Dead on Her Feet (An Antonia Blakeley Tango Mystery Book 1) (21 page)

Shawna nodded. “Yes.”

“And Ms. Blakeley was just telling me about Barbara going after Roland when she saw he’d gotten engaged. Where does she fit into this love triangle?”

“It’s more of a love rhombus, or maybe a pentagon,” Antonia broke in, seizing the opportunity to divert the conversation away from Christian. She offered up a chronology of the relationships, embellishing where she could to make it look like she was being cooperative.

The unsuspecting Detective Morrow wrote it all down. “So, if I understand correctly, Ms. Blakeley, the original relationship was between Eduardo Sanchez and Nathalie LeFebre. Did Nathalie by any chance know Miles Rothenberg?”

 “Miles? They might have met in Buenos Aires at some point. Eduardo knew them both and could have introduced them. Why? I thought Miles’ death was an accident.”

“Just curious.”

Shawna frowned. “I don’t see how ... Miles stopped going to Argentina a few years back.”

Antonia said, “He might have known her. They were both in the business.”

“I seriously doubt that,” Shawna said. “They moved in very different circles.”

Detective Morrow entered another notation in his steno pad. “Let’s see if I have the facts straight. Ms. Muir, you and Roland went to El Abrazo nightclub during Trasnochando; that was in August. There you met Eduardo and he introduced you both to Nathalie who at the time was his girlfriend.”

Shawna took a sip of water. “That’s right.”

“And shortly thereafter Roland and Nathalie started seeing each other.”

“You’ll have to ask him about that. He’d hardly have told me.”

“Don’t count on Roland for a straight answer.” Antonia couldn’t help herself. He was such an easy target.

Detective Morrow continued to question Shawna. “In early September you learned about Roland’s association with Nathalie and broke off the engagement.”

Shawna said, “That’s right.”

“When did Eduardo find out?”

Shawna paused with her glass almost to her lips. “As far as I know, not until he caught them together at the Halloween party.”

Morrow didn’t seem to notice Shawna’s hesitation. Had she told Eduardo about Roland and Nathalie? That seemed unlikely; tattling wasn’t her style. “And sometime in September or October, shortly after Nathalie moved to Atlanta, Barbara and Roland had a brief fling.”

Antonia said to Shawna, “I warned her but she didn’t listen.”

Shawna nodded solemnly. “They never do.”

Morrow frowned, obviously missing the reference, so Antonia explained. “New dancers often confuse tango intimacy with real life attraction. But tango isn’t life.” She turned back to Shawna. “Did you see Bobby’s reaction when he heard Nathalie and Roland had gotten engaged? Overjoyed in a reserved sort of way. Don’t you think he and Barbara would make a good match?”

 “Barbara could be good for him. She’d loosen him up.”

“And he’d be a steadying influence on her—emotionally, God knows not physically. And she must care at least a little—look how she mothers him.”

“She’s almost as bad as you with Christian.”

The last thing she needed was for Morrow to focus on Christian so Antonia said the first thing that came into her head. “Bobby’s probably worrying she did it.”

“I doubt that. Barbara’s not the type to plan a murder.”

Shawna had a point. Even though Barbara was a scientist and therefore ought to be factual, organized, and rational, she really was an emotional person. Antonia tried to imagine a scenario that would fit. “She comes to the party hoping to leave with Roland. Roland arrives with Nathalie on his arm, I always wondered what that meant, that term, on his arm, she’s not a parrot. Anyhow, they announce their engagement. Barbara’s furious. She tries to claw Nathalie’s eyes out. The knife falls out of her garter. She takes it, waits, and strikes.” Antonia shook her head. “No, that won’t work. Nathalie was killed with a steak knife. And anyhow if she did it she’d be incapable of keeping it to herself, unless she was too drunk to remember.” Unless of course Barbara really was cold-blooded and the rest was just an act. “Maybe she plans it all along. Maybe even after Roland betrays her she still wants him and kills Nathalie to get her out of the way.”

Shawna said, “Absolutely not. That’s crazy.”

Detective Morrow made a slight noise as he shifted in his chair. He was letting them interrogate each other. No problem.

Shawna set her water glass down on the floor. Noticing a piece of lint on her sweatpants she plucked it off and flicked it away. “For one thing she must have known Roland wasn’t serious about her.”

