Dead Dancing Women (30 page)

THIRTY-NINE

It was dark when
we got to town, having dodged four deer happily prancing their way from one side of the road to the other, and one of the mangiest coyotes I'd ever seen. The deer were already into their dark fall coats. Sad, because it marked their way of dodging the bullets of November. I pointed this out to Dolly, who looked over at me as if I were crazy.

“We've got a killer on the loose. Friends alone there in town. Can't get ahold of the chief. And you're worrying about those deer? Who almost just killed us, by the way. Running out like they did.”

“You're just mad because you don't have a siren.”

“Damn straight, I'm mad. That's Gilbert's fault, too. My siren. And my ankle. These damn crutches. If I didn't have 'em I'd be driving and we'd be there by now.”

With monumental restraint, I didn't indulge myself in a comment about her driving—and the cars she'd wrecked.

We avoided conversation the rest of the way into town.

The windows of the Leetsville Police Station were bright squares against the dark. I parked in front and we could see a woman inside, taking off her jacket and hanging it on a corner coat tree. But no Lucky.

“That's the chief's wife. I'll run in and find out where Lucky's got to. You wait here.”

I didn't have time to argue. She was out of the car, up on her crutches, and in the station. Dolly'd gotten the hang of the things and they weren't holding her back. In a few minutes she came flying out of the station. She got in, swinging the crutches dangerously near my head as she tossed them in the car.

“You'll never believe where Lucky is?” Her mouth fell open as she waited for me to guess.

I shrugged.

“Out at Sandy Lake.” Dolly's eyes were wide. “Damnedest thing. The Mitchell boys found a car with the back end sticking up out of the lake. Somebody wanted to sink it and failed. The boys tried to get it out. I'll bet to go joy riding but it was stuck down in the lake bottom. They told their dad and he called Lucky. It's a hearse, Emily. Gilbert's hearse. I radioed Lucky. They just pulled it up on shore. Got white paint on the right front fender. Lucky's called Brent already. The state cops are on their way over from Gaylord to help us hunt for Gilbert. Could be he's stole a car and long gone. Or maybe he's around. But somebody helped him out there at Sandy Lake. Had to get a ride back. Maybe Sullivan. Lucky says be careful. I told him we'd be over to Amanda's. He said that was a good thing. Don't know what's going to happen next.”

I put the car in gear and backed out, squealing my tires loud enough to make Dolly smile.

“You see that?” Dolly whispered and pointed at something.

The Poets' house was dark except for a dim light in one of the front windows. Amanda's Dodge Dart was parked in the gravel drive beside the house, so we knew they were back. We'd been sitting in my car, lights out, discussing how to handle the situation, how much to tell the women. We didn't want them scared.

I'd seen what she was pointing to. Darkness against darkness. A figure moving out from the trees, around behind the house.

The figure was furtive, bent forward. Thick bodied, but impossible to tell whose body.

“What do we do?” Dolly whispered, bent down as if to hide, though we were in complete darkness.

“Can't leave,” I said.

“Can't get ahold of Lucky. Damn, why didn't I think to take a radio with me?”

“Do we just sit? What if he's breaking in? They're alone in there.”

“He probably wants Amanda's car.”

“What if he takes them hostage?” By this time we were hissing at each other.

“I got my gun.”

“You going to take him on crutches?”

“Won't need to chase him down if I've got my gun.”

“And if he runs? What then?”

“You want to chase him?” she demanded. “Look, what's important are the women. Let's get up there to the door. We can maybe look in, see what's going on. I could stay here then, keep the place covered. You go back to the station. Find Lucky.”

“I'm not leaving you.”

“Don't be an idiot.”

“Yeah. I'll prop you up against the house with your gun and leave.”

“OK. OK. Let's fight later. Slide over here and come out my door so we don't keep slamming doors and having the overhead light come on. We'll do it once. Get the crutches out of the back for me.”

We coordinated the whole thing, opened the door, and slid out as gracefully as we could.

Dolly stationed herself beside one of the front windows, body balanced on her crutches, gun in her hand. I was going to creep around to the porch and look in the door window. I made a move in that direction just as the front door opened.

