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

by Lisa Fernow

  He opened the freezer door and felt the frosty air blast his face. Roland wasn’t honorable. In another age he would have been called a rake. Something really had to be done about him.

  Whatever he decided for his costume he couldn’t wear a mask, that was obvious. He had to be able to see what he was doing.

  ***

  Nathalie had set up a makeup station in Roland’s master bathroom arranging a palette of eye shadows on one of his hand towels. She watched Roland in the mirror as she darkened one eyebrow with a black pencil. Although they were due at the party in less than an hour he was still in his boxer shorts.

  She penciled in her other brow. “I want you to announce our news tonight.”

  Roland selected a cuticle clipper from his manicure case. “I told you it’s not a good time.”

  “I’m sick of your friends looking at me like I stole the Mona Lisa or something.”

  Roland trimmed away a nearly invisible hangnail from his ring finger, replaced the clippers, and zipped up the manicure case. “It’s not fair to say anything at Shawna’s. I treated her badly enough as it is.”

  “She took the news without throwing herself out the window.”

  “That’s not the point.”

  “You sound like you’re still in love with her.”

  “At least she’s not a blackmailer.”

  If he thought that would get to her, he was wrong. Nathalie formed her mouth into an “O” to create a taut canvas of skin and added a beauty mark under one cheekbone. Finally she inserted the brown contact lenses. Except for her hair, which she planned to leave its normal color, the transformation was complete. “Well, it’s too late now,” she said. She rose from the cushioned stool, drew open her dressing gown, and pressed her naked body against his. “You’ve made your bed, haven’t you?”

  “Nathalie, no,” he said, and she heard the desire and the self-loathing in his voice.

  She reached for him. “Don’t you like it when I do that?”

  He grabbed her by the hair and pulled her face away from his.

  She laughed, ignoring the pain shooting through her scalp. “I’ll make you a model wife. And marriage surely beats prison.”

  “Don’t push me.” He thrust her away, turned, and stormed out, slamming the bathroom door behind him.

  She slipped the engagement ring back on her finger. Too bad she couldn’t have chosen one more to her taste. She turned her hand to catch the lights from the vanity mirror, admiring the effect against her freshly manicured nails. The diamond cast rainbows everywhere. At least the stone was good, she thought. Much better than the soi-disant Colombian emerald.

  ***

  Shawna examined her face in the bathroom mirror. She hadn’t been sleeping well since she returned from Japan. She looked at the fresh tub of clown white that she had bought at the costume shop. The makeup would conceal the dark circles under her eyes.

  Everything was ready for the evening. She’d burned the music and loaded it into the CD player. The food was in the refrigerator and Pearson’s had delivered the wine that morning. She’d had the dining room furniture moved into the library to make room for dancing and placed fresh votive candles around the house. She’d drawn the line at Halloween decorations.

  The guests were due in half an hour. Time to become Japanese.

  The clown white makeup would feel clammy and get under her nails but she forced herself to scoop up a measure with her fingers and rubbed it between her palms to warm it to the right temperature. She dabbed determinedly at her face, using her palms and the tips of her fingers, working quickly to apply an even film. She covered her eyebrows and mouth with white then, after cleaning her hands, used dark lipstick to draw lips in a shape foreign to her real mouth. After a few strokes the geisha’s traditional cupid’s pout leapt from the stark, chalky background like a wound. Her eyes looked out through the inert mask of her makeup and she was satisfied to find no expression in them.

  ***

  Antonia sprawled on her living room couch sipping tepid water out of a dented Evian bottle, resting up in the final minutes before leaving to pick up Christian for Shawna’s Halloween party.

  The room felt stuffy, despite the vaulted ceilings and the huffing of the fan. It was so hot the sap from the pine beams overhead was beading up. She’d thrown open both sets of French doors but the crosscurrent was too weak to stir the air.

  A wasp lay dying on her floor and she felt like joining it.

  She hummed, some ditty about feet stinking and not loving Je-ee-ssuus.

