Dead Man Waltzing

by Ella Barrick

  “I can’t believe she broke into your house,” he exclaimed. “Good heavens!”

  Fortifying myself with a swallow of beer and trying to block out the irritating chorus of “Wake Me Up before You Go-Go” that was now bouncing from the jukebox, I said, “Marco claims Corinne knew something about you that you wouldn’t want to see published.”

  “Corinne knew many things about me I wouldn’t want to see in print, starting with my waist size,” Maurice said humorously, but I could see the uneasiness in his eyes.

  “He mentioned a necklace.” I let the comment hang there.

  “Ah.” Maurice stared into his beer.

  The silence lengthened, broken only by the dulcet tones of Wham!, and I pleated a bar napkin.

  “I was young,” Maurice started, still gazing into his beer as if it were Dumbledore’s Pensieve. I wondered what memories it contained. “But that’s no excuse.”

  I stiffened. Was Maurice going to confess to theft? I didn’t really want to hear it.

  “It was my second cruise. The ship was called Starlight Maiden. I only ever sailed on her the one time. Anyway, our second night out, I asked a woman to dance. That was my job, you know-to ‘entertain’ unaccompanied ladies of a certain age on the dance floor, or even accompanied ones, if it looked like their escorts would be relieved if someone else danced with them. This woman’s name was Julia. She was maybe sixty to my thirty. Attractive, self-assured, from Oklahoma. Oil money.

  “You may have heard jokes about dance hosts being little better than gigolos?” He didn’t wait for me to answer, but hurried on. “In this case… we ‘hooked up,’ as the kids say today. For the remaining seven nights of the cruise. It was fun. I was attentive; she was generous.”

  I squirmed in my seat, intensely uncomfortable, appalled that I had forced Maurice into reliving this. “You don’t have to-”

  “Midway through the cruise, she bestowed a necklace on me, a ruby pendant, a smallish one, set in gold. She said she was tired of it, that I should give it to my mother or my sister. I tucked it away, planning to do just that, and didn’t think any more about it until after the passengers debarked back in Florida and it transpired that Julia had told the purser her necklace was stolen. Before I could come forward, the crew’s quarters were searched and the necklace was found in my suitcase.”

  “Bitch.”

  Maurice pursed his lips. “A very troubled woman, at the least. The cruise line fired me immediately, and I was in danger of going to jail. Corinne saved me.”

  “How?” I envisioned the dancer going toe-to-toe with the mysterious Julia, pulling out her fingernails one by one until she agreed not to prosecute.

  “She hired a private investigator. He discovered that Julia had pulled the same trick three times on separate cruise lines. Gotten three dance hosts fired. One went to prison. Corinne presented this information to the appropriate authorities and the charge was withdrawn; in fact, Julia was prosecuted. I was still fired, though, for ‘fraternizing’ with a passenger.”

  “My God, Maurice.”

  “Not an incident I look back on with pride. You’d better believe all my future dealings with passengers were strictly on the dance floor.” He gave me a strained smile.

  Leaning across the table, I hugged him awkwardly. “I’m sorry I brought it up.”

  “No, it needed to come out. I suppose I should tell Drake, let him advise me as to whether or not I should give the information to the police. It wouldn’t do to have them stumble across the old arrest somehow. Or to get a copy of Corinne’s manuscript or outline and find the tale in there.” He tapped the cartridge on the table.

  It was well past nine o’clock by now and the crowd had thinned out. A waiter came by and we both shook our heads at him. He collected our glasses and swiped at the table, leaving a damp swirl on the polyurethaned wood. Tucking the cartridge under his arm, Maurice slid off his stool. I followed suit. We headed for the door and Maurice collected a few “congrats” and “good nights” from the remaining drinkers. “See you in the morning,” I said, trying to sound natural and spritely.

  “À demain,” Maurice said, walking me to my car and declining a ride home. I watched from behind the steering wheel as he started down the sidewalk toward his house, shoulders slumped just a little, stride a bit less sure than usual. Striped by a car’s headlights, he crossed a street and I lost sight of him.

