Tutu Deadly

by Natalie M. Roberts

  “Ooookay,” I said warily.

  Monica chuckled. “It’s okay, Jenny. I’ve been doing some relaxation and yoga classes, and learning to meditate. I’m searching for inner peace, and I think I’ve found it. You should come with me to the classes. They are doing me so much good.”

  “Uh, just a few days ago you were locked in my bathroom here and threatening all manner of crazy things if I didn’t let you have your way.”

  “These things take time. One does not heal from a life of torment overnight.”

  “Right.” Was she implying I had been tormenting her? No matter. I wasn’t going to ask. She’d offered to fix a costume without hysterics and a mini-nervous breakdown, so torment accusations or not, I was accepting her answer.

  “I’ll be back on Thursday. Should I just make it to fit both girls, or do you have one specifically in mind?”

  “They are close to the same size, so just make one that will fit either of them.” I didn’t want to admit to it, but I was still holding out hope that Taylee would be found, and not just for my dance, of course. I wanted her to be safe. And well. With arms and legs unhurt, so she could dance.

  Was it really that much to ask? Don’t answer that.

  SEVENTEEN

  WHEN classes were over, I gave James a look that said “time to come clean,” and he reluctantly walked in my direction. “I’m going now. I’m headed to my mother’s house, with the express purpose of breaking her already fragile heart, so don’t say another word.”

  “Don’t lay the guilt trip on me, James. You created this, now you get to fix it. Your mom will be fine. If she hadn’t taken it so far, I might have allowed you to use me for a while longer, but it’s gone off the edge. It’s too much, and you know it.”

  With another long-suffering sigh—one that would make my mother proud—James headed to the front door and pushed his way out. All the dancers were gone, and now it was just Tate and I left in the studio. He’d watched the entire exchange between James and me with interest, and now he headed toward me, that sexy half smile on his face. My imagination ran wild as he reached for me, and then the front door opened and Marshal Fallon walked in, followed by the marshal I didn’t know, but who had complimented my agility when I was assaulted.

  “Fallon,” Tate said, nodding his head. I detected a distinct chill between the two men that had not been there before. They had been buddy-buddy just a few days ago. What had happened?

  “Wilson,” the other man answered, also nodding his head. Men were weird. They resolved problems in the strangest ways. I’d seen best friends beat the heck out of each other, and ten minutes later they were best friends again. As opposed to women, who usually destroyed reputations by talking behind each other’s back and held grudges for years. Hmm. Maybe there was something to be said for beating the heck out of each other.

  At any rate, I wasn’t sure what was up with these two, but their officer-ly camaraderie had taken a hit of one kind or another.

  “Why are you here?”

  “I have something I need to ask Ms. Partridge.”

  “And what would that be?”

  “Well, if I needed you to run interference, then I would let you handle it. But I have this under control, and this is a matter of the United States Marshals Office, so if I can just take Ms. Partridge somewhere private . . .”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa, you aren’t taking her anywhere,” Tate said with a growl. “She’s staying where I can see her.”

  “Are you implying that I can’t be trusted to keep Ms. Partridge safe?”

  “Well, you haven’t exactly done a bang-up job of it so far.”

  “Okay, you two, knock it off,” I said, although I was enjoying the show. “I’m sure both of you are equally endowed, and I don’t really enjoy pissing matches, so does someone want to share with me just what the hell is going on here? Just a few days ago you were both pretty chummy, and now you are bickering like teenage boys over a girl.” Ulp. No, it couldn’t be that.

  Both men looked at me expectantly, waiting for me to keep talking, which of course I usually did, and Tate had an amused look on his face, but I’d decided now was probably a good time to shut up. Some lessons took me awhile, but you can’t say I was totally incapable of learning from my mistakes. I was just slower than others.

  Since I was not talking, and the two men practiced silent-but-deadly on just about every occasion, we all stood there staring at each other, quiet filling the room like the icy air that had been all too common in my studio the past few days.

