When Lissy hung up and gave me a long-suffering look, I asked, “Are they yours?”
“You think I keep photos of someone else’s grandkids in my office?”
“Grandkids?” Wow. My mind was busy processing this hitherto unknown side of the persnickety detective and I missed his next remark.
“What do you have to show me, Miss Graysin?” he asked impatiently. “The desk sergeant said you had new information related to the Blakely murder.”
“Oh, this.” I hefted the tote onto my lap and dug out the manuscript. Proudly, I deposited it on his desk. It looked out of place there with its dog-eared pages ever so slightly offset.
Lissy poked at it with a stiff finger. “‘This’ would be…?”
“The manuscript,” I said. “I discovered that Corinne had completed it after all, and I managed to retrieve it.” I waited for his words of praise.
“Oh, that,” he said dismissively. “We’ve already got a copy. One of my officers is reading it, but I don’t expect any revelations.”
“You’ve already got a copy?” My face fell.
Sensing my disappointment, perhaps, he smiled maliciously. “Why, yes. Angela Rush, the agent, faxed it to us yesterday.”
I bit back the words that sprang to mind. Damn. Double damn. I’d thought I could curry favor with Lissy by bringing him the manuscript, but it was old news to him.
“I’ve been doing this job for twenty-seven years, Miss Graysin,” he said. “I’m better at it than you think.” He used the backs of his fingers to edge the manuscript closer to me.
I wanted to point out that if he were really good at it, he wouldn’t have arrested the wrong man. However, I just stood, tucked the pages back into the tote (instead of strewing them around his psychotically neat office, as I was tempted to), and said with as much dignity as I could muster, “Thanks for your time. I’ve got to hurry if I’m going to drop this at Phineas Drake’s office before they close for the day.” I gave him a sweet smile.
The mention of Drake’s name gave Lissy a dyspeptic look, as if he had tummy troubles, but he didn’t say anything besides, “I’ve told you before: Stick-”
“Yeah, yeah, I know. Stick to dancing.”
I dropped a copy of the manuscript off with Phineas Drake, getting a few minutes with the lawyer himself, even though I told his receptionist I didn’t need to see him. His smile was partly hidden by his beard as he came forward to greet me. When I told him what I had, he gave me all the praise Lissy had denied me, extolling my initiative and my cunning. He laughed, a sound like rolling timpani, when I told him about Mrs. Laughlin and Mr. Goudge.
“That’s one way to create conflict of interest and ensure Goudge won’t be able to represent the estate if the grandson sues her for theft of the manuscript,” he said admiringly. “Sounds like my kind of gal.”
I raised my brows, wondering whether Mrs. Laughlin’s liaison with the lawyer was as deliberate as Drake was suggesting, and decided it probably was.
Drake riffled the manuscript’s pages and plunked it onto his massive desk. “I’ll get one of my associates on this right away. I have high hopes that it’ll provide me fodder for creating reasonable doubt, my two favorite words in the English language.” Still chuckling, he escorted me back to the elevators and I rode down, anxious to get home and read the book myself. I called Maurice on the way, telling him what Mrs. Laughlin had said and about giving the manuscript to Drake.
“Good thinking, Anastasia,” he said. “I’ll keep my fingers crossed that you find something useful in the book.”
“I can make another copy, if you want one,” I offered.
“Thank you, but no. I’m sure I’ll read Corinne’s book one day, but I don’t think I can deal with the memories right now.”
“I understand.” The melancholy in his voice subdued me. “I might have some questions for you, though, as I read.”
“By all means.”
I hung up, thinking about what a weird thing a memoir was. Was it possible, I wondered, for Corinne, or anyone, to write a wholly truthful memoir? Not, I decided, thinking about how Danielle’s and my memories of our last trip to Jekyll Island differed. Nothing told from one person’s perspective could be more than one facet of truth, if that. I amused myself the rest of the way home imagining how my life story would differ if written by me or Danielle or an “objective” author like a reporter.
Chapter 29
I couldn’t dive into the manuscript right when I got home, since I had back-to-back private sessions with two of my competitive students. As I said good-bye to the second one, Danielle breezed in, still in her work “uniform” of gray suit, pale blue blouse, and low-heeled black pumps. Dullsville. Only her red curls saved her from a blandness that would make Muzak look innovative. “I thought we’d get dinner somewhere first,” she said, wrinkling her nose at the sight of my sweaty, grubby self.
“First?”
“Aren’t you the one who invited me to go swimsuit shopping?”
“You didn’t take me up on it,” I said, releasing my ponytail from its elastic.
“Well, I must have, since I’m here.” She grinned unrepentantly.
“Fine. Let me shower,” I said, resigned. I didn’t want to go swimsuit shopping now; I wanted to read the manuscript. However, if there was a chance of getting Danielle to agree to vacation with me and Mom, I had to take it. Sisters.
An hour and a half later, me showered and both of us fed, we descended on the swimsuit department at T.J.Maxx. They had a large selection of suits and were relatively uncrowded in the early evening. Danielle and I each selected eight or ten suits and headed to the fitting room to try them on. We emerged from our dressing rooms simultaneously to inspect our first efforts in the three-way mirror. I wore a tomato red bikini with ruffles, and Danielle had on a black one-piece.
Danielle glared at me balefully. “No woman in her right mind goes swimsuit shopping with a professional dancer.”
I grinned and pirouetted, letting my hair fly. “Oh, come on. You’re in good shape, too; you’re just hiding your great bod under the world’s most hideous suit.”
Looking down at her tank-style suit, Danielle said, “You don’t like it? It fits well.”
I made a raspberry. “Let me pick one out for you.” Ducking into her dressing room, I sorted through the suits she’d selected. “Black tank, black tank with a zipper, navy tank-ooh, going out on a fashion limb there-another black tank, black tank with shirring,” I said, tossing them aside. “Boring, boring, boring! Stay here.” I marched out of the fitting area and back to the racks, forgetting I was still wearing the red bikini until I noticed people staring, especially a middle-aged man buying golf shirts who got tangled up in the spinning clothes rack. Ignoring the attention, I pulled three suits off the rack and took them to Danielle.
“Here.”
She took the suits reluctantly. “They’re so… unblack.”
“They’re bright, colorful, happy. Try them on.”
When Danielle came out in the first suit, a one-shoulder number in dark green with pink and coral flowers splashed across it, I gave her a wolf whistle. With her red hair tumbling over her shoulders, she looked like a tropical siren. Turning to and fro in front of the mirror, she gave a tentative smile. “You don’t think it’s too noticeable?”
“There’s no such thing,” I said with all the positivity of almost twenty years of dancing in skintight outfits spattered with sequins or rhinestones, or slit up to here and down to there, or with sheer illusion panels that skirted the FCC’s decency guidelines, or all of the above. “You look hot. Buy it.”