“That’s. That’s your post-sex face, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” I said to the floor.
“Did he hurt you?”
“No,” I said. “I. This is going to sound so bad, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t resist him. There was, some ruggedness to him, some charisma. I just couldn’t say no to him. He was like some Creole barbarian.”
“Sounds like me,” he said. “What happened?”
“He. Look, we… fooled around, okay?”
“Oh, God. Eddie’s going to kill me.”
“Look, you didn’t do this.”
“No, and that’s what sucks the most. At least in a normal situation like this—not a haunted house, you know—I would at least remember bedding the most gorgeous woman in the place.”
“Stop that,” I said. “I already feel guilty enough about it.”
“Look, things happen,” Vic said. “We’ll just. Pretend it didn’t happen.”
“Right,” I said. “It was just an Echo, after all.”
“Right,” Vic said. “Right.”
There was an awkward silence between us for some time.
“Look, at least riddle me this one. Was it… good for you?” Vic asked.
I put my face in my hands.
“The worst part about it is how great it was,” I said.
“Well, I do hate to brag about it, but, again, that goes with the territory,” he said. “Okay. So we have three potential motives.”
“Corcoran is possibly broke,” I said. “He could have been a murderer—planned it out and tried to frame Duke Arden.”
“Four potential motives. So what’s our next step?”
“Well. We wait here and see when they break next. When Tremblay comes down from the party, we follow him and see who follows him. We know the motivations. All we have to do is essentially stake out the evening and then one of us—probably me—gets to sneak into his office and watch exactly what happens.”
“This could go so wrong,” Vic said.
“It hasn’t yet,” I said.
“There’s still plenty of time,” he said.
The clock struck and gonged from upstairs, and soon the string quartet was on to another jaunty tune.
“Ladies and gentleman,” past Richard Tremblay said, strutting into the room in his famed brown suit. “Now we reach the part of the evening we have all arrived for. The dancing! The one place where we can all come together.”
People were getting to their feet all over. Vic and I tried to squeeze into the corner as pairs waltzed off and away from us two by two. Other staff seemed to have paired off as well, sticking to the corners and trying to stay humble. Vic and I stayed put for a while, just watching—watching the Duke and a plump woman awkwardly side-step for a while.
Mother Cantwell came up behind us.
“It’s an open dance,” she said. “You two, go have some fun.”
Vic and I looked at each other and then looked away.