  “Look, Wilson, I just need to speak to Jenny alone for a moment.” One point for Tate, since Fallon spoke first—if anyone was keeping score. I was pretty sure both men were, based on their behavior tonight.

  “There’s nothing you need to say to her that can’t be said in front of me,” Wilson volleyed back. “I have jurisdiction on this case.”

  “Please tell me you aren’t going to throw jurisdiction in my face? I thought we were cooperating together to find a desperate young girl.”

  “Desperate young girl? Good one, but maybe you ought to see if first you can keep a grown woman safe. You didn’t even manage to do that.”

  I sighed heavily, channeling my mother. “Okay, okay, Marshal Fallon, you have five minutes. In my office. Tate, do you really think I’m not safe just ten feet from you, with another officer of the law?” Tate tightened his jaw and a muscle pulsed on the right side of his cheek. He was not enjoying this.

  “Fine, five minutes. No longer.”

  Fallon followed me into my office and I heard the other marshal ask Tate how he thought the Utah Jazz were going to fare this year, before I closed the door on their conversation.

  “You don’t have much time, so let’s get going. What do you want?”

  Fallon hesitated for a moment, and then a look I wasn’t able to identify crossed his face. Finally, he spoke. “Look, I’m really sorry about what happened to you. Twice on my watch you’ve almost gotten hurt, and I started thinking about it, and I realized that it’s because I’ve been looking at this all wrong. I’ve been viewing you, at the least, as a witness, and at the most, as a suspect, and the truth is you are just an innocent bystander who got caught up in something really, really bad.”

  What the hell? “Ooookay,” I said slowly, drawing out my words. “Thanks for the . . . apology?” Where the hell was this one going?

  “Look, Jenny, I’ve spent ten years doing this job, and the end outcome on a missing child is rarely good. It hardens you, and makes you look at everyone around you differently. Especially when those people are directly involved—however they are involved—in a crime.”

  His words sunk in slowly, and four of them stuck out in my mind like neon glowing from the windows of a 7-Eleven. End. Outcome. Rarely. Good. Taylee’s odds of being recovered alive were not good. I guess I’d never really let myself think she might be dead. I just kept thinking she was alive somewhere, and that she would be returned safely, and hopefully in time to perform in the lead role of my Nutcracker performance.

  Spots started swimming before my eyes and I felt all woozy, and the next thing I knew there were shouting voices and loud arguments and lights that were entirely too bright. I slowly came to, aware that my head was throbbing and I was feeling pretty sick.

  “What the hell did you do to her?” Tate asked, his voice sounding ferocious and wild, and most of all, protective. If I wasn’t all oogie feeling I might have been warmed by it. As it was, I needed a bucket or wastebasket—fast.

  “I didn’t do anything. We were just talking and then she keeled over, and I caught her before she hit the ground. She passed out. I think she got really upset when I mentioned that Taylee might not be safe.”

  “Well, surely she figured that from the beginning,” Marshal John Doe said, very unhelpfully, I might add. Since I didn’t know his name, he was John Doe to me.

  “Jenny’s a little different that way,” Tate said, his voice calmer, I supposed, because he had de
termined that Fallon had not tried to manhandle me.

  “Hellllooo,” I said from my position on the floor, as I tried to sit up. Since the world spun alarmingly, I quickly lay back down. “I’m alive down here, and I can hear you. I may not be able to move my body, but my brain is working.”

  All three men knelt down toward me and I suddenly felt like some sort of virgin sacrifice or participant in a weird religious ritual. I forced myself to sit up. “I’m fine. Get up. No need to worry.” Slowly I regained my balance and equilibrium and my stomach stopped threatening to spill its contents. The three men stood up and Tate reached down a strong hand and pulled me up. His clasp was warm and firm, and I felt bubbles of excitement in my stomach that had only a little to do with the nausea I’d been feeling earlier.

