Winner Take All (17 page)

“Yessir, all about those Ben Franklins. All about big money.”

“What you talking about?” Something in her tone suggested Ida Biggs was actually glad her husband was speaking, as it released her from what was probably a tight and constant reserve. “You never worked in that home.”

“Who’s living with you then? Who’s watched you talk every day ’bout how hard it was to be in the same house with that lady. Who’s heard you fretting day in and day out over the baby being in that lady’s care?”

Marcus asked, “How long did you work for Mr. Steadman?”

“A year and some change. Ever since they moved into that house he built her.” But her eyes remained upon her husband, who was going around now with five glasses on a metal tray. “Listen to you talk.”

“I saw that woman more than I ever wanted to.” He handed his wife a glass, then seated himself beside her. “I watched them have words right there on my doorstep.”

His wife sipped from her glass. “Mr. Dale is a fine gentleman.”

“Did I say anything against that man? No I did not. Not one word. I’m talking about the lady.”

“The lady didn’t care nothing about money.”

“But she cared about her singing, didn’t she. She cared about her career. That was her pieces of silver.” He leaned back, satisfied. “Tell me I’m not right.”

“Go turn on the fan so we can get us some air.”

Tyrell set down his glass and rose from his chair. “Her singing was her obsession. Same sin, different currency. Ain’t that what you say, Reverend?”

Marcus asked, “You think Erin Brandt kidnapped the child because of her career?”

“She didn’t do it out of love, I know that much.” Ida Biggs looked straight at him for the first time, and Marcus realized the only reason she was talking to him at all was because of the baby. “One thing I can
say for certain about Miz Brandt. She wouldn’t know love if it grew fangs and bit her on the backside.”

They made two further stops after the visit with Ida Biggs. The meetings proceeded at a country pace, which meant it was almost dark before they finally left Wilmington. Marcus dozed the entire way home. His sleep was never deep enough to dream. Every now and then the mournful note he had heard upon awakening in the hospital drifted through his heart, and he would sense anew the burden of unshed tears.

When Deacon pulled up in front of the house, Marcus opened his door and eased himself upright. He could not help but watch his front door. He knew Kirsten would not be there, but hoped just the same. “Would you come to court with me tomorrow?”

“You still plan on taking that lawyer Caisse to task?”

“You heard what I said to Dale. We don’t have any choice. Ida Biggs might be more comfortable on the stand if you were there to greet her.”

“Son, I’d rather watch you tear a patch out of that man’s hide than sit ringside at a revival.” Deacon slapped the car into gear. “I’ll pick you up at seven-thirty sharp.”

Marcus ate a solitary dinner and stretched out on his bed. But the day had already been too full of sleep. He slipped into his clothes and padded back downstairs. Marcus arrived on the porch just as a concert of wind began singing through his pines. He eased himself down in one of the rockers, testing each joint in turn. There was considerable soreness, particularly around his neck and upper shoulders. But other than a general sense of bearing a body-sized bruise and having come far too close to that last cold breath, he was all right.

The wind’s recital was particularly sweet that night. He rocked in cadence to the tossing branches as thunder’s profound bass filled the hollows of his chest. It seemed to him that Charlie Hayes walked up and settled into the rocker alongside his own. The sensation was so strong Marcus felt a need to say the words aloud, that he was welcome here always.

Then the first sheet of rain swept in, forming a tight enclosure for all the night’s scents. The magnolia blossoms and bougainvillea sang a perfumed lament. The leaves tapped out the rhythm of absent friends.

But it was not merely Charlie’s absence that harried him that night. His need to hold Kirsten was a pain that dwarfed his physical discomfort. He ached as well for all she carried. There was no question but that she was judging him through spectacles formed by her past. Marcus sat and rocked and listened to the storm enclose him in his safe little island, and prayed that he could trust her and their love enough to hope she would not only return, but return because she was ready for him. He hoped Charlie Hayes had been right. He hoped he had done the right thing. This time.

K
IRSTEN CAUGHT THE MIDDAY FLIGHT
to Washington and a late afternoon plane to London. She was plagued the entire journey by how her life’s rules were being tangled and respun in a web-like script she could not fathom. As she entered Heathrow’s Terminal Three, jet lag hulked in the back of her mind like the onset of a bad cold. She gathered her bags, passed through customs, and headed for the discount hotel counter. From the sparse high-season choices she selected a Best Western within walking distance of Paddington Station. On the express train into London, her jumbled thoughts chopped at the fineness of the sunlit morning with a blade honed from earlier times.

At Paddington she asked directions from an overfriendly porter and became lost a block from the station entrance. Jet lag and a plague of almost-familiar images pressed in from all sides. The sunlight was brighter than she recalled, the weather warmer. London to her mind was a place of cool nights and misting rain, even in July. By the time she finally found the proper road, the back of her shirt was clamped tightly to her skin.

The hotel receptionist was a slender Pakistani with soulful eyes and a manner that suggested he tried his wiles with every pretty woman. He pressed the key into her palm, then wrapped his fingers delicately about her wrist, pinning her into his grip. “Madame is being upgraded to one of the most newly renovated and air-conditioned rooms.”

Kirsten pretended not to notice either his tone or his clutch. “Can you tell me where I can find a good detective?”

The receptionist’s hand snapped away. “Please?”

“A detective. A large agency would be better. Someone with an international reputation.”

“I am certain I do not know.” A film descended over the liquid gaze. “Madame must excuse me now. Other guests are soon to be arriving.”

