The Blonde Died Dancing (18 page)

I had remembered another piece of black paper like this one. I had found it in Anita Farrell’s dead hand. It had been a silhouette of her.

Now I knew what had happened to Anita. She had said goodbye to Steve after his lesson, closed the door behind him. She had turned and seen the cut-out on the floor. Curious, as intrigued as I had been, she had picked it up and, instantly, had died. But the needle in it wasn’t poisoned, there was nothing lethal about it. Anita had been shot to death. Then why the silhouette?

I knew why. I had had the answer all along. The grill work in the ceiling was the answer after all. The killer had dropped the silhouette through the grill. Nothing could be less characteristic of its artist than a black cutout, nothing less traceable to the person who had made it. It hadn’t mattered which side it lighted on. The needle in it weighted it enough to make it fall straight down and land beneath the grill. Anita had been shot from up there, shot in the back as she stooped to pick it up. That made the angle by which the bullet entered her body the way the killer wanted it… on a line parallel to the floor. That made it seem that the murderer was someone who had stood in the room with her, her last pupil, the Waltzer.

The killer was above me now, waiting for me to bend over the silhouette, to move into the position he wanted. I forced my eyes to look into that black checkered square of the ceiling.

I could see nothing behind it but darkness. And yet the killer was up there watching me, waiting for me to touch the trap he had set, waiting to shoot.

But I wouldn’t touch it. By now, I suddenly realized, he must know that I had stumbled on the truth, that now I wouldn’t touch it. And I understood why he hadn’t already sent a bullet crashing down.

He was waiting for me to move, to step out from the wall. Flattened against it as I was, I was out of his range. The size of the grill kept me out of his line of fire. He could probably see not more of me than my feet.

I looked toward the door. To reach it, I would have to pass too close to the grill. I would make myself an easy target for him. My eyes circled the room, the shining, mirrored walls, the panel with the black knobs that were the music regulators, the telephone…

The phone was only a few feet from me. I started inching toward it, my back glued to the wall, my eyes fastened on the black hole above. My hand touched the phone’s smooth coolness and I raised it to my lips.

“Leone,” I whispered. “Leone!”

There was no answer. Frantically, I jiggled the hook.

“Leone,” I said again, “Leone, please…”

The phone on her desk had rung. It buzzed automatically when a studio phone was lifted. Leone was there, she had to be there. It was four o’clock, the classes were changing now. Leone would be assigning new students to studios, calling teachers, scribbling appointments in her book. She was always at her desk when the classes changed, she never left it then…

But there was once when she had.

I remembered that one time and my hand, clutching the phone, fell limply to my side. I remembered sitting in the reception room that evening as the classes changed. I remembered the pupils moving to and from the elevators, the smart, statuesque receptionist escorting a newcomer to an interview and then, a minute later, Steve swinging up the corridor from Studio K.

I knew now why the telephone went unanswered. Leone Webb wasn’t at her desk. She was huddled above me, watching me, waiting for me to move.

The sharp sound came from the grill work. I saw a corner of it being slowly forced up, bent backwards. The triangle of cleared space increased… and a woman’s hand pushed a gun down into the room and turned it toward me.

I plunged headlong for the door, and I saw it open. Steve was coming into the room, Bolling behind him. I shouted, “No, Steve, stay back…”

There was the crack of a shot, but it was Bolling who fired it from the doorway. I heard a scream and I turned in Steve’s arms in time to see the gun clatter onto the studio floor from the small black triangle in the ceiling. I heard Bolling’s voice. “Mrs. Barton…”

“Connie’s all right,” Steve said. “She’s fine.”

Steve,
Lieutenant Detective Bolling and I suspended all talk of murder while Bolling concentrated on executing a miracle of modern parking. He gentled the police car into an impossibly small space in front of the Barton’s Lexington Avenue residence and looked to us for approval of his feat. I smiled at him fondly; I smiled at Steve fondly. I was fond of those two boys.

Steve had found the answer to the murder in the tape recordings. He had figured out that Leone Webb was Anita’s killer. He had rushed that information to Bolling and proved to him that he was right. Together they had gone to the Crescent School of Dancing.

When they had not found Leone at her desk in the reception room, they had immediately set out for me and Studio K… and here I was, able to smile fondly at those two fine fellows, and there was Leone, in a hospital, with a shattered wrist and with cops in attendance.

