Free Baby Doll Games by Margaret Maron

solicited, he quietly stirred another spoonful of Wingate West’s raw honey into his tea. He had liked Emmy Mion, admired her talents, and found her brutal murder appalling. Nevertheless, while sitting out in the auditorium, alone with his thoughts, he'd been surprised to find himself so keenly regretful that the dancer’s death meant that his and Sergio’s collaboration might never be performed in its entirety. The nobler part of his character was shamed by such admission, yet little tendrils of hope uncurled in his heart as he listened to the dancers argue and realized that Ulrike was weakening.
“We don’t have time to restructure the dances,” she said, “and none of us has the stamina to go from the first one into the solo.”
Roman tucked his colorful ascot more firmly into the open neck of his safari shirt and cleared his throat. “What about young Orland? He’s watched your rehearsals often enough, I should think, and I've seen him do parts of the goblin dance with Emmy. They gave the Wednesday class a perfectly charming little preview. While it’s true he left early today-”
“David Orland was here today?” Eric Kee stopped pacing and an overhead light emphasized the pale golden tones of his face as the skin tightened over his high cheekbones. “When? And when did he leave?”
“Immediately after the performance began,” answered Roman. “Most unexpected, but I assumed he must have remembered an urgent previous engagement, for no sooner were the five of you onstage for the first dance than I saw him tiptoe out.”
As if they’d been waiting for that cue, Nate Richmond entered the room on the heels of an agitated young Hispanic who cried, “Nate just told me! My God! Who-?” At the sight of him, Eric Kee seemed to go up in flames. As Roman was to tell Sigrid later, it was as if a kung fu movie had suddenly exploded around him. Without even a warning curse, Kee launched himself with a midair kick to David Orland’s chest and knocked him heavily to the floor, then followed with a flying leap onto the newcomer s body to begin hammering him with iron-fisted blows.
“Stop it!” Ulrike shouted and tried to pull Eric off, but she was flung aside.
Though dazed, Orland recovered quickly and twisted his legs with enough leverage to flip Kee away so he could get in a few blows of his own. Chairs crashed and a small table was destroyed as they rolled and tumbled, each fiercely trying for the other s throat.
“Just a goddamned minute!” roared the startled policeman. He rushed forward and yanked Eric Kee from the floor while Cliff and Win held onto the enraged David Orland. “What the hell’s got into you?” rasped the officer, shaking the younger man as if he were a rag doll.
Kee was in better shape physically, but the officer had the advantage of forty pounds and twenty years of police experience in breaking up street brawls and the dancer found himself held in an unbreakable grip.
“He killed Emmy,” Kee gasped, his face flushed with rage, “You filthy liar!” David Orland lunged for Kee, but the others restrained him.
The police officer looked from one to the other. “You,” he said, nodding to David Orland. “Lieutenant Harald seen you yet?”

Chapter 8
    Sigrid usually tried to approach each witness in a homicide case with as few preconceptions as possible, but by the time she was ready to question Helen Delgado, she knew that Emmy Mion had been a sexual magnet who seemed to draw every affection that wasn’t firmly committed elsewhere. Apparently the costume designer’s husband was included in that category. Cliff Delgado had smoldered with open jealousy of Eric Kee’s late monopoly on Emmy and Sigrid doubted if he’d hidden it from his wife since he spoke of her with such scorn.
Accordingly, as she waited for Mick Cluett to bring Helen Delgado to her, Sigrid braced for a drab neglected wife and another trying, emotional outburst. The woman who entered, however, came swathed