Ride a Painted Pony (Superromance)

by McSparren, Carolyn

  “Did you know any of the men Clara dated?”

  “I knew ‘em all. Well, most of ’em anyway.” Estelle sipped her coffee and looked past Taylor into a shadowy past.

  “Ever remember a man named Max Beaumont?” Taylor asked.

  She shook her head. “What year was he?”

  “He was teaching ROTC.”

  “Oh, that Max. I’d forgotten his name. Lord, he was the most gorgeous man. He was older, had been to Vietnam and all. Married but not working at it. If Clara hadn’t started sleeping with him, I’d have gone after him myself.” She laughed. “Does that sound too awful?”

  Taylor smiled back and shook her head.

  “’Course, Clara used to say there wasn’t a nickel’s worth of difference between us and those women—we always referred to them as the prissy bitches—at the sorority houses except that we didn’t do it with white gloves on.” She laughed again, but it turned quickly into gulps and then into sobs. She propped her head in her hands. “We didn’t see each other much these last years, what with me being in Chicago and all, but she was all the family I had.”

  “I am so sorry. Did you get along with her husband?”

  “Helmut? Yes, yes, I did, even though he was ten years older, and I always thought he wasn’t a hundred percent certain whether he ought to be married to a woman at all, if you know what I mean.”

  “Why did Clara marry him?”

  “Respectability and money. Clara liked living high. And Helmut was about as respectable as you can get. Talk about getting back at the prissy bitches! Helmut sold ’em half the furniture in their fancy houses and had things in his they could never have afforded. The greatest rebels are the ones who long most for respectability, didn’t anybody ever tell you that? I’m married to a CPA.”

  “They didn’t have any children, did they?”

  “Never wanted any.”

  “You?”

  “Two sons and a daughter.”

  “You said you were here last week for Helmut’s funeral?”

  “More like a memorial service, really. There wasn’t much left of him to bury.” Estelle wrinkled her nose. “Sad.”

  “Clara didn’t want you to stay down here with her for a while? Help her get the estate settled?”

  “I had to get home. Nels—that’s my husband—had a big function in Chicago on Saturday. Clara swore she’d be fine. Nels told her he’d come down and work with her on probate once she found all the paperwork on the estate. Get the death taxes done, the final tax report, you know, those things.” She stared at Taylor. “My God, I’ve got to do it now, haven’t I? For both of them?”

  Taylor nodded. “Have you been by the house?”

  For the first time, Estelle looked at Taylor with suspicion. “Yes.”

  Taylor shook her head. “I didn’t have anything to do with the destruction at the house.”

  “Then how come you know about it?”

  “I have friends on the police force.” Perfectly true.

  Estelle seemed to accept her statement. She relaxed and waved to the waitress for a refill. “Why would anybody destroy everything that way?” Her eyes began to brim once more. “Or kill Clara?” She ran her fingers across her cheeks under her eyes. Her fingers came away shiny with moisture.

  “Everything was insured, wasn’t it?”

  Estelle stared at her as though the idea had only now entered her head. “Why, yes, I suppose so.” She frowned. “But probably not for anything like full replacement value. Helmut kept the most beautiful things around him. He couldn’t bear to part with them.”

  “Still, in the long run, insurance may make closing the estate easier for you.”

  “I hadn’t thought of that.”

  “Did you find Clara’s will?”

  “It was in their lockbox—hers and Helmut’s.”

  Lockbox. Taylor caught her breath. If there were any clues about the person who had set up the theft of the animals, they might well be in that lockbox. Pushy was one thing, even with a woman as garrulous as Estelle Grierson, but demanding to know the contents of her dead sister’s lockbox went way beyond pushy. “Was there an inventory? Polaroids? Sometimes people take videos of their things. Might make it easier to claim the insurance.”

  Estelle tilted her head. “You know, there were some Polaroids, but I don’t know whether they were of stuff from the house or the store.”

  “What kind of stuff?”

  “Crystal, china, some silver, some antique jewelry, mostly art-deco. I figured they were things from the shop, but I suppose they could just as well be from the house.”

