Rockabye Murder

by Diana Orgain

  “I’ll watch Laurie,” said Jim.

  Laurie, it turned out, wanted nothing more than to play on the rocking horse, so Jim kept one hand on her back while working on a design project on his laptop. I set up at the table and went to work, searching Google for any news references to the poisoning that Galigani told me Todd had allegedly been involved with.

  There! An article from New York, dated twelve years earlier. There wasn’t a whole lot of detail—it didn’t even name Todd because he was a minor—but it did name the victim: nineteen-year-old Giselle Malakhova, who barely survived.

  I researched the poison that had been used on Giselle, but it had been some sort of pesticide, not vercuronium bromide. Still, that didn’t exonerate Todd in Leo’s poisoning. He may have used whatever he could get his hands on—or perhaps he’d realize it would be suspicious to use the same method twice.

  The following morning, when Kenny hadn’t texted me back, I negotiated more daddy-daughter time for Jim since he was working from home and I headed over to the dance studio.

  When I walked in, Petunia Petal greeted me. “Hey,” she said warmly, coming out from behind the front desk to give me a hug. “I didn’t realize you were coming.”

  She wasn’t wearing florals today, but her tunic and leggings were in soft pastels that evoked spring.

  She’s really leaning into that stage name.

  “Interviewing Kim and Todd finally,” I said. “They were at the studio the day Leo died.” I glanced at my watch. “I’m a couple of minutes early—can I ask you a few more questions? I’m trying to see what we might have missed, so I’m looking for any details you can think of, even if they don’t seem relevant.”

  “Sure,” she said, returning to her seat behind the desk. “About the day of the murder?”

  “Anything from that day,” I said, “or anything related to the other strange incidents. First, was anyone else here in the studio that day, besides these people?” I rattled off the list I’d written.

  “Well, students,” said Petunia. “But the schedule was full of private lessons, no group classes, and they were all kids, so I doubt they’d be involved.”

  “What about their parents?”

  Petunia frowned in thought. “The kids were mostly dropped off. I can only think of one mom who stayed, and I visited with her the whole time. Oh! Hank did come by. He asked if your mom was here.”

  Hank, huh? He was a pharmacist. Who knew what concoctions he had behind the counter? I added another line to my list:

  Hank—might have access to poison?

  I tapped my pen against the legal pad. “Can you think of anyone who might want the fundraiser canceled? Anyone at all, no matter how petty the reason might be.”

  Petunia’s mouth twitched. “I mean, other studios, I guess. Or maybe one of the teachers has an enemy. The dance world can be . . . competitive.” Then she sighed. “Even if we don’t cancel, do you think anyone will even come? It hit the newspaper, and that’s terrible publicity.”

  A teenage girl in a leotard emerged from the hall, pointe shoes swung over her shoulder.

  Petunia waved at her. “Bye, hon!”

  “Bye, Miss Petal!” called the girl as she shoved her way through the door.

  Petunia jerked her head toward the hall. “Kim and Todd are free now if you want to talk to them.”

  “Great! I have a few more questions for you, so I’ll track you down later. But I haven’t been able to do any interviews with them yet.”

  When I reached the dance room at the far end, I tapped on the doorframe. Todd totally ignored me, but Kim looked up with an annoyed expression. “Can I help you?”

  “We had an appointment?” I raised my eyebrows.

  “Oh. Right,” said Kim. “Come in, I guess.”

  I grabbed one of the chairs at the back of the room and pulled it toward them. As I sat down, I asked, “So, you were here the day Leo died, right?”

  “Yeah,” said Kim, popping a stick of gum in her mouth. “Teaching classes.”

  “Did you see anything out of the ordinary?”

  Todd sighed and looked at me for the first time since I’d entered the room. “We already answered all these questions for the police.”

  “Humor me.” I kept my voice level and unbothered. “I’m trying to figure out if there’s any clue we haven’t unearthed yet.” No need to let on that I knew about his high school poison escapades. I didn’t want to tip my hand yet.

