Dead Dancing Women (5 page)

The jar in my hands was hot. I set one palm on top of the lid and slid the corner of my jacket under the bottom. I had to get out fast or I'd end up burned. I backed across the room, thanking Harry as I went. Dolly, though she wasn't happy about learning nothing, followed me through the living room and out the screen door, Harry trailing along behind. The dogs, in back, began to bark again. I could imagine them straining at their leashes, teeth bared, mouths foaming.

In the doorway, Dolly turned as if remembering something. “Oh,” she said over the barking. She gave Harry a big smile. “Just to warn you. There'll be men out here searching the woods tomorrow. Don't want you to be surprised if you see a lot of people wandering around.”

Harry looked Dolly straight in the face. His eyes popped wide. “Searching for what?” he demanded.

“For the rest of Miz Poet, of course. Got to be more of her somewhere. These woods the logical place now.”

Harry didn't say another word. He wasn't happy with the thought of men in his woods. In the spring Harry was busy, from the middle of May until late June, chasing mushroom hunters off his property. Now he was faced with the prospect of hordes of men, in uniform, stepping on his illegal traps and stomping over his mushroom grounds. We left an unhappy Harry Mockerman behind us.

Out in the weedy drive, I juggled the jar of stew from hand to hand. Dolly leaned toward me and whispered, “Harry's lying, you know.”

“About knowing Mrs. Poet? Well, of course. Living here all his life, he had to …”

“No, I mean about not being out to the road.”

“What do you mean?”

She pointed at the jar I was clutching. “Possum,” she said. “There was one beside the road when I got here yesterday. Remember?”

“But that was yesterday. The crows got it by now.”

Dolly gave me a look. “You want to bet? I know these old woodsmen. That possum cooking in that pot didn't walk right up and drop dead at his door.” She shook her head and dodged a huge raspberry bush. “And about the crows. He said ‘lots of crows.' How'd he know if he wasn't out to the road some time or other?”

“He could've heard them.”

“Way back there?” she motioned over her shoulder, back toward the house. “Un-uh. I think he saw 'em.”

“Shy man. Maybe he just doesn't want anything to do with the whole business. Lots of people like that up here.” I didn't like thinking ill of Harry.

We stepped out from the bushes to the pavement. Dolly gestured toward the empty road. No crows. No head. No garbage can. No possum.

“See,” she said, giving me a knowing look. “Possum's gone.”

“Crows got it,” was all I said. I turned to look back toward Harry's place. There was a shadow down the path again. Not a deer. Not a bird. Something. Definitely something.

I looked at the jar in my hands and decided I wouldn't be eating this stew. It had smelled good, cooking back there in Harry's kitchen, but now I had an idea where it came from, and just the thought—the dead possum on one side of the road, dead Ruby Poet on the other—took my appetite away.

SEVEN

Our next stop was
Joslyn and Ernie Henry's house. Mother and son. Down the road about a mile, and another half mile in. Close by Ruffle Pond.

The narrow lane into their house ran through daylight turned golden by tall yellow and red maples swaying like hula dancers in the mild, southern wind. As Dolly drove closer, glints of sunlight sparkled off the pond.

Dolly negotiated the ruts and mud holes in the curving road with precision. I guessed she didn't want to damage another police car. All that was left for her to patrol, should she get in trouble again, were the two-track logging roads deep in the woods.

The pond was wild and shallow, almost circular, with a sandy shore. We passed along the far side, the road circling around toward the Henry's tall, plain farmhouse.

We lurched past the south edge of the pond just as a flock of geese lifted off the water, honking their hearts out as they headed up and over the trees. I couldn't help mumbling something about rats leaving the sinking ship. I loved to see the birds return in spring, but fall was another thing entirely. I saw it as desertion. As the worst kind of cowardice.

