Ride a Painted Pony (Superromance)

by McSparren, Carolyn

  “What for?” he asked suspiciously. “Don’t give me any garbage about just wanting to see me again either.”

  “Maybe it’s time to mend fences. Whether we like it or not, we got history.”

  “And you want to pick my brain.”

  “Partly. Partly I want to give you some of the information I may have that you don’t.”

  He asked suspiciously, “What do I have to do in return?”

  “Eat and don’t pay the bill.”

  He thought a moment, and then said, “Okay, but I won’t have much time. I’ll meet you. Say where and when, and make it someplace in the neighborhood.”

  Taylor wore her good wool blazer and slacks. Her mother didn’t have to know that once again she’d dressed up for someone else.

  “I’M INTERROGATING KENDALL this afternoon,” Danny said the moment they sat down.

  Taylor took a deep breath and toyed with her spoon as though the prospect of Nick in Vollmer’s hands didn’t scare the bejesus out of her. “I know you don’t really think he killed anyone.”

  Vollmer leaned over. “There’s something going on. His lawyer—that Cabrizzo guy—called me to make the appointment. When lawyers do that, it’s because their clients have confessed something to them and want to make the best deal they can.”

  “Nick doesn’t have anything to confess.”

  “Yeah, right.” Vollmer concentrated on his menu.

  “Are there any preliminary findings on Eugene’s autopsy?”

  “Come on, Taylor,” he said. “You’re here to tell me, not to pump me, remember?”

  “I will tell you. Answer the question.”

  Vollmer clicked his tongue against his teeth in annoyance. “One thirty-eight slug killed him.”

  Taylor went hot remembering the three shots Nick fired after Eugene.

  She formed her question cautiously, almost afraid to hear the answer. “Was Eugene shot in the back?”

  Vollmer glanced up from his menu and saw her face. He lowered the card slowly and narrowed his eyes at her. “Why?”

  “Please, Danny, it’s important.”

  “Okay. He was shot from the side at close range. The bullet tore the hell out of his right lung and punctured his left one before lodging in a rib.”

  “Could he have driven for any distance after he was shot?”

  Danny snorted. “He was dead in minutes, and probably unconscious instantly.”

  Taylor sank back in her chair. “I know why Nick’s coming to see you.”

  “Yeah?”

  “He thinks he killed Eugene. Yesterday when Eugene ran away, Nick fired three shots after him with Eugene’s own thirty-eight. He thinks one of those shots connected, and that Eugene drove around with a slug in him until he ran off the road and died.”

  “Damn,” Danny said softly. He ran his hand across his mouth and drank half his iced tea in one gulp. “Was he really with you last night?”

  Taylor nodded.

  “God! I hate mysteries,” Danny said. “I wanted him for Eugene’s killing. Really wanted him.” He looked straight into her eyes. “Mistake to let personal feelings interfere with the job.”

  Taylor couldn’t have agreed more.

  “At any rate, he’s got his animals back,” Danny said. “No sense in keeping them for evidence.” He laughed. “I can just see the evidence man if we tried to bring in a bunch of huge carousel animals. We dusted them for fingerprints and told Kendall to come pick them up. He should have them back safe and sound at that warehouse by now.”

  “How many did you find?”

  “Eight.”

  Taylor let out a sigh of relief. “If we assume one burned up at Eberhardt’s, that leaves them all accounted for. That means Nick is safe. Thank God.” Then she realized the return of the animals severed her last connection with Rounders. “Have you started trying to locate the owners of all that other stuff? I suppose it was all stolen.”

  “Some of it came from museums, some from auctions and private houses. Some of it we may never trace.”

  “What about the records? The Eberhardts couldn’t keep that much information in their heads.”

  Danny shook his head. “We’ve been over both houses and that warehouse with a fine-tooth comb. No records. It’s possible they burned up in the fire at the shop, but we can’t count on that. We’re checking to see if they rented any safety deposit boxes in local banks under either ‘Eberhardt’ or ‘Fields’. If they used a fake name, we may never find the records.”

  “Eugene swore there were records, but even he didn’t know where, exactly.”

