Authors: Ella Barrick
Spotting me, Maurice said something to the baron and edged toward me, only to be intercepted by Turner Blakely. The young man looked svelte and sophisticated in a black suit with a black-and-gray-striped tie. His dark hair was brushed straight back from his forehead, revealing a pale, narrow brow.
“Goldberg.” He planted himself in front of Maurice and pulled an envelope from an inner jacket pocket.
Maurice cocked his head slightly, waiting for Turner to explain himself.
“I’m contesting the will,” Turner said, thrusting the envelope at Maurice, “and in particular the painting that you tricked Grandmother into leaving you.”
“There was no trickery involved, Turner, as you well know,” Maurice said calmly. “However, it’s your prerogative under America’s right-to-sue-and-be-sued legal system to contest the will, so contest away.”
The tips of Turner’s ears reddened at the light contempt in Maurice’s tone. “Murderers can’t benefit from their crimes,” he spit. “When you’re convicted, the painting will revert to the estate anyway.”
“Then if you’re so sure of my guilt, save your money and wait for the justice system to grind its wheels. It shouldn’t take more than eight or ten years, what with appeals and everything.” Maurice gave Turner a pseudo-sympathetic smile. “Who knows? Maybe by then the painting will have appreciated in value. Or maybe I will have sold it to pay my legal bills.” With a nod, he left Turner fuming and walked to me, saying under his breath, “Get me out of here, Anastasia, before I really
am
guilty of murder.”
I could tell by his ragged breathing that maintaining a facade of calm while talking to Turner had cost him, and I took his arm to lead him back toward the car, distracting him by telling him about having discovered the identity of the mysterious blonde who had visited Randolph. Tav joined us and, summing up Maurice’s state of mind in one comprehensive glance, offered a quiet comment on the funeral and what a lovely tribute the crowd was to Corinne. Maurice responded in kind, and his breathing had slowed by the time we neared the car.
The car parked in front of mine was a black limousine, and a chauffeur opened the door for Randolph Blakely, Alanna Vincent, and—to my surprise—Hamish MacLeod as we approached. The reverend was still sobbing into his hands, and Alanna was murmuring soothingly to him. The chauffeur stood stiff as a fence post, perhaps used to ferrying blubbering passengers around the city.
“It’ll be okay, Hamish,” Randolph said bracingly. “You made a good decision to admit yourself to Hopeful Morning. They’ll help you. Look what they did for Alanna and me.”
The chauffeur clunked the door shut behind them, and I couldn’t hear any more. My gaze flew involuntarily to Tav, and he gave me a smug “I told you so” look that I couldn’t even get mad about. Apparently Hamish’s presence at Randolph’s cottage
was
completely innocent, as Tav had suggested. He’d been considering admitting himself to the rehab center. I smiled sheepishly and walked around to my door.
Maurice slid into the passenger seat and shut the door, and I looked at Tav gratefully over the hood of the Beetle. “Thanks. So, how does the swan wrangler get them back?” I guessed he’d gone to talk to the man when I went to find Maurice.
He grinned, confirming my guess. “They fly home,” Tav said, “like homing pigeons. And in case one gets the idea of escaping, they have got GPS devices on their collars.”
“The wonders of technology,” I said.
His expression grew more serious, a bit uncertain. The wind riffled his dark hair. “Stacy, will you have dinner with me one evening? Not this weekend—I must fly to New York on business—but next weekend?”
My breath caught in my throat. “Are you asking me for a date at a funeral?”
A wry smile slanted his mouth. “Is that bad?”
“It’s a first for me.”
“Me, too.”
I fell silent, biting my lip. I’d been attracted to Tav all along, but I was afraid to get involved again, especially with a business partner. If we dated and then broke up, it would be messy, awkward, like it had been after I caught Rafe cheating and ended our engagement. But we weren’t talking about “getting involved,” my free-spirit self argued. We were talking about a single date.
Ha!
my sensible side said.
“I’m not sure I’m ready,” I told Tav, brushing a wisp of hair off my face.
“I know. I promised myself I would wait six months before asking you, but my willpower is not up to the task of waiting.” The rueful awareness in his eyes, the crooked smile, the memory of that almost-kiss Monday night made my chest feel tight.
