Dead on the Dance Floor (27 page)

Those two words, spoken to her by a waiter at a competition, where they could have meant anything at all, could have been—must have been—spoken to her by mistake. And yet, they continued to haunt her.

“So just break down already and check yourself into a hospital for the insane,” she murmured to herself.

She felt the unbelievable urge to leave home and head for a boat on the marina called the
Twisted Time.

No.

“Screw this!” she exclaimed aloud with irritation. But once again she found herself going through her house room by room, looking in closets and under the bed, checking out everything, assuring herself that the back door had remained locked and bolted in her absence.

At last she drank a cup of tea and swallowed an Excedrin PM.

After she did, she swore, thinking she would stay up all night long next time, rather than take anything, anything at all, even so much as an aspirin.

It was late when she went to bed, lights blazing in the other rooms, only her own darkened. She would be in shadow and look out to the light. That thought eventually allowed her to close her eyes.

Maybe Christie had been right. Maybe she did need a dog.

She suddenly sat bolt upright, cloaked and chilled by the darkness in her room. Ben had said he'd gone to the convenience store.

For what?

He hadn't been carrying anything, anything at all, when he'd come to her window.

 

Home again, home again.

She was home again.

Alone. Surely, by now, stretched out in bed, glorious eyes closed, lashes sweetly sweeping her cheeks.

No dog, no alarm, and it wasn't difficult at all to don a pair of gloves and use the key he had to slip inside.

She had no idea how vulnerable she was.

At any time…

Just what the hell did she know?

Nothing, he assured himself.

Except that…

She was listening. Hearing what she shouldn't even be noticing. Maybe, in time, she would start looking for the source of the noise.

There was more.

He'd overheard her one time too many. He'd seen the way she acted. And now, when he could, he watched her around the studio.

But she'd known something tonight. She'd heard something.

Vague, that was all. She had a vague sense of danger.

He hesitated, thinking how easy it would be to slip in.

But why?

He could take her any time he wanted. If he needed to.

He would really hate to see her dead.

Right now, he would watch. Just watch.

She shouldn't die in her own house. Unless…

No.

There were far better ways. Should it become necessary.

He had been standing on the sidewalk, in the shadows of an elm. But his car wasn't parked far away.

Actually, he tried never to be very far away. Ever. She never even noticed.

Morning was coming.

He would see to it that they were close during the day.

He would watch and wait.

Tonight, he could have touched her.

So close, he could have reached right out and touched her.

He had to remember that. He was always close. Always watching.

And she never knew.

He would always be watching.

Always be close.

Close enough just to reach out…

And touch.

A
rt Durken entered the jail conference room accompanied by a thirty-something, bulky guard and an older man in a rumpled suit. The older man introduced himself.

“Theodore Smith, Mr. O'Casey. I'm Mr. Durken's attorney, and my client has agreed to see you only in my presence, so if I don't like your questions or attitude, I intend to remind him that he doesn't have to see you at all. Mr. Durken insists on his innocence and is convinced that you may now have a few reasons to believe him—since you requested this meeting.”

“I realize Mr. Durken is under no obligation to speak with me,” Quinn said. “I appreciate both of you agreeing to the interview.”

Smith nodded, looking for all the world like a king granting a subject a special favor, despite his harried appearance. He took a chair on the opposite side of the table, indicating that Art should sit next to him. As Durken did so, Quinn took his own chair.

The burly guard remained in a corner of the room.

Durken was in his early thirties, with sandy hair and light gray eyes. Slender but wiry, he had a certain charm about him. Apparently that was how he had kept Nell.

And acquired a college senior as a mistress.

“I didn't do it,” Durken told him, staring right at him. “I know you were tailing me for Nell, and I know you know exactly what I did with my time in those weeks before she died. But I didn't kill my wife. I swear it.”

He looked ill, not at all the same man Quinn had tailed. His hair, so neatly combed in those days, looked ragged, as if he spent his hours running his fingers through it. He had always worn the look of a man who had the world captured between both hands, but now his face was lean, haggard, and there was a sheen of sweat on his upper lip. He might just have looked nervous, like a killer who'd been caught and was ready to deny everything.

But there was something about the way his eyes held Quinn's that seemed to speak of honesty. He didn't start in by scowling, or by accusing Quinn of being the reason he had been arraigned for murder.

“Your fingerprints were all over your wife's pill bottle,” Quinn reminded him quietly.

