Dead Dancing Women (21 page)

Eugenia was nowhere in sight when I entered the main dining room of the restaurant. I knew most of the waitresses working. They waved through the haze of smoke and one waitress, a
middle
-aged woman named Nancy, yelled, “Sit on down, wherever ya want.” She hurried over to slide much-used menus across the table at the three of us.

“How ya doin', Flora?” she leaned over close and asked, ignoring me and Dolly.

“Eugenia here?” Dolly asked, keeping her eyes on the menu.

Nancy, with little tight brown curls all over her head and tiny, almost no-color eyes, looked away from Dolly and said, “In the back.”

“Could you ask her to come out?” Dolly asked sweetly.

The woman frowned. She nodded reluctantly, then disappeared through the swinging doors to the kitchen.

“Guess I'm pretty famous in town,” Dolly muttered, checking out her pudgy fingers one by one. She picked at a raw cuticle, then at another.

Flora Coy straightened her glasses. She patted Dolly's arm. “Don't you worry, Dolly. Everybody knows you wouldn't do such a thing.”

We ordered the meatloaf and mashed potatoes with a side salad then sat waiting, not talking.

Eugenia's face wasn't any happier than Dolly's when she came through the double doors from the kitchen. We exchanged an embarrassed “Hi, how ya doing,” and Eugenia sat down on the fourth chair at our table. She heaved a sigh and called back to Nancy to bring her a cup of coffee.

That cup of coffee took a lot of attention—with sugar pouring, three small creamers, and a lot of stirring. Our food came while she stirred. That took up more silent time. Finally Eugenia looked over at Dolly, watched her steadily, and said, “You heard it was me told the chief I saw you coming out of Murphy's.”

Dolly nodded. “I just want to know why you'd do that, Eugenia? You know it wasn't me.”

“I don't know who it was. That's my problem. I saw somebody I sure as hell thought was you running hell-bent for leather right out of there.”

Dolly, face blossoming with bright patches, pushed her chair back and made a move with her hands that must have meant
look at me, see me
. “You saw me there? Then how come I was home in bed?”

Eugenia shook her head. “There's a monster here in town doing this. All I know is I saw somebody in what looked like a police jacket and hat running out of there. The chief's too tall. This person was kind of squat—sorry, Dolly—and had on a hat and a jacket. I didn't see the pants or anything because I wasn't thinking about somebody doing anything wrong right then. To tell the truth, I was tired. You know, seeing a cop at a funeral home isn't so different. Maybe, I thought: Oh, oh, looks like somebody died … but that's all. Until I heard the fire engines. Then it all came together, and I thought I'd better mention to the chief that I saw you there. I imagined he'd say you was the one discovered the fire and were running out to report it or something like that. I didn't know I was getting you in trouble. At least I didn't think about it.”

Her voice was a little grudging. Wrinkles along her jaw wiggled. I couldn't help but think of her rogue's gallery of relatives and imagine Eugenia didn't have it in her genetic makeup to knowingly help the police.

“It's not about getting me into trouble. This is murder,” Dolly said, pulling in close to the table and picking up her fork again to poke at the meatloaf. “I know it wasn't me so what we need to know now is who it really was ran out of there last night.”

Eugenia shrugged. “Thought it was you. That's all I can say. If I start saying different, I'd be making it up.”

“OK,” Dolly said around a mouthful of mashed potato. “Somebody who's kind of built like me. You don't know if it was a man or a woman?”

Eugenia shook her head.

“Maybe it was Sullivan. He was there. Got himself out but not his mother.”

Eugenia raised and dropped her shoulders. “Why would Sullivan be wearing a police uniform?”

“I don't know,” Dolly said. “That's what I'm trying to find out.”

“Well,” Eugenia pushed her chair back and stood, “I'm really sorry if I caused you trouble, Dolly. I hear the chief took you off the case. That's too bad, if it really wasn't you I saw.”

“It wasn't,” Dolly almost growled.

“How come you're still going around asking questions if Lucky took you off duty?”

