Ride a Painted Pony (Superromance)

by McSparren, Carolyn

  Had he caught on to the chemistry between her and Nick? They might deny it even to one another, but it was there, all right. Was it that obvious to everyone? Surely not.

  She caught Veda’s eye. Oh, boy. Max wasn’t the only one who was picking up the vibes.

  “Do you expect Josh or me to confess? Or do you plan to get out your little truncheon and beat it out of us?” Max asked.

  “Stop it, Max,” Josh snapped.

  “I keep my truncheon in my other bag,” Taylor said lightly. “All I’ve got with me is my little old blackjack. Will that do?”

  Max slammed his drink against the table so hard that Taylor was afraid the glass would fracture. “I’m damned if I’m afraid of anything this smartass girl can throw at me.”

  “Shut up, Max. Now. I mean it,” Nick snapped.

  Max’s mouth dropped open. “You’ve never spoken to me like that.”

  “You’ve never deserved it.” Nick leaned forward. “What you deserve is a broken jaw. You probably won’t remember any of this tomorrow morning, but that doesn’t excuse your actions tonight.”

  Max struggled to his feet. He stood ramrod straight, every muscle taut. “I’m leaving.”

  “The hell you are. Sit down, apologize to Taylor and the rest of us, and stop acting like a prize jackass before I forget my manners.”

  Max hesitated.

  “Do it,” Nick said. “Now.”

  Max sat and stared at his knees morosely.

  Josh paced in front of the fireplace. “It doesn’t matter whether she found out anything or not. This affair is still going to have serious repercussions for all of us, but for me most of all.” He turned to them. “I mean, who are you people, really? But I’m important in this city. It’s too late to pull out, but I wish to God I’d never gotten involved with the place.”

  “Now who’s being snotty?” Max said, rousing himself with difficulty. “Important in this city?” He whined in perfect imitation of Josh. “You sound like Margery’s ventriloquist’s dummy. Rounders is the only remotely human thing in your life.” He dropped a piece of ice from his glass into his mouth and sucked on it noisily. “Except for bedding the coeds, of course.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” Chessman bleated.

  “Is it still two girls a semester? Or has your aging prostate cut you down to one?”

  “This is ludicrous! Get out, damn you!”

  “Is that why you stole the animals?” Max continued. He seemed to have reached that lucid stage often attained by drunks just before they pass out. “Did you need money to buy yourself the playmate of the month? Or possibly to buy off the playmate of the month.”

  Josh gave a strangled cry and rushed at him. Veda stuck out her hand and caught him as he went by.

  “Ignore him,” she said.

  “You can’t ignore all those harassment charges, though, can you?” Max asked. “One more and I hear you can kiss that provost job good-bye. And kiss Margery good-bye if they hire someone else.”

  Taylor reached across and laid her hand heavily on Nick’s arm as he began to stand. She shook her head. She wanted them to keep talking. Rico nodded at her in agreement.

  “I never stole anything in my life,” Chessman snapped.

  Max seemed suddenly gleeful. “I suppose you had to kill Clara to get her off your back. She probably just wanted a new car to replace the one she had to sell to pay for her miscarriage.”

  The room went dead quiet.

  Chessman gulped as though he’d forgotten how to breathe. Max lay back amongst the cushions and smiled into his drink.

  “I knew about your affair, Josh. Of course I knew. But murder?” He shook his finger and clicked his tongue as though Chessman were a child misbehaving. “Surely there was a better way.”

  “Oh, God!” Chessman sank into an overstuffed club chair and dropped his head into his hands. After a moment he looked up with hope shining in his red-rimmed eyes. “I didn’t kill Clara. I can prove it!” He stared around wildly. “I was working in my office. Margery called.”

  “Margery might have mistaken the time. Not that she’d stick at lying to keep your chairmanship.”

  “No, not alone. I had someone with me. A student.”

  Max roared with laughter. “Josh, you dirty old man, you were having some poor coed on the couch in your office?” He wiped his eyes, then sobered. “That’s not much alibi. Poor little twit’s in love with you.”

