Rockabye Murder

by Diana Orgain

  My mind spun on this new information. What if . . .

  A thunderous pounding sound from the garage practically shook the house. I massaged my temples. Could Jo-Jo not leave me a minute to think? Not one single, solitary minute?

  “Kate?” Kenny interjected.

  “Yeah?”

  “I’m really, really, really sorry. I know it was an awful thing for me to do.” His shoulders slumped.

  “Oh, Kenny. I forgive you. Just don’t do it again. And especially don’t lie to the police again. You can get in a lot of trouble for that, you know.”

  “I know,” he said, and I was reminded of how young he truly was.

  I excused myself to the backyard and called Galigani.

  “Yeah?” came his gruff voice over the line.

  I sank into a chair beneath the pergola, the string lights casting an incandescent glow over everything. “You won’t believe what Kenny just told me.”

  After I explained the story, Galigani said, “Hmm. That’s troubling. So, she had opportunity, and her first impulse when she saw Leo was to beg for an alibi.”

  “People do crazy things when they’re under stress, but that seemed weird to me too.” I drummed my fingernails on the table.

  “Plus, she’s gone missing both times the saboteur has struck since the murder.”

  “If she isn’t involved, that’s a pretty darn big coincidence.”

  Galigani whistled. “You bet it is. I’ll call McNearny and have Odette brought in for questioning. You’ll need to send Kenny down to the precinct to tell them everything he knows, too.”

  “You don’t think they’d charge him for lying to an officer, do you?” I asked, my breath catching.

  “Nah,” said Galigani, clearing his throat. “Not with McNearny handling the case. He just wants to catch the murderer. If the killer turns out to be Odette, he’ll take into account Kenny’s age and the way she manipulated him, and there’ll be leniency. If she’d succeeded in killing anyone else in the meantime, it might have been a different story, of course. McNearny will probably want to scare Kenny onto the straight and narrow, though.”

  “Fine by me,” I muttered.

  We hung up, and when I went back inside, Kenny and Jim were standing near the front door.

  “You really need to go give your statement to police tonight,” I said. “Go voluntarily. Don’t wait until they bring you in. It will look a lot better for you.”

  Kenny gulped but nodded. “Okay.”

  “The whole truth,” I warned him. “Don’t leave anything out. Give them your full cooperation.”

  “I will,” he promised. “And I’m going to watch Laurie tomorrow for you free of charge! You don’t even have to order me a pizza!”

  I laughed. “Paying for pizza is the least of my worries!” I said, as he headed out. I peeked through the window to watch him leave, and sighed in relief when he went straight to his car instead of to his house. “Good,” I murmured. “He’s going to the precinct right away.”

  “So?” Jim asked with a grim look on his face.

  I shrugged. “She had ample opportunity, and she’s been acting suspiciously. That’s all we know for sure. But, in any case, I bet they’re broken up for good this time, and that’s a mercy.”

  I slept restlessly and groaned when I woke up to a text from Galigani saying police hadn’t been able to locate Odette. Dread curdled in my stomach.

  There was probably a reasonable explanation. She’d gone out after breaking up with Kenny and met someone to have a fling with, and they’d spent the night at his apartment rather than hers.

  Or she’d gone to a girlfriend’s place to eat ice cream and talk about her feelings.

  Or she knew that police were onto her, and she was scheming her last and final revenge.

  Kenny arrived to watch Laurie, looking appropriately subdued. “That one cop—you know, the one Deb calls Sergeant McGrumpy?”

  I snorted. “Yeah, McNearny’s his real name.”

  “Yeah, that one. He read me the riot act. But I’m just relieved to have gotten it all off my chest. It ate at me all the time. Especially at night. I’ve really had a hard time sleeping recently.”

  I almost retorted that I’d had a hard time sleeping, too, because I’d been hitting dead end after dead end in the case, but I erred on the side of grace. Kenny clearly felt terrible, and there was no reason to make him feel worse. What was done was done—and next time he’d think twice about covering for someone just because she had a pretty face.

  Hopefully the whole experience made him wiser.