  “If you can match the pictures to the broken china and crystal, your insurance company might pay up much easier, particularly if Helmut took out riders on his home-owner policy.”

  “Thanks...Taylor, was it? That may really help.”

  “If you’d like me to help you, I’d be more than happy to.” Please, Taylor thought, you have no idea how much I want to check those pictures!

  “The police won’t let me in the house until tomorrow at the earliest.” Estelle shook her head. “But I don’t even know you, I couldn’t ask you to help me.”

  “Sure you can.”

  Estelle laughed. “Well, maybe. If you’re available.”

  Taylor felt both annoyed with herself for her duplicity and elated at the ease with which she’d insinuated herself into Estelle’s life—and Clara’s house. She decided to push her luck. “I’ve heard Helmut sailed kind of close to the line sometimes.”

  She’d expected Estelle to be incensed at her implication.

  Instead Estelle broke into laughter. “That man loved to brag about all the people he put things over on. I suppose most antique dealers fudge a little, but Helmut was a real old fraud. I think that’s what attracted Clara, really. In his own way, he was a rebel too. He seemed so stuffy and correct on the outside, and on the inside he was having fun at the expense of all those fancy decorators and rich folks.”

  “Did Clara help out much?”

  “Oh, my, yes! She and Helmut were like a couple of kids sometimes. He found Nels and me some wonderful things—real bargains. I have a beautiful house.”

  “Did he keep everything at the store?”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Did he have another workshop or storage facility?”

  “Not that I’m aware of. Why would he?”

  “Maybe to do his faking in private, away from the prying eyes of his customers.”

  “It’s possible, but if so, neither of them ever talked about it.” She sipped her coffee in silence.

  Taylor watched her closely. Her eyes were far off. Taylor wondered whether she was thinking about the contents of that lockbox. She cleared her throat, ready to ask something, anything, that might get Estelle to talk further.

  Estelle didn’t give her the chance. “You know, it is possible,” she said.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “I was just thinking back to the last time Clara visited us. Meg—that’s my daughter—was having a really fancy sweet-sixteen party complete with a band and all. Clara got a little drunk at the party, and afterwards we drove up to the lake, just the two of us.” Her eyes began to tear. “It was the last time we really saw one another... to really talk, I mean.”

  Taylor nodded encouragement.

  “We were laughing about Helmut and Nels—how we both married kind of right-wing republican types, you know—and Clara said that the only differences between Helmut and a big-time fence were his right-wing convictions, and how he and she had enough stuff stashed—that was the word she used, ‘stashed’—to keep them in European vacations until the twenty-third century. Clara loved going to Europe with Helmut. They stayed in the best places and got the red carpet rolled out by all those bankrupt lords and barons, dying to unload the family heirlooms.”

  “Far cry from love beads at Ole Miss.”

  “Maybe. I always just followed her lead, you know, but Clara wa
s a real outlaw. She just learned to cover it up better.” Estelle said this with pride in her voice.

  “I assume she left everything to you.”

  “Nobody else left. Helmut left it all to her, and she left it to me.” Estelle set down her cup and narrowed her eyes. “You’re not thinking I might have a motive for killing her, are you? My very own sister that I loved?”

  Taylor shook her head. “Not at all. Besides, you were in Willamette when both she and Helmut were killed, weren’t you?”

  “Yes, I was, and I can prove it.”

  “I’m sure you can. I just thought that if there is another location with their stash, then, as executrix, you need to know about it.”

  “I suppose.” She reached across the table and touched Taylor’s hand. “Say, you could find out, couldn’t you?”

  “Sorry, I already have a client, but if I do find out anything, I’ll be happy to let you know.”

  “Would you?” Estelle dug into her black crocodile handbag, pulled out a gold Waterman pen and reached for another napkin. “I’ll be at the Holiday Inn until after the funeral. Nels and the children aren’t coming. What would be the point? But after I go home, you can reach me here.” She wrote on the napkin and shoved it across the table to Taylor, who looked at it, folded it and stuck it in her wallet.

