Read Online Dead Man Waltzing by Ella Barrick - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Ella Barrick
Ads: Link
raise the window. I found myself hoping he’d get in, so I could seize the opportunity to escape.
Instead, he descended the stairs two at a time and I stopped my breaths, afraid he’d decided to search for what he’d dropped after all. The footsteps moved away, however, and soon I couldn’t hear them. Was he leaving? I listened hard. No, I didn’t hear a car start up. Glass shattered somewhere around the back of the house and I realized he’d broken a window. Now was my chance. Still on all fours, I crawled forward a couple of feet, wincing as a holly leaf scored my cheek. A second later, that pain was forgotten as something jabbed into my palm. I closed my lips over the “Ow!” and it came out as a muffled, “Urmf.”
I picked up the thin, flat item, figuring it was the tool the burglar had dropped, and slipped it into my pocket. Rising to a half crouch, I shouldered my way through the remaining shrubs, saw no one on the expanse of lawn and driveway in front of me, and broke cover, doing my best gazelle impression until I thudded against my car. Scrambling around it, I flung open the driver’s door, sat and inserted the key in one motion, threw the car into reverse because the burglar’s dark sedan had me blocked in from the front, and backed down the drive faster than I’d ever backed up in my life.
As my rear wheels spun onto the pavement of the main road, I flicked on my headlights. They grazed the burglar’s car, glinting off the Mercedes hood ornament. What kind of burglar drove a Mercedes? A really successful one? I didn’t have time to think about it as horns honked to complain about my precipitate arrival onto the Mount Vernon Parkway. I straightened the wheel and stomped on the gas, waving apologetically to the car behind me. I was halfway home before it crossed my mind to call the police and anonymously report a burglary in progress.
Safely home, I poured myself a healthy glass of Chianti and eased my hand into my pocket to see what the burglar had dropped. Pulling it out with two fingers, I found one-third of a credit card, snapped off so the hard plastic formed a cutting edge. This was no professional burglar, I decided. Even I knew you couldn’t pop a dead bolt with a credit card. Holding the card under the counter light, I made out the last few letters of the burglar’s name: LIDO .
I caught my breath. Putting together the voice I’d heard with those four letters gave me the man’s identity: Marco Ingelido. Why in the world was the man who owned the most successful chain of franchised ballroom dance studios in the business, Take the Lead with Ingelido, trying to break into Corinne Blakely’s house the day after she was murdered?
Chapter 9
I rose early Thursday morning to do a private lesson with a student who was preparing for his first ballroom dance competition. We would compete in the bronze division as a professional-amateur couple. He was a fiftyish, divorced man who initially signed up for a dance class to meet women, but found himself liking it so much he decided to try his hand at competition. He liked to practice early, before work, so we were finished shortly before eight o’clock. He left for a day in cubicle-ville and I went downstairs to shower and dress.
The ringing phone yanked me out of the shower just as I turned off the taps. Grabbing a towel, I trotted to my bedside table to answer, hoping it was Maurice calling to say he had been released.
“Stacy?”
It was my mom’s voice, clear and a bit reserved, as always. Mom was not one to show a lot of emotion. “Hi, Mom.”
“Have you talked to your sister?” She also wasn’t much of one for beating around the bush or wasting time with small talk. I conjured an image of her thin, angular body and graying red hair. From the whuffling horse sounds behind her, I knew she was standing at the wall phone in her small barn, probably wearing old jodhpurs and rubber boots for mucking out. Bird, her twenty-two-year-old
Instead, he descended the stairs two at a time and I stopped my breaths, afraid he’d decided to search for what he’d dropped after all. The footsteps moved away, however, and soon I couldn’t hear them. Was he leaving? I listened hard. No, I didn’t hear a car start up. Glass shattered somewhere around the back of the house and I realized he’d broken a window. Now was my chance. Still on all fours, I crawled forward a couple of feet, wincing as a holly leaf scored my cheek. A second later, that pain was forgotten as something jabbed into my palm. I closed my lips over the “Ow!” and it came out as a muffled, “Urmf.”
I picked up the thin, flat item, figuring it was the tool the burglar had dropped, and slipped it into my pocket. Rising to a half crouch, I shouldered my way through the remaining shrubs, saw no one on the expanse of lawn and driveway in front of me, and broke cover, doing my best gazelle impression until I thudded against my car. Scrambling around it, I flung open the driver’s door, sat and inserted the key in one motion, threw the car into reverse because the burglar’s dark sedan had me blocked in from the front, and backed down the drive faster than I’d ever backed up in my life.
As my rear wheels spun onto the pavement of the main road, I flicked on my headlights. They grazed the burglar’s car, glinting off the Mercedes hood ornament. What kind of burglar drove a Mercedes? A really successful one? I didn’t have time to think about it as horns honked to complain about my precipitate arrival onto the Mount Vernon Parkway. I straightened the wheel and stomped on the gas, waving apologetically to the car behind me. I was halfway home before it crossed my mind to call the police and anonymously report a burglary in progress.
Safely home, I poured myself a healthy glass of Chianti and eased my hand into my pocket to see what the burglar had dropped. Pulling it out with two fingers, I found one-third of a credit card, snapped off so the hard plastic formed a cutting edge. This was no professional burglar, I decided. Even I knew you couldn’t pop a dead bolt with a credit card. Holding the card under the counter light, I made out the last few letters of the burglar’s name: LIDO .
I caught my breath. Putting together the voice I’d heard with those four letters gave me the man’s identity: Marco Ingelido. Why in the world was the man who owned the most successful chain of franchised ballroom dance studios in the business, Take the Lead with Ingelido, trying to break into Corinne Blakely’s house the day after she was murdered?
Chapter 9
I rose early Thursday morning to do a private lesson with a student who was preparing for his first ballroom dance competition. We would compete in the bronze division as a professional-amateur couple. He was a fiftyish, divorced man who initially signed up for a dance class to meet women, but found himself liking it so much he decided to try his hand at competition. He liked to practice early, before work, so we were finished shortly before eight o’clock. He left for a day in cubicle-ville and I went downstairs to shower and dress.
The ringing phone yanked me out of the shower just as I turned off the taps. Grabbing a towel, I trotted to my bedside table to answer, hoping it was Maurice calling to say he had been released.
“Stacy?”
It was my mom’s voice, clear and a bit reserved, as always. Mom was not one to show a lot of emotion. “Hi, Mom.”
“Have you talked to your sister?” She also wasn’t much of one for beating around the bush or wasting time with small talk. I conjured an image of her thin, angular body and graying red hair. From the whuffling horse sounds behind her, I knew she was standing at the wall phone in her small barn, probably wearing old jodhpurs and rubber boots for mucking out. Bird, her twenty-two-year-old
Similar Books
