Dead on Her Feet (An Antonia Blakeley Tango Mystery Book 1)

by Lisa Fernow

  He beckoned her out into the hall. She checked to see if Christian showed any signs of discomfort, tucked the blanket tight around him, and followed the detective into the passageway. The corridor was teeming with hospital staff in different color uniforms according to job function, ID cards swinging from lanyards or clipped to their pockets, going about their business, talking normally as if nothing special was happening, and family members talking to each other in falsely cheerful tones or trying to get cell phone reception so they could talk to someone else. Talk-talk-talk. The turmoil was overwhelming.

  “Got your message,” Detective Morrow said in the same rumbling, soothing voice he’d used the night they’d met.

  She hid her face in her hands. “This is my fault. I should have done something. I should have made Christian tell me what was going on.”

  “Let’s get out of here.” Morrow took her by the elbow and steered her through a set of double doors. He led her down a hall and into an enclosed alcove only to find other waiting relatives had already set up camp in it. Someone had brought a cooler of food, like a tailgating party, but nothing was left of the meal except for some used soft drink cups and a pile of dried-out orange peels. A wilting flower arrangement and a Get Well card reading “to Mom” had apparently been cleared from a patient’s room and left on a coffee table, but what happened to Mom?

  Sensing her distress Morrow guided her back into the hall, this time to the elevator. They descended a few floors, walked down a few more halls, and finally arrived at the cafeteria which was, mercifully, nearly deserted.

  Morrow settled her into a battered plastic chair and walked over to the vending machine while she concentrated on the humming of the conveyor belt that ferried the used trays and dishes back into the kitchen. He returned with two bottles of water and sat down catty-corner to her. He unscrewed the cap of the first bottle and placed it in front of her.

  She took the bottle and drank. She didn’t want to look at him—by that point her throat had developed a lump the size of Stone Mountain—so she looked down. He tied his shoelaces tighter than anyone she’d ever seen. At the moment that fact seemed vitally important.

  “Like you, I used to think I could control situations.” He spoke softly. “Then one day my partner got his face blown off by some punk we’d pulled over for a simple traffic violation. I thought I had it covered.”

  How awful, she thought, meeting his eyes.

  He unscrewed the cap of the second bottle and took a drink, letting the water sit in his mouth briefly before swallowing. “Has Christian been out the whole time?”

  “He tried to say a few words just now. Something about a delicatessen, I think. Maybe he was hungry. If he doesn’t wake up they’re going to have to feed him fake food through a tube.”

  “He’ll make it.”

  “Maybe we’re just saving him for life imprisonment.” She turned her face towards the ceiling and focused her attention on a sprinkler head so she wouldn’t start bawling like a two-year-old.

  “What makes you think he did it?”

  “It’s happened before.” The words just popped out. She started to shake. She finally looked at Morrow to see how he was reacting.

  Morrow didn’t say anything. The expression on his face was as patient and nonjudgmental as any Buddha’s.

  “I call Christian my nephew but his mother and I were actually first cousins. Katherine. I called her Kat when we were growing up and she called me Ant. She got married when she was nineteen and had Christian almost immediately. Her husband was very controlling. He beat her. He cut her off from her family, friends, from everybody. They moved to a small town outside of Cincinnati and I didn’t see them after that.”

  He was nodding, slowly, doling out his reaction in understanding pieces. He’d probably heard hundreds of stories just like hers.

  “I don’t know what happened that night, exactly,” she went on. “That’s what’s so horrible. I just know what the Child Protective Services people told me after Christian’s grandmother died and they asked me to take over as his guardian. Apparently Kat’s husband came home drunk and … and took … took …”

  “Easy. You’re doing fine.”

  She gulped a lungful of air and forced herself to keep going. “He took a golf club to her. They found her sprawled out in front of the refrigerator with her head beaten in and him on the floor next to her, dead, stabbed in the chest. The police found Christian, unconscious, in the hall, covered with blood. The story was his parents killed each other during a domestic disturbance and he had the bad luck to be on the scene. But now with this happening I think … I think it’s possible Christian might have seen his father kill his mother and gone after him. I would have.”

