Corpse de Ballet (23 page)

“He may not have been lying. Maybe he just had second thoughts.”

Juliet ignored this. “Greg was also in the studio twice the day the rosin was rigged,” she went on. “Once very near the end of the ensemble session.”

“Did you see him go near the box?”

“I wasn't watching. He went here and there around the room—that's all I remember. Till now, I never seriously thought that he could be involved. The idea that he would deliberately injure a star of the Jansch was so farfetched. But if he had turned against Anton for personal reasons, and since he's leaving the Jansch…”

Juliet took another drag on her cigarette and stubbed it out.

“We have to remember,” she went on, “whoever booby-trapped the rosin probably only wanted to make Anton look ridiculous. Ditto whoever spiked his Coke. It was a strong dose, but nothing close to overdose level. Murray tells me it would take about thirty times what was in there to kill someone.” (Murray Landis had released her from her vow of secrecy days ago, and she had promptly told Ruth of their former acquaintance.) “No one could have realized it would be lethal,” she finished.

“Oh, really? Surely Greg would know Anton was using Nardil, if anyone did,” Ruth observed.

“Yeah, that occurred to me, too. But even if he did, would he have known that Nardil and Ecstasy can be so dangerous taken together?” Juliet asked. “Maybe Greg is running away from a spiteful act gone disastrously wrong.”

“On the other hand, maybe since Anton died, there's simply nothing to keep Greg here,” Ruth argued in return. She leaned forward, her bare arms pressed to the white cloth clipped onto both sides of the table. “I'm the one who told him about the talcum powder, remember, and he looked absolutely stunned. He was very upset for Anton. So maybe he feels guilty now that he didn't do more to protect him. Maybe the only reason he's been staying in a job he didn't like very much in the first place was because Anton
was
here, because he loved Anton. Maybe the prospect of being here now, being reminded of him daily, is too painful.”

Juliet's mouth twitched. She had to admit Ruth's speculations were no less plausible than her own.

“Okay,” she said presently, “let's review the others. Motive, means, and opportunity. Isn't that what the lawyers say?

“Now in the talcum powder incident,” she went on, “anyone had the means, and dozens of people had the opportunity. The Ecstasy—that's a bit more limited. But not much. So let's look at the possible motives. Don't you think Ryder Kensington could have done it?”

“Done which?”

“Both, maybe. Powdered the rosin. Doped the Coke.”

“But why?”

“Well, he's a pretty volatile guy. Olympia tells me he's hit Elektra.”

“Really?” Ruth seemed more interested than shocked. “Does she let him, I wonder?”

Juliet shrugged. “Remember the way Ryder jumped when you passed him at the phone booth that day, just when the rosin made Anton slip? And he and Olympia are weirdly tight, don't you think? She had an affair with Anton. Maybe Ryder didn't like that.”

Ruth stirred the watery remains of her drink with a slow finger. “Possibly,” she conceded.

“He was certainly in the right place at the right time—both times.”

“True,” said Ruth. “But I have a simpler idea. Maybe Olympia did it herself.”

“Because Anton ditched her?”

“Could be.”

“Could.” Juliet frowned and began to look around for their waiter, a sunny young man with a head of thick, blond curls. “But she seemed awfully jolly about his fickle nature when I talked to her about him. And I don't recall seeing her near him that day before the run-through. If we're entertaining ex-lovers as suspects, I'd say Lily Bediant was more likely. After all, he two-timed her.”

“A year before?”

“Lily doesn't seem to me the sort to forget. And she might have wanted to give you a little grief, too.” Juliet spotted their waiter some half dozen tables away, chatting with a couple of young women over the canvas barrier. She began to perform semaphore.

Ruth had straightened. “Me?” she bristled. “Why?”

“Because you cast her as an old maid.”

“Miss Havisham's a great role,” Ruth protested indignantly. “Besides, she's only in her fifties. Just because Teri Malone said—”

“Teri does seem to be in Lily's confidence,” observed Juliet, vigorously crossing and uncrossing her arms over her head. “And speaking of crazy old maids, I've sometimes wondered if Victorine could be so far gone that she would abet her precious Lily in an attack on you.”

