A Cat in the Wings: Read online

  A Cat in the Wings:

  Lydia Adamson

  InterMix (2012)

  * * *

  Rating: ★☆☆☆☆

  Available Digitally for the First Time

  Murder takes a bow at the ballet, and cat-sitting sleuth Alice Nestleton pirouettes into danger…

  An actress led into a life of crime (sleuthing, that is) and cat-sitting, Alice Nestleton has returned to the theater—dozing in a box seat through a Lincoln Center production of The Nutcracker. She’s happily imagining her Main Coon cat, Bushy, and all-American alley cat, Pancho, doing the dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy when her reverie is interrupted by some off-stage excitement—the discovery of former ballet great Peter Dobrynin dressed like a derelict and dead as a doornail.

  And when the murder is pinned on her close friend, Lucia, Alice starts snooping for clues among New York’s homeless to find the real killer. From flop houses to the elegant salons of wealthy art patrons, Alice is drawn into a dark, dangerous dance of deception…until a mysterious cat drags in the shocking solution to this pas de deux with death.

  Curl up with A Cat Tells Two Tales, available October 2012 in trade paperback from Obsidian.

  Contents

  Also by Lydia Adamson

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Special Excerpt from A Cat With A Fiddle

  About the Author

  Alice Nestleton Mystery Series eBooks from InterMix

  A Cat in the Manger

  A Cat of a Different Color

  A Cat in Wolf’s Clothing

  A Cat by Any Other Name

  A Cat in the Wings

  A Cat with a Fiddle

  Look for A Cat Tells Two Tales

  Available now in print from Obsidian

  A Cat in the Wings

  An Alice Nestleton Mystery

  Lydia Adamson

  INTERMIX BOOKS, NEW YORK

  INTERMIX BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

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  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  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 control over and does not have any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  A CAT IN THE WINGS

  An InterMix Book / published by arrangement with the author

  PUBLISHING HISTORY

  Signet Books edition / November 1992

  InterMix eBook edition / December 2012

  Copyright © 1992 by Lydia Adamson.

  Excerpt from A Cat with a Fiddle copyright © 1993 by Lydia Adamson.

  Cover art by Robert Crawford.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  For information, address: The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  ISBN: 978-1-101-57890-2

  INTERMIX

  InterMix Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group

  and New American Library, divisions of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  INTERMIX and the “IM” design are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  Chapter 1

  Think of the music and costumes and excitement of The Nutcracker!

  As performed on Christmas Eve by the New York City Ballet at Lincoln Center.

  Is there any other event that so captures the desperate holiday gaiety of Manhattan?

  I doubt it.

  But what was I doing there, in a first-tier box, with five kiddies?

  Yes, count ’em. Five. Between the ages of six and ten.

  There was Kathy, Laura, Stephen, Edward. And one whose name may have been “Ada” or “Dada” or “Sadie.”

  I was there because, in a moment of hubris, I had bragged to one of my cat-sitting clients that I could get good tickets to The Nutcracker anytime I wanted.

  Mrs. Timmerman was wide-eyed when I announced that. She asked: “But how?”

  “A friend in high places,” I replied mysteriously.

  Indeed, I did have a friend in a high place. Lucia Maury worked in the executive offices of the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. Her responsibilities included making travel arrangements for the New York City Ballet when the troupe went on tour. I had known Lucia for more than twenty years. We had been roommates when we both arrived in Manhattan—she to dance, and I to act. We had kept in touch, one reason being that we shared a passion for Maine coon cats. Lucia had once had a wonderful Maine coon named Splat, who passed away about three years ago. She was so distraught that she never obtained another cat. Lucia was a very fine dancer until she hurt her knee. After joining Lincoln Center in an administrative capacity, she had always offered me tickets, most of which I had refused.

  The only flaw in our relationship was that I was profoundly jealous of her—while she was dancing. Like many actresses, I have this inferiority complex in relation to ballet dancers. They are so bloody wonderful! They do what we yearn to do and never can.

  Anyone who has been backstage just before a ballet starts knows what I mean. The dancers are chatting about everything from boyfriends to shopping trips to the weather. Some are stretching. Some are putting on their makeup.

  Suddenly the orchestra begins, and a few seconds later the curtain goes up.

  One of the dancers, who moments earlier was chewing on a fingernail because she was bored, bursts out onto the stage and executes a series of magnificent leaps and turns.

