“You didn’t try anything else to get rid of Ella, did you?” I said.
Keith shook his head quickly. “Of course not! I didn’t even have the guts to go talk to Sam’s wife. What makes you think I would do anything stupid?”
I had to admit that I believed Keith. He didn’t seem to have what it really took to sabotage a competitor, let alone go ahead and murder them. His actions were limited to anonymous ranting and raving, and the occasional grumbling and badmouthing at work.
“If you really want to know what was going on in Ella’s life,” said Keith, “you should go and talk to Sam.”
18
Ian and I pretty much raced over to Sam’s office to talk to him, but his secretary put a damper on our plans by telling us he was out for the day—he’d be in tomorrow.
“But we can’t make it tomorrow,” Ian wailed, sounding heartbroken. “I have to go to the Dance Party USA audition.”
“He’ll be in the next day as well,” the secretary said kindly, and Ian and I headed out and over to my parents’ house.
“Nanna and I need to rehearse for our audition,” Ian said, and I agreed.
I wasn’t sure how their dance performance would improve with just a few hours of practice, but I knew it couldn’t hurt.
When we showed up, we found Nanna and my parents waiting for us.
Nanna was in high spirits. She beamed at us and said, “We’ll really wow them tomorrow!”
I exchanged a wary glance with my mother, who didn’t look quite so enthusiastic.
“Are you sure it’s safe for you to be doing this kind of stuff at your age?” she said to Nanna. “What if you fall down and break your hip or something? Hip replacements are expensive, you know.”
Nanna refused to be annoyed and just laughed. “You could do with some optimism,” she told my mother. “Look at me, I’m almost seventy-five, and I’m as strong as an ox. It comes down to mental strength, that’s what it is. You need to try new things, and you can’t be scared of a little dancing around.”
My mother shot me a pleading glance, but I looked away quickly. I wasn’t about to get involved. I didn’t think this whole dance audition thing was a good idea, but it was nice to see Nanna so enthusiastic about something. The last few times she’d been so enthusiastic had been about “helping” me out with my investigations, and I was glad she’d found something that kept her distracted and not intent on meddling with my work. The way I looked at it, entering a silly dance competition was much safer for Nanna than chasing down murderers.
My dad and Ian pushed aside some furniture, and then Ian hit play on his smartphone, and music blared out. He and Nanna got back into the same routine—they swayed toward each other from opposite ends of the room, and then they stepped this way and that and gyrated their hips in some vague, not-at-all-salsa-like movements. As before, Ian insisted on throwing his arms up into the air every now and then and yelling, “Opa!”
“I thought you guys would open with some salsa,” my dad said mildly, interrupting the music.
Nanna and Ian stopped with their strange side-to-side swaying, and Ian stared at my dad.
“This is salsa,” Ian said.
But he danced as though he’d never seen a salsa dancer in his entire life, and my dad shook his head.
“Opa is a Greek dancing thing,” he said.
Ian frowned. “It sounded familiar, and it sounds cool when I say it, so I’m going to keep doing it. Besides, what we’re doing is fusion—it doesn’t have to be purely salsa.”
A laugh bubbled out of me unbidden, and I quickly turned it into a fit of coughing. Ian and Nanna looked at me suspiciously.
“Something got into my throat,” I said apologetically. “Why don’t you guys go back to your dance practice?”
And they did. One dance routine after the other, they went on and on, getting more out of breath as time went by. Their dancing didn’t improve one bit, and I couldn’t imagine they’d get any better unless they hired a choreographer and diligently practiced for at least a year.
Their salsa portion of the dance routine was not salsa-like at all, Ian’s version of hip-hop was a disgrace to the dance form, and Nanna used the “waltz” portion of the dance section to basically stand still and catch her breath.
By the end of the hour, my dad had had a few suspicious coughing fits as well, and my mother looked stern and grim-faced.
“I think we’ve done enough practice,” Nana said finally. “We don’t want to tire ourselves out before the big day.”
