Dead Man Waltzing

Chapter 10

Students were already starting to trickle in, and I greeted them as they lined up in the ballroom. The hour flew by and I felt invigorated by the exercise. The tension of the last couple days drained out of me as I led the class.

Vitaly came in as the students left and immediately asked about Maurice. “Has he breaked out of the jails?”

“They let him go, yes.”

“Vitaly is glad. I will helping prove his innocence.” He thrust his chin up, looking like a gladiator about to enter the arena.

“I’m sure he’ll appreciate that, Vitaly,” I said. “Tav said he’d help, too, so between us we ought to be able to come up with something.” I told him about Marco Ingelido breaking into the mansion, sure that Vitaly had come across Ingelido at some point during his career.

Vitaly wrinkled his nose and sniffed. “Ingelido is asking me if I want to own a Taking the Lead with Ingelido studio. I laugh in his face.”

“Tactful.”

“His methods is a joke… is only fitting for the sociable dancers, not for competing.”

“Well,” I said, “ballroom dancing is becoming a much more popular social activity. The numbers of dancers have grown a lot in the last five years.” I bent to pick up a stainless-steel water bottle one of the women had left. “If Ingelido’s methods help-”

Vitaly, facing the door, drew in his breath with a hiss. “Speaking of the devils-”

I spun around to see Marco Ingelido on the threshold, surveying the ballroom with an expression that hovered between appreciative and assessing. In his early sixties, he was beginning to put on weight around his middle, but was still a good-looking man, with thick, dark brows over deep-set eyes and an aquiline nose. He’d been balding for years and had finally shaved his head, telling people that if it was good enough for Kojak, it was good enough for him. He’d been moderately successful as a professional ballroom dancer but gave up competing five or six years back, shortly after I started winning, to concentrate on expanding his business.

“I heard you two partnered up,” he said, his gaze going from Vitaly to me. “Anya dump you, Voloshin?”

Vitaly bristled. “I am moved to Baltimore and Anya is not wishing to leave Russia,” he said.

“And of course we all know what happened to your partner, Stacy,” Ingelido said. “I don’t think I’ve seen you since Rafe died. Didn’t I hear something about you being arrested for his murder?” Malice gleamed in his dark eyes.

I chose to ignore his question. “Can I help you with something, Marco?” I asked, convinced his showing up like this was not a coincidence. Not after last night.

“You can give me what you found last night,” he said, his voice flat. “At Corinne Blakely’s.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Ingelido smiled coldly. “My son-in-law is a cop. He ran your license plate for me.”

Oops. “I saw you break into Corinne’s house,” I said. Two could play the intimidation game.

“Your word against mine.”

“Hm, I think your credit card says otherwise.”

He thinned his lips, clearly wishing he’d taken the trouble to retrieve the snapped credit card. “I didn’t come here to quarrel with you. I can’t imagine what Corinne had on you-you’re so young-but I know you were after her manuscript. I want it. Or”-he held out a placatory hand-“I want your assurance that it’s been destroyed.”

“What is Corinne having on you?” Vitaly asked, eyes bright with curiosity.

Ingelido hesitated, then finally said with an air of great honesty, “We were lovers. I was in my late thirties. Corinne was… older. I was between wives, so it’s only… embarrassing. I’d just as soon not have the affair publicized. We were discreet at the time. I don’t know why she decided to go public with it now.” His voice was a growl of frustration.

“How did you know she was going to write about you?” I asked.

“She told me!” He paced like a trapped tiger: three steps away, three steps back. “I had the impression she was giving everyone she was writing about ‘fair warning.’ That’s what she called it when she told me.”

“I didn’t find the manuscript,” I said, feeling a twinge of sympathy for Ingelido. “And her housekeeper said she never wrote it, that she only had an outline.”

Ingelido’s chest expanded as he took a deep breath and held it. He blew it out. “That’s that, then.” His shoulders sagged with relief. I debated telling him what I’d learned from Angela Rush, but before I could say anything, he said, “This is a nice little studio you’ve got here. If you signed on with Take the Lead, we could turn it into a profitable enterprise. My franchisees are seeing a twelve percent return on their investment in the first year and up to thirty percent in the second year.”

“I’m perfectly happy with my income now,” I said.

His smile said he knew I was lying. “If you change your mind…”

“She won’t changing her mind,” Vitaly said. “Stacy and Vitaly is buildings most successful studio on East Coast.”

I appreciated his positive thinking and shot him a smile.

