Dead Man Waltzing

by Ella Barrick

  “Fascinating game,” I said, nodding toward the TV.

  “I don’t understand a single thing about it,” he said, eyes cutting back toward the screen.

  Ordering a glass of chardonnay from the middle-aged, aproned bartender, I studied Maurice. Although garbed in a double-breasted blazer and tailored slacks, he looked less dapper than usual. A lock of Brylcreemed white hair drooped onto his forehead, his shirt looked tired, and even his perpetual George Hamilton tan looked washed-out. Stripped of his usual élan, he seemed a stranger.

  “Sooo,” I said when my wine appeared. “I heard Corinne Blakely died today.”

  He turned his head to look at me and swayed on the stool. I reached out an arm to steady him. “I’m not drunk,” he said with the careful diction of someone who was drunk.

  “You have a right to be,” I assured him.

  “Rinny Blakely died,” he said, as if I hadn’t just mentioned it.

  “I know.”

  “We were having lunch and then-” His head flopped toward his chest, and for a moment I thought he had passed out. Then I realized he was demonstrating what had happened with Corinne. He snapped his head upright. “Then she slumped over and fell out of her chair. I didn’t know what to do.” Taking a swallow of his beer, he wiped at a smudge on the bar with his elbow.

  I took advantage of his distraction to order a couple of coffees from the bartender, who nodded her graying head approvingly. “What did you do?” I asked Maurice.

  He rubbed a finger against his prominent nose. “They have very effishun-efficient-waiters at the Swallow,” he said. “They called for an ambulansh-ambulance-but I lifted Rinny and carried her to the hospital. She weighs less now than when we danced together forty years ago.”

  “You carried her to the hospital?” No wonder the man looked gray and weary. “How far was it?”

  “Couple blocksh.”

  Setting our coffees in front of us, the bartender told me, “You’d be doing your grandfather a favor to take him home. He doesn’t usually put it away like this, if you know what I mean. Bad day?” She waited for me to fork over some good gossip.

  “You could say that.”

  Disappointed by my discretion, she drifted to the other end of the bar to wait on new customers. Everyone in here looked like regulars, I thought as she greeted them by name. I sipped my coffee and Maurice followed suit, not even seeming to notice that his beer had disappeared. Maybe he’d pickled his taste buds. We sat in silence, finishing our coffees. Maurice set his mug on the counter with a snap, and looked at me, his eyes less bleary than earlier.

  “Anastasia, what are you doing here?”

  “Looking for you.”

  His brow crinkled. “What on earth for?”

  “I heard you were with Corinne Blakely when she died,” I hedged, “and I thought you might need a friend.” I didn’t think he was in any condition to hear the police were after him.

  He gave me a sad smile. “I don’t have a lot of friends. It’s hard to keep in touch when you’re cruising to the Bahamas one week, Mexico the next. New passengers every week or ten days. You start getting to know someone, to like someone, and they’re disembarking with a ‘We’ll have to keep in touch’ you know they don’t mean. It’s not that they don’t like you; it’s that the cruise was a fantashy world, and once they’re back in their real world, going to library board meetings and working with Meals on Wheels and keeping the grandkids for the weekend… well, it’s hard to shtay-stay-in touch.”

  I hadn’t thought much about what life as a cruise dance host would be like, but his words painted a picture more lonely than glamorous. “You didn’t always work on a cruise ship.”

  “No.” He seemed disinclined to discuss his earlier life.

  I helped him down from the bar stool, relieved that he could stand on his own. “Let’s get you home.” I remembered the cop waiting outside his place. “On second thought, why don’t you come home with me for the night? You can sleep in the guest room.” I thought I’d changed the sheets on the guest bed after my brother, Nick, visited three months ago.

  “That’s very kind of you, Anastasia.”

  Several patrons called good-nights to Maurice as we left. The fresh air outside perked him up a bit and we walked the couple blocks to my car without incident. He dozed off on the way back to my place, but woke easily when I tapped his shoulder. “We’re here.”

