Dancing with the Dead (23 page)

“ ’Course you didn’t.”

“I’m afraid the police’ll buy into the importance of the dancing connection now, after three murders. After all, it’s what I’ve been trying to convince them of all along. I should stay away from dance competitions. I’ve been hanging myself and didn’t know it; it never occurred to me a woman’d be murdered while I was in the same city. The police’ll think I have some mental problem about dancers who look like Danielle. I don’t, of course. Sweet Lord, I do some dancing myself. My mother was a ballroom dancer. A dancer’s the very last person I’d hurt.”

“Maybe this murder’s not even connected. Maybe the dead woman
did
just happen to take dancing lessons.”

“And get her throat slit the way Danielle did?”

“It could have happened that way. People get murdered all the time, ten times more often than they win the lottery. Almost one every day here in St. Louis.”

“I hope that’s the way it is, despite the fact this murder fits with my theory. I haven’t seen the victim’s photo yet. Pete didn’t even know her name when he called. I hope she’s black or Oriental and her husband’s already confessed. But I doubt it; I’ve got a feeling I was right about this, and the killer came to the competition to scout a victim. It builds up in someone like that, someone mentally tortured. The pressure gets worse and worse. It was time for him to kill again, and I happened to be in the same city when he acted out his sickness. It’s not really that much of a coincidence, you stop to think about it. Christ, it’s something I should’ve taken into account.”

Mary gathered her courage until it encased her heart like cold, hard armor. “Rene, if you have to, go ahead and tell the police about why you went to Kansas City, about the information I sent you. Honest, I don’t care.”

“I
do
care. I promised I’d keep you clear, and I meant it. Your name stays out of this. Which is another reason I called, to tell you I won’t talk with you again till this is over. If I try to contact you, the police’ll almost certainly know. If they were watching me before, they’ll be hiding in every shadow now, using every kind of electronic eavesdropping gadgetry. They’re merciless and relentless, and they’d close in on you like wolves.”

“Rene, it doesn’t matter—”

“It does to me, Mary. I won’t have you dragged through this kinda crap.”

“Don’t worry, any problems it causes can be worked out.”

“But it doesn’t
need
to be that way. Not on my account, anyway. It was never my intention to mess up your life, Mary. I won’t let it happen.”

“Rene—”

“Bye, Mary. I’ll talk to you again when this is over. A promise.”

“But—”

The receiver clicked in her ear.

“Mary?”

She hung up the phone and stared at Victor, standing before her desk and frowning down at her. The bright light from outside was behind him, creating a blinding aura around him, making him seem slim and tall and making her squint.

“Something wrong, Mary? I hope not your mother?”

“Nothing,” she said. “Nothing, Victor. Please!”

“Please what?” He looked perplexed.

She sighed. What could she tell him? What could you ever tell someone like Victor? “You call that four-family buyer about closing figures?”

“Sure did. I’m leaving now to meet him at the Maplewood property. I just thought I’d stop by your desk and let you know.”

“Good, Victor. Fine.”

Still looking puzzled, he shrugged into his coat, shot her a quizzical smile, and went outside.

Mary immediately switched on the small portable radio she kept in her desk drawer.

The rest of the afternoon she played with the radio dial, jumping from station to station. She heard mostly music, a smattering of news, a few minutes of a heartfelt debate about cellulite, but nothing about a murder in Kansas City. Maybe the police were keeping it secret for now. No, that couldn’t be—that reporter, Pete something, had phoned Rene, so the press must know. Probably it simply wasn’t a big enough story to make the national news. It wouldn’t become big enough until the police realized Rene had been in town, or until they made the connection between the Kansas City victim and the women murdered in New Orleans and Seattle.

Assuming there actually was a connection.

Rene had learned about the murder around midnight, so the story might be in the papers. Newspapers reported crime more thoroughly than radio or television; crime seemed to get more complex, unlike how it sounded or looked, the longer it was covered.

As soon as five o’clock arrived, Mary hurried from work and drove to a drugstore, where she bought a
Chicago Tribune
and a
St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

In her car, with the lowering sun beating through the windshield and giving her a headache, she examined the papers and finally found the news item on page four in the
Post.

