La Danza Morte' by Robert F. Clifton (e reader txt) 📖

Remembering

 

La Danza Morte

by

Robert F. Clifton

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

La Danza Morte

Copyright August 20, 2015 by Robert F. Clifton

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be

reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any

means without written permission from the author.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dedicated To The Memory

of

Elva Aspenberg

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Robert Wallace sat in his wheelchair thinking, remembering, the crime, the suspects and the investigation of the murder of Gabriela Bunsdorff. It had happened years ago when the ballet, “Sleeping Beauty” performed by the Baranovsky Ballet Company came to Nautilus Beach, New Jersey. Wallace had been a young homicide investigator for the local police department at the time of the killing. The death of Gabriela Bunsdorff, ballerina, had an unfavorable impact on the tourist trade that was sought after by the merchants of the famous seaside resort. The city fathers wanted the crime solved in a hurry and he was assigned to the case.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Table Of Contents

 

Chapter One.....Remembering

Chapter Two.....Doctor Edwards

Chapter Three..Anthony Rogers

Chapter Four....Natasha Dubcek

Chapter Five.....Margaret Helms

Chapter Six.......Harry Brummel

Chapter Seven...Viktor Baranovsky

Chapter Eight....Lester Cummings

Chapter Nine.....Chicago

Chapter Ten.......Pittsburgh

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter One

Remembering

 

Robert Wallace turned the wheels of his wheelchair with his hands and slowly made his way to the kitchen table. Once there he looked at the tuna salad that his wife Mary Wagner Wallace had prepared for him. He wasn't in the mood for tuna in any way shape or form. However, as an aging diabetic and the disease taking away his walking ability and balance he knew that Mary was watching his diet, even if he wasn't. As he unfolded the cloth napkin he heard her talking to someone on the telephone. When he had met and married her the first time she had been a top reporter for the Nautilus Beach Press. What was strange about that union was the fact that as a police officer, Robert Wallace both distrusted and disliked media reporters and now retired, still did.

As he took small samples of the salad on his fork followed by sips of chemical infused sweetened ice tea he heard

Mary hang up the telephone then heard her footsteps as she approached the kitchen. “You're not eating”, she said sternly when she entered and looked at his plate.

“First of all, I'm tired of fish. If I have to eat it, which I don't. If I did want to eat it then it should be on bread, not piled on top of a lettuce leaf and dumped on a paper plate!”, he answered.

“And you know that too much bread is bad for your diet. You're only allowed so many carbohydrates a day”, Mary responded.

“Say's who?”

“Your doctor, your dietitian and me!”

“Bullshit!”

“And you're full of it! Now, are you going to eat the tuna or would you like me to fry you some eggs?”

“No, I'll eat the damn fish. Who was on the telephone?”

“Ed Kominsky”.

“Who the hell is he?”

“The new editor of the local paper”.

“What did he want?”

“Not you evidently. What he wants is for me to freelance a report and article on the ballet coming to town next month. Naturally I get paid and I also get two tickets. One for you and one for me.”

“Like hell. I can't imagine sitting and watching people jumping up and down in long underwear to music.”

“The girls wear tights and tutu's, not long underwear idiot”.

“And the, what are they called, boys? All the boys do is lift the girls. Besides, they pad the crotch of their pants. Some of them should be arrested for indecency”.

“You are impossible. Finish your lunch”.

“Yeah, yeah. So? Are you taking the job?”, he asked.

“I'd like to. Still, there's the problem of you being alone for a length of time,” Mary answered.

“Don't worry about me.'

“You seem to forget that you've had two hypoglycemic attacks this month alone. Both times I had to call for the ambulance and the EMT's. Both times you were out of it. Once your blood reading was forty eight and you tell me not to worry”.

“Hey, I divorced you once because of my age. Now, since we've remarried you're stuck taking care of an old fart. I warned you. You asked for it. Sorry that I'm such a pain in the ass”.

“You're not a pain in the ass and if you don't want to become one listen to your doctor and those taking care of you”.

“Yeah, yeah”.

“Any way. We could use the money and the pay for the article is generous.”

“Then take the job”.

“It would be nice if you went to the ballet with me”.

“I've had my share of ballet's.'

“Really? How?”

“This isn't the first time a production like this is coming to town. Back in the seventies the ballet, “Sleeping Beauty” came to Nautilus Beach, appearing at the convention center. Unfortunately, it was the first and last ballet here until the one you now want me to attend.”

“Wasn't it a success?”, asked Mary.

“I don't think so. The ballerina dropped dead during the show. Evidence revealed that some one had killed her and the

thought was that the producer had lost his shirt”.

“Why?”

“Why, what?”

“Why did the producer loose his shirt?”

“Because typically, the residents of this city are too damn cheap to support anything except bookmakers, hookers and saloons. Any art form is doomed before it even starts in Nautilus Beach. In the case of the ballet the house was only half full and most of the audience was made up of out of townies.”

“Well this ballet is sold out,” said Mary.

“Really? Which ballet is it?”

“Giselle.”

“Never heard of it.”