  * * *

  Vitaly stomped into the studio the next morning for our practice, tossed his designer sunglasses on top of the stereo cabinet, and announced, “John is being a total fanny.”

  I had to think about that one for a moment. “Ass?”

  “Da!” He nodded, adding a phrase in Russian that probably translated to something ruder than “ass.”

  He marched in place to warm up, each foot pounding down in a way that suggested he was envisioning his partner’s head under his heels. I’d never seen him so worked up. His thin cheeks were flushed, and his strawlike hair flopped as he marched. He had moved from Russia to live with John in Baltimore three or four months back, and I’d met John several times since Vitaly and I had become partners. He was a bit older than Vitaly-in his forties, I’d say-and seemed like a steady, kind man. I carefully didn’t ask what John had done to merit being called an ass, since getting involved in Vitaly’s love life-even peripherally-seemed like a bad idea.

  “You is wanting to know how John is being an ass, yes?” Vitaly said, launching himself across the room in a series of deep lunges. “Well, I am telling you. He is insist we must kennel Lulu when we is vacation in France next month.”

  My brain worked to dredge up Lulu. Their boxer puppy. “Um,” I murmured, going through my own warm-up routine. Frankly, it didn’t seem too ass-ish to me. A not-yet-house-trained puppy in a hotel on the Côte d’Azur sounded like a big pain in the ass to me.

  “Lulu is being lonely without I and John. She is not like living in a box.”

  “Maybe Lulu’s afraid of flying,” I said. Damn, I hadn’t meant to get involved.

  “You think?” Vitaly looked struck.

  “There are lots of very good pet sitters who stay in your house and take care of your pets. Walk them, feed them, keep them company.” In for a penny, in for a pound. “I’m sure if you asked around, some of your dog-owning friends could recommend someone.”

  “John should have thinked of this,” Vitaly announced. “I will telling. Now, we dancing.”

  He pulled me toward him and spun me away and we sprang into the jive, spending a sweaty hour practicing our side-by-side figures and our lifts. Our timing still wasn’t quite right on some of our lifts-we’d been working together only a couple months, after all-and if I didn’t want to end up on my nose when he swung me up so my heels kicked toward the ceiling, I had to hit his hands just right with my pelvic bones, my hands and locked-elbow arms bracing against his shoulders. Our foreheads clunked together at one point, but we kept going until our trembling arms forced a break.

  I was collapsed on the floor sipping a bottled water, and Vitaly was downing his usual grapefruit juice, when I heard the outside door squeak open. WD-40, I reminded myself as Hoover bounded in. His toenails clicked on the ballroom’s wood floor and he skidded to a stop in front of me, licking my face and then sniffing at the bottle I held.

  “Hi, Hoover.” I patted his head, edging away from the strand of drool about to decorate my tank top. The Great Dane trotted over to see whether Vitaly’s bottle held anything more tempting than water, and Mildred entered the room, a beatific smile on her face.

  “Hello, everyone,” she said as if Vitaly and I were a crowd of dozens. “We have news!”

  “We” turned out to be her and Maurice, who entered moments after her, looking more his usual self than when we parted last night. I smiled at him. “The cartridge?” I asked.

  “Yes, Anastasia, the cartridge.” Maurice held up the black plastic case, which now had a loop of ribbon hanging from its pointy end.

 
“We have decoded it,” Mildred announced importantly, waving a thin sheaf of paper. Her white hair bounced happily around her plump cheeks. “We have divined the mysteries of Corinne’s manuscript.” She flourished one hand into the air like a fortune-teller announcing messages from the great beyond. “All is revealed.”

  Vitaly looked confused. “What is this cartridge?”

  Taking turns and talking over each other, Maurice, Mildred, and I explained what the cartridge was and how we had gotten it. “Now,” I finished, “they’re going to tell us what they learned.”

  Vitaly and I turned expectant gazes on the older pair.

  “It’s not quite what we were hoping,” Maurice hedged. “It turns out this must have been a new cartridge, because there were only a couple pages’ worth of material on it. That’s why we were able to copy it off pretty quickly.”

