“But how could he swap off a horse without your knowing?”
“Very easily. The first horses I carved were modeled after these. It was the carousel I knew best. Max stayed late plenty of nights after I’d gone home. I was still living in Granddad’s house and trying to get it ready to sell. All he had to do was wait until one of the real horses was ready to paint, swap it for one of mine after I left for the night, spray mine with a white gesso undercoat, take the real horse home and hide it somewhere so he could work on it in private.”
“But you recognized the nick tonight. Wouldn’t you have seen the same thing then?”
Nick shook his head. “We worked on different horses once we got to that stage. The painting is where the real art comes in. You get proprietary about your horse. You just wait until you’ve got your first horse on its feet. You’ll see what I mean.”
“What would be the point?”
“Money. A real antique with a real provenance sold underground to a crooked collector would be worth big bucks.”
“Couldn’t someone else have done it?”
“No. Only Max.” He turned to her, his face bleak. “Well, I guess we’ve solved our little puzzle. It’s Max after all. Max from the beginning. My friend Max.” The last was spoken with a wrenching bitterness. “No wonder he got so drunk tonight.”
Her heart went out to him. “We have to go talk to him. Maybe he can explain all this.”
“We’re not just talking about carousels here. There have been two murders, remember. How about we go talk to him and he decides to get rid of us too?”
“We’ll tell Mel first. There’s no reason to kill us if it won’t buy Max anything.” She pulled herself up and reached down a hand to him. “Come on. Let’s go find a phone.”
Wood exploded from the platform two inches to the left of Nick’s heel. He fell back and rolled across the platform towards the nearest chariot. “Down!” he yelled.
Taylor flung herself flat and began to wriggle towards Nick as the second bullet pinged against the metal pole a foot above her head.
The chariot was built of wood old enough and thick enough to be as strong as steel and covered with layers of gesso and paint. Hit straight on, it would probably stop a bullet.
But they were trapped. All the shooter had to do was work himself around to get a clear shot at them as they hunkered down behind the chariot. They wouldn’t see him or hear him. They were sitting ducks in a shooting gallery, spotlighted under the purple, gold and green lights of the carousel.
“Stay flat,” Nick commanded. Taylor needed no urging.
“What do we do?” Taylor whispered. Her body felt hot with fear and her pulse throbbed in her throat.
“We’re sitting ducks. I’ve got to get to the controls, give him a moving target,” Nick whispered. “Stay here.”
“Nick, no! He’ll kill you!”
“Not if I’m lucky.”
He began to wriggle across the floor towards the hole in the center that led to the controls.
Taylor’s mouth was too dry even to pray aloud.
Nick dropped into the center well and slid towards the door of the control booth. A shot pinged against the metal door frame.
“Hell!” he snarled. His hand snatched at the handle. He dove inside. Taylor couldn’t see him, but she heard him.
The band organ wheezed into life with a cheerful rendition of “In the Good Ole Summertime.” The carousel began to turn. Lights blinked. Taylor felt as though she were trapped in a kaleidoscope.
She grasped the edge of the chariot with both hands and held on as the carousel picked up speed.
She couldn’t get to Nick across that open space of gears and struts that held the platform. He couldn’t get to her.
Taylor grabbed the nearest steel pole and felt herself jerked up. As the jumper’s pole rose, so did she. As it sank, a bullet struck the pole just where her head had been a moment earlier.
She let go and slid behind the second chariot.
The music was loud above the whirring of the mechanism. The carousel spun faster and faster.
She could feel the centrifugal force thrusting her out towards the edge of the slippery floor. She lay flat, pressed her face against the wood, held on to the edge of the chariot, and prayed. Her stomach heaved.
A spurt of shots hit the wheelhouse. A mirror exploded into shards. Taylor cowered under the chariot seat.
She raised her head a moment later to try to spot a silhouette... the flash of a rifle barrel...anything. If Nick had been hit, she’d ride until she died or spun off onto the concrete.
Nick must live. She couldn’t lose him now.
At first she wasn’t certain whether the carousel slowed or whether she was too dizzy to care. Then she realized the strains of the “Tennessee Waltz” were becoming identifiable. The ponies moved up and down in an easy rhythm.
Finally the carousel jerked to a halt and rocked gently like an ocean liner moored at dockside. Edges of moonlight filtered through the enclosure windows. Had the thing run out of gas or had Nick stopped it? How did he know they were safe?
She heard shouts and running feet.
A moment later six guards with drawn pistols erupted into the enclosure.
“Please, don’t shoot!” Taylor said, but she stayed prone just in case.
The door to the engine room opened. Nick stepped onto the platform.
“What the hell, Nick?” one of the guards shouted.
“Someone was shooting at us.”
The guards hesitated a moment, then ran into the darkness.
Nick dropped beside Taylor. She threw her arms around his neck and buried her face against his shoulder.
“Oh, God, Nick, you’re all right.”
“I couldn’t tell whether he’d hit you.” He began to check her all over.
She clung to him.
“Come on,” he said, and pulled her to her feet. “They won’t catch him now.”
“Whoa! I’m dizzy.”
“I’ve got you, baby, I’ve got you. Hold on to me.”
A large guard came into the enclosure and bolstered his sidearm. “Whoever it was is long gone. What the hell happened?”
“Damned if I know, Jack.”
“What I don’t know is how anybody could miss.” Jack snorted. “Must be one hell of a lousy shot.”
“Not necessarily.” Jack’s partner, five feet ten and whipcord thin, leaned on the edge of the door frame. “You lock the gate behind you, Nick?”
Nick nodded.
“Must have been trying to hit you from the delivery lot.”
“The angle of that first shot was down. Hit the platform.” Nick pointed to a V-shaped groove in the wood.