Maurice rolled down the window and said, “Are you coming, Anastasia?”
“Yes,” I answered both men.
Chapter 30
Friday afternoon I locked up Graysin Motion, shut off my cell phone, and took Corinne’s manuscript into my kitchen. Making a big pot of coffee, I sorted the pages back into order and sat down to read. The tale of Corinne’s life, her excitement as she fell in love and married, only to find herself restless and unsatisfied soon after; her love for baby Randolph, and her anguish as the son she loved turned into someone else under the influence of drugs; her dislike of the daughter-in-law Randolph brought her, a girl ten years his junior who was more interested in partying than in mothering the child who came along six months after they married; her ballroom dance successes and her drive to win more titles and recognition; and the stories about people she met along the way kept me glued to the manuscript as the level of coffee in the pot steadily declined.
Greta Monk’s story was here, along with Corinne’s confrontation with her about the embezzlement. Conrad Monk, Corinne said, had repaid the money his wife embezzled and spread hush money around liberally to keep her from being indicted. Corinne had gone along only to keep scandal from tainting the dance scholarship foundation and its good work. Marco Ingelido’s sordid story was here, a cautionary tale of lust run amok. She’d loved Marco, Corinne admitted, and had hoped to marry him before he got Phyllis, Sarah’s mom, pregnant. When he’d become engaged to Marian, Phyllis’s sister, Corinne had warned Marian, told her that Sarah was, in fact, Marco’s child. My eyes opened wide at that. So, Marco’s wife had known all along and never let on. I wondered whether the knowledge that her husband had slept with her sister, had fathered a child with her, had eaten at her over the years.
I made notes as I read, planning to pass my ideas along to Detective Lissy (whether he appreciated it or not) and Phineas Drake. Corinne gave Maurice’s story of cruise ship romance gone bad a humorous spin, and I wondered how he’d react to that. It didn’t seem to me, even forty-some years after the fact, that he found anything funny about the incident. I knew Detective Lissy would have latched onto the story already, so I didn’t include it in my notes. There were a couple of stories I hadn’t heard before, one featuring a ballroom dance judge who was a closet homosexual in the early 1970s who had been blackmailed by a former partner. Since he had died of AIDS in the late 1980s, I didn’t put him in my notes either. The other tale I was unfamiliar with involved Turner and cheating. He’d done more than cheat himself, according to his loving grandmother; he’d run a cheating racket that involved buying copies of tests, hacking professors’ computers, and selling the tests themselves and/or answers to a startling number of students. I wondered whether he could be prosecuted for the hacking; even if not, having the tale publicized was likely to ensure he never got admitted to another university. Not that failing to get a degree would matter much to his future, now that he had inherited Corinne’s millions.
Lavinia Fremont’s story came late in the manuscript, with great descriptions about their trip to England and the excitement of competing. Corinne described the attack outside the nightclub in horrific detail, and included a confession that rocked me back in my chair. I turned the last page over with relief and regret. I imagined the book would sell well. Draining the last bit of coffee from my mug, and feeling a caffeine-overdose headache coming on, I tapped my pen on the table and stared into space. My thoughts tumbled semiaimlessly. If I wrote a memoir in my seventies, would I have the same wealth of stories to tell that Corinne did? Would the people whose secrets Corinne laid bare in the book recover from the revelations? I thought about Mrs. Laughlin and her statement about greed and revenge being the only credible motives for murder. I’d thought all along that greed had twisted someone into a murderer. Maybe Turner or Randolph in order to inherit early, maybe Marco or Greta, who were greedy for acclaim and success and whose quests for those might be curtailed by Corinne’s brutal openness. Maybe even Mrs. Laughlin, greedy for autonomy and new adventures.
The more I thought about it, though, the more I became convinced that I was wrong. Greed hadn’t prompted Corinne’s murder.
Revenge had.
Chapter 31
I thought about calling Maurice and talking it over with him, or even Tav or Danielle, just to run my suspicions past them. In the end, I called Detective Lissy. He was the one who would have to make the arrest, after all.
I caught him as he was leaving the office for the weekend, and he seemed strangely unwilling to make time for me, even when I told him I knew who had killed Corinne Blakely.
