High Kicks, Hot Chocolate, and Homicides

Book 5: Happy Hoofers Mystery

by Mary McHugh

Genres: Amateur Sleuth; Cozy Mystery; Female Sleuths

Synopsis

“Hilarity and camaraderie.” — RT Book Reviews Murder takes center stage . . . It’s a Christmas miracle for the Happy Hoofers—Tina, Janice, Pat, Mary Louise, and Gini. They’ve scored a gig at New York City’s Radio City Music Hall with the legendary Rockettes, complete with sexy Santa suits and microphones on their shoes. But when a dazzling diva of a dancer is found dead under the stage, there’s quite a lineup of suspects. In between rehearsals and seasonal sightseeing—and the discovery of a multi-talented, multi-colored cat—the toe-tapping troupe has to sort out the intrigue before another victim kicks the bucket . . . INCLUDES COOKING TIPS AND TASTY RECIPES Praise for the Happy Hoofers Mysteries “McHugh delivers murder and mayhem.” —Jerilyn Dufresne “Hilarity and hijinks.” —Nancy Coco “Cozy adventure for mystery buffs.” — Library Journal

Release date: September 27, 2016

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 352

Sample

“What do you mean you’re going to dance with the Rockettes?” George said, buttering his croissant and holding out his cup for more coffee.

“It’s true,” I said. “We’re going to be part of their Christmas show.”

“But they’re professionals,” he said.

“So are we, George,” I said. “People pay us to dance. That makes us professionals.”

“Mary Louise, you’re a housewife,” he said. “Your job is here, taking care of this house. Taking care of me.”

I looked at this man I’d been married to for thirty years and wondered if he knew me at all. I had been dancing on cruise ships and trains and in hotels for the past couple of years with my friends Tina, Janice, Gini, and Pat. We call ourselves the Happy Hoofers. Our names have been all over the TV and newspapers because we’ve solved a few murders here and there. We are really good dancers, and Tina, our leader, gets more offers for jobs than we can accept.

Did I still love George? Sometimes I wasn’t sure. I thought I was in love with Mike Parnell, the doctor I met when we danced on a luxury train in northern Spain. His wife Jenny had died two years before, and he was lost without her. I have the same dark hair and blue eyes she had, and he fell in love with me. Not just because I looked like Jenny, but he thought I was like her in other ways too. He said I was kind to people who didn’t deserve it, that I always made people feel good about themselves, that I looked at life as an adventure. I tried not to love him back, but after that trip I seriously considered leaving George for him. Mike was so much fun, so interesting, so good to me.

That was the part that got me, I think. He was always thinking of me and what would make me happy. George was always thinking of how I could make him happy. I tried to excuse him by reminding myself that he had his own law practice in New Jersey, that he was overworked and tired a lot of the time.

Then I thought of Mike, an obstetrician, and pictured him delivering babies at all hours of the night. He worked just as hard as George, but he still put me first. Let it go. Mary Louise, let it go, I told myself. I was brought up to believe that you should hang in there, even when marriage wasn’t so great. That all marriages go through bad patches.

The kitchen door swung open and Tucker, our golden retriever, loped in and bumped his face on my leg. I gave him a hug.

“Hey Tucker,” I said. “Hungry?”

He wagged his tail so vigorously he almost whacked George on the leg.

I filled Tucker’s bowl with the dry stuff he loved and filled his water dish.

My cell rang. It was Tina Powell, the editor of a bridal magazine, and the leader of our Happy Hoofers dance troupe. We’ve been friends forever, since the days we worked at Redbook magazine together and the crazy trip we took across the country in a beat-up old car.

“Hi, Weezie,” she said. Only my closest friends are allowed to call me that. “Ready to meet the Rockettes? We’re supposed to show up at Radio City Music Hall this morning for a backstage tour. Peter’s going to drive us into the city. Can you believe we’re going to dance with them? The Rockettes!”

“No,” I said. “I still don’t believe it,” I said. “Tell me again why they’re letting us do this.”

“Just to have something different in their Christmas show this year. We’re only going to be a brief part of their program. We’re dancing to ‘Santa Claus is Coming to Town,’ and we’re wearing very short Santa outfits with Santa hats. We come out on the stage alone and then all the Rockettes join us.”

“It’s incredible, Tina. What time are we leaving?”

“We’ll pick you up at nine. Oh, and bring your tap shoes.”

“We’re going to dance this morning?”

“I think they want to see how much training we need.”

“I can tell them,” I said. “A lot.”

“See you at nine, hon,” Tina said and hung up.

