Corpse de Ballet (36 page)

Elektra, grunting with effort, demanded, “Hart, is that true? Did you do that?”

In their strange relation to each other, Elektra facing his back, her hands clenched around his arms, his hands clutching Juliet, they all seemed to be rehearsing some unusual new step.

“No, I didn't.”

“He killed Anton, too,” said Juliet. “He doped his Coke, just before the run-through.”

“I didn't. It's all a lie.”

“If it's a lie,” gasped Elektra, “why are you threatening her? Let go of her, Hart.”

“Go downstairs.”

Except to brace herself by putting a foot up against the wall, Elektra did not move. Years of physical intimacy of this kind must have taught her exactly how to hold Hart, Juliet thought, exactly how to anticipate his moves.

“You're afraid of her,” Elektra said. “You were questioning her, or threatening her, and I interrupted you. Or were you planning to kill her? For God's sake, Hart. I
knew
Anton wouldn't have taken Ecstasy in the studio. I think you did give it to him. But why?”

She began to cry, but—Juliet saw, with gratitude and admiration—without loosening her hold on him.

“Was it ambition? Just for the part, to be the one who made Pip?” She panted, grunted, gasped. “Jesus, Hart, have you lost your mind?”

“Elektra,” he tried again, his voice almost at a shout, “go away. Go down now. I don't want you involved in this.”

“You shouldn't kill her, you should kill me,” she sobbed. “You have killed me. You killed my baby—”

Hart's voice was harsh. He twisted sideways, still clutching Juliet's arms but no longer pushing at her.

“What good would it have done you to start a family with Ryder now?” he demanded. “Why didn't you listen to me? It would have wrecked—”

“It wasn't Ryder's baby. It was Anton's.”

Hart's surprise was so powerful that he took a step back and at last slightly slackened his grip on Juliet. She was calculating whether she could twist her wrists out of his hands now, and if so, how best to slide and dart around him when she heard a woman shout, “Halt in the name of the law!”

All eyes looked to the corner of the terrace. There, Ames's solid, unmistakable bulk stood out against the night. Before her, in both hands, she held a large, heavy pistol, aimed directly at Hart Hayden.

At this second shock, Hart finally, suddenly let go of Juliet. She scrambled off the wall, dashed around him. Grabbing hold of Elektra as she passed, she pulled the ballerina toward Ames and safety. At the same moment, a dark, narrow blur raced around the corner and darted the other way into the narrow alley of the side terrace.

“Police, freeze!”

Landis had arrived at last. Gun drawn, he paused for an instant, then strode halfway down the length of the terrace. With a sobbing Elektra in tow, Juliet ran past him and collapsed on Ames, who gladly allowed the antique Manton pistol (innocent of ammunition for the past hundred years) to drop to her side.

“Miss Malone fetched me, Dr. Bodine. She saw you with Mr. Hayden,” Ames murmured by way of explanation. “I took the liberty of unlocking your Regency display to provide myself with a weapon.”

Meantime, Landis had begun a slow advance on Hart. At first, Hayden merely eyed him warily. But when the detective had come within two yards, the dancer sprang lightly up onto the waist-high wall.

Murray stopped walking and holstered his gun.

“Hayden, think a minute,” he said, his voice reasonable, coaxing. “Take it easy. Talk to me now.”

On the terrace wall, Hart pivoted, came up on one leg and raised his graceful arms in a beautiful arc.

“Everything will be fine. No one's going to hurt you.” Landis's voice was a soothing river. “We can resolve all of this if you just relax and come down—”

Hayden gave a quick, desperate glance at Elektra, then faced the night again. He arched his back and bent his knee.

“No!” Juliet yelled. “It's not—”

But it was too late. Hart Hayden had leapt from the terrace into the darkness below.

Chapter Twenty

“I must say I liked detective work as an excuse for not writing,” Juliet admitted wistfully, offering Ruth a Fuji apple and a block of New York cheddar cheese.

It was late September and local Fujis had just begun to appear at the greenmarket. The women, bundled in fleece sweatshirts and blue jeans, were enjoying lunch in the crisp, breezy air on Juliet's terrace. Across the street, in Riverside Park, a few trees had already gone bright yellow. Others showed here and there a hint of the more garish colors of fall.