Jack shrugged. “Stood on the hood of his car, maybe. Man, what you been up to?”
“Pissing somebody off big time,” the smaller man said as he moved into the enclosure. “We’re supposed to call the cops if anybody shoots off a firearm in the city.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Nick said.
“Ask for Detective Danny Vollmer,” Taylor said.
VOLLMER DIDN’T SHOW UP to take statements, and by the time the police released Nick and Taylor, the clock on the tower of the amusement park had tolled twelve.
Nick suggested that they spend the night at Rounders. “I’ve got a sofa bed too,” he said.
“You don’t have Elmo,” Taylor answered. “He’s never going to speak to me again if he’s run out of cat food. Besides, I don’t intend to let anyone scare me out of my home.”
“I was afraid you’d say that,” Nick told her. He pointed to a gym bag on the backseat of the truck. “I came prepared this time.” Wearily, he considered the misery of another night on that sofa bed, his body tormented not only by the springs under the thin mattress by but the vision of Taylor so close and yet so far above him.
“Eugene’s probably through for the night,” Taylor said, “but we can’t count on that.”
“We can’t be sure it’s Eugene.”
Oh, yes we can,
Taylor thought, shuddering at her memory.
But I can’t tell you how I know.
“Leave your truck at Veda’s. We’ll pick it up in the morning,” Nick continued.
“Is that a good idea? Won’t Veda worry when she finds it in the morning?”
“She’ll just think we spent the night together.”
Taylor closed her eyes. “Oh, great.”
I wish.
At her cabin, Nick reconnoitered before he let Taylor out of the truck. She realized she’d left the Glock in the console of a truck that sat twenty-five miles away. Should they be attacked, they were unarmed. “Great,” she whispered.
Elmo’s fury evaporated at the sight of a can of his favorite cat food. “If I ate the way Elmo does,” Taylor said as she dumped the can into his dish, “I’d be the size of one of those chariots.”
Nick watched her taut rear end as she bent over the dish. She was more like Elmo than she realized. Sleek and tight-muscled. He’d never found muscles sexy before. In fact, a woman like Taylor shouldn’t be able to stir his blood, but she did. She’d done nothing but mess him up since the moment she walked into Rounders. He should kick her intrusive sleek rear end out of his life, out of his troubles, and out of danger.
Unfortunately, the best way to assure her safety was to keep her right by his side.
There was a moment tonight—after he’d turned on the carousel lights—when he’d thought she’d looked at him as a man rather than as a client.
He was fooling himself. What could a high-class, college-educated woman see in a guy like him? He wasn’t much except a halfway decent wood carver with sawdust in his hair on his way to bankruptcy and, possibly, prison.
“You think they’ll pick up Eugene for questioning?” he asked, to keep the conversation going. “I’d like to know for sure whether he’s the shooter.”
Taylor shrugged. “Who? Mississippi state police? Tennessee state police? Shelby County sheriff? Memphis police? Or even, for that matter, the police in Oxford? The way bureaucracies work he’s probably safe until he dies of old age, or unless he wanders into some station house and demands to be locked up.”
“He’s going to keep trying to get us.”
Taylor dropped onto the sofa. “I know. And sooner or later the law of averages will kick in.” She leaned forward and looked at Nick, who leaned once more against the sink. “You weren’t the only target tonight. He was after both of us.”
“Yeah. You gonna call Borman?”
Taylor shook her head. “Not tonight. Should we sleep in shifts the way they used to do in Comanche country?”
Nick shook his head. “Unless Eugene has scored a rocket launcher I’d say we’re safe enough.”
“Good.” Taylor stood. “Then I, for one, am going to bed. This day feels as if it started in September.”
Nick couldn’t sleep, and not because of the mattress, or even because of Taylor. He dreaded the coming of morning as much as if he were facing the gallows at dawn. Morning meant confrontation with Max.
He’d never known who had fathered him. His grandfather wasn’t even a halfway decent role model, much less a friend. Max had needed a son, Nick had needed a father. They’d been a perfect fit.
Now, it seemed as though he’d never known Max at all. Had he projected his own needs onto Max so completely that he’d never recognized the weakness in the man? The viciousness he’d shown tonight with Josh Chessman couldn’t be excused simply because Max was drunk. And Max seemed to be drunk often lately.
Could Max be trying to drown his guilt?
Max was a supreme pragmatist. If he needed money, he’d steal the animals and assume the thefts would never be discovered. Nick could carve more, couldn’t he? Nick would never find out; therefore Nick would never be hurt.
But Nick had found out. And Helmut Eberhardt had died. Suddenly a simple business transaction had exploded into murder and arson.
Had Clara Eberhardt tried to blackmail Max? Tried to threaten him about her husband’s death? Tried to get him to steal again?
Clara Eberhardt would have come to Rounders with Max without a qualm.
Would Clara have come with Josh? Maybe.
She’d have come with Veda. And Veda was an expert with chisels and she knew where a blow would be the most devastating.
Rico? Clara might be flattered by his attentions. He was not above seducing any woman he wanted.
Suddenly Nick sat up. He remembered the underwear in Clara’s luggage. Had Clara been coming to meet a lover and had that lover been Rico? He realized they’d never checked to see whether there was a reservation at The Peabody in her name. Maybe Rico was the one registered.
Finally, there was Marcus Cato. Nick couldn’t see Clara agreeing to join Cato in a darkened warehouse alone at night.
Unless Eugene Lewis came with her.
Maybe Eugene was a party to the murder. Maybe they’d been wrong about Eugene not having the brains to work a scam like this. Maybe he’d killed Clara himself. He knew his way around Rounders. He’d been there to help the Eberhardts steal the animals.