  “So tedious,” Mildred put in. “Letter by letter. I don’t understand why dear Corinne”-I didn’t think she’d ever met Corinne Blakely, but Mildred was the kind of person who made friends immediately, even with a dead woman-“didn’t use a computer. I can’t imagine life without a computer.”

  That was rich, coming from a woman who’d lived more than half her life before the invention of the silicon chip.

  “Why, it’s so much easier to keep up with my sorority sisters and friends with Facebook. I remember when one had to write letters by hand and hunt for one’s address book to address them, and then wait for the postal service to deliver them, and the friend to find time to write back-phah! Twitter’s the way to go. I have seventy-four followers, you know.” She beamed at us.

  “The manuscript?” Maurice nudged her gently.

  Hoover settled beside me, his heavy head on my lap, as Mildred began to read. “It starts in midsentence. ‘… lucky to have lived most of my adult life in the world of dance, surrounded by friends and family who venerate the art form. Although it might seem, from some of the reminiscences I’ve shared with you, that the world of ballroom dance is rife with scandal and backbiting and skullduggery, I suggest that this passion finds its way into the dance and makes it the art form that it is. In every walk of life, there are husbands who cheat, children who disappoint, friends who betray. In dance, at least, there is also beauty and movement, expiation and forgiveness in the sweat and rigor and partnership. In dance, it really does take two to tango, so relationships become paramount.

  “‘As I pen these words, the International Olympic Committee is deciding whether or not DanceSport should become an Olympic event. If you’ve stuck with me through the last two hundred some-odd pages, you know how I hope the vote comes out! But even if DanceSport does not receive the IOC’s blessing, it has still blessed my life in innumerable, immeasurable ways. And I am thankful for it.’”

  Mildred glanced up from the page and wiped a tear from her eye. “So beautiful.”

  I locked eyes with Maurice. “But… two hundred pages! This isn’t an outline-it’s a final chapter.”

  “Just so, Anastasia,” he agreed.

  “Then… then there is a completed manuscript.”

  “Unless she is starting at the end?” Vitaly suggested.

  I considered it briefly before shaking my head. “No, the page count makes it sound like she’s already written the whole thing.” I jumped up, dislodging Hoover. “Mrs. Laughlin lied!”

  Chapter 28

  Maurice tapped a finger against his lips. “Now, Anastasia, maybe there’s some other explanation. Maybe Corinne didn’t share the manuscript with Mrs. Laughlin.”

  I looked at him from under my brows. “Friends for half a century? Lived in the same house?”

  “It seems unlikely that Mrs. Laughlin wouldn’t know,” he admitted.

  “Who is being this Mrs. Laughlin person?” Vitaly asked.

  “Corinne’s housekeeper,” I said.

  “Where can we find her, dear?” Mildred asked.

  “England,” I said gloomily, at the same time Maurice said, “The King’s Arms.”

  “What?” “Where’s that?” “How do you know?” Hoover added to the bedlam by scrambling to his feet and barking. Mildred shushed him with a hand around his muzzle.

  Maurice answered my question first. “I spoke with her briefly at the will reading and she mentioned she would be putting up there-it’s a bed-and-breakfast place in Arlington-until after the funeral.”

  Mention of the funeral quieted us all. It was being held the next day. Turner Blakely had delayed it, he’d said, so Corinne’s “many, many friends from the international ballroom dancing community” could arrange to attend. He’d hired a funeral coordinator and was doing it up like a Hollywood wedding. I knew all this because there’d been a black-boxed announcement about it in the program handed out at the exhibition for the Olympics folks. (The announcement hadn’t actually said the bit about a Hollywood wedding, but it was clear the solemnities would be pompous and glitzy and overdone.) Vitaly and Maurice and I were attending together.

  “I’m going to the King’s Arms,” I said. I pushed to my feet, my muscles stiff after sitting cross-legged for so long on the hard floor. I was getting old.

  “I’ll go with you,” Maurice said.

  Shaking my head, I started for the door. “Uh-uh. She lied to me. I’m going to have it out with her. I’ll give you a call when I get back. Can you cover the ballroom aerobics class for me if I’m not back in time?”