“It's about a peasant girl named Giselle who dies of a broken heart after discovering that her lover is betrothed to another. The Wills, a supernatural group of women who dance men to death summon Giselle from the grave. They target her lover for death, but Giselle's great love frees him from their grasp,” Mary explained.

“Sounds like a lot of horseshit to me.” Wallace replied.

“You're impossible. Why do I even try? I'm going to the

A&P. Is there anything you want or need?” she asked.

“Anything I'd want you wouldn't get because it would be bad for me, according to you.”

“Oh. You mean like a lemon pie, a bag of doughnuts or a gallon of ice cream?”

“I survived many years of coffee and lemon doughnuts”.

“And, your blood glucose reading was three and four hundred”.

“I thought you were going to the store”.

“I am. Good by.”

After Mary left Wallace placed the paper plate with the half eaten tuna salad on his lap then maneuvered the wheel chair to where the trash can stood in the corner. With the toe of one foot he pressed down, opened the lid and tossed the rest of his unfinished lunch into the receptacle. He turned the wheelchair and moved it into the spare bedroom that had become the combination den, office and reading and writing room. Here

Mary Wallace practiced her craft as a free lance writer. In the same room Robert Wallace sat and read or in his reclining chair

and with earphones and closed eyes listened to his music while Mary worked. Occasionally he helped her by doing research of a particular subject in which she was interested, most times he sat deep in thought remembering his days on the Nautilus Beach Police Department. Reminiscing brought back the faces of old friends, like Doc Edwards, Tom McKenna, Frank Stiles, all gone now. Then, there were the memories of the women in his life. Some were one night stands. Some were lovers. A few were treacherous. A couple were killers. Each one had taught him something about life and relationships. Then, there was Mary, a woman who married him and at his request agreed to divorce him because he was many years older then her, only later to take him in and nurse him when he returned from Australia. A woman that through the years maintained her love for him, accepted his likes and dislikes and his definition of life as he saw it. She didn't necessarily agree with it, but she put up with it.

Now, he moved slowly from the wheelchair and slowly lowered himself into the dark, brown leather recliner. Leaning back he closed his eyes and thought again about the murder case involving the ballerina. He had called the case, “La Danza Morte'.” “Death Dance.”

As he recalled it, he remembered that he had been off duty and at home in his condo when at about or around nine o'clock on a Sunday morning a week after Labor Day he received a telephone call from Sergeant John Ackerman. Ackerman informed him that the ballerina dancing Saturday night in the convention center had either fainted or collapsed while performing. She had been rushed to the hospital where she was pronounced dead in the emergency room. At the hospital tests had been done and it was determined that the ballerina one, Gabriela Bunsdorff had high readings of the drug, dioxin in her system. This was enough probable cause for the detective originally assigned to investigate to consider the woman's death as a possible homicide. This brought the Major Crime Squad into the case, a unit that Detective Robert Wallace had just recently been assigned. “Where do you want me Sergeant?,” he had asked.

“Meet me at the Convention Center, back stage,” said Ackerman.

Wallace remembered the appearance of the Convention

Center hallway. The walls had been painted with two colors of paint. The lower half of the walls had been painted gray, the upper half, sea foam green. The sounds his footsteps made on the concrete floor came back to him and in his reverie he saw himself walking the length of that hallway once again. He had opened a door and found that it was the entrance to the rear of the stage. He entered and seeing Sergeant Ackerman reported for duty.

“Ah, Wallace, let me fill you in. You already know what I told you on the telephone. As you know the victim in this case had an abundant amount of dioxin in her system. That doesn't necessarily mean that she was murdered. In fact, it might have been an accidental overdose. Nonetheless we're going to find out one way or another just what happened. As for you, I want you to examine the dressing room. See what you can find. Look for anything out of place or out of order. Take notes. If you find something call for me. Right now I have to talk to the stage manager. Got it?”

“Yes sir,” Wallace answered.

When he entered the dressing room the first thing that had caught his attention was the mixed aroma of face powder and perfume. The result of the open door allowed him to see the makeup table with the outdated, blond wood dressing mirror with its eight, clear glass electric bulbs. Wallace turned, looked and saw the wall switch and he flipped it with a finger allowing the single bulb in the ceiling fixture to illuminate. Now, in the lighted room he stood still, looking, searching, observing. Near the far corner of the room stood a tall dressing screen. Next to that was a clothes rack. A pair of blue jeans, along with a gray sweatshirt hung next to a blue, windbreaker. All had been neatly placed on wooden hangers. A pair of blue, women's, athletic shoes had been placed on the bottom of the rack. Next to the shoes was a black, leather overnight bag. He walked to the clothes rack, bent over and picked up the bag. He then took a seat in one of the three chairs in the room and opened the bag and looked inside. The bag contained a change of underwear, panties, a bra and a pair of peds. From the chair Wallace continued visually searching the room. He noticed a woman's, black, leather, pocketbook on a small table. Next to the pocketbook was a yellow, frosted, drinking glass.

Wallace got up, walked to the table and picked up the pocketbook then took a seat