“You’re right,” Ian said. “It’s more important to show up feeling energetic than to practice too much.”
I raised my eyebrows, keeping my thoughts to myself, and my mother shook her head disapprovingly.
“You’re not seriously thinking of entering,” she said again, her voice dripping with disappointment.
“I thought we’d agreed to be optimistic,” Nanna said, sounding slightly out of breath.
“I am being optimistic,” my mother said. “I’m just worried that the two of you will make fools of yourselves on national TV.”
Nanna smiled and shook her head. “Why do you care if we make fools of ourselves? I’m too old to care about what other people think, and if Ian wants to make a fool of himself, that’s his business.”
My mother shrugged, as if to say, “I tried to warn you.”
“Besides,” said Ian happily, “I know we’ve got a solid dance routine going on. It’ll be way different from everyone else’s.”
My father had another suspicious fit of coughing, and I said, “It certainly will be.”
All through my shift that night, I thought about Ian and Nanna’s dance performance. They were truly terrible—there was no way to sugarcoat it.
I had no idea how they had gotten through to the first round, but I was sure it involved some kind of mix-up.
As the jingle of slot machines rang out, mixed with the occasional joyous scream of someone who’d won a small jackpot, I tried to focus on the players sitting in front of me.
But it was no use—I kept remembering Ian’s horrible twerking, and Nanna’s awkward robot. Nanna had now gotten used to Ian’s twerking, and no longer stood shocked and horrified; however, I was sure that the judges who saw Ian’s twerking would definitely be looking shocked and horrified.
In an attempt to stop thinking about Nanna and Ian and what would happen to them at the audition tomorrow, I thought about Sam.
Perhaps Keith had been wrong. Maybe Sam hadn’t been having an affair with anyone at all—maybe the brunette Keith had seen Sam kissing was his sister, and he’d just been giving her a chaste peck on the cheek.
However, I remembered Ian’s surprise that first day when he’d learned that Sam was married. It was true, there was something about the vain, superficial man that gave off an impression of being footloose and fancy-free. Maybe he was having an affair with someone, but so what? That didn’t mean he’d had anything to do with Ella’s death.
Or did it? And if so, how would we get him to admit that his relationship with Ella had been more than merely professional?
Ian and Nanna had been told to show up for the audition at noon, so of course, the next day, Ian woke me up at around ten in the morning. I’d barely gotten enough sleep, but it didn’t really matter, because Ian had come bearing gifts—a box containing six cupcakes from a new bakery that had opened next to Neil’s Diner. He’d purchased one of each flavor—red velvet, dark chocolate, orange, lemon-buttercream, pistachio and apple-cinnamon.
I made us a mug of coffee each and grabbed the dark chocolate cupcake for myself. When I bit in, it was so rich and moist and chocolatey that I forgot about everything else for a few long seconds.
When I came back to earth, Ian was saying, “This coffee tastes terrible! I’m going to have to tell my lawyer to release some money from the trust fund so that I can go and buy myself a nice coffee machine. I could really become a coffee enthusiast like Ronan.”
I shrugged nonchalantly and chugged the instant coffee I’d made. I didn’t earn enough to have expensive tastes like that. I finished the delicious chocolate cupcake and decided to attack the lemon-buttercream one next.
An hour later, Ian and I had finished all the cupcakes in the box, and we’d talked about the case a little bit. Of course, Ian could barely concentrate on the case because he was so excited about the upcoming audition—and he just couldn’t stop talking about it.
“It’s so much fun being on these reality TV shows,” he said. “I’m so excited! It’s going to be so much fun, and our dance routine is going to blow everyone out of the water. I’m pretty sure we’re going to get through the next round, and the judges are going to be amazed by our skill…”
Ian went on and on for a while, until finally, there was a knock on the door.
I opened it to find Nanna standing there, almost jumping out of her wrinkled skin with excitement. She was wearing the same red dress she’d worn for the video audition, plus bright red lipstick and dark eyeliner.
