“You’re looking great.”
“I’m feeling awfully sore,” she said. “But, with the new keyhole surgery,” she added, brightening, “at least I’m not going to have one of those really long scars.”
“What a relief,” he murmured, only slightly amused. She lived off her body—and not in an evil way. He’d started to see more and more of what went on in her world. She was young, and very pretty, and the costumes she wore were often skimpy, exposing the length of her perfect back and toned midriff.
“That sounds petty, doesn’t it?” she said with a sigh.
“I’m sorry. I understand.”
“Your brother just left,” she said.
“Did he? He’s supposed to be on the job. He was lucky to get a regular nine-to-five patrol beat.”
“He only comes for a minute, just to say good-morning.”
He nodded. “So you two are seeing each other?”
“You can’t tell anyone,” she said, plucking at the sheet nervously.
He smiled. “It might become evident.”
“If it reaches that point, I may have to quit.” She stared at the sheet, then looked up. “Gordon and Shannon are both willing to look the other way as long as they can, but…then again, maybe Shannon will be more understanding now.”
“Oh?”
Jane laughed out loud. “Hey, she hasn’t taken on a new student in a long time.”
“I thought you were stuck with someone if they fell your way when they came in for their first lesson.”
“Not if you’re Shannon. She’s the manager. She chose to keep you.”
“Only because she was investigating me.”
Jane smiled again. “Because you’re an investigator.”
“Everyone knows now, right?”
“Well, to be honest, Doug told me. But Katarina was in yesterday and told me you caused a real flurry, going to Dr. Long’s office.”
“I see.”
“Actually, I can tell you a secret.”
“And what is that?”
“I don’t think Shannon held on to you to try to find out what you were about,” she said with a conspiratorial smile.
“Well, she’s not very fond of me at the moment.”
“You’re wrong, you know.”
“Am I?”
“She’s very proud. I wasn’t around at the time, but Christie told me once that she never let anyone see how it hurt her when Ben decided to dance with Lara, then marry her. Christie said Shannon behaved as if it was the most normal and natural thing in the world, and she held her head high any time she saw them. As if he had meant nothing to her and it was a relief to teach and not have to mess with all the games involved in competition. Well, she does love to teach, of course. But…” Her smile deepened. “Wouldn’t it be cool if Doug and I got married, and you married Shannon?”
He had to laugh out loud. “Wow, you two are moving fast.”
She wrinkled her nose. “You mean because of his thing with Lara?”
“Uh, frankly, yes.”
“Lara knew I liked him. Really liked him. And that I was proud of him as a student. That’s why she went after him. I didn’t blame Doug. I just kept telling him that I was his teacher, and that…well, we couldn’t go out. But after Lara died, I don’t know, maybe I realized that life could be short. And who knows? We’re an independent studio. No corporate brass can come down on us or anything like that.”
“All right, maybe you and Doug have a longer relationship than I realized,” he told her. “But I can’t say Shannon and I have aeons of experience together. And as I said, I’m not so sure she likes me very much right now.”
“That’s because she’s falling head over heels for you, and she’s afraid of herself,” Jane said. She grinned deeply. “I know Shannon pretty well. She’s different, since you’ve been around. I have a feeling you two know certain things about each other really well—if you get my drift.”
“We’ll see. At the moment, Jane, I have two questions for you. You said you were afraid you’d been poisoned when you fell.”
She flushed. “Silly, huh? I was just convinced that someone had put something in the coffee because of the chat we’d been having. About Lara. Like how maybe someone might have slipped her some extra pills in a drink or something.”
“And who was in on this conversation?”
She grimaced. “Lots of people. The Longs, Mr. Clinton, even one of the new girls—I don’t remember her name. Gabe, Katarina…I think David was there. Ben…Doug, and Gordon was nearby, watching the floor. And Sam was near Gordon. Lots of people.”
“Did any of them say anything suspicious?”
“Um…David Mercutio, Katarina’s husband, he was the one who said you could probably slip pills into a drink.”
“Okay, second question. Do you have any idea who might have been alone with Lara at the competition and argued with her? Or even been really friendly?”
Her face darkened.
“I know about my brother,” he told her.
She sighed. “Besides Doug…she fought with Jim Burke, her partner. They always fought. There would have been something suspicious if they hadn’t fought!”
“Anyone else?”
“In the little bar area in front of the actual showroom floor, I saw her talking with Gordon, Ben, Justin…Gabe, both of the Longs, I think. And Shannon.”
“Shannon?”
“I told you, there was never a time when you would have known that Shannon had anything against her. I think she bought her a drink. Or maybe not. Maybe she just went up to her to tell her good luck. You can’t imagine how busy it is then, how fast everything moves. And remember, Sam and I were in that competition, too.”
“Right. You two are really good together, right?”
“Sad to say, maybe we’ll have a chance now. We won several times when Lara wasn’t there.”
He nodded. “One last thing. Do you mind taking a look at a picture?”
She shook her head.
He showed her the sketch of Sally Grant he had gotten from the police file. Jane looked at him right away, shaking her head. “No. I remember when they found her body, though. I mean, actually, I do recognize that picture, because they ran it in the paper. But I never saw her around the studio.”
