Dead Man Waltzing

Chapter 8

I froze. Turner Blakely! I was so screwed. My choices were try to brazen it out or dive into the bushes adjacent to the stoop. If I tried to run for it, he’d see me. I dived.

Stiff holly leaves pricked me and scratched my face, and crushed juniper let out a fresh piney scent. The drop was only four feet or so, and I landed on my feet but pitched forward onto my knees. Damp soil caked my hands. Concentrating on being still, I tried not to think about the spiders or other creepy crawlies that might lurk in the greenery. I couldn’t see Turner or his car from my vantage point, but I heard the motor cut off, the door slam, and footsteps. A man’s figure came into view, pausing beside my Beetle. He stopped to look into the passenger-side window, then straightened and looked around. After a moment or two, he started toward the house.

Watching him walk, I knew it wasn’t Turner. As a dancer, I’m very aware of how people move, and this man didn’t move like Turner. His stride was longer, his balance better. Besides, I noted as he mounted the stairs, this man was taller than Corinne’s grandson. Looking over his shoulder when he reached the door, he reached for the knob and jiggled it in vain. I was glad I’d locked it.

The man rattled it harder, cursed, then pulled something from his wallet and had at the door again. Lock picks, maybe? I wondered whether he was one of those opportunistic thieves who read the obituaries and burgle dead people’s homes. The skritch of his tool against the door sounded loud in the stillness. A moment later, a faint snap elicited another curse and something fell to the ground almost noiselessly. As the man bent to pick it up, a gust of wind snatched it and tossed it into the bushes, right at my feet.

Ack! I tried to shrink back without rustling the bushes. Luckily, the wind was blowing hard enough to clack the branches together, so it covered, I hoped, any sounds I made. The burglar swore loud and long this time and crossed the wide stoop with a heavy tread, coming straight toward me. There was something familiar about his voice…

I didn’t have time to figure it out as I concentrated on looking small and bent my head forward so my white face wouldn’t glimmer. I held my breath, praying the man wouldn’t want whatever he’d dropped badly enough to brave the holly to look for it. Labored breaths sounded from only a couple feet away, and the man muttered to himself, “Shit… flashlight… no one… find it.”

When the footsteps moved away again and no beam of light shone into my face, I took that to mean he wished he’d brought a flashlight and didn’t think anyone would find whatever he’d dropped, so it wasn’t worth searching in the bushes. The tink of metal against glass moments later, followed by a shaking sound, told me he was trying to raise the window. I found myself hoping he’d get in, so I could seize the opportunity to escape.

Instead, he descended the stairs two at a time and I stopped my breaths, afraid he’d decided to search for what he’d dropped after all. The footsteps moved away, however, and soon I couldn’t hear them. Was he leaving? I listened hard. No, I didn’t hear a car start up. Glass shattered somewhere around the back of the house and I realized he’d broken a window. Now was my chance. Still on all fours, I crawled forward a couple of feet, wincing as a holly leaf scored my cheek. A second later, that pain was forgotten as something jabbed into my palm. I closed my lips over the “Ow!” and it came out as a muffled, “Urmf.”

I picked up the thin, flat item, figuring it was the tool the burglar had dropped, and slipped it into my pocket. Rising to a half crouch, I shouldered my way through the remaining shrubs, saw no one on the expanse of lawn and driveway in front of me, and broke cover, doing my best gazelle impression until I thudded against my car. Scrambling around it, I flung open the driver’s door, sat and inserted the key in one motion, threw the car into reverse because the burglar’s dark sedan had me blocked in from the front, and backed down the drive faster than I’d ever backed up in my life.

As my rear wheels spun onto the pavement of the main road, I flicked on my headlights. They grazed the burglar’s car, glinting off the Mercedes hood ornament. What kind of burglar drove a Mercedes? A really successful one? I didn’t have time to think about it as horns honked to complain about my precipitate arrival onto the Mount Vernon Parkway. I straightened the wheel and stomped on the gas, waving apologetically to the car behind me. I was halfway home before it crossed my mind to call the police and anonymously report a burglary in progress.

Safely home, I poured myself a healthy glass of Chianti and eased my hand into my pocket to see what the burglar had dropped. Pulling it out with two fingers, I found one-third of a credit card, snapped off so the hard plastic formed a cutting edge. This was no professional burglar, I decided. Even I knew you couldn’t pop a dead bolt with a credit card. Holding the card under the counter light, I made out the last few letters of the burglar’s name: LIDO.

I caught my breath. Putting together the voice I’d heard with those four letters gave me the man’s identity: Marco Ingelido. Why in the world was the man who owned the most successful chain of franchised ballroom dance studios in the business, Take the Lead with Ingelido, trying to break into Corinne Blakely’s house the day after she was murdered?