  “He sure can’t tell us now.” Their food arrived. Danny tucked into his goulash; Taylor suddenly found that she had no appetite. She pulled her chicken salad apart and picked at it with her fork.

  Danny didn’t register mat she wasn’t eating until his own lunch was half gone. Then he glanced up at her and asked, “So, you in love with this guy or what?”

  Taylor caught her breath. “He’s a client.”

  “Bull. This morning when I went for Kendall you tore into me like a banshee. You’re like a damn mother hen. I hope he appreciates it.”

  “Nope. He fired me this morning. Whatever we had is definitely over.”

  “Sure. Right.” Danny buttered a popover and bit into it greedily. He spoke with his mouth full. “So, your turn.”

  Taylor reached for her satchel. “I brought you Eugene’s thirty-eight with three shots fired.”

  Vollmer choked. “You what?” He wiped his mouth and leaned across the table. “Are you crazy? You should never have picked up the damn gun.”

  Taylor hunched her shoulders. “Neither of us was thinking very clearly. I’m sorry.”

  “Hang on to it until we’re in the parking lot. These old biddies would probably have strokes if you handed me a gun.”

  “It’s got Nick’s fingerprints on it.”

  Vollmer nodded.

  “But it won’t be the gun that shot Eugene.”

  “Yeah, okay, but shooting off a firearm in the city is against the law.”

  Taylor raised her hands and laughed. “Get a grip. I’ll swear it was self-defense. No prosecutor in his right mind would go to the grand jury.”

  “Maybe. I’m still going to use every bit of leverage to wring Kendall so dry he’ll think he’s been microwaved.”

  “You just said personal animosity does not mix with good police work.”

  “This is different—” he reached across the table and touched her hand “—this is you.”

  She pulled away, but smiled to take some of the sting out of her words. “I owe you a lot, Danny. You single-handedly picked my self-esteem out of the mud. I hope you’ll always be my friend.”

  “But no more than a friend.” Danny shrugged and leaned back in his chair. “Just for that—I get dessert.”

  Taylor laughed.

  “And then you start at the beginning of this mess and tell me everything you know, think, or even suspect. Got that?”

  “Yessir, Mr. Policeman, sir.” Taylor threw him a salute.

  She’d tell him no more than she wanted him to know.

  She’d always been able to con Danny, and she had no intention of turning over a new leaf now.

  “HELLO, CECE,” Taylor said. “My mother here yet?”

  “Taylor, how nice.” CeCe stood behind a glass case full of antique jewelry with a large spray bottle of glass cleaner and a wad of paper towels. “Come to help out? I still haven’t hired anyone.”

  “Ask me again in a couple of weeks. I’m going to need a job.”

  CeCe raised her eyebrows. “Well, I just might do that little thing.”

  “Obviously, my mother’s late as usual.” The shop was not yet fully organized, but opulence overflowed in every direction. “CeCe, I need a favor.” She told CeCe about Estelle Grierson. She expected CeCe to respond grudgingly, but instead the woman seemed elated at the prospect of digging through the ruins of Eberhardt’s shop.

&n
bsp; “I’m so glad you asked me,” CeCe said, rubbing her hands together. “A lot of it may be junk but there’s bound to be some marvelous things left.”

  Taylor gave her Estelle’s telephone number and breathed a sigh of relief. She owed Estelle Grierson.

  “I can see why mother loves this place,” she said. “She’s crazy about antique jewelry.” Taylor ran her eye casually over the cloisonné necklaces, old jade amulets, and soft baroque pearls. She leaned forward and pointed at a gold necklace and pendant at the end of the case. “Could I see that thing? I know somebody who’s got one.”

  CeCe opened the case and pulled out the necklace. “Lovely piece. A lady’s gold pencil from about nineteen-hundred.” She handed the necklace to Taylor. “Not expensive. The chain is, of course. But the pencil’s only a hundred and fifty dollars—and it’s twenty-four-carat gold.”

  Taylor touched it and felt an almost electrical tingle run from it up her arms. “It’s a pencil? It’s only four inches long.”