  “Did they charge him?”

  She shook her head. “The police never even filed the case with the prosecutor.”

  “What does he say?”

  “He says he doesn’t remember. But I’ve seen how he gets. At the party he talked about cutting Nathalie’s face. I was afraid ... heredity repeating itself or something.” She sniffed. Her nose had started to run. She reached into a pocket, found a tissue, and blew into it. “They told me it was an overdose.”

  “That’s right. Sleeping pills.”

  “Pills?”

  Morrow nodded.

  Antonia gaped. “That can’t be. Christian can’t swallow pills. He has a thing about them. He can’t even take aspirin. I thought when they said overdose it was from alcohol or something, but now that I think about it I don’t think Christian drank anything last night. How many was he supposed to have taken?”

  “About three times the normal dose. He was lucky. Your red devils were years out of date.”

  “My what?”

  “Seconal.”

  “But that’s impossible.”

  “EMS found the empty bottle in Christian’s kitchen. Prescribed by a Dr. Rux Donner. Your address was on the label.”

  “I know the bottle you’re talking about but Christian couldn’t have taken it.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because I gave Eduardo one of those pills just last night and Christian left right after Eduardo and I came downstairs.”

  “Are you absolutely sure?”

  Then she realized the implications of what he was saying. She leapt up and shouted, not caring who saw or heard. “He didn’t try to kill himself. He didn’t do it!”

  “You know what that means, then, if you’re right,” Morrow said, getting to his feet. “Someone’s trying to kill him.”

  “Yes! Yes! Isn’t it great?” She threw her arms around him.

  He tensed.

  She recoiled. “Sorry. I didn’t mean … I …”

  “Not at all.” He held up his hand and she watched the skin between his freckles grow progressively pinker. “Excuse me.” He turned away, reached into his jacket for his cell phone, and dialed a number.

  Antonia listened to his end of the conversation and realized he was asking someone to “secure” Christian’s apartment. Antonia pulled her own cell phone from her pocket, turned it on, and dialed Shawna. She could confirm when Christian had left the milonga. But there was no answer.

  When Morrow finished his call she said, “Why would someone try to kill him?”

  “We’ll find out as soon as he comes to.”

  “How long’s that going to take? Christian’s in danger until we catch who is responsible.” Antonia felt her throat close up as the bigger reality set in.

  “Who knew you had Seconal in the house?” Morrow took out his notebook and a mechanical pencil and sat back down.

  She sat, too. “Eduardo, obviously, since he was with me in the bathroom when I got them out of the medicine cabinet. And I gave Shawna one the night of Nathalie’s murder. I know that makes me sound like a pharmacy but anyone could have known they were there. People use that bathroom all the time. The only ones left at the party after I gave Eduardo the pill were Shawna, Barbara, Bobby and Eduardo. Remember?�
��

  Morrow closed his notebook and put it back in his pocket. “We’ll check their stories.”

  “Christian tried to say a few words just now: ‘delicatessen’ and ‘sight.’ Could that mean something?”

  “Probably nothing. People sometimes hallucinate when they OD. My question is why attack him now? He must have said or done something at the reenactment to threaten the killer.”

  “Christian hardly talked to anyone all night. The only thing I heard him say was that he was going to clean out his computer files. Maybe there’s something there that triggered the murderer to act.”

  “That’s a big leap.”

  “Well, I’m a hell of a great leaper.” She bounded up, grabbed her purse, and headed for the door.

  He beat her to the exit, blocking her way. “First things first, Antonia. I need a search warrant to see anything on Christian’s computer. We’re getting a judge to authorize one. The evidence in his apartment isn’t going anywhere.”

  “But we have to do something.”

  “I’m on it. Trust me.”

  “Trust you? How can I do that? I don’t know anything about you. You won’t even tell me your first name.”

