Murder Boogies With Elvis (14 page)

“It shocked us, too,” Sister said. “We were sitting in
the front row and he nearly landed in our laps.” She took a sip of her coffee and then put the cup on the table. “Which reminds me. You know Larry Ludmiller, Dusk?”

Dusk had curled up in a wicker chair in a position that only a dancer could accomplish. Her legs seemed to have disappeared.

“The one who books acts?” she wanted to know. “I’ve met him is all. Why?”

“He seems to have disappeared. He didn’t come home last night.”

Bernice looked up, alarmed. “They don’t think it’s connected to the Moonflower case, do they?”

“Mooncloth, Mama.” Dusk said. Bernice shrugged

“I don’t know what they think,” Sister said. “I just know they’re trying to find him and that they say this is totally unlike him. They’re worried.”

“Maybe he had a wreck,” Dusk suggested. “His car could be down an embankment or something. Remember that lady who ran off the road in Shelby County and kudzu covered her car for weeks?”

“Oh, surely not.” Bernice pushed her coffee away. “Do y’all know him?”

“He’s Virgil Stuckey’s son-in-law. Virgil and I are getting married in May.” Sister turned to me. “Do you remember the exact date?”

I shrugged that I didn’t.

“Virgil’s the sheriff of St. Clair County until the end of this month,” Sister explained, “and then he’s retiring.”

“Well, I declare, Mary Alice.” Bernice beamed. “That’s wonderful. When did all this happen?”

“Recently.” It was the first thing I had said since we sat down. The other three looked at me in surprise as if they had forgotten I was there.

“You wouldn’t believe, Bernice. He looks a lot like Cary Grant,” Sister said. “And the wedding is going to be in the little church at Tannehill Park.”

It’s hard to believe that even as strong an emotion as love could turn a combination of Willard Scott and Norman Schwarzkopf into Cary Grant. Proof that it really is blind, I suppose.

“Well, tell me all about it,” Bernice said.

So Sister did, including the wedding dress and the sunflower and magenta bridesmaids’ dresses. Bernice seemed enthralled and even Dusk seemed excited. Too excited, I realized, when she clapped her hands as Fay and May tossed rose petals. Her face seemed flushed, too, I noticed. Was she still sick? Or was she on something? Some people were allergic to stomach medications. Maybe that was it.

Mary Alice and Bernice were engrossed in the talk about the wedding, and I watched Dusk. Surreptitiously, of course. To a casual observer, she would look relaxed, curled up in a chair. But I realized that she was in constant motion, pushing her hair back, patting the leg that was curled under her.

So I wasn’t as surprised as the other two were when she suddenly jumped up, excused herself, and left the room.

“You okay?” Bernice called after her.

“Fine,” echoed down the stairs.

“No, she’s not,” Bernice said sadly. “She’s still in a dither about the murder. I wish she’d talk about it, but she won’t. Not even to Day.”

I put my coffee cup on the table. “I’m sure it shook her up terribly.”

Bernice sighed. “I wish she wouldn’t go back to New York just yet. But she says there’s a new show that
she wants to try out for. And when Dusk makes up her mind, she’s adamant.”

“How well did she know the Mooncloth guy?” Sister asked.

“Not all that well. She knew him in class, of course, but it was actually Day who knew him better than Dusk. Day met him when she was visiting Dusk in New York and went out with him some. She thought a lot of him. Said he was the last person in the world who she could imagine anyone murdering.” Bernice shook her head. “So sad. They’re going to have a memorial service for him in New York, so she’s going back with Dusk. I’m glad she’ll be with her for a few days.” Bernice looked toward the steps. “I’m still worried about Dusk. To tell you the truth, I think she may have an eating disorder. Have you noticed how terribly thin she is? I can’t get her to go to a doctor, though.”

“Patricia Anne’s always had one,” Sister commiserated.

“I have not.” I rubbed my forehead. I could use some aspirin.

Sister looked at me sadly. “She plays the denial game.”

“I’m afraid Dusk does, too,” Bernice said. “Well, enough of that. You want to go see the chair?”