  Inside, I heated a bowl of soup for him, pretty sure he hadn’t eaten since his lunch with Corinne, and remade the bed while he ate. By the time I returned to the kitchen, he was sitting straighter and finishing a big glass of water.

  “My head is going to ache abominably in the morning,” he said with a rueful smile.

  “I expect so.”

  He looked around the kitchen and said, “I shouldn’t impose. I can go home, Anastasia.”

  “You might not want to do that.” When he looked a question at me, I explained about the police looking for him.

  His brows climbed toward his hairline in astonishment. “For me? The police think I had something to do with Corinne’s death?”

  “Apparently.”

  “That’s preposterous!”

  “Detective Lissy thinks it’s suspicious that you ‘disappeared’-his word-from the hospital.”

  “Disappeared? I sat in the waiting room for over an hour, until I gathered that the doctors had been unable to resuscitate Corinne, that she had passed. In truth, I think she was gone from the moment she hit the floor at the restaurant. I went straight to the Fox and Muskrat and I’ve been sitting there ever since, drowning my sorrows, you might say.” He stopped abruptly. “Why do the police care about a heart attack, anyway?”

  “They think she was murdered.”

  “Ridiculous,” he said forcefully. “How?”

  I realized Detective Lissy hadn’t given me any details. “I don’t know.” They’d been lunching, she’d keeled over… “Poison?”

  The idea seemed to stun him.

  “What, exactly, happened? Did you pick her up or did you arrive separately at the restaurant? Did anyone join you? What did you eat?”

  Maurice rose and refilled his water glass from the tap. Leaning back against the sink, he took a long swallow. “We arrived separately,” he said finally. “I was running errands and drove to the Swallow from the library. Corinne was there, seated at a table, when I arrived. She looked fabulous.”

  Corinne always looked fabulous. She had a slender Audrey Hepburn-ish figure that looked marvelous in clothes, and thick, angel-wing white hair she always wore in a chignon. Photos revealed she’d had the prematurely white hair from her early thirties. She favored suits in clear pinks and reds and blues that flattered her complexion, and had a collection of shoes I envied. I won’t even mention her extraordinary wardrobe of competition dresses. “Had she eaten or drunk anything before you arrived?”

  “I don’t think so, although she’d ordered a bottle of champagne.”

  “Quite the ritzy lunch,” I observed.

  “She wanted to celebrate. She’d signed a contract for her book on very favorable terms, and she wanted to celebrate.”

  “What book?”

  “A memoir. I believe she was calling it Step by Step.”

  “So what happened then?”

  “I kissed her and sat and we had some champagne.”

  “Both of you?”

  He nodded.

  Scratch the champagne as the poison source, I thought.

  Without further cue from me, Maurice continued. “We talked for a while before ordering-and then I ordered the ginger-squash soup and the portabella-spinach ravioli. Corinne had a salad and an asparagus-goat cheese quiche, if I recall correctly. We shared a slice of a flourless chocolate torte for dessert.”

  Sharing a dessert… It sounded like Maurice had been considerably more intimate with Corinne Blakely than I realized. How interesting. I left that thought for the moment. “And she ate some of everything before she… s
he had her attack?”

  “Yes.” He set his glass in the sink. “I really can’t believe she was murdered, Anastasia, much less poisoned. Maybe the police have simply got it wrong?”

  I didn’t figure Detective Lissy would waste his time looking for a murderer unless he had unambiguous evidence that a murder had been committed. “Did Corinne leave the table at any time?”

  “She left to visit the ladies’ room before dessert.”

  “How long was she gone?”

  “Good grief, Anastasia, I wasn’t timing her.”

  “Long enough to bump into someone and chat?” I persisted.

  “Maybe ten or twelve minutes?”

  Maurice smoothed a weary hand over his hair and I realized he must be exhausted. “Let’s sleep on it,” I said, handing him the extra pillow and a blanket I’d taken from the linen closet. The air-conditioning kept it chilly. “I even changed the bed for you.”

  That got a small smile before worry cloaked his face again. “Perhaps I should visit the police station now and get this straightened out.”