“An ambitious goal,” Ingelido said in a voice that suggested he thought we’d have more chance of winning a Nobel Prize. “If-”

Before he could finish the thought, Maurice entered the ballroom, stopping abruptly at the sight of the other dancer. “Ingelido,” he said in a cold, un-Maurice-ish voice.

“Goldberg,” the other man replied, equally cool.

The temperature in the room went down to levels a penguin would enjoy, and Vitaly and I glanced at each other, wary of the animosity between the two men.

“Shouldn’t you be making license plates or something? I read that you’d been arrested. I debated sending a congratulatory note to our men and women in blue.”

“To paraphrase: ‘Reports of my incarceration have been greatly exaggerated,’” Maurice said. “Sorry to disappoint.”

“Ah, well.” Ingelido loosed a dramatic sigh. Giving Maurice a considering look, he added, “You and Corinne went back decades. She must have known where all your skeletons were buried.”

Maurice flinched almost imperceptibly, and I was startled to see fear skate across his eyes before he banished it. An uneasy thought crossed my mind: Could Maurice have something to hide?

He rallied. “At least my skeletons-if I had any-are decently buried. Some of yours are still walking around, hm?”

Ingelido flushed red and then paled. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. Let me know if you want more information about the franchise opportunity, Stacy.” He handed me a business card with the stylized, top-hatted logo of Taking the Lead with Ingelido, and left.

Vitaly followed on his heels, exclaiming, “I am late for meeting John.”

Left alone with Maurice, I raised my brows and asked, “What in the world was that about?” Before he could answer, I said, “You can tell me while I work. I’ve got to clean the bathroom.” Since our bottom line was a little shaky, we saved money by doing the cleaning ourselves. It wasn’t too onerous, but I looked forward to the day we could hire a janitorial service again.

Maurice followed me to the powder room and watched as I liberated cleanser, a sponge, and rubber gloves from the under-sink cabinet. I squirted cleanser under the toilet rim and motioned for Maurice to start talking. “Marco Ingelido is a cad,” he said. “He hurt Corinne very badly some years ago. She was in love with him-why, I’ll never know, except she had unfortunate taste in men-”

“Present company excepted.”

A slight smile eased his frown. “Thank you, Anastasia. Anyway, Corinne loved him and he threw her over for Marian, the woman he’s married to now.”

“Is that what you meant when you said his skeletons were still walking around?” I looked up from scrubbing the sink to see a crease appear between his brows.

“He has a niece, Sarah. Sarah Lewis. She’s a photographer… must be almost thirty now. Marco dotes on her. They’ve always had a close relationship, much closer than your average uncle and niece. Anyway-”

“He had an affair with his own niece? How very Woody Allen of him. No, that was his stepdaughter, wasn’t it?” I wrinkled my nose, sloshed the brush around the toilet, and flushed away the foamy water. I’d had a crush on my cousin Tom when I was fifteen or so and he was nineteen. We’d sneaked a few kisses (okay, it was really several hours’ worth of nonstop, volcano-hot kissing) during a family reunion at a lake in the Poconos, and I’d had a hard-to-explain case of bristle burn that made my chin, lips, and cheeks raw. We’d returned to our separate states and Tom had moved on to an eighteen-year-old girlfriend before we got too serious, but I’d moped about him for several months. I sighed at the memory.

“He-”

Clicking noises from the hall approached quickly. Moments later, Hoover skidded to a stop with a woof. He wedged his head between Maurice’s leg and the doorjamb, nearly knocking Maurice over as he wriggled into the small bathroom. I patted his heavy head as Mildred Kensington’s voice fluted, “Hoover, you bad dog. How many times have I told you it’s not polite to interrupt someone in the loo?”

Hoover ignored her, nosing at the minifridge’s door in an attempt to open it. “Hello, Mildred,” Maurice said, backing out of the bathroom doorway.

“Maurice! Oh, I came as soon as I heard. Thank goodness you’ve been released.” She threw her plump form at him and embraced him, almost knocking him off his feet. He steadied himself with a hand against the wall.

She released him, her eyes bright. Dabbing at them with a lace hankie she pulled from her sleeve, she said, “It makes me so emotional. To think of you cooped up in a prison cell with no room to dance.”

I could think of a lot worse things about being imprisoned than that, but I didn’t mention them. A slurping sound brought all our heads around, and we saw Hoover lapping happily from the toilet. Thank goodness I’d already flushed the cleanser down. He looked up when Mildred shrieked his name, slobbering on the toilet seat and tiled floor. So much for my clean bathroom.