  Though they answered my questions, each reply was short and abrupt, and they certainly weren’t giving me anything helpful.

  Todd’s phone rang, and I thought I recognized the ringtone as something from The Nutcracker. He answered, and Kim took the opportunity to excuse herself to use the restroom.

  “Yeah?” said Todd into the phone. He glanced at me and walked away, into the hall.

  As soon as he disappeared from view, I stood and crept quietly toward the door. Staying just inside the room, I listened intently.

  “Double the signing bonus, and you have a deal,” said Todd. “I want to jump this ship.” There was a long pause. “Yeah, yeah. Monte, cool it. Do you want us to come teach at your studio or not?” Another pause. “I’m taking care of it. Yes, our students will follow us.”

  Well, well, well. Todd and Monte had just skyrocketed to the very top of my list.

  Todd hung up, but I didn’t budge from where I was standing. He came through the door and stopped dead in his tracks.

  I crossed my arms. “Want to tell me what that was all about?”

  With a scowl, he spat, “None of your business.”

  “Sounded like you’re going to sign with a competing studio and poach all of Tre Fratelli Danzanti’s ballet students,” I said. “And it also sounds like you’re ‘taking care’ of something. That wouldn’t have anything to do with Leo’s death, now, would it?”

  “No!” exclaimed Kim as she ran into the room. “Why would you think that?”

  Todd brushed past me. “You took half a conversation out of context. We’re not leaving Tre Fratelli Danzanti.”

  Kim’s lips tightened into a thin white line.

  “Would you like to clarify that, Kim?” I asked. “Because from where I stand, there are a lot of things not adding up. Especially since Todd has poisoned someone before.”

  Todd whirled on me, his face pale and trembling. “Who told you that?” he hissed. “I never poisoned anyone. Ever. My crazy ex-girlfriend lied. She said I poisoned Giselle for her in high school, but I didn’t know anything about it.”

  “Why should I believe you? Give me something solid.”

  “Wait!” cried Kim. “We’ve talked about leaving the studio, but I don’t want to go. We have a good gig here, and I don’t trust Monte. Petunia’s stuck up, but she treats us right.”

  Petunia, stuck up? That was rich, coming from Kim.

  Todd scowled at Kim. “It’s a twenty percent pay raise.”

  “Hold up,” I said, “where were you guys the morning Leo was killed?”

  “Here,” said Todd, “you know that. That’s why you were in here asking us questions.”

  “But where exactly?” I asked.

  “In this room,” he said, his palms facing upward. “Teaching.”

  “Did you have students every hour?”

  He fell silent.

  Kim answered, “Except between ten and eleven.”

  “Where were you between ten and eleven?” I asked.

  “We stayed here,” said Kim. “Putting together some choreography for our students.”

  “Can anyone else vouch for that?” I asked.

  Desperation flashed across Kim’s face. “Petunia, maybe, if she remembers passing us when she went back and forth between the office and the lobby. Listen, I don’t know how to prove this, but we didn’t do it.”

  “Can I have a phone number in case I have any more questions?”

  With a subdued expression on her face, she rattled off her number and I programmed it
into my phone. I left, considering the interaction. They were suspicious, but my gut said they didn’t do it. Or at least that Kim wasn’t involved. Todd was an open question. I still found him pretty suspicious.

  Even if he wasn’t a killer, he was slimy.

  Of course, I still needed to follow up on everyone else and run down every clue I had. Next up, Petunia. Then, Odette.

  Chapter 10

  A couple dance teachers I didn’t recognize were teaching ballroom classes, but I didn’t see Odette. I found Petunia, jotted down the answers to a few more questions, and then asked when Odette would be in.

  “Mmm, she was scheduled for a private lesson,” Petunia said, “but the student canceled, so Odette took off with Kenny to film that music video.”

  “Do you know where they went?” I asked, shifting my purse to my other shoulder.

  “Legion of Honor,” she said. “I think they wanted to get some footage in front with the Thinker for that video their working on.”

  I climbed in my car and had just buckled my seatbelt when Jim called. “Hey, hon,” he said, sounding excited. “How’s the investigation going?”

