Winner Take All (37 page)

Even with the two of them helping, Dale made hard going of the front stairs. Marcus used his foot to push open the screen door. “Let’s take him straight upstairs.”

“S-stand aside.” Darren gripped Dale so hard the air huffed from his lungs, and hustled up the steps.

“First door on the right.”

Darren pushed into the guest bedroom and eased the man down. Dale’s fumbling would have cast the side table and lamp to the floor, had Marcus not been there to catch them. Dale’s gaze roved with the unwilling fervor of lost control. “So afraid.”

“The bathroom is through the door straight ahead of you.” Marcus positioned the trash can by the side of the bed, then laid a towel by Dale’s head. “Don’t worry. Their case is full of holes.”

Confusion writhed across his features. “What’re you talking about?”

“Prison. This afternoon. New York. Remember?”

Dale laughed with drunken contempt. “Couldn’t care less about all that.”

Marcus stared down at the rumpled man.

“Where is my baby, Marcus?”

He motioned Darren toward the door. “Sleep it off. We’ll talk tomorrow.”

As he flipped off the light and closed the door, a voice crushed by a mountain of pain moaned, “Where is my daughter?”

Sleep, night’s intimate companion, bid Marcus a jarring farewell. He dressed and stood in the upstairs hallway, listening to the house. A sonorous snoring came from the guest bedroom. Marcus tread quietly down the stairs, grateful for the isolation.

He made a coffee and took his mug and the cordless phone out onto his front porch. His thoughts shifted in time to the pungent predawn breeze. Strands of honeysuckle and bougainvillea climbed trellises to either side of the porch, offering aromatic alms to the day ahead. The previous autumn he had planted a stand of fruit trees beside his office, replacing the huge elm burned by New Horizons lackeys sent to destroy his home. The day was so young and the sky so clear the saplings and neighboring pines stood as Chinese etchings upon a gold-embossed sky. Between him and the road, magnolia blossoms cupped the first glimmer of light in scented white hands.

The night’s final dream lingered like half-heard whispers. He had been seated in this very same spot, rocking away and watching his little corner of the world. Fay had appeared and spoken to him. In the dream he could not make out her words, but he heard the wisdom of hard-fought years and knew the woman’s message. He waited through his second cup, then dialed the New York hotel’s number from memory.

Kirsten answered with the soft breathiness of one still asleep.

“It’s me.”

“Marcus, hi.” The voice was so intimate he tasted the words as he would love’s caress. “I was at dinner when you called. When I got back I was so sleepy I just fell into bed. I’ve still got on half my clothes.”

He forced himself to push that thought away. “It’s early, but I couldn’t wait. We’ve got to talk.”

“Why, what’s wrong?”

“Kirsten, I need your help.”

There was a moment’s pause, then, “Wait just a second.”

The first birds of dawn chirped a welcome as he waited. She returned equipped with a totally different tone. “All right, I’m back.”

He took it slow, giving her the full details. Walking her through the three court appearances, the way opposing counsel had constantly stayed ahead of him, the news yesterday, the journey, the confrontations. Then, because it had tasted so good the first time, he finished as he had started. “I know I’m missing something. I just can’t seem to see this clearly.”

“Someone else is involved here.”

Fifteen minutes on the phone and she had the answer. Marcus found it difficult not to scoff. “Kirsten, who on earth could possibly have such a strong interest in this baby they’d go to all this trouble?”

“That’s our problem.” She remained as soft-spoken as always, but there was no doubt to her response. “We’ve been hitting our heads on a question we can’t answer. Let’s look at it another way.”

He stared at the gathering light. “What other way is there?”

“We need to discover,” Kirsten answered, “who else could be pulling Hamper Caisse’s string.”

“But what would they want?”

“That’s exactly the issue we have to work out.”

The impulse to play the lawyer and pick away at her certainty was so potent it forced him out of his chair and across the dew-flecked lawn. “You’re saying we look first for motive, then the person.”

“Erin had a secret. We know that much. We’ve assumed it was nothing more than a desire to avoid bad publicity. What if it was something else?”

“I’m not sure I follow you.”

“We’ve got to start looking for answers where she cared the most.” She pondered a moment. “I need an introduction at the Met. That was her obsession, right? It’s as good a place to start as any. But I need a contact.”

He shrugged in silent bafflement to reasoning he could not fathom. “Let me make a call.”

R
EINER
K
LATZ
was a man undone.

He sat locked inside Erin Brandt’s front room. Goscha the maid was upstairs somewhere, packing Erin’s belongings. Her wailing drifted through the ceiling overhead as though Erin’s specter had already arrived to take up ghoulish residence. Newspapers were spread about the table and sofa and floor in devastating array. The tabloids had used police photographs for their front covers. They and the headlines were fists that beat him almost senseless.

Erin’s word, her mood, her every thought had been so tightly woven into the fabric of his day that he now had neither direction nor purpose. His mind hunted like a frantic little animal for the familiar, finding empty solace in meaningless memories.

He recalled the thrill he had felt at discovering Erin’s pure sound was not based upon perfect pitch, which was a source of false pride for many divas. Instead, Erin had the much rarer quality of perfect
relative
pitch. Perfect pitch meant the ability to remember a note and hit it perfectly, first time, every time. But some of the world’s greatest orchestras held to the centuries-old tradition of tuning a quarter note low or high. This meant the diva was forced to perform in what was for her slightly off-pitch. Erin, on the other hand, took her pitch from the oboe used to tune the instruments. Right first time, every time. So rare a quality it was seldom even discussed.