  I hummed the theme to Swan Lake as Jim and I drove to Tre Fratelli Danzanti. The studio was a frenzy of activity—this was an all-hands-on-board event. Paula, dressed to the nines and showing no sign of her concussion, was directing a handful of dance teachers who were setting up tables. Kim was among them, her dark hair pulled back in a ponytail and a look of determination on her face.

  Dave practically bounced up to us. “No such thing as bad publicity,” he crowed. “We’ve sold every last ticket. The place will be packed. And I upsold about thirty percent of the attendees to a package of ballroom dance classes. We’ve never had so many students on the books.”

  “I’m so glad,” said Jim.

  “We’ll be able to pay for Sharon’s treatment and set the studio up for a great fiscal year.” Dave’s face grew more serious. “And police have agreed to be undercover in the crowd, watching for anything suspicious, so the event should be safe.”

  “Fingers crossed,” I said weakly.

  Petunia pushed a janitor’s cart out of the bathroom, sweat beading on her brow. She waved at us and called, “We’ve got this!”

  How I hoped she was right. I was pretty sure we’d cracked the case—but I just hoped I wasn’t too late.

  “Darling!” Mom called from the direction of the lobby. “Could you help me bring some of this food inside?”

  I dispatched Jim to assist Mom for me and went to ask Paula what I could do to help. Anything to get my mind off the fact that police couldn’t find Odette.

  “Could you set that out front?” Paula called, waving me toward an A-frame sign in the same style as the posters Jim had designed—the silhouetted swing dance couple, the calligraphy-style font, and . . .

  “No!” I gasped aloud.

  In huge letters at the top, there it was again: PUBIC DANCE.

  “Paula!” I shrieked.

  She glanced at me with a quizzical expression, and I gestured wildly at the sign.

  “Read it!” I yelled.

  “Public dance,” she said aloud.

  “Spell it,” I insisted.

  She furrowed her brow, “P-u-b-i . . . oh my stars.” Her eyes popped wide open. “We can’t get that reprinted in time! I . . . I don’t know how that happened! I pulled it from the file Jim sent, so it would match the posters.”

  I groaned aloud. “From the draft poster? Did he send it to you to look it over?”

  “Yeah. I said it looked great.”

  “Okay,” I said, folding my hands together. “We can fix this. We don’t need a fancy A-frame sign. What should we use instead, that we can put together at the last minute?”

  Paula stared at me with a look of panic on her face. “Um. Um. I’m sorry. I’ve had crazy brain fog since I got knocked out. I—”

  “Take a deep breath.” I pulled her into a hug. “I’ll take care of this. Just focus on getting the interior laid out the way you want.”

  “Okay,” she said, inhaling sharply. “Thank you. I trust you implicitly.”

  I leaned against the wall and ran a Google search on my phone for cute 1950s sign ideas. And then it hit me. “A chalkboard!” I cried. “Like what you might see at a soda fountain.”

  Paula whirled toward me. “That’s perfect!”

  “Do we have anyone who can do the lettering?” I asked.

  “I can do that,” Hank said from behind me.

  I turned, and Hank had his arm around the
shoulders of one of the dance teachers.

  “Kate,” he said, “this is my niece, Dara. She’s a new instructor here.”

  Ah, this must be the niece who’d been teaching at Dare to Dance until recently. I extended my hand. “It’s so nice to meet you, Dara.”

  Hank continued, “I’ve got a pretty good knack for lettering, and I think I can make the chalkboard look like it came straight out of the fifties. How about I go track a board down and take care of setting it up?”

  “Thank you!” Paula called. “I have the best friends!”

  The day passed in a whirlwind, but I kept checking my phone to see if there were any updates on Odette. Finally, midway through the afternoon, I called Deb.

  “Yo, Kate,” Deb said when she answered.

  “Hey, Deb,” I said. “Are you on the job tonight at the swing dance?”

  “You bet,” she said. “I’m going undercover as a partygoer. McGrumpy’s coming, too. He’s posing as my date.” Distaste colored her voice.

  Then we both howled in laughter.