  CeCe laughed throatily. “Here, dear.” She took off the top of the pencil and spread it like a telescope, then put the top back on. The pencil was now a respectable ten inches long. “See,” she said, “you put the lead into the end and it feeds down through the hole at the bottom in that little narrow part.”

  “I thought it was an old-fashioned hypodermic needle.” Taylor handed it back. “Are they rare?”

  “I’d say so. Not unique, certainly, but quite rare. I’ve never seen another one like it, and I’ve been in the business for forty years.”

  Taylor picked up her satchel and threaded her way to the door. “Would you tell my mother I had an emergency? I’ll call her tonight.”

  Irene was climbing out of her car outside.

  “Taysie, darling, I’m sorry I’m late.”

  Taylor kissed her cheek on the fly. “Sorry, Mother, something came up. I’ll call you.” She ran to her truck and climbed in. As she backed out, she saw Irene staring after her openmouthed.

  No grateful hospital board had given Margery Chessman a fancy antique hypodermic needle.

  One lady’s gold pencil, circa 1904 had been missing from the inventory of Helmut’s store after the robbery. Taylor had assumed that it had been destroyed, but this was too much of a coincidence to be ignored. Unless there were three pencils kicking around—highly unlikely given the rarity of the thing—that pencil around Margery’s neck came from Helmut Eberhardt’s store. And it had been listed on his inventory when he died.

  So unless Margery or Josh Chessman drove to Oxford the day of his death and bought the thing—and both of them denied having been out of town that day—that pencil was taken either just before or just after Eberhardt was killed. Margery surely had no reason to kill Eberhardt. That left good ol’ Josh.

  Taylor could imagine his eyes lighting on it in Helmut’s display case as he made his way out the front door and away from the flames that lapped Helmut’s body. A gold pencil would appeal to an academic, surely. But why on earth would he be crazy enough to give it to his wife? Unless she found it and thought it was a present for her. Josh would hardly deny that under the circumstances. Nobody was likely to connect it with Eberhardt, after all. Perfectly safe for Margery to walk around with it hanging among her other baubles.

  Taylor knew she ought to call Vollmer, but if she guessed correctly, he’d still be interrogating Nick. A lousy little pencil was not hard evidence. She dialed Mel and got the Borman Agency answering machine. She called information for Veda’s number and got an answering machine there too. She called Rounders on the assumption that Veda—or at least some of the carvers—would be there.

  Another damn answering machine! The world was being run by robots who couldn’t even talk to one another.

  In desperation she called Max Beaumont. No answer, no machine. She couldn’t call Josh Chessman. What would she say to Margery? Margery had sworn Josh had been in his office at seven-thirty on Monday night while Clara Eberhardt was being stabbed to death.

  Chessman had sworn he’d been duking it out with his latest abandoned mistress. They’d accepted his story. Margery could be lying, or the mistress might still be very much in love with Josh and happy to lie for him. Maybe Josh had paid her off.

  Finally, Josh might have had his calls forwarded to his car phone. He might have been answering Margery’s call as he tried to avoid sideswiping Taylor coming out of the Rounders alleyway Monday evening.

  He had opportunity to steal. He had keys to Rounders. He knew Clara Eberhardt well. He even owed her—or she might have felt that he did.

  Maybe Josh wanted enough of his own money to be able to dump Margery. She was the one with ambition. Josh seemed more likely to want a nubile young wife, a cushy tenured job and plenty of free time to play at Rounders.

  If all the animals in Rounders had been sold, he stood to make in the neighborhood of three-hundred thousand dollars in nontaxable income that he could hide in a safety deposit box and dole out in such small amounts that the I.R.S. wouldn’t be suspicious.

  But one gold pencil didn’t make a case.

  Taylor needed the Eberhardts’ records right now! She needed to be able to tie Chessman to the stolen animals.

  She called Chessman’s number. If she were going on a fishing expedition, she didn’t want to run into the resident shark. Margery answered and told her that Josh had office hours tonight until eight. He wouldn’t be available to talk to her until the following morning.

