Death on Beguiling Way by Patricia McLinn

Author:Patricia McLinn
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Mystery
ISBN: 9781944126476
Publisher: Craig Place Books
Published: 2019-10-18T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Deputy Hensen was professional and thorough as he took me through the events of the class and after.

He didn’t say a word about Teague O’Donnell.

Neither did I, despite swells of temptation to ask what the heck they’d been talking about.

Only one question caught me unprepared.

“Were you the last one to leave the studio?”

I went blank for a second. Had someone said I was last? Or, more accurately, we were, because Clara and I left together. We were sometimes last out when Liz taught, especially if we got chatting. And because, for some reason, I seemed to be among the slowest mat-rollers on the planet.

But that night…?

No, wait. The auburn-haired woman had said we were behind her and there were others yet to leave.

Besides, I knew we hadn’t been last.

Yet the question left me momentarily blank.

Okay. Recreate it.

Class ends. We’re all down on our mats, stretched out for shavasana, less relaxed, more exhausted than usual. Xanthe started ordering us to bring movement back into our bodies way before I was ready.

We all sit up, do the closing, she thanks us for sharing our practice with her. I mentally add, our sweat, too. Then…

The Tackler, now also known as Julia Trippen, hopped up — I remember resenting her enthusiasm — and fussed with her bag.

Rolled up my mat. Clara and I waited for the crush to end, then put our bolsters, blocks, and blankets away. We went up front to the vestibule to get our shoes and other paraphernalia.

A few had already left. More milled around, putting shoes on. Someone — Laura, the new mother, I thought — stood by the desk, asking Xanthe something. Yes, definitely Laura. There’d been a phrase about baby weight.

Eve and Julia came up behind us, blocked from leaving because of the traffic jam in the vestibule.

The door opened for another departure, and a gust of scent had entered.

“Fresh strawberry pie at the café,” Clara murmured. “Do you want…?”

“I want.”

We snaked through those left, reached the door behind — yes, the auburn-haired woman. We waved a thank you to the substitute instructor over the head of the New Mother named Laura, who was talking angrily. A continuation of the morning dog-baby conflict, if Rowena was right.

Clara and I were out the door, heading south on Beguiling Way.

We passed the music shop and reached the odds and ends storefront, its window festooned with strings of lampshades above the more sober bases at the bottom of the window, when a sound behind us made me turn.

Eve and Julia — though I’d then thought of them as MOTB and the Tackler — were emerging from the studio and heading our direction. Instinctively, I picked up the pace and Clara matched it without question. So we were in the café before they would have reached the end of Beguiling Way.

“No,” I told Hensen firmly, “I wasn’t the last to leave the studio. Clara and I left together and there were several people still there. In addition to Xanthe. I assume you weren’t counting her, because she’d naturally be the last one, needing to lock up.

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