  “Well, maybe if we can find the killer, you can ditch McNearny and find a lovely lady to dance with.”

  “I sure hope so,” she said dreamily.

  “Speaking of the case, any progress on tracking down Odette?” I crossed my fingers and hoped against hope for a break.

  “Zip, zilch, nada. It’s like the girl vanished into thin air.”

  I didn’t like this. Not one bit.

  “But get this. We talked to some of her friends and found out that she’s been dating this anesthesiologist, and his office had a whole bottle of vecuronium bromide go missing two weeks ago.”

  My mind stuttered on she’s been dating this anesthesiologist. “Did the friends say anything about her dating a younger musician?”

  “Not a word,” said Deb flatly. “And that’s not all. We talked to the baristas at the coffee shop, and we took a look at their online records and video feed. The day of the killing, our Ms. Malakhova put in a pickup order via their app for four coffees. She was in and out of the coffee shop in thirty seconds, but she told your kid babysitter that the line had taken her an hour to get through.”

  I’d been right. Odette had definitely just been using Kenny. I pursed my lips. I was really starting to hate her. I took a deep breath. “A missing bottle of vecuronium bromide. What are the odds?”

  “Pretty darn slim, if you ask me. We’re watching for anything suspicious tonight, of course, but we will most definitely be looking out for Odette in particular. If anyone sees her, they need to flag us down ASAP.”

  “Noted. I’ll pass the word around.” Then my brain latched onto the name Deb had called Odette. “Did you say Ms. Malakhova?”

  “Yeah. Odette Malakhova.”

  “Is that her birth name?” I demanded.

  Deb paused, and I heard a few keyboard keys clack in the background. “Yeah, it’s her birth name.”

  “Is her middle name Giselle, by any chance?”

  “No, it’s Anya.” Then she let out a whoop. “But she has a sister named Giselle. Or, had one. The sister’s deceased. Why?”

  Giselle Malakhova. The girl Todd had been suspected of poisoning.

  “A hunch,” I said.

  Deb chuckled. “All right. Keep your secrets, and we’ll track her down and bring her in. See you tonight!”

  I made sure that everyone knew to be on the lookout for Odette, and mused over the case while absentmindedly following Paula’s instructions.

  Years earlier, Todd had been a suspect in the poisoning of Odette’s now-deceased sister. And now he and Odette were working together at the same studio? These pieces fit together somehow. I was certain of it. But how?

  What if Leo had just been collateral damage? What if Odette was trying to kill Todd?

  After another hour or so of preparation, the studio looked perfect. The dividers had been rolled back, revealing a huge dance floor, decorated to a tee, with tables and chairs around the edges. Paula and I high-fived.

  “You did good,” I told her, swelling with pride at my best friend’s talent.

  “It was a team effort!” she said, throwing her arms around me.

  Jim and I headed home to get ready for the dance, and on the way out, I inspected Hank’s hand-chalked sign. It looked exactly like an old soda fountain chalkboard. His lettering was excellent—and most importantly, he’d spelled PUBLIC correctly.

  I let out a sigh of relief. That was one problem taken care of.

  Now we just had to keep our eyes open for Odette—perhaps she should have been named Odile, after Swan Lake’s villainous Black Swan.

  We pulled into the driveway at home, and I gasped out loud. Our front door was standing open, and Whiskers was crouched beneath a bush in the flower bed.

  I glanced toward the street and then over at Kenny’s house. Jo-Jo’s truck was still here—the garage door was closed, though, which was odd—and Kenny’s van was in his parents’ driveway. Maybe Jo-Jo had left the front door open while going in or out, and Kenny had taken Laurie out to the backyard and hadn’t noticed?

  But a sick, panicky feeling in my stomach told me something was wrong.

  Very, very wrong.

  Chapter 20

  Jim clambered out and hissed, “Stay in the car.”

  Not a chance. Not until I knew my baby was safe. I climbed out after Jim, snatched up Whiskers, and tossed her into our car. Then I darted into the house, almost colliding with Jim’s back.

  “Kenny?” Jim called. “Jo-Jo?”

