Ride a Painted Pony (Superromance) (9 page)
Read Ride a Painted Pony (Superromance) Online
Authors: Carolyn McSparren
“We’re closed, man.” He pointed to the sign, moving in a miasma of unwashed armpits and ash.
Taylor breathed through her mouth and handed him a card that said, Wendy Wright, Estate Sales. He took the card, raked Taylor with prurient eyes and pulled his short upper lip down over a set of yellow teeth that would have benefited from orthodonture and regular flossing.
Taylor did not offer to shake his hand. She smiled brightly and asked, “And you are Mr...?”
“Eugene Lewis.”
She heard Nick’s low growl behind her. She continued pleasantly, “I’m interested in carousel animals, Mr. Lewis. A friend told me you might know where I could find some.”
“I don’t know who the hell told you that. We ain’t got no carousel crap now and never did have. I told you. We’re closed.”
“How soon do you plan on reopening?”
“Who said we did?”
“Listen, friend,” Nick said, “I know somebody who bought a carousel animal here less than a month ago and I know you’ve got more. Answer the lady’s question.”
“Shoot, I ain’t answering nothing. Now y’all git or I’ll call the sheriff.”
“For what? Asking questions with intent?” Taylor said. “Who are you anyway? You own this place?”
“It ain’t none of your business, but I work here. I’m trying to salvage what I can. And I ain’t found no animals, alive or dead.” He grinned as though he’d made a joke.
Taylor felt Nick close behind her and knew trouble was imminent. She turned around and herded him back toward the truck. “Come, dear, let’s let the nice man get back to his job.” When Nick refused to move, she took his arm. “Quickly, dear—” she wiggled her eyebrows at him “—before Mr. Lewis has more company.”
Nick nodded, climbed in, slammed the truck into gear and spun rubber out of the parking lot.
“Son of a bitch,” Nick snarled.
“Several generations back, I’d say,” Taylor answered. “Did you notice his shoes?”
“No. Why?”
“Our Mr. Lewis was wearing steel-toed work boots. He’d probably enjoy destroying china. The question is whether he’d enjoy destroying middle-aged matrons even more.”
CHAPTER FIVE
“H
ELLO, MOTHER. SORRY I’M LATE.” Taylor pulled out her chair without waiting for the maitre d’ to hold it for her. She plunked her satchel onto the floor by her feet. She should probably have left the Glock in the car, but she didn’t want it stolen, and recently there had been a series of thefts from the country club parking lot, much to her mother’s chagrin.
ELLO, MOTHER. SORRY I’M LATE.” Taylor pulled out her chair without waiting for the maitre d’ to hold it for her. She plunked her satchel onto the floor by her feet. She should probably have left the Glock in the car, but she didn’t want it stolen, and recently there had been a series of thefts from the country club parking lot, much to her mother’s chagrin.
“You look nice, dear,” her mother said. “That’s a very becoming shade of lipstick.”
Taylor smiled and accepted the compliment. It would do no good to tell her mother that she had dressed to con The Peabody parking lot attendant.
Irene continued, “If you’d just let your lovely hair grow, maybe use some hot rollers, a few highlights in the front...” She reached out red-tipped fingers to touch Taylor’s hair. Taylor drew back as though she were being confronted by a striking copperhead. Her mother dropped the offending hand and let out a small but perfectly audible sigh.
Taylor spoke through clamped teeth, “I like my hair, I like my clothes, I like my job, I like my life.”
Her mother stiffened. “Why do you always attack me? I’m only trying to help. You used to be such a lovely woman. And you’re still young. Well, youngish. It’s not too late for babies yet. You could probably still have almost any man you choose. You got Paul, after all.” She caught her breath. “Oh, dear, I didn’t mean to open old wounds. I am a stupid old woman.”
“You’re barely sixty, you have an I.Q. of one-thirty, and why you persist in this Billie Burke imitation I will never know. It went out of style with the Eisenhower administration.”
Her mother reddened and opened her mouth to retort.
Before she could speak, however, a shadow fell across the table. Both women looked up.
“Irene, darling, I haven’t seen you for ages. And Taylor. How lovely of you to ask me to join you.”
Taylor knew she’d been sandbagged. She’d figured her mother’s luncheon invitation involved throwing Taylor at Irene’s latest prospect for replacement son-in-law. Instead, here was CeCe Washburn, owner of the new antique shop. Another attempt to prune Taylor from her unsuitable employment with Mel Borman.
But this time her mother’s plan might not be so bad. CeCe Washburn could be a plu-perfect source of information about Helmut Eberhardt, the business of fake antiques, and possibly Nick Kendall as well.
Taylor turned on a genuinely welcoming smile.
“CeCe, I couldn’t be more delighted. Sit down, please. We’re just about to order. Would you like a cocktail, maybe? Glass of wine?” Taylor rested her cheek on her hand and simpered. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught her mother’s startled glance. Taylor smiled at her.
Irene narrowed her eyes.
CeCe drained her fourth frozen margarita forty-five minutes later, and fished around in her salad bowl for any stray shrimp that might be hiding under the arugula. Taylor drank her iced tea and wondered at CeCe’s ability to suck up not only the alcohol but the calories without any appreciable effect on her fashionably skeletal frame.
“So you see, darling, I really do need an assistant manager for the new shop. And since your degree is in interior design, naturally your name popped right to the front of my poor little brain,” CeCe said, and signaled to the waiter. The fifth frozen margarita appeared at CeCe’s elbow.
