The Uneven Score (15 page)

He propped her up against the headboard and touched her hair just above her ear. The shadows played in his eyes. With a smile filled with tenderness, he bent over and planted a kiss on her forehead. “Night-night, love.”

Then he grinned and hopped off the bed.

“Daniel…”

He stopped halfway to the door and turned. “Here I am trying to be noble as hell and the woman is delaying me,” he said with a small grin. “You’re playing with fire, darlin’.”

“Seems to be a bad habit with me,” she said with a gentle, mocking smile. She tugged the blanket up under her chin so she wouldn’t have to see the lingering physical effects of his touch. There was nothing she could do about the- emotional ones. “I just wanted to tell you—I trust you, Daniel. I want you to know that.”  

“Go to sleep, Whitney,” he said, and flicked the switch next to the door.

“Psst … Whitney … psst ...” There was a tapping sound. “Whitney, wake up.”

Wide awake, Whitney kept both eyes shut and didn’t move, stifling an urge to bolt up and run.

Someone was outside her window, tapping on her screen.

If she pretended to be asleep, maybe he would go away.

“It’s Victoria …”

Now she bolted up. “
Victoria
!”

“No, shh!” came the insistent whisper.

Whitney threw off her blanket and went to the screen, silently thanking the gods that Daniel hadn’t made up his mind to stay the night. Paddie was crouched next to the azalea. The soft light of dawn was streaking across the sky. Birds pranced and chirped on the lawn.

“Victoria, what is it?” Whitney whispered. “Is something wrong?”

“I don’t know. You must come with me.”

“Now? I don’t see how—”

“Hurry! Meet me at the lake.”

“Victoria, wait!”

But she was already slinking off across the dew-soaked lawn. Whitney groaned and decided whoever was trying to drive Paddie nuts had succeeded. Without bothering to get dressed, she tiptoed out the front door and ran across the lawn in her nightgown and bare feet.

 Paddie was waiting under a giant cypress tree, the trunk blocking a view of her stout figure from anyone looking on from the stately house. “Did Graham hear you?” Her voice was just above a whisper.

Whitney shook her head. “What is it now?”

“I heard shots.”

 Paddie paused dramatically for Whitney to absorb the impact of her words and turn properly pale.

“In the grove,” she went on, “toward the highway, although it was difficult to tell.”

“You’re sure?”

“Of course.”

“Do you think
...
” Whitney swallowed hard. “Harry—oh, Paddie, do you think it’s him? If he’s been shot…

 Paddie sank against the thick trunk of the tree. She had on a clean pair of black stretch knit pants and a red sweatshirt and had washed her hair, but had not gotten around to combing it. Her tiny eyes were alive with anger and determination and something else. Fear?

Fear for Harry Stagliatti?

Whitney shook off the thought. There had to be another explanation. Poachers?

“I don’t know,” Paddie admitted. “But we must investigate.”

Whitney shook her head, adamant. “No, not we, Victoria. This has gone too far. We have to call the police.”

“And tell them what?” Paddie demanded.

“That you heard shots. That’s enough. Daniel said he’s had trouble with poachers. Maybe—”

“We’re wasting precious time arguing—and we could waste more time contacting the police. They would be slow; they would ask too many questions. We must act now, Whitney. It’s almost a mile’s walk to my cottage.”

“I’ll get Daniel—”

“No!”

Whitney had already started off toward the house, but now she turned and stared, white-faced, at Paddie. “Victoria, you can’t possibly still believe he’s behind all this!”

“I don’t know what to believe,” Paddie replied, haughty despite her own uncertainty. “But I know I will not risk Harry’s life. I trust you, Whitney, and only you.”

“But . .

“Come.”

“Don’t you think I ought to get dressed first?”

 Paddie groaned impatiently but relented, needlessly warning Whitney to be quiet.

Whitney raced back into the house, not daring even to turn on a light as she peeled off her nightgown and put on a pair of jeans, sneakers, and her sweatshirt with the bust of Beethoven silk-screened on the front. Then, silently, she tiptoed up the stairs to Daniel’s room. She wouldn’t disturb him. She just wanted to know he was there, safe and asleep.

But he wasn’t.