The first thing we heard was Flora Coy crying and begging the person behind her, pushing her out onto the porch, not to hurt her. “You know I won't take it now.” Flora's words were interrupted by snuffles. “I can't do what Ruby wanted. That's not me. No chapel. That was always more Ruby's dream. Ernie owns the property. There's no more Women of the Moon. It's all yours. All yours.”

“All you had to do was tell me where it was,” the person behind her, still inside the house, hidden by the door, growled at her.

“I didn't remember. Why, you know …” Poor Flora was hanging on to the banister, looking down the steps as if afraid of being pushed again. “I forgot she told me to put it near something I loved. All that's been going on … right out of my head. You know I wouldn't have kept any …”

Dolly and I braced our bodies against the house, staying out of sight. I could have bent down, hidden behind the bushes under the window, but not Dolly, not up on the tree trunks she was swinging from. We held our breath.

From behind Flora, Amanda Poet emerged. She stumbled on the door sill and grabbed the storm door.

“Watch yourself.” It was a man's voice, behind her.

Gilbert. Taking hostages, as we'd feared. And here we were …

I felt Dolly pressing something into my side. It was her gun.

“Take it,” she whispered faintly at my ear.

I thought I got the picture. I was to step out with the gun and stop him. She'd remain back in the shadows, pretending she had him covered, too. It was all we had.

I was ready to take a step forward when Amanda spoke again.

“None of you old witches needed to die, if you weren't so greedy.”

“Nobody was greedy, Amanda.” Flora, at the bottom of the steps, looked back up at Amanda Poet. “I didn't even know about the will. Now it doesn't matter.”

“Joslyn knew. Came over here and told me right after they found Mother. Threatening me. She said that was the way Mother wanted it and that was the way it was going to be. Imagine, leaving all that money to the bunch of you.”

“We wouldn't have …”

“Gilbert, shut her up. I just can't listen to any more of this. Now we've got to go back out there to that awful writer person's house and get those damn birds.”

Gilbert Murphy stepped forward, around Amanda Poet, who stood with her hands to her ears. He pulled Flora's arm and started dragging her toward Amanda's car when I grabbed Dolly's gun, took a deep, shaky breath, and stepped out into his path.

The three of them stopped where they were, frozen in place.

“Not another step,” Dolly said from back by the house. “We've both got guns.”

I stood in what I imagined was gun-holding stance, legs apart, hands—with gun—straight out in front of me. I didn't say a word. I couldn't. I just stood and pointed—not sure which one of them I pointed at.

“My goodness!” Flora was the first to speak. “Emily? Is that you?” She turned. “And Dolly? Well, am I glad to see the two of you. This pair, why they're in cahoots. Both going to get money from their poor mothers. Murdered them. “

She walked between me and Gilbert as she spoke, coming right at me.

“Get down, Flora!” Dolly yelled as Gilbert made a move to grab her. Flora dodged his outstretched arms, and fled behind me, where she held on so hard I could barely keep my hands out straight.

Gilbert stopped where he was. He raised his arms, which made me feel better.

Amanda hadn't moved. Now she took her hands down from her ears. All I could see in the light from the doorway were the whites of her eyes.

“Why, Emily. We were coming back out to your place … ,” Amanda began to speak. She took a few steps forward.

“Stay right where you are, Amanda. The chief's on his way with the state cops. You're not going out to Emily's or anywhere.”

“Don't be silly, Dolly. This can all be explained …”

“No, it can't,” Flora, peeking out from behind me, said. “Our dear Ruby left a will giving us those oil leases. She wanted a chapel built in Joslyn's woods, by the fire. So all women could come and join in, maybe make our little group grow. That's what Amanda wanted from me. Mine's taped to the bottom of one of my birdcages. I just forgot because … well … I just forgot.”

“That's OK, Flora,” I said. Her voice was shaking, and her hands weren't steady either.