  Pure, sweet relief filled me when Laurie wailed. “Laurie!” I screamed, bolting toward her nursery. I hurtled through the door and found her lying in her crib, crying. I picked her up, searching her for any signs of injury. She was fine, but her diaper was absolutely soaked.

  Murmuring nonsensical words to her in a soothing voice, I rejoined Jim in the living room.

  “No one’s here,” he said, his face pale.

  “Check the garage.”

  He strode to the door and opened it. “Oh no.”

  “What?” I asked, crowding behind him to see.

  Jo-Jo was knocked out in the middle of the garage near a pile of two-by-fours. Next to him lay an empty medical syringe.

  My blood pressure skyrocketed as I fumbled for my phone.

  “Stay here,” Jim ordered.

  I nodded and dialed 911. “I need police and ambulance here right away,” I said to the operator. “My babysitter is missing, and my contractor was attacked and knocked out. I’d bet anything he was poisoned with vercuronium bromide.”

  “Yes, ma’am, I’m dispatching someone to you right away,” the operator responded in a voice that seemed entirely too calm for the situation. “Hold tight. You said your babysitter is missing? Is there a child in the home?”

  “Yes, my daughter’s fine. I have her. She was in her crib.”

  “Kate!” Jim called.

  I hung up on 911 and ran to meet Jim at the back door. He was staring into the yard with a horrified look on his face. I followed his gaze.

  Beneath the pergola, Odette stood holding a knife to Kenny’s throat. My heart lurched at the wide-eyed look of terror on his face. I covered Laurie’s eyes.

  “Stay back!” Odette shrieked, a maniacal light gleaming in her eyes. “Don’t get any closer! I’ll kill him.”

  I tightened my grip on Laurie and took a step away from the knife-wielding fiend. “It’s going to be okay, Kenny.”

  Jim called, “Give it up, Odette. Police are already on their way.”

  Odette’s eyes darted to Jim, and I took the chance to slip my phone out of my pocket. Holding it behind Laurie so Odette couldn’t see, I dialed Galigani, put my phone on speaker and then hit the mute button.

  Please let this work!

  Swallowing my fear, I choked out, “Why’d you kill Leo, Odette?”

  Odette’s grip on Kenny tightened. “No one would have ever found out if this snitch hadn’t opened his big mouth.”

>   “Listen,” I said, trying to keep my voice as soothing as possible, “I can help you. I have friends on the force and I know the best defense attorney in town. I’m sure he can get you a good plea deal. Help me help you. Tell me what happened.”

  She hissed, “It was never supposed to be Leo. The fool ruined my whole plan when he stole the coffee. But, you know, play stupid games, win stupid prizes, I guess.”

  Todd. I was right. She’d been going after Todd. “Who was supposed to die?” I asked, affecting confusion.

  Odette barked a harsh laugh. “You want to help me get a plea deal? I can get my own deal. Because I just have to tell them the truth. They’ll feel bad for me. They’ll give me a deal. Leo was never supposed to die. I was going to get sweet, sweet revenge for what he did to Giselle.”

  “Giselle?” I asked softly.

  “My older sister,” said Odette sourly. “Unlike me, she followed our parents’ dreams for her life and danced ballet, until Todd’s poison left her too sick and traumatized to keep going. She killed herself two years ago.”

  My stomach dropped.

  Suicide. My heart broke for their poor family. “I’m so sorry about Giselle,” I said, and even though Odette was absolutely crazed, I meant every word. “That’s terrible.”

  The words poured out of her faster now. “So, I tracked Todd down. I uprooted my life in New York and moved to San Francisco to take a job at this studio so that I could watch him and wait for the right moment. I was patient. I watched every move he made. When he started talking to Monte, I knew. So, I started talking to Monte, too. That idiot was even going to give me a tidy payday if I brought down Tre Fratelli Danzanti. So, I figured, why not do two things at once? No one would look twice at me after they learned Todd was scheming against the studio and Kim was reluctant to go along with it.” Her face contorted in rage. “And then that loser Leo went and stole the coffee. He ruined everything.”