Dead Dancing Women (11 page)

I THINK YOU'D BETTER LEAVE NOW. I'VE GOT NOTHING TO SAY ABOUT ANYTHING. POOR RUBY. NOTHING WILL BRING HER BACK . I'M GRIEVING AND I ASK THAT YOU RESPECT MY FEELINGS.

“Well, yes.” I was embarrassed. We'd pushed too hard. I didn't like being a part of this whole thing and would rather just write what people told me than wring it out of them. I got up. Dolly was slower. She sat, looking straight at Mrs. Coy, until the woman's naturally bright pink cheeks went a brazen red. Dolly got up then because I was motioning at her to come on, don't bother this woman anymore. Mrs. Coy rose, and was about to follow us to the door, obviously relieved to think she was seeing the end of us, when she tripped on one of her rag throw rugs and stumbled. Her hands flew out in front of her. She flailed around, trying to right herself.

“Oh my, no … ,” she said clearly, in a surprisingly deep voice, as she grabbed for the back of a chair.

Dolly turned to face her. She said nothing. I already had my hand on the doorknob but I stood still, too. So much for laryngitis, I thought, and waited to see what would happen next.

Mrs. Coy righted herself, shook her head a few times. She blinked her eyes and straightened the pink glasses that had fallen down her nose. “Well,” she said, looking angry, probably at herself. “Guess my throat's not as bad as I thought it was.”

She didn't bother looking embarrassed about the lie. She heaved a sigh and stood, waiting for what was coming next.

“I'm very sad about our poor Ruby,” she said, her deep voice grudging. She had her bright eyes on me, avoiding Dolly. “Don't think I need to even come out and say it. We've been friends since we were five years old. Started school together. The thing is … well.” She looked nervous, not angry. “The thing is I've been warned not to talk to anybody.”

“Who warned you to do that? The state police?”

Mrs. Coy shook her head fast, setting her white frizz to quivering around her head, like an electric halo. She held up a finger for us to wait, and went back through a tall archway. We heard her footsteps along an uncarpeted hallway and heard what must've been a drawer open, then close.

When she walked back in, she carried a folded piece of pink paper. “Found this in my mailbox yesterday morning,” she said and then handed the letter to Dolly.

Dolly shook the letter open and read. I looked over her shoulder.

YOU'LL STOP YOUR PAGAN WAYS OR FACE AN AVENGING GOD DON'T GO TALKING TO ANYBODY ANYMORE OR THIS WON'T STOP WITH RUBY POET YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN GET YOUR HEATHEN SELF BACK TO THE CHURCH AND YOU'LL BE SAVED

OR ELSE

“Guess I was being stupid, being afraid like that.” She sniffed now, one hand wiping angrily at her nose. She sat back down and wrapped the brightly colored afghan around her. She rocked as fast as she could get the chair to go, talking more to herself than to us.

“Anybody else get anything like this?” Dolly asked.

“I don't know. Haven't called either Mary Margaret or Joslyn and they haven't called me. That's not usual, so I kind of think something's going on with them, too. I'm an old woman.” She looked up and there were tears in the bright blue eyes, shining all the brighter for the thick lenses. “I've never had anyone threaten me before. Why, I can't imagine. Why would anybody want to hurt any of us? We don't do anything wrong. We get together for the solstices and a few other celebrations. All in fun. Ruby said if we got more in tune with nature our gardens would do better. She said what we were doing had nothing to do with religion, just a way of thanking the earth … you know …” She spread her hands and shrugged. “It wasn't anything that hurt anybody. We'd bake cookies in the shape of suns and moons and sometimes make little goddesses out of them. We'd have hot chocolate or lemonade; take it out to the fire. Joslyn played the flute and I brought my violin. We'd play music, and then we'd dance, if we felt like it. Nothing strange. We'd wave our arms and dance around and laugh and sing. What's so terrible about having a little fun? Is it just because we're old women? Is that it? People can't stand to see us acting young, and laughing, and enjoying ourselves? A shame. An awful shame, I'll tell you.”

