Dead Man Waltzing

by Ella Barrick

  I pulled the door wider, silently inviting him in, still coming to terms with the fact that nothing had happened to my family. Breathing easier, I faced him in the hallway. “What happened?”

  “I need you to come with me. Throw some clothes on and let’s go.” His face, impassive, told me nothing.

  I was half-startled, half-curious. “Where? What? Are you arresting me?” Suddenly conscious of the sheerness of my nightgown and robe, I crossed my arms over my chest. Lissy seemed totally unmoved by my state of partial undress, his eyes staying on my face seemingly without effort.

  “Have you done something I should arrest you for?”

  “Of course not!”

  “Just get dressed, Ms. Graysin. We’re wasting time.”

  Confused, sleepy, but relieved that my family was okay and that he wasn’t arresting me, I closed my bedroom door and scrambled into a summer skirt, peasant blouse, and sandals. Brushing my teeth and running a brush through my hair, I rejoined Lissy in less than five minutes.

  “Impressive,” was all he said as he gestured me to the door.

  I climbed into the front seat of his brown Crown Victoria and buckled up. “Can we get coffee?” I asked.

  For answer, he pulled into the nearest fast-food drive-through, and we both ordered extra-large coffees, black. I shot him a glance; it felt weird to have something in common with Lissy, even something as minor as how we liked our coffee.

  “Where are we going?” I asked as we headed out Route 1 toward D.C. There was virtually no traffic this early on Saturday, and we sped along above the speed limit.

  “In due time, Ms. Graysin, in due time.”

  I relaxed back into the seat, sipping my coffee, but after a few moments the silence got to me. “Did your grandson win his game?”

  Lissy slid his eyes my way and said, “You’re not really interested.”

  He had me there. I relapsed into semisulky silence, irritated at having my sleep interrupted and irritated with his high-handed, secretive behavior. What in the world could possibly have come up that would make a homicide detective kidnap me at the crack of dawn? Maurice! I sat up straighter and was about to ask Lissy whether our field trip had anything to do with Maurice when we crossed the Arlington Memorial Bridge and I realized we weren’t headed toward Maurice’s house.

  I had just raised my cup to my lips for a sip of coffee when Lissy jolted into a pothole. Coffee splashed out of the cup and onto my blouse and I yelped.

  “Don’t get it on the seat,” Lissy said, reaching over to liberate napkins from the glove box.

  “I’m fine, thanks,” I said. “Second-degree burns-nothing to worry about.” Blotting coffee off my yellow blouse, I didn’t notice we’d arrived until Lissy parked at the curb. An ambulance, doors wide, and a couple of police cars were parked askew in the narrow street fronting Lavinia Fremont’s studio and apartment. Oh, no. “What happened?” I whispered.

  “Why don’t you tell me?” Lissy said. When I didn’t say anything, he opened his door and got out. I followed suit, scrambling onto the sidewalk and staring as EMTs carried a stretcher down the stairs from Lavinia’s apartment. The sheet-shrouded figure lay still except for movements induced by the jostling descent. The sheet covered her face, but I knew it was Lavinia.

  A young cop looked at me curiously, and I realized I was holding the coffee cup so loosely that coffee was dribbling to the sidewalk. I chucked the cup into a nearby trash can and moved to join Lissy at the door. “Don’t just stand there,” he said, starting up the stairs. “And don’t touch anything-put your hands in your pockets.”

  I did as he said. When we entered Lavinia’s apartment, I glanced around, expecting to see signs of mayhem. But everything appeared as it had last night: orderly, warm, cozy. It didn’t look like a homicidal maniac had gone rampaging through the place. I looked a question at Lissy, whose gaze hadn’t left my face since we came in. Finally, it seemed, he was ready to tell me why he’d dragged me down here.

  “You will have gathered that Ms. Fremont is dead,” he said. He paused a moment, as if waiting for me to argue with him. When I didn’t say anything, he went on. “It looks like a heart attack, not an unusual occurrence for a seventy-three-year-old. A neighbor found her-”

  “At six in the morning?”

