The Dance (3 page)

She was working on something and had a pencil in her mouth. He watched for a minute while she scratched her head, wrinkled her forehead, glanced at her watch, and grimaced. No matter what the expression, to him she was beautiful.

Since he had returned to school, he had gone to great pains to avoid her, more than he had during the week following their one date. He’d asked and received another locker. He’d avoided the courtyard during both break and lunch. He’d obtained a list of her classes from the computer at school and mapped out in his head where she should be at any particular moment, planning his own routes accordingly.

“
I loved Alice. I loved her more than the world. And what I said to the police, I didn’t say because I wanted to. It hurt me to say it, as much as it’s hurting me to stand here and have you accuse me…
”

Naturally, despite his precautions, he had occasionally bumped into her, anyway. But they’d exchanged few words. Hello. How are you? Take care. Good-bye. But he’d seen enough of her to know his longing for her had not died with Alice, as he had thought it would. It had only grown stronger.

She was parked in front of Julie Pickering’s house. He hadn’t realized they were friends. She was probably waiting for Julie to come home. From what he could see, he guessed she might be finishing up some homework before knocking on Julie’s door. She could disappear any second.

He didn’t give himself a chance to think about it, to chicken out. He started up the street. He had decided that first night in the desert that he owed her an apology.

Halfway to her car, he saw her notice him. He waved.

“Hi. Jessie?”

She rolled down her window, peeked her head outside, her long brown hair covering her shoulder. “Yeah, it’s me,” she said, her smile strained. “Hi, Michael. I guess you’re wondering what I’m doing here?”

He nodded toward the Pickerings’ residence. “You know Julie, don’t you?”

Jessica glanced at Julie’s house. “Ah, yeah, Julie. Yeah, I know her.”

“Are you two going to study together?” He remembered Julie, like Jessica, was taking chemistry.

“Yeah, that’s it. I mean, I didn’t know you and Julie lived on the same block?”

He gestured vaguely back the way he had come. “I live over there.”

“Oh.”

He put his hands in his pockets, looked at the ground. That was the neat thing about the ground. It was always there to look at when you were talking to a pretty girl. He didn’t know how to begin.

“I haven’t seen you around school much,” she said finally.

“I’ve been around.”

“Do you have a new locker?”

“Yeah, they gave me one. Somebody transferred to another school.” He shrugged. “It was available.”

“I bet you have a lot more room now?”

“You never crowded me.”

“Sure I did. With my bag and my makeup and stuff. I don’t know how you put up with me.”

“I was the one who ruined your sweater.”

“You didn’t ruin it.”

“Yeah, I did.”

“No.” She reached out, brushed his arm. “Look at me, Michael.” He did so, seeing her large brown eyes first, as he usually did when he looked at her. She chuckled. “Don’t you see? I have it on.”

He smiled. “That’s right. How did you get the stain out?” She touched her chest. “I don’t remember. It doesn’t matter. It’s gone.”

“It looks great on you.”

“Thank you.” She paused, her face suddenly serious. “Did you ask for a new locker?”

He couldn’t lie to her. “Yeah.”

The word seemed to startle her. She recovered quickly, however, nodding. “That’s OK.”

“Jessie—”

“No, I understand. It’s fine, really, no offense taken. It’s just that I sort of, you know—I used to like talking to you between classes.” She smiled briefly. “That was fun.”

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“It’s all right.”

“No, I’m sorry about what I said to you.” He lowered his voice, his eyes. “When we were in Alice’s studio. I shouldn’t have said—what I did.”

She sank back into her seat, taking a breath, putting her hands on the steering wheel, pulling them off again. Obviously, it was a topic she would have preferred to avoid. “You were upset,” she said quietly.

“I was an asshole.”

She started to shake her head, stopped. She could have been talking about the stain again. “I don’t remember what you said. It doesn’t matter, anyway. It’s past.”

“Do you forgive me?”

“I don’t have to forgive you for loving her.” She caught his eye. “That’s all I heard in that room, Michael—that you loved her. All right?”

