The Ugly Duckling (24 page)

He watched the mourners get into their cars in the parking lot and drive away. He had been a mourner. He had loved his father. It should have been his mother who had died, the vicious bitch. He had not meant it to happen. He had just pushed his father a little and he’d fallen down those steps. It should have been her.

A young man in a dark suit came out of the mortuary and cut across the lawn to the employee parking. A trainee to the vampire? Or maybe Birnbaum had a son too. The kid was whistling as he jumped into a blue Oldsmobile parked beside a sleek Cadillac hearse.

A new hearse, one that had been purchased in cash a week after the Calder woman’s supposed cremation.

Maritz had found the record of that purchase very interesting.

The entry lights went out in the vestibule.

Maritz waited until the Oldsmobile had disappeared around the corner before he got out of the car and walked across the street. He rang the doorbell.

No answer.

He rang it again.

He waited a minute and rang it again.

The entry lights went on, the door opened. Cool air and the heavy scent of flowers surrounded Maritz.

John Birnbaum stood in the doorway—sleek gray hair, a little plump, dressed in a sober gray suit. “Do you wish to view the body? I’m sorry, we’re closed.”

Maritz shook his head. “I need to ask you some questions. I know it’s late, but may I come in?”

Birnbaum hesitated. Maritz could almost see the wheels turning in his head and coming up dollar signs. Birnbaum stepped aside. “Have you had a loss?”

Maritz entered the foyer and closed the door. He smiled. “Yes, I’ve had a loss. We need to talk about it.”

N
ell stood watching Michaela from the doorway of the kitchen. The woman’s arms were smeared with flour as she rolled out a circle of dough on the butcher block. Every movement was swift, graceful, economical.

“You want something?” Michaela asked without looking up.

Nell jumped. She said the first thing that came to her head. “What are you making?”

“Biscuits.”

“The ones we had for breakfast were wonderful.”

“I know.”

This wasn’t going to be easy. “You’re very busy.”

Michaela nodded.

“It’s very kind of you and your husband to let Peter stay with you at the ranch for a while.”

“He won’t be in the way.” She put aside the rolling pin and began to cut out the biscuits. “If he’d been trouble, we wouldn’t have done it. Jean has no time for fools. The boy has the mind of a child, not a fool. Children can be taught.” The words were spoken as crisply as the movement of the cutter in the dough. “Now, what do you want?”

“Your face.”

Michaela’s gaze lifted. “I’d say yours was good enough.”

“I mean … I’d like to sketch you.”

Michaela began to put the biscuits into a pan. “I’ve no time for posing.”

“I could sketch you while you’re working. I might not need you very much at first.”

Michaela didn’t speak for a moment. “You’re an artist?”

“Not really. I don’t have the time. I do it only when I’m not—” She stopped as she realized she was automatically giving the same answer she had given everyone before Medas. But there was no Jill or Richard to occupy her time now. She smothered the jab of pain. “Yes, I’m an artist.” The words sounded strange and lonely to her own ears.

Michaela studied her and then nodded curtly. “Sketch away. Just don’t get in my way.”

Nell didn’t give her a chance to change her mind. “I’ll go get my sketch pad.”

“I’m not going to stay still.”

“I’ll work around you …”

It was easier said than done, she realized after an hour of trying to capture Michaela’s features. The woman was never still. For a woman whose face had the serenity of a Nefertiti, she was a dynamo of energy. After discarding several full-face sheets in despair, Nell decided to concentrate on one feature at a time. She started on those deepset eyes.

That was better. She was getting it. Maybe she could combine the features later.…

“Why are you here?”

Nell looked up. It was the first time Michaela had spoken for over an hour. “I’m just visiting.”

Michaela shook her head. “Nicholas said you were staying through the winter. That’s not a visit.”

“I’ll try not to be a bother to you.”

“If Nicholas wants you here, I’ll put up with a little bother.”

“Nicholas said that you and Jean belonged here more than he did.”

“We do, but he’s getting there. He needs only a little more seasoning.”

“Seasoning?”

Michaela shrugged. “I think it’s hard for him to belong anywhere, but he wants it. We’ll see.”

“You want him to stay?”

