Dead Dancing Women (13 page)

My hair didn't take long, and after it was dried I thought she was very right—I did look a lot better with a single shade of brown. She trimmed off about four inches and poufed it so my face didn't seem so long and drawn. Dolly's magic was working. I was beginning to relish a makeover. I wanted to see what Dolly had up her sleeve for my face.

She rubbed cream into my skin as I sat with my eyes closed, letting myself enjoy the attention. She rubbed makeup on, though she cleansed it right back off when we both decided that shade of orange wasn't for me. She outlined my eyes and patted my cheeks with blush and put some stuff on my eyelids with small brushes. I was feeling very glamorous by the time I'd puckered and squinted and bunched up my cheeks for her.

When she finished and stood back to examine me, her face took on a self-satisfied smirk. She held a hand mirror up for me to see myself. I looked like a woman in a magazine. My hair shone and turned under slightly, just beneath my ears. It was too short, now, to pull back into a ponytail, but maybe that was a good thing. The makeup made me colorful, and pretty. Well, I told myself, won't Jackson be surprised.

Next, I insisted on doing Dolly's face, though the makeup looked funny on her. She was too down-to-earth. Makeup on a face that frowns deeply and crunches into crevice-like scowls, well, it just sat there looking as if it could roll off by itself, in one, wide, single sheet. She washed her face because we both agreed she was pretty enough without it.

EIGHTEEN

Next morning no one
answered the door again at the tall, plain, Henry house. No car in the drive or behind the house. No one inside. I cupped my hands at the front window and looked hard, but the drapes were drawn across the window now.

“Somebody's been home,” I said. “The drapes were open last night and our note's gone.”

Dolly shrugged. “Must've had some place else to go today.”

“Obviously,” I said, peeved that Dolly found it necessary to state the obvious.

“So, what now?” I asked, stepping back from the front window, looking over the neat garden.

“While we're out here I'd at least like to see the place where the women danced,” Dolly said.

“Dave Rombart said their bonfire was out by the pond.”

Dolly nodded. “If somebody killed Ruby because of the nature stuff, we'd better have a look at where it went on. Might give us some idea who could get back there and who'd be familiar enough with the territory to spy on the ladies. So far I'd say Dave Rombart and Harry Mockerman, and Ernie. All of them know these woods like the back of their hand.”

As we headed down the steps, I noticed the pile of pot shards was just as I'd left it the day before.

The walk, from the Henry house out to Ruffle Pond, was beautiful, the sandy ground covered with orange and yellow leaves. Lining the path in thick clumps, the sumac had turned a vivid red. Dead ferns, now bronze, fell over, catching at our legs as we passed. In the sunlit patches, the world had taken on a golden glow. Magic. Dolly and I didn't talk. This was one of those places that called for silence. One of those days.

Ahead, down the path, I could see the milky white and blue of Ruffle Pond.

We walked the beach, scruffy with tall weeds, and looked out over the water, to the trees on the other side, most still in full fall dress, some already blown bare. I dug my toe into the sand, recognizing the pointed prints of a couple of deer; the small footprints of a raccoon, around us.

“I'd like to dance out here, too,” I said and half meant it. A peaceful place. I could imagine a fire on the shore. I could imagine singing. Even the dancing. In my head, I was sure I could see four old women with their arms in the air, their bodies surprisingly lithe and limber—swaying to their own music. I could hear muted laughter coming over water.

“Where do you think they had their … altar, or whatever it was?” Dolly turned, her hand up to shade her eyes. She scanned the trees and beach behind us, looking hard at the open places where the land curved up to the tall grass, then to the trees.

I turned to look with her.

She pointed. “Over there. Looks like log seats in a circle. That would be the place, around a campfire. Like a bunch of Girl Scouts. Don't see why anybody would object to anything they did out here, on their own land.”

She shook her head and started off toward the circle of cut logs. I followed. It was a little way down the beach and up the curve of sand. We could see the blackened remnants of a log fire and something just beyond the fire pit, stretched out on the ground. I thought it might be their altar. A mound, close to the earth.