  When Maurice looked like he would have followed me anyway, Vitaly put a hand on his arm. “No one is doing anythings with Stacy when she is making up her minds. Much smarter to keep away and take cover.” He mimed ducking and covered his head with his arms.

  Everyone laughed, defusing the tension. Hoover barked, and I hurried out, not bothering to debate Vitaly’s assessment of me. I might be impulsive now and then, but I didn’t create chaos, for heaven’s sake.

  Pausing only to toss a lemon-colored T-shirt over my sweaty workout top, I grabbed my keys and slammed the back door on my way out.

  * * *

  The King’s Arms, when I finally found it-I should have taken time to MapQuest it before driving off-was a two-story, Tudor-style home on a quiet cul-de-sac in nearby Arlington. It was all whitewashed walls, dark beams, and mullioned windows; it looked old and out of place next to the brick, 1960s-era ranch house beside it. Flowers frothed in the classic English garden that fronted the home, roses spilling open so bumblebees could get drunk on pollen. I recognized lavender and daisies and petunias, but I couldn’t name most of the blooms. A carved wooden sign announced, THE KING’S ARMS, EST. 1805, BED AND BREAKFAST. Crunching up the oyster-shell path to the front door, I paused. Did one ring the bell or just walk into a B and B? Playing it safe, I knocked. When no one answered, I pushed the door open and peeked in.

  “Hello?”

  A small reception desk with old-fashioned cubbies for keys was four paces in front of me, but no one staffed it. A rag rug covered the floor, and an iron chandelier hung low, providing dim light from curly CFL bulbs that didn’t have near the ambience that candles would have. A broad staircase ascended to my right, and I could see a door with the number one affixed to it just off the landing. I had one foot on the stairs, determined to knock on every door if I had to, to locate Mrs. Laughlin, when a thin teenager came around the corner, steadying a pile of pink towels with her chin. She looked startled to see me, but then smiled. “Hi.” The towels muffled the word by not giving her enough space to open her mouth properly.

  “I’m looking for Mrs. Laughlin,” I said.

  “Number four,” she said.

  “Thanks.” I trotted up the stairs, not pausing to inspect any of the botanical prints arranged on the wall.

  Number four was the last door on the right. I rapped with one knuckle.

  “Come in, Shelly,” a voice called.

  I turned the black metal doorknob that might have been original to the house, and pushed the door open. Mrs. Laughlin, still looking as sweet and gentle as a Hallmark-card grandm
a, had a suitcase open on the bed and was placing folded clothes into it. “Just leave the towels on the dresser,” she said without looking up.

  “You lied to me,” I said, stepping in and closing the door.

  Mrs. Laughlin didn’t exclaim or scream, but the pile of utilitarian undies she was tucking into the suitcase tumbled out of her hands, spilling on the bed and the floor, when she jerked her head toward me. “Oh, my goodness, you gave me a start,” she said, right hand pressed to her chest. She peered over the red-framed bifocals. “Stella, right?”

  “Stacy.”

  She bent to retrieve a pair of undies from the floor. “I wasn’t expecting… Why are you-”

  “I think you know.” I’d been scanning the room, and I’d spotted a stack of paper on the antique oak washstand by the window. Crossing the room, I studied the top page, which proclaimed Step by Step: A Memoir. Corinne’s name appeared next, followed by a list of some of the ballroom dancing titles she’d won.

  Mrs. Laughlin watched me riffle through the pages, doing nothing to stop me.

  “This is Corinne’s memoir. Why did you lie to me and tell me it wasn’t finished?”

  She sighed and stretched for a pair of undies that had drifted half under the bed. Her girth got in the way, and I bent to pull them out for her. “Thank you.” She folded them precisely and laid them gently atop the others in her old-fashioned, hard-sided suitcase. It looked battered enough and antique enough to have been the one she packed her clothes in when she came from England half a century earlier.

  “Well, I really didn’t think it was any of your business,” she said at last, turning to face me. A look of resolution stiffened her seamed face. “I lived all this with Corinne,” she said, gesturing toward the manuscript pages, “and I helped her write and organize the book. When she died, it seemed only right for me to continue where she’d left off and see the book through to publication.”