  “In the morning,” I said. “When you’re sober. With a lawyer.”

  Chapter 3

  I wanted to accompany Maurice to the police station in the morning, but he refused.

  “I’ll be in and out in under half an hour,” he said with a confidence brought on by a good night’s sleep, a handful of painkillers with an oatmeal breakfast, a washed and ironed shirt (I’d tossed his shirt in the wash after he’d gone to sleep), and his white hair slicked back as usual, with a handful of my mousse. He complained the vanilla scent wasn’t manly, but lodgers at the Graysin Motel can’t be too choosy about their complimentary toiletries.

  “Don’t go without a lawyer,” I said, already dressed in my dance clothes to teach my Ballroom Aerobics class. It was the only class at Graysin Motion that didn’t teach competition-type or social ballroom dancing and, wouldn’t you know it, it was our most popular class. I had a full studio every Wednesday and Friday at seven a.m., and on Tuesday and Thursday over lunch.

  “That won’t be necessary,” Maurice said with a wave of his hand. “I’m innocent.”

  Rolling my eyes, I said, “That’s not enough for Detective Lissy.” I handed him the business card I’d dug up earlier. “Here. Take this. Drake is a high-powered criminal defense lawyer. He’ll-”

  “I am not a criminal!”

  “He’ll help you.” My uncle Nico had sent Phineas Drake to rescue me when the police thought I killed Rafe. Drake made me nervous-he’d hinted that he could set up anyone I wanted as Rafe’s murderer-but he got results. “He’s expensive, though.”

  “Money isn’t an issue.” Maurice waved the card away and I jammed it into the key pocket of my spandex shorts.

  I wished I could say, “Money isn’t an issue.” Could be that cruise lines paid more than I realized. “Good, then. Call me as soon as you’re finished with the police, okay?”

  Maurice smiled and kissed my cheek. “Thank you, Anastasia.”

  “Sure.” I shrugged it off, embarrassed by his gratitude. “What are friends for?”

  * * *

  An hour and a half later, sweaty from the high-voltage class, I walked into my office to find Tav sitting at his desk. I smiled involuntarily at the sight of his dark head bent in concentration over a spreadsheet. Octavio Acosta, Rafe’s half brother, had inherited Rafe’s share of the business. Instead of selling out, he had elected to stay on as my partner, for a while at least, and he handled the numbers end of the business that I hated. In his “real” life, he owned an import-export company in Argentina and was spending a year in the States to set up an outlet or branch or outpost in the northern Virginia area. It kept him busy, and he didn’t spend much time at his desk here.

  “To what do I owe the pleasure?” I asked.

  He looked up with a smile. His lean face with its strong nose and brows, dark eyes glinting with humor, and sensuous mouth was disturbingly attractive. His black hair was a bit longer than it had been when he arrived almost two months ago, curling halfway down his collar; maybe he hadn’t found a good barber yet.

  “Stacy. I looked into the ballroom, but you did not see me. You were leading the ladies around the room in a circle, doing a leg exercise of some sort.”

  His sexy Argentinean accent, so like Rafe’s, made me tingle. “Tango lunges,” I said. Nodding at the papers spread on his desk, I asked. “So, are we solvent?”

  “Barely.” His brows twitched closer together. “The trip to Blackpool took a big bite out of our cash on hand.”

  The Blackpool Dance Festival in England was the most prestigious international professional dance competition of the year. Couples competed by invitation only, and wins at Blackpool could significantly boost ballroom dancers’ reputations and, thus, their bottom line via increasing numbers of students, endorsement deals, invitations to perform on Ballroom with the B-Listers, and the like. When Rafe got killed, I’d had to find a new partner quickly. I’d been lucky that Vitaly Voloshin had left his dance partner in Russia when he moved to nearby Baltimore to be with his life partner. We’d paired up, practiced like demons, and won trophies for our waltzing and quickstepping. Given that we’d had only a few weeks together, I was happy with the outcome and looking forward to next year’s festival.