  “They walk together every day at five thirty, apparently,” Lissy said. “As I say, her death would normally not have occasioned much remark, except…” He paused for emphasis. “Except that last night you were on me like paparazzi on Angelina Jolie, trying to convince me that the now-dead Ms. Fremont murdered Corinne Blakely. To top that off”-he raised a hand to stop me as I opened my mouth-“your fingerprints are all over the apartment, and the video camera at the jewelry store down the block shows you passing by at seven thirty-eight last evening. “So I ask you again, Ms. Graysin: What happened here?”

  Damn. No good deed goes unpunished, as they say. I came down here to help Maurice by prodding Lavinia into a confession, and I ended up as a murder suspect. “Should I call Phineas Drake?” I asked.

  “Hell, no,” Lissy said, wincing. “You’re not a suspect.”

  “I’m not?” Then what was with the gestapo routine, the visit to Lavinia’s?

  “The same camera that showed you arriving caught you leaving forty-five minutes later. Shortly after that, Ms. Fremont called her doctor’s office to cancel an appointment for today. The camera and the doctor’s answering machine have accurate time stamps. It’s pretty clear that it was suicide. She took a few handfuls of the same medicine that triggered Corinne Blakely’s heart failure-the packets are in her bathroom, and only her fingerprints are on them. Judging by the prescription meds in her medicine cabinet, she had much the same heart condition as Blakely, so the result was identical: myocardial infarction and death. At least, that’s what it looks like pending autopsy. Plus, there’s a note. I just want you to tell me how it came about.”

  “A note?”

  Lissy beckoned to a white-overalled woman who obligingly produced a note in a plastic bag. It was handwritten on cream-colored stationery with a stylized LF at the top. “Life without friends isn’t worth living. The friendship I believed in all these years was a lie. No one should be blamed for Corinne’s death except Corinne herself. And no one should be blamed for mine except me.” There was no signature.

  I looked up from the grim words to find Lissy still staring at me. “I came here last night,” I said, “hoping to goad Lavinia into confessing to murdering Corinne. I wasn’t expecting… this.” The weight of responsibility crashed down; I felt like someone had dropped a grand piano on me. I had pushed Lavinia Fremont over the edge, nudged her into committing suicide. I struggled to be objective. Of course, Lavinia had a murder weighing on her conscience, too. Even though her note made it clear she thought Corinne deserved to die, I knew guilt must have been eating at her.

  “It’s not your fault,” Lissy said dispassionately. “She was depressed over her best friend’s death, perhaps overwhelmed by what she’d done. Did she admit to killing Blakely?”

  “Pretty nearly.” I related as much of the conversation as I could remember. “When she first learned Maurice had been arrested, I remember that she seemed upset about it, so I implied that his case was desperate, that he was likely to get convicted. I thought her conscience might get the better of her if she thought an innocent person was going to go to jail for what she’d done.” And it had, but not in the way I’d imagined. “Can I go home now?” I whispered.

  “Yeah. I’ll have a uniform take you back. Thanks for your assistance.”

  “Maurice?”

  He puffed out his cheeks. “I’m sure the DA will want to review the charges in light of recent events.”

  That was good news, at least. I tried to focus on that as I descended the stairs, trailing one hand against the wall to steady myself. I felt dizzy, off balance. It was going to take me a while to process all this. A good long while.

  Chapter 33

&nb
sp; Friday evening, almost a week later, the DA had dismissed all charges against Maurice, and he, Vitaly, Danielle, and I were gathered in the ballroom, celebrating. Only Tav was missing, still on his business trip. He’d be back tomorrow, and I was looking forward to our date with equal parts anticipation and anxiety. I looked around the now-empty ballroom, weary but content. We’d hosted our monthly social dance, where students and others paid a fee of seven dollars and came here to dance for fun and practice their steps, and the last straggler had just left. We’d had a good turnout tonight-nineteen people-and I was tired, but not so drained that I turned down the glass of champagne Maurice offered me. He’d brought along a couple of bottles to celebrate the good news from the DA.

  “To Maurice,” we toasted, raising our glasses to drink.

  “I still can’t believe it was Lavinia,” Maurice said for about the twelfth time. “Lavinia!”

  “She felt betrayed,” I said.

  “Revenge is powerful motivationer,” Vitaly said, downing his champagne in two glugs and holding out his glass for more. “I had an uncle once who wanted revenging on the man who is having affair with his wife, my aunt Magda. Uncle Sergei is spending ten years in the planning, but he is destroying man’s business-canning the fishes-and strangling the man outside where he gets his hairs barbered. The police is not catching him, but in the family, we know. We Russians is knowing how to hold the grunge.”