  Something was definitely eating Christian. Ever since the night at Sanctuary his t-shirts, a reliable reflection of his inner state, had grown increasingly nihilistic. The one he’d worn the day before carried a lurid close-up of a silkscreen woman shrinking in terror from an unseen attacker, screaming soundlessly, her teeth as big as tombstones.

  She dearly wanted to tackle him about his flare-up with Barbara and his obsession with Nathalie LeFebre, which was what it had to be if he was keeping a file on her. But Shawna was right. She couldn’t say anything.

  She stared out the window, feeling too oppressed to move. Her neighbors had decorated for Halloween in true Hallmark tradition. Orange and black plastic pumpkins glared against a backdrop of brown lawn. A bedsheet ghost sagged from a withered azalea. She wondered if she could just leave trick or treats outside the door and let the children scavenge: carpe candy.

  How could it still be hot? It wasn’t natural. Like A Little Night Music, where the sun never sets and people go nuts and sing about how the sun never sets, then they all run off with each other's lovers.

  That never happened in real life.

  ***

  Christian didn’t want to go to Shawna’s party. He didn’t want to face anyone, especially not her. He paged through the e-mail again and wondered miserably if the words would etch a permanent image on the screen if he read them too often:

  You’re deluded. Stay away from me.

  How could she? She’d flirted with him. She’d asked him to send his poetry. And then she’d turned on him for no reason.

  Tears of anger and humiliation flooded his eyes, blurring his view of the screen. Better erase the e-mails. Send them to Ethernet hell. Then there would be nothing to show that anything had ever happened. His hand hesitated on the mouse, his forefinger twitched once, and Nathalie LeFebre was obliterated.

  CHAPTER 17

  Halloween Night

  ANT BUNDLED HIM INTO his Merlin costume like he was some little kid and couldn’t dress himself, all the while asking him, “What’s wrong, Christian,” but he was feeling too angry to talk, even to her. He stonewalled her and she finally left him alone.

  They drove to Shawna’s and pulled up at exactly nine-thirty p.m. Way too early to go to a party.

  He had never been to the place. From the sidewalk as far as he was concerned it looked like most of the houses in Grant Park: the usual single-story wood box with a front screened-in porch. The windows were dark but he could make out tiny flames flickering inside.

  Steadying his wizard’s hat and clutching the skirts of his robe, he followed Ant up the cement steps and through the screen door to the porch. The floorboards creaked. The front door to the house was closed. A cheerful waltz played within and it pissed him off to imagine other people being happy when he felt like such crap.

  “I’m not dancing tonight,” he announced, as if there was a chance in hell Ant would listen.

  “C’mon, you’ll feel better.” Ant jiggled the doorknob. “Hey, Shawna,” she shouted. Without waiting for an answer she opened the door and stepped inside.

  He followed. The house smelled like fresh-baked cookies which just depressed him further. Candles flickered everywhere. As his eyes adjusted to the light he made out a narrow hall directly in front of him, bisecting the house. On his right just past the coat closet he saw a library. On his left the entryway opened up into a living room. Two sofas faced each other. He thought about his own couch
and wished like hell he could be on it.

  Ant called out, “Trick or treat, are you decent? Christian and I came early to help out.”

  “Coming!” Shawna appeared from further back in the house dressed in a wig with loops of coarse black hair and an embroidered kimono with a bright red sash around her waist. Her face was white as a piece of paper except for two red blobs in the middle of her mouth and two black eyebrows painted over her natural ones. “Oh, you both look great!” She stepped closer to get a better look at his costume. “Let me guess, Christian. Are you some sort of sorcerer? Merlin?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Smart. You can move in your costume which is more than I can say for mine.” Shawna studied Ant for a moment. “Okay. With the toga and that ivy around your head, you’re a Roman somebody, but who are you? Caesar?”

  “I’m supposed to be Titania, Queen of the Fairies, from Midsummer Night’s Dream.”

  More like titanium, he thought morosely.

  Shawna helped her tuck a loose fold of bed sheet back under her bra strap. “You look lovely.”

  Ant scratched under her left arm. “I stole the ivy from my neighbor’s trash, he’s landscaping and ripping up his yard and now I’m having this terrible thought he’s sprayed pesticides.”