“Any idea, at all, who might've sent this?” Dolly held the letter by one corner.

Mrs. Coy shrugged her shoulders, then made a face. The rocking chair slowed, the thumping sound against the floor dropped in tempo. “You know, I heard Pastor Runcival, over to the Church of the Contented Flock, preached out against us. Or, not us exactly, but what he called New Age people dancing in the woods. As if we'd call ourselves ‘New Age.' Or new anything, for that matter. More ‘old age,' I'd say. We never did a thing to hurt him or his flock. Amanda goes to that very church. I can't imagine a pastor sending a letter like that. Not in a million years. Still …”

“We'll look into it,” Dolly said. “Get it to the state police to go over. I'll show the chief. Maybe Dorothy at the post office. She'll remember somebody bringing it in, if she saw 'em. It's Butch who brings around your mail, isn't it? I'll talk to him, too.”

Dolly folded the letter carefully and slipped it into her shirt pocket. She turned to me. “Maybe we'd better get over to see Mary Margaret.” Dolly scrunched her face so I couldn't tell if she was uncomfortable or angry.

“Dave Rombart told me there was trouble between him and you ladies. You don't think he would do something like this to Mrs. Poet do you?” I asked.

“Hmmp. That Rombart man. He would've shot Joslyn, if you ask me, not gone after poor Ruby. He thinks he's got rights nobody else has got because that wife of his put it into his head that they're different from the rest of us, don't have to obey the laws of this country. I don't think he's got it in him to really hurt anybody. Dave grew up right here in town. We all knew him from when he was little. I remember him running the streets in a diaper, one hand down on his back cheek, nose running.” She shook her head. “Sad little boy. But how can you know what goes on in a man's heart and mind? Why, there's no way of knowing anything. I'm as confused by all of this as you are. If I thought … well … I'm not one to get anybody in trouble. I'd have to be awfully sure …”

We waited. I was hoping she was going to come up with something but there was reluctance written across her face. Mrs. Coy was one of those delicate ladies who didn't wish to cause anyone trouble. Whether that delicacy stretched to people who'd murdered her friend and threatened her, we'd have to wait and see.

“You aren't afraid to be alone or anything, are you?” Dolly turned back to Mrs. Coy as we were leaving.

The woman shook her head. “Lived here all my life. Not going to be scared now. Must be some kids or some nut who wants to be in on the excitement that sent me the letter. Not many murders in Leetsville, as you well know. It's just so … very … unsettling.”

“If you're worried, you call the station. The chief will get a hold of me,” Dolly said.

“Or me,” I added and wrote my name and number down in my notebook then tore it out and handed her the paper. “Any time. I'd be glad to have you come stay with me if need be. Don't be afraid to ask.”

“How neighborly. Thank you both.” Mrs. Coy didn't seem as nervous now. “You make me feel a whole lot better. I'm sure I'll be just fine. But could you tell Mary Margaret to give me a call? I'll feel better knowing she isn't getting threatening letters, too. Joslyn, too—if you see her. I sure hope it's only me.”

We left her, walked out to the car, then drove over to the big crumbling funeral home at the corner of Griffith and Mitchell streets.

SIXTEEN

Mary Margaret Murphy was
not the kind of well-tailored,
plastic
-smile funeral director you might expect. She was more the motherly sort, big, blowzy, with a malleable face that went from throw-back-your-head-and-laugh to Poor-Dear, so-sad, in a nanosecond. Dressed in her un-funereal, large-flowered, polyester dress cinched in under her big breasts by an invisible belt, she stood across from me and Dolly in the front hall of her funeral home wringing her hands and shaking her head sadly. “Our precious Ruby. Who'd ever have thought she'd be the first to go.”

Around us were dusty red velvet draperies, a red Axminster carpet, and huge gold-framed mirrors, leading me to wonder why funeral homes and houses of prostitution went in for the same decor.