Joslyn Henry's house was as I remembered it, standing in an open space surrounded by woods. The house itself was as simple as an Amish farmer. Pale green, with a long and wide front porch where three rockers stood in a line, all rocking slightly in a nonexistent breeze. Around the house were gardens: wide beds; some forked over and raked; some filled with bright and dull, yellow and rust, mums; some with purple asters. We parked and walked straight up through the center of the garden, up broad green steps to the porch. Dolly knocked.

I saw the lace door curtain twitch back, then fall into place. I hadn't seen a face looking out, but there was definitely someone home.

Dolly knocked again. This time the inner door opened and Joslyn Henry stood there, half hidden behind the door, peering out at us through the screen. The woman frowned, hung back. Not a bit friendly. If anything, I would have said Joslyn Henry was wary of me and my uniformed friend.

“Yes?” she said, and opened the door a bit wider when she saw who it was. There was still no invitation in her voice, no smile on her long, wary face.

Her hair was piled up into a loose, floppy topknot. She wore a flowered house dress with a coat sweater over it. Today she looked her seventy or so years, unlike the vital Joslyn Henry I'd met before.

“What can I help you with?” Mrs. Henry said, as if we were Jehovah's Witnesses.

“It's me,” I said. “Emily Kincaid. Your neighbor.” I leaned around Dolly and smiled wide to show how harmless I was.

“Sure, I know you, Emily. Not senile yet.”

The screen door stayed closed. I stood with an inane smile pasted on my face. “This is Deputy Dolly … eh …”

“Wakowski.” Dolly leaned forward and gave her last name. “We met before, Miz Henry. I think I gave your son Ernie a ticket once. Came here 'cause he got mad and tore it up and I didn't want his temper getting him in trouble. But that's neither here nor there. Thing is, Emily, here, found something strange in her garbage can yesterday morning and we're kind of going around to the neighbors, wondering if you saw anything odd out by the road. Some person not supposed to be hanging around.”

“What was it, Emily?” Mrs. Henry asked me, ignoring Dolly. I got the impression that what I had to say wasn't going to come as a surprise. From her frozen face and icy voice, I figured Mrs. Henry knew about Ruby Poet and had already been crying.

“It was a human head, Mrs. Henry,” I said, though I was still talking through her screen door and wondering why. Must be Dolly's uniform again, I thought. We were going to have to split up to talk to people, or Dolly was going to have to think about a wardrobe change.

Mrs. Henry caught her breath and put a hand to her mouth. She put her other hand out to steady herself in the doorway, forcing the door open a little more. If she would only have unlocked the damned screen, I could have helped her. Whatever her reason for the unfriendly behavior, she was on her own handling her surprise—if it was a surprise.

“Whose head was it?” she asked when she could take a deep breath again.

“Ruby Poet's,” Dolly said with a bluntness that made me uncomfortable. “You must've known Miz Poet, didn't you?”

Again, Mrs. Henry had to hold on to the doorjamb. She made a noise and shook her head, as if she were clearing it. “Oh, no,” she said. “So it's true. Poor Ruby. Oh my. Who would do such a thing to our beloved Ruby? Oh dear. Oh dear.” She put both hands to her mouth and really cried.

“Now, come on, Ma.” Ernie, a short, thick, little man who usually wore overalls with an oily rag sticking from the back pocket, appeared from somewhere behind her and clucked first at her, then at me and Dolly. “Flora Coy called earlier about Miz Poet. Ma's really upset. Maybe you better come around another time.”

“Well, now, Ernie, could you answer a couple of questions?” Dolly pushed on.

“Neither one of us saw a thing.” Ernie, hanging behind in the shadows, shook his head. Joslyn Henry stepped back. She was bent almost in half, sobbing.

“If you'd let us in …”

“Come on, Deputy. You can see for yourself this isn't a good time. I'd better take care of my mother. Miz Poet was her friend. You need to know anything, you come back another day, OK?”

“Of course,” I said, putting a hand on Dolly's arm. She was pretty stiff and determined.

“Were you out to the road yesterday morning, Ernie?” Dolly whipped out her notebook and tried looking official, while pulling away from me.

