “You didn’t, did you?”

  “Hell! Of course not. I didn’t know who she was until this morning.”

  Max picked up on his statement instantly. “This morning? Last I heard, the police didn’t have any idea who she was.”

  “It’s a long story. I’m sure it’ll be on the evening news. She was Clara Eberhardt, Helmut Eberhardt’s wife.”

  Nick expected a reaction, but not the one he got. Max surged up from the couch as though he’d been shot out of a mortar. “Clara Eberhardt? Clara Fields Eberhardt?”

  Nick looked up at him, puzzled at his distress. “Yeah. Car registration said her maiden name was Fields. How’d you know?”

  Max dropped back onto the couch. “Last week when you asked me to check on Eberhardt, I found out he’d married Clara Fields.”

  “So?”

  “She was at Ole Miss when I was there as an ROTC instructor back in the seventies. I not only knew her, I slept with her.”

  “God.” Nick stared at Max. “You didn’t identify her picture.”

  “When I knew her, she had bushy red hair to her waist and bangs to the bridge of her nose. She was twenty pounds overweight and still wore love beads—the last of the long-haired hippies. Apparently at some point she married Eberhardt, dropped the weight, and turned into a society matron. Before last week I hadn’t thought of her in years.”

  “I thought you were married when you were at Ole Miss.”

  Max shrugged ruefully. “Clara is part of the reason I’m not married any longer. After Vietnam, I laid every female I could con into bed with me. Sarah tried to be sympathetic, but eventually she stopped forgiving me for post-traumatic stress disorder and blew her stack over straightforward marital infidelity. Can’t blame her. That’s when she took Michael, moved to California and divorced me.”

  In the week since he’d discovered the theft of his animals, Nick had made no connection between Helmut Eberhardt and anyone at Rounders. Here it was.

  He knew how much Max had hated losing his family, hated the distance—emotional as well as physical—between him and his son Michael. He’d never even seen his grandson, Michael Junior.

  Could Max have run into Clara after all these years? Met Eberhardt through her? He remembered the force and pinpoint accuracy of that thrust into Clara’s throat. Max knew how to kill, no doubt had killed in the course of his twenty-five years as an artillery officer.

  Max always said that his killing had been long-range, that he’d never had to see the faces or the bodies of the dead. But was that accurate? There’d been plenty of hand-to-hand in the jungles of Vietnam.

  Nick and Max had often told one another that their military careers had made them more peaceable. But was that true? If Clara Eberhardt presented a direct threat, would Max have reverted? After all, he had thirty years of orchestrated violence in his background.

  “I need a beer,” Max said.

  “Yeah, me too.” Nick watched his closest friend, his nearest ally, walk out of the sunroom into the kitchen. Max was over sixty now, but still strong and straight. From the back he looked like a man half his age. His shoulders and arms were still muscular. He could have picked Clara Eberhardt up like a child after he’d killed her.

  If so, he’d have been covered with her blood. What would he have done with the clothes?

  Nick shook the idea way. This was Max, not Jack the Ripper! He took the long neck Sam Adams from Max’s hand and drank deeply. Max sank once more onto the wicker couch and propped his feet, in their snow-white running shoes, on the glass coffee table between them.

  “You going to tell the cops you knew her?” Nick asked.

  Max shook his head. “Not if I don’t have to. Why borrow trouble?”

  “Tell Taylor.”

  Max snapped, “Surely you’re going to dump her.”

  Nick stopped with the bottle halfway to his lips. “Dump her? Why would I do that?”

  Max leaned forward and set his bottle on the table with a clunk. He began to draw circles on the glass with the condensation from the bottom of the bottle. “All right, all right.” He raised his eyes and Nick was surprised to see anger in them and in the set of his jaw.

  “I’m a little ticked off—no, make that mad as hell—that you went and hired that, that...uppity...woman without mentioning it to Josh and me.” Nick started to speak, but Max held up a hand. “We’re your partners, goddammit! You’re treating us like suspects—like we could be the ones who stole those animals.”