  Christian muttered, “You’re going to get a killer rash.”

  “It could be a spider.” Ant inspected her armpit and, finding nothing, said to Shawna, “You on the other hand, your outfit is spectacular. It’s real, isn’t it? Did you get it in Japan? How are you going to dance?”

  “It’s a yukata and the sash is a hanhaba; I couldn’t get a formal kimono on by myself.”

  “And your fan, can I see?” Ant grabbed it without waiting for permission, as usual, and hefted it. She flicked the fan open revealing an image of the Japanese flag, a big red dot against a white background.

  “There are apples on the counter,” Shawna said, taking the fan. “Do you mind cutting them up for me? I was afraid they’d go brown if I did it earlier. You know where everything is; I just have a few last-minute items to take care of.” Shawna smiled at him, or at least she showed her teeth. “Feel free to make yourself at home, Christian. Are you okay?”

  “Yeah.” What was he supposed to say, he wished he were dead?

  “Library’s to your right. Bathroom’s off the hall if you need it.”

  Both women went off about their business, leaving him alone in the entryway. He decided to check out the house to see where he could wait out the evening.

  He tried the living room first. Candles surrounded by pebbles on a tray on a low coffee table provided the only source of light in the room. The couches looked definitely snooze-worthy but it was way too public. He walked through the arch leading from the living room and found an empty space lined with folding chairs. The dance floor was to be avoided. To his right a side table held a surprisingly good stereo system with a multi-CD changer. A second archway led to the kitchen where he could see Ant knocking about with a cutting board, chewing on an apple slice. She was to be avoided.

  He retraced his steps back through the living room to the front of the house. He was about to try the library when he happened to glance down the hall. A glass exhibit case framed in dark wood and lit from within, like the kind they had in museums, beckoned. He walked toward it and when he got closer saw it contained a collection of antique weapons. All had been carefully laid out on velvet-lined shelves.

  So many ways to cut someone. A curved silver kris with ornate Arabic designs. A set of super-lethal looking daggers. A ninja throwing star. And a samurai sword displayed, out of its sheath, on a dark wooden stand. He imagined the blade being newly forged in the flames, made sharp and strong. A weapon of destruction. A magical weapon. The glass reflected the candlelight from the kitchen and he saw himself reflected in the glass, too, in his sorcerer’s hat. The sword was bewitched and he, Merlin, was the only person who could remove the spell. He felt his face grow hotter and hotter.

  “What do you think of them?” Shawna asked in a low voice and he realized she’d caught him with his forehead against the glass.

  Shawna had always been decent to him. Maybe she’d understand. “Do you believe these weapons carry any memories?”

  “What do you mean?”

  He suddenly realized how asinine his question sounded. “You know, like if the owner of the sword used it for an evil purpose it would come back to haunt him and his family. Like a curse.” The more he tried to explain the more he felt like a complete dick.

  A burst of laughter came from the porch.

  The first of the guests had arrived and were apparently trying to identify each other.

  “Excuse me, I’m sorry, I have to play hostess,” Shawna said, abruptly, and left him.

  CHAPTER 18

  Catfight

  IT TOOK LESS THAN A TANDA for Antonia to discover just how ill advised her costume choice had been. Her toga tangled up like wet laundry when she danced and her ivy crown kept slipping down into her eyes. She reached up to adjust the offending foliage and caught the smell of her last partner’s aftershave.

  Christian had made good on his threat not to dance or, for that matter, to socialize in any way whatsoever. Almost immediately on arrival he’d closed the pocket doors to Shawna’s library and barricaded himself in. Antonia hoped he wasn’t obsessing over Nathalie.

  Fresedo’s “Como Aquella Princesa” came on, a swirly, elegant confection that usually made her feel all exotic and mysterious, but in her present disjointed state left her flat. She decided to take a breather.

  The living room was about ten welcome degrees cooler. She commandeered the nearest of the two loveseats, liberated her feet from her shoes, propped them up on the coffee table and gratefully wiggled her toes. From where she sat she had a partial view of the street. The lampposts illuminated the canopy of mature oaks stretching over the road but did little to light much else. She could just make out Bobby Glass lumbering towards the house, dressed in white, a bright figure against the gloaming.