He thanked her and rose.
“Are you going to the studio?”
“Yes, why? Do you need something?”
She shook her head. “You’re a good student.”
“I have a lot to learn before the Gator Gala.”
“Yeah, right.”
“I have to keep an eye on people.”
“Including Shannon, huh?”
“She is pretty suspicious,” he said.
She just grinned, settling into her pillow.
“What the hell are you doing in here? And on the floor?”
Shannon blinked, looking up. Gordon was standing over her.
She sat up, then clutched her wobbling head. “Someone tripped me, bumped me, something.”
He arched a brow, looking around. The storeroom was empty.
“What did you do? Walk into a shelf? Oh, I see. You had a major fight with a dressmaker’s dummy.”
“I came in here, and then there were footsteps in the hall.”
“Me,” he told her.
“And you turned out the light and closed the door?”
“I thought some idiot had left the light on and the door open. I turned off the light, and closed and locked the door.”
“When?”
“Just a few minutes ago. When I went into the studio and found your purse in the office and no you, I came running back out here.” He looked concerned. “Are you all right? Hell, we’d better get you to the hospital, if you knocked yourself out.”
She looked around the room, noting that, indeed, nothing, no one was there—except for the dressmaker’s dummy, down on the floor beside her.
“No one came out?”
“I locked the
door from the outside,” he told her. “I guess I should have looked in. It just didn’t occur to me that you were in here.”
She had to be imagining things. It had gone black, and she had panicked. Because, if anyone had been in the room with her, Gordon would have seen him. Or her.
He sighed. “Can you get up?”
“Of course.” She rose, only a little unsteadily, to her feet.
“Come on,” Gordon said. “Let’s go start canceling your lessons for the day.”
“No,” she protested.
He gave her a stern look. “You probably have one hell of a lump on your head somewhere.”
She probed her own skull. She had a lump, but it was a little one.
“I’m okay, Gordon.”
“You should—”
“Gordon, I swear to you, I’m okay. And if, during the day, at any time, I feel funny in the least, I swear, I’ll let you know. I don’t want to go to a hospital, or home, and I sure as hell don’t want to cancel my classes.”
“But—”
“Really. And, Gordon, don’t say a word about this, please?”
“But…?”
“Please? Look, if I’m out of it for any reason, there will just be more talk. And we could wind up having to cancel the Gator Gala.”
That gave him pause. He sighed.
“Gordon, not a word. And in turn, I swear I will tell you if I have so much as a headache.”
“Deal,” he said after a minute.
They walked out into the hall together. Ben was there, just outside the studio’s rear door. “What the hell is going on?”
“What?” Shannon asked guiltily.
“Doors open, music blaring…and no one around.”
“I was just…” She paused, looking at Gordon. “I was checking on some of my old costumes.”
Ben’s dark brows arched slowly. “You’re really—seriously—considering competing again?”
“Yes.”
“With me?”
“Yes, Ben.”
“Thank you,” he said. She had never heard him sound more humble.
He walked back into the studio, and she and Gordon followed him. Shannon had a feeling it was going to be another long day.
CHAPTER 21
Something was off all day.
Or maybe she was feeling a sense of heightened awareness after being hit on the head, however it had happened. Friday was usually slow, but today it was busy.
She spent time training Marnie, as well as her students, after getting Ben to run back to her house to pick up the girl. Richard was peevish, saying that he wanted to learn more lifts, and she wasn’t sure he had the ability to do them.
She had a student named Billy that afternoon, one of her regulars, who suffered from cerebral palsy. He tried so hard but continually got frustrated with himself. Still, she respected him for trying, where others might just have given up. She worked with him especially hard, knowing how good the basic movements were for him.
Then there was Quinn.
Unbelievably determined and adept at the waltz, lifting, turning, moving as he should. She wondered how it was possible for him to be so good at the waltz and so horrible at the fox-trot. Students tended to do better at smooth dances and have trouble with rhythm, or do well with rhythm and have a hard time with smooth. She’d never come across anyone who could waltz with the best, then trip over his own feet in a fox-trot. Even tango steps came more naturally to him.
They worked for a while with Rhianna and a student on one side, Justin and Mina Long on the other. It wasn’t until the others had gone over to the other side of the room to work rhythm and she moved to the stereo that he said to her, “Any trouble with the alarm system?”
“None whatsoever,” she told him. After hesitating, she said stiffly, “Thank you.”
“Sure. And thanks for letting me sleep.”
“No problem.”
She was tempted to tell him about her wild panic in the storeroom that morning. But the more time that passed, the more convinced she was that her imagination had really begun to run wild.
“What?” he demanded. She looked up. He was against the wall, trying to catch her eyes, which were lowered as she stared sightlessly at the floor. She shook her head. “Nothing.”
“There’s something.”
He wasn’t going to let up. She turned the tables. “Exactly what mistake did you make with the FBI? What did you do?”
He looked aggravated, as if he was going to tell her to mind her own business.
“I was with profiling.”
“Profiling?” She didn’t know why she was surprised that that was the root of his issues. Maybe because she’d had a sense that he had shot the wrong person, or someone had died, that something really terrible had happened.