Dolly picked up speed. I ran along behind.

“Christ's sakes!” she exploded just about the time I let out a long and painful breath.

We could see the mound better. Not an altar. Not a site of worship. A body, laid out in a long black coat. The head was back, salt-and-pepper hair arranged perfectly around her.

Joslyn Henry. As obviously dead as she was ever going to get.

Dolly stopped me, stretching her arms wide.

“It's her all right,” she said. “We've got to get back to the car and call the chief. If he isn't there, we'll call Gaylord. We don't want to mess anything up here. Maybe, after this, we'd better butt out completely. I hate to think this happened because we've been asking too many questions.” She was shaking her head. I thought I saw tears in her eyes.

Somebody's got to ask those questions, I thought, but I knew how Dolly felt. What I wanted to do now was stay as far as I could from Joslyn Henry. Stay away from the other poor deluded women who thought they were hurting no one with their joyous dances in the woods. What I wanted to do most was run home, post Sorrow at the door, crawl into bed, stick my head under the blankets, and come out when this was over.

The chief was with his son in Traverse City so the state police drove over from Gaylord. Officer Brent was the first to arrive, his long face sad, the single eyebrow immobilized.

He walked by without acknowledging us. He knelt down, seemed to be poking and prodding, then got up, whisked his hands together and came back to where we waited.

“Dead all right,” he said. “You want to tell me how you found the body?”

He gave me a long, hard look.

Dolly spoke up. “We were looking for her. She hasn't been seen in a few days. Her son, Ernie, either. No one home so we came out here to find where the women had been holding their … eh … meetings, and there she was.”

He nodded, then nodded again. We all stood looking over toward where the body lay.

“Marks on her neck. I'd say she was strangled. Looks like she'd been sitting on that log and fell over after she was attacked. Probably didn't even see the attacker.”

I reached in my shoulder bag for my notebook, but he gave me a withering look. “Don't you write anything down yet, Emily. I'm not talking for the record here. That was only speculation I was giving. You'll have to get official word later.”

I closed my purse.

“You know, maybe you two better pull back, let us take the lead out here. Looking really bad. Another one. Serious business going on.”

Dolly nodded. We all fell silent. I toed a pile of leaves at my feet, all dead cupped hands. All around me were these dark brown, pleading hands.

After a while, Brent turned casually to face Dolly. “Got anything I should know? With your investigation?”

Dolly nodded, then shrugged, giving nothing away.

“Don't imagine you know any more than we do,” he said. “If you find out anything, you'll give me a call, right? Come on in and we'll have a talk.”

“We found that letter Mrs. Coy got,” she said, squinting up at him. “Thought it might be important.”

“We're looking into it. See if anything comes of the typing, the stationery. Maybe fingerprints other than Mrs. Coy's, yours, and the chief's. We've got the resources for that kind of thing.”

“You look into Ruby Poet's oil leases yet?”

Brent looked confused for a minute. He said nothing.

“Shell Oil,” Dolly said. “She was coming into money.”

Brent nodded. “Thanks.”

“See about her will, too,” she said.

He fit his hat on his slickly shaved head. “Do that,” he said and then stalked off to greet men from the sheriff's department, who'd just driven in and walked up the slope side by side, like a posse.

“Good thing we had this talk,” Dolly called after him.

We heard motors pulling in along the other side of the pond and made our way back to the Henrys' house. More cops. As soon as the men were busy out by the fire pit, we were free to go.

We drove to my house, where Dolly said we'd better double up our efforts before somebody else got hurt.

“I thought Brent was kind of warning us off.”

“Yeah, sure.” She gave me a full face of disgust.

“That's what I figured,” I said. “So, what now?”

“We've got to find Ernie,” Dolly said. “That's where we start. While they're busy out there, we just keep getting ahead of them. Got to find Ernie. If he isn't dead, too, where the hell is he?”