She nodded. “He understands us and lets us go our way. The next owner might be stupid and untrainable.”

She smiled. “And you’re training Nicholas?”

“Of course. He’s not difficult. He has great strength
of mind and will. He will meld with this country, given time.”

“I’d think strength of will would keep one from melding.”

“This land is strong. It doesn’t like weaklings.” She looked at Nell. “It chews them up and spits them out.”

Her pencil stopped in mid-motion. “You think I’m a weakling?”

“I don’t know. Are you?”

“No.”

“Then you have nothing to worry about.”

“You don’t want me here, do you?”

“It doesn’t matter to me if you’re here.” She took the biscuits out of the oven. “As long as you don’t try to take Nicholas away. Talk to him. Smile at him. Sleep with him.” She set the pan on the butcher block. “But when you go, leave him here.”

She felt a ripple of shock. “I don’t intend to sleep with him. That’s not why I came.”

Michaela shrugged. “It will happen. He’s a man and you’re closer than the women in town.” She took a spatula and gently pried the biscuits from the pan. “And you’re the kind of woman who would stir a man.”

“He doesn’t see me like that.”

“All men see women like that. It’s their first reaction. It’s only later that they see us as people with minds as well as bodies.”

“And he’s the only one who has anything to say about it?”

“You like to look at him. You watch him.”

Did she? Dammit, of course she looked at him. He was a man who drew attention. He had stood out like a lighthouse in that crowded ballroom. “That doesn’t mean anything. There’s nothing between us.”

“If you say so.” She turned away. “I’ve no more
time to talk. It’s nearly lunchtime. I have to get this food on the table.”

Nell breathed a sigh of relief. Michaela was entirely wrong, but the conversation had been disconcerting. “May I help? I could set the table.”

“No.” She opened the cabinet and took down the plates. “But you can go to the stable and get Nicholas.”

Nell set her sketchbook down and hopped off the stool. “Right away.”

Nicholas was grooming a bay stallion when she entered the stable. She stopped just inside the door. “Lunch is ready.”

“I’ll be there in a minute.”

She watched him as he brushed the stallion with long, clean strokes. He did everything with that same power and clean economy, she thought. He was dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt and he looked totally at home doing the menial task. If she hadn’t known better, she would have assumed he’d been born to it. It was hard to connect the Tanek on Medas to this man.

He didn’t look up. “You’re very quiet. What are you thinking?”

“That you do that very well. Do you know a lot about horses?”

He smiled. “I’m learning. I’d never seen any horse before I came here but the ones the British moguls at the polo club rode.”

“You belonged to the polo club?”

“Not likely. I was a dishwasher in the kitchens when I was a boy.”

“I can’t see you as a dishwasher.”

“No? I looked on it as a step up. My job before that was scrubbing floors in the whorehouse where my mother worked.”

“Oh.”

He looked over his shoulder. “What a polite little exclamation. Did I embarrass you?”

“No, but I—” She was stammering, she realized in annoyance. “It’s none of my business. I didn’t mean to intrude.”

“No intrusion. I scarcely knew my mother. I was closer to the other whores than I was to her. She was an American hippie who came to China to seek the true light. Unfortunately, the only light she saw was when she was stoned. So she stayed stoned. She died of an overdose when I was six.”

“How old were you when you left there?”

He thought about it. “I guess I was eight when I started at the polo club. I was kicked out of the job when I was twelve.”

“Why?”

“The cook said I’d stolen three cases of caviar and sold it on the black market.”

“Did you?”

“No, he did it himself, but I was a convenient target. Actually, he was very clever to choose me.” His tone was coolly objective. “I was the most vulnerable. I had no one to protect me and I wasn’t capable of protecting myself.”

“You don’t seem angry about it.”

“It’s over. It taught me a valuable lesson. I was never that vulnerable again and I learned to keep what was mine.”

“What happened to you after you left? Did you have somewhere to go?”

“The streets.” He put down the brush and patted the horse’s nose. “The lessons I learned there were even more valuable, but you wouldn’t want to hear about them.” He left the stall and closed the half-door. “Or maybe you would. Quite a few of them dealt with dirty tricks and mayhem.”