  “Why would that make a difference?”

  “It makes you human. It puts us on equal footing.”

  He held out his hand. “How do you do? Sam Morrow.”

  CHAPTER 42

  Sam

  SAM. THE NAME FIT with his compact body and ordinary features. The laughable part was she’d gotten used to thinking of him as Morrow and it was too late to change.

  He insisted on escorting her out to the Emergency entrance lot. But as soon as he disappeared back into the hospital she mentally addressed the row of badly parked cars, each one standing in silent testament of someone’s personal crisis, “I am not waiting for some stupid search warrant.” The murderer might strike again at any moment while the authorities dragged their red-taped feet. It was up to her to find something that would point to Christian’s would-be killer.

  Morrow would have wanted it that way.

  She drove to Christian’s apartment and for once traffic was on her side. A sign. She pulled into the parking lot and surveyed the area to see if the authorities had beaten her there. No cop cars in sight.

  She climbed the stairs to Christian’s loft and let herself in, knowing she had only minutes to find whatever it was before the authorities got there to put up their Do Not Enter barricades. She flipped on the overhead light. The place smelled even worse than it had that morning.

  Before tackling Christian’s office she made a quick detour to the kitchen just in case she might see something the EMS people hadn’t. Nothing in the dish drainer, nothing on the counter. She peered in the trashcan. Nothing there either.

  She checked the refrigerator, thinking she might discover some connection to a deli, but found only a saucepan with leftover spaghetti marinara—the only dish Christian ever cooked from scratch—and a box of what looked like Chinese takeout. She opened it. Disgusting.

  She tried Christian’s office area next. The pool of vomit on the floor where he’d passed out and flopped from his chair had dried. She decided not to waste time on the hill of papers on his desk. Christian’s idea of a file would be a computer file. He’d said he was going to rebuild his hard drive. Was that why the murderer came to his apartment, she wondered, to prevent Christian from seeing something on his computer? Or had the unfriendly visitor fixed him a downer cocktail because Christian had already seen something and might connect it to Nathalie’s death? If the courts were anything like the Motor Vehicle Registration department it would take Morrow weeks to get a search warrant whereas she could find out what was on his computer right now.

  She tiptoed to the puke-free side of Christian’s chair, sat down facing the row of monitors, and rocked back and forth in the ergonomic seat. Which hard drive was he planning to rebuild? The laptop’s, probably. She’d check that first and if it looked like the right one maybe she’d just take it away with her. If not, she’d have to search the other PCs. No, there wasn’t time. She decided to turn them all on at once. She flipped every switch that seemed to be attached to a power source and pressed the “on” button for the laptop, but as the computers made their booting up noises she realized she didn’t know Christian’s user name or password for any of them.

  She waited for the laptop’s password screen then typed in the obvious first choice, Cookerly, but in her agitated state she typed it three times before she got it right.

  No good.

  Birth date, no good.

  Mother’s maiden name, no good.

  Christian’s middle name, no good.

  “‘Delicatessen’ and ‘sight.’ What in the world did you mean, Christian?” She felt silly talking to herself but she needed the company. Had he seen someone in a deli? Maybe Morrow was right and Christian’s words were just drug-induced delirium. The police would be here any second. She was running out of time. She looked around at the books and manuals on his shelves, hoping for inspiration.

  S-T-E-V-E-J-O-B-S

  A-N-D-Y-G-R-O-V-E

  G-O-R-D-O-N-M-O-O-R-E

  B-U-C-K-M-I-N-S …

  Nuts.

  He wasn’t using family members or geek heroes. And the possible permutations, considering Christian probably used letters and numbers and punctuation marks in fifteen-character strings, were infinite. She tapped on the edge of the keyboard with one finger. N-A-T-H-A-L-I-E. Finally, feeling more than a little sheepish, she typed A-N-T-O-N-I-A and her birthday and pressed enter.

  The computer roared to life and she was so touched that Christian had used her name she nearly burst into tears.

