Dead Dancing Women (7 page)

ELEVEN

Being alone wasn't as
alluring as it once was. In the morning, after Dolly left to go to work, the walls crept closer. I felt as if I couldn't breathe; couldn't get my own stale air down far enough into my lungs because I'd breathed that same air before, tasted it before, was so overly familiar with that air I'd become allergic to it. And the sound of my refrigerator thumping and buzzing, my damned birdcall clock I'd thought so charming when I bought it—all of it was driving me crazy. My ears hurt at times, from the quiet that fell in between the mechanical sounds. My skin ached for the presence of another human being. Not to be made love to—it wasn't a deep down yearning sex thing. More a need to feel the floor shiver with movement I didn't make myself, to have a laugh or a word travel toward me, to share an emotion, draw a response, be given a touch of solace. For the first time in three years—I was more alone than I could stand.

I liked the idea of getting a dog. Dolly'd made fun of the idea of a puppy protecting me from anything. She said I should visit the shelter in Traverse and get an older dog that needed a home, who knew how to bark and tear a stranger's leg off. Old/young—I figured it didn't matter much since I'd never had a dog before and I'd be starting from scratch either way. Better to begin with a young one that wouldn't sense my inexperience and give me trouble. It seemed to me, with an old dog, it would be like Jackson—I'd be jumping through hoops for him within days. Not to say that I'm a wimp. More that it takes a lot of energy to control people and things. I never had that kind of energy.

Only enough to call Gaylord and talk to Officer Brent. I needed to know what was happening on the state police end. I had to write a follow-up for Bill. Getting to work felt like plugging into a stream of energy, tapping into things and people in motion. Better than standing at a window watching a quiet lake and a couple of loons, and doing nothing.

Brent was up in Mackinaw City, working on a case. Again, I got another officer.

“We don't know a lot at this point, Miss Kincaid.” The policeman's voice went deep and official.

“The arm and the head, they're from the same person?” I needed at least that much from him. Not two disparate bodies. Certainly not
two
of them.

“I think we can assume the … eh … appendages are from the same person. That would be all right to say.” This man was nothing if not cautious.

“Mrs. Poet then?”

A long pause. “You could say that.”

I squirmed. Pulling this man's fingernails out one at a time would be easier, I thought.

“So, you're investigating a murder.”

“Hmm, yes, you could say that.”

“Have fingerprints been taken?”

“Well now, that's up to our forensics lab in Grayling. We should be hearing soon, but since the head was hers, well, I think it's safe to say the arm belongs to her, too.”

“And the way the arm was … eh … removed from the body? They said the head had been sawed off. Is that true of the arm?” Talking about these things made my stomach do a slow rolling dive, but I had to ask the questions.

“Let's leave matters like that until we hear from the lab. They'll have a lot more to tell us.”

“I heard they found teeth marks on the head. So some animal found her after all.”

“I believe that's true. Maybe you need to get this from Officer Brent.”

“But no animal put her in my garbage can.”

“I rather doubt that was the case. Unless you've got yourself some homicidal chipmunks out your way.” His voice didn't change, not by a single quiver, but I knew he was making fun of me.

I forged ahead. “Any suspects yet?”

He cleared his throat. “You mean who murdered her?”

I wanted to scream. Getting anything from this guy was like pulling weeds with never-ending roots.

“Just put down that we're looking into a number of suspects. That an arrest is imminent.”

“Really? Can you name names?” I knew he had no one in mind and no arrest was imminent, but I couldn't help testing.

“You'll get that information as it becomes available. As I said, you should talk to Officer Brent.”

Sure. Enough of that party line, I told myself, and I hung up.

I called the paper.

Bill Corcoran was concerned even more for me when I told him about the arm. “You going to be all right?” His deep voice was worried and that made me feel good. A long time since a man had sounded like that about me. “Something really dangerous going on out there, Emily. I don't know if you should hang around or if you should keep working on the story. Maybe somebody else … ?”

“Why? They'd just have to interview me, 'cause I'm not going anywhere.”

“You might want to rethink that, consider making yourself scarce over there for a while. Sounds like somebody's got it in for you. If you need a place to stay, I've got a spare room.”

“Hmm, as attractive as that is …”

“I didn't mean …” He was flustered.

I wanted to laugh but didn't. “I'll be fine, Bill. Couldn't be in better hands.”