“So do I,” he said wearily. “Maurice Goldberg. We arrested him, remember?”
“It wasn’t Maurice. Look, I read the manuscript—”
“So did one of my officers. We talked to a couple of the folks mentioned in the book, including the Monks and Mr. Ingelido, and we’re satisfied they didn’t have anything to do with the murder.”
“They didn’t,” I agreed. “If you’d just hear me out—”
“Ms. Graysin, my grandson is pitching the first game in the Little League championships in forty-five minutes. The only thing I’m listening to this evening is the crack of the ball against the bat and the insults of parents abusing the ump.”
“Where?”
A hint of disbelief in his voice, Lissy told me.
An hour later, I joined him on the metal bleachers set up around a baseball diamond out near Vienna, Virginia, a D.C. suburb off of I-66. The sun beat down hotly, and I was grateful for the Baltimore Orioles cap I wore with my ponytail threaded through the back. The metal bleachers had absorbed enough heat to be uncomfortably warm against the backs of my thighs as I settled in beside Lissy. He looked casual and much more grandpa-ish in multipocketed khaki shorts and a faded blue golf shirt. Despite that, the shoelaces on his athletic shoes looked like they’d been ironed, and not a smudge of dirt sullied their whiteness. He slid me an exasperated look when I sat down and didn’t introduce me to the woman on his other side, whom I assumed was his daughter.
“You know Virginia has stalking laws, right?” he greeted me.
“I’m not stalking you!”
“Hmph.” He turned away to applaud as a team of adolescent boys in red-striped shirts took the field. “My grandson,” he said proudly, pointing to a burly lad throwing balls from the pitcher’s mound. He sounded more human than I’d ever heard him.
“Looks like he’s got an arm,” I said, parroting something I’d heard my dad say once about an Orioles pitching prospect.
I’d hoped that praising his grandson would soften Lissy up, but he merely said, “Give it to me.” He kept his eyes on the field while I talked, turning his head to face me only when I’d finished.
“You want me to arrest Lavinia Fremont?” he said incredulously. “The woman who benefited most from Corinne Blakely’s generosity, whose business was financed by Blakely?” He sounded as if he’d have had the ump throw me out of the game if it were possible.
“It was blood money,” I said. “In her memoir, Corinne confessed to being the one who orchestrated the attack that cost Lavinia her leg. Listen.” I’d brought the page with me, and I dug it out of my pocket and unfolded it. “It’s from the next-to-last chapter.”
I began to read. “‘This memoir would be neither complete nor honest without an accounting of what happened in London in 1964 when my best friend, Lavinia, was attacked outside a nightclub and subsequently lost part of her leg and the ability to dance.’” I looked up to gauge Lissy’s reaction, but his face was expressionless. “She goes on to explain about the dance competition and who all was there in London, and then says, ‘To my everlasting shame, I paid a man, a thug, to injure Corinne so she wouldn’t be able to compete. I told him where we’d be and even made sure we lingered at the nightclub until most of the patrons had left. I have regretted it from the moment he jumped out from behind that car. If I could have stopped it, I would have, but it was too late. I watched as he attacked Lavinia, watched as she crumpled to the sidewalk, and listened to her cries of pain. I could try to excuse what I did by talking about my passion for ballroom dance, and how badly I wanted to win the competition, but that would only make me more contemptible. I was so sick with grief and remorse that I could barely dance; indeed, I gave up dancing for several months after that. Everyone thought it was so I could be with Lavinia and help her, but it was because every turn, every chassé, reminded me of what I’d caused to be done. I swear, if I could have traded places with Lavinia on that operating table when the doctors removed her leg, I would have.’”
I lowered the page, affected as I had been on first reading it by the honesty—belated—and the pain that quivered in the words. “Even though Corinne meant only to put Lavinia out of commission for a week or so, she’s the reason her friend had to have her leg amputated. She felt so guilty about it that she helped Lavinia financially—”
“Helped her get on her feet,” Lissy said with mordant humor.
I winced and continued. “She put up the money to start Lavinia’s design studio and did what she could to funnel business Lavinia’s way. All because she felt genuinely awful about what she’d done.”