“Because I want to know who's trying to make folks think I'm a killer.”

Eugenia nodded. “Good for you. Don't blame you. I wouldn't lay off either. If I think of anything else, or I hear anything in here, I'll get right to you.”

She turned to Flora and me. We'd been silent through all of this. “I'm really sorry, Flora. I guess Mary Margaret's the last of your friends.”

Flora teared up then wiped at her eye with a paper napkin.

“Hope you're staying with Emily here. It looks like somebody's after all of you Ladies of the Moon. Can't imagine what's going on.”

“Me either,” Flora said, her deep voice cracking. “Just don't have a clue.”

Eugenia got up to go back to her kitchen. I acted as if I'd just thought of something, got up, and followed her.

“Eugenia?” I stopped her halfway through the swinging kitchen door. I couldn't help myself. I didn't think I was getting even for Dolly, but sometimes we just don't know why we're doing things. “Those relatives of yours out there in your vestibule, they're not really related to you are they?”

Eugenia paused, one hand holding the door open. Her face went through a series of changes, searching through possible comebacks. At last she softened, even smiled.

“Busted,” she said and then gave a short, almost barking, laugh.

“Come on—Billy the Kid? Belle Starr? How'd you get away with it this long?”

“Don't think many but you reads 'em.”

“Why do you bother, if they aren't your relatives?”

She shrugged. “Everybody needs somebody, I guess. They're my somebodies. Don't be so surprised, Emily. Lots of things aren't what they seem to be.” She looked back at Dolly for a minute, then shook her head. “I did it just for fun. First because I liked looking 'em up. Then just to see how long I could fool people. If you don't go around telling on me I'll keep it going. It's like a game. I'm not hurting anybody. A few others know. That's what kind of separates the people who come here: the people who know and the people who don't. You just got yourself into an elite club, Emily.” Eugenia smiled and her wrinkles smacked together like dominoes.

“I don't get the point,” I said.

Eugenia made a face. “Lots of us don't get the point of other people's lives. Most hiding secrets far worse than my little gag. As I said, sometimes things aren't what they seem to be. Some can hurt us. Some can't.” She shrugged and went through the swinging door.

I walked back to our table and didn't say a word. It wasn't that I wanted into Eugenia's “elite” club as much as I felt a kind of secret guilt, maybe at taking three years to figure it out, maybe at knowing something Dolly didn't know and not sharing it. Anyway, I wasn't telling on Eugenia. She was right, lots of things weren't what they seemed to be. Including me and Dolly.

TWENTY-NINE

Flora knew something was
wrong with her house before she got the front door open. “My lord, my lord,” she whispered frantically as she fumbled the long, metal key into the old lock. “Listen to my birds. Oh dear, now what?”

She threw the door open to a room filled with shadows and chaos. The house had been ransacked. Books and papers lay everywhere. Sofa cushions were slashed, Styrofoam filling thrown around like clumps of old snow. It was the kind of nightmare no one wants to walk in on.

Poor Flora moved from room to room with her hands clamped over her mouth. She absorbed the damage slowly, more concerned for a flock of parakeets flitting from chandelier to ceiling molding than for her broken furniture.

“My poor birds,” Flora cooed, putting her thin arms up high as if she could gather the parakeets together.

“Are they all here?” Dolly asked, concerned, following Flora from room to room. “How many do you have? I'll try to get them back in their cages.”

“Oh no, Dolly. You might hurt them. I'll do it.” The poor woman wasn't crying anymore. Her drained face looked too worn for crying, too worn for more tragedy. I never felt sorrier for anybody in my life. How I wanted to get my hands on whoever did this.

I picked up a few things and tried to set others right, but there was no easy fix for the mess the intruders left behind them.

“Where are their cages?” I asked, giving up on quick fixes.

“Out in the kitchen, Emily. Oh, would you please get them? They'll be so happy to be back in their homes. My little sweet … oh dear … I never thought anybody could be this mean.”