She sucked in her breath. The victim’s photograph accompanied the story, and her name, Vivian Ferris. The story had made the St. Louis paper because of the relative nearness of Kansas City and the viciousness of the crime. The victim’s throat had been deeply slashed, her breasts and genitalia mutilated, and the speculation was that she’d been raped.

Mary was sure the autopsy would reveal intercourse had occurred after death.

She felt dizzy. Death and sex, sex and death. Marriages and funerals. Lady-killers and lovers’ leaps. Was death so much a part of the danger and allure of sex?

Despite the grainy black-and-white newspaper photograph, she was positive she and Vivian Ferris could have passed for sisters.

A
S SHE WAS DRIVING
to try on her dress at Denise’s before work the next morning, Mary heard on KMOX news that Rene had been questioned by the police, then released. Two people at the Kansas City dance competition were sure they’d seen him there at the time of the murder, a tall man with dark hair and a deeply cleft chin, avidly watching the dancers.

Though she’d planned on waiting until she’d picked up the dress, Mary stopped at a vending machine and bought a newspaper. She leafed through the front section until she found the story.

The information was the same as the report she’d heard on her car radio, only it confirmed that Vivian Ferris had been sexually molested after death. A newer, more sharply focused photograph of the victim was in this edition; Mary was struck even more by the resemblance to her own image in the mirror. Dark hair, lean features, even something about the tilt of the head. And beyond that, some
essence.

Helen had laughed and told her it was her imagination, that she and Vivian Ferris looked nothing alike. She’d argued with Helen about that.

Occasionally Mary would answer her phone and no one would speak, though she was sure someone was on the other end of the connection. Crank phone calls? Or Jake?

Despite, or maybe because of, the day she’d resisted him and forced him from her apartment, Jake still concerned her. Though no longer in her life, she suspected he’d reappear in a way she wouldn’t like. He was a problem looming like a specter in her near future, one of those dilemmas the mind shied away from, like an impending war too terrible to contemplate.

Denise, chunky and energetic, met her at the door, holding the black dress high on a hanger so she could be impressed. She said, “Duh-
duh!
” A drum roll was conspicuous by its absence.

But Mary
was
impressed. The skirt draped in graceful folds where Denise had raised the hem above the knee on one side, the filmy shoulder sleeves appeared perfect, and the sequins caught and gave back morning light like black stars winking at midnight.

“So whad’ya think?” Denise asked, grinning and obviously proud of herself.

“I hope I do it justice,” Mary said, reaching out and touching the dress as if it were alive and might snap at her.

“Quit doin’ a number on yourself, Mary, just try it on.” Denise stepped away from the door to let her in. Her own stocky body was clad in baggy slacks and a sweater with a hunting scene on it, knitted men aiming their rifles at a V-formation of knitted ducks. One of the ducks had tumbled from the sky to beneath her left breast. Her taste and talent were reserved for her clients.

As soon as Mary zipped up the dress in the changing room, she knew it was perfect. It
fit
perfectly, anyway. How it looked might be another matter.

Avoiding stepping on the many pins lying in ambush on the carpet, she slipped into her Latin shoes, now dyed black, and apprehensively stepped outside the privacy curtain.

She stood in front of the full-length mirror and stared at herself, adjusting the diaphanous sleeves. Denise was gazing at her in the mirror, forefinger to lips, as if warning her to be silent in this moment of truth. She cocked her head to the side and moved the finger in a whirling motion, signaling Mary to turn around.

Mary spun as if doing a walk-around dance turn, gazing at her reflection over her shoulder, automatically putting on the flirtatious expression Mel wanted during the maneuver in the competition. She shocked herself; she looked saucy and put together. Damned sexy, in fact.

“I love it on you,” Denise pronounced. “Absolutely!”

Mary still wasn’t sure. She stood in a deliberately awkward posture and studied the dress in the mirror. “Not too much leg showing when I dance?”

“Hell, Mary, you’ll be one of the more conservative ones out there. You oughta see some of the stuff I been making lately. More skin than material showing, I can tell you.”