NINETEEN

We didn't find Ernie
though we checked his engine repair shop in town. Big CLOSED sign in the window. Not at Fuller's either, though there were a lot of townspeople there, buzzing about another murder. Neither of us felt like staying and hashing over this latest tragedy.

Ernie wasn't at the Skunk Saloon, across Main Street from Fuller's, and not at the bowling alley. I was tired enough to give up caring. Considering what we'd been through in the last few days, and what was ahead of me—with Jackson and the mystery “We” coming the next afternoon—I was beyond needing to be the one to save Ernie Henry from the shock of his mother's awful death.

“I'm going home,” I said. “And I don't want to hear anything about anybody dying for at least twenty-four hours.”

We stood in the bowling alley parking lot among red and rusty pickups, one with a yellow-eyed black lab tied in the bed.

“You going to poop out now? Right when we need to be working hardest on this?” Dolly reared back and fixed her eyes on me. “What about the other two women? They're all that's left.”

“We haven't exactly been saving anybody,” I said, one foot in my car.

“And we sure won't by giving up.”

“Bull!” I was really tired of being talked into things. I didn't want to be bullied anymore by this stub of a woman. “Let the state police handle it.”

“They save anybody yet?”

“You don't get it, Dolly. I don't care right now. I've got stuff in my own life. I've had enough shocks for a while. OK?”

“You out of it completely?” Her thumbs were twined around her gun belt. She closed one eye against the sun and looked up at me.

“I don't know,” I said, giving an honest answer. I didn't know what I wanted to do. At the moment, I just needed to be away from her, away from death, away from trouble, and away from Leetsville, with all its shabby sadness.

She gave me one last, long look. “Then piss off,” she said, turned her back, got in her squad car, and drove away.

I went home, called in the story, and settled down to a long day of quiet reading, eating when and what I pleased, and finally falling asleep without a thought to anybody tossing anything at my door or of stumbling on one more dead body.

It was a thrill to have my house to myself the next morning—me and Sorrow. Not that I'd minded having Dolly there with me. She'd actually been good company. Now that I was rested, I was feeling guilty that I'd walked out on her the way I had. I figured I should call her, but I couldn't bring myself to pick up the phone. I liked having my life back. I liked my house empty. All that was left me were a few hours of peace before Jackson got there. I didn't see a need to call and make up with Deputy Dolly right then.

I hummed as I boiled myself an egg and pushed an English muffin into the toaster. I'd been over Jackson's room again, straightening the rug, pulling the Mexican throw from the bed, then putting it back on. The dresser looked funny, pulled so close to the door when there was plenty of empty wall space beyond it. Still, it was better than having that gaping chew-hole show.

I was happy for the peaceful morning. Sorrow'd discovered he loved licking my bare feet so I had to give up going barefoot. It was demeaning to have him that grateful for a home, though he was still insistent, chasing me, nipping at my fluffy slippers.

We were getting along better, I thought. And he was protective. Barked when Simon pulled down the drive to deliver a book I'd ordered, barked at birds flying in front of the windows, and barked when a squirrel scampered over the roof. Well, and barked if I closed the door too hard. And barked when I dropped a spoon …

Still, I had hopes for our future together.

The morning lay ahead of me. The house was as clean as it was going to get. I didn't have to worry about lunch since Jackson said he'd eat somewhere along I-75. Dinner was iffy. I didn't want to make plans that took anything for granted. For all I knew he would have appointments to look at cottages all afternoon. Better not to presume he was coming to see me and would be hanging around. Better to prepare myself for disappointment, an emotion I knew well from the years of our marriage.

But disappointment was dippy, I told myself. No disappointment because I had no expectations—despite my new hair, and the makeup I wasn't sure I was going to apply. Disappointment was for girls who didn't get asked to the senior prom, or women waiting breathlessly for that hoped-for phone call. How could you disappoint a woman who'd bought whole-hog into that “ever after” stuff, and lost?