  “We had to go,” I told Tav.

  “I know. But some belt-tightening measures are in order now.”

  I wasn’t fond of belt tightening. I liked buying new competition dresses, bling, and accessories. I plopped onto the love seat by the window, idly watching tourists crowding the sidewalks of Old Town.

  “Possibly you could share a hotel room with someone at the Virginia DanceSport competition.”

  I wrinkled my nose with distaste. Rafe and I had shared a room when we went to competitions. Vitaly and I didn’t bunk together, of course, so the studio’s hotel bill for competitions had doubled. I sighed. “If I have to.”

  “There is a huge bridal show coming up,” Tav said.

  “Thinking of getting married?”

  “Por Dios, no!”

  His expression was comical, and I laughed. I realized I didn’t know whether Tav had ever been married. We’d met under intense circumstances and gotten to know each other on some levels pretty quickly, but once we became coowners of Graysin Motion, a certain awkwardness had come in. Having learned my lesson about being involved with a business partner from the difficulties that resulted when Rafe and I broke up but still had the studio to run together, I was reluctant to become too close to Tav. Dating was out of the question, although something about him-his scent, his intensity-made me far too aware of him. Not that he’d ever asked me out, I thought with irrational pique.

  “Why the interest in bridal shows, then?”

  “I thought that Graysin Motion might purchase space and use the convention as an opportunity to advertise ballroom dance lessons. Encourage brides and grooms and their attendants to learn to waltz for their wedding receptions.”

  “We could even offer a gift registry, where people could buy the happy couple dance lessons,” I said, enthused by the idea. “That’s very clever, Tav.” We’d always had a trickle of business from engaged couples hoping to shine on the dance floor at their receptions, but I’d never thought of specifically going after wedding business.

  He grinned, teeth very white against his tanned skin. “Advertising is one of my gifts. Like soccer and-”

  I stopped myself and him before I could speculate about his other possible gifts. “Did you hear about Corinne Blakely’s death?”

  “No. Who is she?”

  I gave him the twenty-five-words-or-less summary of her career. “There’s no one bigger in ballroom dance circles,” I finished.

  Tav looked a question at me, clearly wondering why I was giving him the life story of a woman he’d never meet.

  “She died yesterday,” I said.

  “I am sor-”

  “The police think she was murd
ered.”

  “Murdered?” Dismay clouded his brow. “Stacy, please do not tell me-”

  “Maurice was with her when she died,” I blurted. “He’s at the police station now.”

  Running a hand down his face, Tav said, “That is all the studio needs-more publicity related to murder.”

  “I’m sure the studio won’t be drawn into it,” I said, hoping I was right. “Maurice will tell the police about lunching with Corinne and taking her to the hospital, and they’ll thank him and wave good-bye.”

  The phone rang.

  Happy for the interruption, I lunged for it. “Graysin Motion.”

  “Anastasia?”

  I winced at the distress in Maurice’s voice. “Are you okay?”

  “Perhaps you could call your lawyer friend for me?”

  * * *

  I put in a call to Phineas Drake, but his secretary said he was in New York for the day. Asking her to have him call me as soon as possible, I said a hurried good-bye to Tav, who was headed into D.C. to look at spaces-to-let for housing his new store, and ran downstairs to shower and change.

  Seeing the brick police building on Mill Street again made my tummy flutter nervously. Reminding myself that no one suspected me of anything this time, I climbed the shallow stairs and pushed into the crowded waiting room. I avoided eye contact with the people waiting to submit forms for background checks, get fingerprinted, or report crimes, and marched straight to the counter to ask the bored-looking officer for Maurice Goldberg. In the event, Maurice exited through a door to the left of the counter before the officer could pick up the phone to locate him.

  “Maurice!” I hurried to him and gave him a big hug. He looked worried, but not like he’d been beaten with hoses, stretched on the rack, or forced to listen to Justin Bieber albums. “They’re letting you go?”

  “For the time being.” He sounded like he thought the police would drag him from his bed at midnight and toss him into jail.