“Yes, I was. Putting out the garbage. That's all. We've got a wire cage by the road. That way I don't have to fool with garbage cans, just drive the bags out.”

“You see anybody? Anything different? See somebody hanging around?” Dolly said.

Ernie shook his head and took a swipe at his nose. “Not a soul.” His voice was shaky. The woman behind him moved out of sight. I could hear her sobbing and felt sorry for both son and mother. I wanted to get out of there.

“Anybody in the area been acting strange lately?” Dolly was press
ing on. I grabbed her arm again. “What about that time Parson Run
cival,
took exception to what was goin' …”

I pulled hard now. She glared at me. I glared back.

“That was nothing. Ma's got friends, is all. Maybe you should go talk to Mary Margaret over to the funeral home. She was in the group with Ma. Or even Flora Coy. There's another one.”

“Sorry, Ernie,” I said. “Tell your mother I feel bad for her trouble. We'll come back another time, if you don't mind. When your mother's doing better.”

Ernie nodded. “Sure. If that's necessary. Terrible thing that's happened. Probably some awful accident. Happens to old people I guess. That's why I'm always warning Ma about being out by the pond, the way they are. Never know.”

We backed off the porch and down the steps, Dolly sputtering at me, and warning me to take my hand off of her.

“By the way,” Ernie called after us, holding the outer door wider now. “If you go see Amanda, tell her we got the news and that we're sorry for her loss. Tell her we'll be in to visit when things calm down out here. OK? Will you do that for us?”

I waved, assuring Ernie we'd deliver his message if we could.

The inner door closed slowly on Ernie Henry. I heard the lock click behind him. Both of the Henrys weren't feeling hospitable and I didn't blame them. After all, these people didn't have reporters and police coming to their door every day. I understood their reluctance to talk. I hoped everybody up here wouldn't feel the same, or Dolly and I were going to get nowhere.

EIGHT

“Probably one of the
dying ones,” Dolly said, shaking her head as we walked back through Mrs. Henry's garden, to the car. She pointed to a tall, old maple at the edge of the woods. “If you know anything about trees, the ones that are going to die will be the best and brightest one year and the next they're nothing but sticks. Guess if you're gonna go that's the best way. One last blast of color.”

I agreed, though I found nothing particularly encouraging about going out in a blast of color, or any other way, for that matter. Not at that moment, when death seemed to be our only topic of conversation. Deputy Dolly Wakowski certainly had a dark side to her.

“Lots of women like Miz Henry, up here,” Dolly was saying very low and confidentially, as we climbed back into her police car. “Widowed early. Left with her son, Ernie … geez, the guy must be almost forty. Never married. Stays home with mama. I hear he's kind of tight with a dollar. Probably doesn't want a wife.”

“They're both afraid of something,” I said.

“Whew,” Dolly whistled. “You can say that again. All of 'em. Harry Mockerman. These folks. Something's really spooked 'em. Never know. People who live alone back in these woods … well, you just never know. They get funny, being alone too much.”

“I live alone back in these woods,” I said, yet one more time, taking umbrage at her blanket judgment of us all. “Only sensible way to get along. Keep to yourself.”

“I suppose you'd feel like that,” Dolly said, watching the rearview mirror as she backed her way out to a turnaround. “You've got that in you. Probably end like the rest of them: old, eccentric, a little nutty. Or, maybe you'll get it in gear and write a good mystery for a change.”

“And maybe you'll stop crashing police cars; and get off patrolling these back roads; and do something better with your life than chase innocent people, and give them tickets.”

Dolly made a face and gave me what I could only describe as a malevolent smile. Her washed-out blue eyes crinkled with tiny lines at their corners. For a thirty-some-year-old woman, Dolly was already getting the skin of middle-age. Too much frowning, I thought. Too many long faces. Too much sauntering up to pulled-over cars and smiling tight, mean smiles.