  Max’s sense of outrage seemed to be aimed more at Taylor than at Nick for hiring her. Nick felt a surge of irritation. “I wanted professional help because you damn well could have stolen them.”

  Max’s eyes widened.

  “All I know is that whoever stole those animals was familiar with Rounders. That includes all the carvers—and all my partners. And now that there’ve been two murders...”

  Max gaped. “What two?”

  “Hell, Max. Eberhardt’s death can’t be a coincidence. Somebody must have knocked the poor devil over the head and incinerated him to keep him from talking to me. You’re no fool. You must know that. If you didn’t before, Clara Eberhardt’s murder should have convinced you. It convinced me.”

  Once again anger flared behind Max’s eyes. Then he looked once more at the bottle on the table. He picked it up and drained it, then set it back carefully in the same wet ring. “Yeah.” He sounded tired. “Goddammit, Nick, you think I could do something like that to Rounders? To you? To Clara?”

  Waves of guilt swept over Nick. Not for the first time, he wondered if he should tell Max about the ten-day limit before he had to cough up thirty-five thousand dollars to reimburse Pete Marley for his hippocampus. He was sure Max would offer him the money—if he had it.

  Time enough for that if Borman and Taylor didn’t come up with the answer. “Hell, Max, you’ve got to see that as long as we don’t know who stole the animals, everybody’s a suspect. Vollmer even suspects me. We’re going to wind up hating each other unless we get this cleared up. We need Taylor. The cops aren’t going to give a good goddamn about carousel animals, but I think they’re the motive for these killings. Either they’ve all been sold, in which case sales records must exist, or they’re out there waiting to be sold.”

  “They burned up in the fire.”

  “You guessing?”

  Max glared at him. “Stands to reason. Marley bought the hippocampus at Eberhardt’s shop, right?”

  “Yeah, and according to him, it was the only one Eberhardt had. So either Eberhardt brought them all conveniently to the shop so his killer could destroy them, or they’re stored somewhere, or they’ve all been sold.” He leaned forward and let his forearms rest on his knees. He tried to relax, but he saw Max look at the cords in his hands. “Records exist. Even if the animals burned, records should be somewhere. If Eberhardt had them, he’d have kept them in a fireproof container. Or a bank box. Somewhere safe and secret. We’ve got to find them—and fast.”

  “Maybe the police already have.”

  “I doubt it.” Nick longed to tell Max about the wreck that had been made of the Eberhardt’s house. Again something warned him to keep his mouth shut.

  Both men jumped when the doorbell sounded. “That’s Josh,” Max said, and rose. Nick handed him the empty beer bottle on his way by.

  “My God, Nick, did you see the evening news? That woman, the one who was killed. She was married to Helmut Eberhardt.” Josh Chessman entered and collapsed onto the couch.

  Max shook his head at Nic
k. He obviously didn’t want Nick to tell Josh about his liaison with Clara at Ole Miss.

  For twenty minutes, the three friends discussed the problem without coming to any conclusions.

  Finally, Josh stopped in mid-sentence, peered at his watch, and headed for the door. “I’ve got to get home. We’re meeting the vice president and his wife at Amaranthus for dinner. Margery’s furious about all this, you know. She thinks it’ll hurt my chances to become vice provost when Hawkins retires in December.” He giggled. “You know Margery. Anything that ‘endangers my career’—” he imitated Margery’s syrupy southern society drawl “—is a personal affront to her.”

  “No doubt the woman got herself murdered at Rounders just to spike your career plans,” Max said acerbically.

  Josh looked at him in panic. “Oh, God, I didn’t mean that. But you know the only reason Margery let me invest in Rounders was because she thought my having a hobby made me seem well-rounded and less of a university grunt.”

  “We know, Josh,” Max said wearily.

  Impulsively, Josh laid a hand on Nick’s shoulder. “Don’t worry, Nick. I’m sure the police will sort it all out. We’re all behind you.” He scurried out and slammed the front door behind him.

  “Behind and well to the rear of the action,” Max said.

