Tutu Deadly Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  TWENTY-FIVE

  TWENTY-SIX

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  TWENTY-NINE

  Someone else is in the house . . .

  I turned to leave the house, deciding my brief career as a detective was over, when I caught a glimpse of flashing light in the room just beyond the kitchen. My curiosity pulled me forward instead of out the door—which my common sense told me I should be exiting through right now. Oh well. I was a redhead. Blame it on poor impulse control. I slowly walked toward the place where I had seen the flashing light, when I was suddenly blinded by a powerful beam.

  In that one brilliant moment, it was all horribly—and dangerously—clear.

  Someone was inside this house with a flashlight. Someone, who, like me, had no business being in this house.

  Someone who was most likely a killer.

  I turned to run but was stopped by a sudden sharp pain in my head.

  I awoke to a light that hurt my eyes, and some sort of metal pointed directly at my head. When I could get my eyes to focus, I saw that the metal was attached to the hand of an extremely attractive, very tall, very angry man wearing a nicely tailored dark blue suit. The metal was also a gun.

  I allowed myself a brief moment of panic and sheer terror, and then forced myself back to reality. Come on, criminals were not this good looking . . .

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  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  TUTU DEADLY

  A Berkley Prime Crime Book / published by arrangement with the author

  PRINTING HISTORY

  Berkley Prime Crime mass-market edition / April 2007

  Copyright © 2007 by Natalie M. Roberts.

  All rights reserved.

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  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014

  eISBN : 978-0-425-21486-2

  BERKLEY® PRIME CRIME

  Berkley Prime Crime Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  The name BERKLEY PRIME CRIME and the BERKLEY PRIME CRIME design are trademarks

  belonging to Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

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  To Misty Robbins, dance teacher extraordinaire, who can choreograph her way out of a hostage situation. When the stress is high, the deadlines near, the performance on the edge—then you see that she is pure and unadulterated magic. What more can you ask?

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  To all the dance moms who inspired this book (you know who you are!) along with the dancers at EDF, and, of course, my own little Dancing Daughter, Cambre. Without the craziness of the world of competitive dance, I could never have created a wonderful, flighty, and ditzy character like Jenny T. Partridge. And of course, to my fabulous agent, Karen Solem, and my editor at Berkley, Sandra Harding, it’s been a joy to work with both of you. I hope Jenny is around for a long, long time so we can continue this collaboration. As always, I must thank the ladies at murdershewrites.com, Jennifer Apodaca, Deborah LeBlanc, Allison Brennan, and Karin Tabke; especially Karen and Jennifer, who took the time to read and critique Jenny’s exploits.

  ONE

  DESPITE what my mother would probably tell you, my greatest fear in life was not dying alone with only four hundred cats for company. My greatest fear in life was staring me right in the face—and she was colossal. She was the mother of all dance moms, and she was steaming mad. Any minute now, she was going to do one of those sumo-wrestler moves and land on top of me, and then it would all be over. I’d slowly suffocate, my dance studio would go bankrupt, and my mom would be left mourning over my grave with nothing to remember me by except a few dead plants, dust bunnies under my bed, and some stuffed animals. This was my worst nightmare. I really needed to get a life.

  Every dance teacher knew that the worst part of trying to instruct children was not the kids themselves, but their parents. Sure, an occasional kid threw up on you, or peed in the middle of class, but that was nothing compared to dealing with an irate mother who didn’t think her little darling was getting enough attention or the starring role she deserved.

  I didn’t particularly like chubby little Ella Anderson, who was just six years old, and I cared even less for her mother, Emma, whose picture was probably in the dictionary under “stage mother.” I just hadn’t looked yet.

  Emma Anderson believed that her daughter was the next big thing in the world of dance, and was determined to convince me of the same. I was afraid if I didn’t kowtow to her demands to keep Ella on the front-row fifty—the prime spot for dancers to be placed, right in the center of the front row—Momma Anderson was going to end my life. I’m sure plenty of people have been killed for lesser things. For a dance mom, there was nothing more primo than seeing her daughter in the front-row fifty. And of course once a dancer earned that coveted spot, her mom would do just about anything to keep her there. It was scary. Kind of like Emma Anderson.

  Today’s argument—we had one nearly every week—was over whether Ella deserved the part of the Sugar Plum Fairy in the Jenny T. Partridge Dance Academy’s annual production of The Nutcracker.