Every time I'd seen Mary Margaret before, usually at EATS, she'd never seemed a woman to look dejected—despite her profession. She was more an upbeat person, back-patting and cheering. Now she listed to the left, the way the building listed. Her left leg was stuck out, her head was tilted, and her hands were gathered at her left hip. I felt off-kilter, the way you feel in one of those mystery spots where the rooms are built wrong, as if I might fall over if I didn't rearrange my body. I stuck my right leg out, tilted my head to the right and felt better.

“Sure,” she answered a question Dolly asked. She frowned briefly, before her face automatically drew back to a tepid smile. “I got one of those letters. Don't tell me Flora's worried. Nonsense—all of that. Everybody knows our precious Ruby got herself lost out there in the woods. She went hunting for weeds. Well, she called 'em herbs. Always traipsing around hunting for a mushroom that only grew there by you, or for some wildflower in danger of becoming extinct. Not that I can tell one weed from another.” She leaned forward at the waist and chuckled. “Still our Ruby was the one into all of that and it was important to her. And you know what, Dolly? If she died out there where she was happiest, then so be it. Better we all go like that than in some cold hospital with tubes stuck up our butts.”

“Wasn't natural causes,” Dolly said.

“Well,” Mary Margaret waved a hand, dismissing details. “Whatever took her out there, she'd have wanted it that way.”

“Not the way she went,” Dolly went on doggedly.

“Why? What do you mean? Nobody said anything to me.”

“I'm surprised you haven't heard,” I said, knowing that by now all of Fuller's EATS had to be buzzing with the news.

“So?” Mary Margaret frowned in earnest, her lips puffed out, her painted eyebrows drawn up, then down, into jagged angle irons.

“Ruby Poet was murdered, or at least her body was cut up after death. With a saw,” Dolly said.

Mary Margaret's hand flew to her mouth. Her eyes shot wide. “You don't say. I don't believe it. Not up here. Down below—well, they act like that. But not up here.” She shook her head. “No sir, I just won't believe it of anybody from up here. Except, maybe one of those kooks from back in the words. Maybe one of those. We had an incident with Dave Rombart out by Joslyn not too long ago. Man thinks he's a general or something. He and his wife, they live out there beyond Joslyn. Behind barbed wire, if you can believe it. Live off the land, they call it. That sort of thing. You never know. If one of that kind went nuts, well, oh dear, but not our precious Ruby—the least among us. The dearest. The gentlest. Well, wouldn't you just know it? This world isn't fit for good people like Ruby Poet.”

“That's why we're concerned about those letters you women got,” Dolly said. “Can we see it—the letter?”

“I tore the thing up and threw it away. You've always got your religious nuts, no matter where you go. I didn't think anything of it. There's not one of us doing wrong. We get together and have a bonfire and sometimes we sing songs Ruby comes … er … came up with. And we'd do a little dancing around the fire—just to make our bodies feel good. I mean, it really felt good being out there in the woods with friends. We'd take out thermoses of hot tea and some fancy cups and cookies. Somebody always made cookies. Kind of a competition between us, who came up with the best cookies. One time I made these orange butter cookies that beat everything else. But the cookies and stuff wasn't the point. It was being there under the trees, with the fire going. That was it. Made you feel connected to the earth. I think Ruby, more than the rest of us, had a connection to what she called the Goddess spirit. Maybe that's what made people angry, when she talked about the feminine spirit in the woods. But she didn't mean it in any religious sense. You understand?

“I mean, it was just that she felt it was closer to all that's real about life, being there with the wind and stars and fire and earth. All the elements. Like Ruby said: we came from the elements and that's what we should be thanking for our lives. I don't know if I bought into all that so much. It was just fun to be with my old friends and laugh and dance and sing and feel young, like I had no worries about my boys or about this place. That's what we all said and were grateful to Ruby for organizing the meetings. Just a few hours, maybe every month or so, to be together like we used to be when we were kids and be doing something … I don't know … something other people didn't know about. Though I guess they did.”