  “Is he scared of Margery or what?” Nick asked.

  “Petrified is more like it,” Max said. “Want another beer?”

  “No, thanks. I thought I’d take my Harley out. Need to clear my head.”

  “Anyplace special?”

  “Just out.”

  “If you say so.” Max uncapped his third beer. “I think your Ms. Hunt is in way over her head.”

  Nick bridled. “I’m paying Borman for her services. It’s not coming out of Rounders.”

  Max raised his hands. “Okay, okay.”

  Nick stood, and Max followed. “Taylor’s going to need to talk to everyone at Rounders about the animals. Can you see her tomorrow morning?”

  “If I must.”

  “Why don’t you like her?” Nick asked.

  “I don’t dislike her. She’s possibly competent and intelligent in routine matters. You obviously find her attractive. That might cause problems.”

  “I don’t see how. We have a professional relationship, period. Besides, she’s got one thing going for her that I don’t.”

  “Indeed?”

  “Yeah. Her judgment isn’t clouded by friendship.”

  MAX STOOD ON THE BACK STEPS and watched Nick unlock the garage door and roll out his Harley. It gleamed in the late-afternoon sunshine, a perfectly restored Flathead. A black fiberglass helmet with visor hung from the handlebars. Nick picked it up and slid it over his head, visor up. “I won’t stop when I bring it back,” he said. “I’ll just take the truck and go.”

  “I’ll probably be up working on those tiles in the living room. Why don’t you ring the bell if the lights are on.” Max sounded wistful.

  Nick glanced up at the house—mansion, really—its two-story Corinthian columns soaring. It was meant for parties, large families, children. Max must rattle around in it like some kind of ghost.

  “Maybe,” Nick said, and flipped his visor down. The Harley kicked on with a saber-tooth’s growl. Nick rolled up the driveway, accelerating sedately and well within the speed limit.

  Reflected in the side mirror, Max stood with his shoulders slumped, his hands in his pockets. For the first time, Nick thought he looked every one of his sixty-one years.

  CHAPTER SIX

  NICK REALIZED HE’D BEEN HEADING for Taylor’s address ever since he rolled the Harley out of Max’s garage. Max must have guessed. Apparently he resented any contact between Nick and Taylor.

  Nick turned on his headlamps in the gathering dusk and swooped along the sunken road Taylor had described. He knew these roads well, had probably passed her place a hundred times without ever realizing it.

  He hoped she was home alone. He knew she was a widow, but he had no idea how, or with whom, she spent her free time. She had a private life, after all. Vollmer or some other man might be with her.

  Why should he care about her private life? But he did care, did not want her to have a lover, some faceless male with every right to share her bed and her life.

  He felt an intense flare of heat in his loins at the thought of her face as it might look, staring up at him, eyes soft and unfocused with pleasure as he made love to her.

  The bike skidded on a piece of loose gravel so that he had to fight for control.

  At the rate he was going, he’d never make it to her house. He forced his mind back to the problem of Max’s attitude.

  Max did not normally dislike people at first meeting, but he certainly seemed to feel instant antipathy towards Taylor. It was more than her inexperience. Almost seemed like jealousy. Or fear.

  What was Max afraid of? A week ago Nick would have said he and Max knew everything there was to know about one another. Now he felt as though he’d spent the last hour with a stranger.

  He slowed for the curve, saw the small green road sign peaking out of a tangle of honeysuckle, turned left and began to search for Taylor’s address on a mailbox. When he found it and turned into the drive, he was startled to meet tall, sturdy iron gates set in thick, concrete pillars. Barbwire fences led away on both sides. Beyond the gates, a narrow gravel drive wound down an incline and curved left into darkness. From the road he couldn’t see the house. Loblolly pines festooned with wild vines pressed against either side of the drive. The whole area was thick with honey locust and old-growth oak trees. He wondered how Taylor’s guests notified her they’d arrived.

