“Because whoever it was was looking for Corinne’s manuscript.”
Taking my elbow, he guided me toward a small office I hadn’t noticed earlier. I noted dark wood, an excellent sound system, dance trophies, and a sleek laptop before he closed the door and turned to face me. “Did they get it?” His dark eyes searched my face.
“You should know.”
“Are you accusing me?” He seemed caught between astonishment and scorn, and any hope I cherished of getting him to confess dwindled. He snorted and passed behind me to get a cigarette from a box on his desk. “Filthy habit, I know,” he said, lighting up. “I feel it in my wind more and more each year. Yet…” He shrugged.
I tried a different tack. “Sarah Lewis seemed very interested in the scene of the crime. I caught her taking photos of my parlor.”
“Sarah?” Marco took a step toward me. “What was she doing there?”
“Vitaly and I hired her to do our publicity stills,” I said. The tension in Marco’s face unsettled me and I stepped back.
“Leave Sarah out of this,” Marco warned. “It’s got nothing to do with her.”
“Oh, I think it does,” I said. “Your determination to keep Corinne from publishing her memoir-I think it’s got everything to do with Sarah.”
Marco reared back as if I’d slapped him. The cigarette burned down, unnoticed, between his fingers. After a moment, he lifted it to his lips and drew deeply. It seemed to calm him and he turned his head to exhale smoke over his shoulder. “Whatever you think you know, I had nothing to do with Corinne’s death. And that’s all I’m going to say on the subject. I don’t need to prove anything to you or anyone else: The police already have their man.”
I sensed a deep weariness in the dancer that almost made me feel sorry for him. “Maurice didn’t do it,” I said. “He had no possible motive.”
“Really?” Marco squinted and his voice turned nasty. “Perhaps you should ask him about a certain ruby necklace that ‘disappeared’ during one of his cruises. Come to think of it, that’s a story that might interest the police, if they haven’t already dug it up. And I’m sure it’s a story Corinne was including in her damned memoir, since she was instrumental in resolving the situation.”
The certainty in his tone took me aback. “What are you talking about?”
His gaze mocked me. “Ask Maurice. I’m not one to tell tales out of school on another man. I’ve got a class to teach.” On that note, he stubbed out his cigarette in an ashtray and ushered me out of the office, leaving me in the entryway as he returned to the dance floor. I knew Solange, eyes bright with curiosity, watched me as I exited.
I pointed my Beetle toward home, troubled by Marco’s insinuations about Maurice. I hoped to be able to talk to him about them when I got back to Graysin Motion, but an accident on the beltway had traffic backed up for miles, and by the time I reached Old Town ninety minutes later, he was gone for the day. I phoned his house, but got no answer. Reluctantly concluding I would get no answers that evening, I called Danielle and talked her into meeting me at the gym for a workout.
“Isn’t that Eulalia Pine something else?” Danielle whispered as we did vicious ab exercises in a Pilates class-Danielle’s choice, not mine.
“She seems to know her stuff,” I said, crunching my body into a vee with my arms extended over my head and my legs almost perpendicular to the floor. “She’s in charge of an estate sale at Corinne Blakely’s house that starts tomorrow. I’m going to show up early to buy Corinne’s old typewriter.”
“Why?”
The women on either side of us shushed us, and Danielle and I exchanged guilty looks and then giggled. The instructor frowned at us, which only made us giggle more.
“I’m not going to be able to walk upright for a week,” I complained to Dani as we straggled out of the class at nine p.m. I rubbed my abused abs.
“You’re the professional athlete,” she said. “Suck it up.”
“Hmph.”
As we showered in the locker room, Danielle came back to the estate sale, and I told her about the typewriter and Maurice’s theory that the cartridge would reveal Corinne’s outline and provide more suspects for her murder.
“An estate sale sounds like fun,” Dani said, squirting shampoo into her hand and massaging it through her thick curls. “I’ll come with you.”
“I have to be there by eight tomorrow morning.”
“Shoot. I’ve got to work.”
I faced the shower spray, closing my eyes and lifting my face to the drumming water. “I’ll call you as soon as I get finished and let you know how it goes. Any luck finding a couch yet? I could keep an eye out for one at the estate sale.”
“I’ve been to a couple more stores, but I haven’t settled on a couch yet. I’m making progress, though: I know I don’t want leather. Sure, let me know if you see something at the sale.”
We toweled off, dressed, and left the gym as the last glimmers of sun faded from the sky. Before we separated outside the gym, I asked Dani whether she wanted to go swimsuit shopping with me on Saturday. “I need a new suit for Jekyll Island,” I said casually.
She eyed me with affectionate scorn. “Is that your subtle way of trying to nudge me into a decision?”
I don’t know why my subtlety was so obvious to everyone. “Maybe.”
She laughed, punched my shoulder, and strode off with a toss of her red curls.
“Is that a ‘yes’?” I called after her.
I arrived at the estate sale the next morning moments after it began, Tav, surprisingly, in tow. He’d shown up at Graysin Motion before heading to his business downtown, hoping to have the talk about our financial situation which we’d postponed from yesterday. He’d caught me shooing out the sweaty ballroom cardio students, anxious to get to Corinne’s house before someone snapped up the typewriter, and had decided to ride along when I told him where I was going.
He let out a low whistle when he caught sight of the mansion. “Ballroom dancing pays better than I thought,” he said.
“Marrying well pays better than ballroom dancing,” I said dryly, maneuvering the car down a side street where arrows indicated we should park.
“Maybe I should try it,” he said with a sidelong look at me.
“Great work if you can get it,” I said, refusing to take the bait.
He laughed and freed himself from the seat belt. “Which way is the house now? I got lost two turns back-I have no sense of direction.”
I put my hands on his shoulders and pointed him in the right direction. The number of cars parked on both sides of the street between here and Corinne’s filled me with dismay, and I found my pace quickening as we approached the house. “I hope it’s not gone,” I muttered, as we came within sight of the house, the lawn crawling with dozens of people pawing through goods set up on card tables outside, while a steady stream of buyers disappeared through the front doors or into the open garage.
A fortyish woman and a man sat behind a six-foot-long folding table with a cash box in front of them and a professionally lettered sign proclaiming PINE ESTATE SALES propped to the side. The woman wasn’t Eulalia Pine, but I approached her anyway. She looked up from making change for a dealer apparently buying several pieces of furniture and gave me a harassed look over the tops of her reading glasses. When I introduced myself and told her I wanted to speak to Eulalia Pine, she shook her head of frizzy brown hair. “Mom tore a ligament in her ankle out appraising some antique farm equipment last evening,” she said with an exasperated sigh.
“She was going to put a typewriter aside for me,” I said anxiously, scanning the boxes and items stacked behind and under the table.
The woman threw open her hands in a “nothing I can do” gesture. “She didn’t say anything to me. Your best bet is to find it in the house. All I can say is we haven’t sold any typewriters today.” She turned her attention to a customer behind me.