  “Grudge,” the rest of us chorused.

  “I’m just glad you don’t have to go through a trial,” I told Maurice.

  “Me, too,” he added fervently.

  Danielle slipped off her shoes and scrunched her toes open and closed against the cool hardwood floor. “So, if this dress designer person killed Corinne, who pushed you off the paddleboat, Stacy?”

  “My guess is Conrad Monk. I think he meant it as a warning, or to soften me up for his attempt at buying me off when he thought I had the manuscript.”

  “Are they still going to publish it?” Danielle asked.

  “I don’t know. You probably saw the news story: Turner is suing Mrs. Laughlin and the publisher over it, but Randolph is contesting Corinne’s will and trying to wrest control of the estate away from his son, so who knows how it will turn out.”

  “Turner should have known better than to try to move Randolph out of Hopeful Morning,” Maurice said with a head shake. “If he’d left things as they were, Randolph would probably have been happy to spend the rest of his life there, bothering no one.”

  “At least now Turner’s so busy with Randolph’s lawsuit and fighting the sexual-assault allegation that he doesn’t have the time or money to fight for your painting,” I said. “Did you see in the paper that he was arrested but released on bond? Someone told me there was a video on YouTube of him going after the stripper at the bachelor party, but I haven’t seen it. Phineas Drake says he’ll buy his way out of it-pay off the woman who’s accusing him-but still. What will you do with the painting?”

  “Hang it in my house for a while,” Maurice said, smoothing his hair back, “then probably donate it to the Smithsonian. It belongs in a museum, where thousands of people can admire Corinne every day. To Corinne.” He raised his glass, tiny bubbles spiraling upward, and we toasted again.

  “To ballroom dancing,” Vitaly offered.

  “To ballroom dancing,” we chorused.

  “To Anastasia,” Maurice said, “whose tenacity-”

  “Pigheadedness,” Dani chimed in.

  “-and insight spared me an ugly trial, at the very least.” He mouthed Thank you at me as the others swallowed more champagne.

  Danielle pulled me aside as the men popped open the second champagne bottle. “Did you ever hear back from Eulalia Pine about the furniture? Did she give you an estimate?”

  “She did better than that,” I said, raising my champagne glass. “She bought most of it. She’s sending a truck on Wednesday.”

  Danielle stared at me. “Really? And it doesn’t bother you to let it all go?”

  Shaking my head, I said, “No. I thought about it. I mean, there’re a lot of memories in that furniture, but you know what? They’re Great-aunt Laurinda’s memories, not mine. I want to start fresh, with a clean slate and all that, and decorate this place in a way that means something to me. I’m keeping a couple of pieces, the grandfather clock and Great-aunt Laurinda’s portrait, for instance, but most of it is out the door.” I made brushing movements with my hands.

  “Did she pay you enough to buy all new furniture?”

  “I wish. I can buy a few pieces-maybe we can go couch shopping again!-but it’ll be pretty bare in here for a while.”

  Danielle looked down into her almost empty champagne flute and mumbled something.

  “What?”

  “I said I bought my ticket today.” She met my gaze almost defiantly.

  “Ticket?”

  “For Jekyll Island.”

  I gave a whoop and hugged her hard. “I’m so glad you’re coming! You didn’t have to buy a ticket, though; Mom said it was her treat.”

  “I’ll pay my own way, thank you,” Danielle said. “That way, if I feel like canceling, I can, or if I want to come home early because it’s just too awkward or the memories are hard to take, I can.”

  I smiled and released her. That was my sis, always planning for all eventualities.

  Music suddenly blared from the speakers-Carrie Underwood’s “Cowboy Casanova”-at decibel levels guaranteed to net complaints from my neighbors. Danielle and I whirled to see that a tipsy Vitaly had plugged his iPod into the stereo system and was now free-dancing to the strong beat. With a laugh, Danielle joined him, doing the same dorky box step she’d been doing since her first middle school dance. Maurice set down the champagne bottle and glided toward me. With a smile, he offered his hand.

  “Anastasia?”

  “Let’s dance,” I agreed.

  ELLA BARRICK

  ***

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