Bossa Novas, Bikinis, and Bad Ends Page 18

  “Tell them to call me,” I said, “if they need convincing.”

  “Everyone else will tell them that, so you probably don’t have to,” Mary Louise said.

  “You’re right,” Tina said. “I’ll think about it. What else should we tell our honeymooners? Anything about the beaches? That’s the big attraction here.”

  “Something I found out that seems odd,” Janice said. “You can wear practically no bathing suit at all—you know, just a thong and a miniscule bra, but you can’t go topless. I think there’s one nude beach in Rio, but all the other beaches require tops. If your honeymooners are coming here in one hundred degree heat, the bride might be tempted to take off her bra. I certainly would. But it’s definitely frowned on.”

  “Good to know, Jan,” Tina said. “When you see what the women wear here, you’d certainly think topless was OK. Anything else I should put in this article?”

  “You might want to tell them to learn some Portuguese words and phrases before they come,” Mary Louise said. “I’ve been surprised at how few people speak English here. They do in the big stores, of course, but in the little shops and walking around, they don’t really understand you. I draw pictures on my iPad or wave my arms around, or point to things and make a face like I want to know how much it costs, but it would be good to learn some of those phrases Lucas taught us. Before I came here, I thought I could use the few Spanish words I know, but Portuguese is way different.”

  “I’m glad you reminded me of that,” Tina said. “That’s really important. I think I have the most crucial for the article. I’ll tell them about the four zones in the city: central, where the theater and museum of fine arts are, the upscale south zone where our Copacabana, the Ipanema, Leblon are, plus Sugar Loaf and Corcovado, the north zone where the Maracaña Stadium and the zoo are, and the west zone, which is suburban and where the 2016 Olympics will be.”

  The waiter brought our next course, the tuna mignon and foie gras with asparagus.

  “Enough shop talk,” Tina said. “Let’s just concentrate on this made-in-heaven food and think about where we want to go next.”

  We all made suggestions in between bites of this unbelievable fish with foie gras—what an ingenious combination. Must have it at my next dinner party, I thought. Yeah, right.

  “You mean, we now get to choose where we want to dance?” Mary Louise asked, as surprised as the rest of us.

  “Not bad, huh?” Tina said, looking pleased. “I’ve been getting lots of offers for us lately.”

  “I’m amazed that anyone would want to hire us, considering the body count when we leave,” I said. I couldn’t help it. After all, I was almost in that last body count.

  “It gives us a certain excitement value,” Tina said. “I know. It’s weird, but our names are beginning to bring in more customers because people think they might end up on the front page of the newspaper.”

  “Or at least in the obituary section,” Gini said, making us laugh.

  “Come on, guys,” Tina said. “Where shall we go next?”

  “What are our choices?” Janice asked. “Couldn’t we go someplace closer to home? I’m trying to work on that book about the Gypsy Robes with my daughter Sandy, and we keep dancing whole continents away.”

  “What would you say about dancing in New York City?” Tina asked.

  We all talked at once.

  “Perfect!” Gini said. “I could spend some time with Alex. I miss him.”

  “George would be thrilled,” Mary Louise said about her husband, who always complained when she went so far away on our gigs.

  “And I could finally get a chance to see more of Tom,” Janice said. “I think I like him a lot but haven’t really had a chance to find out.”

  “Denise could stop holding her breath that I’ll end up dead,” I said.

  “And Peter and I might actually find a few minutes to get married,” Tina said.

  “Where would we dance?” I asked.

  Before Tina could answer me, the waiter brought what Luiz called his pièce de résistance—the ossobuco with saffron risotto. I found out ossobuco is a veal shank simmered in gremola. One bite and I didn’t care where we would dance in New York. It was perfection.

  But Gini had to know, of course.

  “Where in New York, Tina?” she said. “Tell us.”

  “You won’t believe this,” Tina said, “but somebody at Radio City Music Hall read about our Paris adventure and invited us to dance with the Rockettes in their Christmas show!”