“How did you learn to do your eyeliner like that?” I asked, slightly surprised. She’d also drawn thick eyebrows and applied a skillful layer of foundation that hid a large portion of her wrinkles.
“YouTube, silly! I called Gavin last night and asked him if they do our makeup professionally, but he said they don’t. So I watched some videos, and I did it myself. I bet I won’t look too bad on camera.”
I nodded, and Ian said, “Do you think I should wear some makeup too?”
I wasn’t too excited by the prospect of having to put makeup on Ian, so I said, “Don’t you remember how horrible you looked when I had to put makeup on you so you could pretend to be a woman?”
“That’s not what I meant,” said Ian. “You know how all these movie actors wear makeup so they look better on screen—the camera makes you look all pale and old. I should probably put on some foundation and eyeliner, maybe a little mascara.”
“You’ll be fine,” said Nanna quickly. “I don’t want you going around stealing my thunder.”
Ian nodded. “There’s that, too. I wouldn’t want to do that. You’re the star.”
The two of them spent half an hour practicing their dance routine—which meant that they went through the whole one-minute routine once, and then Ian insisted on practicing just the hip-hop section a few times. Nanna didn’t mind that too much, since she mostly just stood there and waved her arms in the air stiffly, and I tried not to roll my eyes or laugh out loud as I watched them.
When we were about to head out, Ian turned to me and said, “What you think, Tiff? Don’t we look amazing?”
They looked something.
“You…” I tried to think fast. Finally, I said, “I think you’ll make the judges’ jaws drop.”
Gavin had told Nanna the address to go to, and when I turned up, it turned out to be a small conference room just west of McCarran Airport. There were signs announcing the Dance Party USA auditions, and we followed them to a small auditorium. At the door, a young man with a headset and clipboard told Nanna and Ian to go down the stairs and off to the left, and he told me to join the small group of twenty or so people sitting in the chairs facing the stage.
Most of the audience looked like parents or siblings of the contestants, and I found myself sitting in the back row, wondering how long the audition would take.
Unfortunately, a few minutes later, Gavin realized that I’d arrived, and he materialized at my side.
“I’m glad you came,” he said. “I’ve been wanting to spend some more time with you.”
He snaked an arm across the back of my chair, and I leaned forward so that I wouldn’t have any contact with him.
“I’m just here to watch Nanna and Ian,” I said. “I didn’t want to let them down.”
Gavin laughed. “You don’t need to worry about letting them down—the only reason they got into the first round was that the producers thought they would be hilarious. Your nanna might even fall down during one of the routines, or Ian might break his arm doing the worm. They are going to do the same dance routine, aren’t they?”
I looked at him through narrowed eyes. “You mean Nanna and Ian are just here to make fools of themselves?”
Gavin continued to grin like an idiot. “Of course. Every reality TV show needs the joker. Your nanna and Ian are the jokers for this show.”
I continued to stare at him icily, and he mistook my frostiness for surprise.
“The shows need all kinds of characters,” he went on. “You need someone that everyone hates, and you need the nice person, and you need the idiot, and you need—”
“Excuse me,” I said, interrupting him and rushing down the stairs in the direction I’d seen Nanna and Ian go.
A burly, wide-set man wearing a black suit and a headset stopped me. “Are you a contestant?”
“No,” I said, “but I need to talk to—”
“If you’re not a contestant, I can’t let you through.”
“But my nanna and my friend Ian are contestants, and I really need to talk to them,” I said desperately.
The man shook his head. “If you need to talk to them, give them a phone call.”
He didn’t seem all that smart, but I couldn’t really blame him for doing his job.
When I pulled out my cell phone, there weren’t any bars. I rushed outside, where there was reception, and I dialed Ian’s cell phone, praying that he would answer in time.
He did, sounding surprised that I’d called him.