  She stops suddenly downstage, bows
luxuriously, and then proceeds to glissade contemptuously about the stage.

  In a short span of time the dancer has gone from quiescence to ecstasy, with many stops in between—a disciplined orgy of physical elegance and control.

  How could an actress not be jealous of a ballerina?

  But, to make a long story short, Mrs. Timmerman, that day, was annoying me. She kept going on and on about her country house in Dutchess County, and how this Christmas they had decided to stay in Manhattan to let the children experience “an urban Christmas.” And besides, the cat Belle hated the country.

  On and on she went, and I had to listen politely. The more she talked the more she irritated me. So I just casually mentioned that I could get any kind of ballet tickets, including ones for The Nutcracker on Christmas Eve. It was my way of showing her that while I might be a cat-sitter, I had another life—a life that was far superior to hers, culturally, no matter what her wealth.

  It was kind of pathetic. I didn’t usually do those kinds of petty things. But Christmas in New York is difficult, even if one is a Minnesota farm girl who has lived in Manhattan for more than two decades. And the conversation with Mrs. Timmerman took place only nineteen days before Christmas.

  Compounding my stupidity, I offered to take the children as well as obtain the tickets. Everyone was ecstatic except for the cat, Belle, and me.

  So that is why, on Christmas Eve, I found myself shepherding the kiddies at The Nutcracker. That is why I had ended up sitting in an opulent box seat at the State Theater, amidst all that Noel splendor of light and color and music and fantasy.

  Actually, Tchaikovsky has always been too much for me, so after the first dazzling scene I let my mind wander back in time, as I tried to envision what the first production of Nutcracker in America must have looked like. It took place in 1940, before I was born, at the old Metropolitan Opera House. The company was the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo. The sugar-plum fairy was Alicia Markova. The prince was André Eglevsky.

  When my efforts to conjure up the scene failed, I just let myself doze off, since my charges were mesmerized by the balletic spectacle.

  My doze turned into a gentle fantasy in which my two cats, Bushy and Pancho, were in the process of trying out for roles in an all-feline production of The Nutcracker.

  I opened my eyes just as, onstage, the Mouse King was about to be extirpated by the heroine.

  The door to our box had been pushed open a few inches.

  Lucia Maury was standing there. I hadn’t even known she would be at the performance. She hadn’t mentioned it.

  She didn’t move. She held a finger up to her lips, as if to signify that the children shouldn’t know she was there. It was very odd.

  Then she waved one hand, indicating that I should leave the box.

  I did so. The children were too caught up in the ballet to even notice my departure.

  The moment I had stepped outside the box and closed the door gently behind me, I knew Lucia was in some kind of trouble. Her thin, angular body was stooped over. She was very pale. The long sleeves of her lovely black dress were pulled up to her elbows, as if she were about to do manual labor.

  “Lucia! What’s the matter?”

  She started to answer, then burst into tears. She fought back the tears, grabbed my arm, and started to pull me along.

  I allowed myself to be led. Lounging ushers stared at us. The music from within could be heard only faintly.

  She guided me through the mezzanine lobby, past the bar, already set up for the coming intermission, and through the glass doors onto the open-air balcony.

  It was cold. A strong wind was blowing. The city was a bonfire of holiday lights. The fountain in the plaza below was spouting magnificently. I could hear the bells of the Salvation Army Santas on Broadway.

  At first I thought we were the only ones on that windswept balcony.

  But then I saw a small knot of people on the western edge, against the building. At least two of them were police officers.

  Lucia was beginning to shiver. She had stopped about five feet from the gathering.

  Suddenly I knew why we were there.

  Sitting up against the building wall was a derelict, without shoes.

  His eyes, a startling shade of blue, were wide open.

  I was about to remonstrate with Lucia for having dragged me out onto a freezing balcony to look at a drunk. After all, there were hundreds of derelicts like this one living around Lincoln Center.

  But then I noticed something else distinctive about this drunk—something other than his beautiful eyes and the fact that he was shoeless in December.

  There was a hole in his forehead. A small, jagged hole.

  The man was dead. And the hole had been made by a bullet.

  Lucia increased the pressure of her arm on mine, as if she were falling.

  “It’s Dobrynin, Alice,” she said. “Dobrynin!”

  Was Lucia mad?

  “Do you mean Peter Dobrynin?”

  “Yes! Yes! Yes!” she whispered frantically. “It’s Peter!” And her fingers pinched my arm so forcefully that I cried out from the pain. One of the policemen turned to stare at me.