  “You could do one thing,” Taylor said. “Check Helmut and Clara’s bank statements. See if they paid rental on any property you don’t know about.”

  “Could I get in trouble? If they’ve done anything funny, I mean.”

  Taylor shook her head. “You had no way of knowing. But it might help in the long run. Will you do it?”

  Estelle pursed her lips. “I’ll have to, won’t I?” She reached for the check.

  “Please, let me,” Taylor said. Estelle gave in gracefully. As they stood up to go, Taylor asked, “One more thing. Did either of you know a Josh Chessman at Ole Miss?”

  Estelle froze halfway out of the booth and hung there a moment in a semi-crouch. “That bastard! Of course I knew Josh Chessman.”

  Taylor sat down again, and after a moment Estelle did the same.

  “Tell me.”

  “That son of a bitch. He got Clara pregnant and wouldn’t marry her. Then she lost the baby and almost died. Had to sell her car to pay the hospital bill because there was no way we could tell Momma and Daddy. After that, she and Helmut couldn’t have had kids even if they’d wanted to. How does Josh Chessman come into this?”

  “He may not. But both he and Max Beaumont are partners in Rounders—the place in Memphis where they found Clara’s body.”

  TAYLOR’S NEXT STOP was the police department. After several false starts she connected with Tom Owenwald, the officer who had investigated the fire at Eberhardt’s shop.

  Owenwald was a compact man who looked as though he’d be more comfortable in jeans and a camouflage vest than in his uniform. His hair was so fair and cropped so short that from a distance he looked bald, and his green eyes were made for staring down the sight of a deer rifle. A photo on his desk showed officer Tom holding up a nine point buck. “You know anything about arson?” he asked.

  “Some. Was there any suspicion of arson?”

  “Problem is that with most fires if you find evidence of an accelerant—gasoline, say, or kerosene—you know you’ve got arson ’cause the damn stuff was where it had no business being.”

  “Not at Eberhardt’s.”

  “Hell,” Owenwald said, “that whole storeroom was one big accelerant. There were gallon drums of paint stripper and denatured alcohol and lacquer thinner and I don’t know what all. Miracle the man didn’t blow himself up sooner. Plus he had a bunch of ventilation fans in the ceiling, so once the fire got started it had a real nice source of fresh air to keep it going.”

  “Still, he must have been careful about fire. I mean the man didn’t have a death wish, surely?”

  “Might as well have. What we think happened, he was there all by himself stripping something using a heat gun.” He raised his eyebrows.

  She nodded. “I’ve never used one, but I’ve seen them. They’re like big hair dryers. Make paint blister up so you can scrape it.”

  “Right. Anyway, Eberhardt was using this heat gun. No idea what on. All the wood burned smack dab up along with Eberhardt, who probably got sick from the fumes or else had a stroke or something. Fell with the heat gun, and after a couple of minutes of resting against one of those cans, the whole shebang went up.”

  “Was he alive when the fire started?”

  “Yeah. The body was what we call a crispy critter—not enough skin left on his face to see whether he breathed in any soot, but there was enough lung tissue left to see he’d been breathing when the fire started.”

  Taylor gulped, but persisted. “Could somebody have knocked him out, put the heat gun against one of the drums, and left?”

  “Sure. Taking an awful chance, though. Whole thing could have blown up too soon and trapped whoever did it.”

  “Did Eberhardt show any evidence of head trauma?”

  Tom laughed. “We think he fell and hit his head, so even a fractured skull wouldn’t be evidence of murder.”

  “You do know his wife was found dead yesterday morning? Murdered?”

  “Yeah. Weird coincidence.”

  “Coincidence—my aunt Fanny.”

  “Who’d want to get rid of both the Eberhardts?”

  This was the one question Taylor couldn’t answer even if she wanted to. “What do you know about that guy who worked for them? Eugene Lewis?”

  “Oh, yeah, we know old Eugene all right.” Tom grinned. “Mean drunk. Likes to fight in bars.” He shook his head. “One of these days I’m gonna have Eugene’s ass.”