  “The Rockettes,” Janice said. “You can’t mean it. They’re the best in the world. How can we dance with them?”

  “Their manager thought it would be fun if we came out on the stage before they did, dressed like the Rockettes, and started dancing, and then were joined by all the real Rockettes who’d include us dancing to Christmas songs.”

  “But nobody ever dances with the Rockettes,” Gini said.

  “Well, we will,” Tina said. “That is, if you guys want to do it.”

  We all talked at once, bubbling over with enthusiasm at the idea of actually being on the same stage as the Rockettes.

  “It’s lots of work, gang,” Tina said. “They rehearse like crazy. That’s why they’re always perfect.”

  “So we’ll be in New York a lot,” Gini said, the enthusiasm in her voice coming through loud and clear. “We’ll get to do Christmas in New York.”

  “You wouldn’t mean you and Alex by ‘we’ would you, Gini?” Tina said, smiling at the look on Gini’s face.

  “Noooo,” she said, smiling back. “Can’t wait to tell him. Did you say yes to this?”

  “Not yet. I wanted to see if you guys were up for this.”

  “We’re way up,” Janice said. “This will be the most fun ever. Wait till I tell Tom we’re dancing with the Rockettes.”

  I couldn’t wait to tell Denise and David I would be taking them to all kinds of Christmas stuff, including the lighting of the tree in Rockefeller Center and ice skating in their rink.

  “I’ll sign us up when we get home,” Tina said.

  Luiz appeared at our table. “How was everything, ladies?” he asked.

  We all exploded with praise for his food and how exquisite it was.

  “Here is your final treat,” he said as the waiter served us his eggplant gnocchi in tomato and basil sauce. “If you still have room, I’d like to bring you the perfect dessert to end your meal.”

  A genteel groan came out of all our mouths. Where would we ever put dessert?

  When we finished the eggplant delight, Luiz appeared, a big smile on his face.

  “Do not worry, senhora,” Luiz said. “I am bringing you a coconut white chocolate mousse. Light, sweet, and delicious.” He clapped his hands and the waiter glided up to our table with sherbert glasses filled with white mousse. He was right. It was indeed the perfect ending to this incredible dinner.

  “We want to thank you, Luiz,” Tina said, “for this amazing meal. Every mouthful was a delight.”

  “My pleasure, senhora,” he said and motioned for the waiter to bring espressos to finish off this evening.

  When he left, Tina said, “So long, Rio. Hello, New York.” We all raised our glasses in a toast to our favorite city in the world, our own helluva town, New York.

  Want to celebrate Christmas in New York with us?

  Keep reading to enjoy a preview excerpt from

  the next Happy Hoofers mystery

  HIGH KICKS, HOT CHOCOLATE,

  AND HOMICIDE

  Coming soon from

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  Chapter One

  Rock On, Rockettes

  “What do you mean you’re going to dance with the Rockettes?” George said, buttering his croissant and holding out his cup for more coffee.

  “It’s true,” I said. “We’re going to be part of their Christmas show.”

  “But they’re professionals,” he said.

  “So are we, George,” I sa
id. “People pay us to dance. That makes us professionals.”

  “Mary Louise, you’re a housewife,” he said. “Your job is here, taking care of this house. Taking care of me.”

  I looked at this man I’d been married to for thirty years and wondered if he knew me at all. I had been dancing on cruise ships and trains and in hotels for the past couple of years with my friends Tina, Janice, Gini, and Pat. We call ourselves the Happy Hoofers. Our names have been all over the TV and newspapers because of a few murders here and there. We are really good dancers, and Tina, our leader, got more offers for jobs than we could accept.

  Did I still love George? Sometimes I wasn’t sure. I thought I was in love with Mike Parnell, the doctor I met when we danced on a luxury train in northern Spain last year. His wife had died two years before, and he was lost without her. I have the same dark hair and blue eyes she had, and he fell in love with me. I tried not to love him back, but during that trip I was ready to leave George for him. Mike was so much fun, so interesting, so good to me.