This mean
seemed an understatement considering what had already happened. I went for the cages standing in a row along the kitchen windows, all with their doors hanging open, as if yanked free. They would have to be wired shut, I imagined.

It was a relief to get the birds settled, to have the twittering and peeping and fluttering cut to a minimum of complaint. Flora was thrilled to find every one accounted for—six of them—as if it were a moral victory not to have her birds murdered, too.

I wanted to get busy and clean the house, to make Flora feel better about what had happened, but Dolly shook her head, warning me not to touch anything more than we'd already touched. “Gotta call Lucky,” she said. “He'll get the state police out here. They'll have to go over everything.”

Flora moaned and plopped down into one of her still-standing spindle-backed kitchen chairs. She sat very still, offering no resistance, doing nothing but sighing and shaking her head.

This whole thing was getting to me in a way I couldn't separate myself from any longer. This was very personal. I wanted to move, do something, go after somebody.

“Why do you think this house and Joslyn Henry's house were searched?” I asked Dolly, keeping my voice low because Flora was stressed enough.

Dolly motioned me back into the living room where we could talk. We settled on the floor, not wanting to disturb the disturbance. “This has all got to be tied together,” I said, impatient now. “Somebody is desperately looking for something. It's the only thing I can think of that connects what's been happening—the women and these searches. What is it somebody wants? What did one of the women have that was important enough to kill for?”

Dolly nodded and thought awhile. “You think the funeral home was burned down to hide something?”

“What good would that do? If the women had something the killer or killers needed, burning down the funeral home without finding what they were after wouldn't make any sense.”

“Maybe they found it, that's why they burned the place down.”

“Then why search here?”

We looked around at the overturned furniture, the dumped drawers, the disrespectful flinging of an old woman's belongings.

“And why wasn't Ruby Poet's house searched?” I asked.

“Let's ask Flora if she has any idea,” Dolly said.

Flora sat where we'd left her but now she was peeping up at her birds, smiling at them, ignoring the mess around her. I asked gently if she could think of anything she had valuable enough to cause what had happened, but Flora shook her head. “Never had much,” she said. “There was my Grandmother's Limoges. Maybe they heard about the cup collection …”

I looked around the kitchen, broken dishes thrown out of the cupboards, a cereal box emptied on the floor, flour and sugar canisters dumped. This wasn't about a set of Limoges cups.

“Look,” I whispered to Dolly. “You wait with Flora. I'm going over to talk to Amanda. That fluff-head routine of hers just doesn't impress me anymore. It all started with her mother. Maybe it's the money from the oil her mother was expecting. I can't think of anything else, can you?”

Dolly shook her head. “Sure you want to do it now? You've got to be as tired as I am.”

“Yeah. But somebody doesn't want us to rest.”

I promised to return for them.

“We'll head back to my home when the police finish here,” I told Dolly. I left her leaning against a kitchen counter, trying to keep from stepping on pottery shards. Flora Coy stood peeping at her parakeets.

The first thing I noticed at Amanda's, though it was dark by the time I got over there, was the for-sale sign on the lawn. There were lights in the front window and a blue Dodge Dart parked in the side drive. She answered the door after turning the porch light on and peeking out from behind the curtain. It took awhile but I didn't blame her for being cautious. I imagined people all over Leetsville were being very cautious and that Jehovah's Witnesses would have a hard time getting anybody to answer a door until this was over.

I waved through the front window and smiled at Amanda. I tried to appear nonthreatening though I was nervous myself, standing in the bright light of the overhead porch globe where anybody passing by could see me. Amanda opened the inside door but held on to the storm door. “Emily. Why, what could you be doing here at this hour?” she said in a loud voice.

“So many things have been happening, Amanda. Dolly and I had some more questions we thought you might be able to help us with.” I put my hand on the door handle, fully expecting her to unlock it. She didn't.

“I heard Dolly Wakowski was put on indefinite leave,” she shouted, though it was only glass she spoke through. “Word around town is sh
e was seen setting the fire at the funeral home.”