“Perhaps you’ll explain why Fremont waited until now to get her revenge?” Lissy asked, politely skeptical.
“Because she didn’t know Corinne was behind it!”
Cheers erupted around us, and the boys on the field headed for the dugout while a green-shirted team took up positions around the bases and in the outfield. The scent of hot dogs drifted our way, and I realized I was hungry, but not hungry enough to eat a hot dog.
“And since the book isn’t published, she found out about the scheme how?” His tone was not-so-politely skeptical now.
“Because Corinne told her.”
He looked at me from under his brows. “Ms. Graysin—”
“No, really. Corinne told each of the people mentioned in the book—well, maybe not all of them, but the major players—what she was writing about. Greta Monk knew. Marco Ingelido knew. Maurice knew. I’m sure her son and grandson knew something about what she was writing about them. She talked to everyone. She must have talked to Lavinia Fremont, but Lavinia didn’t mention that when we talked, which proves she had something to hide.” I finished triumphantly and leaned back, bumping into someone’s knees. “Sorry,” I muttered to the man behind me.
“In each of those cases, Ms. Graysin, Blakely was revealing something negative about another individual; maybe you’re right and she felt some obligation to warn them. With the Fremont tale, however, she was confessing to something herself, not outing someone else’s secret, so I don’t see that she’d have the same motivation to discuss it in advance.”
I’d been through it fifty times in my mind and I knew I was right. Frustrated with what I saw as Lissy’s deliberate obtuseness, I started, “Detective—”
“Ssh!” His grandson had come up to bat. I resigned myself and watched as the kid whiffed the first pitch, fouled the second one, and then connected with the third one to send the ball skittering between first and second bases. When he arrived, panting, at first base, he turned to grin at his grandpa, and Lissy gave him a thumbs-up. If I’d thought his pleasure in his grandson’s accomplishment would soften him up, I was in for a disappointment.
“Go away, Ms. Graysin,” Lissy said. “I appreciate what you’re trying to do for your friend, but you have no evidence. Nada. Nothing but a story made up of speculation and wishful thinking.”
“But—” I stopped. “What if I had proof?”
“If you had evidence, we could talk.” His tone made it plain he didn’t think we’d be conversing anytime soon.
* * *
Without giving a lot of thought to what I was going to do next, I pointed my Beetle toward Washington, D.C. At this hour on a Friday evening, most of the traffic was crawling out of the city, so I didn’t hit any major traffic jams. As a result, I slid into a curbside parking space a block from Lavinia Fremont’s shop at half past seven. The sun was low on the horizon, still providing plenty of light, but stretching shadows halfway across the street. A Middle Eastern restaurant offered sidewalk tables, and the scent of falafel mingled strangely with exhaust. Diners laughed, and a belly dancer emerged as I made my way toward Lavinia Fremont’s studio.
The door was locked, and a “closed” sign hung in the window. I bit my lip. I’d rushed over here without a real plan, in my usual impulsive way, and now I didn’t know what to do. I stepped back on the sidewalk and craned my neck. A light shone from the windows above the shop; I thought Lavinia lived up there. A taupe-painted door to the left of the shop had a sign above its doorbell that read,
PRIVATE RESIDENCE. NO SOLICITATION
. I wasn’t a salesperson. I rang the bell.
Nothing happened for several minutes. I was about to give up and go home to formulate a better plan—heck, any plan—when I heard footsteps descending the stairs. “Yes?” Lavinia called from inside the safely closed door.
“It’s Stacy Graysin, Lavinia. May I talk to you for a moment?”
The door eased open a crack, stopped by a chain, and half of Lavinia’s face appeared. She was makeupless, and her severely red hair made a stark contrast with her pale, tissue-frail skin. “Stacy!” She sounded astonished to see that it was really me. “What on earth—”
“I know it’s late, and I shouldn’t bother you at home, but it’s about Corinne. May I come in?”
She hesitated long enough for me to know she considered my appearance on her doorstep an imposition, and then pulled the door wider after removing the chain. “I suppose so.” Her voice was querulous; she sounded a lot like my Nana Graysin did once she decided she was old and decrepit, not like the vibrant Lavinia I was used to.
