Ella Barrick - Dead Man Waltzing

Dani tossed her hair and sniffed, knowing I was making fun of her love of do-it-yourself and home-makeover TV shows. “Laugh if you want, but I’ve learned a lot from those shows. I’ll find someone to give you an estimate.”

“Really?” I hugged her good-bye. “Thanks, Dani.” She headed toward her car and I called after her, “Think about it.” I wasn’t talking about the sofa.

Between collecting Maurice from the police station, our field trip to Corinne Blakely’s house, and the furniture-shopping expedition with Dani, I’d taken an extraordinarily long lunch. No biggie, I told myself, climbing the interior stairs to the studio at almost two o’clock. Our next class wasn’t until four, and I’d be working until eight o’clock tonight with classes and a private lesson with one of the men who paid me to dance with him at professional-amateur competitions. Such students were a pro’s bread and butter, and I was hoping to take on a couple more, since one of my best students, Mark Downey, had turned out to be an unbalanced stalker type.

When I opened the door into the studio hallway, the strains of “With You I’m Born Again,” one of my favorite waltzes, drifted from the ballroom. Curious about who was here-I’d installed new locks not long ago and only a few people had keys-I paused outside the ballroom door. Vitaly Voloshin, my new dance partner, stood at the bar stretching. He had a lanky body and was one of those people who look totally unprepossessing at first glance; in fact, you wouldn’t be surprised to hear he was a 7-Eleven clerk or video store manager, with his longish, strawlike hair, pale skin, and bony face. But when he stepped on a dance floor, he underwent an amazing transformation, becoming somehow elegant and electric. I couldn’t explain it. He caught sight of me in the mirrors I’d had installed when we redid the room after the fire, and his face split into a grin. He loved smiling since his partner, John, had gifted him with dental work that turned his formerly tannish, crooked teeth into movie star-worthy choppers.

“Good. You is here. We can practicing. I have the new ideas for our waltz.”

“We didn’t have a practice scheduled.”

Vitaly raised his brows. “So?”

“You’re right. Give me a minute.” I clattered back downstairs and threw on dance leggings, a T-shirt, and my dance shoes. He was waiting in the middle of the ballroom’s hardwood floor when I returned, hand extended in invitation. He cued the stereo with the remote as I walked toward him, feeling myself drift into the dreamy, elegant mood of the waltz as the first notes floated around me. We moved slowly at first, then more swiftly as he whirled me into a turn series. I extended my limbs with each movement, knowing the pointed toe, the half twist of the wrist, and stretched fingers made the elongated and graceful lines that separated a so-so waltzer from a champion waltzer. Even without a flowing dress and an updo, I felt timeless, regal, like I was dancing at the court of some long-deposed or beheaded European king.

New songs came on, but Vitaly and I held the mood. People think that competitive dancers get to prepare a routine to a specific song, like they do on Ballroom with the B-Listers , but we really dance to whatever the competition organizers cue up. Vitaly’s clasp was strong, his steps perfectly suited to mine, and we danced for at least forty-five minutes, stopping to perfect a pose or rework a turn, before I found Maurice’s problems intruding on my thoughts. Vitaly felt my mind drift and cut the music in midphrase, frowning slightly.

“You is losing concentrations,” he said.

“I know. I’m sorry. Let’s take a break.” I darted across the hall to the minifridge in the bathroom and returned with a bottled water for myself and a grapefruit juice for Vitaly. “You heard about Corinne Blakely?” I asked, handing him the bottle.

“ Da .” He drank deeply and swiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Is tragic losing for dance world. She was-how do you say?-‘only one of her type.’”

“One of a kind. Did you know her well?”

“ Comme ci, comme ça .” Vitaly waggled his hand in the international gesture for “so-so.” “We are dancing together at exhibition in France.”

“I remember that exhibition. What was it-two, three years ago?”

“She is having amazing control, is being very precisely,” he said, “for a-”

He threw in a Russian word that I automatically translated as “old woman,” “grandmother,” or “ancient crone.”

“Maurice was having lunch with her when she died. The police interrogated him.”

Vitaly opened his eyes wide. “Is not possible!”

I didn’t know whether he thought it was impossible that Maurice killed Corinne, or impossible that the police questioned him.

After another long glug of grapefruit juice, he added, “Is bad for business. Peoples is not liking dancing with murderers or where murders is happened.” His eyes slid to the spot near the windows where I’d found Rafe’s body.

“Maurice is not a murderer.”

“You should proving.” Vitaly’s face lit up.

“Investigate? I don’t think so.” I shook my head, making my ponytail swish across my shoulders.

“But yes! You has found Rafe’s killer. You can finding Corinne’s.”

“I’ve got a ballroom studio to run, students to recruit, expenses to slash, and classes to teach,” I said. “I don’t have time to play investigator. Besides, the police let Maurice go after talking to him this morning; chances are he’s not even a suspect anymore.”

My cell phone rang. I didn’t recognize the number. “Hello?”

“Anastasia, you’ll have to ask Vitaly to fill in for me at tonight’s class.” Maurice’s voice was calm, but a twinge of tension, like a taut piano wire, hummed through it. “I’ve been arrested.”

A few frantic minutes and a couple of phone calls later, I had elicited a promise from Phineas Drake’s law firm that a legal minion of some sort would be dispatched to Maurice immediately, even though the great man himself was on a train returning from New York City. Hearing the desperation in my voice (or having checked Maurice’s financials and found that he could pay the firm’s exorbitant fees), the aloof assistant patched me through to Phineas Drake’s cell phone. I could hear the rhythmic clacking of the train as we spoke, and I visualized the bearded, bearlike man reclining in a seat, his size and girth discouraging anyone from sitting beside him.

“Stacy Graysin.” Drake’s voice boomed through the phone, and I could see Vitaly crane his neck to listen. “I didn’t think I’d be hearing from you again so soon.” He chuckled, a rich Santa-ish sound. I always had trouble reconciling his jovial exterior with his sharp and calculating mind.

I explained about Maurice’s situation. “I don’t know why they’ve arrested him,” I said. “I don’t think he knew for sure.”

When he spoke again, Drake’s voice was all business. “If he’s been smart enough to keep his mouth shut, it won’t matter; we’ll get him out of it, although it may be tomorrow, because it’s too late to get him arraigned today. Allison is on her way. She’s a chip off the old block.”

I had no idea what “old block” he was talking about.

“For a while there, during her sophomore year at Yale, it looked like she was going to be a vet, but then she decided to follow in dear old Dad’s footsteps and become a legal eagle.”

“You have a daughter?” Somehow I hadn’t pictured Drake as being married, much less having children.

“Six.”

“Six daughters? Good heavens!”