The idea of performing with the Rockettes on the stage of Radio City was so exciting I practically danced to the sink with the breakfast dishes.

“You’re going into the city today?” George asked. “I thought you were going to get the car washed.”

“Oh George, I can do that any time,” I said. “This is a chance to meet the Rockettes for the first time. Tina thought we might get the chance to dance a little today, but she wasn’t sure.”

I rinsed off the plates and juice glasses and stuck them in the dishwasher.

“Well, I hope you don’t plan to spend much time in the city.” George said. “There’s a lot to do around here with Christmas coming.”

“It’s only October,” I said, my happy mood disappearing down the drain. “I don’t even have to think about shopping and the tree and all that until the end of November. You should be glad I’m not in Thailand or some place like that. I’ll only be across the river in New York. I can get a lot of the stuff I need there.”

“Just be sure you’re back here in time for dinner,” he said, rattling his New York Times noisily.

Maybe, maybe not, I thought, leaving the room to get my tap shoes. I gave the shoes a quick shine and popped them into my bag. How I loved those little shoes. Because of them I had traveled to Russia, Spain, Paris, and Rio. I had tapped, flamencoed, sambaed, and cariocaed.

Dancing to me was like being set free to whirl out into space, to let go of all my inhibitions and let my body lead me wherever it wanted to go. When I danced, I forgot George and New Jersey and even my children. I wasn’t Mary Louise Temple any more. I was a shooting star, a sparkling rocket, a flash of light. I hugged my bag with the shoes in them against my chest and did a couple of twirls around the room.

George walked into the room at that moment and smiled.

“You’re beautiful,” he said and kissed me.

“Thank you, sweetheart,” I said. “I won’t be late. I’m cooking your favorite dinner tonight—salmon and anchovies.”

“I may be a little late,” he said. “The Alderson case is taking longer to prepare for than I thought.”

“Tell me again what that case is about,” I said, trying to comb the curl out of my hair. I wanted that nice straight look everybody else had, but my hair always rebelled and popped out with a little wiggle whenever it got the chance.

“This woman is suing the company because her husband stepped into an empty elevator shaft in the building they own and was killed.”

“That’s horrible!” I said. “How do you defend that?”

“It was obviously the fault of the company that built the elevator, not the company that owned the building. The door shouldn’t open onto an empty shaft, but it did. It’s a complicated case, though, and it’s a lot of work.”

He looked preoccupied, worried. I had a glimpse into the long hours he spent with each case because of his care and perfectionism.

“You’ll do a great job,” I said. “You always do.”

He smiled his thanks at me and hugged me.

I gave him a quick kiss and went downstairs to wait for Tina and the others.

At nine, right on the dot, Peter’s car pulled into our driveway. I like Peter a lot. He makes Tina happy. He had been her husband Bill’s law partner, and he and his wife had been close friends of theirs while Bill was alive. Then Peter and Helen divorced, and a couple of years later, Bill died of brain cancer.

Peter did everything to help Tina adjust to life without Bill. He was especially good with her children. He helped them choose a college and drove them there in the fall and went with Tina to pick them up in the spring. He took her out to dinner every chance he got. He drove her to planes when she had to travel for business. He fell in love with her in the process. For a long time Tina just thought of him as a good friend, but gradually she grew to love him too. They kept talking about getting married, but somehow Tina was always off somewhere dancing instead of arranging the wedding. She was lucky that Peter was such a patient man.

Now that we were going to be in New York for a while, I hoped she would stop putting the wedding off and do it. Tina wanted the reception to be in the Frick Museum in New York, one of my favorite places in the world, as well as hers, because it was so much like a home as well as a museum. I could always picture the Fricks living there. Knowing Tina, it would be an exquisitely beautiful reception.

I ran outside and hopped in the van where the rest of my Hoofer friends were already ensconced. Somehow all four of us fitted in the back seat with plenty of room to sip our coffee and munch on the rolls that Peter had supplied.

“Hey, Weezie,” Peter said. “I hear you’re going to be a Rockette.”

“Is that crazy or what?” I said. “How Tina talked them into letting us dance on that huge stage at Christmas time with all those perfect Rockettes, I’ll never know.”

“Didn’t you know?” Peter said with a loving glance at Tina sitting next to him in the front seat. “Tina can do anything.”

“Except plan her own wedding,” Gini Miller, our documentary filmmaker Hoofer, said in her usual in-your-face mode.

“Gini,” Tina said, her voice low, warning.

“Oh, Gini, shut up,” Janice Rogers said, using her stage director voice instead of her usual gentle one.