“I eat,” I said as we went up the steps. “I eat a lot.” But sometimes you’re just plain talking into a vacuum.

Bernice led us up two flights of stairs. As we paused on the second landing to catch our breath, we could hear Dusk talking to someone. She sounded quite angry.

Her bedroom door was half open so Bernice stuck her head in. “You okay?”

“Just trying to get our plane tickets straight, Mama.”

“You’ll get more done with sugar than vinegar, Dusk.” Bernice closed the door, and we continued on up the steps, leaving, I imagined, a young woman rolling her eyes at her mother’s remark.

“Mama used to tell us that all the time,” Mary Alice said. “Only I think she said we’d catch more flies with sugar than vinegar. Wasn’t that what she said, Patricia Anne?”

I nodded.

“Mine did, too. I remember wondering why we wanted to catch flies.” Bernice opened the attic door and we stepped inside. The house was grander than mine, but the attic was the same. An old sewing machine, a dressmaker’s form, trunks. Bernice walked over and pulled a sheet from over what I knew immediately was the perfect chair. It wasn’t at all what I had expected. I think what I had had in mind was a smaller version of President Kennedy’s rocker. But this was a small, upholstered mahogany rocker. The arms were very low so Haley wouldn’t have to worry about bumping Joanna’s head. The upholstery was a delicate blue brocade patterned with pink and darker blue flowers.

“Oh, my,” I said, sitting in it. “This is wonderful, Bernice.”

“I think they call it a ladies’ rocker or a boudoir rocker, something fancy like that,” she said. “I just think it’s a perfect rocking-the-baby chair.”

“You’re sure you want to part with it?”

“I’d love to think of Haley with it.”

“She’ll treasure it.” And she would. I closed my eyes and rocked a minute until Sister said she wanted to try it out. “Test it for sturdiness.”

I have seen the legs of chairs splay when Sister sat in them. This one didn’t. It passed the sturdiness test.

“Mama?” Dusk called up the stairs. “I’m going down to the Alabama to pick up my bag I left there the other night. It’s got all my stage makeup in it.”

“Okay, honey. The keys are in my purse. Be careful.” Bernice turned back to us, smiling at our obvious pleasure. “Do I have a taker here?”

I nodded and helped pull Sister up. “You have a very grateful taker. But if either Day or Dusk changes her mind and wants it back, just let me know.”

“Don’t I wish. Well, let’s get it down the stairs.”

The chair wasn’t large, but maneuvering it down two flights of steps wasn’t easy. I was in front, Sister behind, and Bernice cautioning us to be careful. After the first flight, I had discovered the law of physics that states that the person at the bottom of a load is carrying most of the weight.

“Maybe it would be better if you put the seat on top of your head and you could go frontward,” Sister suggested.

I didn’t answer that.

Dusk was standing in the foyer grinning at us as we tried to avoid banging into the banisters.

“I thought you’d left,” her mother said, out of breath. Vicariously, I suppose, since her involvement in moving the chair had strictly been giving directions.

“Your car wouldn’t start.” Dusk reached over, took the chair from Sister and me, and placed it on the floor.

“Damn. Probably the battery. Or the computer.” Bernice fanned her face with her hand. “I swear, y’all, I was driving down two hundred and eighty one afternoon at four-thirty and the car just went dead. Even the power steering was gone. God only knows how I managed it with all that traffic, but I coasted into a Hardee’s. I figured it was the carburetor, but the woman who fixed
me a peach milkshake, so I could take some aspirin, said she bet it was the computer, that they didn’t make carburetors anymore. And sure enough it was. Had to tow me in. I just don’t have any idea what happened to carburetors, do y’all?”

“They’re gone?” I asked.

“Maybe not in your car.” Sister turned to Dusk. “We’ll take you to the Alabama. We’ve got to go right through town.”

“Thanks, Mrs. Crane. I’m sure I can get a ride home.”

“Call your daddy if you can’t,” Bernice said. “And don’t go inside that theater if nobody else is there.”

“Okay, Mama.”

