The Uneven Score (2 page)

“You’re under a great deal of pressure…”

“Yes, and these incidents only make matters worse. They are not extravagances of my imagination, Whitney. They have happened, and I fear Harry is mixed up in it somehow.”

“But not responsible?”

“That I cannot believe.”

Whitney had nodded glumly, sipping her beer. “Why do you think he’s been kidnapped? Just because he’s been gone four days?”

“Four days is too long, yes,” Paddie admitted. “But that is not enough. Whitney, yesterday after talking to you I received another obscene and threatening phone call, and I began to wonder if maybe something had cracked inside Harry Staliatti’s cantankerous brain and he was behind all these incidents. So I drove out to the residential hotel where he was staying. I had already called, of course, but the desk clerk had said Harry was to be gone for a while but had retained his rooms. I wondered if perhaps this was part of his ruse. In any case, I went upstairs, intending to get into his rooms and search them for clues of where, if anywhere, he had gone. And do you know what I found?”

Her stomach knotted with tension, Whitney shook her head. Paddie’s sense of drama was getting to her.

“My chairman of the board.”

“You’re kidding!”

“No,” Paddie said gravely. “He did not see me, of course, but I saw him go into Harry’s rooms and I saw him leave, carrying a sack of Harry’s things.”

“Oh, Victoria, no! You can’t think your chairman of the board is behind this! Why on earth—”

“You haven’t met him, Whitney. Daniel Graham is the kind of man who has always stood in my way. He acts chivalrous and he’s terribly handsome, but he does not know what to do with a strong woman. I threaten men like this. It is absurd, of course, but it happens.”

“Handsome, chivalrous men don’t put soap in people’s coffee!”

“Perhaps he didn’t do this himself, but he is at the heart of the plot against me.”

“Victoria, this is awful. Are you sure—”

“Am I sure I’m not crazy? Hopelessly paranoid?”

She smiled, knowing exactly what Whitney was thinking. With her abominable taste in clothes, her excess flesh, her overbite, her thin graying hair, and her deservedly lofty opinion of her skills, Victoria Paderevsky appalled people. She knew it, and didn’t care. “No, Whitney,” she went on, “I am not crazy or paranoid, although I do admit I have wondered during the past few days if my critics are not right after all. This is absurd, naturally, but, as you say, the pressures on me are tremendous.”

“But you enjoy them.”

“Yes, I suppose I must.”

Whitney had sighed deeply, wondering if Paddie was finally falling apart, but refusing to believe it. “This Daniel Graham doesn’t sound like the kind of man who would need to go around kidnapping French horn players to get rid of someone he didn’t want around. Tell me about him.”

Paddie had done her best to give Whitney an overview of CFSO politics and Graham’s role in them. Although representative of the growing area’s broadening industries and interests, the orchestra’s board was dominated by two prominent citrus families, the Grahams and the Walkers. Daniel Graham was chairman of the board and had almost single-handedly secured the majority of financial backing for the risky venture, and his mother, Rebecca Graham, had recommended and fought for the appointment of Victoria Paderevsky as music director. Thomas Walker was a vociferous opponent of Paddie’s, and his son, Matthew, was the CFSO’s general manager, a soft-spoken proponent of Paddie’s, and, to further complicate matters, a friend of Daniel’s.

“Why would Daniel Graham want to ruin you?” Whitney had asked finally. “Wouldn’t he come out looking bad, too?”

“Not for long, no. People would tend to feel sorry for him and blame me. In the beginning I believed he was on my side, but had to pacify those who oppose me.”

“Play both sides against the middle, you mean?”

“Yes. But now I’m afraid he has been converted by my opposition and believes that I will bring the orchestra to ruin. If he can get rid of me now before the premiere, then he may still be able to save the orchestra.”

“That doesn’t make any sense!”

“Yes, it does. If he had gotten rid of me two months ago, the CFSO would have died then and there. But now everything is ready. The orchestra is prepared, the programs are set, the publicity is in place. If I suddenly died or left town, the orchestra could conceivably survive. Someone like Daniel Graham would think it could easily survive.”

“But where would he find another conductor on such short notice?”

“It can be done.”

Whitney had sighed miserably, her doubts slowly being erased by Paddie’s calm, rational explanation. “How could anyone believe you’d ruin the CFSO?”