“And whose would those be? Lucky Barnard's?”

“Well, the chief and his deputy. They're taking very good care of me.”

“That would be Deputy Dolly right? Heard of her. Why don't I feel reassured?” he asked and hung up.

I spent the next hour standing at the front window, hugging my arms to my body and shivering. I stared out at the lake where the loons dipped and dove and popped up in unexpected places. Even they would soon be gone. I couldn't go out to my studio; writing was out of the question. No concentrating today. No sitting quietly in an empty room without the feel of eyes boring into my back, without my skin crawling at the slightest sound beyond the studio walls. I watched the loons until it was time to put my body in motion.

I had to meet Dolly in town in a couple of hours. We'd decided I should call back at Harry Mockerman's house; see if he'd tell me anything without the uniform present. And Joslyn Henry's, too. We thought maybe she and Ernie would be less nervous without Dolly there. Maybe Joslyn would ask me in, tell me what bothered her so much she'd been afraid to open the door to us.

First I had dog business to see to. I hurriedly scrawled a note to Simon, asking him to drop by with the puppy. Then I grabbed up my car keys and purse and drove to the top of my drive where I left my car.

Putting Simon's note into my mailbox meant pulling the mailbox door open. I'm not a slow learner. I already knew what could happen when you lifted lids and opened doors. A beating heart or an upright foot, anything could be in there. It took all I had to open the mailbox, stick the note inside without looking, then slam the door shut. Whoever was doing this to me knew what they were doing. Everywhere I turned seemed treacherous now—the woods too dark, trees too close. Willow Lake Road was too empty—there should be cars, traffic, people walking. What I'd loved about this North Country before—the emptiness and quiet—seemed a trap. Any misstep into a dark shallow of weeds and saplings could mean death.

I stood for a moment trying to recapture my place, my woods, my northern world. Sun and warmth and blue sky. It could be summer again. A day to work in my garden, cut back the iris and the lilies, tear out the tomatoes, rake a few of the beds, empty clay pots I would store in the shed until next spring. What a great day for getting my hands dirty, doing a last weeding of all my beds. Anything but tracking a murderer with Deputy Dolly. Anything but thinking about dead things.

I hesitated at the edge of the road, putting off walking up Harry's overgrown drive alone. Nothing was as friendly nor as accessible as it once was. With this change, with my small world made dangerous, I didn't feel I belonged up here the way I had.

Voices came from some place off in the woods. Male voices, calling one to the other. Men, where they weren't supposed to be. It frightened me, until I remembered—the police, hunting for more of Ruby Poet—whatever was left of her to find. I felt a little safer, knowing the police were in the woods along with whatever else was out there. Nobody was going to sling a leg or some other body part at me with the cops around. I started up Harry's dark path just a little braver than I'd been before.

The first thing I looked for was Harry's old black car/truck, but it wasn't behind the house. No one answered the door either. No smells met me. The house had the empty, nobody-home feeling that houses can get. I listened for Harry's chain saw off in the woods, but all I heard was a muffled call from one of the searchers. I walked around back, in case he was in the kennel. Nobody there but his dozen or more dogs, who went crazy, barking at the sight of me and leaping at the chainlink fence. I imagined the men searching the woods for Ruby Poet could hear and maybe the noise would draw them this way. Harry would hate that. Probably why he was gone—because he couldn't tolerate the thought of the police in his woods. Harry was a very private man. I'd violated his privacy enough already. I didn't want to be the cause of men swarming over his property.

I went back the way I'd gone in, and walked on down to Joslyn Henry's house. A couple of police officers, standing by the road, nodded as I passed, then went on talking, bending over a map they'd spread across the hood of their patrol car.

It felt good—the walking, getting some exercise. I didn't mind the half mile in to Joslyn Henry's house either. I was sure the police had been there before me, probably asking the same questions I was going to ask, but Dolly and I agreed we had to cover a lot of ground again and again, if we were going to get anywhere.

Another closed door. No answer to my knock or my, “Yoo-hoo. Mrs. Henry!”