“Sorry if I touched a nerve.” Dolly braked, and turned full at me, one small hand flying up. Her slightly cock-eyed, blue eyes looked polished. “I don't know when to shut my mouth. Emily, you're helping me out here and I know it. What you do with your life is none of my damned business. It's just me. That's the way I am. Not that I want to be like this. I wish to God I could learn to shut up. But I don't think people should be alone all the time.”

“Now that you've gone through all of that, you'd better be ready to tell me you live a happy life with husband and kids,” I grumbled. “You better live where the birds sing and butterflies flit, and hummingbirds sit on your shoulder.”

She gave me a look, then threw back her head and laughed. “Yup. That's it. You just described my life.”

She let the brake up and headed back to my place.

“I'll bet you're a really good writer, Emily,” she said as we neared my drive. “I mean, I've never known anybody who wrote anything but letters and checks before. You're probably a lot smarter than I am. Maybe that's my problem with you. It's like you're looking down at me. I've only been out of Leetsville a couple of times in my life. I don't know … eh … the things you know. I didn't go to college, like you.”

Taken by surprise, I began to laugh. Being with Dolly Wakowski was like traveling on a very wild conversational roller coaster. Up. Down. All over the place.

“What do you mean ‘looking down at you'?” I asked. “I'm trying to keep up with you. I don't even know what we're doing. I should be working on my next really awful mystery. Instead, here I am annoying my neighbors. Probably just made enemies for life, thanks to you.”

She gave a small chuckle, the most mirth I'd seen from her since our first traffic ticket together. She stopped behind where I'd left my car and leaned over the steering wheel. “So what've we got?” she asked.

“A lying Harry Mockerman and a frightened Joslyn Henry. Oh, and a very nervous Ernie Henry,” I said.

“What's it all about, do you think?”

I shrugged. “An old woman's been killed. Will Chief Barnard tell you what the coroner says about the head? I mean, what he finds—how she was killed, how long ago?”

Dolly nodded. “The chief'll tell us whatever they tell him. He'd be doing this himself if it wasn't for Charlie, his little boy. He's in Munson Hospital, in Traverse. An operation, though the kid's only seven. Some heart thing he was born with. So, the chief's busy and we're it. Anyway, he told me he's afraid it won't end with old Miz Poet. I mean, no reason for her to be killed. None in the world. But somebody's taken exception to something the lady did. And if it's this dancing in the woods stuff, well, there's others that could be in trouble.”

“I doubt that has anything …”

“You don't know though, do you?” Dolly snapped around to look hard at me. “You don't know and I don't know and the chief doesn't know and we're charged with keeping the people safe. That's our job.”

I nodded. Well, that was her job. As for me, maybe I'd just as soon leave it to the state police investigators. I'd already pissed off three of my neighbors by prying. Now I wanted to get back to my house, put on some good music, cook an omelet for dinner, open a bottle of white wine, and lull myself into oblivion.

“Mind if I come with you?” Dolly motioned toward my drive. She watched me, maybe reading my mind and knowing I wanted to get rid of her.

“I've got to pee bad,” she said, and she gave me a pained look so I'd believe her.

That wasn't the kind of request you denied, so I got out and drove down ahead of her. I parked next to the house and motioned Dolly in next to my car.

She surprised me by peeing and leaving right afterward.

“I'll call you in the morning with anything I find out,” she said, standing with one foot in the police car. “If you're still interested by then.”

I left it there. I had to call the state police to get what they were giving out to the press, and call another story into Bill. Maybe that would be the extent of my involvement from here on, I thought. I was beginning to feel a little silly—doing this sleuthing thing with my girl chum, Deputy Dolly. Maybe it was time to get back to my real purpose in life—writing the crappy mystery. Wasn't that enough to handle? I asked myself, as I stood waving to Dolly, who backed up and out my driveway too fast through my fragile birch trees.