“I am the fat, ugly lady who dares to do music. Who would want to come see my orchestra?”

“Anyone who knows anything about music!”

“Not everyone agrees with you, Whitney.”

“But that’s disgusting! What difference does it make what you look like or whether you’re a man or woman?”

“You know it makes a big difference to far too many people.”

“Yes,” Whitney said, deflated, “you’re right. The question is, what are we going to do about it?”

Paddie’s eyes had lit up. “I have a plan.”

Now, as she left Lake Eola Park and crossed the busy street, Whitney wondered if perhaps she had been too credible. Looking up at the gleaming high-rise, she wondered why on earth a man like Daniel Graham would go to the extreme of kidnapping a French horn player and making threatening phone calls just to harass Victoria Paderevsky into giving up her podium. He was the vice president of a national citrus corporation, for heaven’s sake! Whitney had drunk a glass of Graham premium orange juice that very morning!

It was impossible, she told herself She was just going along with Paddie’s bizarre scheme to pacify her, to calm her frayed nerves. Whatever Harry was up to was perfectly legitimate, if ill-timed, and had simply taken a bit longer than he’d thought. He’d be back. And everything else was just what Paddie had originally thought it was: nasty incidents spawned by jealousy.

Yet how did Whitney explain Daniel Graham’s visit to Harry’s rooms?

She couldn’t, not to her satisfaction.

Besides, there was the chance, however slim, that Paddie was right, and Harry had been kidnapped, wasn’t there? And as long as that chance existed, Whitney would remain cautious and open-minded. She simply couldn’t bear to have anything happen to Harry—or, for that matter, to Paddie.

The revolving doors at the front of the building were still unlocked. Whitney went through them and smiled at the security guard. He smiled back. She went straight to the elevators, banged the up button, whistled Mozart while waiting, and walked in when the doors opened up. The nonstop rise to the twenty-first floor was smooth but fast, and Whitney’s stomach, already not in the best of shape, flip-flopped several times. She did deep-breathing exercises and, when the doors opened and the bell dinged, walked out onto the gold-carpeted floor with her stomach intact.

It was after five, and the reception area was empty. Whitney fished out the key Paddie had presented her and walked past two secretarial desks and down a hall to the last door on the left. Glancing up and down the hall, she stuck the key in the lock, held her breath, and turned the key; to her immense surprise and relief, the door opened.

It was a corner office with floor-to-ceiling windows: quiet, cool, and even more elegant than Whitney had expected. The view of Orlando was stunning. A huge antique walnut desk stood in front of the windows, and there were leather chairs and a leather couch, shelves, two nineteenth-century landscape paintings, and an Oriental carpet. There was absolutely no clutter and certainly no indication whatsoever that the man who occupied this office had kidnapped Harry Stagliatti or poured soap into Victoria Paderevsky’s coffee.

It hardly seemed the man’s style, Whitney thought.

“I don’t know what you’ll find,” Paddie had said. “I don’t even know what you should look for, but if you can find something
..
. a clue as to his motive, or proof of his intentions, or an idea of where Harry might be…I will be indebted to you, Whitney.”

At the time, it had seemed a reasonable proposition. As Paddie had explained, Whitney wasn’t really breaking and entering. She had a key, didn’t she? (Paddie had shrugged off questions about where she had procured a key to Daniel Graham’s office; she was a resourceful woman.)

But now, sensing the power of the man whose office she was about to search, Whitney wondered if she had made a grievous mistake in going along with Paddie. What would happen if she was caught? Guilty or innocent, Daniel Graham wouldn’t be pleased. But Paddie had said Daniel Graham was to be at her four o’clock rehearsal, and she would keep him there at all costs. Whitney was safe.

She started with the shelves and worked her way around the room. Everything she touched and examined suggested that Daniel Graham was a wealthy and cultured man…and not an especially old one, as Whitney had anticipated. The diploma displayed on one of the shelves, just below the decanters of scotch and bourbon, was only fifteen years old. The man had graduated from the University of Florida the same year Harry had introduced Whitney to the glories of Mozart horn concertos.

She moved to the desk and began rifling through the in nocuous drawers, despairing of finding anything incriminating. Clearly, Daniel Graham was the type who would cover his tracks—if he had any to cover. But Paddie would want details, and Whitney was determined to give them to her.

