“Just wait till Tara gets a look at that one,” Christie said, almost in a whisper. “Tara Corcoran is not the sort of person who sits still for phonies.”
“Is that what she is?” Greta asked. “I thought she was just a bitch. You know. With money.”
“Rhymes with rich,” Michelle said, laughing out loud.
They were all walking toward the door together now, at the very back of the crowd.
“No matter what that silly old woman thinks,” Christie Mulligan said, “I’m sure this murder isn’t your ordinary kind of thing. I mean, your ordinary drug pusher doesn’t kill his enemies with cyanide or whatever it was.”
“Arsenic is what I heard,” Michelle said.
“It doesn’t matter. Have you seen the papers?” Christie turned to Greta. “They had pictures of him just after it happened, and there’s going to be a story in Connecticut magazine. Tim Bradbury.”
Greta Bellamy started. “Tim Bradbury?” she repeated. “Are you sure that was the name?”
“What’s the matter?” Michelle asked eagerly. “Did you know him?”
Greta was at a loss. “I didn’t exactly know him,” she said, feeling unbelievably stupid, “and I’m sure it’s not the same person anyway, I mean, it’s not exactly an uncommon name—”
“It’s not exactly a common one, either,” Christie pointed out. “The only other Bradbury I know of is the science fiction writer.”
Greta had never heard of a science fiction writer named Bradbury. They were on their way out the door into the hall again. The hall was darker than the studio had been. Greta ran a hand through her hair in exasperation.
“I’m sure it couldn’t have been the same person,” she murmured.
Christie Mulligan shook her head emphatically. “I don’t think you ought to trust yourself about that. Not if you knew somebody named Tim Bradbury. I think you ought to find out the name of that police detective who was here and go tell him all about it.”
“You know what happens in books when people keep information like that to themselves,” Michelle said. “They get murdered, too.”
Greta ran a hand through her hair again. A couple of college girls from Yale, she thought. What could they possibly know? They were so damned young. People in real life didn’t get murdered for “knowing too much.” They especially didn’t get murdered for not knowing if they knew. Greta didn’t even watch cop shows and murder mysteries on television, because she found them so unreal.
“I’m sure it couldn’t have been the same person,” Greta said for the third time—but she said it to herself.
Christie and Michelle had found their friend Tara, and gone off to collect her.
2
THE FIRST TIME MAGDA Hale had felt the pain in her hip, it was only halfway through the first dance of the morning. It was an awful pain, too—stabbing, sharp and undeniable. Magda had been well into a high kick when it hit, and she had almost fallen over. High kicks were Magda’s specialty. She had performed them on all three of the exercise videos she had made, and on local cable television, and at mall demonstrations from Connecticut to New Hampshire and out in California. She was scheduled to do a demonstration routine, with high kick intact, on Oprah Winfrey’s show at the end of March. When the pain hit, the air in front of her changed colors. Her whole leg felt as if someone had doused it with gasoline and set it on fire. Her breath stopped and her heart seemed to stop with it. It took the most massive effort of will she had ever made in her life to get going again.
The second time Magda Hale felt the pain in her hip, it was right before lunch, after all that uproar with the broken railing on the balcony, and she was trying to get her advanced class through their last routine in time to pack them all off to the dining room. This time, the pain was not only sharp and stabbing it had staying power. It hit hard and spread quickly down her leg—but then it stayed, and stayed and stayed, no matter how she moved or what she put her weight on. There was one last cycle left in this routine: step, kick, step, kick, bend, turn, jump, repeat. After that, there was only the cooldown, which consisted of two and a half minutes of the kind of flowing waterbaby motions five-year-olds did in their first ballet recitals. Magda fully expected the pain to cease when she got to that part. There was nothing high impact about waterbaby motions. This time, though, they didn’t help. Magda was sure she was imagining it, but sweeping hand movements and slow head rolls actually seemed to make the pain worse. By the time she got through the go-limp-and-relax phase, she was very close to throwing up. If she had had anything in her stomach, she would have thrown up. Her stomach was a rolling mass of cramps.