  I’m Jenny T. Partridge—no
jokes please—and no, I do not have a pear tree. Christmastime, which was just around the corner, usually brought out the worst in the name punsters—mostly male—who took great joy in asking to see my plumage. I rarely replied to that. Guys didn’t listen to what you said, anyway. They were too busy staring at your chest, or moving around their equipment in front of God and the whole country. At least that’s what my last boyfriend did. I broke up with him when I realized he couldn’t pick my face out of a crowd, but could describe my chest in great detail.

  At any rate, my production of The Nutcracker was not your typical classic. We did a jazzy version with loud music—you know, that thrashy pop and hip-hop mix—and elegant, flashy costumes that was well-known for hundreds of miles around Ogden, Utah, which is where my studio is located. It was the one thing I did that allowed me to scrimp by the rest of the year. Entire families made attending our production an annual event.

  But back to Ella, who at six had no talent, and even less desire to learn to dance. She spent most of the class burying her finger up her nose, and the rest of it whining and crying; there was very little dancing going on in her neck of the forest—probably a good thing, actually, considering she had two right feet.

  “See, Mrs. Anderson, the Sugar Plum Fairy is a hard role, and it usually goes to one of the older girls, those who have danced for years. Those who can stand on relevé, and dance en pointe.”

  “But fairies are little,” the woman protested, as she pushed in closer to me, giving me a whiff of her odiferous perfume. She had absolutely no sense of personal space. I got claustrophobic just hearing her name. I was right, I thought. My nightmares were coming true. She was going to pin me to the wall until I gave her daughter the role. Emma was very tall—at least six feet—and broad shouldered, and she towered over me. “Ella is just right for the fairy. She is the fairy. She can relevé. Show her your relevé, Ella.”

  She pointed her left arm back at her daughter without turning away from me. Mrs. Anderson’s little sugar plum fairy was about twenty pounds heavier than she should have been at her age, and “little” was a relative term. She might be little to her Amazonian momma, but she was two to three sizes larger than my other Minis. I knew one day she would grow into that weight, but right now . . . She stared blankly at her mother’s face for a moment then brightened. “You mean ice cream?” she asked, obviously relating the term “relevé” to Chocolate Peanut Butter Revel. I understood. That was good ice cream.

  James Marriott, who taught my Seniors and Petites, and who was the world’s biggest yellow-bellied coward, had taken off with a crazed look in his eye the minute Mrs. Anderson stepped foot in the door, so I was on my own. That was his usual reaction. I could hear the loud music from the other room, which meant that James was pretending to be busy, choreographing a routine or designing a new move. Since the Seniors weren’t due at the studio for at least another hour, I was on to his pretense. He’d get his later.

  Marlys Fulton, whose daughter, Carly, danced in my Petites, and whose other daughter Maribel danced in my Tots, and who worked in exchange for her daughters’ dance lessons, had just left to make some copies of the dance calendar. She usually ran interference for me with the pushy dance moms, but she couldn’t be with me 24-7.

  “Look,” I said, moving backward away from Mrs. Anderson, who only pressed in closer, “my Minis usually play the role of the buffoons, and that’s just how I’ve always done it.” I found I was stuck—I’d hit the barre, which was attached to the mirror on the wall. There was no escape.

  “A buffoon? You want my daughter to be a buffoon?” Her voice nearly cracked with strain and outrage, and I groaned as she moved even closer. She waved her arms and got so close I could see the pores on her face. “Listen, here, Jenny T. Partridge, I know talent when I see talent and Ella has talent. I wouldn’t even bother to come in here if I didn’t know she was right for the part. You have to put her in that role.”

  At that point I got a little light-headed. There was a very big unstated “and if you don’t I’ll make your pay” in her proclamation. It was going to make the newspapers, I just knew it.

  LOCAL DANCE TEACHER SUFFOCATED BY STAGE MOTHER

  Ogden, Utah—Local dance teacher Jenny Partridge was flattened today by the mother of one of her students, after an altercation over a sugar plum fairy. Police said they had to peel Partridge off the mirror of her dance studio after she was cornered by Mrs. Emma Anderson, mother of fairy-wannabe Ella Anderson. “She called my daughter a buffoon!” said an indignant Mrs. Anderson. “Nobody calls my daughter a buffoon!”

  Luckily for me, Ella picked that very moment to pee her pants, staring down as her pink leotard and tights darkened, a pool of urine puddling under her feet. She seemed fascinated by her bodily functions. This amazed me, as I figured by the time you were six you pretty much had that stuff figured out. Despite the fact I didn’t like Ella a whole lot, I was very grateful for her interruption.

  “Oh, Ella! You made a naughty on the floor! Oh no!”

