Corpse de Ballet (14 page)

The men exchanged glances. Pilots have been known to drink, their looks said. Juliet thought of arguing the point further and decided not to. Neither of these men struck her as particularly bright.

“Did you see him eat or drink anything?” Roarke prodded. “Someone monkey around with his food or anything?”

“No. That is—” Her soft, girlish voice halted and she blinked rapidly. “He did have a soda, but I didn't see anyone tamper with it, no.”

Officer Peltz raised an eyebrow, then took her address and phone number. A few moments later, the medics carried their patient away, Victorine hurrying behind them to accompany him in the ambulance. The police went also. As they all left, Greg announced that he would go as well, in a cab.

And then, to Juliet's amazement, Ruth called the dancers back in to get on with choreographing the end of the first act. Naturally shaken, the dancers looked faintly astonished at being made to resume routine work. But there were two valuable rehearsal hours left in the day, two unreplaceable hours worth three or four thousand dollars in salaries. Ruth briskly announced that Anton was being “seen to” and began at once addressing various matters of timing and gesture she had found amiss during the run-through.

Juliet was just resuming her chair when she noticed, under the piano, Anton's dance bag and the Coke he had been drinking. Evidently, the police had not thought his things worth picking up. A little self-consciously, she collected them herself, finding the cap to the bottle in an outer pocket of the bag. She brought them back to the chair with her and sat down rather reluctantly. She both admired Ruth's discipline and thought she was out of her mind. No sane person could concentrate in the wake of such a scene. But Ruth was not entirely sane these days—at least, not about
Great Ex.
She was a woman obsessed, terrified of failure, and entirely unable to see beyond her cherished project.

The others seemed to react more normally. Patrick, though he obeyed Ruth, was pale and visibly distressed. Hart, who stood in for Anton, moved his body as he was told. But, as complete a professional as he was, he could put no feeling or fluidity into what he did, and his face was opaque with mixed emotions. Ruth had called on him to partner Kirsten Ahlswede, who was much too tall for him—five or six inches taller than he. Kirsten's ice-blue eyes were stony, perhaps with shock, perhaps with anger at Ruth's persistence, perhaps for some dancer's reason Juliet could not hope to divine. She caught a peculiar glance passing between Kirsten and Lily Bediant as they began to listen to Ruth's notes on the pas de trois. Apprehension was legible in Lily's face and in her every gesture, though she dutifully performed the steps Ruth required. Teri Malone, who stood with the corps waiting her turn for notes, looked as if she might run back to Eau Claire for good; near her, Olympia Andreades scowled and simmered. Elektra sat with her husband for once, against the wall under a barre, her small, lovely face pinched and frightened, his solemn but unreadable. The only relaxed expression Juliet saw belonged to Alexei Ostrovsky, the angular Russian, who seemed to be rather enjoying the discomfiture of everyone else. While Ruth was absorbed with Luis in yet another discussion of measures and beats, Alexei absolutely mimicked Anton's weird performance, whirling as if giddy and finishing by pretending to fall to the floor in a daze. His clowning earned a few uncertain smiles, but more eye-rolling and glares, and so even he subsided into decorous stillness.

When Ruth finally thanked and released the group, a palpable whoosh of relief passed over the room. The dancers departed, a hum of murmurs and mutters rising from them as they went. More than one sent a glance of disapproval in Ruth's direction; but she, of course, was oblivious.

Once the room was empty, Juliet offered to drive her to the hospital. But Ruth was exhausted and angry and said she saw no point in going there. Any news would be relayed to her by Greg or Victorine, probably sooner than she wanted to hear it, she said.

Out of patience for once with her difficult friend, Juliet left abruptly and alone. It was her creed that one took the bad with the good in those one loved; but Ruth's selfish myopia was wearing on her today. For her own part, she had found the scene of Anton's collapse extremely upsetting. She considered dropping his bag at the hospital but decided it could wait till tomorrow. Victorine and Greg would make sure he had anything necessary tonight.