  “She hates my guts!” Chessman’s voice thrummed with hope. “She’s been threatening to go to the president about me if I don’t pay her off. She wouldn’t lie to save me from the fires of hell.”

  “What’s her name?” Taylor asked.

  Chessman turned to her as though he’d forgotten she was there. “I can’t have you talking to her. Margery might find out.”

  “Then tell Sergeant Vollmer.”

  Josh shook his head.

  Taylor opened her hands to him. “Look, if Vollmer has one less suspect, he can concentrate on finding out who really did kill Clara Eberhardt. You’ll be off the hook, no suspicion, no harm to your reputation.”

  “That makes sense,” Veda said. “You should call him, Josh.”

  “Ah, little Miss Veda, the voice of reason,” Max said. “How about you for the role of first murderer?”

  “What?” Veda stared at him.

  “Come now. A nurse practitioner like you would know precisely the right place to jam that chisel into Clara’s neck for maximum bang for the buck.” Max gestured toward Veda. “Josh has plenty of money, Rico’s coining it, and God knows, Marcus Cato does. I have my pension and my investments. But who knows how much little Veda’s widow’s mite is?”

  Veda set her drink down. “Probably more than yours, Max.” She looked at him as though he were a total stranger. “I’ve been making excuses for you ever since the first day I met you. You’re a real jerk, Max, you know that?”

  Max laughed. “Oh, I can’t bear it! A jerk!”

  “Yes, Max, a jerk. And after watching your little exhibition tonight, I’ve finally figured out that you have about as much real sex appeal as an aardvark with a bad case of herpes.” She stood. “I’m damn hungry. I’m going home.”

  The conference broke up.

  Nick half carried Max—who had passed into maudlin semiconsciousness—to his truck. “I’ll drive him home and put him to bed,” he told Taylor.

  As she said good-bye to Josh, she whispered, “Can I see you in your office tomorrow about ten?”

  He shrank from her and stammered, “I don’t want to talk to you.”

  Taylor smiled ingratiatingly. “If you talk to me, I can smooth your way with Detective Vollmer.”

  “I can give you five minutes before my ten o’clock class. You know where my office is?”

  “I’ll find it.”

  Rico waited for her outside the front door. He’d been so quiet she’d almost forgotten he was there.

  He slipped his arm through hers. “Thank God, Max wound down before he got to me and Marcus. How about lunch tomorrow? I’m not in court. ”

  Taylor glanced at Nick, who was wrestling Max’s car keys out of his hand. “I’ll call you.”

  Nick dropped Max’s keys into his pocket and walked him down the steps toward the Rounders truck. Over his shoulder he said to Taylor, “Can you take Veda home? She came with Max.”

  “We’re not supposed to separate after dark, remember?”

  “I’ll be careful if you will. Wait for me at Veda’s.”

  “Then can we please get something to eat?”

  Nick grinned. “Promise.”

  Rico climbed into his Mercedes and drove away.

  Max stumbled against the hood of Nick’s truck. Nick caught him and steered him around the door and into the front seat.

  Veda stood watching until they drove away, then climbed in beside Taylor. They drove off behind Nick.

  Taylor’s Glock lay on the seat between them. Veda poked it with a small index
finger. “Some gun.”

  “Does it bother you?” Taylor opened the center console and slid the gun inside.

  “Lord, no. I’m good with guns.”

  Taylor checked her rearview mirror. No Toyota trucks behind her. With luck, Eugene was home nursing his injuries. Taylor realized she was so tired and hungry that her eyes were starting to cross. “Does Max get like that often?” she asked.

  “I’ve never seen it quite that bad before, but then I’ve never seen Max under pressure.”

  “Murder creates pressure.”

  Veda shook her head. “I don’t think Max is a killer. But something has frightened him badly.” They drove silently for a while, then Veda said brightly, “I’m bored to death with Max. Tell me about being a detective. Turn right here.”

  “It’s an ordinary job. All those tough-talking female P.I.s in the books get into more trouble in a day than I’m likely to get into in ten years.” Taylor laughed. “Mel says the main thing the fictional P.I.s have to be is fast-healers. They get beat up, break ribs, and five pages later they’re making love.”