  That was the part that got me, I think. He was always thinking of me and what would make me happy. George was always thinking of how I could make him happy. I tried to excuse him by reminding myself that he had his own law practice in New Jersey, that he was overworked and tired a lot of the time. Then I thought of Mike, an obstetrician, and pictured him delivering babies at all hours of the night. He still put me first. Let it go. Mary Louise, let it go, I told myself.

  My cell rang. It was Tina Powell—travel editor of Perfect Bride magazine, and the leader of our Happy Hoofers troupe. We’ve been friends forever since the days we worked at Redbook magazine together and traveled across the country in a beat-up old car.

  “Hi, Weezie,” she said. Only my closest friends are allowed to call me that. “Ready to meet the Rockettes? We’re supposed to show up at Radio City this morning for a backstage tour. Peter’s going to drive us into the city. Can you believe we’re going to dance with them? The Rockettes!”

  “No, I don’t believe it,” I said. “Tell me again why they’re letting us do this.”

  “Just to have something different this year. We’re only going to be on for a brief part of their whole show. We’re dancing to ‘Santa Claus Is Coming to Town,’ and we’re wearing very short Santa outfits with Santa hats. We come out on the stage alone and then all the Rockettes join us.”

  “It’s incredible, Tina. What time are we leaving?”

  “We’ll pick you up at nine. Oh, and bring your tap shoes.”

  “We’re going to dance this morning?”

  “I think they want to see how much training we need.”

  “I can tell them,” I said. “A lot.”

  “See you at nine, hon,” Tina said and hung up.

  The idea of performing with the Rockettes on the stage of Radio City was so exciting, I practically danced to the sink with the breakfast dishes.

  “You’re going into the city today?” George asked. “I thought you were going to get the car washed.”

  “Oh, George, I can do that anytime,” I said. “This is a chance to meet the Rockettes. Tina thought we might get the chance to dance a little today, but she wasn’t sure.”

  I rinsed off the plates and juice glasses and stuck them in the dishwasher.

  “Well, I hope you don’t plan to spend much time in the city.” George said. “There’s a lot to do around here with Christmas coming.”

  “It’s only October,” I said, my happy mood disappearing down the sink. “I don’t even have to think about shopping and the tree and all that until December. You should be glad I’m not in Thailand or someplace like that. I’ll only be across the river in New York.”

  “Just be sure you’re back here in time for dinner,” he said and rattled his New York Times noisily.

  Maybe, maybe not, I thought, leaving the room to get my tap shoes.

  I gave the shoes a quick shine and popped them into my bag. How I loved those little shoes. Because of them I had traveled to Russia, Spain, Paris, and Rio. I had tapped, flamencoed, sambaed, and cariocaed.

  Dancing to me was like being set free to whirl out into space, to let go of all my inhibitions and let my body lead me wherever it wanted to go. When I danced, I forgot about George and New Jersey and even my children. I wasn’t Mary Louise Temple anymore. I was a shooting star, a sparkling rocket, a flash of light. I hugged my bag with the shoes in them against my chest and did a couple of twirls around the room.

  George walked into the room and smiled.

  “You’re beautiful,” he said and kissed me.

  “Thank you, sweetheart,” I said. “I won’t be late. I’m cooking your favorite dinner tonight—salmon and anchovies.”

  “I may be a little late,” he said. “The Alderson Company case is taking longer to prepare for than I thought.”

  “Tell me again what that case is about,” I said, trying to comb the curl out of my hair. I wanted that nice straight look but my hair always rebelled and popped out with a little wiggle whenever it got the chance.

  “This woman is suing the company because her husband stepped into an empty elevator shaft in the building they own and was killed.”

  “That’s horrible!” I said. “How do you defend that?”

  “It was obviously the fault of the company that built the elevator. The door shouldn’t open onto an empty shaft, but it did. It’s a complicated case though and it’s a lot of work.”

  He looked preoccupied, worried, and I had a glimpse into the long hours he spent with each case because of his care and perfectionism.

  “You’ll do a great job,” I said. “You always do.”

  He smiled his thanks and hugged me.