She wore a gray chenille robe, and I followed her up the stairs, conscious of her one bony, blue-veined ankle bare above a black, moccasin-style slipper, and the hard, too-uniform flesh color of the prosthetic. Her apartment door stood open, light spilling onto the landing, and she gestured for me to precede her inside. I looked around curiously, noting a sofa and love seat covered in pale green velvet, with striped pillows and a patterned rug providing contrast. Framed photos were the only art on the walls. I moved closer to study them, smiling at the 1960s hairdos and fashions of the ballroom dancers. An auburn-haired dancer in an ice blue gown caught my eye. I half turned to Lavinia, who stood watching me. “You?”
She nodded. “Me and Ricky.” I realized with a start that there were no dance photos in her design studio, no photos of her at all. Glancing at the collection on her walls, I also realized that all the displayed pictures predated the attack in London. Suddenly uncomfortable, I backed away. A dining nook beyond the seating area held a round table and four chairs in a warm wood of some kind, and a single bowl of soup and glass of wine sat on the shiny tabletop.
“I interrupted your dinner,” I said, feeling worse and worse about my invasion. “I’m sorry.”
Lavinia shrugged as if to say,
You’re here now
, and offered me some soup. “Chicken barley,” she said. “A family recipe.”
“It smells delicious,” I said, accepting.
Limping into the galley-style kitchen, she ladled soup into an eggplant-colored bowl and handed it to me. “Wine?”
“I’m driving.”
Without asking, she poured me a glass of water, carried it to the table, and seated herself. “I assume you’re not here to talk about dresses?” she said with a hint of asperity. She sounded more like the usual Lavinia, and I relaxed a tad.
“No. I wanted to talk about Corinne.”
Lavinia nodded. “There’s something about a funeral that brings out the need to tell stories, isn’t there?”
That wasn’t exactly it, but I nodded. “You were best friends.”
Lavinia spooned up soup and didn’t reply.
“It’s amazing what she did for you after your accident.”
“I wouldn’t call it an ‘accident.’”
“The attack.” I let the words sit, trying to prod her into saying something. No joy. We ate for a moment in silence, and I glugged some water, beginning to wish I’d accepted the wine. Finally, I said, “I read Corinne’s manuscript.”
That brought Lavinia’s head up. She observed me through narrowed eyes. “I heard she never finished it.”
“Oh, she did,” I said. “Her housekeeper—Mrs. Laughlin—took it over after Corinne’s death.”
“Stole it?” Lavinia wasn’t one to pussyfoot around with euphemisms.
“I guess so. She finished it up, added a bit, and sent it off to the publisher. I guess the book’ll come out in time for the holidays.”
“Merry Christmas,” Lavinia said in an unjolly voice.
“She’s got a whole chapter about the trip to London,” I prodded.
Lavinia downed the rest of her wine and rose to fetch the bottle, her limp more pronounced than earlier. “What does she have to say about it?”
“I think you know.” There. I said it. I kept my eyes fastened on Lavinia; her gaze flitted to my face and then refocused on the wine bottle as she poured the last of the straw-colored liquid into her glass.
“I suppose I do know,” she said, and I felt a brief flare of triumph before she continued. “I was there, after all.” Did her steady gaze hold a hint of mockery?
I expressed my frustration by dropping my spoon into my bowl with a clatter. “She admits to paying some thug to attack you.”
Lavinia drew her breath in sharply and said, “Oh, my.”
“‘Oh, my’? You learn your best friend was responsible for an attack that cost you your foot, your ability to dance, and you say, ‘Oh, my’?” Scraping my chair back, I got to my feet. “I think you knew. I think she told you.”
Lavinia faced me calmly, only her whitened knuckles around the wine bottle’s neck betraying tension. “I’m just surprised that she confessed to it in writing,” she said. “I’ve known for years.”
“I don’t believe you.” I knew I sounded like an eight-year-old on the playground, but I couldn’t help it. She was skillfully, deftly, cutting the ground from under my feet. By saying she’d known for years, she was building a defense based on Lissy’s logic: Why would she seek revenge all these years after the fact? “I think she told you not long ago, like she told everyone else about what she was writing. I think you felt angry, stunned, betrayed. I think you went off the deep end, that you . . .” I found I couldn’t utter the accusation out loud.