“I agree. It was a calculated move, for Roland to seduce Barbara, I mean. He wanted to show Nathalie she wasn’t the only fish in the sea. What a Pinocchio.” Antonia twisted her ponytail into a knot and smiled at Detective Morrow. “Are you following all this?”

“No strings to hold him back. And a liar.”

Not bad, she thought. “But Roland’s plan backfires because Nathalie knows that game and plays it better.”

Shawna said, “Nathalie manipulated everybody. Even Christian.”

“Was she successful?” Morrow asked.

Antonia couldn’t let him suspect Nathalie had gotten to Christian. “Was she ever. Look how she got Roland to pop the question.”

The detective switched to another pencil. “I meant with Christian.”

Antonia shifted in her seat. The built-in couch was a lot less comfortable than the stand-alone one. “Not that I know,” she said which was technically true. Christian hadn’t admitted anything. “Nathalie vamped all the guys.”

Detective Morrow raised his eyebrows at her in a very dubious way.

“Look,” she said. “Christian and I are close. He’d have told me if there was any connection.”

Shawna added, “He didn’t go near Nathalie after she fainted in any case, so he can’t be involved.”

“Not necessarily,” he said. “Nathalie could have been struck on the dance floor.”

“Hold on, I just thought of something that will scotch that theory,” Antonia said. “If she was stabbed then she’d have fallen over on the spot.”

Morrow shrugged. “Not necessarily. It depends. How sharp the knife is, where it enters the body, angle of entrance, what it hits. Stabbing victims can walk for minutes. They think they’ve been thumped in the back.”

“That seems far-fetched to me,” Shawna said.

“There are other possibilities,” Morrow said. “Someone left a set of fingerprints and a nice clean mark from his or her right cheek on the library door—the door that goes to the bedroom. It looks like someone was eavesdropping. Perhaps they heard or saw something. They could have entered the bedroom.”

Shawna said, “No. I told you before, nobody came in.”

Don’t react, Antonia thought, he’s just fishing. She said as calmly as she could, “You don’t know when he left those prints, if they are his. You can’t really think he’s capable of killing Nathalie.”

“Maybe not,” he said. “But I have to investigate all the possibilities.” He scribbled something in his notebook. “Let me make sure I have this straight. Ms. Muir, when you were dancing with Bobby last night, right before you and he bumped into Nathalie and Roland, who else was on the floor with you?”

Nuts, Antonia thought. If anyone noticed I left Christian alone on the dance floor his alibi’s blown.

Shawna said, “When we started the dance Roland and Nathalie were ahead of us and Antonia and Christian were behind us.”

“Did you stay in that order for the whole song?”

 Antonia quickly said, “I remember Bobby was having trouble staying in his lane.”

“Ms. Muir?”

“I didn’t see. I dance with my eyes closed. That’s the best way to feel what’s going on with your partner.”

“What about immediately after the collision? You must have opened your eyes then.”

Antonia held her breath. She could feel the sweat beginning to pool under her armpits. It seemed like Shawna was taking a very long time to answer.

“Bobby had trod on my foot and it hurt. I wasn’t paying attention to much else, I’m afraid. I went to my room to change out of my dance shoes.”

Whew, that’s lucky. Antonia thought. Shawna’s one down. Now I just need to get to the others before Morrow does.

Ir hacia atrás

To go backwards

THE MOMENT DETECTIVE MORROW LEFT
the house Antonia dashed upstairs to her bedroom and speed-dialed Christian’s number. No answer. She waited for a few seconds and tried again. Still no answer. She raced down the half flight of stairs to the main floor and grabbed her car keys, cell phone and satchel from the hall table.

Shawna followed her to the front door. “Where are you going?”

She ran down the steps to the driveway and got into her car. The Audi was nearly on empty. Nuts.

She hit traffic almost immediately. The light at Peachtree and Martin Luther King changed twice before she could get through the intersection, the road into Grant Park choked with Southern drivers going nowhere slowly. She rolled down the window hoping for some fresh fall air and was blasted with hot black lung-clogging exhaust from the SUV ahead of her. She tried to reach Christian again with no luck.

