Dead Man Waltzing

by Ella Barrick

  “I didn’t think you were going to make it,” I whispered. I’d mentioned the funeral to him a couple days earlier, but he’d been unsure about getting away from his business long enough to attend.

  He scanned the church with slightly lifted brows. “Judging from the crowd, I wouldn’t have been missed.”

  “I’d have missed you.” Oops. I hadn’t meant to say that.

  He gave me a warm smile that elicited all sorts of feelings not appropriate for a funeral. I resolutely faced forward as the service began, but I was conscious of his muscled thigh pressed against mine and his every movement as he flipped a page in the program or stood for a hymn. A photographer-not Sarah Lewis-took pictures discreetly, and if people had been wearing brighter colors and the music had been a bit more up-tempo, I’d have thought I’d stumbled into a wedding rather than a funeral.

  We were spared any eulogies, and the service itself was mercifully brief and tasteful. The interment was in the cemetery attached to the church, and we all filed outside while the organist played a dirge-y piece I didn’t recognize. I was grateful for my sleeveless dress as we emerged into the swampy heat. Tav stayed beside me as we angled toward the grave site, his arm lightly draped over my shoulders. Something black moved under the awning set up to shade the mourners, and I took a closer look as Tav asked, “Is that-”

  “Black swans,” I said, suppressing a giggle. Six of the large birds were corralled in a roped-off area to the left of the grave opening. A scrawny man in black jeans and a black T-shirt with SWAN WRANGLER stenciled across the back cast seed for them and headed off an aggressive bird that pecked at the patent-leather shoes of a woman who walked too close.

  “Now I have seen everything,” Tav said in a wondering voice. “I have seen doves at weddings a couple of times, but this is my first experience of swans at a funeral.”

  “Something to keep in mind for when your own time comes,” I said with an impish smile.

  “Absolutely not.”

  He said it forcefully, and a couple in front of us turned to glare. I buried my head in his shoulder to stifle my giggles and felt him shaking with laughter, too. “This is a solemn occasion,” I managed to squeak after a moment, straightening up. The minister was saying something, but we were too far back, and a breeze was blowing her words away, so I couldn’t hear. What we did hear was a sharp yap-yap. I looked around, thinking a stray dog might have wandered into the graveyard, but didn’t see one until Tav poked me gently and directed my attention to a furry mop of a dog sticking his head out of a woman’s purse to tell the swans what he thought of water fowl at a funeral.

  The dog’s owner tried to silence her pet with a hand around his muzzle, but the dog continued to mrrf and growl. People nearby began to smile or frown, and a wave of muffled laughter and comments spread through the crowd. The lowering of the casket caught the dog owner’s attention, and the pooch seized the opportunity to leap to the ground. Threading his way through people’s legs, he beelined for the swans. Despite the fact that they were three or four times his size, he dashed under the rope and stood barking at them. The minister spoke louder to compensate. A couple of the swans waddled away uneasily, more disturbed by the shrill yapping, I was convinced, than by any threat the tiny dog represented, but another swan moved toward the pup, hissing.

  Before the swan wrangler could shoo the dog out of the enclosure, the aggressive swan fanned his wings wide and snaked his head toward the dog. With startled yips, the mop dog turned tail and ran, the swan chasing him. People backed away as the angry swan sailed over the rope and the wrangler cried, “Not yet, Ebony, dang it!”

  The other swans, apparently taking Ebony’s departure as their cue, beat their wings heavily and took to the sky, a dark phalanx rising over the cemetery. It was stirring in its way, I had to admit, but slightly undermined by the first swan still chasing the hapless pup. I had to think this wasn’t quite what Corinne had in mind when she requested swans at her funeral. The dog’s owner had entered the chase as well, wailing, “Gumdrop!” as she trailed the pair, staggering on her high heels. The dog had reached the lip of the grave, and I was afraid that the farce was going to turn really ugly, but Corinne’s son, Randolph Blakely, leaned forward and scooped up Gumdrop before he could barrel into the gaping hole. With a smile, he restored the dog to her grateful owner. A blond woman about Randolph’s age laid her hand on his arm and smiled. My investigative antennae pricked up, and I wondered whether she was the “girlfriend” Randolph’s neighbor had told us about. She carried a few extra pounds and had a long face, but she was attractive in a comfortable, middle-aged sort of way.