She did forgive him, and she was asking him to drop it. “All right,” he said, feeling much better. He should have come to her weeks ago. She picked up her papers and books from the passenger seat, glad to change the subject.

“You can see I’m still studying for the SAT,” she said. “I have to take it, not this Saturday, but next.”

“That’s when I’m taking it. At Sanders High?”

She brightened. “Yeah. Maybe we’ll be in the same room.”

“Maybe.”

She nodded to her test book. “I’m not doing so hot on these trial tests. How do you score on them?”

He had not given a thought to the SAT. “I haven’t taken any.”

“Really? You’re just going to walk in there and do it? That’s amazing.” She glanced at her scratch papers, frowned. “I wish I could do that.”

“You’ll do fine. Don’t worry about it.”

“I’m not worried.” She laughed. “I’m terrified.”

He smiled. “If worse comes to worst, I can always slip you my answers—if you’d want them.”

She looked up at him. “Don’t tempt me, guy.”

“Of course you’d have to pay me in advance.”

“Oh! I do have to pay you. I mean, I still owe you a movie.” She paused. “Would you like to go to the movies with me?”

He felt much much better. “When?”

“How about tomorrow?”

Tomorrow was Friday, and he
had
to work because he was already taking Saturday off to play in the final practice game of the season. He couldn’t do that to his bosses—disappear two days in a row during the busiest part of the week. They’d already given him a break by not firing him when he had stayed home for days on end after the funeral.

On the other hand, this last preseason game was against a marshmallow of a school. And Coach Sellers was still trying to make up his mind about a couple of guards. If he did call in sick, the team would still win, and the two guys would get more playing time, and have more of an opportunity to prove themselves. By working Saturday, he could rationalize taking Friday off.

“Tomorrow would be great,” he said.

They worked out the details. He would pick her up at six at her house and they would take it from there. She squeezed his hand just before she drove away. He decided she had changed her mind about studying with Julie.

He didn’t know what was the matter with him. He could never sit around and enjoy a happy moment. His brief conversation with Lieutenant Keller suddenly came back to plague him. He hadn’t had enough information to challenge the detective. He needed more. He needed to study that autopsy report.

He got into his car, drove to the police station. There he picked up the permission form. The sooner he got it back to them, the sooner he might clear Alice’s name. He headed for the McCoy residence.

Polly answered the door. There were shadows beneath her eyes, and the rest of her features looked drawn and tired. She had lost a great deal of weight, particularly in her face. He had never realized how pretty she was, or how much she resembled her sister.

“Hi, Mike,” she said. She had on dark wine-colored pants, a white blouse, a red scarf around her neck. “How are you?”

“I’m all right. How about you?”

“Fine. Would you like to come in?”

“Yeah, thanks.” He stepped inside, bracing himself involuntarily. Even twenty years from now he doubted that he would feel comfortable in this mansion. The plush carpet, the high white ceilings—he remembered it all too well. There was, however, a slight stale odor in the air he did not recall. Polly led him toward the couch in the living room where he’d been sitting with Nick and Maria when the gun had gone off.

“I was in the neighborhood, and I thought I’d stop by and see how things are,” he said as they sat down.

“That was nice of you.”

He glanced about. “It’s amazing how neat you’re able to keep this place.”

“Polly.” A thin voice sounded from the direction of the hallway. Polly immediately leaped to her feet, but stopped at the start of the hall.

“It’s a friend from school, Aunty. Do you need anything?”

“No, dear, talk to your friend first.”

“First?
Do
you need anything?”

“Go ahead and talk to your friend,” the old woman said.

Polly shook her head, mildly irritated, and returned to her place beside Michael on the couch. “She’ll probably call out again in a minute,” she said.

“How is she? Someone told me she’d had a heart attack?”

She nodded. “Yeah. The doctors say it was mild, but she’s so old. She hasn’t really got her strength back. She has to stay in the downstairs bedroom. The climb upstairs is too much for her.”

“Do you have a nurse?”

“I can take care of her. If she’d tell me what she wants. She doesn’t know half the time.” Polly shook her head again and then looked at him, smiling, pain beneath the smile. He almost decided right then and there not to bring up the reason for his visit. “I’m glad you stopped by,” she said. “It gets kind of boring sitting home every night.”