I went in to check my machine for messages and discovered a message from Jackson Rinaldi. Yuck, I thought as I listened to the familiar affected drone. “Emily. It's Jackson. Give me a call when you get in, will you? I've something to ask you. A favor—maybe—if you can find it in your heart …”

Here he gave a phony little laugh, as if I could deny him, would deny him; as if any woman could. “Well, it will be wonderful to speak to you anyway. It's been a long time. I've always thought of us as friends, no matter how difficult you made things …” I hit the button and cut him off.

Drivel. Enough for more than a single phone message. Jackson took up more time and more space than a decent person should. Hell if I'd call him. Let him call me. No, better yet—let him not call me and live with the fact I didn't care enough to pay attention.

I stomped around the house long enough to cool off then went to the phone and got the number of the Michigan State Police in Gaylord, over toward the middle of the state. Officer Brent wasn't there but I was referred to an Officer Chamberlain who gave me the pat story of the Poet investigation—everything I already knew. I hung up and called Lucky Barnard but he wasn't in either, at least nobody was answering the Leetsville Police Department's phone, which seemed strange since he and Dolly were the only law for many miles around. I made some notes, then called the paper, and gave Bill Corcoran all the information I had—not very much. I did put in a few quotes from Harry Mockerman and one from Ernie Henry. Just the usual about being shocked; how wonderful a woman Mrs. Poet was. That sort of thing. He was still concerned enough about me to offer to come out if I needed help. I said I didn't, that I'd be fine. When I hung up, my duty done, I sat looking down at the phone awhile then picked it up and dialed the familiar number of my old house in Ann Arbor. I waited through three rings and then came his voice on the machine, asking me to please leave him a message and he would get back to me as soon as time permitted.

“Bastard,” I muttered under my breath, half hoping the machine caught it. “This is Emily returning your call.” Bang. Nothing else. No message. No encouragement. No
“Call me, please, oh please, oh please, will ya, huh?”

I had at least an hour before I'd be starving and, since I was deeply depressed, I didn't want to let myself eat until it was safe. If I opened the refrigerator at that moment I'd gobble everything in sight then head back to Leetsville, to the nearest market, and buy more to gobble. It wasn't that I put on weight after these binges, I usually didn't. It was that I made myself sick. Instead, I planned a lovely omelet dinner and a jug of wine, a hunk of bread … though, blissfully, there was no “
thou, beside me. Singing in the wilderness.
”

I went out to my studio to work awhile on the book, which loomed larger and larger in my consciousness. I'd decided to focus on writing, and not think about dead heads, and strange-acting neighbors, and certainly not odd little female deputies with gun belts.

My studio was the size of a small garage. Plain. Undecorated. Wooden. A single open room with windows looking out on a small meadow where I could watch deer chase each other; and once I'd seen a coyote passing through; and once a mother fox with her kits. It was a good place to work and a good place to do nothing but stand at the window and look out—a thing I did a lot of, calling it “mental writing.”

Elbows on the window sill was a terrific position, I'd found, for musing. My best stuff came from watching the meadow, and sometimes observing a spider weave a web in a corner of the window, and sometimes lying on my back on my ragged old futon, watching the ceiling, hoping inspiration would droppeth like “
the gentle rain from heaven
.”

During this hour, when it wasn't dark yet, in the still time before the sun went down, when the world held its breath and noises were embarrassing and alien, I decided my New York writer needed a male detective to counter her. Maybe they'd even fall in love. Martin Gorman, his name would be, I told myself, while lying on my futon contemplating nothing. He would be a man with a checkered past. A man with one divorce and a few troubles in his work. I would get him in deep with the seductive writer he'd be investigating. I needed a bar scene. Maybe Martin was going to take up drinking again, or he would have a fight with somebody. I wanted him to appear more and more unstable so people thought he wasn't to be trusted.

I didn't feel like putting myself into a smoky bar right then. Anyway, my troubles with the dead head and with my neighbors seemed a whole lot worse than Martin Gorman's. I was in no mood to write. All I seemed capable of was listening to the trees make a buzzing sound like electricity running through wires. But maybe it was only my ears, and the quiet of being so alone.