Dead on Her Feet (An Antonia Blakeley Tango Mystery Book 1) (24 page)

“It’s like the Sudan in here.”

“Then your hand scooted from your neck to your right cheek where it is now partially obstructing your mouth. You have jam on your knuckle.”

She licked the preserves off her traitorous finger and thrust it into her lap. “I don’t care how it looks; Christian didn’t do it.”

“You’re probably right. Statistically speaking most people are murdered by someone they know intimately. Husbands. Wives.”

That made sense. She’d certainly felt like killing Rux when they were married, not to mention vice versa, which went without saying since Rux actually had tried on more than one occasion. The statistics made sense, not that the police ever did anything about stopping the statistics from happening in the first place.

Morrow said, “How well did Christian know Nathalie?”

“Hardly at all. Roland knew her much better, biblically speaking.” It would be wonderful if Detective Morrow were right about it being the husband or in this case the almost husband. She felt her back relax into the vinyl cushion.

“Plenty of people had the opportunity to kill Nathalie.” He gave her a moment to let his words sink in. “Think Christian’s innocent?”

I’ll tell you the truth. I hated Nathalie LeFebre. I hated her.
She swallowed. “Yes.”

“Want to clear him?”

“Of course.” How dangerously easy it would be to confess a crime to this man, she thought: he made interrogation feel like therapy. If only she could trust him.

 “Then tell me what happened.”

“What’s he said?”

“I want your version.” Detective Morrow hitched up closer to the table and took out his notebook and a pencil. “You care about Christian a lot, don’t you?”

She wanted to shout,
I love that boy.
“Yes, we’re very close. He tells me everything.” Except it wasn’t true anymore. Christian had made it clear he never wanted to see her again. She became aware of a burning sensation working its way up her esophagus. Heartburn, heartbreak, what was the difference. It was all so exhausting. She took in Detective Morrow’s features—the freckles, the baby-blue eyes, the homely broken nose, the neatly trimmed mustache that he was always combing with his fingers—and found herself pouring out her woes.

 “Christian and I were in the middle of a milonga, that’s sort of like a polka. It wasn’t going well. His chest had collapsed and he wasn’t listening to the music. He told me he didn’t feel like dancing. We’d fought earlier.” She wiped her fingers on her napkin, mashed it into a ball, and tugged another from the dispenser. It disgorged its meager contents and she cleaned off the last traces of jam with fresh napkins as she talked. “So I went to the kitchen.”

“What did you fight about?”

“I didn’t like the way he was behaving.”

“What was he doing?”

Pretending to slice Nathalie’s face up.
“Acting out. The usual adolescent drama.”

“He seemed very touchy about Nathalie when I talked to him last night. Since you know him so well, tell me. Why would that be?”

She shifted back to her earlier position on the lumpy seat. “Either I contradict what I just said and tell you that I
don’t
know everything that goes on in Christian’s life, in which case he could be up to something, or, I
do
know what Christian is hiding—if he
is
hiding something— and I incriminate myself as an accessory after the fact. There’s no way I can win in this situation, is there?”

He smiled. “Nope.”

She’d have to give the man something. “Okay, Christian’s been acting a little weird lately. He’s never been a very social animal but now he’s even more introverted than usual. He’s upset about something to do with Nathalie, I don’t know what, but I know he had nothing to do with her murder.” Antonia tried not to dwell on how he’d behaved with the kitchen knife.

“Did you see where he went after you left him on the dance floor?”

“No. I asked him about it this morning. He told me he didn’t remember where he’d gone and when I pressed him he got mad and threw me out of his apartment. That’s the truth.”

“Feel better?”

Funny, she did, somewhat.

Detective Morrow signaled for more coffee and the waitress refilled his cup, smiling at him for some reason. Maybe because he’d kept his part of the table clean. Or maybe she wanted to flirt. He probably got that a lot. “Ms. Blakeley, you seem to want to take an active part in the investigation.”

That was better than saying she’d tried to interfere with it.