Kirsten hefted her own luggage and carried it up the narrow stairs. Her room was an Edwardian box, high-ceilinged and once probably the side parlor to a grand city house. Now it was carpeted in a depressing plaid, painted a shade somewhere between tan and putrid, and lit by the chandelier’s three remaining bulbs. Kirsten settled upon the bed, pulled out the proper phone book, and looked up the Royal Opera House. Every motion caused the unsprung mattress to sway like a boat entering harbor. As the phone rang she surveyed the room with tired satisfaction. If any place offered a total disconnection from her unwanted past, it was this.

The phone spoke. “Covent Garden.”

“I just wanted to ask about a singer performing tonight.”

“The name?”

“Erin Brandt.”

The response came too swiftly for it to have been the first time spoken that day. “Ms. Brandt does not accept any calls. But I am happy to relay a message.”

“No. No message.” She hung up, took a hard breath, then dialed the number for Marcus’ office. She endured Netty’s recorded message and tersely spelled out her London address. Her hands were shaking as she hunted through her purse for the card from Senator Jacobs’ aide. She dialed the senator’s Raleigh office and left a detailed message, asking for help in locating a London-based detective agency. As she spelled out her requirements, she found herself fighting a losing skirmish with her steadily descending eyelids.

She was asleep before her head hit the pillow. Familiar dreams rose in what she had hoped would be a sterile room. She danced to a chamber full of strangers, all smiling and waving, all shouting noises that created a screeching cacophonous din. She danced not to a melody, but chaos. The apparitions shouted at her in voices barely below full rage. Though she neither wanted to be there nor understood what they were saying, still she danced, alone and surrounded by enemies disguised with smiles.

The noise in her dream was so loud, when the phone rang she merely absorbed the sound and danced to that as well. Gradually the
wordless clatter receded until the ringing was all she could hear, and the dance dimmed to where she had no choice but to open her eyes.

She lifted the receiver, cradled it to her shoulder, and pushed herself upright. “Yes?”

“Madame has a visitor.”

“Who—” But the receptionist had already slapped down the phone.

Kirsten slipped into clothes that still smelled of the plane’s recycled air. In the doorway she paused and turned back, inspecting the high-ceilinged room with its repainted hints of former grandeur. She saw no hint of her caper with frantic memories save the tousled bed.

She took the stairs in a dull melange of fatigue and dream tendrils. Which made her entrance into the lobby even more eerie.

Afternoon light made a brilliant splash upon the lobby’s white-tiled floor. To her squinting gaze, it appeared that a shadow separated itself from its owner and rushed over to find a more suitable host.

Then a face came into view, and eyes looked at her, and a mild yet breathless voice declared, “Beautiful, yes, that I can accept. But not like this. Not like a vision with the eyes of a shattered soul. Do you dance? Do you sing? You have the look of an artist, one whose cry is too great to be held trapped within.”

“Excuse me?”

A hand reached for her arm and pulled her toward the doorway. “Come, we must inspect you in the full light of day.”

The woman’s movements were too swift, the tableau too changing, for Kirsten to focus fully. She saw high-heeled suede boots dancing across the sun-splashed floor. They rose to join with rose-silk trousers, and they with a matching high-collared jacket. Hair like a black waterfall poured across the shoulders. The woman was not large. But when she turned back around, and drew in so close Kirsten could see the faint darker flecks within those chestnut eyes, she
commanded
. “Yes. As soon as I saw you moving down the stairs, I knew. We are sisters, you and I. Molded by the same harsh flame.”

Her own words sounded feeble, unable to meet the force with which she was being assaulted. “You are Erin Brandt?”

“Of course, of course, you came seeking an enemy. As did I.” She had a slight accent, the faintest lilt to her breathless words. As though she were reading them off a score she would later sing. “That was why I came, I had to see for myself. Who have they sent to attack me?”

“I … We shouldn’t be talking.”

“So the world says, does it not?” The woman seemed both young and old, a timeless adolescent trapped in the amber of fame. “But what does your heart say? Does it chant the same incantation as mine, that we meet as sisters held too long apart?”

“How did you find me?”

“That doesn’t matter now.” Erin stepped away and began scrambling through her purse. “You must come tonight. You know of my performance, yes? Of course, why else would they have sent you.” She extracted a silver pen and tiny leather-bound notepad. “Your name, it is Kirsten, yes?”

“Kirsten Stansted.”

“So very lovely. Like an aria.” Erin tore off the page and pressed it into Kirsten’s hand. “Give that to the guard at the backstage entrance to Covent Garden. Be there by a quarter to eight. Someone will greet you and take you to a chair. They say it is sold out, but we must find you a seat somewhere, yes? Of course we must.”

The gesture was not enough. Impatiently Erin stuffed the pen and pad back into her purse, freeing her other hand to reach over and grip as well. “Tell me you will come, I beg you. Or say nothing, so that I can at least dream that beyond the lights and the orchestra, there in the dark cloud of strange faces, I will have you to sing to. You to catch my words and know their true meaning. As only a sister can.”

Then she turned and fled down the stairs and out to the street, where a uniformed chauffeur rose to hold open the door to a purple Rolls-Royce. Erin cast her a single glance, so strong in appeal Kirsten could feel the slender fingers still pressing and holding.

Kirsten turned from the entrance. The receptionist observed her with the scorn of one who wished to claim he had known this was the situation all along.

M
ARCUS ARRIVED
at the courthouse to discover his case was listed first on Judge Sears’ overcrowded Tuesday docket. When Marcus entered the courtroom, Dale Steadman was already there in the back row. Marcus waved him forward. “I’ve asked Deacon to join us as a sort of unofficial aide. His presence might prove important.”

“Whatever you say.” Steadman wore a standard-issue gray suit and the grim expression of one entering a war not of his choosing. He pointed to where the court reporter stood by the back doorway. “Do you know him?”