  Randolph looked more alert today, and his expression was lighter, in marked contrast to his son, who scowled at Gumdrop as if wanting to drop-kick him into the next county. “That was well done of Randolph,” I whispered to Tav.

  Ebony, deprived of his prey, flapped his great wings and followed his buddies into the sky.

  “I wonder how the swan wrangler catches them again,” Tav said, his gaze following the elegant bird.

  With a determined look on her face, the minister began a rousing chorus of “Nearer My God to Thee” and we all chimed in.

  As the service ended and people began wandering off, I excused myself to Tav and angled toward where Randolph was accepting condolences, the blond woman still by his side. I made it to the front of the line and offered my hand to Randolph, saying sincerely, “Your mother meant a lot to all of us in the ballroom dancing world. I’m so sorry for your loss.”

  He nodded his acceptance of my condolences and turned to the older gentleman behind me. I stuck out my hand to the blond woman. “I’m Stacy Graysin. I don’t think we’ve met.”

  “Alanna Vincent,” she said with the gratitude that spouses and girlfriends frequently betray when someone pays attention to them at their husbands’ or boyfriends’ events.

  “How did you know Corinne?” I asked.

  “I didn’t, really,” she admitted with a small smile that crinkled the skin at the corners of her eyes. “Randolph and I met at Hopeful Morning. I’m an alcoholic, and we overlapped there for several months.” She said it with no trace of self-consciousness. “When I left this past February, we stayed in touch. Things are progressing.” She gave me a sweetly mischievous smile and squeezed Randolph’s arm. Still conversing with the elderly gentleman, who seemed to have an inexhaustible flow of reminiscences about Corinne, Randolph patted her hand where it lay on his arm.

  “That’s lovely,” I said. “I hope things work out for both of you. It was very nice meeting you.”

  “You, too, Stacy.” Alanna smiled.

  A bit bemused by this evidence of Randolph’s romantic life, I went in search of Maurice to see how he was holding up. He stood near the grave with the other ex-husbands. Lyle was apparently demonstrating a golf swing, and the Reverend Hamish was bawling, while the fifth husband, the African-American whose name I couldn’t remember, patted his back. I assumed the short, dumpy man I hadn’t seen before was Baron von Whatever, and I studied him curiously. I was somewhat disappointed to see that he was ordinary in every respect, except for a gray mustache waxed and twirled into points that looped up against his pudgy cheeks.

  Spotting me, Maurice said something to the baron and edged toward me, only to be intercepted by Turner Blakely. The young man looked svelte and sophisticated in a black suit with a black-and-gray-striped tie. His dark hair was brushed straight back from his forehead, revealing a pale, narrow brow.

  “Goldberg.” He planted himself in front of Maurice and pulled an envelope from an inner jacket pocket.

  Maurice cocked his head slightly, waiting for Turner to explain himself.

  “I’m contesting the will,” Turner said, thrusting the envelope at Maurice, “and in particular the painting that you tricked Grandmother into leaving you.”

  “There was no trickery involved, Turner, as you well know,” Maurice said calmly. “However, it’s your prerogative under America’s ri
ght-to-sue-and-be-sued legal system to contest the will, so contest away.”

  The tips of Turner’s ears reddened at the light contempt in Maurice’s tone. “Murderers can’t benefit from their crimes,” he spit. “When you’re convicted, the painting will revert to the estate anyway.”

  “Then if you’re so sure of my guilt, save your money and wait for the justice system to grind its wheels. It shouldn’t take more than eight or ten years, what with appeals and everything.” Maurice gave Turner a pseudo-sympathetic smile. “Who knows? Maybe by then the painting will have appreciated in value. Or maybe I will have sold it to pay my legal bills.” With a nod, he left Turner fuming and walked to me, saying under his breath, “Get me out of here, Anastasia, before I really am guilty of murder.”

