Dancing with the Dead (9 page)

In the faint light filtering through the curtains, she was astounded to see tears gleaming on his cheeks. The agony written on his face wrenched her insides.

“Lemme just lay down near you till morning, then I’ll leave first thing. Will you do that for me, Mary? I won’t even touch you, I promise. Not sex, only sleep. I haven’t slept more’n half the night since we fought. I’m asking for your help.”

“I know you are.” She lay very still, listening to the night sounds beyond the walls, and the steady breathing of the man she’d so often lain beside. In the kitchen, the refrigerator clicked on and hummed.

“Mary?”

She was tired, so tired of arguing. She arched her back slightly, dug in her heels, and slid over to the cool side of the sheet.

The mattress tilted, then leveled as he stretched out alongside her and his weight was evenly distributed. She could feel his nearness and the heat emanating from his body. A tremor ran through the bed. She turned her head and saw that he was quietly sobbing, afraid of something but not knowing quite what, ashamed of his vulnerability.

“Not sex,” he said again. “Only sleep . . .”

She cradled his head against her breasts while he cried. A warm breeze pushed in through the window and explored the room. Faraway sounds took on a lazy, reassuring rhythm, the city dreaming and softly stirring in its sleep.

Eventually, Jake dozed off before she did.

When the alarm woke her in the morning, she was startled to find herself alone.

“S
O WHAT’S IT GONNA
be, Mary?” Mel asked. Grinning, he absently did a complete and perfect spin, casually as another man might unconsciously tug at his earlobe, while waiting for her answer. The blur of action made his sparkling grin seem to linger in the air. Like the Cheshire cat’s, Mary thought.

She didn’t need much time to decide what dance to concentrate on for the Ohio competition. “Tango,” she said.

“It’s a good choice,” Mel said thoughtfully. “You’re strong in tango. We can do that in the Bronze category. And I think you oughta enter Novice class and do some of the other dances. Swing, rumba, fox-trot. Really, you’re strong enough in those dances.”

They’d stopped dancing beneath one of the many clusters of red and white balloons strung from the ceiling from the last studio party. The one wall that wasn’t mirrored was decorated with a series of colorful cut-out dancers, life-size and in perfect dramatic or joyous postures. The festive atmosphere never entirely left Romance Studio. The momentum of each day’s dancing seemed to carry to the next.

Ray Huggins, who owned and managed the Romance Studio franchise, ambled out of his office and saw that Mel and Mary had stopped dancing in the middle of the floor and were talking instead. He smiled at Mary and walked toward them. Huggins deftly sidestepped Willie and his instructor Marlene as they wheeled into fifth-position rumba breaks.

Huggins was forty-six and at least twenty pounds overweight. He wore youthful clothes and a tight perm to disguise those facts, and he still moved with the ease and grace of a much lighter and younger man. Ten years ago he was winning trophies in international competition with his rhythm dances, and he could still compete in the smooth dances if he had time to train. But the studio, and the students, demanded most of his time.

“You two cooking up a conspiracy?” he asked with a bright grin. He had perfect teeth.

“Talking about the Ohio Star Ball,” Mel said.

Huggins’s grin generated even more candle power. “Hey, you’re gonna enter. That’s great, Mary! You’ll knock ’em dead.”

“
Maybe
I’m going to enter,” Mary said, feeling herself blush.

Huggins gave a loose backhand wave. “What dances you gonna compete in?”

“We thought the tango,” Mel said. “I been telling her she’s super-strong in tango.”

Huggins pressed the tip of his forefinger to his chin, as if trying to form a dimple there, thinking. “Yep, I’ve noticed Mary’s tango. Good choice.” He clapped his hands, touched Mary’s arm, and said, “Well, I better leave you two alone to practice.”

But after he took a few strides he turned around, making it look like a dance maneuver. “Listen, Mary, I shouldn’t be telling you this, but the cost of the trip to Ohio for the competition is gonna go up ten percent next month. If you could pay now, it’d save you some money.”

Mary had just sent in for new dance shoes, anticipating going to Ohio, telling herself she needed the expensive shoes anyway, even though it wasn’t true. “Let me think about it, okay?”