  I gave him a quick kiss and went downstairs to wait for Tina and the others.

  At nine, right on the dot, Peter’s car pulled into our driveway. I like Peter a lot. He makes Tina happy. He had been her husband, Bill’s law partner, and he and his wife had been close friends of theirs while Bill was alive. Then Peter and Helen divorced, and a couple of years later, Bill died.

  Peter did everything to help Tina adjust to life without Bill. He fell in love with her in the process. Tina just thought of him as a good friend for a long time, but gradually she grew to love him too. They kept talking about getting married, but somehow Tina was always off somewhere dancing instead of arranging the wedding. She was lucky that Peter was such a patient man.

  Now that we were going to be in New York for a while, I hoped she would stop putting the wedding off and do it. Tina wanted the reception to be in the Frick Museum in New York, one of my favorite places in the world, as well as hers, because it was so cozy, so much like a home. Knowing Tina, it would be an exquisitely beautiful reception.

  I ran outside and hopped in the car where the rest of my Hoofer friends were already ensconced. Somehow all four of us fit in the backseat with plenty of room to sip our coffee and munch on the rolls that Peter had supplied.

  “Hey, Weezie,” Peter said. “I hear you’re going to be a Rockette.”

  “Is that crazy or what?” I said. “How Tina talked them into letting us dance on that huge stage at Christmastime with all those perfect Rockettes I’ll never know.”

  “Didn’t you know?” Peter said with a loving glance at Tina sitting next to him in the front seat. “Tina can do anything.”

  “Except plan her own wedding,” Gini Miller, our documentary filmmaker Hoofer, said, in her usual in-your-face mode.

  “Gini,” Tina said, her voice low and warning.

  “Gini, shut up,” Janice Rogers said, using her actress/director voice, instead of her usual gentle one.

  “Let’s not talk about that right now, Gini,” Pat, our peacemaking family therapist Hoofer said, dispelling the threat of a quarrel before we even got out of the driveway.

  Peter backed the car into the street and headed for Route 24 that led to Route 78 that would take us through the Lincoln Tunnel and into the city and Rockefeller Center. Peter w
as an excellent driver and maneuvered his car in and out of the morning traffic with skill.

  “So, Tina, what’s happening this morning?” Gini asked, choosing a safe subject.

  “Well, they were a little vague,” Tina said, “but I got the impression that they just wanted to meet us, introduce us to the Rockettes, give us a tour of the theater, and tell us what we will be doing in the show.”

  “Why are we bringing our tap shoes?” I asked.

  “I’m not sure,” Tina said, “but I think they want to be sure we can really dance.”

  “Of course we can dance!” Gini said impatiently. “What do they think we were doing in Rio—directing traffic?”

  “Almost getting killed,” Pat muttered with a little shudder.

  I put my arm around her for a second in a gesture of sympathy. She had been through a terrifying time in Brazil.

  Tina reached over the seat and squeezed Pat’s hand. “They knew we were dancing in Rio,” she said, “but they want to be sure we can really tap their way. We mostly flung ourselves around doing the samba and the bossa nova in Brazil. It’s not the kind of disciplined dancing the Rockettes do.”

  “Think we can do it?” Janice asked.

  “With a lot of work,” Tina said. “And I mean long hours of rehearsal.”

  George will have a fit, I thought, and then, Tough! I seemed to be having such ambivalent feelings about him lately. Since I met Mike. I needed to talk to somebody about it. Pat. She’s a wonderful therapist. I would talk to her. She always helped. I glanced over at her squeezed into the corner and smiled. She read my mind.

  “Will George be OK with long hours away from your wifely duties, Mary Louise?” she asked.

  “He’ll have to be,” I said. “He has no choice.”

  “There’s always a middle way,” she said, smiling back at me. “Life isn’t just black or white, perfect or not perfect.”

  “Can we talk?” I said, and my understanding friends chuckled. They all knew how much Pat helped us when we had problems. Every one of us had turned to her in times of crisis and she was always unfailingly wise and insightful.