  I could tell by his ragged breathing that maintaining a facade of calm while talking to Turner had cost him, and I took his arm to lead him back toward the car, distracting him by telling him about having discovered the identity of the mysterious blonde who had visited Randolph. Tav joined us and, summing up Maurice’s state of mind in one comprehensive glance, offered a quiet comment on the funeral and what a lovely tribute the crowd was to Corinne. Maurice responded in kind, and his breathing had slowed by the time we neared the car.

  The car parked in front of mine was a black limousine, and a chauffeur opened the door for Randolph Blakely, Alanna Vincent, and-to my surprise-Hamish MacLeod as we approached. The reverend was still sobbing into his hands, and Alanna was murmuring soothingly to him. The chauffeur stood stiff as a fence post, perhaps used to ferrying blubbering passengers around the city.

  “It’ll be okay, Hamish,” Randolph said bracingly. “You made a good decision to admit yourself to Hopeful Morning. They’ll help you. Look what they did for Alanna and me.”

  The chauffeur clunked the door shut behind them, and I couldn’t hear any more. My gaze flew involuntarily to Tav, and he gave me a smug “I told you so” look that I couldn’t even get mad about. Apparently Hamish’s presence at Randolph’s cottage was completely innocent, as Tav had suggested. He’d been considering admitting himself to the rehab center. I smiled sheepishly and walked around to my door.

  Maurice slid into the passenger seat and shut the door, and I looked at Tav gratefully over the hood of the Beetle. “Thanks. So, how does the swan wrangler get them back?” I guessed he’d gone to talk to the man when I went to find Maurice.

  He grinned, confirming my guess. “They fly home,” Tav said, “like homing pigeons. And in case one gets the idea of escaping, they have got GPS devices on their collars.”

  “The wonders of technology,” I said.

  His expression grew more serious, a bit uncertain. The wind riffled his dark hair. “Stacy, will you have dinner with me one evening? Not this weekend-I must fly to New York on business-but next weekend?”

  My breath caught in my throat. “Are you asking me for a date at a funeral?”

  A wry smile slanted his mouth. “Is that bad?”

  “It’s a first for me.”

  “Me, too.”

  I fell silent, biting my lip. I’d been attracted to Tav all along, but I was afraid to get involved again, especially with a business partner. If we dated and then broke up, it would be messy, awkward, like it had been after I caught Rafe cheating and ended our engagement. But we weren’t talking about “getting involved,” my free-spirit self argued. We were talking about a single date. Ha! my sensible side said.

  “I’m not sure I’m ready,” I told Tav, brushing a wisp of hair off my face.

  “I know. I promised myself I would wait six months before asking you, but my willpower is not up to the task of waiting.” The rueful awareness in his eyes, the crooked smile, the memory of that almost-kiss Monday night made my chest feel tight.

  Maurice rolled down the window and said, “Are you coming, Anastasia?”

  “Yes,” I answered both men.

  Chapter 30

  Friday afternoon I locked up Graysin Motion, shut off my cell phone, and took Corinne’s manuscript into my kitchen. Making a big pot of coffee, I sorted the pages back into order and sat down to read. The tale of Corinne’s life, her excitement as she fell in love and married, only to find herself restless and unsatisfied soon after; her love for baby Randolph, and her anguish as the son she loved turned into someone else under the influence of drugs; her dislike of the daughter-in-law Randolph brought her, a girl ten years his junior who was more interested in partying than in mothering the child who came along six months after they married; her ballroom dance successes and her drive to win more titles and recognition; and the stories about people she met along the way kept me glued to the manuscript as the level of coffee in the pot steadily declined.

  Greta Monk’s story was here, along with Corinne’s confrontation with her about the embezzlement. Conrad Monk, Corinne said, had repaid the money his wife embezzled and spread hush money around liberally to keep her from being indicted. Corinne had gone along only to keep scandal from tainting the dance scholarship foundation and its good work. Marco Ingelido’s sordid story was here, a cautionary tale of lust run amok. She’d loved Marco, Corinne admitted, and had hoped to marry him before he got Phyllis, Sarah’s mom, pregnant. When he’d become engaged to Marian, Phyllis’s sister, Corinne had warned Marian, told her that Sarah was, in fact, Marco’s child. My eyes opened wide at that. So, Marco’s wife had known all along and never let on. I wondered whether the knowledge that her husband had slept with her sister, had fathered a child with her, had eaten at her over the years.