Huggins touched his chin again, rotating his finger this time; there was a lot going on beneath those curls. “Listen, just for you, if you can put a few dollars down, make a commitment, I think I can hold the price for you.”

“Like how much down?”

“Oh, just a small percentage.”

“Why not ten percent?” Mel said.

Huggins glared at him as if he’d just screwed up nuclear arms negotiations, then he shrugged and grinned. “Your instructor’s taking good care of you,” he said. “Since Mel made the offer, okay, I’ll live with it. Ten percent down, and you’re locked into the present price for the Ohio Star Ball. My promise to you.”

Mel was smiling, pleased he’d helped work this out in her favor.

“Tell you what,” Huggins said. “You decide you can’t compete, you get half the down payment back. That’s about the best I can do. But for God’s sake don’t tell anybody I’m sticking my neck out this way for you.”

“I won’t,” Mary said.

“You better keep a lid on it, too, okay, Mel.”

“You betcha, Boss.” Mel casually did another spin.

“See me in the office when your lesson’s over, okay, Mary? You can write a check, and I’ll type you out a receipt.”

“Fine,” Mary said. She and Mel watched Huggins walk back across the dance floor, cross the short stretch of carpet, and enter his office. He left the door open.

“Tango!” Mel said, smiling and stamping his foot. He didn’t shout “Olé!” but it was in the air. The quick-quick-slow rumba beat Willie and Marlene had been dancing to was ended. Mel made a good-natured show of beating Marlene to the tape deck, and tango music began. He returned and moved close to Mary into dance position, his young body lean and hard against her. For some reason she thought about him dancing with Danielle Verlane in New Orleans. She hadn’t known Mel had taught at a New Orleans studio before coming to Romance. “Nobody really knows anyone,” Angie had said, but she’d been talking about Jake.

During the rest of the lesson she forgot about her problems with Jake, about her day at work that went by in a disorienting blur, about Victor hanging around her desk and trying to make small talk. Victor was such a schmuck. And there was more to it than that, really. Sometimes, for reasons she couldn’t quite understand, he gave her the absolute creeps.

Mel led her through some
cortes,
then some fans. Mary felt the beat coursing like fever in her blood. She knew she was dancing beautifully.

“Wonderful move, hon,” Mel told her, drawing her close again after a series of fans. She smiled, determined to concentrate on her posture, to trace a line even more elegant. Being on the gaunt side could be an advantage in dancing; with the right dress she could seem exquisitely graceful if only she made no glaring mistakes.

After going into Ray Huggins’s office and writing a money-market check for five hundred dollars, Mary felt even better. In fact, as she left the studio and walked toward her car, she felt absolutely exhilarated. Only a tango step away from Columbus in November.

She approached the car with some trepidation, almost expecting another grisly symbolic message.

But she’d deliberately parked directly beneath one of the bright lights, and the little yellow Honda was exactly as she’d left it. She climbed in and drove away fast, not looking at her rearview mirror.

Her phone was jangling when she let herself into her apartment.

She expected to hear Jake’s voice when she said hello, but instead a woman asked if she was the daughter of Angela Arlington. Something about the voice; the impersonal tone of officialdom. News of tax audits and deaths came in voices like that.

Mary stood still for a moment, a chill on the back of her neck.

“Miss Arlington, is it?”

“Yes.”

Silence except for muffled voices, as if a hand had been cupped over the receiver for temporary privacy.

“Has something happened?” Mary finally asked through the lump of apprehension in her throat. She was having difficulty breathing; something heavy seemed to be resting on her chest.

“Your mother Angela was checked into the detoxification center earlier this evening here at Saint Sebastian Hospital. We found your name and phone number among the possessions she left at the desk.”

“My God! Is she all right?”

“We think so,” the woman said, “but her alcohol level was dangerously high when she was brought here. It’s still at an unacceptable level, and there’s some possibility of alcohol poisoning.”

“Who brought her there?”

A pause. “He didn’t leave a name.”

“I see.”

“I think it’d be a good idea if you came down here, Miss Arlington. So you can see your mother and then speak to the doctor yourself.”

“I’ll come right now,” Mary said.

She hung up the phone, dropped her dance shoes on the sofa, and hurried to the door.