“All the fun of research and much better company,” Juliet went on, starting to peel an apple.

The Andersons' was only a little balcony, but it was well located, two floors below Juliet's terrace and exactly under the spot from which Hart Hayden had jumped. Leaping from any other point, he would have sailed out into space and died instantly. As it was, a tearing sound (the Andersons' awning), then a sickening thud told the onlookers he had not gone far.

He had broken three bones—not counting ribs—and suffered extensive cuts and contusions. But quite enough of him remained intact to face a charge of the attempted homicide of Juliet Bodine. The doctors expected to release him from the hospital sometime in October.

“Speaking of company, are you seeing Murray Landis at all?” Ruth asked, slicing from the cheddar block a wafer of cheese thin enough to be translucent. This she laid atop a sliver of apple and slid into her mouth.

Ruth had been busy in the past few weeks, giving interviews, tightening up the production of
Great Ex,
sifting through newly offered commissions. For a while, she had been frantic about the loss of her leading dancer—a person she had liked as well as admired professionally. But after six or seven successful performances with the second and third casts, she had calmed down. It was sad for her that the splendid notices
Great Ex
had received (“Stunning!” “Magical!” “Moving!”) had been overshadowed almost at once by the gory drama of Hart Hayden's “fall” (as his lawyer insisted on calling it) and the resurrection in the press of the lurid story of Anton's death. But Nick Sabatino and Kirsten had proven exceptional, and Lily Bediant, dancing Estella with Alexei Ostrovsky as Pip in the third cast, had pleased the sentimental crowds more than Elektra could ever have done. Ruth would gladly have allowed Elektra to dance, pairing her with Nick. But the death of her lover, the loss of her pregnancy, her impending divorce, her partner's betrayal, and his near-fatal jump had all combined to unbalance her thoroughly. She had dropped out for the season and was spending a month with friends in London.

Juliet sighed. “Well, in the ocular sense, yes,” she replied. “I did see Murray Landis, a couple of weeks ago. He finally invited me to his studio to look at his sculpture. You ought to see it some time. It's pretty fascinating—strange, but not for the sake of strangeness.”

She did not add how disappointed she had been, when at last the promised hour had arrived, to find that Murray had invited another visitor as well. This was an elderly collector, insistently courtly and maddeningly intrusive, who called Juliet “darling” and would not hear of leaving without her.

“But if you meant are we ‘seeing each other' seeing each other,” Juliet went on, “no. Or—I don't know, maybe I should say that all we have done is see.”

She sighed again, a long sigh. Several times in the last month or so, she had dreamt of Murray Landis. Langorous, sensual dreams that clung deliciously to her waking consciousness for hours. During the studio visit, she had been disturbed repeatedly by an impulse to hop into his lap and bury her nose in the curve of his neck. When she had left him at Cadwell Hall just after the premiere, his reserve had unmistakably been breaking down. “You look very beautiful tonight,” he had said—and there had been the orchid.

But alas, the evening's subsequent drama had given him plenty of time to retreat to his usual distance. Since then, he had been friendly, courteous, but no more. Juliet had to admit she still couldn't imagine a happy ending for a romantic relationship between them. But every day, she was less interested in such wise foresight and more drawn by short-term gratification. True, it was easier to stay out than to get out. But what was the point of living if you couldn't make a mistake now and then?

However, Murray showed no sign of any reciprocal recklessness.

Ruth shrugged sympathetically. “Men,” she said, and the conversation turned to other matters.

Half an hour later, lunch eaten and coffee drunk, Ruth went off to Cadwell Hall to prepare for the evening's performance. After her departure, Juliet stood alone on the terrace for a long while, looking into the stiffening breeze off the river and thinking about the vanished summer. On September 15, on time to the day, she had given the completed manuscript of
London Quadrille
to Portia Klein. The editor read it overnight and pronounced it vintage Kestrel-Haven. Juliet had also given her Teri Malone's first chapter, which Portia, somewhat surprisingly, also simply adored. The dancer was planning to write through the winter break, then see where she was. Perhaps she would even quit the Jansch in the spring.