Instead, she went home and phoned Molly Laurence, her oldest friend in the world and, of everyone she knew, Most Likely to Console. Five years ago, Molly had met a man, quit her job and left the city. Now she was marooned on Long Island, caught (on the hook of her three-year-old son's happiness) in an extremely unhappy marriage. But she was still Molly, and she had only to listen to Juliet for a few minutes before making her diagnosis.

“Sweetie, you had a very disturbing experience. No wonder you're feeling rattled. You need a warm bath and some Beethoven,” Molly prescribed authoritatively. “Scented oil or salts in the bath and—um, I would say the String Quartet in C, Opus 59, Number 3. If you can't sit still long enough for the whole thing, just do the second movement.”

Juliet obeyed. She soaked herself for nearly an hour, then had peanut butter and jelly on toasted white bread for dinner. Her equilibrium restored, she spent the remainder of the evening with Lady Porter, who was beginning to show surprising depths of cunning.

Chapter Nine

“Dead?”

Juliet sat up against the pillows, dropped the cordless, lost it under a pillow and found it again.

“What did you say?”

“Anton's dead,” Ruth repeated. “He died about an hour ago, in the ICU. Greg just called me. He was overheated, way overheated, and they couldn't get his temperature down. I think he basically boiled to death.”

“Good God.” Juliet squinched her face up and tried to get her bearings. Her bedside clock said 6:12, and a white glow showed at the windows. “Did the doctors say he'd been drugged?”

“‘Been drugged?'” echoed Ruth, stressing the ‘been.' “No. They said he'd taken Ecstasy.”

“Taken what?”

“Ecstasy. Ek-stah-cee. It's a street drug, Juliet. What convent are you living in?”

Juliet sat up straighter. “Is it lethal? Did he overdose?”

“No, of course it's not lethal. It makes people feel fabulous.” Ruth was quiet a moment, and when she spoke again her tone was more neutral. “And they don't think he overdosed. Greg says they don't know yet why he reacted so badly. He was dancing, and it was hot in the room, and he may have gotten dehydrated and—they don't know. He's just dead. Juliet, how could he? What am I going to do?”

Realizing a little belatedly that she was awake for the day, Juliet got out of bed and headed toward the kitchen. “Ruth,” she asked, on her way down the stairs, “had you ever seen Anton on drugs before?”

“No. Why?”

“Do dancers even do drugs?”

“God, yes. All kinds. Especially speed and coke.”

“Really?” Juliet was surprised. Those gorgeous bodies. She reached the kitchen, tucked the phone between her shoulder and ear and picked up the kettle. “Ruth, yesterday, during the run-through, you whispered something to Anton—just after the scene with the oranges. What did you say?”

“I don't know. I guess I asked him if his ankle was bothering him, and—”

“Was it?” interrupted Juliet, pausing at the sink.

“No. He said he felt a little dizzy, but great. So I told him, in that case, get hold of yourself and quit fucking up.”

“Yes, he was sort of fucking up,” Juliet agreed. For the first time, the fact that Anton Mohr was dead, gone, began to come home to her. She felt tears start to her eyes and worked to check them. “Why did he smile at you and pat you?”

“I have no idea. Because he was high as a kite, presumably. How he could do this when—”

As Ruth took up her lament, Juliet put down the kettle and walked into the front hall just to reassure herself. Yes, Anton's dance bag was there.

“Juliet?” Ruth had started going on about some meeting. “Did you hear me? Can you come?”

“Sorry, what? Come where?”

“To the Jansch. Can you hold my hand at the Jansch at noon today? Greg is going to announce what happened, and I have to think about recasting. Well, not think about it, do it. Shit, I better get off the phone.”

Ruth hung up before Juliet had even given her answer.

“Yes, I'll be there,” she said into the dead receiver, then hung up, poured boiling water over a tea bag in a mug, and went upstairs to pee. At the same time, she wondered how and why Anton Mohr should have died so young. Her thoughts ranged from the elegiac to the pragmatic, with many stops in between. When she had complimented him in the studio, just after her lunch with Patrick yesterday, he had been perfectly sober, even a little grouchy—certainly not in a mood to grin or gambol. Her own experiments with illicit drugs had now faded into the mists of time, but she still remembered the strange interval between dropping the dose and feeling its effects: that heightened sense of waiting, of giddy, apprehensive attention to every interior sensation, the examination of each stray thought to see if it could herald the start of the high, the feeling of keeping a giggly secret from outsiders. She had seen nothing like this in Anton.