“Somebody drove a knife into Nathalie LeFebre’s back in the middle of a dance floor without anyone seeing it. I want to understand how they pulled that off. You’re in a unique position to help.”

“Me?”

 “You know the people. You know tango.”

“And I can go places and do things you can’t.”

“Whoa, Bessie, I said help, not break the law.”

Whoa Bessie
—that’s what he said at Shawna’s when she’d nearly fainted. She’d heard him say those words before that, but where? Then it hit her. She bounced up in her seat. “I know where I saw you, besides when you came to the studio about Miles Rothenberg, I mean. You were at El Abrazo the night Eduardo introduced us to Nathalie. I
cabeceoed
you and you looked away and later you almost stopped a fight: you said, ‘Whoa, Bessie.’”

 “You’ve got a good memory.”

“What were you doing there?”

“Just what you said. Stopping a fight.”

“No, really. What were you doing? Spying on Roland? You asked earlier if Nathalie had known Miles Rothenberg. Was it something to do with Miles?”

“I can’t tell you. Who could have stabbed Nathalie while she danced? Roland?”

“No. Both his hands would have been occupied.” She thought for a second. “But he could have stage-managed the collision and stabbed her when he was taking her to sit down.”

“Where would he have hidden the weapon, in that case?”

“I don’t know, up his sleeve maybe. His left forearm would always be vertical, holding her right hand in proper dance position, so a knife wouldn’t have fallen out.” She held up her left forearm to demonstrate but something about the explanation didn’t feel right. She settled back into her seat and sipped her coffee which by that point had cooled to room temperature. “Let me ask you something. Could the murderer have just wanted to take a swipe at Nathalie, not meaning to kill her?”

“Why would you think so?”

“Even if you danced with the same partner to the same music no dance is ever the same. So it would be impossible for the murderer to predict where anyone would be on the dance floor. If I wanted to kill someone I’d have found a much more dependable way.”

“Tell me more.”

“Well, some people call tango ‘the vertical expression of a horizontal desire’—‘one body with four legs.’” Antonia stopped, flustered.
Why on earth did I say that? I must be losing it.
“It’s totally improvised. It would be too risky to attack someone and be sure to hit the right spot or even the right person.”

Detective Morrow sipped his coffee, eyeing her over the rim of the mug. “It’s possible Roland Guest may have been the intended victim. What do you think of him as a target?”

“I’m all in favor.”

He grinned.

“No, not really,” she said. “I just don’t like him.”

The waitress came to clear, saw the mess of used napkins, and confiscated the dispenser.

He said, “I want to recreate the conditions of the night in question.”

“You mean reenact the crime, like a whodunit?”

“This isn’t fiction but something along those lines. When’s your next dance?”

“There’s a milonga at my place two days from now.”

“I thought you said a milonga was a type of dance.”

“It also means a tango event. Like El Abrazo. Our community isn’t that large so we often hold them in our houses.”

“What time?”

“Nine thirty, but it doesn’t really get going until after ten. What do you want me to do?”

 
“Can you get everyone who was at Shawna’s party there?”

“Are you kidding? Tango is an obsession. Nothing short of nuclear war will stop them.”

“Just make sure they come. I can’t get them there unless I ask officially and I don’t want to do that at this point.”

If Christian didn’t do it the reenactment would clear him. But Morrow could still get it wrong, unless she controlled the situation.

She leaned forward and put both hands on the table. She looked him dead in the eye. “I’ll do it. But since we’re going to be working together, Detective Morrow, shouldn’t I know your first name?”

Detective Morrow looked back and gave her a slow-cooked grin. “Nope.”

Antonia Blakeley Cleans Up

11/3. 2130 hours. Antonia Blakeley’s house, Brookwood Hills.

MORROW ARRIVED AT HER DOORSTEP
promptly at nine thirty. She answered the bell holding a broom and wearing a knockout lace dress that clung to every curve of her athletically toned body.

“Hello, Detective Morrow.” She greeted him with a peck on the cheek, smelling the way women did when they took all day to get ready.

Whoa Bessie.
“Hello, Ms. Blakeley.”