So Juliet felt satisfied with her summer's work. There was, moreover, the new book, the one with the chaste hero, which looked like lots of fun.

But the summer had also been hard, sad, shot through with death and destruction, and it left behind more than a whiff of regret. A few days after her visit to his studio, Murray had phoned her from the station. The department had just gotten word as to legal plans for Hart Hayden's prosecution. In conjunction with his behavior at Juliet's party, the D.A. might have tried to nail him for Anton Mohr's death. But because Officer Peltz had not confiscated and analyzed the Coke at once, they did not believe there was adequate intact physical evidence to make it stick. Nor did they think a charge of his having caused Elektra's miscarriage with an untraced and untraceable substance would fly. As for the talcum powder, Murray had already gently intimated to Juliet it would be just as well if that matter were not examined too closely. He seemed to feel Greg Fleetwood could be found criminally negligent for his weak response and his failure to inform the victim. The result was that her own attempted homicide was the only charge Hart would face. Murray believed they would get a conviction; but without a record, Hayden would probably get no more than probation.

Juliet had immediately suffered a spasm of bitter frustration. Fate had seen to it that Hart Hayden would never dance again—indeed, would be lucky to walk again. But in the courts of men, he would literally get away with murder. If only she had forced Peltz to take that Coke bottle with him. If only she had not made such a foolish error in her French. The latter mistake had been due to sheer intellectual arrogance, a grimly familiar personal fault—in fact, the bête noire that roamed her inner landscape. When she blurted out the gist of her self-reproach to Murray, he heartily concurred.

“Yeah,” he said. “And another thing, it was incredibly stupid to try to act as a P.I. That can be very dangerous. Don't do that next time, Jule.”

“I certainly wasn't very good at it,” she said ruefully, overlooking that curious ‘next time' till much later.

“Now, there I don't agree with you. You were very good at it. You figured it out.”

“But Anton is dead. And the baby he would have left is—”

“Hey, don't go all lofty on me. You think anyone but God could have second-guessed that lunatic?”

“But if I had made Peltz take the bag—”

“Oh, can it, Jule. You're smarter than that. Do you really believe Officer Bonehead Peltz would ever have had that soda pop analyzed? He took you for a hysterical broad. He'd probably have chugged what was left himself. And wouldn't that have taught him a lesson?” Murray paused to laugh, then resumed, “You ought to feel good about yourself, Jule. A lot of times, evil wins. At least this time, the guy was caught. You have any idea how many murders in this town go undetected?”

“No,” said Juliet, intrigued.

“Well, neither do I. 'Cause they go undetected.” Landis gave another laugh, as if he had told a good riddle, then went on, “The person who really fucked up in this case was me. I shouldn't have gone to that memorial with you. It's true the file was closed by then—but I'm usually smarter than that. And I should have realized those questions about the Mistenflo and the E could get back to Hayden. I put you in danger.”

Juliet considered this. Then, “At least you also came to rescue me,” she said.

She hung up feeling comforted. It was one of the growing number of things she liked Landis for.

Now she slowly turned her eyes from the river and roused herself to work. She had pooh-poohed Ruth's offer to help her with the dishes, and these consequently remained on the painted table in all their sorry disarray. Carrying the first load down to the kitchen, she noticed a light flashing on her answering machine.

She rewound it.

“Jule? Murray Landis.”

(“Dope,” Juliet couldn't help thinking. How many Murrays did he think she knew? Meantime, his voice was going on.)

“Listen, I got a problem. Somebody clobbered a talking head up at the Karp Foundation's think tank—that's over near you, on West End Avenue. They kind of specialize in those windy Bill Buckley—style types up there, you know what I mean, professional pontificators, gasbags, Ph.D. Which you'd think would make them trip themselves up if they talked long enough in an interrogation room. But in fact, I'm having a heck of a time making out which of these damned jokers is lying through his teeth. So … I feel kind of funny asking, but do you think I could come over your place, run it by you, maybe pick your brain? Maybe you could even go over there with me sometime, take a look around.”