  He led me over to my office desk chair and helped me settle into it. I watched the three men staring at me attentively, and wondered—not the for the first time of course—just how this had all come about. “So you all think Taylee is dead, don’t you?” Saying the cold, cruel words made me blanch but I’d already done too much running from reality. It was time to face up to this ugly situation, and the truth was, odds were against Taylee’s survival. This wasn’t about a stupid dance performance, or even my yearly income. This was about a little girl who was missing, possibly dead, and she had no one here to defend her. It was time for me to step up to the plate.

  “We don’t know that, obviously. We actually have two cases here, I guess. One is a murder, and one a missing person,” Tate said as though he knew Taylee were alive, but his face told another story. He wasn’t holding on to any extreme hope that she was alive.

  “We need to find her, Jenny, which is why we have been following you and watching you so closely,” Fallon said. “With her mother dead, you’re the closest thing she would have to a mother or mother figure. We figure if she’s going to go to someone for help, it would be you.” The thought of me as a mother figure to anyone was ludicrous at best, but now wasn’t the time to mention that.

  “But thinking she will come to someone for help seems to imply that you don’t think she was taken.”

  “We don’t really know. But all indications lead us to believe she happened upon the crime shortly after it happened, and was either removed from the scene or ran.”

  I sucked in my breath. What kind of trauma would that do to a young girl, seeing her mother’s dead body on the floor, and then realizing the murderer was still close? Poor Taylee.

  “What evidence do you have that supports that?” I asked Fallon.

  He shook his head, slowly, and tightened his lips. “I can’t tell you that. I’m sorry. Just believe me when I say that we know Taylee was alive shortly after her mother was murdered.”

  “Witness protection, right?” The time had passed for the cloak-and-dagger routine. I’d decided that I needed to do whatever I could to find Taylee, if she was still alive. “I can’t tell you” worked for the old Jenny T. Partridge, but not this one. Fallon blanched as I said the words, and the other marshal’s eyes got wide. Bingo. Wow, I never thought life would be like the movies, but it was certainly turning out that way right now. “Yet you can’t find her. And you are scared she might be dead. Well, you marshals don’t have anything on the dance-mom rumor mill. I’m going to find Taylee. I’ll do whatever I have to. Put up posters around town, call press conferences . . .” Something suddenly occurred to me. While Sandra’s murder had made the local news, there had been no pictures displayed, and none of the television stations had mentioned her missing daughter. Why was that?

  “You can’t do that, Jenny,” Marshal Fallon said quietly.

  “You have a hat on this whole thing, don’t you?” I said, wonderment filling my voice.

  “A hat?” Marshal John Doe asked.

  “She means a lid,” said Tate, who had apparently decided to become my interpreter.

  “Whatever,” I said, my irritation rising. “Meanwhile, no one is out looking for a scared, desperate little girl. You’re doing nothing to find her, because she’s in witness protection, and you’re afraid that . . . Oh.” Damn, I hated it when I figured things out after I spoke. The only person they were trying to protect was Taylee. They thought she’d be safe here in Ogden, Utah, with a new life, and a new name, but death had come calling for her mother and possibly had taken her, too, in the wake. I hoped not. God, I hoped not.

  “So the person you hid her from originally might find her if you put her picture in the papers, or in the news, right?”

  Fallon nodded.

  “Isn’t it possible that that person only wanted her nasty mother, Sandra, and now that that threat is gone, Taylee will be safe?”

  He shook his head. Damn.

  “Right now, you’re the best hope we have, Jenny. So we’re sticking close to you,” Marshal Fallon said. Tate’s face tightened at those words. Apparently, he didn’t want Andrew Fallon sticking close to me at all. As for me, if I didn’t have the very sexy Tate Wilson dogging my every step, I certainly would have considered tangoing with super handsome Andrew Fallon. Of course, it’s not like I had some commitment or understanding with Tate. Those dinners did not count, because he was just trying to keep me where he could see me, and it was just easier that way. All in all, while I knew he found me attractive, that was hardly enough to build a lifetime on, or even to, say, rule out every other guy.

  “Are you sure I didn’t hit my head?” I asked Andrew Fallon, and he grinned at me, an ear-to-ear smile, dimples accentuated, that made my heart do a little flutter. That smile almost said, “I know what you’re thinking!” I felt a rosy, hot flush climb up my chest and into my face.