“Yeah, profiling. There was a case in Indiana. I should have been on top of it, but gave an entirely wrong assessment. I was certain the killer had to be late twenties, early thirties, with some kind of a menial day job, maybe even a wife. They arrested a guy who fit our description.”
“And?”
“The community let down its guard. The next day, there were two more dead women. The killer left evidence that time—he dropped his wallet. He was fifty, and an executive at a local bank.”
“But profiling isn’t an exact science. You could only work with what you had.”
“Maybe that was the point. I felt that my work was useless. So I came back home, and started working with Dane, an old friend. I figured I couldn’t do too much harm on surveillance, that type of thing. I was wrong. I followed a guy named Art Durken, and he wound up killing his wife.”
“Nell,” Shannon said softly.
“Nell,” he agreed. “Kind, pleasant, the type of person who should fill the world. But she wound up dead, and Durken wound up arrested, and now, well, now I’m not at all sure Art is guilty, but I’ll be damned if I can figure out who is. Except…”
“Except?”
He stared at her with a shrug. “Well, that’s obvious, isn’t it? It’s someone associated with this studio.”
She swallowed hard. “It might not be,” she said.
“You don’t want it to be,” he corrected.
She looked at him again. “Some murders are never solved.”
“This one had better be. When Doug talked me into coming here, he told me he was afraid someone else would die. I think he was right.”
“Is that what it takes to learn those lifts—lots of long conversation?” Rhianna teased, coming over to them. “Shannon,” she asked, “are you going to play anything or can I have a cha-cha?”
“Sure, a cha-cha. Whatever.”
Rhianna put in a CD, and moved out to the floor.
“I’ll follow you and Marnie back to your house later,” Quinn said.
“It will be around ten by then,” she told him. As happy as she was to improve someone’s life as it seemed they had Marnie’s, she suddenly desperately wished she didn’t have a roommate.
“It’s all right. I’ll see you two home.”
“I have an alarm now, you know,” she reminded him.
“And it’s great—once you’re inside to be protected by it.”
His lesson was over. He gave her the perfunctory and studio-necessary kiss on the cheek, then left.
After that, the day seemed to drag endlessly, even though students kept coming.
At the end of the night, she remembered to announce to the group class that everyone involved with the Gator Gala and who wanted to attend the cruise get-together should be at the marina by seven.
She thought Quinn had forgotten her, but just as they were locking up, he arrived. Since Gordon evidently knew exactly what he did for a living and what he was doing at the studio, it didn’t seem to matter that Quinn had come for the precise reason of following her home.
He didn’t even get out of his car when they got there. He watched her enter the house with Marnie, waved, and was gone.
So
much for his being in love with her.
There was still no word from Manuel Taylor when Quinn reached the Twisted Time, though, frankly, he had expected that if the man was going to call him back, he would have called his cell phone.
“No problem. I’m making pretty big bucks off your group,” the man had said.
Sure. He’d made money off Gordon, and off Quinn, for showing up to confront Gordon, who had seemed to have such a glib answer.
But the sentence, Quinn was certain, implied more. Someone else in the group had paid the waiter, as well.
But for what?
Did they all tip that well, just for drinks?
He doubted it. He had a feeling someone had tipped Manuel to give Lara Trudeau a drink. A special drink. A drugged drink.
It was late. Still, he tried the hotel and got through to a beverage manager.
The man was no help. He was irritated. Manuel Taylor was supposed to have worked a dinner the night before, but he hadn’t shown up.
“Is he usually fairly dependable?”
“Yeah, sure, usually,” the beverage manager told Quinn over the phone. “But he was a no-show once before. Went off to Orlando with friends. I told him if he pulled one like that on me again, he’d be fired. He’s a good waiter, though. I’m going to be sorry to fire him.”
Quinn hung up, aggravated himself.
There was little else he could do that night. He was restless, feeling that he should be at Shannon’s house, even though there was an alarm there now, and she wasn’t alone.
Nothing to do. He lay in the cabin, awake for hours—events and ideas floating around in his mind like pieces of a puzzle.
Shannon, here, on the Twisted Time, not so long ago, a lifetime ago. Wearing his old shirt and framed in the doorway, a silhouette, a shadow of seduction. One night and his world had turned. The boat still seemed to carry the elusive scent of her perfume, permeating his sheets, the cabin, his memory. The sound of her voice echoed in his ears, the dance she practiced between the sheets more hypnotic than the sway of the rumba, as passionate as the steamy encounter of a pasa doble.
He was losing it, he told himself.
But he couldn’t erase the memory of her coming to his cabin door, and he was chagrined to realize that an eighteen-year-old street waif had seen with clarity the depth of what he had thought was just attraction and arousal. She had touched him once, and now the world revolved around her, both his waking moments and his dreams. He wasn’t just after the truth to vindicate himself, but because he had to fix her world and create one in which he could touch her once again. He’d known what it was to care, but never before had he felt that someone had slipped into his skin and was haunting him, flesh and blood. She teased and taunted his dreams. He saw her in the realm of memory, breathed the scent of her, heard her whisper, even above the lapping of the surf against the hull.