Then, as she was trying to open the bottom right drawer, she heard footsteps out in the hall.

“Just my luck,” she muttered to herself, and, not wasting a second in self incriminations, grabbed her horn and scuttled off to the closet.

With her heart pounding in her chest, she leaped into a dark corner of the closet, which she had already searched, and pulled a herringbone jacket down on top of her, curling up under it and tucking her feet under a tennis racket. The wooden coat hanger made a horrible clanging noise and fell on her head. She was about to toss it aside, but seized it instead, clutching it to her side, listening. If worse came to worse, she wondered, would she be able to beat Daniel Graham over the head with a wooden coat hanger?

The footsteps stopped, and Whitney sat very still, wondering if the oppressive silence was good news or bad news. She was uncomfortable and claustrophobic and furious with Paddie for getting her into this mess and with herself for letting Paddie get her into this mess. It was just a janitor, she told herself; nothing to be worried about.

Then the daunting silence exploded. “You might as well come out,” a deep, male, and very alert voice said in a distinct drawl. “I assure you, you don’t want me to come after you.”

Whitney grimaced and held her horn tightly with clammy hands. Breathing the stale, stifling air under the jacket, she acknowledged the dreaded truth: The man beyond the closet door didn’t sound at all like a janitor.

“I wouldn’t try anything foolish,” he said with an annoying air of self-confidence.

Too late for that, Whitney thought dispiritedly. She began to picture herself on a chain gang in some bug-infested swamp. Having waited until age twenty-nine to step foot into Florida, she had her preconceived notions. She pursed her lips and sweated.

“I have a gun,” he announced matter-of-factly.

Whitney was not surprised. There was an off chance he was just a security guard doing his job, but she doubted it. He sounded more like Paddie’s rendition of Daniel Graham. Probably the gun had been in the locked drawer. And since she had so brilliantly hidden in the closet, Graham had had plenty of time to slip into the drawer and arm himself. From his perspective, she was a possibly dangerous burglar. From her perspective, she was a harmless woman hiding in a closet with a coat hanger and a nickel-plated French horn for protection.

The closet door creaked open, light filtering through the herringbone jacket. Whitney wondered what kind of idiocy had prompted her to hide in a closet. It was a dead end. She breathed through her nose and tried to remain calm, silent, and still. All she needed now was to hyperventilate. She hadn’t hyperventilated since high school when she’d played the horn solo in L’Après Midi d’un Faun. Nerves. Harry had thrown a paper bag over her head and whacked her on the back. A horn player needed to know how to breathe properly.

So, apparently, did a burglar.

“You will remove the jacket from your face—very slowly.”

He spoke in a confident, sonorous drawl, but, of course, he could afford to be confident. He was the one with the gun. It occurred to Whitney that the roles were reversed. She was the burglar. He was the innocent bystander.

“Need I remind you that I have a gun?”

“You needn’t,” she replied with as much lighthearted and irreproachable good cheer as she could manage.

Slowly—very slowly—she removed the jacket from her face and wondered what Daniel Graham was making of his dangerous burglar. Once she had agreed to Paddie’s scheme, Whitney had disappeared into the women’s bathroom at the airport and changed into attire she considered more suitable for breaking into a corporate office: gray sweat pants, a Buffalo Sabres hockey shirt, and pink ballet slippers. She had even tied her ash-brown hair back with a length of thirty-pound fishing line that she had tucked in her horn case. Ordinarily she used the line to string up the complicated valves on her instrument, not to string up her bouncy, dangling curls. She considered herself a strong, sturdy sort of woman—a French horn player had to be—and, with her wide blue eyes, straight nose, and good cheekbones, not unattractive.

She couldn’t make out the features of the dark-haired figure in the light of the doorway, but she did see his gun. “I’m not armed,” she said in a clear voice. “I know this must look odd, but—”

“Stand up—slowly. We’ll talk in a minute.”

Whitney was not encouraged. She didn’t want to talk. She couldn’t talk. She had promised Paddie. Not, she thought, that Paddie had kept her end of the bargain. She had vowed to keep Daniel Graham at her four o’clock rehearsal, and unless Whitney was very much mistaken, Daniel Graham wasn’t at the Orlando Community College auditorium. He was in his office ordering her about with a gun. Brilliant conductor though she might be, Victoria Paderevsky was not a reliable cohort.