Ella Barrick - Dead Man Waltzing

“Ah, well.” Ingelido loosed a dramatic sigh. Giving Maurice a considering look, he added, “You and Corinne went back decades. She must have known where all your skeletons were buried.”

Maurice flinched almost imperceptibly, and I was startled to see fear skate across his eyes before he banished it. An uneasy thought crossed my mind: Could Maurice have something to hide?

He rallied. “At least my skeletons-if I had any-are decently buried. Some of yours are still walking around, hm?”

Ingelido flushed red and then paled. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. Let me know if you want more information about the franchise opportunity, Stacy.” He handed me a business card with the stylized, top-hatted logo of Taking the Lead with Ingelido, and left.

Vitaly followed on his heels, exclaiming, “I am late for meeting John.”

Left alone with Maurice, I raised my brows and asked, “What in the world was that about?” Before he could answer, I said, “You can tell me while I work. I’ve got to clean the bathroom.” Since our bottom line was a little shaky, we saved money by doing the cleaning ourselves. It wasn’t too onerous, but I looked forward to the day we could hire a janitorial service again.

Maurice followed me to the powder room and watched as I liberated cleanser, a sponge, and rubber gloves from the under-sink cabinet. I squirted cleanser under the toilet rim and motioned for Maurice to start talking. “Marco Ingelido is a cad,” he said. “He hurt Corinne very badly some years ago. She was in love with him-why, I’ll never know, except she had unfortunate taste in men-”

“Present company excepted.”

A slight smile eased his frown. “Thank you, Anastasia. Anyway, Corinne loved him and he threw her over for Marian, the woman he’s married to now.”

“Is that what you meant when you said his skeletons were still walking around?” I looked up from scrubbing the sink to see a crease appear between his brows.

“He has a niece, Sarah. Sarah Lewis. She’s a photographer… must be almost thirty now. Marco dotes on her. They’ve always had a close relationship, much closer than your average uncle and niece. Anyway-”

“He had an affair with his own niece? How very Woody Allen of him. No, that was his stepdaughter, wasn’t it?” I wrinkled my nose, sloshed the brush around the toilet, and flushed away the foamy water. I’d had a crush on my cousin Tom when I was fifteen or so and he was nineteen. We’d sneaked a few kisses (okay, it was really several hours’ worth of nonstop, volcano-hot kissing) during a family reunion at a lake in the Poconos, and I’d had a hard-to-explain case of bristle burn that made my chin, lips, and cheeks raw. We’d returned to our separate states and Tom had moved on to an eighteen-year-old girlfriend before we got too serious, but I’d moped about him for several months. I sighed at the memory.

“He-”

Clicking noises from the hall approached quickly. Moments later, Hoover skidded to a stop with a woof. He wedged his head between Maurice’s leg and the doorjamb, nearly knocking Maurice over as he wriggled into the small bathroom. I patted his heavy head as Mildred Kensington’s voice fluted, “Hoover, you bad dog. How many times have I told you it’s not polite to interrupt someone in the loo?”

Hoover ignored her, nosing at the minifridge’s door in an attempt to open it. “Hello, Mildred,” Maurice said, backing out of the bathroom doorway.

“Maurice! Oh, I came as soon as I heard. Thank goodness you’ve been released.” She threw her plump form at him and embraced him, almost knocking him off his feet. He steadied himself with a hand against the wall.

She released him, her eyes bright. Dabbing at them with a lace hankie she pulled from her sleeve, she said, “It makes me so emotional. To think of you cooped up in a prison cell with no room to dance .”

I could think of a lot worse things about being imprisoned than that, but I didn’t mention them. A slurping sound brought all our heads around, and we saw Hoover lapping happily from the toilet. Thank goodness I’d already flushed the cleanser down. He looked up when Mildred shrieked his name, slobbering on the toilet seat and tiled floor. So much for my clean bathroom.

“Hoover, dear, that’s a nasty, nasty habit,” Mildred scolded. “How many times have I told you that?”

The Great Dane’s tail thumped against the fridge. Stripping off my gloves, I joined the others in the hall, and Hoover followed me.

“It was kind of you to stop by, Mildred,” Maurice said, “but-”

“Oh, I didn’t just stop by. I’ve come to tell you that I’m starting a legal defense fund for you.” Mildred beamed. “I’ve already put out collection jars at many of the businesses around here, with that lovely photo of us from when we competed at the Emerald Ball a couple of years ago. And I’ve sent an e-mail to all my correspondents, explaining the situation and asking for donations.”

Maurice looked appalled. “Mil-”

“Oh, no, you don’t have to thank me.” She held up a beringed hand sparkling with diamonds, rubies, and platinum. “You know you’re so much more than a dance instructor to me, Maurice, and I couldn’t sleep at night if I didn’t do what I could to make sure you don’t end up incarcerated for life. Or worse. Do they have the death penalty in Virginia?”

“Indeed they do,” Maurice said grimly. “One of the guards ‘joked’ that when I got convicted and put on death row, I could be known as ‘dead man waltzing.’ Apparently the phrase ‘dead man walking’ refers to a condemned prisoner on his way to be executed.”

“That’s horrible!” I said.

“We’ll have to make sure it doesn’t come to that,” Mildred said, patting his arm. “Don’t you worry. I’m all over this like stink on excrement, as my grandson says.”

When I choked back a laugh, she twinkled at me. “Well, that’s not exactly how he says it. Come on, Maurice.” She hooked her arm through his. “I’m taking you to lunch. It’s a wonder you didn’t waste away on that nasty prison diet.”

“I was only there one night,” he said, letting himself be dragged away.

“Perhaps Hoover could stay here with you, Miss Graysin?” Mildred called over her shoulder. “For some reason they don’t appreciate him at Giuseppe’s.”

Imagine that. “Sure.”

They exited through the door by my office. Hoover sat in front of the closed door, cocking his head. When it didn’t reopen, he raised one great paw and scratched at it, looking over his shoulder to invite me to let him out.

“Sorry, buddy. You’re stuck with me for the moment.”

He stared at me disbelievingly. When it dawned on him that Mildred wasn’t coming back immediately, he threw up his nose and let loose with a mournful whoo-wooo-ooo .

“I think I have some peanut butter crackers in my drawer,” I said, coaxing him into my office. He snarfed down the six crackers, snuffled around the desks, then clambered onto the love seat, resting his head against the back of it so he could see out the window.

Maurice and Mildred returned more than two hours later. Hoover leaped off the couch at the sound of their footsteps on the outside stairs and dashed to the door to greet them. The three of them crowded into the office moments later, Mildred looking distinctly disgruntled.

“That Turner Blakely is a nasty young man,” she announced.

“Did you run into him at the restaurant? What did he do?”

“It was my idea,” Mildred admitted, patting Hoover as he nosed at her hand. “When Maurice filled me in on your search-so brave of you, dear-I thought up a wonderful scheme for getting the typewriter cartridge from Corinne’s house. ‘Tell Corinne’s grandson you want the typewriter for sentimental reasons,’ I told Maurice. ‘Tell him it’s special to you because Corinne used it to write you letters.’”