Ella Barrick: Dead Man Waltzing

I made my way past a group of thirtyish men arguing about whether Bud or Miller Lite commercials were funnier. They paused, midargument, to eye me as I passed. I ignored them, used to the attention. When you’re blond, stacked, and move like a dancer, men tend to notice you. I slid onto the stool beside Maurice and said, “Hey.”

After a too-long moment, he lowered his gaze from the television to note my presence. It took another moment before he said, “Anastasia.”

No matter how hard I try, I can’t convince him to leave off calling me by my real name and use Stacy like everyone else does. He blinked twice, looking perplexed by my presence, and I began to wonder how many yards of ale he’d already drunk.

“Fascinating game,” I said, nodding toward the TV.

“I don’t understand a single thing about it,” he said, eyes cutting back toward the screen.

Ordering a glass of chardonnay from the middle-aged, aproned bartender, I studied Maurice. Although garbed in a double-breasted blazer and tailored slacks, he looked less dapper than usual. A lock of Brylcreemed white hair drooped onto his forehead, his shirt looked tired, and even his perpetual George Hamilton tan looked washed-out. Stripped of his usual élan, he seemed a stranger.

“Sooo,” I said when my wine appeared. “I heard Corinne Blakely died today.”

He turned his head to look at me and swayed on the stool. I reached out an arm to steady him. “I’m not drunk,” he said with the careful diction of someone who was drunk.

“You have a right to be,” I assured him.

“Rinny Blakely died,” he said, as if I hadn’t just mentioned it.

“I know.”

“We were having lunch and then-” His head flopped toward his chest, and for a moment I thought he had passed out. Then I realized he was demonstrating what had happened with Corinne. He snapped his head upright. “Then she slumped over and fell out of her chair. I didn’t know what to do.” Taking a swallow of his beer, he wiped at a smudge on the bar with his elbow.

I took advantage of his distraction to order a couple of coffees from the bartender, who nodded her graying head approvingly. “What did you do?” I asked Maurice.

He rubbed a finger against his prominent nose. “They have very effishun-efficient-waiters at the Swallow,” he said. “They called for an ambulansh-ambu lance -but I lifted Rinny and carried her to the hospital. She weighs less now than when we danced together forty years ago.”

“You carried her to the hospital?” No wonder the man looked gray and weary. “How far was it?”

“Couple blocksh.”

Setting our coffees in front of us, the bartender told me, “You’d be doing your grandfather a favor to take him home. He doesn’t usually put it away like this, if you know what I mean. Bad day?” She waited for me to fork over some good gossip.

“You could say that.”

Disappointed by my discretion, she drifted to the other end of the bar to wait on new customers. Everyone in here looked like regulars, I thought as she greeted them by name. I sipped my coffee and Maurice followed suit, not even seeming to notice that his beer had disappeared. Maybe he’d pickled his taste buds. We sat in silence, finishing our coffees. Maurice set his mug on the counter with a snap, and looked at me, his eyes less bleary than earlier.

“Anastasia, what are you doing here?”

“Looking for you.”

His brow crinkled. “What on earth for?”

“I heard you were with Corinne Blakely when she died,” I hedged, “and I thought you might need a friend.” I didn’t think he was in any condition to hear the police were after him.

He gave me a sad smile. “I don’t have a lot of friends. It’s hard to keep in touch when you’re cruising to the Bahamas one week, Mexico the next. New passengers every week or ten days. You start getting to know someone, to like someone, and they’re disembarking with a ‘We’ll have to keep in touch’ you know they don’t mean. It’s not that they don’t like you; it’s that the cruise was a fantashy world, and once they’re back in their real world, going to library board meetings and working with Meals on Wheels and keeping the grandkids for the weekend… well, it’s hard to shtay-stay-in touch.”

I hadn’t thought much about what life as a cruise dance host would be like, but his words painted a picture more lonely than glamorous. “You didn’t always work on a cruise ship.”

“No.” He seemed disinclined to discuss his earlier life.

I helped him down from the bar stool, relieved that he could stand on his own. “Let’s get you home.” I remembered the cop waiting outside his place. “On second thought, why don’t you come home with me for the night? You can sleep in the guest room.” I thought I’d changed the sheets on the guest bed after my brother, Nick, visited three months ago.

“That’s very kind of you, Anastasia.”

Several patrons called good-nights to Maurice as we left. The fresh air outside perked him up a bit and we walked the couple blocks to my car without incident. He dozed off on the way back to my place, but woke easily when I tapped his shoulder. “We’re here.”

Inside, I heated a bowl of soup for him, pretty sure he hadn’t eaten since his lunch with Corinne, and remade the bed while he ate. By the time I returned to the kitchen, he was sitting straighter and finishing a big glass of water.

“My head is going to ache abominably in the morning,” he said with a rueful smile.

“I expect so.”

He looked around the kitchen and said, “I shouldn’t impose. I can go home, Anastasia.”

“You might not want to do that.” When he looked a question at me, I explained about the police looking for him.

His brows climbed toward his hairline in astonishment. “For me? The police think I had something to do with Corinne’s death?”

“Apparently.”

“That’s preposterous!”

“Detective Lissy thinks it’s suspicious that you ‘disappeared’-his word-from the hospital.”

“Disappeared? I sat in the waiting room for over an hour, until I gathered that the doctors had been unable to resuscitate Corinne, that she had passed. In truth, I think she was gone from the moment she hit the floor at the restaurant. I went straight to the Fox and Muskrat and I’ve been sitting there ever since, drowning my sorrows, you might say.” He stopped abruptly. “Why do the police care about a heart attack, anyway?”

“They think she was murdered.”

“Ridiculous,” he said forcefully. “How?”

I realized Detective Lissy hadn’t given me any details. “I don’t know.” They’d been lunching, she’d keeled over… “Poison?”

The idea seemed to stun him.

“What, exactly, happened? Did you pick her up or did you arrive separately at the restaurant? Did anyone join you? What did you eat?”

Maurice rose and refilled his water glass from the tap. Leaning back against the sink, he took a long swallow. “We arrived separately,” he said finally. “I was running errands and drove to the Swallow from the library. Corinne was there, seated at a table, when I arrived. She looked fabulous.”

Corinne always looked fabulous. She had a slender Audrey Hepburn-ish figure that looked marvelous in clothes, and thick, angel-wing white hair she always wore in a chignon. Photos revealed she’d had the prematurely white hair from her early thirties. She favored suits in clear pinks and reds and blues that flattered her complexion, and had a collection of shoes I envied. I won’t even mention her extraordinary wardrobe of competition dresses. “Had she eaten or drunk anything before you arrived?”

“I don’t think so, although she’d ordered a bottle of champagne.”