“You lied to me,” I said, stepping in and closing the door.
Mrs. Laughlin didn’t exclaim or scream, but the pile of utilitarian undies she was tucking into the suitcase tumbled out of her hands, spilling on the bed and the floor, when she jerked her head toward me. “Oh, my goodness, you gave me a start,” she said, right hand pressed to her chest. She peered over the red-framed bifocals. “Stella, right?”
“Stacy.”
She bent to retrieve a pair of undies from the floor. “I wasn’t expecting… Why are you-”
“I think you know.” I’d been scanning the room, and I’d spotted a stack of paper on the antique oak washstand by the window. Crossing the room, I studied the top page, which proclaimed Step by Step: A Memoir. Corinne’s name appeared next, followed by a list of some of the ballroom dancing titles she’d won.
Mrs. Laughlin watched me riffle through the pages, doing nothing to stop me.
“This is Corinne’s memoir. Why did you lie to me and tell me it wasn’t finished?”
She sighed and stretched for a pair of undies that had drifted half under the bed. Her girth got in the way, and I bent to pull them out for her. “Thank you.” She folded them precisely and laid them gently atop the others in her old-fashioned, hard-sided suitcase. It looked battered enough and antique enough to have been the one she packed her clothes in when she came from England half a century earlier.
“Well, I really didn’t think it was any of your business,” she said at last, turning to face me. A look of resolution stiffened her seamed face. “I lived all this with Corinne,” she said, gesturing toward the manuscript pages, “and I helped her write and organize the book. When she died, it seemed only right for me to continue where she’d left off and see the book through to publication.”
“It’s part of the estate,” I pointed out. “It must belong to Turner.”
“Pish.”
She turned back to her packing and I watched for a minute. “Corinne’s agent said they were working with someone to finish the book-that was you?”
She nodded. “I got in touch with them immediately after learning Corinne was dead. I’ve added a chapter about her death-the editor says it’s quite moving-and I mailed off the completed manuscript Monday. That’s a copy.” She indicated the pages on the dresser.
“The police should have this,” I said, laying a hand on the manuscript.
“There’s nothing in there that will help them,” she said, “but by all means, take it to them if you want.”
“What do you mean, there’s nothing that will help them? So many people were worried about what Corinne was saying and were angry at her for revealing their secrets.”
“Maybe so, dear,” Mrs. Laughlin said with a world-weary air, “but do you really think Marco Ingelido would kill to keep his illegitimate daughter a secret?”
I did, actually.
“Or that Greta Monk would do murder to keep Corinne from spilling the beans about a spot of embezzlement twenty years ago?”
Possibly. Or her husband might.
“Or that one of her ex-husbands might do away with her in order to keep sexual inadequacies a secret-Lyle; or keep the world from hearing how he beat his son from his first marriage-the Reverend Hamish; or conceal his past as a gigolo accused of theft-your friend Maurice.” Her gaze gently mocked me. Giving me her back, she hauled on the suitcase, pulling the top half up and over so she could latch it. A gap of about eight inches made closing it unlikely. “Could you just press down on this, dear?” she asked.
Obligingly, I moved to the bed and leaned all my weight onto the suitcase while she fumbled with the latches. They snapped shut after a moment’s struggle. Breathing heavily, Mrs. Laughlin sank onto the coverletted bed, and I swung the suitcase to the floor, nearly dislocating my shoulder. What was she taking back to England with her-her bowling ball collection?
“People don’t kill out of embarrassment,” she said after catching her breath.
Hm, wasn’t there more to it than shame? I wasn’t so sure that the prospect of humiliation, divorce, loss of income or prestige, or a prison sentence didn’t make good motives, but I let her continue.
“People kill out of greed or for revenge,” she said with the air of a teacher instructing a student.
Where had she gotten her degree in the psychology of murder? “If greed’s a motive, you stand to make a lot of money off of this,” I said.
My near-accusation didn’t faze her; in fact, amusement bloomed on her face. “I didn’t kill Corinne.”
“It would have been easy for you to tamper with her medication.”
“Maybe so, but I didn’t do it. However, that doesn’t mean I was going to look a gift horse in the mouth. The manuscript,” she said when I looked confused. “Corinne left me enough to live on in her will, but do you have any idea what taxes are like in England? And the VAT?” She shook her head in disbelief. “Besides which, I don’t want to spend the rest of my days trapped in that cottage with Abigail. We didn’t get along so well as teenagers, and I doubt that old age has increased our tolerance for each other. I want to be able to get away, to travel. The advance for the book-I negotiated a new one when I explained to the publisher that they’d never get the manuscript if they didn’t deal with me-will pay for a little holiday in Majorca. And when the royalties start coming in, I expect I’ll be able to manage the safari in Botswana I’ve always dreamed of, and maybe a tour of Cambodia.” She gave me a serene smile.
“Turner will sue you,” I predicted.
“Let him try.” Steel threaded her tone. “I’ll claim the manuscript was one of the mementos I chose in accordance with dear Corinne’s will.”
Whew. If she hadn’t been so thoroughly English, I’d’ve thought she had an ancestor named Machiavelli.
Getting to her feet, she said, “Now, dear, I’m afraid I have to shoo you out. I need a nap before my dinner date this evening.”
Date? This octogenarian on the verge of moving back to England had a date when I hadn’t had a date in over half a year, not since Rafe and I broke up?
She primmed her mouth. “Mr. Jonathan Goudge has invited me to dine with him,” she said coyly.
Corinne’s lawyer. I couldn’t help it: I laughed. “Well, have a nice evening,” I said, scooping up the typewritten pages. They weighed more than I anticipated.
“You, too. I expect I’ll see you at the funeral tomorrow.”
I arrived back at the studio midway through the ballroom aerobics class and immediately took over for Vitaly, who was leading the class with verve. The students seemed to be enjoying him, even though he had them doing spins until they staggered around the room like drunks, since they didn’t know how to spot properly. I waved good-bye to Vitaly as I got the women started on some quickstep footwork sequences guaranteed to raise their pulses.
As soon as class ended, I went downstairs to shower and change. Refreshed, and dressed in a minidress with a mod floral print straight out of the sixties, I tucked the manuscript in a tote and lugged it to a copy place. Once I’d made myself a copy, I drove to the police station and asked for Detective Lissy. A young admin type escorted me back to his office, and I looked around with curiosity while Lissy finished a phone conversation. My prior experience of the police station included only a grim interview room; it was interesting to scope out Lissy’s private space.
As I would have expected, the place was scarily neat, with case folders stacked precisely, papers in his in-box aligned so their edges touched the top and right-hand sides of the box, white mug centered on a ceramic coaster. What caught my attention, though, were the photos. All in identical black frames, and all lined up with the front edge of the credenza behind his desk, they featured kids ranging in age from infanthood to adolescence, smiles on most of their faces. Somehow, I had never pictured the neat-freak Detective Lissy with children. Unless he had them trained to military standards, they must drive him insane with clothes dropped on the bedroom floor, makeup left on bathroom countertops, and mud tracked into the house.