  Most days I climbed out of bed knowing that everything would pretty much be the same. Every day. While I didn’t consider my regular life boring by any means, this type of thing never happened to me. The scary part was that I was confused, tired, worried, more than a little desperate, terribly poor, and also, really getting addicted to the excitement.

  Now, in addition to a carb addiction, I apparently craved adrenaline.

  EIGHTEEN

  TATE insisted on escorting me home, and Andrew Fallon didn’t say much, other than, “You know where to find me, Jenny. I’ll be a lot closer just in case anything happens.”

  That whole “cement balloon” cliché was really appropriate here, because Tate did not like that at all. I could tell because his lips were clinched together tight, sort of like Grandma Gilly’s always got whenever she saw me coming. Break a few holy statues, flood the bathroom once or twice, and you were branded for life.

  “You seem kinda pissed,” I said after a few minutes of frosty silence. “I don’t get you men. Just a few days ago, you and Marshal Fallon were buddy-buddy and practically at the ball-scratching, beer-drinking phase of guy relationships. Now you can barely look at him without spitting nails. Care to tell me what’s up with that?”

  “No,” he said grimly, not even cracking a smile at my little joke. Hmmph. We rode a little further in silence, and then I was forced to say something else, because the quiet was getting to me and I did not need time alone with my own crazy thoughts. That always got me in trouble.

  “So, what do you think you should do next to find Taylee?”

  “Dunno.”

  Mr. Morose was starting to piss me off. I hadn’t exactly asked to be put in this position. I started stewing, and my stomach churned, and just about that time, Tate pulled in front of my apartment building. Lights pulled in behind us, and I assumed that it was Fallon, staying close as he had promised. Surely Tate could not be angry about that? Surely he realized that we did not have some huge commitment that required me not to even look at extremely handsome U.S. marshals without getting slightly weak-kneed? Surely I was totally insane to even think that this was bothering Tate at all?

  He opened his door and got out, and I did the same, a light honk from the car behind us indicating Fallon’s acknowledgment that I was headed into my apartment.

  Tate fo
llowed me closely—a little too close—and I put the key in the lock and turned it, then removed it and inserted the dead bolt key, Tate standing right behind me the entire time, almost pressed up against me, causing me all kinds of emotional turmoil and mixed sexual feelings.

  After I got the dead bolt open, I reached for the knob and slightly turned it, determined to get rid of Tate Wilson and collapse inside of my apartment, surrounded by all my confusion, attraction, and misguided lust. It didn’t work that way.

  Tate was pretty quick on the draw, pushing the door open and propelling me inside, moving us both out around it and then shutting it tight. He pushed my back up against the door, one hand around my waist, almost cupping my butt, the other on my shoulder, pushing me back gently, but firmly. He leaned in and put his mouth on mine, softly at first, little feathery kisses, followed by firmer, stronger pressure. The hand around my waist moved up, trailing over my rib cage until it stopped just below my left breast, teasing me. Torturing me, really.

  He continued to kiss me, and I found myself unable to move, to protest—which I definitely should have been doing. His tongue drove hungrily into my mouth and I was hit with the sudden impulsive urge to just rip off my clothes—and his, too—and drag him to the floor. But I couldn’t. Because he stopped, breath ragged, and pulled away from me, running his right hand through his hair as he paced toward the living room.

  I tried to catch my breath, leaning against the door, wondering what I’d done wrong, and hating myself for my constant self-doubt. Why did it have to be about me? Maybe it was his issue.

  “Maybe you should go now,” I said, my voice high and faltering.

  “Is that what you want? You want me to go?”

  “I have no idea what I want, because I have no idea what you want. You’re driving me crazy. Half the time I think you’re interested in me for reasons other than the fact I am tied to one of your cases by a dead psycho mom and her missing daughter, and the rest of the time I think you are just playing me, trying to get close to me because I can help you solve your case. I don’t know which one of those things is worse.”