“Sorry, CeCe, I have a job.”
Taylor heard her mother’s sniff. “But you’d meet the loveliest people with CeCe, dear.”
“As opposed to the scum of the earth and the dregs of humanity with whom I presently associate?” Taylor said.
Irene tittered. “Dear Taysie, you get so prickly whenever I mention that nice Mr. Borman and his...clients.”
“Sorry, Mother.” Then the demons that invariably beset her whenever she was around her family began to dance a jig in her head. She leaned closer to her mother and whispered, “You’d be amazed at how many of those dregs are lunching in this room as we speak.”
Her mother jumped and began to peer around myopically. Taylor sat back and smiled. CeCe had been too involved in licking the salt from the rim of her glass to notice their exchange.
“CeCe, did you ever run across a man named Eberhardt?”
CeCe’s tongue stopped in mid-lap. CeCe took a sip and set her glass down. “Terrible tragedy. Of course I never did business personally with him.”
Taylor nodded. “Not too savory a reputation?”
“My dear, the man was a crook. Sold overpriced nineteen-twenties’ reproductions as eighteenth-century English. I’ve heard he even commissioned pieces to order. If a client was dying for a William and Mary dining table, Eberhardt would magically discover one.”
“Did he ever fake a provenance?”
Again the darting tongue was still a moment before CeCe replied. She cleared her throat and shook the heavy gold cuff on her right hand. “Possibly. ‘Course the man made a mint. Some people are so crass.”
Taylor couldn’t have said why she asked her next question, but the moment the words were out of her mouth she knew she’d hit pay dirt. “Did you ever work with a cabinetmaker named Kendall? He’s dead now.”
CeCe blinked at her and burst into loud laughter that grated like a flock of guinea hens running from a raccoon. “Oh, Lord, that man was a genius!” She looked around the room, leaned forward and lowered her voice. “I wouldn’t tell just anybody this, but what with you possibly bein’ in the trade and all. What old Nicholas Kendall didn’t know about furniture hasn’t been invented. He could fake fresh mahogany so you’d swear the worms ate on it in seventeen-fifty.” She caught herself. “Not that he ever faked anything for me, you understand, but when you’re replacing veneer and paneling and things, you have to make the new parts match the rest of the piece.”
“Of course.” Taylor smiled. “Did you like him?”
“What an odd question.” CeCe took a hefty swig of her margarita. The four-carat diamond on her ring finger glittered in the light from the chandelier. “Frankly, I loathed the sanctimonious old fart.”
Taylor stifled a giggle at her mother’s horrified expression.
“Ever meet his grandson?”
“God, did I ever!” CeCe clasped a hand over her sternum—every inch of which was visible beneath her pebbled skin. “If I’d been five—well, maybe ten—years younger, I’d have bought him a closet full of Armani suits, chained him to my bed and screwed his brains out until neither one of us could stand up.”
Taylor laughed out loud. She didn’t dare glance at her mother.
CeCe blinked. “Whoo-ee, I am drunk as a skunk.” She flipped her diamond-encrusted hand over her shoulder. “Armande! You’d better call the store and tell Felix to come on over and get me in the panel truck. That is, if I can walk.” She struggled to her feet. Armande took one elbow, Taylor took the other.
“Lordy! I better go lie down in the ladies’ room until Felix gets here. Thanks for lunch, Irene.” CeCe minced off as though she were picking her way through a minefield. Both Taylor and Armande followed two steps behind, ready to catch her if she stumbled.
When Taylor resumed her seat, she bit her lip to avoid cracking a smile.
“Well, I never. Taylor, you egged that poor woman on. Obviously, she wasn’t paying a bit of attention to how many margaritas she’d had. It’s your fault if she gets sick all over the ladies’ room.”
“Obviously.”
In her mother’s world, women who wore big diamonds didn’t talk like field hands and inhale margaritas like elephants at a watering hole. But Taylor was feeling much too good to be annoyed at her mother’s arcane value system. She knew CeCe would have a doozy of a hangover by sunset.
Taylor reached for her satchel and stood. “Thanks for lunch, Mother. I mean that. It’s been very informative and a heck of a lot of fun, but I’ve got to get back to work.”
“Taysie, you can’t go. You haven’t told me anything that’s been happening with you.”
For a moment Taylor’s demons begged her to sit back down and regale her mother with tales of bloody corpses and long nights spent with homicide detectives. She smacked them back and prayed the newspaper wouldn’t mention her name in connection with the murder.
Taylor leaned over and kissed her mother’s silken cheek. On impulse she hugged her. “I love you, old girl, I really do. And I’m fine. I wish you could believe that. I promise I’ll call you.”
She threaded her way among the tables feeling a sudden sense of sadness. Why couldn’t families just accept one another? She tried to accept her mother and her brother, but neither made much attempt to reciprocate. At the doorway she turned. Her mother still sat at the table watching her, her eyes bright with unshed tears. Taylor felt her own eyes sting. She must be a terrible disappointment. She waved. Her mother waved back.
Now she knew why Nick’s spotless reputation was important to him. He was living down the reputation that old scoundrel, his grandfather, had bequeathed to him. She’d have to do some further checking on Nicholas Kendall Senior. Did the old man’s lessons in woodcraft include failsafe methods for faking antiques? And did those antiques possibly include carousel animals?
“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.
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