A Motive for Murder

Description

Murder at the Ballet: Dance of the Dangling Corpse

They all seem murderous, but maybe they’re just hungry. Half the company chain-smokes to keep their weight down, and as tempers flare, you’d better watch who you say “Break a leg!” to.

Recently retired Wall Street exec T.S. Hubbert and the flamboyant fashionista amateur sleuth who’s his Auntie Lil have solved three murders when Auntie Lil becomes the newest member of the Metropolitan Ballet’s board of directors. For weeks Auntie Lil has dragged T.S. to every dance performance in the city, and the season is about to peak with The Nutcracker when the promising ballerina whose scholarship Lil’s been sponsoring has her plum role snatched away.

The board is swayed by the box office appeal of a sixteen-year-old Hollywood heart-throb who wants to dance the role of the Nutcracker, and the boy’s manager father demands Lil’s protégé be replaced lest all the publicity go to her instead of his son. Although Auntie Lil’s is the only dissenting vote, apparently, she’s not the only one displeased with the board’s decision—the father’s body is discovered swinging from the rope of the First Act curtain at The Nutcracker’s Gala Opening.

Auntie Lil’s recent detective successes make her a natural to run damage control for the board by investigating the murder. In order to check out a couple of suspects, Lil takes her first ballet class in all her sprightly eighty-four years, along with her gentleman friend, Herbert Wong. Less suited to flying leaps than to flying leaps of imagination, it’s unlikely she’ll keep up the lessons, but Herbert is totally hooked.

Meanwhile, T.S. is making good use of his retirement by studying ballroom dancing to impress his lovely lady friend Lilah Cheswick, leaving Auntie Lil to do the heavy lifting on this one, while Theodore and Herbert keep sneaking off for dance lessons . . . and martinis. The entire crew of geriatric super sleuths has dance fever!