“You should try to get out.”

Polly glanced toward the front hall, or was it up, toward the bedroom where they had found Alice. That was one room he’d like to look at again. “Not yet,” she said.

He cleared his throat. “Polly, I have a confession to make. I did have another reason for stopping by. I have a few questions I want to ask you.”

“Would you like something to eat?”

“No thanks. What I wanted—”

“How about something to drink?”

He smiled. “Sure. Juice would be nice.”

She jumped up. “What flavor? We have pineapple-coconut?”

“That would be fine.”

She was back in a minute with a huge ice-filled glass, a slice of orange stuck on the rim. She hadn’t bothered about one for herself. She sat on the couch a little closer this time, her expression now more alert than hurt. “Is it good?” she asked.

He took a sip. “Great.” He set it in his lap, stirred the ice with the straw she had provided. “I wanted to ask about Alice,” he said carefully.

“We can talk about her,” she said quickly. “Jessie and Sara—they think I’ll break down if I hear her name. But I won’t. She was my sister, after all, why shouldn’t I talk about her?”

“That’s a good attitude.” Man, this was hard. Despite what she said, he felt as if he were treading on thin ice on a hot day. “What I wanted to say—Do you think Alice killed herself?”

“Didn’t she?”

“Do
you
think she did?”

Polly turned her head away, stared off into space for a moment. “What?”

Michael set down his drink on the coffee table. “Do you think she was the suicidal type?”

She frowned. “Do you mean before she killed herself? She only killed herself the one time. At least that was the only time she tried, that I know of.”

“Do you think there might have been other times?”

“She never told me about any other time. She didn’t tell me about this time, before she did it I mean. But she didn’t always tell me everything. We were close, but she had her secrets, which I think is all right.”

“Polly.”

“What? Did I put too much ice in your juice?”

“No. What I’m trying to say is I don’t think she killed herself.”

“No?”

“No. I think she was murdered.”

Polly was impressed, to a certain extent. “Really?”

“Yes.”

“Who murdered her?”

“I don’t know. That’s why I’m here. I’m trying to find out.”

Polly was suddenly confused. “You don’t think I did it, do you?”

“No.”

She relaxed. “I didn’t. I thought she did it. That’s what that doctor at the hospital told me. The man with the electricity.”

“The man with the what?”

Polly shook her head. “Never mind. I see what you’re saying. You think someone killed her on purpose, and not accidentally.”

“Yeah.”

“And you don’t know who it is?”

“Right.” He sat up, folded his hands. “Polly, just before Alice died, you went outside to check the chlorine in the pool. Do you remember if you turned the pool light off?”

She nodded. “Sure I remember, I have a good memory. I turned it off.”

“After you put the chlorine in the water?”

“Yes.”

“How long before you heard the shot did you turn off the light?”

“Not long.”

“A minute?”

“Yeah.”

That would explain why the room had been so dark. “When you were outside at the pool, did you see anybody?”

“No.”

“Did you hear anything? Like up on the roof?”

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

“No. Yes.”

“What did you do when you heard the shot?”

“Wh—I came inside. You saw me. Don’t you remember?”

“I remember.” She had been about to say something else. “Tell me about Clark?”

Polly spoke defensively. “I don’t know his last name.”

“I understand. But can you tell me anything about him? How did you meet him?”

“On a hike in the mountains. I sprained my ankle and he came and drew my picture.”

“Where in the mountains?”

“I don’t know what the place is called. We took that road that leads up and away from the racetrack.”

“The Santa Anita Racetrack?”

“Yeah, we went up there.”

“You and Alice?”

“Yeah.”

“What school did Clark go to?”

“I don’t know if he went to school.”

“But wasn’t he our age?”

“I don’t know. He never talked about school. Alice told me you met him?”

“I did, yeah, at the first football game. Tell me, what did he talk about?”

“Weird stuff. He was a weird guy. But he—he was interesting, too.”

“Why did Alice go out with him?”