“That's not true at all,” I said, and I rattled the door handle slightly, letting her know I expected to be invited in. “It was a mistake. Eugenia saw somebody who looked like her coming out of the funeral home, but Dolly was home in bed. Eugenia saw somebody else. We're trying to find out who that could be and now there's been a break-in at Flora Coy's house. I'd like to talk to you …”

She hesitated for a bit longer, than flipped the lock and pushed the door open.

“Well, I certainly hope you haven't come here to murder me in my bed,” she said over her shoulder as I followed her into the living room where she sat in the plaid rocker and eyed me. I wasn't offered a chair, so I stood, and with the state the room was in, I was just as glad.

“You are right to be cautious, about everybody,” I said. “We just wondered if you could think what it might be somebody's hunting for. Joslyn's house was ransacked the day she died. Now Flora Coy's house. Maybe the funeral home, too, for all we know. Have you missed anything here?”

Amanda frowned and shook her head. “My house certainly hasn't been ransacked.”

I looked around the messy living room and wondered how she would know. “Anything about that money your mother was going to receive from the oil company? Did she get a check and give it to one of her friends for safe keeping?”

“Why would Mother do a thing like that? There's a perfectly good bank right here in town. And the first thing she would have done was show it to me. All I know about the oil lease money is that she signed an agreement guaranteeing her so much on every barrel of oil they bring in out there. Could be a little. Could be a lot. That's nobody's business but ours … well … actually mine now.”

“So, she wouldn't have maybe made a loan to one of the other ladies, or offered one of them some of the money?”

“For what reason?” Amanda looked shocked. “Mother knew I wanted to move out of this town a long time ago. Leetsville isn't the cultured kind of city we should've ever been living in. We have plenty of use for our own money.”

At least I wasn't getting the fainting daisy routine this time. There was certainly a practical bone down somewhere in Amanda's body.

“I see you've got your house up for sale. Kind of fast, isn't it?”

Amanda's lips tightened. “None of this is your business, Emily. All I'll say is that I think I've found a place I like better. Now, especially, with all the bad memories here, I'm sure you can understand. You're from the city. You're more cultured than most of the people around here can ever hope to be. It's a matter of what we want from life, don't you agree? I mean, maybe you choose to live out in the woods, but some day you'll see, you'll head back to the city. Mark my words.”

“You're moving south? Grand Rapids? Detroit?”

“Oh no.” She waved a hand at me. “Nothing like that. Just up to Petoskey. They've got better shops and a decent hairdresser.”

“Cultural centers,” I said, being deliberately mean.

“Are you making fun of me?” Her hurt look deepened.

I shook my head, ashamed. “Not at all,” I assured her falsely.

“Well,” she sniffed. “Since you're here you might as well know the plans we've made for the funerals.” She sighed. “I, for one, just want this behind us.”

“You mean you and Ernie Henry?”

“Yes, and now you can add in Gilbert and Sullivan Murphy. They've got their mother to bury, too, or what's left of her.” She made a noise in her throat. “Anyway, we're having a service at the Church of the Contented Flock on Wednesday. No bodies to bury. Who knows whose ashes would be whose? I was a little upset with Ernie, I don't mind telling you. The man is cheap. Didn't even want a nice cake after the service. But the rest of us voted him down. It will be very well done. I hope you plan on being there to celebrate the lives of these wonderful women.”

I assured Amanda I wouldn't miss it and left her poring over what she said was a new list of hymns “Pastor” had given her, since she hadn't been happy with the last list he'd provided. I noticed the list was printed on paper and wondered, on my way out the door, the lock snapping shut behind me, how the minister who preached against books and the printed word explained his printed lists and signs and being listed in the phone book. I guessed, as I stumbled through the garden gate, that people believed what they wanted to believe, and never what was right in front of their nose.

Then it occurred to me Amanda Poet was a perfect example of a myopic human being who could erase anything from her mind when it didn't suit her to take notice. After all, she'd asked nothing about the break-in at Flora's house, and seemed unconcerned for the safety of the last of her mother's friends.