Ella Barrick - Dead Man Waltzing

“Bless you, I’m going back to England to live with my sister Abigail,” she said. “She’s got a snug little cottage in Cornwall and has been after me for years to retire and set up house with her. Now”-she leveled a stern look at me from pale blue eyes-“perhaps you’ll tell me what you’re doing here.”

I liked Mrs. Laughlin and couldn’t believe she’d had anything to do with Corinne Blakely’s death, so I told her about Maurice being arrested and about the manuscript Corinne was working on. “I don’t suppose you know where it is?”

She was shaking her head before I finished the question. “No. I know about the book, of course. She talked about it constantly these past few months, and used to ask me if I thought she should include this happening or that anecdote, but as far as I know, she hadn’t actually written the thing yet. She was waiting for a contract. ‘There’s no point doing it on spec, Mrs. Laughlin,’ she said to me more than once. She did have an outline, though, which she revised every day. ‘Should I put in the bit about Greta Monk?’ she’d ask, or ‘I don’t think I’ll use the story about Frederick Winston… poor old Freddy.’”

Mrs. Laughlin sipped her tea. “Sometimes I thought it would be best if she didn’t get a contract, because then she’d have to write the book, and I didn’t know what she’d focus on once it was finished. I had one of my feelings-that when she typed ‘The End’ on the last page, she’d be at her end, too. A foolish worry, as it turns out.” She stared into the amber liquid in her cup.

I tried to imagine what it must be like for her at eighty-whatever to have lost the woman I suspected was her best, if not only, friend, her employer, and her home all at once.

“You wouldn’t believe how worried some people were about what she was putting in the book,” Mrs. Laughlin went on. “My, my. I can’t tell you how many times one person or another cornered me in the kitchen if they were over for dinner, or asked me on the phone, if I answered it, exactly what she was including. I gave them all the same answer: ‘You’ll have to ask Mrs. Blakely.’”

Interesting, I thought. If Danielle or one of my former dance partners or boyfriends told me they were writing a memoir, would I be worried? Okay, maybe a little bit. Danielle certainly knew a few things about my love life that I’d just as soon my parents never knew, and Andrew might reveal the story of how we raised the money to enter our first serious ballroom dance competition, but I couldn’t see myself taking any drastic steps to protect those secrets. Just how big did a secret need to be to inspire someone to want it kept under wraps “at all costs”? A question to ponder later.

“I can help you carry your stuff to your car,” I said, beginning to worry about Turner Blakely returning. If he wasn’t spending the night in Virginia Beach, he could come driving up anytime. Even though he was probably whooping it up with his about-to-be-married buddy, I couldn’t help worrying. A flat tire or a headache or a falling-out with a drunken friend might bring him home early.

“That’s very kind of you.”

I helped her down from the stool and hefted two boxes. She led the way through a back door to a detached four-car garage that held only an aging Volvo station wagon. I slid the boxes into the back and returned to the kitchen for the suitcases. When I’d loaded those, the cargo area of the Volvo was less than half-full. “Is that all?” I asked doubtfully, thinking it sad that the accumulation of fifty years would take up so little room.

“Other than the few things I mean to gather,” she said, walking briskly back toward the house.

I caught up with her. “I’m afraid Turner will come back.”

She made a derisive noise. “That sot? He’s been taken up for drunk driving three times already; he can’t afford to be pulled over again. No, he’ll stay over with his chum in Virginia Beach. That one’s another with more money than sense.” She stalked into the house, if a woman who bore more than a passing resemblance to Tweety Bird’s Granny could be said to stalk.

I followed her through the mansion, fascinated by the items she chose and the stories associated with each one. I carried the things she indicated. “That pillow,” she said, pointing to an ornately embroidered throw pillow on one of the couches. “I made that for Mrs. Blakely when she turned forty. What a party we had that weekend.” In the dining room she pointed at a framed photo. “That’s me and Mrs. Blakely and Fred Astaire. They were very close at one time; he said she was the best dancer he ever led onto a dance floor. Ginger Rogers supposedly took a pet when she heard that.”

I eyed the black-and-white photo as I picked it up. It was a casual snap of the three of them, taken in front of this house. Corinne Blakely was young and lovely, holding windswept blond hair back with one hand. Mrs. Laughlin was laughing up at a middle-aged Fred Astaire, who had an arm draped around her plump shoulders. “She lived a lot of ballroom dance history,” I observed.

“She is ballroom dance history,” Mrs. Laughlin said, taking the photo from me and passing a sleeved forearm over the glass. She held it as we continued through the house, acquiring a small landscape painting, an old-fashioned pincushion shaped like a strawberry, a pair of earrings-“she was wearing those the night the baron proposed”-and a competition gown of turquoise satin and chiffon, heavy with rhinestones and trimmed with feathers. I recognized it.

“She wore that when she and Donald-that’s Donald Stevenson, one of her early partners-performed on The Ed Sullivan Show ,” Mrs. Laughlin said.

“I’ve seen the footage,” I said, carrying the plastic-wrapped gown high in one hand so it wouldn’t drag on the ground. “It belongs in a museum.”

Mrs. Laughlin glared at me. “She said she wanted me to have it. She and Lavinia and I worked on it together, oh, decades ago, before Lavinia had her accident and turned to designing full-time.”

“Lavinia Fremont?” She was a famous and successful competition gown designer, the same vintage as Corinne Blakely. I bought gowns from her; in fact, she was working on my and Vitaly’s costumes for the upcoming Virginia DanceSport competition.

Mrs. Laughlin nodded and headed back toward the kitchen. “They were best friends,” she said. “Mrs. Blakely was very good to Lavinia after the accident, invested in her design business.”

I vaguely remembered hearing about a tragedy or scandal involving Lavinia Fremont some decades ago, but I couldn’t summon up the details. I’d ask Maurice. “Aren’t you worried Turner will miss some of these things?”

She shook her head so her fluffy white hair danced. “A pillow? A pincushion? The boy is oblivious to anything whose value can’t be totted up by a bank.”

“The painting?” It had left a bare rectangle of lighter paint where we unhooked it from the wall. Something about the luminous colors and quiet serenity of the scene made me suspect it was valuable.

“Maybe,” she admitted with a tight smile. “But I don’t care. It’ll be on its way to Cornwall tomorrow, and I’ll be following it immediately after the funeral. He may suspect I took it, but I don’t see that he can do anything about it.”

I supposed I ought to object to aiding and abetting a thief, but I found I didn’t care. If the painting meant something to Mrs. Laughlin, I was glad she could have it. We exited through the back again and finished loading the Volvo. I told the housekeeper that I’d see her at the funeral, and watched as she backed out carefully. Then I made sure the back door was locked-I didn’t want real thieves ransacking Corinne Blakely’s house-and trotted around to the front. Clouds had drifted in, obscuring what little light the stars and new moon provided, and the wind blew in fitful gusts. I locked the front door, too, fumbling the key a bit in the dark, and was just descending the steps when headlights swept into the driveway.