  Mrs. Anderson ran over and hustled her daughter out of the room, her face flushing, while the other mothers watched, giggled, and whispered behind their hands. She turned in my direction before she exited and said, “I’m warning you, Jenny. You don’t want to mess with me, or you’ll be sorry.”

  Yeah, I was already sorry. Sorry I didn’t study tennis or piano when I was younger. The other moms were still whispering and laughing. Mrs. Anderson was not particularly well liked by the other dance moms. The little girls also giggled and moved away from the puddle that was beginning to spread and seep toward them. My studio was old, and there was a certain slant in the floor that was usually unnoticeable—unless something liquid was placed on it. As the puddle picked up speed, they began to scatter and run and squeal, most of them heading to their mothers—who sat in chairs and on the floor on the other side of the room. I understood. Someone else’s urine usually made me want to run and squeal, too. Unfortunately, Mrs. Anderson had left the building, and I was left with the mess—the story of my professional life. All the moms sitting there watching me without offering to help knew they weren’t supposed to be inside the studio, where the girls were dancing. The sign on my door clearly said “No parents allowed.” Yeah, right. Over the eight years I had been in business I had gotten a little lax. I had grown tired of fighting. I just let one in, then another, until they just kind of took over. How was I supposed to enforce this rule now? I was nothing but a dance teacher. I’d need a bodyguard to keep these women out.

  “What’s up?” my assistant dance teacher Amber Francis asked, as she sauntered into the room—ten minutes late, as usual. Amber’s long blond hair was casually tied back in a ponytail and she wore no makeup. She didn’t need it. She had large blue eyes, dark eyelashes that never had to endure the horror of an eyelash curler, and plump full lips. She also had a strong, lithe body with a large chest and a tiny waist. Those breasts had been the only thing keeping her from a real career as a ballerina, and she wasn’t willing to give them up for the craft, so she concentrated on jazz dance, which is what she taught for me. “What’s the puddle?”

  I looked down at my own short legs, thick waist, and slightly bulging middle—I needed to lay off the ice cream and Cheetos—and sighed. It’s a good thing I still danced, or I’d probably weigh four hundred pounds. “Ewwww,” I said aloud, and Amber gave me the same look she always did when my mental processes got ahead of my mouth.

  “Ella peed her pants. Mrs. Anderson thinks Ella should be the Sugar Plum Fairy, and she’s appalled I’d call her daughter a buffoon. And she almost suffocated me again,” I explained.

  Amber peered at my face. “You’ve got bags under your eyes. You dreaming about her squishing you again?”

  “Hey, it could happen.”

  “Man, Jenny, you seriously need a life. Or a boyfriend, or something.”

  With that pronouncement on my pathetic existence—all of which I was perfectly aware of without her pointing it out—she
clapped her hands and called the girls to attention. No one listened, as they were fixated on the puddle.

  I got a rag and cleaned up Ella’s urine, because it was hard to teach little girls to dance when they were all huddled on one side of the small studio trying to avoid the river of pee headed swiftly in their direction.

  That was where I was—on the floor, sopping up little girl pee—when I saw the shoes advance on me. Black, polished dress shoes—man shoes. “No street shoes in here!” I shouted. “Out! Get out!”

  The shoes didn’t move. I followed them up to see a nice pair of dress pants, well pressed and very well fitted, a dress shirt and jacket, broad, athletic shoulders, and on top of the entire package, an impossibly handsome face, saved from pretty-boy status only by a one-inch scar over the left eye. Dark hair. Cobalt blue eyes. I almost melted on the spot, except then I would have been puddled next to Ella’s pee, and that was something I did not want to experience.

  After exchanging with me what I wanted to believe were looks of instant and mutual attraction, Blue Eyes took himself over to the door where he slipped off his shoes and then padded back over to me. “Jenny Partridge?” Even his socks were elegant—no holes. I thought of the pair I was wearing under my dance shoes. They were mostly one big hole. There wasn’t much sock left.

  “That’s me.” I finished cleaning up the pee, and stood. “I’d offer my hand, but I don’t think that would be a good idea.” He wrinkled his nose as the smell of urine from the rag drifted over to him, and he waved a hand.

  “Not necessary. I’m Detective Tate Wilson. I’m here about Sandra Epstein.”

  I groaned aloud. Sandra Epstein, the worst stage mother of them all. Worse than four Emma Andersons. I’d taught her daughter Taylee dance for three years now, and the girl was incredibly talented, but her mother was going to be the death of any career she might have.