“We’re going onstage in a few minutes,” Ian said. “I can’t chat with you right now.”
“This isn’t a chat,” I said. “I just talked to Gavin. He says the only reason you and Nanna are here at the audition is so that you can give the viewers something to laugh about. You’re basically just going to go onstage to make fools of yourself.”
I could almost see Ian frowning at the other end of the line. But when he finally spoke, all he said was, “So?”
“Don’t you care? You and Nanna are going to look like idiots.”
“I don’t really care,” Ian said nonchalantly. “I’m just here to have some fun, and if people think we’re funny, then good for us. It’s hard to be funny. And Nanna and I are having a good time—that’s what really matters.”
“Nanna might not feel the same way as you.”
“I’ll ask her.”
I heard muffled voices, and then Ian came back on the line. “She says that’s fine. If anything, we should probably ham it up. I mean, I was hoping to become, like, a world-renowned dancer or something, but if I’m just going to be the funny guy who also has good dance moves, that’s good enough for me. And Nanna thinks so too—she’s excited to be here, and we don’t want you trying to bring us down.”
I shook my head, even though Ian couldn’t see me. “Well, don’t do anything too stupid.”
19
Although Ian had said that they’d be going onstage in a few minutes, it seemed to take forever.
There were three judges, the same people we’d seen on TV the other day—Francine, Carlos and Scott.
Then a presenter came onstage and talked about the show, how excited they were to be here in Vegas, and how talented all the contestants were. And then, finally, the contestants started to come onstage.
There were at least six couples who came onstage before Ian and Nanna. We didn’t know if any of them got through to the next round or not, because the presenter told us that would be decided in a few days’ time. The show would be edited to make it look like the judges’ decisions had been instantaneous.
It took Nanna and Ian much longer than I’d expected to go onstage, but at least Gavin hadn’t tried to manhandle me, and the silence needed for recording meant that he didn’t bother to try to talk to me. Things weren’t going too badly, so far.
When Nanna and Ian went on, there was a smattering of polite applause, and then they started their routine.
As the duo danc
ed, I looked at the judges’ faces—they must not have been told that Ian and Nanna were supposed to be the show’s jokers. They stared at Ian and Nanna in disbelief, their jaws almost hitting the floor. At one point, Francine began to laugh so hard that she leaned back in her chair. She grabbed her concave stomach and leaned weakly against Carlos, who was sitting next to her.
I heard a few chuckles from the audience as well, and finally, the dance routine was over. Nanna hadn’t fallen down or broken her hip, and Ian had managed not to trip over himself.
After they finished dancing, it was time for the judges to say something about their performance. The cameraman focused on Carlos, who threw up his hands in the air and made a face. “I’m speechless. I don’t think I have anything to say to that.”
The cameraman moved on to Francine, who was still weak with laughter, and she shook her head and waved her hands to indicate that she was laughing too hard to talk. Finally, Scott said, “That was a ridiculously bad performance. I think you guys are too far along the crazy end of the spectrum to need any advice. I’m not even sure how you managed to come up with that routine—it sure was entertaining, though.”
Ian and Nanna grinned happily, pleased with their performance. They thanked the judges, bowed, and walked offstage. In a few days, we’d find out if they’d gotten through to the next round or not, and I could tell that despite the judges’ comments, they were hoping they’d make it.
I was almost weak with relief that Ian and Nanna’s dance routine was over. Perhaps I was turning into my mother, worrying about things that I didn’t need to.
Ian was right—so what if they’d made fools of themselves? They were far from professional dancers. The two of them had enjoyed a fun time, and Nanna was probably excited to experience all the “glamour” of the reality TV world.
I was about to get up and sneak out when a skinny man wearing jeans and a checked shirt came onstage and clapped his hands to get our attention. “It’s time for some audience reels,” he said, “so if you could all clap and cheer loudly, that would be great.”
Dancing With Danger in Las Vegas: A Humorous Tiffany Black Mystery Page 11