Steve helped me out of the car, and I enjoyed the way he held my arm… so tightly that it hurt. Mr. Golden, our janitor, came running up out of the vestibule. I had never seen Mr. Golden so excited before; he was hopping.

“Mr. Barton, Mr. Barton, I been phoning all over for you!”

“Why?” Steve asked. “What’s happened?”

“A burglar! In your apartment! I caught him! He’s in jail!”

“A burglar…”

“Yeah!” Mr. Golden guffawed a fine, scornful laugh. “He got himself locked in your bedroom closet, a fine burglar! I heard him pounding and yelling! And the story he told me, ha! What a crazy story!”

“Just a minute,” I said, and I never realized how small my voice could sound. “Just a minute…”

Mr. Golden went on shouting. “He says Mrs. Barton locked him in the closet! Why, he don’t even know Mrs. Barton! He said you were a dancing teacher, your name was Hester Frost or something, he said you were a blonde…” Mr. Golden choked off and gaped at me. He said, “Mrs. Barton, you
are
a blonde…”

“Just a minute,” I said again. “This is all very simple. Mr. Bolling, that was no burglar, that was Ralph Tolley. I… I had just planned to borrow him for an hour or two…”

“Mrs. Barton,” Bolling said. He looked as if he were going to say quite a lot more, of rather a serious nature. But he only shook his head and said, “Mrs. Barton, Mrs. Barton.”

“I’ll write him a nice note,” I said. “He was very sweet and cooperative.”

“Mrs. Barton,” Bolling said a few more times. Upstairs Bolling used our phone to liberate Mr. Tolley. Steve used our gin and vermouth and added up a batch of Martinis. I used our love seat, all five and a half feet of it. I was rather tired, not sleepy, but tired. It had been a busy day.

“Steve,” I said, “what was in the recording that tipped you off to Leone?”

“You still don’t know, Connie?”

“Don’t be so proud of yourself. Tell me.”

“It was all in the Stubby tape. Do you remember what a struggle Anita had to keep Stubby from passing out?”

“Yes.”

“At one point, before she’d got him to admit he had killed his partner, she said she had some lovely Scotch in the kitchen. She suggested a drink; she thought that might keep Stubby awake and talking.”

“I remember that, yes.”

“Did she go and make the drinks?”

“No… she couldn’t have. She never left the room.”

“That’s right. The conversation between Anita and Stubby was continuous; she didn’t leave him for a second. Yet a few minutes later they each had a drink of that Scotch that was in the kitchen.”

“Yes,” I said. “Someone else got it for them.”

“Stubby was too drunk to realize it, but he and Anita weren’t alone in the apartment. Leone was there, listening from a bedroom. And when Anita needed help to keep Stubby talking, she cooperated. She got the Scotch, slipped it to Anita. Then there was something else that indicated a third person… the phone call at the end of the tape. It came after Stubby had conked out. Anita answered the phone and said, ‘Who is it? Oh, just a minute…’ The caller wanted to speak to someone else… Leone Webb!”

“But how could you be sure it was Leone?”

“That was on the Stubby tape, too. When was that recording made, Connie? What date?”

“No date was mentioned,” I said.

“Not directly,” Steve said.

“You’re being proud of yourself again.”

“Barton,” Bolling said, “it’s all right. You can be proud of yourself again.”

“Thanks. Well, Leone lived with Anita for a while, so she was obvious vote for the accomplice. But, specifically, Connie, remember what Stubby kept muttering about? Tonight’s the night to get drunk, everybody ought to get drunk, their duty. And he said he had reservations someplace, hardest place in town to get reservations that night… but he got them. Well, what night’s that?”

“New Year’s Eve, of course! What else?”

“Sure, and what else do we know happened on New Year’s Eve?”

“Of course! Oliver Bell proposed to Leone!”

“Over the telephone, remember… shortly after midnight.”

“And that’s when that recording was made! Anita told Stubby what time it was… not quite twelve-thirty.”

“Sure. That was Oliver Bell who telephoned. He wished Anita a happy New Year and asked to speak to Leone.”

“I understand. If he ever heard that recording he’d know that his lovely bride-to-be was an active accomplice in a blackmailing racket.”

“That’s right,” Steve said. “And when Anita tried to use that to blackmail her old partner, Leone killed her. She wasn’t going to lose Oliver Bell… not only because she was fond of him. Mr. Bell owns a million dollar business.”