“I handed her the damned thing often enough. And I told her she shouldn't be taking the things. Hell, I even told her that I wasn't worth her having to be on the things. But she had me convinced she knew what she was doing, that she knew when to take them, and that she didn't overdo it. They kept her from mood swings and depression, and fear.”

“Let's say you didn't do it, Art,” Quinn told him. “Who could have forced her to overdose like that?”

A look of desolation swept over the other man, and he shook his head. “I don't know. You see, the thing of it is…I think Nell was having an affair months ago. She knew…well, she suspected, until she hired you, that I fooled around.” He lifted his hands. “I…I did before. And I think her way of getting even with me might have been to have her own affair. I accused her once, and she told me that she
should
be fooling around, maybe we could stay married that way. It would be messed up as hell, but…she said she loved me and wanted to stay married. Anyway, I went into a big guilt thing, and I wasn't even angry that she was running around, too. I just…you see, I wanted to stay married, too.”

“So what happened?”

He shook his head. “It's not in my nature, I guess, to be monogamous. I met Cecily, told her I wasn't married, and you know the rest. Actually,” he said, wincing, “I told her that I worked for the CIA, and that's why I was away so much, unable to see her, be with her…and she believed me. I guess you know all that, but…look, I might have been an asshole, a liar and a cheat, but I didn't kill Nell.”

“You weren't at all angry, thinking she might have had an affair? You haven't mentioned any of this before. It's not in any of the reports,” Quinn pointed out.

“Art, be careful of what you're saying,” Smith warned him.

Durken shook his head impatiently. “I didn't mention it before because no one asked me, and…shit, why volunteer that kind of information when I already had a motive and no one wanted to look any further? And while I'm at it, yes, it was always her trust fund that we used for our lifestyle.”

“Art, this man can use what you're saying against you in court,” Smith warned firmly.

“Was it during the time that your wife was dancing that you thought she was having an affair?” Quinn asked.

Durken looked surprised. “Yes.”

“Do you think she was having an affair with a teacher? A fellow student?”

He shrugged. “I never went around the place. Bullshit dance like that just doesn't appeal to me. She'd asked me to go when she started. I probably should have. Who knows? But, yeah, I suppose she could have had her affair with someone there. We made up big time back then, though. She stopped dancing—and I think she stopped her affair. I didn't press the point, because I didn't want her pressing any points with me. I was guilty as hell, so if she was guilty, too…well, you know.”

Durken brightened up suddenly. “I heard about that dancer dying. She died of an overdose, too, huh? Or drugs and booze, something like that.” His face fell. “But she died in front of a pack of people, didn't she?”

“Yes, she died before hundreds of people.”

Durken looked ill again.

Quinn rose, nodding to Durken's attorney and the guard. “That doesn't mean she wasn't alone with someone before the performance,” he said. He pulled out his card, handing it to Durken's attorney. “If there's anything you can think of that might help, could you give me a call?”

He started from the room. Smith called him back. “Mr. Durken is in here because of you, Mr. O'Casey.”

“Mr. Durken is in here because his fingerprints were all over the bottle of pills his wife had taken. I merely provided the police with a chronology of his activities prior to his wife's death.”

Durken was shaking his head, ignoring his attorney. “I don't care if you got me in here or not—if you can get me out. I'll be thinking. Of anything that can help. Anything at all.”

“Thanks,” Quinn said.

A guard on the outside opened the door, and Quinn found himself anxious to leave the jail as quickly as possible.

Once outside, he hesitated only a minute, then put through a call to Annie. Though he wasn't scheduled for an appointment himself until the following day, he wanted to get back into the studio.

 

Marnie was excited.

Dressed in jeans and a polo shirt, she was worried that she didn't really have clothing in which she could move.

“And my shoes,” she told Quinn. “My shoes are horrible.”

He glanced at her as they drove across the causeway. “I don't think it matters too much—not at first, anyway.”

“You sure?”

“We'll find out, won't we?”

She nodded, and he knew she was watching him. “Thanks, by the way,” she told him quietly.

“The studio offers a free first class to everyone,” he reminded her.

She shook her head, and her long dark hair floated on her shoulders. “I mean, thanks for setting me up with Annie and all. Annie is great. I've been working, you know. At a boutique, right by the shelter. And I can stay at the shelter until I get on my feet. The boutique is great, really cool clothes, and I'll get a fifty percent discount after six months. But you know what? There's an older woman who is a friend of Annie's, and she doesn't have any local family. So Annie's trying to set the two of us up. You know, she'll give me a room, rent free, if I take her to some doctor appointments, buy groceries, take her to church, you know. And if it works out, I can buy the lady's car. Okay, so it's a fifteen-year-old Chevy, but it was never driven anywhere.”