A block or so away, I heard sirens blaring. Lucky. I hoped he was on his way. No doubt somebody in town had seen and called him. Somebody knew Dolly and I were standing out here with two killers held at gunpoint. Something this big couldn't have slid under the town's infallible radar.

“Get down, Gilbert,” Dolly ordered.

“DOWN! On your face!” she shouted when he didn't move fast enough.

Dolly limped from the dark shadows of the house, whipping her handcuffs out as she came haltingly forward. She handed the cuffs to me and pointed toward Gilbert, now docile and face down on the ground. She took the gun from my hands and kept it trained on Amanda while I cuffed Gilbert—which wasn't as easy as it looked on
COPS
.

“Why Dolly!” Amanda's voice was disappointed. “You lied to us. You don't have a gun at all.”

“Sorry, Amanda,” she said just as Lucky, siren blaring, pulled up on the grass. “I guess some of us don't know how to be a lady.”

Gilbert and Amanda disappeared into the back of the chief's car. Amanda scolded Gilbert when he didn't step aside and let her get in first. Gilbert growled at her and she finally shut up.

Later, when she'd finished filing her report and been congratulated by Officer Brent and the other state cops, and been assured by Lucky Barnard that she was back patrolling in town—as soon as they got her car fixed, Dolly joined the rest of us at Fuller's EATS, where most of Leetsville had already gathered.

Over coffee, Flora preened when she was called a hero and patted on the back. Simon said she'd probably get Ruby's money now.

Flora shook her head. “Well, no use to it, is there? I can't build that chapel. Land's Ernie's and he won't want anything like that out there.” She thought awhile. “Seems I could build a shelter for women. That'd be the ticket. And I can tell them about Ruby and Mary Margaret, and Joslyn. Maybe one of them will start up Women of the Moon again.” She looked at the avid faces around her and nodded, again and again.

“I figured just today it had to be Gilbert doing this,” Gloria announced to anyone who would listen. “Always about money. You should've known that, Emily.” She stooped to fill my cup with coffee—though I'd ordered tea. “All you have to do is watch
Law & Order.
And when Eugenia mentioned she thought the two of them had a thing going on, well, that was it. Amanda'd get the oil lease money. Gilbert the insurance. And they'd get out of Leetsville like Amanda always wanted. Just don't understand, with his connections, why Gilbert cut up poor Ruby and buried her out in the woods. Why didn't he just put her in a box and bury her properly at the cemetery?”

Nancy, another waitress, made a noise. “That's easy,” she snorted. “'Cause his mother would've seen the order to open a grave. If she looked, she woulda seen he paid for the plot himself. With Ruby missing, you can bet Mary Margaret woulda been asking questions.”

“I figured all along it had to be Gilbert, too,” Simon, not to be outdone, spoke up, leaning back and running a hand through his long, blond hair. “He's the one did the bodies at the funeral home. 'Less it was Mary Margaret. Personally, I figured he put poor Ruby out there to make it look like old Harry Mockerman did it—over a load of firewood. Once he started killing, guess Gilbert figured he'd do in his mother and brother and burn down the funeral home for the insurance money. Maybe by then he'd decided, with all that money, he could live in Vegas and get himself a showgirl.” The men in the place snickered. The women eyed them coldly. “Well, I guess that was until he messed up the hearse and needed Amanda to help him hide it and get him out of town.”

“That's where you two come in,” Eugenia said, pointing at me and Dolly.

All Dolly had to add was that the day we saw an angry Joslyn Henry heading into Amanda's was the day she'd found Ruby Poet's hand-written will, leaving everything to the women in order to perpetuate their love of nature. “To Amanda and Gilbert,” she said, a hint of self-satisfaction in her sniff, and in the set of her shoulders, “that meant all the women had to die, and all copies of a second will had to be destroyed.”

“Good thing Lucky Barnard was on the job—besides me and Emily, of course,” Dolly added, giving a slow, serious look at the people gathered around us. “And Pastor Runcival, too. He finally called Lucky to say it was Amanda who'd been at the church. Amanda's voice on those awful phone calls to Flora, here. It was her sending the letters, too. She admitted it to Lucky.