By the time she arrived at his building and bounded up the stairs to his loft she was panting. She pressed the doorbell. No answer.

Nuts. Where was the little rascal?

She was just about to use her key to let herself in when the door cracked open and Christian poked out his head. His hair was matted down on one side and his t-shirt looked like the same one he’d worn under his costume the night before, only slept in.

“Hey.” He opened the door wider to let her pass. “You look terrible.”

“Why didn’t you answer your phone? The police were just at my house asking about you,” she said, brushing past him into the loft’s main living area. The place was a mess even by Christian’s standards. The vast oak floor was strewn with dirty clothes and newspapers. Nathalie’s face smiled in black and white from the front page of the Atlanta Constitution; some ghoul of a reporter had already capitalized on her tragedy.

“The police want to know where you were when Bobby and Shawna collided with Nathalie last night. Remember? We stopped dancing right before that and I went to the kitchen. Where did you go after I left you?”

Christian threw himself down on the couch and sighed like he did whenever she used to ask him where he was going, who with, how far, how late, back in the days when he’d lived under her roof. She knew he hated it but right now she didn’t have time to tiptoe around his feelings.

“I already said. I was either in the dining room or the library.”

“What?” Her car keys slipped from her fingers and clattered against the hardwood floor. She picked them up and stuffed them back into her satchel. “You told Detective Morrow that?”

He kicked at the floor with the toe of his sneaker. “So what?”

“So what? I told him we were dancing together the whole time. I lied to him.”

“What for? The police always want to know crap like that. It’s their routine.”

“Detective Morrow thinks Nathalie might have been stabbed in the dining room. If you were there and you weren’t dancing with me you have no alibi.”

Christian scooped up a rumpled bedroom pillow from the floor and crushed it to his chest. “So?”

“We need to prove you weren’t anywhere near Nathalie. What did you do after we stopped dancing?”

He didn’t answer.

“Did you go to the library? Detective Morrow says there were prints all over the door to Shawna’s bedroom.”

Christian scuttled from the couch, taking refuge behind the metal shelving that separated the living area from the office. The coils of computer wiring that always reminded her of the top of barbed wire fences had grown since her last visit. The clicking of his fingers on the keyboard told her he was back online—and off-line as far as their conversation was concerned.

She addressed her argument to the air, hoping he was still listening, even if he pretended not to be. “I know the police, they’re no good, they arrest the wrong people and let the right people go, but that Detective Morrow is different – he’s an anal-retentive, smart, relentless—” She couldn’t find the right word to finish the sentence. “If there’s a gap in your story he’ll find it. Think. Did you use the bathroom?”

Click-click-click.

“Christian, you’re a suspect.”

His disembodied voice rang out, “
I
haven’t done anything wrong.
I
told him the truth.”

“Then why won’t you tell me?”

The clicking stopped.

She came around to find Christian slumped at the computer holding his head. Stacks of paper surrounded him like sandbags around a bunker; on top of one pile lay extra, unsent invitations to Shawna’s Halloween party. How innocent it had all seemed then. “Christian, I’m trying to help. Last night you talked about cutting Nathalie’s face. What
was
there between you two?”

He shook his head. “I told you, nothing.”

“You kept a file on her.”

“Did Barbara tell you that?”

“You were obsessed with Nathalie, weren’t you?”

“Shut up!”

She reached down and turned the computer off. “Did she lead you on then reject you?

“No!”

“Did you want to hurt her like she hurt you?” The accusations felt crazy but they’d taken on a momentum of their own. “You attacked Barbara. Did you learn that from your father?”

“Don’t talk to me about him.”

“Did you do it?”

Christian shoved his chair back, stood up, and swept his arm across the surface of the desk sending manuals, papers, and party invitations flying. “Get out of my face!” He ripped the keyboard from its port and threw it on the floor where it skipped once, hit the wall, and lay still. He looked around for something else to wreck.

“You don’t know shit about what happened,” he said. “And you don’t understand shit—” he yanked the monitor away from its station, popping the plug from the wall outlet, “—about me. Telling me what to do. Treating me like a kid.” He slammed the monitor into the floor. “I’ll tell you the truth. I hated Nathalie. I hated her.” He started to cry. “Are you satisfied? Now get out! Get the hell out of here!”