“Let’s not talk about that right now, Gini,” Pat, our peace-making family-therapist Hoofer said, dispelling the threat of a quarrel before we even got out of the driveway.

Peter backed the van into the street and headed for Route 24 that led to Route 78, which would take us through the Lincoln Tunnel and into the city to Rockefeller Center. Peter was an excellent driver and maneuvered his vehicle in and out of the morning traffic with skill and expertise.

“So, Tina, what’s happening today?” Pat asked, choosing a safe subject.

“Well, Glenna, the head Rockette, was a little vague,” Tina said, “but I got the impression that they just wanted to meet us, introduce us to the Rockettes, give us a tour of the theater, and tell us what we will be doing in the show.”

“Why are we bringing our tap shoes?” I asked.

“I’m not sure,” Tina said. “But I think they want to be sure we can really dance.”

“Of course we can dance!” Gini said impatiently. “What do they think we were doing in Rio—directing traffic?”

“Almost getting killed,” Pat muttered with a little shudder.

I put my arm around her for a second in a gesture of sympathy. She had been through a terrifying time in Brazil.

Tina reached over the seat and squeezed Pat’s hand. “They knew we were dancing in Rio,” she said, “but they want to be sure we can really tap their way. We mostly flung ourselves around doing the samba and the bossa nova in Brazil. It’s not the kind of disciplined dancing the Rockettes do.”

“Think we can do it?” Janice asked.

“With a lot of work,” Tina said. “And I mean long hours of rehearsal.”

George will have a fit, I thought, and then, Tough! I seemed to be having such ambivalent feelings about him lately since I met Mike. I needed to talk to somebody about it. Pat was the logical choice. She’s a wonderful therapist. I would talk to her. She always helped. I glanced over at her with a querying look. She read my mind.

“Will George be okay with long hours away from your wifely duties, Mary Louise?” she asked.

“He’ll have to be,” I said. “He has no choice.”

“There’s always a middle way,” she said, “Life isn’t just black or white, perfect or not perfect.”

“Can we talk?” I said, and my understanding friends chuckled. They all knew how much Pat helped us when we had problems. Every one of us had turned to her in times of crisis. She was always wise and insightful.

“Any time, hon,” she said.

Peter emerged from the Lincoln Tunnel, wove his way to Sixth Avenue and Fiftieth Street and let us out in front of Radio City Music Hall.

“Give me a call when you’re ready to leave,” he said to Tina. “And I’ll come pick you up”

“We might only be here a short time, Peter,” she said. “Don’t worry about us. We’ll take the train home.”

“Call me anyway,” he said. “I can usually work something out.”

I wished George had such a flexible schedule in his firm as Peter had. George never seemed to be able to “work something out” even though he was the main partner of the firm.

We thanked Peter and followed Tina into Radio City.

“May I help you?” the ticket taker said.

“We’re the Happy Hoofers,” Tina said. “We’re looking for Glenna Parsons. We’re going to be working with her.”

The ticket taker, who looked about fifteen, said, “You’re going to be Rockettes?” He tried, but he couldn’t hide his disbelief that women our age could possibly be Rockettes. We’re only in our early fifties, but to him, we must have seemed ancient.

“You bet we are,” Gini said. I love Gini. She always says what the rest of us don’t have the nerve to say. “They’re begging us to join them. Want to tell Glenna we’re here?”

He fumbled with his phone and then clicked a button.

“M-m-m-s Parsons,” he said, “they’re here. Them,” he said after a pause. “You know, those Happy Hookers. They’re here.” People often call us that to tease us, but this boy just made an honest mistake. I think.

Tina gently pried the phone out of his hands.

“Glenna?” she said. “It’s Tina. I brought my gang as you requested. We’re dying to meet the Rockettes. Where do we go next?”

Tina listened to the answer and then said to us, “She’s meeting us on the stage. We ought to be able to find that without any problem.”

She handed the phone back to the flustered young man and motioned to the rest of us to follow her into the theater. My first sight of that magnificent foyer brought back the memory of coming to this theater when my children were little. I used to come here while they were in school. In those days, you could see a feature movie, some cowboy short films, a stage show—with the Rockettes of course—and a comedy skit.

I would go into the theater about eleven o’-clock in the morning and snuggle down in my comfortable seat. I’d pretend I didn’t have to go back to my housewifey world. That I could just stay there totally immersed in the feature movie, dancing with them, singing with them, worrying about some incredibly silly problem that of course was solved in ninety minutes. Then I’d stumble out of there around two o’clock and go back home in time to greet my children when they came home from school.

It was heaven. I always came back home refreshed, entertained, calm and ready to cook some mor. . .