His bed was empty, still neatly made, as it had been that morning. His tan suit and yellow shirt were tossed over the pillows. Whitney held her breath. Her head began to pound. Over and over again her mind said
no, no, no
!

She ran downstairs. It no longer mattered how much noise she made now, so she didn’t care. She went to the gun closet in the cypress-paneled study. The key was in the lock. And why not? The two rifles that had been there that morning were gone.

But the revolver wasn’t. She picked it up and felt her stomach flip-flop. She hated guns. She didn’t even know how to use one.

“I’ll figure it out if I have to,” she said to herself, her voice, like the rest of her, trembling.

Chapter Nine

They followed the path around the lake to Paddie’s cottage and, refusing to discuss alternatives or turn back, ventured into the isolated section of groves west of the cottage, staying on a well-traveled sandy road that seemed to cut through the heart of the grove. Picking was being done here. Valencias, Paddie said.

They heard no shots, and saw no sign of Daniel Graham, Harry Stagliatti, or poachers.

Finally they came to a crossroads. Paddie wanted to turn left. Whitney, uncertain, looked to her right, and spotted a huge trailer truck, a monolithic silhouette in the pale light of dawn. She touched Paddie on the shoulder and pointed.

It was Paddie who spotted the pickup truck. “See,” she whispered, “behind the trailer.”

Whitney saw. Its bed was loaded with boxes of fruit.

Poachers.

Discussion was unnecessary. They knew what they had to do. Paddie had heard shots, and poachers wouldn’t be shooting at each other. Leaving the road, they crept into the grove, hiding in the cover of the older trees, their branches weighted down with tangy-smelling fruit. Paddie had grabbed her fireplace poker at the cottage and now held it high. Whitney straightened her grip on the revolver.

As they moved closer to the trailer, they could hear voices. Men’s voices, their words unintelligible. Whitney listened hard for Daniel’s sonorous drawl, not certain she wanted to hear it. It could mean he was in trouble … or causing trouble. She would have liked to stop and listen and think, but Paddie ducked under the next branch and Whitney followed.

An orange dropped with a thud from a heavily laden branch.

The two women stood motionless. Whitney was grateful for the breath control she had developed after all her years playing horn. They didn’t make another sound.

But nothing happened. Either the men up ahead hadn’t heard the orange or had thought nothing of it. Paddie, sticking her hand behind her back, motioned for Whitney to proceed.

They ducked silently under another branch and were at the trailer, huddled along its long wooden side, the tires blocking a view of their feet from the side the voices seemed to be coming from.

“If we kill him,” a man was saying disinterestedly, “it’d be cold-blooded, premeditated murder. That’s not what we’re being paid to do.”

“He’s seen us.”

“So?”

“So he can describe us!”

“Big deal. He tells the cops he came across two guys stealing oranges. The cops take down the descriptions and file them. The police aren’t going to catch us. But if we leave them a corpse to find—”

“They don’t have to find his body. I can get rid of it.”

“Yeah, well.”

“Maybe we ought to check in and—”

“—and be pegged as a couple of turkeys? Forget it.”

“We have to do something.”

They continued arguing back and forth. Paddie and Whitney looked at each other. Someone was at the mercy of two poachers. Daniel? Impossible, Whitney thought; the man was armed to the teeth! Harry?

Whitney looked at Paddie, but the stout and brilliant conductor needed no persuading. With her mouth set grimly and her poker held firmly, she crept around the back of the trailer. Whitney nodded to herself and followed.

“If you hadn’t shot the poor slob we wouldn’t be in this mess,” one man was saying.

“If you’d kept your voice down like I told you— Wait, did you hear something?”

“Naw. You’re just getting nervous. I say we get out of here while the getting’s good.”

 Paddie peeked around the corner of the trailer and immediately turned back to Whitney. “Harry?” Whitney mouthed.

 Paddie nodded, her face white.

Whitney could feel the blood draining out of her own face, but she steadied herself, placing a hand on the trailer.
Harry Stagliatti had been shot!
Now, of all times, she couldn’t fail him. She had to think clearly. She had to reason. She had to get him out of there!

 Paddie held up two fingers. Then she held up one finger.

Two men. One gun.

Whitney nodded.

