Natalie Roberts - Tutu Deadly

Table of Contents

Someone else is in the house...

I turned to leave the house, deciding my brief career as a detective was over, when I caught a glimpse of flashing light in the room just beyond the kitchen. My curiosity pulled me forward instead of out the doorwhich my common sense told me I should be exiting through right now. Oh well. I was a redhead. Blame it on poor impulse control. I slowly walked toward the place where I had seen the flashing light, when I was suddenly blinded by a powerful beam.

In that one brilliant moment, it was all horriblyand dangerouslyclear.

Someone was inside this house with a flashlight. Someone, who, like me, had no business being in this house.

Someone who was most likely a killer.

I turned to run but was stopped by a sudden sharp pain in my head.

I awoke to a light that hurt my eyes, and some sort of metal pointed directly at my head. When I could get my eyes to focus, I saw that the metal was attached to the hand of an extremely attractive, very tall, very angry man wearing a nicely tailored dark blue suit. The metal was also a gun.

I allowed myself a brief moment of panic and sheer terror, and then forced myself back to reality. Come on, criminals were not this good looking ...

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

TUTU DEADLY

A Berkley Prime Crime Book / published by arrangement with the author

PRINTING HISTORY
Berkley Prime Crime mass-market edition / April 2007

Copyright 2007 by Natalie M. Roberts.

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eISBN : 978-1-429-57036-7

BERKLEY PRIME CRIME
Berkley Prime Crime Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group,
a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,
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To Misty Robbins, dance teacher extraordinaire, who can choreograph her way out of a hostage situation. When the stress is high, the deadlines near, the performance on the edgethen you see that she is pure and unadulterated magic. What more can you ask?

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

To all the dance moms who inspired this book (you know who you are!) along with the dancers at EDF, and, of course, my own little Dancing Daughter, Cambre. Without the craziness of the world of competitive dance, I could never have created a wonderful, flighty, and ditzy character like Jenny T. Partridge. And of course, to my fabulous agent, Karen Solem, and my editor at Berkley, Sandra Harding, its been a joy to work with both of you. I hope Jenny is around for a long, long time so we can continue this collaboration. As always, I must thank the ladies at murdershewrites.com, Jennifer Apodaca, Deborah LeBlanc, Allison Brennan, and Karin Tabke; especially Karen and Jennifer, who took the time to read and critique Jennys exploits.

ONE

DESPITE what my mother would probably tell you, my greatest fear in life was not dying alone with only four hundred cats for company. My greatest fear in life was staring me right in the faceand she was colossal. She was the mother of all dance moms, and she was steaming mad. Any minute now, she was going to do one of those sumo-wrestler moves and land on top of me, and then it would all be over. Id slowly suffocate, my dance studio would go bankrupt, and my mom would be left mourning over my grave with nothing to remember me by except a few dead plants, dust bunnies under my bed, and some stuffed animals. This was my worst nightmare. I really needed to get a life.

Every dance teacher knew that the worst part of trying to instruct children was not the kids themselves, but their parents. Sure, an occasional kid threw up on you, or peed in the middle of class, but that was nothing compared to dealing with an irate mother who didnt think her little darling was getting enough attention or the starring role she deserved.

I didnt particularly like chubby little Ella Anderson, who was just six years old, and I cared even less for her mother, Emma, whose picture was probably in the dictionary under stage mother. I just hadnt looked yet.

Emma Anderson believed that her daughter was the next big thing in the world of dance, and was determined to convince me of the same. I was afraid if I didnt kowtow to her demands to keep Ella on the front-row fiftythe prime spot for dancers to be placed, right in the center of the front rowMomma Anderson was going to end my life. Im sure plenty of people have been killed for lesser things. For a dance mom, there was nothing more primo than seeing her daughter in the front-row fifty. And of course once a dancer earned that coveted spot, her mom would do just about anything to keep her there. It was scary. Kind of like Emma Anderson.

Todays argumentwe had one nearly every weekwas over whether Ella deserved the part of the Sugar Plum Fairy in the Jenny T. Partridge Dance Academys annual production of The Nutcracker .

Im Jenny T. Partridgeno jokes pleaseand no, I do not have a pear tree. Christmastime, which was just around the corner, usually brought out the worst in the name punstersmostly malewho took great joy in asking to see my plumage. I rarely replied to that. Guys didnt listen to what you said, anyway. They were too busy staring at your chest, or moving around their equipment in front of God and the whole country. At least thats what my last boyfriend did. I broke up with him when I realized he couldnt pick my face out of a crowd, but could describe my chest in great detail.

At any rate, my production of The Nutcracker was not your typical classic. We did a jazzy version with loud musicyou know, that thrashy pop and hip-hop mixand elegant, flashy costumes that was well-known for hundreds of miles around Ogden, Utah, which is where my studio is located. It was the one thing I did that allowed me to scrimp by the rest of the year. Entire families made attending our production an annual event.