“We’ll check it out.” I hugged Bernice, thanked her again, and we took the chair out to Sister’s van. The young man who had been planting begonias was now clipping shrubbery and came over to help us. Mary Alice was right. My car would never have held us and the chair.

“Who was the boy you were dancing with the other night, Dusk?” Mary Alice asked as she stopped at a light.

“His name’s Bobby Miller, and he’s a student at the Alabama School of Fine Arts. He’s wonderful, isn’t he? And he’s only eighteen years old.”

“Wonderful,” Sister and I both agreed.

“I’m trying to talk him into coming to New York and putting college off. But he probably won’t. His father doesn’t approve of him being a dancer. Thinks it’s sissy.”

I remembered how lightly he had lifted Dusk, the unbelievable leaps. Nothing sissy there. I felt the old familiar anger all teachers feel when parents insist that
their gifted children follow in the path that they, the parents, have decided is the right one. And for the millionth time, I wished the arts were appreciated more.

“Y’all can just let me out at the side entrance,” Dusk said, pointing to a door in the side of the Alabama that was almost lost in the shells and curlicues that adorned the outside of the building as well as the inside.

“We’ll wait and see if anyone’s here,” Mary Alice said.

“Have you ever been backstage?” Dusk asked. “Would you like to see it? They’ve even got some of Tallulah Bankhead’s old costumes back there. And the most wonderful old movie posters you’ve ever seen.”

Mary Alice and I looked at each other. “You feel like it, Mouse?”

If I’d been half dead, I would have jumped at the chance. I’m totally addicted to old movies. And the Alabama has always been the most magical theater in the world.

“Park the car,” I said.

This was no problem. As in most American cities, the large department stores and shops that once flourished in the downtown area have moved to the malls. Several plans have been proposed to bring the area back, including Birmingham Green, where a median of one of the principal downtown streets was planted with trees and flowers. Benches were placed strategically to welcome tired shoppers or to draw brown-bag lunchers from the office buildings to sit in the sun. It’s beautiful, but usually deserted. Only recently have a few people begun to move back downtown into the loft apartments that are being created in the historic old buildings.

We parked across the street, jaywalked safely to the door in the side of the theater, and Dusk knocked on it.
There was no answer, so she knocked again, louder. Still no answer. Mary Alice reached over and turned the doorknob. The door opened, and we stepped inside into a narrow hall. Dusk clicked on the light switch, and a couple of sixty-watt bulbs dangling from the ceiling lit the concrete-block wall and the cement floor. All pretensions of grandeur had been left at the door.

“It gets better,” she promised. She walked to the end of the hall, opened another door, and called, “Hello? Anyone here?”

“Who is it?” a male voice called back.

“It’s me, Dusk Armstrong. Is that you, Mr. Taylor?”

“What are you doing here, Dusk?” Mr. Taylor appeared out of the darkness. His thin, reddish hair was sticking up as if he had been sleeping on it. What riveted our attention, though, was the rag that he clasped in his hand. It looked like an old undershirt; it was covered in blood.

“What’s the matter?” he asked, seeing the three of us as one begin to back up. I can only imagine how frightened we looked. It took him a second to catch on. “Oh, the rag. It’s paint, ladies.” He held it up for our inspection. “Just paint. I’m touching up the Wurlitzer, where that unfortunate young man fell on it the other night. Actually he did more than scratch it. He popped a corner right off. But somebody who knows woodwork is going to have to fix that. All I’m doing is fixing the scratches and polishing it.” He stepped back. “Y’all come on in. I’m sorry I scared you.”

We followed him in nervously. He was older than he had looked rising majestically on the Wurlitzer, makeup in place. Probably in his late sixties.

Dusk introduced us and said that she was there to get her makeup bag.

“You go right ahead. I was fixing to make sure the lift is okay on the Wurlitzer.” He turned to Sister and me. “You ladies want to ride up on it?”

“Lord, yes,” Sister said.

Dusk grinned at our enthusiasm. She hadn’t spent her childhood at the Alabama watching the miracle of the Wurlitzer rise from the floor. “I’ll go get my case,” she said.