  Oh boy. He’s not wearing his glasses. I hope he didn’t drive from Druid Hills like that.

  He made it up the cement steps without mishap only to walk smack into the screen door. “Sorry,” he said.

  “Hey! Bobby!”

  He managed to find his way through the porch and poked his head through the front door. “Hello-ello!”

  “It’s me.”

  “Antonia? Good. Thought this must be the right house.” He crossed the threshold and felt his way into the living room. In the candlelight his face looked pink and freshly scrubbed. For his costume he wore a white oxford shirt, white jeans, and white Docksiders. A metal ice cube tray hung from a string around his neck. She had no idea what it was supposed to represent.

  Just then Barbara came into the hall, tugging at her dress. She snuck up on Bobby and clapped her palms over his eyes.

  “Barbara,” he said, sounding pleased, as if he’d correctly classified an ambiguous specimen. “For a second I thought you were Shawna.”

  “What?”

  “You smell like her lavender soap.”

  “You just saw me in my costume, silly.” Barbara gave him a look of mock exasperation. “Where are your glasses? You know you’re a mole without them. Do I have to watch over you all night?”

  “I can see perfectly well, it’s just dark.”

  “I give up. What in the Sam Hill are you?”

  Bobby pivoted. Hanging down the back of his shirt, a cardboard sign read, ‘Titanic 0, Iceberg 1’.

  Antonia applauded. “Very witty.”

  “Well you coming as a collision, that makes sense.” Barbara grabbed his elbow. “No, really, I’m kidding, it’s very clever of you to think of that. Now, let me get you something to drink.”

  “I can’t,” Bobby said plaintively. “I’m dancing.”

  “Okay then, let’s you get me a drink.”

  Barbara led Bobby to the kitchen. A few seconds later they reappe
ared, Barbara carrying a plastic glass filled with red wine.

  By this time Roland had arrived, or nearly so. He stood on the porch calling out to someone in the drive, “What are you doing there? Aren’t you coming?” He sounded exasperated. Antonia wished he and Nathalie could have found somewhere else to spend Halloween, for everyone’s sakes, but Shawna didn’t seem to care anymore and with any luck Christian would stay closeted in the library.

  “Okay, fine,” Roland said. “I’ll see you inside.”

  Roland knew the house well, of course, and Antonia watched him stroll confidently in like an actor onto the stage. He’d come as a matador. Taking one look at her costume, he said, “We who are about to die, salute you!”

  One could only hope.

  Seeing she didn’t appreciate his feeble attempt at a joke he switched to his hail-fellow-well-met voice, the one he used when he wanted to show he was just one of the guys. “How are you, Antonia?”

  “Sweaty.” She scrambled up from the couch and put up a hand to forestall him. “Better not touch me.”

  Barbara tripped into the room, caught Roland around the neck and kissed him smack on the mouth. “So, Roland, where’s your bull?”

  Roland stage-whispered loud enough for everyone to hear, “I left him back in Spain.” Barbara went off into peals of laughter as if he’d said something clever.

  “Bobby,” Roland said manfully, holding out his hand.

  “Roland,” Bobby said manfully back. But instead of shaking Roland’s hand, Bobby bowed, causing the ice tray to swing from his neck and the lone strand of hair he normally combed over his scalp to flop forward.

  Shawna shuffled in from the hall. “I was beginning to wonder if you were coming,” she said to Roland as he went to kiss her cheek. “Don’t; you’ll get my makeup all over you.”

  Roland said, “I’m untouchable tonight, it seems.”

  “I’m counting on at least one tanda,” Barbara said. “Hurry up and change your shoes.”

  “Helloooo, everyone! Happy Halloweeeeen!” Nathalie undulated in, arms raised high over her head, flapping a fan and clicking imaginary castanets. She’d pulled her fair hair into a knot at the nape of her neck and darkened her brows. Her eyes were brown tonight. She wore a low-cut black leotard. Tied around her hips was a black and gold embroidered silk shawl she’d probably stolen off a piano.