Page 24

Edwina jumps up and goes back to her window, where she pulls back the curtains, peers outside, and then drops them again. She counts to five under her breath and does the curtain routine again. Across the street, the Pittsburgh sisters are looking at their notes, oblivious to Edwina Flasher’s smoke signals.
Wyatt asks where Dinda lives so that we can interview her again later. Edwina tells us that poor Dinda has been quite pressed for money and has been living in an apartment above a garage on the end of town.
“Beware her dog,” she warns us. “Her name’s Petunia, but don’t be fooled. She’s a holy terror.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Sticking to our plan to question Gordon next, we follow a cobblestone lane down to the river. It’s a bucolic scene, with tall weeping willows on the far bank draping their strands in the water. The side closer to us is walled and edged by a wide walkway for strolling. Young couples push baby carriages, and some schoolboys are skipping stones. The river looks calm, but the ducks paddling upstream and then being pushed back down hint at a deceptively strong current.
As we cross a low bridge over the river, Amity stops to take pictures of two swans gliding beneath us. “Aren’t they regal?” she says.
“They’re literally regal,” I say. “Owned by the British royal family.”
“Those two particular swans?” Wyatt looks doubtful.
“All the swans in England. Queen Elizabeth the First wanted to corral some swans and was told their owners might resist giving them up. So she took the issue to court, which ruled that she had a right to any swan on open waters.”
“She nationalized the swans?” Wyatt says.
“How ever do you know that?” Amity says.
“I’m not sure. I might have heard it from my mother. She used to concoct stories for me all the time. It’s probably not even true.”
Amity scrolls through her phone. “She didn’t make it up. It was in the 1500s, and since then the royal family holds a ceremony on the Thames every summer where a census is taken of the local swans, weighing them and inspecting them for injuries. Pity, it’s in late July. I would have liked to have seen that. A swan inventory, imagine that.”
The other side of the river is not as densely built as the village center. We pass a few buildings, still old but not particularly charming, and find Gordon’s studio next door to the community pool, which has a sign on the front that reads,CLOSED. SORRY FOR THE INCONVENIENCE. In the studio, four elderly women are paired up, dancing the rumba. A man in the obligatory dance instructor outfit—black V-neck top, stretchy black pants, and soft black shoes—none of which flatter his slightly paunchy physique, swirls around them chanting, “And back, side, together. And forward, side together.” When he spots us, he glides our way, calling over his shoulder, “Hips! Activate your hips, ladies!” He stops in front of us, his feet turned out in a ballet dancer’s first position.
“Looking for lessons?” he asks.
Wyatt flips open the top of his notebook with Sam Spade panache. “Are you Gordon Penny, husband of Tracy Penny?”
The flash of disappointment on Gordon’s face suggests that he’d forgotten about the murder mystery. He rubs a hand over his head as if he’s pushing hair back, but it must be an old habit, because other than a few lonely strands crossing his scalp, he’s bald.
Gordon sighs. “The one and only,” he says.
“If you don’t mind, we have a few questions,” Wyatt says.
“Give me a moment.” Gordon turns back to his students andclaps his hands. “Okay, ladies, brilliant work today. I’m afraid we’ve got to wrap up early.”
Gordon switches off the music. There are some oohs and aahs as the women seem to recall what’s going on in their village this week. A plump woman with purple-tinged hair swats Gordon on the hip. “I hope you didn’t kill anyone, you cheeky fellow!”
“Do you need an alibi?” another woman asks. “I’ll tell them you were with meall nightand that I know it for sure because we didn’t sleep a wink!” More laughter.
The women pick up their things and head out of the studio. Gordon leads us to folding chairs lined up on the wall. He pulls out a chair and sits down opposite us.
“Our deepest condolences,” Amity says, patting Gordon on the knee. “Such a shock to lose a dear one in so brutal a manner.”
I love how sincere she seems. It’s interesting how taking all of this so seriously, acting like we really are detectives investigating a crime, makes it more fun. My drama teacher in high school used to say the first rule of improv was to agree with whatever scenario anyone else created, but I was too self-conscious to listen.
“Yeah, yeah,” Gordon says. “Cry me a river.”
“Were you married for long?” Amity asks.
Gordon gives us the rundown. Tracy and he were married for fifteen years. Seven years ago, they moved down from Sheffield with plans to run the dance studio together. “I thought she’d finally found her thing after changing her mind all the time. First it was scuba diving and all ‘Let’s move to the Bahamas and run a dive shop.’ And then it was horses—she said she’d never been as happy as doing horse therapy over in Whitby.”
“Helping anxious horses?” Wyatt asks.
“Nah, helping kids with horses. You know, troubled kids. Withvarious issues, brain damage, born with differences, that kind of thing. They live in a special school over there, next to the stables, which they visit once a week. Tracy still volunteers there.”