“Barton,” Bolling said, “you make a very quickly disappearing Martini.”

“The kitchen is right…”

“I know,” Bolling said. “Excuse me.”

“Leone and Anita,” I said. “A charming pair.”

“They started their blackmail racket together,” Steve said. “As receptionist at the school, Leone was in a position to steer all the vulnerable-looking, wealthier type students to Anita, who took it from there. When Leone had firmly hooked Oliver Bell, she dissolved the partnership. It was all very amicable. In fact, Leone and Anita remained friends until just a few days ago… when Anita must have suddenly realized she had an unexpected gold mine on those tapes. She thought she could bleed Leone dry, but she thought wrong. Leone knew too much about blackmail to let herself become a victim. She devised a quick plan for killing Anita in which she thought she’d never be suspected… shooting her from the ceiling.”

“And blaming it on you, Steve.”

“No, that just happened. The first time she had a legitimate excuse to leave the reception room between classes, she took it. She escorted a new student to Bell for an interview… that took only a moment… then she beat it up to the cat walk. No one questioned her absence from her desk. It was all over, the murderer was obviously Anita’s last student, and Leone was safe. Nobody was ever going to blackmail her.”

“But could Anita really have blackmailed her? If she’d played that Stubby recording for Mr. Bell, he’d know that she was in the racket, too.”

“Yeah,” Bolling said. He put the pitcher down on the coffee table and stirred its contents. “I talked to Miss Webb about that. Anita pointed out to her that Bell would fire her, that’s all. He would never have let it be known that his school had been a recruiting place for blackmail victims. That’s bad for business, and that guy Bell likes business. Another Martini, Mrs. Barton?”

“At least,” I said.

“These will last longer. There’s more of them.”

“So that’s how it was,” I said. “Was Leone’s story to me about a recording of Oliver Bell and Anita true?”

“Not a word of it,” Steve said. “She had to explain to you what she was doing at Rhinebeck Place, why she wanted those tapes. She wasn’t particularly worried about them after the murder. She knew where they were hidden and she had a key to the apartment. The first chance she got she went down to Rhinebeck Place, but I chased her out before she could get the one she really wanted… the Stubby one.”

“And when you informed the lady that you had that tape,” Bolling said, “you almost cooked your own goose.”

“Oh,” I said, “yes. She knew I had the means to figure out she was the killer.”

“Exactly, Mrs. Barton. She had to get rid of you.”

“But she didn’t,” I said gratefully, “thanks to you two boys. Please pass the Martinis. I’m going to drink a dozen to each of you.”

“I doubt it,” Steve said.

“I’m going to do my best. You deserve it, you two.”

I did pretty well. The next time things really got back into focus, I was in the Rosewood Room. I was having a wonderful time celebrating my fifth wedding anniversary. I was even celebrating it with, of all people, my husband.

And we were dancing. That was hard for me to realize… that Steve was dancing, Steve and I, we were dancing. I snuggled closer to him and closed my eyes. We were dancing.

Then, suddenly, my blood ran cold. Steve was waltzing! People would see him, they would know who he was. I listened for the cry of recognition… “The Waltzer!” I tried to disengage myself from him, but he held me tighter.

I opened my eyes. The floor was crowded with couples. The music was a waltz, everyone was waltzing.

FIN

William and Audrey Kelley Roos met in 1930 when they both took voice training lessons, hoping to make a career on the stage. They first played on a show-boat on the Ohio shore before landing small roles on the New York stage. They married at the time.

During the Second World War, they adopted the pseudonym Kelley Roos to start writing detective novels.
Made Up to Kill
(1940), the first novel in the series featuring the couple Jeff and Troy Haila, took place behind the scenes of a theater and was an immediate hit. Jeff, a photographer, and Haila, a former actress, feature in a dozen novels and short stories mixing screwball comedy with classic Whodunits puzzles. Hollywood took notice of the popularity of the Kelley Roos novels. In 1942 “A Night to Remember” featuring Brian Aherne and Loretta Young was released, followed by a TV show in 1950 featuring Robert Sterling and Virginia Gilmore. The best-known title of the series,
Shadow of a Chance
was retitled “Scent of Mystery” and directed by Jack Cardiff from a screenplay by William Roos in 1960. It was the first movie featuring “Smell-O-Vision”, a system that timed odors to points in the film’s plot and was a box office bomb.