  “I have some interesting leads,” I said. “Just about to take off to find Kenny and Odette.”

  “Oh! Good! Can you swing by the house and grab Laurie? I have a conference call in about forty minutes, and I thought it’d be fine to do it from the house, but Jo-Jo is making such a racket in the garage and it’s going to be hard to balance Laurie and a work phone call from a library conference room.”

  “Yeah, definitely,” I said. “Petunia told me Kenny’s at the Legion of Honor. And the weather is so nice today, I’ll take Laurie over to the playground near there. She’ll love the swings.”

  I texted Kenny, Where r u? Then, not expecting an answer, I put the car in gear and headed off toward home. It took me a few minutes to gather Laurie, the diaper bag, and her sand pail—Jim was right, Jo-Jo was either working some sort of power drill or had let loose a nest of monster murder hornets in the garage—and by the time I left the house, Kenny hadn’t texted me back. I called. No answer.

  Well, hopefully I’d find them in front of the Legion of Honor museum. I snagged a parking spot near the fountain and bundled Laurie into the stroller. It was a beautiful, sunny day, but an unexpected chill cut through the air. We walked past the fountain, and I spotted Kenny slumped against one of the off-white pillars that made up the building’s neoclassical front. He was wearing a sparkly silver shirt with the sleeves rolled up, a thin blue tie, and black pants.

  Odette was nowhere in sight.

  “Kenny!” I waved at him.

  He glanced up, his confusion evident. “Kate? Laurie?”

  A giggle gurgled out of Laurie when she heard Kenny’s voice, and she squirmed in the stroller. When I reached Kenny, I pulled Laurie out, and she reached for him. He took her with a gentle smile, but seemed a little defensive when he looked back at me.

  “What’s up, Kate?”

  “Petunia said I could find Odette here. I’m trying to go over everyone’s statements again carefully and see what I may have missed.”

  Kenny’s mouth opened and then closed. After a long pause, he said stiffly, “You don’t . . . think she’s a suspect, do you? I told you, I was with her the whole morning.”

  “I’m interviewing everyone again,” I said in a soothing voice. “Not just people I suspect—”

  “So, you do suspect her.”

  “I mean, I haven’t ruled her out—”

  “She couldn’t have done it!” he said, annoyance flashing across his face.

  I held up my hands and spoke in my most reassuring voice. “But mostly I’m here to see if there’s anything else she might be able to remember, any detail, no matter how small, that she didn’t think was significant. Something that might help me crack open the case.”

  This seemed to mollify Kenny a little, but he still looked petulant.

  “Where is Odette, by the way?” I asked.

  “She went in to use the restroom.”

  I studied Kenny. I’d never seen this kind of attitude out of him. That girl was no good for him.

  Thirty seconds later, Odette emerged from the museum, decked out in a ruffly 1980s ballroom dress that matched the exact shade of Kenny’s tie. Her eyebrows knitted in confusion when she saw me. “Hey, Kate,” she said. “Did you decide to bring Laurie to the museum?”

  The Legion of Honor wasn’t exactly a children’s museum, so I didn’t blame her for being confused. “No, we’re going to the playground at Lincoln Par, but Petunia said I could find you here. So, I thought I’d kill two birds, so to speak.” I pulled my legal pad out of the stroller. “I’m tracking down everyone who was there the day of the murder to see if we can pick out any details that got missed the first time around. Anything you’ve realized you forgot to mention, or that didn’t seem like a big deal at the time.”

  Odette shifted uncomfortably. “I mean, there’s not much I can say, because I was really only there when Kenny and I came to get the costumes.”

  “Was anyone there who wasn’t normally there? Or anyone missing who was normally there?”

  Her nose twitched, and she shifted her weight from foot to foot. “I wasn’t paying that close of attention. We went straight to the costume closet, and everything’s a blur after . . . after we found Leo.”

  My face softened. “I’m sorry you had to see that. How are you doing?”

  She took a deep, shaky breath. “It’s hard.”