  “Could I possibly have a copy of the arson report?”

  “Why not? Case is closed.”

  Next, she checked the city directories. The Eberhardts had only two properties listed—the store and the house. When she finally walked out onto the front steps of the courthouse, she realized it was sunset. She’d never make it back to Rounders before dark.

  As she drove onto the highway, she noticed a dark Toyota pickup behind her. It was still there in Holly Springs, but by the time she’d turned onto the expressway, it had disappeared. In any case, she couldn’t see Eugene Lewis driving a Japanese pickup. He looked like one of the “America—Love it or Leave it” types.

  CHAPTER NINE

  BEFORE TAYLOR REACHED THE SOUTHERN SUBURBS south of the Mississippi line, darkness closed in with a threat of rain. Even driving against the caravan of homebound commuters, traffic into town was heavy.

  She paid no further attention to the shifting headlights in her rearview mirror, but as she reached the downtown fork of the interstate, a Toyota pickup accelerated past her and disappeared over the hill as though the driver had suddenly decided he was late for an appointment.

  At sixty-five miles an hour, Taylor didn’t dare take even one hand off the wheel long enough to call Nick on her car phone. A twenty-minute wait was preferable to winding up under an eighteen-wheeler.

  Instead she concentrated on reaching downtown as soon as possible. Mel expected her to be with Nick after dark for his protection as well as her own.

  Mel would be proud of what she had learned from Estelle and Owenwald. She was a pro, dammit. It was about time these men admitted it.

  She allowed herself a moment of worry about Nick’s encounter with Danny, then dismissed it. Danny was on a simple fishing expedition, looking for an easy solution. Nick and his Boston-bred lawyer would have been able to handle Danny.

  She felt like celebrating. She’d make Nick and Mel take her out for a steak before she and Nick went home to feed Elmo and circle the wagons for the night.

  She thought about spending another night with Nick below her on the sofa bed. She’d been as aware of his breathing as he’d said he was of hers. Every time she woke—and she woke often—she watched him in the dim light that spilled from the bath
room—the way the muscles of his back rose and fell gently with his breathing, the way his hair curled over his ear. Fickle Elmo had spent the whole night curled against his back.

  Lucky Elmo.

  By the time Taylor pulled down the dark alley to the square in front of Rounders, her wipers beat an intermittent thwack against the mist that formed on her windshield. The place looked even more deserted and forlorn than it had—had it only been two nights ago?

  She pulled up, slung her satchel over her shoulder, opened her car door, ducked her head against the drizzle, and sprinted for the front door of Rounders without waiting for Nick to spot her and buzz the door open.

  She felt the change in atmosphere and heard a shoe scrape a second before a hand covered her mouth and stifled her screams. The man’s other arm pressed across her breasts, pinned her arms to her sides. She felt herself lifted off the pavement.

  Terror burned her body like a blowtorch and sucked the breath from her lungs like a bellows. This was it!

  She heard the soft grunt of laughter and the voice whispering, “You and me’s gonna take a little ride, sweet thang.”

  She was carried backward in a paroxysm of terror. She struggled, but the arms that held her felt thick and powerful. She smelled stale sweat and day-old Brut.

  She’d had the courses. Self-defense for women, lesson one: Get in the car with him and you’re dead.

  It had to be Eugene, all two hundred and fifty bodybuilding pounds of him. She couldn’t see him, but she knew his stench. That Delta drawl chanted from beneath white sheets with eyeholes cut out, snickered from behind broken beer bottles and over broken women. Oh, yeah, she knew that voice in her soul.

  She struggled.

  She might as well have been an eland in the jaws of a lion.

  She tried to open her mouth to bite the filthy hand across her face, but she could barely breathe. His palm forced her lips hard against her teeth, and she tasted her own blood. His thumb pressed against her cheekbone under her eye so hard that tears welled.

  He pressed her against him, and the cut steel of his belt buckle etched a pattern into her spine. Below his belt he was urgently erect.