A Motive For Murder Read Online Free PDF

flurry of plastic flakes and headed
for center stage like well-trained lemmings. There, they executed a
dizzying array of leaps and turns before entering a front door cut
into the simulated house front. Scores of adult dancers depicting
their parents scurried across the stage and followed them inside
the door, each stopping first to exhibit their poise and control
with a determined ferociousness that quickly turned the scene into
a dance contest that would have made even Dick Clark nervous.
    As the backdrop rose out of sight an ostentatiously
furnished parlor set was revealed. Perhaps Clara and her family
were bunking down at the Trump Plaza. The usual Christmas tree was
curiously missing from the stage. But the excess space was easily
filled with dancers pantomiming their roles as excited children and
parents at a Christmas party. Auntie Lil searched through the crowd
for a dark face, but she did not really expect to see Fatima Jones.
She had heard that the young girl had declined an offer to dance a
lesser role, and had rather admired her spunk.
    The party scene deteriorated into a
turn-of-the-century Woodstock with waves of dancers whirling and
parting and forming again, taking turns dominating the stage. How
anyone could find their mark given the crowded conditions, Auntie
Lil could not fathom.
    The young lady who had replaced Fatima Jones as
Clara—Julie Perkins, according to the program—was not bad, but she
had no sparkle. Her body was certainly a perfect example of the
long and lean frame favored in American ballet, but her dancing
lacked passion. Good ballet, Auntie Lil believed, combined skilled
movement with real emotion. Julie Perkins possessed one of these
traits quite admirably, but completely lacked the other. Her blond
hair had been carefully wound at the nape of her neck in an older
style that most Claras wore. The reason why became obvious when
Herr Drosselmeyer entered the party. Martinez was playing up a
romantic relationship between Clara and this mysterious friend of
her family.
    He’d done this for a very good reason. As promised
or, more accurately, threatened, Martinez had combined the parts of
Drosselmeyer and the Prince, awarding both to Mikey Morgan. In this
manner, the young teen idol would be onstage for a maximum amount
of time, delighting the audience and, if one stretched a point,
playing two romantic roles. Not coinci-dentally, he could also
dance part of his first-act role cloaked in a black, floor-length
cape, thus disguising his ineptitude.
     But not even the cape could mask Mikey Morgan’s
melodramatic sense of emotion. Making the leap from the silver
screen back to the stage had apparently triggered a histrionic
reflex in the young film star. He interpreted the admittedly creepy
Drosselmeyer as if he were the greedy landlord in an old vaudeville
play. He stalked around the stage, leered at Clara, waved the toy
nutcracker around like it was a bomb, and frequently whipped his
cape in the face of the other dancers. All that was missing was a
twirly black mustache. None of this dampened the enthusiasm of his
audience, however, since squeals and sighs continued to rise from
the darkened rows with religious fervor.
    In one particularly ill-chosen pas de trois, Drosselmeyer demonstrated a series of steps to Clara and her little
brother. This had the unfortunate effect of directly comparing
Mikey Morgan’s lack of technique with the talents of better
dancers. There would be no need for either Auntie Lil or T.S. to
loudly complain about his lack of finesse at intermission. It would
be obvious to anyone that the years spent in Hollywood had
eradicated any discipline or ballet aptitude that the young man
might once have possessed.
    This inescapable fact was confirmed when Morgan shed
his cloak for a pas de deux with Clara a few moments later.
The grace of this classic ballet partnership was ruined when he
hoisted her into the air as if she weighed five times more than he
and then set her down