Ella Barrick - Dead Man Waltzing

“Three are lawyers like their pop, two are doctors like their mom, and one’s a clockmaker.”

I resisted the urge to pry further into the Drake family’s situation. “So Allison can get Maurice out? Can she find out why they arrested him?”

“Absolutely. In fact, I can find that out with a phone call to the DA. Call me back in ten.” He hung up.

Vitaly had been dancing from foot to foot in front of me, impatient to find out more. “What is happening?” he asked.

“The police have arrested Maurice for Corinne Blakely’s murder, and I’ve arranged for a lawyer to represent him. Can you help me with the Latin class tonight?”

“ Da . Of course.” Vitaly nodded impatiently. “What can I doing to help Maurice?”

I smiled, touched by his willingness to help a man he’d known only a couple of months. “That’s very kind, Vitaly, but I can’t think of anything right now, besides covering his classes and maybe working with his private students.”

“Vitaly is doing,” he said with the air of one making a heroic sacrifice. “I will even dancing with the hippies.”

I didn’t correct his English. One of Vitaly’s conditions about working here had been that he wouldn’t have to partner heavy women, even though one of them was one of our top two or three dancers. “Has it been ten minutes?” I looked at my watch. “Close enough.”

Phineas Drake answered on the first ring. “They’ve got a pill bottle that apparently was the source of the poison that killed the Blakely woman,” he said without preamble. “It’s got Goldberg’s fingerprints on it.”

I gasped. Drake chuckled. He didn’t seem worried about the damning evidence against Maurice. “Dozens of ways Goldberg’s fingerprints could’ve gotten on that bottle,” he assured me. “If that’s all the police have… pfft. We’ll know more after we get a look at the autopsy report.”

I hung up, feeling slightly queasy, and relayed the news to Vitaly. “He asked me to feed his cats,” I added. I hadn’t even known Maurice had cats, but he’d asked me to take care of Gene and Cyd “for a night or two” when he called about his arrest.

“Go, then,” Vitaly said, flicking me away with his hands. “Vitaly is holding the port until you returning.”

“Fort.” I left.

Maurice’s house was a Craftsman-style bungalow with a compact front yard planted with dark green ivy rather than grass. Pink, mauve, and white impatiens bloomed in red ceramic pots on either side of the door, which was painted a dark purple. I wondered whether the color was Maurice’s choice, or if he bought the house like that. I found the key under the rightmost pot, as Maurice had said, and opened the door.

“Mrow!”

A silvery cat with darker gray markings came trotting toward me, tail up, and began to twine around my legs. If I hadn’t known better, I’d have thought she’d been alone for days rather than just the hours since Maurice’s arrest. “You must be Cyd,” I said. “As in Cyd Charisse.” I stooped to scratch under her chin. The cat purred, intimating that I could call her anything I liked as long as I kept scratching. Another cat, bigger and darker, with white markings like eyebrows over his green eyes, and a white-tipped tail, jumped from a plant ledge to a console table in the hall, knocking something off with a clink. I squatted to stroke both cats and pick up whatever Gene-named for Gene Kelly, Maurice had told me-had knocked off.

It was a key. I was about to put it back on the table when a thought came to me. It looked like the key Maurice had used at Corinne Blakely’s house, brass-colored and a bit larger than your standard house key. I weighed it in my hand, thinking. Thought one: Finding the manuscript was important to Maurice. Thought two: Turner Blakely had mentioned he was off to Virginia Beach, two and a half hours away, for a bachelor party. He’d drink too much, put the moves on the stripper-he was the kind of guy whose friends would definitely have a stripper or two at a bachelor party-and crash at a friend’s house for the night. Thought three: This evening would be a perfect time to search Corinne’s house for the manuscript. There might not be another chance.

Dismissing thought four, which had to do with arrest, trial, and imprisonment for breaking and entering, I fed the cats, locked up, and pointed my Beetle toward home. I’d have to postpone my debut as a housebreaker until after the Latin dance class.

Twilight stretched shadows across the yard and gave the unlit house a somewhat forbidding aspect when I arrived at nearly eight thirty. An accident on the parkway made the drive that had taken twenty minutes in late morning take three times that long. One of the joys of living in the greater D.C. area. I had plenty of time to question my impulsiveness on the drive, but I didn’t turn around. If there was the slightest chance that the mysterious manuscript would help erase Maurice from the police’s suspect list, then I had to do what I could to find it.

Getting out of my car, I climbed the steps to the front door and slid the key into the lock. I looked over my shoulder, feeling furtive, and saw nothing and no one except my yellow Beetle looking lonely on the circular driveway. I eased the door open. Darkness greeted me. I pulled out the small flashlight I’d had the forethought to bring along and clicked the “on” button. Nothing happened. I shook it and tried again. More nothing. Shoot . Next time I’d have to be forethoughtful enough to check the batteries before setting out on a house-searching expedition. I reminded myself that there were no nearby neighbors and felt along the wall for a light switch. My fingers touched a rheostat and I turned it slightly. The chandelier glowed to life, bulbs half-lit like fireflies surrounded by sparkly crystals.

I’d had time to develop a strategy on the drive, and I set out in search of an office. No way could I search every room in this mansion-I’d lived in apartment complexes that were smaller-so I’d decided to look in Corinne’s office and her bedroom. Then I’d leave, even if I hadn’t found the manuscript. On the ground floor, I poked my head into rooms filled with antique tallboys and silk-covered sofas too fragile to sit on, a dining room table long enough to seat the Redskins’ starting offense and defense, oil paintings in heavy frames, and a kitchen with an oversize farm sink and cabinet-front appliances. I suspected most of the parlors, drawing rooms, music rooms, and sitting rooms-or whatever they were called-went largely unused. Nothing looked remotely like an office.

I climbed the curving staircase to the second floor, my footsteps muffled by the expensive-feeling carpet lining the steps. A wide hallway extended on either side of me, and I went right. The first room I looked in was a bedroom, but the room across from it, which must face the backyard, was an office, complete with desk, file cabinet, and typewriter. Finally! I made my way across the room mostly by feel and fumbled with the drapes, pulling the cord to close them. Only then did I return to the door, find the light switch, and flick it on, illuminating a Tiffany table lamp.

I made straight for the desk, the sight of the old Smith Corona electric typewriter making me hopeful. No stack of manuscript pages sat beside it, however, and I could find none in the drawers. Sighing, I turned to the wooden file cabinet and opened the top drawer. Financial records. Investments. Insurance. The second drawer held what looked like personal correspondence, each file folder labeled with a name. Riffling through the first folder, marked AMELIA ADAMS, I found letters dating back to the mid-twentieth century. Corinne must have saved every letter she ever got. Fascinating for a biographer, but not so useful to me. The rest of the folders in the drawer, alphabetically filed, held similar contents.