His mind scampered further, recalling her pattern before every performance. She liked to arrive at the concert hall very early and give the music a final study. Dinner prior to an evening performance was an
apple and a few sips of champagne. An iced bucket was always there in her dressing room. Always. She rarely drank more than a single glass, but she insisted on a full bottle. She considered such touches her due. Her voice coach arrived then and together they did a major warm-up. Then she was fitted into the opera’s first costume, assisted only by one trusted dresser, for it was during this period that she also moved into character. Then the final warm-up, another few sips of champagne, and up to the stage. No calming exercises for Erin. This was time for energy and excitement. Reiner sat and recalled what it was like to move alongside Erin Brandt as she headed for the stage. Her focus was so tight that the rest of the world faded into meaningless shadows. She saw nothing, heard nothing, felt nothing. Her world was ahead of her, her life, her entire existence. The only reality she ever cared about waited just beyond where the stage manager stood and smiled the welcome she did not see, his hand timed to open the curtain on the conductor’s downbeat. Then she could step forward, and drink in the lights and the music and the adoration. Then she knew the rapture of being worshiped.

Goscha’s shriek ripped through his reverie. Reiner winced at the impact of returning to the here and now, with the photographs and the headlines shrilling that his life was over. Stabbed eleven times. Brutal murder. They might as well have plunged the knife into him, he was that dead.

The housemaid’s cries were directly overhead now. But it was more than her proximity that heightened the noise. She was in the baby’s room. Reiner stared up at the ceiling with dawning realization. Goscha was not weeping over her deceased mistress. She cried for that cursed child.

Even this heightened caterwauling could not drive him out. Where was he to go? Certainly not down his beloved Kö, where the greyhounds slavered for his blood and the world was ready to watch his death throes. And not home. His wife was waiting for him there. The world might see her as the compliant one, the silent seamstress ready to do anyone’s bidding. But Reiner knew this wraith had teeth. She had gnawed on him relentlessly since the news arrived. How he was brought low now, how he should never have mixed himself up with that singer. As he had fled their expensive riverside flat, the one they would now be forced to vacate since his sole source of income lay full of gaping wounds, his wife had shrilled that he had earned his place in the grave beside Erin Brandt.

Definitely he could not go home.

The wailing overhead gradually lessened. The Polish maid seemed content now to moan a single word. Over and over she repeated the baby’s name. Celeste. Celeste. Reiner folded his head into his hands, inwardly moaning along with Goscha.

Then he realized what he was saying.

He stood and walked to the window. Goscha’s moans were no longer a vexation. They pushed him forward. Of course. There was indeed a way out of this. A perfect way.

The phone rang just as he was reaching for it. Reiner stared in confusion. The ringing continued. Tentatively he picked up the receiver. He stared at it a moment longer before placing it to his ear. “Yes?”

“Tell me you haven’t done anything yet.”

Reiner sighed. Of course this man would have anticipated everything. Of course. And in that moment, for the very first time, things began to grow clear. “No,” Reiner replied. “Not yet.”

“Good. Very good.” The voice held the quality of a dagger wrapped in a silk scarf. “Now I will tell you precisely what is going to happen. But first I need to know, does your wife speak English?”

“Yes.” For once, Reiner was able to anticipate the man’s thinking. At least partially. “But she won’t help us.”

“That,” the man replied, “is where you are most assuredly wrong.”

M
ARCUS GAVE IT
as long as he could, then took a coffee and two aspirin upstairs and knocked on the guestroom door. Dale had risen during the night and managed to undress himself. The burly man peered up at him with the furrowed brow of one striving to keep the lid of his head from splitting open.

“I have to be going,” Marcus told him. He knew from experience the last thing Dale wanted was questions as to his well-being. “But first I need to ask you something. And you need to answer. So do whatever it takes to wake up.”

The man pushed himself to a seated position, swayed and almost went down the other way, then rose to his feet. When Marcus moved to offer support, Dale halted him with an upraised hand. He disappeared into the bathroom, returned, took the aspirin with a slug of coffee, sighed, drained the cup. He croaked, “Go where?”

“Church. You ready to listen?”

Unwilling to nod and risk dislodging his head, he made do with a wave. Go.

“Is there anybody else you can think of who might have a motive to make a run for your daughter?”

Dale’s head came up far too swiftly. He applied a palm to his temple to stop the world from swimming. “What?”

“Anybody who might be trying to get to you through your daughter,” Marcus repeated. “Think, man. This could be very important.” Or an utter waste of time. But there was nothing to be gained by expressing his doubts just then.

When Dale answered by staring at his empty mug, Marcus took it from him, went downstairs, and returned with another dose. “What about New Horizons?”

Dale drained half the mug before responding. “What’s the gain? They’ve already sunk my career.”

“Do you have other enemies who’d see this as a way to retaliate?”

“Not me.” He drained the mug. “But Erin does.”

“Of course.”

“Even so, stealing a child wouldn’t be their way. They’d go after what would hurt her the most. Her career.”

“Would they kill her?”

“Maybe. Opera’s like every other art form, too many talented people hunting too few spots. It breeds a special form of viciousness. Why are you asking?”

“You mean, other than the fact that I’ve got to clear you of a murder charge?” Marcus glanced at his watch. “I need to be rolling. You’re welcome to come along if you like.”

Dale gestured at the pile of grass-stained clothes he’d worn since the arrest. “Got something that’d fit me?”

The man outweighed him by forty pounds. “Sweats only,” Marcus replied. “But I seriously doubt anybody will mind.”