Early as it was, the day was already well under way. Sunlight painted the pebbled glass of the bathroom window a radiant white. Juliet splashed her face with water, combed her hair and went back down to the kitchen to sip tea in the unfamiliar light. Cupping her hands around the hot mug, she allowed her thoughts to return to her own affairs. With satisfaction, she recalled the six pages she had managed to turn out before falling into bed last night. Any day now, Lord Suffield would offer for Caroline Castlingham and after that,
London Quadrille
would practically write itself.

*   *   *

Thanks to her unwontedly early start, Juliet had already showered, dressed, and sat down at her desk by the time the doorman's buzzer sounded, some minutes after nine. Ames, who had just gone into her little office to type last night's six pages into the computer, answered the house phone, then came into the adjoining room, where Juliet was poring over the 1807 edition of
Lodge's Peerage
for names. She needed names for a dinner party Lady Porter was planning to give; anyway, a browse through Lodge was a good antidote for brooding over Anton Mohr's death.

“A Detective Murray Landis is in the lobby,” said Ames, her intonation turning the statement into a question.

Juliet looked up, her head full of Augustas and Frederics and Jemimas. “Murray?” she repeated dubiously, as if Ames had been suggesting the name for a character in
London Quadrille.

“Evidently he's from the precinct house on West Seventy-third Street,” said Ames. “He wants to come up and see you.”

“Oh! It must be about Anton Mohr.” Juliet stood up and moved away from the desk, then stopped. “Murray Landis? I knew a Murray Landis at Radcliffe. I mean, he was a student at Harvard. An art student. Are you sure?”

“It may not be the same one, Dr. Bodine,” said Ames, her large, plain face studiously blank as usual. Ames always insisted on calling Juliet Dr. Bodine, just as she always insisted on wearing a suit and stockings to her job. Juliet sometimes wondered what Ames had been like as a little girl. Exactly the same as fifty years later, she would have bet: tall, pale, contained, watchful, and absolutely competent. She had, no doubt, been the sort of child who decides early to keep her own counsel, the sort who delivers even her cleverest observations without cracking a smile. Jolly and effusive Ames was not and never would be; but Juliet had learned over the years that she had a brand of loyalty that was perhaps superior to mere easy friendship. She also had a certain subtle, dry—indeed, parched—kind of humor. In fact, she was probably laughing uproariously at her employer right now.

“Shall I have him sent up?” she asked.

“Yes, you'd better. Take him into the library. I'll see him there.”

Juliet went down the stairs to her library, her thoughts chasing around in her brain like mice in a maze. Was it normal for a detective to come to one's house? Why should she be visited so soon rather than Max or Greg? Could the police really imagine she had doped Anton Mohr? What had ever become of Murray Landis, anyway? They had met when he started dating her roommate, Mona, during their sophomore year. She never saw Mona these days—Mona had married a diplomat and moved to Norway, last she heard—and she couldn't think—

“Miss Bodine?”

A tall, lanky man with dark eyes, a long, crooked nose and curiously flat cheekbones appeared at the door to the library. He had dark skin and short, curly hair, and his nose looked as if it had once been broken. Instinctively, Juliet backed away a step or two. It is one thing to see curling, discolored photographs of our parents, for example, and laugh at their funny clothes and fresh faces, the hilarious way their hair was combed. But to see a face we think of as young suddenly middle-aged is frightening. In the end (though habit spares us the worst of the special effects), we are all Dorian Gray.

Juliet stared at the tall policeman, dismay, confusion, and delight crowding into her soft face. As with most people, Murray Landis had both changed and grown more the same over the years. The slight stoop in his bony shoulders had been there in embryonic form even when he was nineteen. His olive skin had toughened, and his crisp, curly hair was flecked with gray. His nose seemed even more crooked now. But his small, dark eyes were as bright, as sharp, and he gave altogether the same effect of absolute maleness. His khaki slacks were deeply frayed at the cuffs, and his dark sports jacket was about to lose a button. But they hung on his lean frame well.