During the drive to Saint Sebastian, her fear for Angie’s life clashed with anger at her mother for doing this to herself again. And yes, doing it to her, Mary. She felt a stab of guilt for seeing herself as a victim.
Angie, Angie, don’t you know the pain you cause?

But she was sure Angie did know, only she lost sight of the fact from time to time. It wasn’t something you could put in a bottle and look at, like gin.

M
ORRISY BIT DOWN HARD
on the stem of his unlit pipe. He’d been thinking about his former wife, Bonita. About the time he’d discovered her in bed with—

Hell with that! Better not to remember it.

He removed the pipe from his mouth and focused his mind on the Verlane mess. He’d decided to turn the screws tighter on the husband. The asshole kept shooting off his mouth to the media, and it was having its cumulative effect. Subtle and not so subtle pressure, from the media and from higher-ups in the department, was being applied to Morrisy to bring the case to a conclusion. They were beginning to squeeze, and Morrisy didn’t like it.

The loose tail kept on Verlane had been stepped up to almost constant surveillance, and in a way calculated to let Verlane know he was being observed. So far there’d been no results, but Morrisy knew these things could take time. Then, when there
were
results, they could be sudden and decisive.

He was leaning back in his desk chair, staring at the dark patterns the gentle salvos of beginning rain were making on the building across the street, when he heard a perfunctory knock and Waxman walked into his office.

Morrisy’s swivel chair squealed as he turned away from the window and the view of outside gloom. He liked the expression on Waxman’s smooth, handsome face; it suggested he’d found out something he was eager to share.

“Verlane’s called the airport,” Waxman said, standing close to Morrisy’s desk.

They had a tracer on Verlane’s home phone, but not a wiretap. Pansy-ass judges needed more than Morrisy could give them right now for a wiretap warrant. A cop’s intuition didn’t count for as much as it used to, as it should still. “Which airline?” Morrisy asked, nonetheless liking this development.

“I’m supposed to find out any minute now. We can ask some questions when we know, get Verlane’s destination.” Waxman adjusted his tie’s strangulation-tight knot. His sleekly combed hair looked a little wet from the rain. “Think it’s cut-and-run time?”

“We’ll know more when we discover the destination,” Morrisy said, “assuming Verlane made a reservation. Could be just a business trip, but if he’s got a seat on a flight to South America or someplace like that, we can figure he’s broken enough to confess, providing we pick him up and work him right.”

Actually Morrisy didn’t think Verlane had reached the point where he’d flee, even if he was guilty. He’d so far demonstrated more anger than fear, shown he had some balls. But you could never tell, so Morrisy allowed himself to hope.

“What if it’s South America?” Waxman asked.

“We let him almost make the flight, then we collar him at the airport.” Maximum psychological effect; Dr. Schutz would approve.

“And if it’s Atlanta, someplace like that?”

“We let him fly, but we keep tabs on him. We wouldn’t want him to make a connecting flight in some other city.”

“He runs anywhere,” Waxman said, “and it doesn’t gel with Schutz’s theory that the killer might be blanking out the crimes and not know he’s guilty.”

“I never put a lot of stock in that one anyway,” Morrisy said. Yet a part of him knew it was unwise to dismiss completely anything Schutz told him. But this theory made him unaccountably uneasy. “I don’t even want to hear about that nonsense,” he said to Waxman.

“Fine by me.” Waxman carefully brushed raindrops from his hair without mussing it. An oddly feminine gesture. “Verlane hasn’t been back to work since Danielle died,” Waxman said. “They told me at the brokerage firm he’d taken some vacation time. We got the usual story there, how he loved his wife and they seemed happy together, all that stuff.”

“You’d have heard the same thing about Bluebeard’s wives,” Morrisy said. He meticulously placed the pipe in an ashtray, as if it were actually lit.

“Guess that’s true.”

“Stay tight on him,” Morrisy said. “Wherever he’s booked a flight to, when he leaves home, I wanna know how much luggage he’s carrying.”

Waxman nodded and turned to leave.

“When I say tight,” Morrisy said, “you know what I mean?”

“You mean tight,” Waxman said. He smiled and left the office.

Morrisy turned back to the window and watched the rain, falling much harder now. It had been raining when Bonita—

He picked up the pipe and clamped it between his teeth again. Stared harder at the grayness beyond the glass.