She stopped talking and readjusted her body, listing farther left. “Hope that wasn't it. That somebody took offense enough to kill our precious Ruby. Terrible thought. Don't know if I can stay in a place that would do something like this …”

“It wasn't the town,” Dolly said with more thoughtfulness than I'd imagined her capable of. “Just one person. Could be anywhere. Evil can spring up any place, any time.”

“Got that right.” Mary Margaret sighed.

“Well, if there's nothing you can add. No ideas about who might've done this to Miz Poet?”

Mary Margaret shook her head slowly. “Can't come up with a thing.”

“What about those oil leases of hers?” Dolly asked. I watched the woman's face closely. If anyone would know if there was truth to the rumors, I imagined a close friend would.

“Well, yes. She mentioned something about signing papers. Said it might bring her some money. Said she hoped she could do good with that money—if she got any. That was all. Just that much. We never talked about business, or our kids, or even about our lives. Not when we were out at Joslyn's. That was kind of kept sacred, you understand. Like there was one place where the everyday stuff couldn't get us. We all have our trouble, I can tell you. But we had that one place. I wonder what we'll do now. Ruby was our spark plug. I'll have to talk to Joslyn and Flora. Maybe after the funeral. I'd like to see us keep going, myself. But maybe they'll be afraid. Not that I'd blame them. Still. Oh my.” Her hands flew up to cover her mouth. “The coroner'll bring Ruby here. He didn't call … but … oh dear. Pieces? Gilbert will have to handle it. Why, I just couldn't. Not my dear precious Ruby.”

I got a few strained quotes from her about Ruby Poet, how they were best friends. “Gave each other words of encouragement, you know. Sometimes a little poem. Sometimes just a note to buck each other up. Always there with a kind word. Especially Ruby. Why, I've got a note from her now. Gave us each one—something for the bad times, she said. I think that's what she said. Haven't given it a thought until now. Gotta find it. Open it, when I can read her words without bawling my eyes out.”

Dolly told the tearful Mary Margaret to call either one of us if she thought of anything at all. Something Ruby had said, somebody she was afraid of or worried about, anything that could help find who did this terrible thing to Ruby Poet. Mary Margaret assured us she'd be keeping her ears open and searching back in her head for anything that should have warned her there was danger.

We left with Mary Margaret calling after us as we stepped across the sloping, veranda-like, front porch, “I'm going to get ahold of Flora right now and maybe ask her to come stay here until after the funeral, if she's worried. I tried getting Joslyn on the phone, but no luck. I think this is her day to go shopping into Traverse. I'll call again this evening.”

Dolly and I took a look at the tilting, weathered porch of the decaying funeral home and looked at each other, both doubting Flora Coy would come there for a safe haven.

Dolly pulled into a parking place directly in front of the Leetsville police station, beside Lucky Barnard's dark sedan. The chief was in his office and motioned me to sit, leaving Dolly to balance herself with one hip on his desk, her gun belt clanking against the metal top.

“How's Charlie doing?” she asked as she thumbed through papers neatly piled at the corner of Lucky Barnard's desk.

“Really good, looks like,” the chief said, and he reached out to straighten his papers. Dolly sat up and folded her hands in her lap. “I've got to get back there right away. Just came in to make sure things were going OK. Tried to raise you but you had the radio shut off.”

His big face was stern. This wasn't the way he ran his department. Maybe Dolly was making up too many of her own rules.

Dolly nodded. “Me and Emily were in talking to Mrs. Coy and then to Mary Margaret, over at the funeral home.” She leaned back and drew Mrs. Coy's letter from her pocket. She handed it to Chief Barnard. He read it. His face didn't change.

“I'll turn this over to the state police right away. They'll want the lab in Grayling to go over it for fingerprints …” He held the letter gingerly away from him as if he could decontaminate it now. “Probably won't get much beyond you and Mrs. Coy, and now me.”