“Hoover, dear, that’s a nasty, nasty habit,” Mildred scolded. “How many times have I told you that?”

The Great Dane’s tail thumped against the fridge. Stripping off my gloves, I joined the others in the hall, and Hoover followed me.

“It was kind of you to stop by, Mildred,” Maurice said, “but-”

“Oh, I didn’t just stop by. I’ve come to tell you that I’m starting a legal defense fund for you.” Mildred beamed. “I’ve already put out collection jars at many of the businesses around here, with that lovely photo of us from when we competed at the Emerald Ball a couple of years ago. And I’ve sent an e-mail to all my correspondents, explaining the situation and asking for donations.”

Maurice looked appalled. “Mil-”

“Oh, no, you don’t have to thank me.” She held up a beringed hand sparkling with diamonds, rubies, and platinum. “You know you’re so much more than a dance instructor to me, Maurice, and I couldn’t sleep at night if I didn’t do what I could to make sure you don’t end up incarcerated for life. Or worse. Do they have the death penalty in Virginia?”

“Indeed they do,” Maurice said grimly. “One of the guards ‘joked’ that when I got convicted and put on death row, I could be known as ‘dead man waltzing.’ Apparently the phrase ‘dead man walking’ refers to a condemned prisoner on his way to be executed.”

“That’s horrible!” I said.

“We’ll have to make sure it doesn’t come to that,” Mildred said, patting his arm. “Don’t you worry. I’m all over this like stink on excrement, as my grandson says.”

When I choked back a laugh, she twinkled at me. “Well, that’s not exactly how he says it. Come on, Maurice.” She hooked her arm through his. “I’m taking you to lunch. It’s a wonder you didn’t waste away on that nasty prison diet.”

“I was only there one night,” he said, letting himself be dragged away.

“Perhaps Hoover could stay here with you, Miss Graysin?” Mildred called over her shoulder. “For some reason they don’t appreciate him at Giuseppe’s.”

Imagine that. “Sure.”

They exited through the door by my office. Hoover sat in front of the closed door, cocking his head. When it didn’t reopen, he raised one great paw and scratched at it, looking over his shoulder to invite me to let him out.

“Sorry, buddy. You’re stuck with me for the moment.”

He stared at me disbelievingly. When it dawned on him that Mildred wasn’t coming back immediately, he threw up his nose and let loose with a mournful whoo-wooo-ooo.

“I think I have some peanut butter crackers in my drawer,” I said, coaxing him into my office. He snarfed down the six crackers, snuffled around the desks, then clambered onto the love seat, resting his head against the back of it so he could see out the window.

Maurice and Mildred returned more than two hours later. Hoover leaped off the couch at the sound of their footsteps on the outside stairs and dashed to the door to greet them. The three of them crowded into the office moments later, Mildred looking distinctly disgruntled.

“That Turner Blakely is a nasty young man,” she announced.

“Did you run into him at the restaurant? What did he do?”

“It was my idea,” Mildred admitted, patting Hoover as he nosed at her hand. “When Maurice filled me in on your search-so brave of you, dear-I thought up a wonderful scheme for getting the typewriter cartridge from Corinne’s house. ‘Tell Corinne’s grandson you want the typewriter for sentimental reasons,’ I told Maurice. ‘Tell him it’s special to you because Corinne used it to write you letters.’”

“I thought it was worth a try,” Maurice said, “but Turner turned me down flat. His insurance adjustor was there, and someone to fix the broken window-”

“Courtesy of Marco Ingelido,” I put in.

“-and an alarm company representative to install a security system, so he was distracted.”

Mildred took over. “Even so, he told us quite nastily that we were trespassing and that he wouldn’t give Maurice the time of day, never mind anything from Corinne’s house. ‘My inheritance,’ he called it.”

Maurice shrugged. “It was a long shot anyway.”

I made commiserating noises, and said, “The agent may yet come through with the outline.” Fat chance.

“It’s best not to rely on other people’s efficiency or memory,” Mildred said wisely. “Things get done better and faster if you do them yourself. We’re off to Maurice’s now to come up with a new plan,” she added. “Ta-ta. Come, Hoover.”

I wondered briefly how Hoover would get along with Gene and Cyd, Maurice’s cats, but decided it wasn’t my problem. “Keep me posted,” I called after them.

My watch said it was closing in on three o’clock. I didn’t have to be back in the studio until time to teach a tango class at six thirty. Now would be a good time, I decided, to kill two birds with one stone.