  He walked the bike close to the gates. Set into the left pillar was a sophisticated wireless callbox and keypad. Very impressive. He’d seen the same sort of thing on some of the executive mansions in Rivers Edge and Germantown when he was still doing custom cabinetry. He leaned over and tapped the intercom button. After a moment, he hit it again.

  “Yes?” Taylor sounded tinny and distant.

  “Hi. It’s Nick. I need to talk.”

  A moment’s silence, then he heard the buzzer sound on the gate. The two panels swung open softly. He put the bike into gear and rolled down the road towards her house. He splashed through a shallow ford, barely a trickle now after ten days without rain.

  The gates should have led to a mansion. Instead he found a low cabin that looked as though it had been constructed completely of old barn timbers and salvage. None of the windows matched. Even in the failing light, he could discern three different colors of metal roofing. The front door was a massively carved antique that belonged on an Arizona monastery.

  Taylor stood in the lighted doorway with her hands on her hips. Amazing, he thought. Not many women could look sexy in black sweats. Taylor managed.

  He turned off the engine and slipped the flattened soda can he carried off his handlebars. He held the bike one-handed and slid the can under the kickstand so it wouldn’t bury itself in the mud and pull the Harley over.

  “Very impressive,” Taylor said.

  “Yeah, like those gates.” He gestured over his shoulder. “Expecting an invasion?”

  “My uncle Mark left me this place. He was an assistant district attorney. He had the gates installed after a guy he’d convicted drove in and tried to take him hostage.” She shrugged. “At least I can count on my privacy.” She pointed to the motorcycle. “Really nice bike.”

  “Bought it in pieces. Spent two years redoing it. It lives in Max’s garage. There’s no place to keep it at Rounders.”

  “Come in.” She stood aside.

  The cabin consisted of one large room, perhaps thirty-by-forty, floored in old brick varnished to a high sheen. The rafters formed the ceiling, the timbers the walls. Against the back wall stood a galley kitchen with mismatched cabinets painted Chinese red. In the corner a small fire burned in a stone fireplace. To his right a ladder climbed to a sleeping loft. The area underneath it had been wal
led in to create what he assumed was a bathroom. Bookshelves crowded the available wall space.

  To his left, sat enough exercise equipment to start a small gym—weight bench, free weights, treadmill, stair climber—all top quality. No wonder she looked tough. She’d apparently been using them when he drove up. Under the light, he could see her hair was damp. He remembered that old southern adage his grandmother used to throw at him—men perspire, women glow.

  Taylor glowed all right. She pulled the white gym towel from around her neck and wiped her face. “Sorry,” she said, “I wasn’t expecting company.”

  He walked to the back of the room and stared into the darkness at the trees hugging the house. They might have been in the middle of the Amazon rain forest. No outside lights broke the darkness here.

  He turned back to look at this woman who obviously enjoyed her solitude, and started as his own full-length reflection stared back at him. A tall, ornate gilt pier mirror, totally at odds with the rest of the room, sat against the wall in front of him. Beside the mirror, the door to the bathroom was open to reveal gleaming white tile.

  He looked away from his reflection and spotted a computer in the shadowy corner beyond the exercise equipment. White desk, shelves, filing cabinets, scanner, laser printer and a big PC. Across its screen multi-colored fish swam languidly. “You use this as your office?” he asked.

  She shook her head. “Not usually, but I can if I have to. I can modern into Mel’s computer.” She raised her shoulders. “Nice when we get an ice storm. I hate to drive in ice or snow. Getting up the hill to the front gates can be murder when the ford freezes over, even with four-wheel drive.” She motioned to the only other visible furniture—an obviously aged maroon leather sofa and matching wing chair, a coffee table made from a fat slice of old-growth walnut, a couple of Victorian end tables rescued from somebody’s attic, and a round claw-foot dining table with four mismatched chairs.

  “Have a seat. You said you needed to talk.”

  “I’ve been sitting on that motorcycle for the better part of an hour. I’ll lean, thank you.” He grinned ruefully. “When you own a Harley, you have to swear to eternal discomfort. It’s part of the contract.”