“Sounds great,” Quinn told her.

“No, it's incredible!” Marnie exclaimed. Then she shook her head again, as if she didn't want to get too sappy. “So, you know, thanks. It's working out well. Better than living in a yard, anyway. Even if it's a pretty decent yard. Besides, the yard was getting a little creepy.”

“Creepy? You mean bugs and things?”

She shook her head and said dryly, “No, you live on the street, you learn to live with bugs. No, it was weird sometimes. There was a car that used to cruise by really slowly…then take off. Probably just someone looking for an address.”

Tension knotted Quinn's fingers, causing his grip on the steering wheel to tighten. “What car?” he snapped.

“Hey, sorry! I don't know. I didn't get a license number or anything. It was night, dark, you know? It was a car. Maybe beige, maybe gray. Lightish.”

“What kind of lightish car?”

“What do you mean? A car—like the kind people drive.”

“Big one, little one?”

“Medium.”

“Chevy, Ford, Olds, Toyota, Mercedes—what kind of a car?”

“I don't know. I don't have a car, remember? I've never even been shopping for a car. I only know that old Mrs. Marlin's car is a Chevy because Annie told me. It was a medium-size sedan, I guess.”

“If you saw it again, would you recognize it?”

She must have felt his tension because she went very stiff herself. She was staring at him, looking a little scared, as if she'd trusted in a mentor who'd turned out to be slightly insane. And yet she still looked as if she wanted to help him.

She shook her head. “I'm sorry. Really.”

“How many nights did you see this car?”

“It was only twice—if it was the same car.”

“So why did it make things…creepy?”

“I don't know. It just did. Hey, pay attention—you're going to miss the turnoff. I do know how to get to the beach.”

They reached the studio. Quinn parked at a meter but told Marnie they would walk around the back, where the teachers, seasoned students and other employees at the building parked.

“Recognize any of them?” he asked, but before she could reply, he knew her answer.

Every flipping car there was gray or beige.

And every single one of them was a sedan.

“Quinn, I'm sorry. They all look alike,” she told him, turning her large brown eyes to meet his. “It might have been any one of them.”

“Or none,” he said.

“Or none,” she agreed.

He nodded. “Well, thanks for looking. Let's go on up.”

She smiled again. “My first lesson,” she breathed happily.

 

Shannon returned from a meeting to see Marnie out on the floor with Sam Railey. The girl looked like a child getting a Christmas present for the first time. And when she moved, following Sam's instructions on a rumba step, it was with a natural grace.

The girl had caught her eye, but then Shannon looked quickly around, certain Quinn would be there, as well.

He was. By the reception area, with Gordon and Ella, all of them watching the girl.

“You're back,” Ella called out to her. “Meeting go well?”

“Yes, everything went perfectly,” she said, walking over to join the group. As courtesy required, she forced a note of welcome into her voice as she greeted Quinn.

“Great. You've got a class in fifteen minutes,” Ella told her.

“Oh?” Who? she wondered. Quinn wasn't scheduled until the next day.

“Me,” he told her, smiling.

“Oh?” she responded, trying not to sound too icy.

“Well, I've decided to enter that Gator thing,” he said. “And that means I have a lot to learn in very little time.”

“You're really going to enter the Gator Gala?” she asked.

“Why not?” Gordon boomed. “There's a beginners category.”

“Gordon, he's had one private lesson!” she said.

“Well, that's the point. I'm going to need a few more,” Quinn said.

She nodded. “Fine. Let me get my shoes on.”

Trying very hard not to give away her irritation, Shannon went to her office and changed her shoes. Gordon might be delighted that a brand-new student wanted to enter, but she wasn't.

Still it was good for the studio. It would mean lots and lots of classes. Lots and lots of money. Of course, she knew now that he wasn't any poor fishing captain or struggling charter service. Then again, did P.I.s make the big bucks?

Of course, Doug O'Casey felt free to book as many classes as he wanted. On a cop's salary.

There was a light tap on her door. “Hey, Shannon,” Ella said softly. “He signed up for this hour.”

“Well, he shouldn't have. I just got back,” she muttered.

“Gordon was really excited.”

“Then Gordon should teach him.”

“Shannon, what on earth is the matter?” Ella demanded.