Sorrow broke up all that useless reverie with his whining at the door. I let him out. I'd discovered he didn't run away but spent a lot of time sitting on the porch, waiting for the door to open again, like a kid afraid of getting lost if he went too far.

After breakfast, I cleaned up and wiped the sink until it was dry and shining, I dressed in ancient sweats to go out and work in the garden. There were the last of the weeds to pull before they dropped their seed for next year, which I knew was dumb because they would have dropped those errant seeds weeks before. There were marigolds and hollyhocks to cut back. There were roses to begin mounding. I had daffodils to plant. Straw to spread. So much to do. I looked forward to a half day of heavy work. It would keep my mind occupied. I wouldn't sit in my office avoiding writing. I wouldn't stand staring out the window, hoping for inspiration to strike me. I wouldn't think about dead people. In gardening there was the benefit of mindless work; digging in dirt, a kind of hypnosis. Worm-mind, I called it. No thought. No worry. No self-pity. Just dig and burrow and edge forward with scavenging fingers.

I shrugged on a ripped jacket, which would do well for working outside on a half chilly/half warm late September day. Before I could get out of the house, the phone rang.

“It's me,” Dolly said.

I was happy to hear her voice. “Hi,” I said, just a little too cheerful. That final “Piss off” yesterday melted away.

“You coming into town? We've got to keep moving on this.”

“You forget Jackson's getting here this afternoon? I can't go anywhere.”

“Yeah. But later. I mean, this isn't something we can sit on. Good Lord, now we've got two dead women and we don't even know why. You think the state boys are entertaining company?”

“I thought I was kind of … well … out of it,” I said.

“You were tired. You're not a quitter. You said you wanted to find out who was doing this.”

“Yes,” I said, half flattered, half knowing I was being had.

“This is serious, Emily.”

“I know,” I said, anger bubbling, slightly. Here I was, being pushe
d all over again.

“So? How about this afternoon? You get him settled in and let him go out looking for a house to rent.”

“OK,” I said, keeping my lips tight.

“Great.” Her squeaky voice lifted as if everything was settled between us. “Or tell 'im you've got work to do. He'll be glad of it. You know flatlanders; they get worn out just from the drive up here. I'll call you after a while. Or you call me. Whatever. Now, can I fill you in on what's been happening?” Dolly had said her piece without drawing a breath. I guessed our quarrel was over. Funny, my part in it seemed so negligible.

She gulped in air, and began as if reading from notes.

“Here's what the chief got out of Officer Brent. You can take it down and give as much to the paper as you want to, OK? Number one: Miz Henry was strangled, just like Officer Brent said. It's not official yet but they think she was killed on Thursday sometime.

“There, that's that.” She mumbled to herself, then burst out, “Oh, oh, yeah. Ernie. Drove in right after we left, I guess. He was at a tractor pull over in Leland. Said he hadn't talked to his mother since Wednesday. Ernie said he didn't have any idea who would want to hurt his mother. He's all broken up, poor guy. Feels responsible, for being away. Said he's always taken good care of her. An awful thing. Lived his whole life with her, and he's almost forty. Shame. Some men never grow up. He's kidding himself, that he was taking care of her. More the other way around. Anyway, he drove in just as the coroner was taking his mother's body away.”

“Then Mrs. Henry must've been home all that time. I mean, when I was over there knocking. But wait—if she was killed Thursday she must've been dead when we were there that night. So who closed the drapes after that? Something's wrong here.”

“Well, listen to this. The house was ransacked. The chief said there wasn't a dish left in the cupboards, not a piece of clothing in any of the closets. Just a mess. All torn up.”

“Any idea who did it?”

“Had to be whoever killed her.”

A shiver ran through my body.

“Whoever did it took the note we left on the door.”

“And closed the drapes in case we came back.” She stopped. I heard her sniff. “I'm going over to warn Mary Margaret and Flora Coy now.” Dolly sounded pretty sick. “Wish I could take 'em into custody. God only knows what's going on here.”

