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.”
CHAPTER 39
Marcus 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.”
The day was quiet and drenched with eight o’clock sun. Dale endured the ride in stoic silence. When they pulled into the church parking lot and Dale remained where he was, Marcus wondered if he had made a mistake, bringing this broken man to a black country church. Then he realized Dale’s gaze rested upon the hillside, where the New Horizons headquarters glinted like a polarized tombstone to his own career.
“You okay with all this?”
“I was just thinking,” Dale said. “How hard it is to be so wrong about love.”
Marcus kept his engine running and the car cool. Now that they were here, he felt no urge to move inside. “Do something for me, will you? Think back to the last time you saw Erin. I mean, before New York.”
“When she took Celeste.”
“Tell me about that night.”
Dale looked at him. “Why?”
He understood the man’s desire to avoid the pain of inspecting a running sore. “Kirsten has the feeling maybe there’s an ulterior motive at work. Something we’ve missed up to now.”
Dale turned back to the front windshield. “Erin called and said she was over for another PBS special.”
“You mean, back in the States.”
“She wanted to come down and talk. How could I refuse her? She hadn’t seen her baby in months. We met for dinner. The worst in a long line of bad moves.”
“You did the only thing you could, Dale.”
“She played her charm card. Again. I let myself get taken in. Again.”
“What did you talk about?”
“The usual. Her career. Mine. She wanted to know about the burglary.”
“The what?”
“A couple of guys broke into the house. Didn’t I tell you about this?”
Something niggled at his mind, but Marcus could not bring the pieces together. “It was a week or so before she came down?”
“Five days, maybe six. I caught them in the act. Clocked them with a lamp. Made the papers.” He shrugged. No big deal in the grand scheme. “Erin and I had your normal catch-up kind of talk.”
“What happened after dinner?”
“She drove me home. Like usual when I’d been drinking.” He rubbed his face, pushing the glasses up to his forehead, revealing the white splotches on his temples and the weary creases and the eyes of one already convicted and condemned. “Another major mistake.”
“You passed out?”
“Apparently. I don’t remember. One minute I was on the sofa in the back room, the next I was in bed and the house was on fire.”