“And screw up
Great Ex?
And injure Anton?”

Juliet shrugged. “He wasn't the only one who looked like a fool that day,” she pointed out. When she had raised this possibility with Landis, he hadn't seemed to make much of the idea. But it still seemed to her worth consideration. “That run-through was your chance to shine. You needed to shine. And instead…”

She left the sentence unfinished as the waiter at last noticed her flailing arms and sauntered over to them.

“Everything all right, ladies?”

“I believe we asked for some food from you earlier this evening,” Juliet said politely. “It was this evening, wasn't it, Ruth? About forty-five minutes ago? So—please, sir, may we have some food? We're quite hungry now.”

The waiter gave her the pitying smile the laid-back reserve for the highly strung. “I'll go check in the kitchen,” he said, as if this were a favor undertaken strictly from kindness.

When he had sauntered away again, Juliet went on. “Besides, didn't you tell me Victorine wanted to choreograph
Great Expectations
herself?”

Ruth's narrow forehead wrinkled. She sat quietly for some moments. Meanwhile, Juliet counted on her fingers.

“Let's see, there were six people I know talked to Anton before the run-through: Greg Fleetwood, Ryder, Lily, Elektra, Victorine and—who are we leaving out. Oh, Hart Hayden! What about Hart? Could he have slept with Anton?”

“I suppose. Although I have heard Hart is more or less celibate.”

“Yes, he told me that himself.”

“Could he have been jealous about not being the first Pip?”

“He could have,” Ruth said dubiously. “On the other hand, Anton could have been jealous of him, because in this season's
Giselle,
Hart is the first Albrecht and Anton was the second. You see, the trouble is—” She leaned forward and spoke more earnestly. “The trouble with all your suspects is, Juliet, that they're all dancers. Every one of them has spent years of his or her life—has spent his or her life, period—struggling and suffering and sacrificing for dance. Every one of them has lost parts they coveted. And dance is a communal art. Every one of these people stands to lose if
Great Ex
flops. It isn't only me. It's the whole company, even Greg.”

“Well, somebody did it.”

“Not necessarily.”

“Oh, Ruth, don't tell me you're joining Landis's camp! You think Anton took that dope on purpose? Why would he put it in his Coke, if he meant to take it? Why not just pop a pill?”

“I don't know.”

“I refuse to believe he sabotaged himself.”

“He was depressed,” Ruth pointed out.

“No, he
wasn't
depressed. He was being successfully treated for depression.” Juliet, who had struggled through depression herself, heard the anger in her voice and tried to calm down. “Murray Landis may have been depressed. You may have been depressed. But the one person in all of this we can be sure was not depressed—at least, not depressed in his behavior—was Anton. Anyway,” she went on, after a rather sullen pause, “you don't think he made himself slip with the talcum powder, do you?”

“Of course not.”

“So someone didn't mind hurting him.”

“Granted. But Juliet—” Ruth began and faltered. “Sweetie, don't jump down my throat, but don't you think you're a little bit biased in favor of thinking this was a murder?”

“Biased?”

“Well, yes. Murray Landis thinks it was suicide, and Murray Landis hurt your feelings. Now you're angry at him, and as a result, determined to think he's wrong. Therefore it had to be homicide.”

“Murray Landis hurt my feelings?”

“Now, don't get angry at me.”

“Angry?”

“Juliet, I know you. When you start repeating what I say, you're getting mad. You are biased, and you were hurt, because you thought Landis should have treated you as a friend, not a suspect. He was only doing his job, but you took it personally.”

Juliet picked up a fork with her left hand and started to rub its tines with her right. “I'm capable of being a little more grown up than that, don't you think?” she said.

“For a short while, maybe. But ultimately? No.”

“Ruth!”

“I'm sorry, I don't really think any of us is more grown up than that. I think it's very painful when someone we like and trust doesn't like and trust us back. Even if it's that other person's responsibility not to trust us. But look at it from Murray's point of view. He probably did enjoy running into you again. He probably wanted to shmooze and catch up and reminisce and the whole thing. It wasn't easy for him to keep his distance, but he had to do it and he did it. It was his job. So don't begrudge him that.”

