Dead Man Waltzing (2 page)

Chapter 2

Detective Lissy and I stared at each other for a moment, my green eyes meeting his gray ones. Apparently, neither of us wanted to be the first to speak, so the M-word dangled in the silence between us. I cracked first. I frequently wish I had more self-control, but my impulses rule me more often than not.

“What happened?”

“That’s what we’d like to talk to Mr. Goldberg about,” Lissy said. Putting an index finger to the framed dance photo on the wall, he straightened it with a little push.

“Why Maurice?”

“He was lunching with her when she collapsed. He brought her to the emergency room.”

Relief flitted through me. “Well, there! If he took her to the ER, he couldn’t have wanted her dead. And if she keeled over while they were eating, maybe it was a heart attack or a stroke. Maybe”—I tried to think of medical conditions that resulted in sudden death—“an aneurysm.”

“You’ve acquired a medical degree since we last spoke?” Lissy asked, gently sarcastic.

I glared at him.

He moved toward the door. “If you see or speak to Mr. Goldberg, please let him know that I’d like to talk to him at his earliest convenience.” He put a dig in the last word. “It’s in his best interest to explain his . . . disappearance from the hospital as soon as possible.”

“Of course,” I said, holding the door wide. “Good-bye.” I couldn’t make myself go with a polite,
Nice to see you again
.

“I’m sure we’ll chat soon.” He stepped onto the landing and turned to give me a look. He was the kind of man who should’ve had a fedora; he had a 1950s kind of air about him, despite the modern clothes. “Don’t go sticking your nose into this case,” he said. “And you don’t need to bother with that ‘Who, me?’ look. Remember what happened last time.” He started down the stairs with a heavy tread.

“I caught a murderer and cleared my name,” I called after him.

He didn’t reply, just lifted a hand in farewell or dismissal, and strode toward his car parked at the curb. It was up to me to add in a whisper, “And got shot and got my studio set on fire.”

* * *

Locking the shiny new dead bolt after him and turning out the lights in my office and the ballroom, I walked to the end of the hall where a door marked,
PRIVATE,
led downstairs to my living quarters. Going downstairs was a bit like leaving the twenty-first century to enter the 1930s; I didn’t have money for new furniture or redecorating, so everything was as it had been when Aunt Laurinda lived here. A fusty lavender velvet settee was near the marble fireplace in the “parlor,” as my great-aunt called it. Scattered about the room were a tarnished silver bowl and porcelain knickknacks, and old-fashioned paintings in heavy frames, including one of Aunt Laurinda as a 1923 debutante. The kitchen was no better, with its mismatched appliances, cracking linoleum floor, and turquoise-tiled countertops, the result of a misguided redecorating experiment in the 1960s. As soon as I had money to spare—in another decade or so—I was redoing the kitchen.

Finding some leftover salmon from last night’s dinner in the rounded front fridge that Aunt Laurinda probably bought when the Beatles first stormed the States, I worried about Maurice. He was not a murderer. No way. Detective Lissy, as usual, had the wrong end of the stick. I thought how pathetic it was that I could attach the phrase “as usual” to a murder investigation. Considering I lived in an upscale area that I couldn’t hope to have afforded without my aunt’s bequest, I’d come into contact with a lot of homicide cases recently. Okay, two might not count as “a lot” to a police officer, but it seemed like two too many to me.

Washing my plate in the sink—no dishwasher—I put it in the dish drainer to dry, trying to think where Maurice might be. If he’d been lunching with Corinne Blakely when she fell ill, and had taken her to the hospital, where would he be now? He didn’t have a wife, or any kids that I knew about, so he hadn’t taken refuge with family. I trusted that Detective Lissy had checked at his house, so he apparently wasn’t there. I tried to put myself in Maurice’s place. If I’d seen my lunch partner pitch facedown into the bouillabaisse and had to hang around an ER that smelled of various body fluids, desperation, and nose-singeing cleaners, I’d need a drink.

I’d met Maurice once, shortly before I hired him, at a little pub around the corner from his house. I thought I could find it again, although I couldn’t quite remember the name. The Fox and Hen? Fox and Hound? I was pretty sure it was something to do with foxes. Pulling the ponytail elastic from my blond hair, I shook it free, ran a brush through it, and changed out of my dance gear into capris, a tank top, and gold sandals. A shower might’ve been a good idea, too, after three hours of back-to-back classes, but I didn’t want to take the time. Within seven minutes, I was out the back door and getting into my yellow Volkswagen Beetle parked under the carport that abutted my tiny courtyard.

* * *

Maurice lived west of Old Town proper, in an area dominated by streets named for trees: Linden, Maple, Cedar. Starting from his house on Walnut Street, which had a patrol car parked in front of it—very subtle—I circled the area, searching for the pub. I finally located the Fox and Muskrat on a corner four blocks from Maurice’s place. The parking looked to be on the street, so I found a spot and slid into it, then walked back. The pub anchored a block of stores dropped into the middle of a residential area. Mature trees overhung cracked sidewalks, and the stores, like the pub, all looked like they’d been open since the Woodstock era. I passed a wine store, an antique books and maps shop, and a place selling fabric and sewing supplies that had a lovely quilt patterned with stylized mountains in the window.

A wooden sign with a top hat–wearing fox poking his cane at a weaselly-looking muskrat swung from a wooden arm over the pub’s door. Why a muskrat? I craned my neck to study the sign, but had to move aside when a patron exited the bar, letting a burp of air-conditioning escape. I caught the door before it could close and went in.

The place smelled like cigarettes, even though Virginia had a no-smoking law on the books. It took me two seconds to realize the odor wasn’t new; it seeped from the walls, the beamed ceiling, and the wooden floors. In the fifties and sixties, probably every drinker in the place had a cigarette going, and the smoke had, over time, sunk into every fiber of wood in the place. My fascinated mind wondered whether smoke from one of the founding fathers’ pipes still lingered here.

A small place, the Fox and Muskrat was picturesque veering toward shoddy. It could have been transported in its entirety from an English roadside, complete with pint glasses, snug booths, and scarred oak tables. The dim glow from electric candles centered on each table provided insufficient illumination, and two big-screen TVs over the bar didn’t help much. Two men tossed darts in a desultory way on the far side of the bar. Once my eyes adjusted to the gloom, I spotted Maurice on a stool at the end of the bar, a half-empty yard of ale in front of him, his gaze lifted to the nearest television, where an obscure channel broadcast a cricket match.

I made my way past a group of thirtyish men arguing about whether Bud or Miller Lite commercials were funnier. They paused, midargument, to eye me as I passed. I ignored them, used to the attention. When you’re blond, stacked, and move like a dancer, men tend to notice you. I slid onto the stool beside Maurice and said, “Hey.”

After a too-long moment, he lowered his gaze from the television to note my presence. It took another moment before he said, “Anastasia.”

No matter how hard I try, I can’t convince him to leave off calling me by my real name and use Stacy like everyone else does. He blinked twice, looking perplexed by my presence, and I began to wonder how many yards of ale he’d already drunk.

“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—ambu
lance
—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?”