Dolly shrugged.

“Mary Margaret get one?” Lucky asked.

Dolly nodded.

“What about Mrs. Henry? Check with her yet?”

“Can't get her.”

He nodded.

“Why don't you go on over there? I'll see Mrs. Coy and get the envelope, then I'll stop at the post office and talk to Dorothy, see if she remembers anything about it. You know Dorothy, she recognizes everybody in town by their handwriting, even by their typing. She might be some help. Or even Butch, he delivers around here. He might know who sent it. I'll radio you with what I get. You keep that radio on, you hear?” His voice and face were stern. Dolly didn't seem to notice. She got up and stretched.

“Eh, Chief,” I jumped in, “Dave Rombart told me he had a run-in with the women in the woods during one of their dancing sessions—or whatever you want to call it. He says you went out there to talk to him. Did they accuse him of peeping at them, or was it something else? He seemed to think they were just causing trouble.”

Chief Barnard gave me a rueful smile and shook his head. “You meet his wife?” He shook his head again. “She's the real source of trouble. Every time there's a run-in out there it's something Sharon instigated. Maybe not this time. I talked to her after the women complained. I think what Dave was doing was poaching on Mrs. Henry's property. He kills quail and rabbit. Pretty sure some deer, too. We know it, but you have to catch him in the act, or with the dead animal. So far that hasn't happened. Mrs. Henry told me she'd keep calling, every time she saw Dave on her property. That's what it was about—him hunting her woods. Those women are against hunting to begin with. Lots of signs all over the Henrys' place, but Dave Rombart doesn't obey signs. Says they have nothing to do with him, that you can't own land and keep people from hunting on it, but you try stepping a foot on their property and they're out there with guns pointed. I warned Dave, more than once, not to hunt any place out of season. It's Sharon that's always running her mouth, saying they don't have to follow laws they don't believe in. If you ask me, she's nuttier than Dave is. And that's pretty nutty.”

“Then you don't think he might have been holding a grudge against the women?” I said.

Lucky thought a moment and made a face. “If that was the case, Dave would have a grudge against just about everybody living out your way. He and Harry Mockerman had to-dos about Harry's going onto Dave's property. Harry thinks nothing of letting his dogs run. Makes a lot of your neighbors over there mad. I do my best for people, but you have to realize that some been living here their whole life and you can't ask them to change everything just because we've got newcomers.”

“Dave's not a newcomer.”

“No, but since he holed up and put those signs around his property—well, he's been acting like he's the army and everything on his place is top secret.”

“Maybe it is,” I said. “Maybe the women found out something he didn't want them to know. Or maybe they saw something and don't even know it.”

Dave shrugged. “All you can do is ask,” he said.

Dolly took my arm and pulled me toward the door.

“You've got to get back to the hospital,” she said to the chief. “Give Charlie my love and tell him to get better real fast.”

Lucky nodded and stood as we left his office. He promised to stay in touch, especially if he found out anything at the PO. Dolly promised to leave her radio on.

I would have sworn Eugenia was waiting to pounce on us when we walked into Fuller's EATS for a quick dinner before going back out to my place. “You two hear those ladies were being threatened?” Eugenia hissed at us before we were barely in the front door.

Dolly glowered at her. My mouth fell open. “How'd you know?” I asked. “We just found out a little while ago.”

“Sullivan Murphy came in. Said his mother got a letter threatening her if she didn't stop whatever those women were doing out in the woods. Now, why in hell would anybody care what a bunch of old ladies was doing on their own property, having a little fun, or whatever it was? Just terrible. Like we've got Nazis moved in, telling us what we can do.” Eugenia's face was red with anger. “They better not try anything like that with me. I've still got the rifle Rodney left me. I'll use it faster than they can say ‘bite me.' I'm not afraid to stand up to any of those crazies. You just watch.”