“We kiss everyone hello and goodbye, both sides, like in Argentina, Detective, as you have no doubt observed,” she murmured as she went for the second cheek. Damned if the wench wasn’t deliberately trying to take him off balance. Before he could speculate on what she might be up to she about-faced and led him up the half flight of stairs to the hall landing that connected the dining area with the living room, moving fluidly despite her impossibly high heels. His knowledge of women’s shoes being mainly concerned with the type of prints they left, it was hard to see how she expected to dance in them.

On his previous visit the built-in cabinet that served as an entryway table had been strewn with unopened bills and circulars. The mail was still there, massed into a heap, making room for two stacks of short plastic cups, cans of Diet 7Up chilling in a large bowl of ice, an open bottle of Argentine Malbec, a squat candle nearly at the end of its life, and a box of safety matches.

She propped the broom against the wall and, without asking, poured a glass of wine and tried to get him to take it.

“No, thanks.”

“Think of it as a disguise,” she said as she opened a door in the cabinet and stowed the mail. “If you’re drinking people will think you’re off duty.”

“No thanks.”

“You need to give them some explanation for your presence.” She picked up the broom and invited him to follow her into the living room. “We’ll be in here. I don’t know if Christian will come. I asked Shawna to work on him—he likes dancing with her.” She didn’t seem to expect an answer so while she buzzed around sweeping what appeared to be a perfectly clean wood floor he scouted the terrain.

Her living area was larger than Shawna Muir’s dining room but the space was otherwise appropriate for the exercise and free of obstructions. On his right a built-in seating area with fitted, flat cushions ran the length of the wall. Above it a recessed shelf held a CD player, several days’ worth of newspapers, and stacks of home-burned CDs—many out of their jewel cases. Whoever was working the music would probably sit there. Along the far wall a ledge supported a modern built-in fireplace. On his left, two sets of French doors opened out to a backyard deck which was dark except for the illumination spilling from within. Blakeley obviously didn’t believe in security lighting.

About thirty people were expected. He hadn’t asked what it had taken her to get everyone together so soon after the murder. The sofa offered the best sight lines but the armchair and coffee table had already been moved out onto the deck so it might be going too. He opted for the ledge and sat.

By this point Blakeley had turned her attention to the newspapers. “You have to give some reason for being here,” she said as she scooped them up and stuffed them into the fireplace. “I could tell them you want to learn to dance.”

“They know who I am. I don’t need a reason.”

“Give you a free lesson right now to get you started.”

“Let’s stay focused, okay?”

She stopped what she was doing and put one hand on her hip. “Don’t tell me you’re afraid of a little dance. Is tango too intense for you?”

It was a pretty ballsy comment considering what he did for a living.

She marched to the upholstered couch and punched the pillows to fluff them. “I’ll give you fifty dollars if you let me teach you a basic walk in front of everyone, right here tonight.”

 “I’ll give you a hundred bucks if you settle down and let me do my job.”

Blakeley circled around to the far side of the sofa. “Maybe I should tell them we’re old school buddies—” She tugged at the sturdy, old-fashioned piece, apparently intending to drag it single-handedly across the room.

“Want help with that?”

“ —and I was surprised as anything to see you at Shawna’s because at the last reunion you told me you were studying for the priesthood.”

 He laughed, despite himself.

“And you came tonight because you’re my—” she gave one last heave and the sofa moved a few feet, “—father confessor. Of course that won’t work since I don’t know your first name. I can’t very well call you Father S. She straightened up and wrinkled her nose at him. “I bet when you were born your parents took one look at you and decided not to give you a first name. Just the initial.” She leaned on the arm of the sofa to readjust the strap of her shoe. “I should have done this before I put on these heels.”

“Where do you want it?”

“Outside.”

Of course the woman wanted it outside. Together they maneuvered the furniture through the French doors and positioned it so it faced the back yard. The night air had turned pleasantly cool. No moon. Without security lights the sky was clear enough to see the Pleiades.

“Here’s the drill,” he said. “I’ll sit over near the fireplace and observe for about twenty or thirty minutes to see how everyone dances normally.”