She could not even imagine what it would be like surviving on the streets, and he had been only a boy at the time.

He glanced at her and shook his head. “You’re looking at me like you do Peter. Soft as butter.”

She quickly looked away. “It’s not soft to hate abusive treatment of children. You hate it yourself.”

“I don’t melt at the thought.”

“I’m not melting.”

“Close enough. Look, not all children are like Jill. I was a tough, self-serving, little bastard with nasty claws.” He met her gaze. “You think you’ve changed, but you’re still too soft. Soft means malleable and malleable means dead.”

“Then I’ll get over it.” She started toward the door. “Michaela will be upset if her lunch gets cold.”

“We wouldn’t want that to happen.” He fell into step with her. “How are you getting along with her?”

“Well enough. She’s letting me sketch her.” She grimaced. “As long as I don’t get in her way.”

“How does it feel?”

“Good.” She glanced at him. “But it’s not going to cause me to find a cozy little corner and forget everything.”

“It may help. It’s all part of the big picture.”

“I spent three hours sketching today. That means you owe me.”

A corner of his lip lifted in a sardonic smile as he held open the front door for her. “That’s what this is all about.”

She shook her head. He was a strange mixture—cool, tough, and yet possessing a code that included both a sense of responsibility and justice. It was remarkable in a man of his background.

But then, Tanek was a remarkable man.

You look at him
.

Michaela’s words rushed back to her, and again she felt that bolt of shock at the thought of intimacy with Tanek. It was a stupid reaction. Admitting Tanek was extraordinary didn’t mean she wanted to jump into bed with him. There was no room in her life for sex with any man, and if she didn’t want to be friends with Tanek, she certainly didn’t want him in her bed. All he meant to her was a way to get to Maritz, and that’s the way it would stay. She didn’t even know why she had questioned him about his past. The less she knew about him, the better.

No, that wasn’t true. She had questioned him because she had been curious about the elements that had shaped a man like Tanek. Curiosity was a normal and acceptable trait. She found she was still curious, when a sudden thought occurred to her. “The cook who got you fired. Did you ever meet him again?”

“Oh, yes, I met him again.”

Tanek smiled.

No one was following her.

It was only her imagination, Tania told herself. She was being an idiot.

But relief flooded her as she pulled into the driveway.

Home. Safety.

She sat there for a moment, her gaze on the rearview mirror. The only car that drove by was a day care van loaded with kids.

See, she was being paranoid. This was Minneapolis, not Sarajevo. She got out of the car, popped open the trunk, and took out the first bag of groceries.

“Let me carry that for you.”

She jumped and whirled.

Phil was coming up the driveway. “Sorry. Did I scare you?”

“I wasn’t expecting you.”

Phil took the sack from Tania, grabbed the other two in the trunk, and closed the lid with his elbow. “You should have called me.”

“I thought I could manage.” Tania smiled at him as
she started up the driveway toward the house. “And, besides, that’s not your job.”

“Keep me busy. Now that the summer’s over, I don’t have enough to do with the garden.” He grimaced. “I don’t know why I’m here anyway now that Nell is in Idaho with Nicholas.”

“You’re a great help to us.” She didn’t look at him as she unlocked the front door. “Did … Nicholas tell you to watch out for me?”

He frowned. “What do you mean? He said to wait here until he contacted me and help out with anything you asked me to do.”

“But not to follow me and keep an eye on me?”

“No.” His gaze narrowed on her face. “Some creep been following you?”

“No.” She entered the foyer and led him toward the kitchen. “It’s probably my imagination. I haven’t actually seen anyone. It’s just a feeling. Why would anyone want to watch me?”

He grinned and gave a low whistle. “Who wouldn’t?” He sobered. “But there are a lot of weirdos wandering around. You can’t be too careful these days. Suppose I go with you next time you run your errands?”

She shook her head. “I’d feel foolish. It’s my imagination.”

“So what?” He set the bags on the counter. “It will give me something to do.”

“We’ll see.” She started to unload a bag. “But I thank you for the offer.”

He hesitated, staring at her, before moving toward the door. “You and Dr. Lieber have been great to me. I don’t like the idea of you worrying. Just give me a holler if you want company.”