  Christian had saved his e-mail password so getting into his account was easy. She clicked on Inbox and found eleven new messages, all dated that day and unread. It was impossible for her to tell whether any e-mails had been deleted. She searched for Nathalie’s name and was relieved to find nothing. She scrolled through the most recent two weeks of archived messages. Most were RSVPs for the Halloween party. Some from Emory e-mail addresses also cc’d Barbara.

  She’d gotten through a third of the Sent e-mails for October before she found anything of interest. Written the same date as the Halloween invitations, the outgoing message to Eduardo Sanchez Jaury from Christian’s computer was unsigned.

  If you want to know what your precious girlfriend is doing behind your back you’d better come to Shawna Muir’s Halloween milonga.

  Wow. That explained why Eduardo had shown up at the party so unexpectedly.

  The tone of the message sounded more like Barbara than Shawna but Antonia couldn’t see why either of them would poison Christian to prevent him from finding out they’d sent Eduardo an anonymous e-mail. Plus it hadn’t been deleted so by definition, this wasn’t it.

  She started on the bookmarks hoping something would jump out. Some antique furniture stores, those would be Shawna’s. Brigitango, Tango Lyrics, Sanctuary Latin Nightclub. She’d sent Christian those. How was she going to know if he’d deleted a bookmark or if someone else had?

  She clicked on My Recent Documents. Someone had purged the listing of recently accessed files. That might be important. She opened the directory and read the folder titles, hoping something would cabeceo her and say, “pick me.” Nothing did. She’d have to go through each folder. She double clicked on one that read, “Words,” clicked on the icons to find the most recently modified file. She opened it and read.

  Locked inside.

  That didn’t sound like a song. It must be one of Christian’s poems. Was this where he hid them? She had never seen his work. Did he show it to anyone? Probably not, he would have shared them with her if he did; at least she hoped they had that kind of relationship. She parsed through a few samples and decided that, however well they offered a window to his inner life, they were getting her nowhere on the question of who had tried to end it. And time was ticking away.

  Shawna said Christian kep
t a file on Nathalie but there was none to be found. Antonia opened up the recycle bin but it was empty. Was it possible to recover a deleted folder? The police would be there any moment. She had to decide whether to try to break into the other computers, take off with Christian’s laptop, or keep reading.

  “This is crazy. I don’t even know what I’m looking for.” She leaned back in her chair and ran her fingers through her hair. It desperately needed washing, as did the rest of her.

  It finally occurred to her to pull down the menu showing which websites had been most recently accessed. When she did so the computer gave up a URL she hadn’t seen before. She opened it and studied the home page: Japanese martial arts, selling samurai swords and other ninja warrior equipment. They accepted e-commerce orders to the US. All very nice and lethal, she thought, but the murder weapon was an ordinary kitchen knife and the site wasn’t exactly Williams & Sonoma.

  She scrolled down the page and tried to imagine what if anything might have stuck out in the murderer’s mind as worth risking exposure to erase. One image showed a fan decorated with a scene from Mount Fuji. Shawna had carried a fan as part of her Halloween costume but that wasn’t much of a connection. Curious to see what a fan was doing on a site full of weapons, Antonia clicked on the picture for the description.

  The fan played a role in Japanese etiquette, especially on formal occasions, and was rarely ever out of a samurai's possession. The folding war fan usually had eight to ten metal ribs and was used as a weapon of both attack and defense.

  The smell of Christian’s vomit returned full strength and Antonia was overpowered with a wave of nausea.

  CHAPTER 43

  Dead Letters

  11/4, 1438, Nathalie LeFebre’s apartment, Buckhead.

  MORROW KNEW THERE WAS NO POINT in kicking himself but it was hard not to want to. He’d missed something important at Antonia’s party—some detail that had caused Nathalie LeFebre’s murderer to see Cookerly as a threat—and nearly gotten the kid killed. Seeing the unsinkable Antonia Blakeley so close to tears had made it worse.