  Veda laughed. “As a nurse I can assure you nobody with broken ribs is interested in making love.”

  “I break the occasional fingernail, period. Even surveillance cases are just plain boring. You can’t run the heater in the winter or the air conditioner in the summer because you’ll mess up the car. So you freeze or bake, and try to stay awake with regular jolts of caffeine.”

  “Doesn’t sound very glamorous.”

  “It isn’t. Or dangerous, as I keep assuring my mother.”

  “But Clara Eberhardt got murdered,” Veda reminded her.

  Taylor sighed. “True. This is my first murder. And I’m not really in the line of fire.” Her hands tightened on the wheel as the memory of Eugene’s hands swept over her.

  “You can park here under the light,” Veda said. Taylor watched to see whether she’d been followed. Apparently not. She took a deep breath and followed Veda into her townhouse.

  “I’ll bet you could use some nibblies while you’re waiting,” Veda said. “I make a hell of a cheese straw.”

  This small house had all the grace and charm that the Chessmans’s lacked. A cockatoo in a bamboo cage squawked and raised his crest the moment the door opened. Veda opened the kitchen door and a big ginger cat stalked out. “This is Denzel,” she said.

  Taylor scratched his ears.

  “I moved here after my husband, Bill, died,” Veda said. “My son wanted me to come live with them, but I’m happy here. I know this place is cluttered, but I can’t get rid of all my memories. I am desperate for more space, not fewer memories. I like living in the Garden District, but so far I haven’t been able to find a place I can afford to buy.”

  Taylor picked up a photo in a silver frame. A much younger Veda hung on the arm of a cheerful mustached man.

  Veda handed Taylor a glass of iced tea and set a plate of cheese straws on the coffee table. “That’s my Bill. We had a heck of a marriage.”

  “Are you retired?”

  “No. Why?”

  “You have so much free time,” Taylor said.

  “Bill left some money, and I do private-duty nursing whenever I want to do something special, like travel to Michigan to see my grandsons. Yech! I hate snow.”

  “You’re awfully young to be widowed,” Taylor said. “Have you ever thought of marrying again?”

  “I could ask you the same. You’re widowed and considerably younger than I am.”

  “The few men I meet come equipped with ex-wives, delinquent stepchildren, alimony, child support, and all the psychological problems that made the ex divorce them in the first place.”

  “Nick doesn’t have an ex,” Veda said.

  “Why not? At his age, most men have been married at least once.”

  “He’s had two live-ins since I started working at Rounders, but they left because he spent too much time with the carvers. He can’t—what’s the word I’m looking for?—invest himself in any woman the way he does with us.”

  “Why?”

  Veda raised her hands. “I’m no psychologist, but his mother deserted him and his grandmother died on him very suddenly. There never was anyone else.”

  “I thought his mother died.”

  Veda shook her head. “Nope. Just vanished. You like him, don’t you?”

  “He’s a client.”

  “He’s a man. A great big, sexy man.”

  “I don’t generally go for men like Nick, no matter how big and sexy they are.”

  “Why ever not?”

  Taylor took another cheese straw, leaned back and put her feet on the ottoman. “For the same reason you’re in love with Max.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Max is your prototypical star bastard,” Taylor said. “I have been falling for star bastards since Freddy Colbert knocked me off my skates in the second grade and I had to have three stitches in my bottom lip—” she touched the thin white line that ran from her lip like a minute hand pointing to twenty-five minutes after the hour “—but point me at a decent, caring, gentle man and I run screaming in the other direction. The psychologists say it’s low self-esteem. We think we deserve to be mistreated,” Taylor said, and sipped her iced tea. Until now, she thought.

  “Horse pucky,” Veda said and gulped hers. “I’ve got self-esteem up the wazoo, and even after tonight I’d probably still go to bed with Max if he asked me. Which he won’t.”

  “Hasn’t he given you any sign that he’s interested?”