“Could they get out of town for a while, you think? Just until this is over.”

“They'd never leave. People in this town don't get scared off easy.”

“Well, at least tell them to be careful. Flora Coy should get somebody in that house with her.”

“Yeah. Mary Margaret's got Gilbert and Sullivan, though I'm not sure those two boys would be much help in a pinch.”

“Hmm,” I said, thinking how I would feel if my two friends had just been murdered. Speaking solely for myself, I think I'd get the hell out of town as fast as my wheels could carry me.

“Oh, speaking of those letters, the chief went to see Dorothy at the post office and she remembered letters going to Flora Coy and Mary Margaret. Says she's sure Joslyn Henry got one, too. They were all the same, small pink envelopes, like birthday cards. She noticed they were typed and there was no return address on any of them. She said they came in right there at the post office drop box. She took them out of mail collection herself but she didn't know who put them there, and she didn't recognize the type on the envelopes. Says she didn't think about it at the time.

“Ya know, Emily, if we can't talk to Ernie we've got to get over and talk to Amanda. We really need to find out what was on Miz Henry's mind that day she called on her. It seems like that's got something to do with what happened. I'll come get you, if you want. Say five o'clock? I'm on duty today anyway so I won't be free until about then. Would that be OK?”

“I'll meet you in town,” I said, feeling that maybe Dolly was more than a little curious to get a look at Jackson. “Let's ask, too, when they're having services for both women. I'd like to see who comes to those, wouldn't you?”

“Everybody will be there. That's the way the town is. What about your neighbor? Old Harry. I've still got a feeling he knows something. Didn't you get that feeling?”

I had to admit Harry hadn't been forthcoming. It had been awhile since I'd seen him. Time to drop by. He was always out in the woods. Maybe he saw something over at the Henrys' place. We agreed we had to talk to Harry.

“So, if you don't want me to come get you, where'd you want to meet?”

“How about the parking lot of the IGA? You know if we go to Fuller's we'll be bombarded with questions.”

“Yeah, but that goes the other way, too. That's where we get answers we didn't know we needed.”

“We'll start at Fuller's, then. Five thirty? I might have to bring Jackson with me.”

“Geez, Emily. What'll we do with him?”

“You'll like him, Dolly. Jackson can be very charming.”

“I don't care what he is. We don't need him in the way right now.”

“He could be here for some time.”

“You're not letting him stay with you, are you?”

“Well, maybe … until he finds his own place to write.”

“I don't know, Emily. He might try to put something over on you, move in until he gets his book done. What better than to have you cooking and cleaning all over again, while he sits and writes his dumb book nobody's going to read anyway.”

“Now, Dolly. You don't even know Jackson. And his work is important.”

“Yeah, what'd you say it was on?”

“Chaucer.”

“See what I mean? How high is that on the bestseller list?”

“That's not the point with scholarship …”

“Don't start the nose-thumbing at me, Emily. I'm just saying, don't be a patsy and let him move in on you. You know you'll only be sorry. And if you ask me, you're a little too nice sometimes.”

“Don't worry. It's just until he gets settled,” I said with my teeth gritted.

“Then I hope he gets settled right away. You want me to start calling Realtors for him? I could get them going. Know a few houses for rent myself. I'll write down numbers and directions. The sooner he gets out of your hair the better for you. You've got that mystery to finish. That's important.”

I laughed at the thought of
Creative Murder
being important, especially now, with Jackson doing his lofty study of a Middle English writer. Inwardly, I groaned. I'd have to hear every tiny detail as he made his way through Chaucer, one cheery or dreary character at a time. I liked Chaucer well enough. Especially the Wife of Bath, who was my kind of woman. Still, Jackson knew how to drain the life out of any subject, how to vampirize good writing until it lay on the page like a consumptive: anemic,
in extremis
.

Before we hung up I got the last word. “And, Dolly,” I said. “I am not too nice. Don't ever call me that again.