Unparalleled musician that she was, Paddie had a finely tuned sense of timing and the ability to communicate to other musicians with a look and a movement. Now, as never before, she drew on those skills. She looked at Whitney the way she would the second before a horn solo was to begin. Then a move of her hand, a slight widening of her eyes
...
and they acted.

 Paddie was out first, screaming like a banshee and flailing her poker, and then came Whitney, calmly pointing her revolver at the two men. One was balding and heavyset, with a mustache that needed trimming. The other wore overalls with no shirt and was one of the largest individuals Whitney had ever seen.

He was the one with the gun.

A man built like Harry Stagliatti lay face down in the sand, but Whitney forced herself not to look at him.

“Drop it,” she told the huge man.

He stared at her. “What the hell—”

“The gun,” she said stoically. “Drop it.”

The words came just as she realized that if she hadn’t mentioned the damn thing, he might not have remembered he had it until too late. As it was, he looked at the gun, grinned, and pointed it at Whitney.

But it was the balding man with the mustache who spoke. “No one wants any trouble, ladies,” he drawled patiently. “So why don’t we just be on our way?”

His comrade in thuggery and Paddie both protested, but Whitney and the fat man knew a stalemate when they saw one.

“For all I care, she can go on and kill you, and you can go on and kill her,” the balding man said. “I’m leaving.” He spread out his palms in a gesture of innocence and an appeal for common sense. “Ladies?”

“We don’t care about you,” Paddie said. “Go.”

Whitney nodded curtly, her gun and her eyes focused on the fat man.

“Let’s go,” his friend said, patting him once on his massive shoulder. “We’ve done enough damage for one night—no point in getting ourselves killed, too.” “I can take both of them”

“Do what you like. I’m getting out of here.”

Then he walked toward the truck. The big man looked at Whitney. She wouldn’t have met his gaze if she could have avoided it, but she didn’t dare avert her eyes for a fraction of a second. What good was one bullet going to do? The man was massive! If she could bring herself to pull the trigger, if her aim was accidentally on target, there was no guarantee—not even the likelihood—that  a single shot from her gun was going to topple him. At least not before he had a chance to pump her slim frame with bullets.

But, muttering obscenities, he finally heaved himself up. Whitney didn’t move. Her gun was shaking, but she couldn’t help that. Keeping his gun trained on her, the fat man backed toward the pickup, where his comrade had opened the door for him. The truck roared to a start. He climbed in, and they sped off, kicking up sand and dust in their wake.

“That was a close one, Victoria,” Whitney said.

“Too close,” Paddie said.

“Did you get the license plate?”

“Of course.”

They lowered their weapons and stooped beside the squat, unmoving figure lying half under the trailer. “Harry?” Whitney said softly.

“Don’t touch me, you maniacs,” came the blunt, sarcastic voice of Harry Stagliatti. “Those sons-of-bitches shot my muting arm.”

 Paddie and Whitney understood at once. Harry didn’t have a right arm and a left arm. He had an arm, which coincidentally was his left, that held the horn up to his mouth, and a hand, also his left, that operated the three valves and a fourth valve to switch from F horn to B-flat alto horn. He had another arm, his right, that controlled the famous bell of the horn. Just by positioning his hand in the bell, he could adjust to every nuance of pitch and tone, from a soft buzzing mute of a stopped-bell to the loud bombastic sounds of an open bell. Harry Stagliatti was a master of these nuances. They were what gave his instrument some of its incredible versatility and was one reason for its being an integral part of both wind and brass ensembles.

So Harry had been wounded in his right arm.

Moaning, he sat up, refusing any assistance from Paddie or Whitney. Blood had soaked through the sleeve of his shirt and was oozing down his hand, but he swore he’d bite the first one who tried to touch him. He called them names and said he had had everything under control.

“Ha,” Paddie replied. “They were going to kill you.”

“Moron,” Harry snapped. He was not a handsome man, but he had a nice, straight nose and a face that he said had character. Like Paddie, looks did not interest him. “I was playing dead.”

“Humph,” Paddie said. “Then why were they discussing whether to kill you?”

“I was crossing one bridge at a time and— Ouch! Damn it. Whitney, don’t look at me like that. I’m not dead yet, no thanks to you two. Thought you were a goner for sure, you nitwit. Whatever possessed you to start acting like Wyatt Earp—and where in hell did you get that thing? Looks like a goddamned elephant gun.”