  “Are you going to be home? Can you give him a message?” Taylor asked.

  “I have a board meeting and a dinner engagement. I will be home very late.”

  Taylor decided that counted as a ‘no.’ She thanked Margery and hung up. So Josh was safely out of the picture. So was everyone else including Nick. She had the next two hours to find those records.

  She pulled into the nearest parking lot and cut her engine. She had a feeling that if she put her mind to it, she could figure out where those blasted records had to be. If they were on computer disks, they’d make up a fairly small package. The police had searched Eberhardt’s house, shop, rental property and warehouse, and had come up empty. Policemen knew how to search. They got plenty of practice going after drugs.

  So either the records did not exist, or they were in a truly weird place.

  But Eugene swore they existed. The killer thought they existed. Taylor had to believe they existed. Otherwise, why would the killer continue to target her and Nick?

  Where was there left to search? The police would have found records or lockbox keys or disks even if they were taped to the bottoms of drawers or the backs of picture frames.

  And chances were that Helmut and Clara would have wanted to keep their records accessible, able to be updated fairly quickly. They wouldn’t have used the local bank.

  She leaned her head against the back of her seat. She was developing a major pain behind her right eye. She longed to stop worrying about the records...and Nick...and Vollmer... and these murders... It almost made her wish she had one of those crystal glasses full of single-malt whiskey that Marcus Cato had thrust at her from the belly of his fancy armored horse.

  Suddenly her eyes widened. Oh, yeah. She knew one place she’d bet the police had not searched. And it was just weird enough to be the right place. She grinned and started her truck.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  “YOU DO KNOW FIRING A GUN is against the law?” Vollmer said for the sixth time.

  Cabrizzo came to attention. “My client was in fear for his life.”

  “Hell, Cabrizzo,” Detective Harrison said, “the guy was running away.”

  “For all my client knew, he was running to his vehicle for another weapon. Did you find another weapon in his car?”

  “None of your business.”

  “Certainly it’s my business. Do you have any reason to believe that any of the shots he fired after this retreating criminal could have caused said criminal’s death?” Then, when nobody answered, “Come on, Voll
mer, give already.”

  Vollmer shrugged. “Okay. Eugene Lewis was shot once at close range while he was sitting in the front seat of his car fifty miles from that place the Eberhardts were using. He died almost instantly.”

  Nick surged to his feet.

  Harrison and Vollmer did the same thing so quickly that their chairs fell over backwards.

  “Vollmer, you bastard, you put me through hell for three hours when you knew I didn’t shoot Eugene!”

  Rico grabbed Nick’s arm. “Sit down.”

  Rico gathered up his notes and opened his briefcase. He said cheerfully, “Okay, you guys, we’re outa here. You want to talk to my client again, you get a warrant. Okay?”

  “Wait a minute,” Harrison said, “we’re not through.”

  “Sure you are,” Rico said.

  Nick laid a hand on Rico’s arm and spoke to Vollmer. “If I were you, Detective, I’d stop letting my personal feelings interfere with my job and go looking for whoever set Helmut Eberhardt on fire, because the same person who did that stole my animals, killed Clara and Eugene, and, if you’re not careful, could kill Taylor Hunt.”

  “Taylor’s out of it,” Vollmer said.

  “The hell she is.”

  “I had lunch with her today. She’s the one gave me the gun.”

  Nick looked confused.

  “She said you were clear on Lewis and she’d testify for you. She’s getting out of the P.I. racket.”

  “She said she was not going to be a P.I. any longer?” Nick asked. “Her precise words?”

  “She said she’d given Borman two weeks’ notice.”

  “Can we get out of here now?” Nick didn’t believe that Taylor had simply given up. He wanted to know where she was and what she was up to, and he wanted to know immediately.

  TAILOR CALLED MARCUS FROM HER TRUCK. Better to confirm her theory before she wasted a lot of time. He picked up the phone himself.

  “Child, how you doin’?” he asked.

  “Fine, Marcus. Got a quick question for you.”

  “Sure.”

  “How hard is it to hollow out one of those animals to set up something like your bar?”