  Peter Dobrynin? I stared at the shoeless dead man again. How could it be?

  Peter Dobrynin had dropped out of the public eye three years ago. The most acclaimed male ballet dancer since Nijinsky had gone into seclusion. There were all kinds of rumors and speculations: He had gone into a drug-rehab clinic. He had entered a monastery in Vermont. He had been admitted to a mental hospital. No one knew the real story.

  But what an impact this one-time student at the Kirov had made on the dance world before he dropped out! Bigger and more powerful and dramatic than Baryshnikov . . . more technically proficient and more musical than Nureyev . . . his roles in Giselle and Firebird and Petrouchka had made him the new hero of the American ballet.

  And Dobrynin had been as flamboyant offstage as he was on—lover, brawler, lunatic, junkie, drunk, frequenter of jet-set parties as well as trend-setting Harlem clubs. He was always out of control.

  Lucia started to pull me away, but I resisted. I couldn’t stop looking at the corpse.

  Had this wreck of a man really once been the golden dancer Dobrynin?

  The wind began to whip across the open expanse of concrete, making me shudder. After all, it was Christmastime in the city.

  Chapter 2

  Lucia spent the night on my sofa. But even after two cups of hot tea, lemon, and brandy, she wasn’t able to sleep much.

  I could hear her pacing and crying, so around two in the morning I carried my bedding into the living room and stayed with her there. The floor was hard, and my Maine coon cat Bushy refused to leave the bedroom pillow to keep me company on the vigil. So much for feline constancy.

  Pancho, the other cat, who seemed never to sleep more than forty seconds at a time, did stop briefly to sniff me several times during his perpetual flight from imagined enemies. I was thankful for that.

  Finally, around four, Lucia fell into a heavy sleep.

  At nine in the morning she was still sleeping soundly, so I went down to buy the newspaper and croissants. It was Christmas Day, and some sort of treat seemed in order.

  The early-morning streets were very still—not a creature was stirring, as the poem would have it. But, to my relief, the French bakery was open. I used the change in my pocket to buy a Daily News from one of those blasted automated boxes, losing only a dime in the transaction.

  I heard Lucia stir while I was making the coffee.

  “I’m sorry I was such a baby last night, Alice. It was all too much for me. And now here I am ruining your holiday.”

  She stood just outside my small kitchen. It was amazing how little her firm dancer’s body had aged. And her high-cheekboned face was still thin as well, her features crisp. Lucia’s mid-length sandy hair was pulled back into a ponytail. She looked as though she were about to do a barre.

  “It’s good to have you here,
no matter what the circumstances,” I said. We used to stay over at each other’s place a lot in the old days. “And besides, you know I’ve been a bah-humbug type about Christmas for ages. Remember?”

  She nodded quietly and helped me bring the coffee and croissants out to the living room. Bushy, having finally made his first regal appearance of the morning, was now inspecting Lucia minutely, probably calculating how long it was going to take to make her his slave.

  We read the News article together, when we finally managed to find it. The first two pages of the Christmas Day edition were filled with peace-on-earth stories and Santas and happy families; Bethlehem guarded by heavily armed Israeli soldiers; stock photos of St. Patrick’s Cathedral during midnight Mass; crèche scenes from the outer boroughs. Peter Dobrynin’s death had been pushed all the way back to page five.

  A DANCER DIES, the bold headline read.

  There were several photos of Dobrynin as he had appeared in his choicest roles. And there was a single grainy, grim shot of the hospital stretcher carrying the covered body to a waiting ambulance.

  Alongside the photographs, a few paragraphs of text in a box traced for one last time Peter Dobrynin’s meteoric rise in the ballet world—and his equally meteoric fall.

  The story was short and to the point:

  Acclaimed ballet dancer Peter Dobrynin was found shot to death in the State Theater at Lincoln Center last night, during the New York City Ballet’s traditional Christmas Eve performance of Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker. The dead Dobrynin was shoeless.

  Lincoln Center staffers first believed the dead man to be a neighborhood derelict who had managed to enter the theater unnoticed. But several balletgoers noticed the similarity between him and Dobrynin, who has been out of the public eye in recent years. A positive identification was made later.

  Police say they know of no motive for the killing at this time. There are no suspects, and no actual witnesses to the crime. The murder weapon has not been recovered. According to authorities, Dobrynin was most likely shot on the theater’s outdoor balcony during the opening scenes of the ballet.