“It seems to fit all right.” She switched her hips, making the gathered skirt flare. Hey, she liked the way that looked!

“No way anybody can fit it to you better,” Denise said, sounding slightly miffed by Mary’s lack of enthusiasm.

Mary smiled at her via the mirror. “Okay, I think it’s great!”

“Really?”

“Really.”

Mary changed back into her working-woman clothes and wrote the mollified Denise a check. She was spending plenty for the dress, but Denise was worth it, and the price was exactly the amount agreed upon and allotted by Mary. And though the Ohio competition would be expensive, she’d set money aside for it. Frugality was about to reward her, exactly as Angie and the nuns at Saint Elizabeth’s had preached. What else might they have been right about? If they’d known the score about frugality, why not eternity?

She couldn’t stop thinking about the dress as she drove to work, glancing at it now and then in the rearview mirror, where it was draped in a plastic bag on a hanger in the back of the car. The more she thought about it, the more she liked it. And she could wear her simple cocktail dress for the smooth dance competition; that’s what most dancers wore in the Newcomer category.

Tapping her fingers on the steering wheel in cha-cha rhythm, she smiled as she drove. She’d danced experimentally on carpet with the new Latin shoes, and finally she was sure she’d found a pair that fit. And they were great with the dress. She was set now with what she needed to wear in Ohio. An important and worrisome hurdle had been cleared.

She was still pleased as she parked in the lot behind Summers Realty. A chill fall wind gusted in off Kingshighway, scattering dust and scraps of paper before it, but she didn’t feel cold.

As she was locking the car, she realized she’d momentarily forgotten about Rene. About Angie. About Jake. Just the anticipation of dancing had filled her mind with movement and music and left no room for pain.

Three weeks now, she thought, still smiling but feeling a nervous knot forming in her stomach.

Three weeks until Ohio.

She was sure she was ready. She repeated to herself that she was sure.

Rene, as he’d told her, didn’t call her during those three weeks. Mary thought of him every day, and doubt crept into her mind and spread like a malignancy. Would he ever call? Did any man ever really carry through on the important promises?

As the time of the competition drew nearer, she thought less about Rene and more about Ohio, battling her nerves. She began waking up in the early morning hours and not falling back asleep until almost dawn, her mind spinning to music. Other nights she’d lie awake thinking about Rene, until she slept and saw herself or women she resembled, their throats slit and grinning and their pale bodies locked in sexual embrace with a man whose features were blurred. Her nervous state began to show on her face, the strain dragging at her eyelids and the corners of her lips.

After Ohio things might be different. She would have passed through the fire, emerging annealed, and free.

One day the hospital called and informed her that Angie had been placed in intensive care. It wasn’t unusual during chemotherapy, Dr. Brainton told Mary. Something about the white corpuscle count and anemia. Angie could have visitors, but they must only view her through a window, couldn’t even send flowers; the intensive care unit had to be kept sterile.

Mary dutifully went to Saint Sebastian every day and stood for a while outside Angie’s room. She’d waved to her through the window the first few times. Then Angie became too weak or disinterested to wave back. Sometimes she didn’t seem to know anyone was there, and simply lay with her eyes closed or staring up at the ceiling. She was thinner and seemed much older now, and her eyebrows and most of her hair had fallen out. Yet ancient as she’d come to appear, there was something infantile about her, as if she’d aged full circle and returned to the newborn stage of her life cycle. The lack of hair and eyebrows, maybe. Mary had become the strong one and the caretaker. Daughter had become mother, and mother daughter. Time and death having their joke.

Dr. Brainton assured Mary that while Angie’s condition was delicate, she was in no immediate mortal danger. But he didn’t sound sure. Whatever his reputation, a doctor who looked like a bond salesman two years out of college didn’t inspire confidence.

Mary suspected Angie might die soon. Suspected yet didn’t admit it. To accept the impending death of a parent, you had to bend your mind around your own mortality. There was an undeniable progression there, the dark plainly visible at the end of the tunnel. She kept such thoughts to herself and placed them in an isolated part of her mind where she could almost ignore them.