Ella Barrick - Dead Man Waltzing

Most of the crowd had dispersed, many of them leaving the pub, and no one was watching the twosome still tossing darts toward one of the targets. No danger of public embarrassment. “How hard can it be?” I asked, grabbing a hasty sip of my own beer before Maurice pulled me to a line on the wooden floor and handed me a dart. Showing me how to position my fingers on the ridged metal, he drew his arm back and pushed it forward to demonstrate the throwing motion several times. “Push the dart at the board. Don’t fling it. There’s no break in the wrist.”

I lobbed the feathered missile toward the board; it nicked the corner and clattered to the floor. Okay, so the game was more difficult than it looked. Maurice handed me another dart. “Not so hard. Relax into it.”

I tried relaxing and the dart nose-dived into the floor a foot in front of the target. I pouted.

“Not quite so relaxed,” Maurice said, hiding a smile.

I could see he was enjoying himself, maybe for the first time since his arrest, and I didn’t want to spoil his mood, but after another fifteen minutes of the darts lesson, during which I managed to sink most of my darts into the pockmarked beam supporting the target and a couple of them into the target itself (to extravagant praise from Maurice), I dragged him back to the table.

Squirming onto the bar stool, I said, “I’ve got some good news and a question.”

“Good news first,” Maurice said, signaling for another beer. He was drinking something dark and foamy that looked like it would hold a fork upright; I prefer a beer that light can penetrate, an India pale ale or the like.

Pulling the cartridge from my purse, I waved it aloft. “Ta-da.”

His brows climbed as he reached for it. “Anastasia! How did you acquire it?”

I told him about going to the estate sale with Tav and the stratagems we’d had to employ to secure the cartridge. “The Quest for the Cartridge ended in triumph,” I declaimed, “due to the perseverance and resourcefulness of the knight and his fair lady.” Whew . I’d had too much beer.

Maurice wiped away a foamy mustache and smiled. “Well done. Mildred and I will get started on deciphering it first thing tomorrow. I just hope that what it contains is worth all the money and effort you put into finding it.”

“If not”-I shrugged-“we’re no worse off than we were before.”

“You said you had a question?”

Someone plugged quarters into an old jukebox that had been turned off during the tourney, and a Kenny Rogers song drifted our way. It was incongruous in the British-feeling pub. “I talked to Marco Ingelido yesterday,” I said. “And to Sarah today.” Uncomfortable confronting Maurice with Marco’s story, I gladly wasted some time telling him about my conversation with Sarah.

“I can’t believe she broke into your house,” he exclaimed. “Good heavens!”

Fortifying myself with a swallow of beer and trying to block out the irritating chorus of “Wake Me Up before You Go-Go” that was now bouncing from the jukebox, I said, “Marco claims Corinne knew something about you that you wouldn’t want to see published.”

“Corinne knew many things about me I wouldn’t want to see in print, starting with my waist size,” Maurice said humorously, but I could see the uneasiness in his eyes.

“He mentioned a necklace.” I let the comment hang there.

“Ah.” Maurice stared into his beer.

The silence lengthened, broken only by the dulcet tones of Wham!, and I pleated a bar napkin.

“I was young,” Maurice started, still gazing into his beer as if it were Dumbledore’s Pensieve. I wondered what memories it contained. “But that’s no excuse.”

I stiffened. Was Maurice going to confess to theft? I didn’t really want to hear it.

“It was my second cruise. The ship was called Starlight Maiden. I only ever sailed on her the one time. Anyway, our second night out, I asked a woman to dance. That was my job, you know-to ‘entertain’ unaccompanied ladies of a certain age on the dance floor, or even accompanied ones, if it looked like their escorts would be relieved if someone else danced with them. This woman’s name was Julia. She was maybe sixty to my thirty. Attractive, self-assured, from Oklahoma. Oil money.

“You may have heard jokes about dance hosts being little better than gigolos?” He didn’t wait for me to answer, but hurried on. “In this case… we ‘hooked up,’ as the kids say today. For the remaining seven nights of the cruise. It was fun. I was attentive; she was generous.”

I squirmed in my seat, intensely uncomfortable, appalled that I had forced Maurice into reliving this. “You don’t have to-”

“Midway through the cruise, she bestowed a necklace on me, a ruby pendant, a smallish one, set in gold. She said she was tired of it, that I should give it to my mother or my sister. I tucked it away, planning to do just that, and didn’t think any more about it until after the passengers debarked back in Florida and it transpired that Julia had told the purser her necklace was stolen. Before I could come forward, the crew’s quarters were searched and the necklace was found in my suitcase.”

“Bitch.”

Maurice pursed his lips. “A very troubled woman, at the least. The cruise line fired me immediately, and I was in danger of going to jail. Corinne saved me.”

“How?” I envisioned the dancer going toe-to-toe with the mysterious Julia, pulling out her fingernails one by one until she agreed not to prosecute.

“She hired a private investigator. He discovered that Julia had pulled the same trick three times on separate cruise lines. Gotten three dance hosts fired. One went to prison. Corinne presented this information to the appropriate authorities and the charge was withdrawn; in fact, Julia was prosecuted. I was still fired, though, for ‘fraternizing’ with a passenger.”

“My God, Maurice.”

“Not an incident I look back on with pride. You’d better believe all my future dealings with passengers were strictly on the dance floor.” He gave me a strained smile.

Leaning across the table, I hugged him awkwardly. “I’m sorry I brought it up.”

“No, it needed to come out. I suppose I should tell Drake, let him advise me as to whether or not I should give the information to the police. It wouldn’t do to have them stumble across the old arrest somehow. Or to get a copy of Corinne’s manuscript or outline and find the tale in there.” He tapped the cartridge on the table.

It was well past nine o’clock by now and the crowd had thinned out. A waiter came by and we both shook our heads at him. He collected our glasses and swiped at the table, leaving a damp swirl on the polyurethaned wood. Tucking the cartridge under his arm, Maurice slid off his stool. I followed suit. We headed for the door and Maurice collected a few “congrats” and “good nights” from the remaining drinkers. “See you in the morning,” I said, trying to sound natural and spritely.

“ À demain ,” Maurice said, walking me to my car and declining a ride home. I watched from behind the steering wheel as he started down the sidewalk toward his house, shoulders slumped just a little, stride a bit less sure than usual. Striped by a car’s headlights, he crossed a street and I lost sight of him.

Vitaly stomped into the studio the next morning for our practice, tossed his designer sunglasses on top of the stereo cabinet, and announced, “John is being a total fanny.”

I had to think about that one for a moment. “Ass?”

“ Da! ” He nodded, adding a phrase in Russian that probably translated to something ruder than “ass.”

He marched in place to warm up, each foot pounding down in a way that suggested he was envisioning his partner’s head under his heels. I’d never seen him so worked up. His thin cheeks were flushed, and his strawlike hair flopped as he marched. He had moved from Russia to live with John in Baltimore three or four months back, and I’d met John several times since Vitaly and I had become partners. He was a bit older than Vitaly-in his forties, I’d say-and seemed like a steady, kind man. I carefully didn’t ask what John had done to merit being called an ass, since getting involved in Vitaly’s love life-even peripherally-seemed like a bad idea.