  I made notes as I read, planning to pass my ideas along to Detective Lissy (whether he appreciated it or not) and Phineas Drake. Corinne gave Maurice’s story of cruise ship romance gone bad a humorous spin, and I wondered how he’d react to that. It didn’t seem to me, even forty-some years after the fact, that he found anything funny about the incident. I knew Detective Lissy would have latched onto the story already, so I didn’t include it in my notes. There were a couple of stories I hadn’t heard before, one featuring a ballroom dance judge who was a closet homosexual in the early 1970s who had been blackmailed by a former partner. Since he had died of AIDS in the late 1980s, I didn’t put him in my notes either. The other tale I was unfamiliar with involved Turner and cheating. He’d done more than cheat himself, according to his loving grandmother; he’d run a cheating racket that involved buying copies of tests, hacking professors’ computers, and selling the tests themselves and/or answers to a startling number of students. I wondered whether he could be prosecuted for the hacking; even if not, having the tale publicized was likely to ensure he never got admitted to another university. Not that failing to get a degree would matter much to his future, now that he had inherited Corinne’s millions.

  Lavinia Fremont’s story came late in the manuscript, with great descriptions about their trip to England and the excitement of competing. Corinne described the attack outside the nightclub in horrific detail, and included a confession that rocked me back in my chair. I turned the last page over with relief and regret. I imagined the book would sell well. Draining the last bit of coffee from my mug, and feeling a caffeine-overdose headache coming on, I tapped my pen on the table and stared into space. My thoughts tumbled semiaimlessly. If I wrote a memoir in my seventies, would I have the same wealth of stories to tell that Corinne did? Would the people whose secrets Corinne laid bare in the book recover from the revelations? I thought about Mrs. Laughlin and her statement about greed and revenge being the only credible motives for murder. I’d thought all along that greed had twisted someone into a murderer. Maybe Turner or Randolph in order to inherit early, maybe Marco or Greta, who were greedy for acclaim and success and whose quests for those might be curtailed by Corinne’s brutal openness. Maybe even Mrs. Laughlin, greedy for autonomy and new adventures.

  The more I thought about it, though, the more I became convinced that I was wrong. Greed hadn’t prompted Corinne’s murder.

  Revenge had.

&nbs
p; Chapter 31

  I thought about calling Maurice and talking it over with him, or even Tav or Danielle, just to run my suspicions past them. In the end, I called Detective Lissy. He was the one who would have to make the arrest, after all.

  I caught him as he was leaving the office for the weekend, and he seemed strangely unwilling to make time for me, even when I told him I knew who had killed Corinne Blakely.

  “So do I,” he said wearily. “Maurice Goldberg. We arrested him, remember?”

  “It wasn’t Maurice. Look, I read the manuscript-”

  “So did one of my officers. We talked to a couple of the folks mentioned in the book, including the Monks and Mr. Ingelido, and we’re satisfied they didn’t have anything to do with the murder.”

  “They didn’t,” I agreed. “If you’d just hear me out-”

  “Ms. Graysin, my grandson is pitching the first game in the Little League championships in forty-five minutes. The only thing I’m listening to this evening is the crack of the ball against the bat and the insults of parents abusing the ump.”

  “Where?”

  A hint of disbelief in his voice, Lissy told me.

  An hour later, I joined him on the metal bleachers set up around a baseball diamond out near Vienna, Virginia, a D.C. suburb off of I-66. The sun beat down hotly, and I was grateful for the Baltimore Orioles cap I wore with my ponytail threaded through the back. The metal bleachers had absorbed enough heat to be uncomfortably warm against the backs of my thighs as I settled in beside Lissy. He looked casual and much more grandpa-ish in multipocketed khaki shorts and a faded blue golf shirt. Despite that, the shoelaces on his athletic shoes looked like they’d been ironed, and not a smudge of dirt sullied their whiteness. He slid me an exasperated look when I sat down and didn’t introduce me to the woman on his other side, whom I assumed was his daughter.