“If he wanted to shmooze so much, why hasn't he called since the case was dropped?”

“See? You are hurt. But it really was quite admirable of him to maintain that distance, I think,” Ruth went on. “It means he takes his work seriously. Which is something we like in a person. Isn't it?”

Juliet was beginning to see her point, but she did not feel quite ready to admit it. It bothered her that Ruth—Ruth, of all people!—could know her better than she knew herself.

“Sorry, I think you've lost me a bit here,” she equivocated. “Do you really think my—” She paused, searching for a dignified word, then resumed, “—do you really think my disappointment with Murray's attitude could cloud my judgment of the facts?”

“Well, certainly. You're human. Don't you believe all thought is influenced by emotion?” Ruth asked. “Don't you think our wishes always influence our logic?”

“Not at all,” Juliet objected, gladly leaping to the firmer ground of abstract argument. “Action is rooted in emotion, that I'll grant you. But thought—no. And by definition, certainly not logic.”

And from here, the two launched into a prolonged discussion in which Ruth maintained that emotion influenced even which “facts” were so identified, while Juliet insisted that a baseline of objective reality underlay any thought that deserved the name. This pleasant dispute took them through their dinners (when these were finally brought by the waiter, who placed them on the table as if indulging two children's silly whims) and on to coffee and blueberry pie. Nothing more was said between them as to how Anton had died, or whether Juliet had judged Murray Landis too harshly. All the same, the matter was on Juliet's mind after they finally parted. On her way home, she decided she would get in touch with him. Maybe she would invite him to the memorial for Mohr.

*   *   *

If it is true that there are two kinds of people in the world (as one kind of person, at least, perennially asserts), then one of the divides is surely between those who can speak wittily, eloquently, and movingly of the recently dead and those who—cannot. Whatever mechanism of thought permits certain mourners to celebrate aloud the life of a vanished loved one (for example, to remind a gathered assembly of the off-color jokes Mom used to tell late at night, or the time Cousin Pete walked all the way to Pine Creek in a snowstorm just to be sure Uncle Jim had enough food) and by doing so, moreover, to bring the departed back to life for a moment in affectionate memory
and
at the same time help begin the healing of those surviving the loss—that gift or skill or mechanism of thought is surely provided for by some chromosome present in certain human beings and simply not present in others.

Juliet, who belonged to the latter group—the group of people who cannot put two sentences together for months when overtaken by grief, let alone fluently articulate what she had cherished in them a few days later—was astonished by the memorial service mounted by Jansch members and others for Anton Mohr. For one thing, despite its immense size, Cadwell Hall was three-quarters filled with mourners: fellow dancers, dance teachers, dance buffs, dance writers, dance underwriters, dance-shoe ribbon manufacturers, for all Juliet knew, streamed in through the Hall's heavy, old-fashioned doors and took their seats amid an uncertain murmur of hushed greetings and shared condolences.

With an alacrity she found gratifying, Murray Landis had agreed to accompany her there. They met a few minutes before seven at Columbus Circle and walked over in the increasingly pink light of late afternoon. Mindful of Ruth's belief that she had been blaming him for doing his job well, Juliet had been prepared to greet him warmly, as a friend. But, spotting her first, he came up with a hand formally extended to shake hers. Forced to reciprocate, she heard her “Hello” come out uncertain, ambiguous.

Now, amid the respectful buzz of the gathering audience, they picked their way single file to seats toward the back of the orchestra. Juliet, who had imagined this emotionally loaded occasion as an opportunity to spot the guilt-stricken face of the culprit (if culprit there was, which even she had begun to doubt) found herself thwarted by both the size of the crowd and the astounding polish of the program. She looked around as best she could, but the Jansch members were spread throughout the auditorium, their faces glimpsable now and then but mostly too far away or too absorbed in conversation to be read. Ryder and Elektra sat together in a box in the mezzanine; Victorine had Lily Bediant on one side, Teri on the other, a few rows up from the front of the orchestra. On the way in, Juliet had caught sight of Hart, but he disappeared down a side aisle and she couldn't spot him after that.