  “Were you guys here at the Legion of Honor that day? Filming, maybe, before you went to the studio?”

  “Oh, no,” said Odette. “We were just choreographing. We weren’t filming yet. We were going to do some filming in the afternoon after we found costumes, but . . .”

  “Everyone’s plans got derailed,” I said when she trailed off.

  “You could say that.”

  “What time did you meet Kenny that morning?”

  Odette’s eyes darted to Kenny, then back to me. “Um, about eight, I think. We set the meeting for eight. I was a few minutes late.”

  I jotted down a note.

  She squinted at my notetaking. “I mean, not late, late, just a couple minutes. Maybe five minutes or so.”

  I nodded. “Sure. Where were you before that?”

  “I came straight from my apartment. You can ask my roommate to confirm.”

  I got her roommate’s contact information, and then continued, “And you were with Kenny the whole day?”

  She glanced at Kenny again. “Yeah. We were together all day.” She shrugged. “Except, restroom breaks. And I got coffee,” she added hurriedly. “But it was quick.”

  “And where were you choreographing?”

  She gave the address of a park that was close to the studio, and added, “It’s about halfway between work and home for me, and the gazebo actually makes for a pretty good dance floor.”

  “Why not choreograph at the studio?” I asked.

  “Kate!” Kenny practically exploded. “I told you, she was with me the whole time. Seriously.”

  What in the world is wrong with him?

  I frowned at Kenny, but moved quickly on from questions about the murder. Odette said she really couldn’t think of anything else she’d noticed on the day of the burglary or from when the dead bird was left in the studio and that she hadn’t even known about the hole in the roof. After hitting nothing but dead ends, I put Laurie back in stroller and waved goodbye to Odette and Kenny, feeling deflated.

  When I reached the car, I turned back and looked at them. They were dancing some sort of intense ballroom dance—pasodoble? Argentine tango? I couldn’t remember what was what. Whichever one was supposed to mimic a bullfight. Pasodoble, I decided. Kenny’s phone was set up on a little tripod, filming them.

  Kenny was right. He held his own. They looked great.

  But I couldn’t shake the feeling that something didn’t add up. Odette hadn’t seemed certain when she wa
s giving her answers, like she was hoping she was confirming whatever Kenny had already told me. And it was very unlike Kenny to be so defensive.

  “Another thing to follow up on, peannutty pie,” I said to Laurie. “But for now, let’s go find that swing set.”

  I pushed her stroller on the quick hike from the Legion of Honor to Lincoln Park, breathing in the fresh air and admiring my favorite view of the Golden Gate Bridge.

  Once I strapped Laurie into the baby swing, I dialed Galigani.

  “Hey, kid,” he answered.

  I brough him up to date, and then tacked on, “Oh, and Petunia mentioned that Hank swung by that day.” I left out the reason Hank had stopped by. No need to raise Galigani’s jealousy hackles.

  There was a long pause. “Hank, huh?”

  “He seems like a long shot, though. What would his motive be?” I moved from the back of the swing to the front and saw that Laurie’s eyes were growing heavy-lidded.

  “Well . . . I hate to say this, but—”

  I doubt very much he hates to say it.

  “—I did a little background research on Hank, and it turns out he knew Leo. Did he ever let on about that to you?”

  He knew Leo? Weird.

  I thought about the question while gently pushing Laurie, but I was certain this was new information. “He didn’t say anything about it. Were they close?”

  “They were part of a regular poker night.”

  “Poker? Did Hank owe Leo money?”

  A group of moms with toddlers streamed into the park, one toddler making a bee-line for the swing set where I stood. Laurie jolted out of her rhythm induced stupor and chortled at the child.

  * * *

  “That’s something we should find out,” said Galigani grimly. “I got a tip that there might be some bad blood.”

  “And he’s a pharmacist,” I said, pulling Laurie out of the swing and giving the next child a turn.

  “He’d know how to poison someone,” Galigani said.

  The silence hung heavy between us, and I stammered, “I-I’ll head home now. I’ll let you know when Jim gets back, and we can go talk to Hank together.”