  “I’m twenty years too old for him,” Veda said bitterly. “He’s got a string of women my son’s age and younger. He takes them to dinner, beds them. They help him with that benighted house of his, but nobody stays long.” Veda leaned back against the sofa and closed her eyes. “After Bill died I didn’t think I’d ever want another man. Then I walked into Rounders and there’s Max. God, what did I see in the man?”

  “Maybe some of the same things I saw in my husband Paul.”

  “Nick’s different.”

  “But he doesn’t keep his women around long either.”

  “They always part friends. Max’s women always leave in a huff.” Veda raised her head and Taylor saw that her eyes were filled with unshed tears. “Tell me about your Paul.”

  “Handsome as Lucifer, Law Review at Harvard, slated to be a named partner in his firm before his fiftieth birthday, married Taylor Maxwell, perfect consort and hostess, in a society wedding with twelve bridesmaids and a reception at the country club. Cinderella gets her fella. Happily ever after.”

  “What was the problem?”

  “I’m not Cinderella, although I didn’t know that until after he died. We both got cheated.”

  After a moment Veda said softly, “You think Max is guilty of this, don’t you?”

  “Assuming that Josh’s alibi checks out, he’s starting to look better and better,” Taylor said.

  “I could tell from the way you looked at him. You don’t like him.”

  “He loathes me.”

  “He’s afraid you’ve taken Nick away from him.”

  Taylor said nothing.

  Veda nodded. “Oh, yes, he is. Nick is the son he never knew. Nick respects him. The other women in Nick’s life were unimportant adjuncts, but you’re different. I’ve seen the way Nick looks at you.”

  “How?”

  “Like you’re a shiny new Illions King Stander with the original park paint.”

  Taylor laughed.

  Veda took her hand. “No, I mean it. When he looks at you he’s—I don’t know—hungry. I used to wish Max looked at me that way.”

  “Why don’t you tell him how you feel?”

  “If he said he wasn’t interested—and he would—we’d never be easy with one another again. I’d have to give up Rounders. God, I can’t imagine life without Rounders!”

  “Is the carving that important to you?”

  “I was a floor nurse for twenty years. Everybody
said how competent I was and how caring. I didn’t want to be competent, I wanted to be creative! I can’t play an instrument or draw a straight line, or act, or dance—but the day I walked into Rounders I found out that I could carve. I’m damn good at it.”

  “I know you are, I’ve seen the frog and Harvey.”

  “They rely on me at Rounders; they like me—not as a nurse, but as a colleague. I won’t give that up, not even for Max!”

  “You shouldn’t have to.” Taylor regarded Veda with compassion. “It doesn’t get easier, does it?”

  “With age, you mean?” Veda laughed without humor. “Harder, if anything. On top of everything else there’s the pressure of time and the pull of gravity.”

  “You still look great.”

  “Not naked I don’t. Or not that great.” Veda set her glass down on the side table. “Hell, Taylor, I don’t want to die without ever making love again.”

  “And you want to make it with Max.”

  “I don’t know anyone else.”

  “Somebody will look at you the way you want Max to.”

  “I probably won’t look back.” Veda shook her head. “I know he’s bad for me, but if you think the pickings are slim at your age, you ought to try them at mine.”

  The two women sat silently for a moment, then Taylor asked, “Veda, does Max need money?”

  Veda drew in her breath shortly and began to shake her head in a gesture that was more denial of the question than an answer to it. “I don’t know. That house is a money pit, and I know he’s sent his son money a couple of times. He feels so guilty about losing the boy—hell, he’s no boy, Michael’s a grown man with a son of his own.”

  “A grandson? Does Max see him?”

  “I don’t think he’s ever laid eyes on him.”

  “Do you have any idea when the animals were stolen?”

  “The last time I was in that storeroom was when I finished my Death and Glory Frog—you know, the one in the red waistcoat. That was in June—no, July. Just before the Fourth, I think. I didn’t pay much attention, but the room seemed as full as usual.”

  “Why didn’t you take the frog home?”

  Veda laughed and waved a hand at the clutter around her. “And put him where?” She shook her head. “Nick is determined we’re going to start a carousel museum. There’s a lower floor that’s not in use. It was rented out for a while to a man who did ornamental ironwork, but he moved out to his own building.”