Nobody home there either. I couldn't help but take a little time to walk around Joslyn Henry's flower beds and admire the configuration of circles and squares and ellipses she'd achieved. At that time of year, there wasn't much left in the way of vegetation, some dank-looking mums, a couple of bowing asters, but the layout of the garden was interesting, best seen when the beds were empty. It was a mathematical equation—a place of basic shapes. The woman, whether she knew it or not, was quite a garden designer. If this all worked out, and my neighbors were still speaking to me next spring, I decided I'd ask her to help me design a new plot of beds I'd been thinking about, up the hill at the back of the house. Nothing there now but bracken and a few wild raspberries. It could be pretty, laid out like this. Maybe a rose bed, though I'd have to order winter hardy bushes from Canada, because it could get down as low as thirty below. Maybe a back bed of double hollyhocks, with some tall lupine in front, and annuals in front of them. In my head, my garden was always perfect. In my head, no animal ever came to browse. In my head, there was never a bug on my flowers. Nobody ate a single bud. A storm never beat down the blossoms. In my head … ooh … like most of my life, much of my garden was lost inside my head.

TWELVE

Dolly's patrol car was
outside the restaurant when I got there. I stopped in the vestibule to look at Eugenia's latest outlaw relative before entering. It didn't do to let Eugenia think you ignored her genealogical charts—might get very cold soup for a week or so.

There were a couple of new sheets. One on a Harry Longabaugh, who'd fled the country with the law hot on his tail, and another one named Robert LeRoy Parker. The last name struck some kind of chord, but I figured Parker was a common enough name. Odd, I thought, how few of her relatives were named Fuller. I supposed they all came from the female side, lots of name changing. I leafed through the older charts to see if anything else rang a bell. Ned Christie, Pearl Bywater, Etta Place. Not a Fuller among them.

Eugenia was busy cutting pies and portioning them out onto plates. She smiled and nodded, but looked lost in thought over her pie work, so I was safe from genealogical comment. The restaurant was full, maybe it was the excitement in town or maybe because they were all hungry at the same time. The air quivered with smoke. I never found out where Eugenia's “No Smoking” section was. Probably lost in the fog.

Dolly was seated in a corner booth. I headed her way, cutting between chairs set at the end of filled tables. I spotted Doc Crimson, the town veterinarian, at a table under the air filter that kept snapping like a bug catcher. Just the man I needed to see. I waved and went over to stand by his table, as everybody did sooner or later, to ask what I should do about a new puppy.

“Just bring him on in when you get him. We'll give him his shots.” He shook his shaggy head of long white hair at me and held his fork, filled with crusty apple pie, just below his mouth, signaling this had better be a short consultation.

“Anything I need to know? I mean, about taking care of him.” I was on shaky ground with a young animal, or any other living, breathing thing. There had to be dietary requirements and sleep requirements and vitamins and all that stuff.

“He'll teach you.” His eyes danced, and I knew I was being had.

“Yeah,” I said. “That's what I'm afraid of. But what do I feed him?”

“Pick up a bag of puppy chow and read the label.”

“OK.” I nodded, sure I wasn't getting the whole story. “That's it?”

“About it. Maybe you'll need a bed for 'im. Maybe some toys—to keep him from chewing up the house. But you come on in and see me. We'll talk about it.”

Smart man, I thought, as I made my way to the corner booth near the front windows where Dolly sat. The vet wasn't giving me a lot of information for free when I might as well be paying for his time.

“Nobody home at Harry's or Mrs. Henry's house either,” I said to Dolly as I slid in across from her, keeping my voice low because I had the feeling we were the center of attention again. No one stared directly, but you can sense when ears are turned toward you, like a roof full of antennas.

“It was Miz Poet's arm all right,” Dolly half-whispered back. “Teeth marks, but nobody thinks a cougar dropped this one on you either.”

The Murphy boys from the funeral home were at the table across from us. I only knew one of them, Gilbert, the reported gambler in the family, a short, rotund, fortyish man who liked to stand outside the funeral home, over on Griffith Street, watch the cars go by, and smoke a foot-long cigar. In my first year up here, I met him while doing a story on a woman who'd sworn she'd seen a panther stalking a funeral party. Gilbert had laughed at the woman and wised me up to a few of the people in town who liked to come up with bizarre stories to keep the juices flowing, and the others in a state of panic.

I nodded to Gilbert and supposed the man with him was Sullivan, his twin. I couldn't go wrong in that assumption since the other guy looked exactly like Gilbert, only a little dimmed, as if he were fading into a smaller, shadowy version of his brother.

“Should we talk to them?” I mumbled to Dolly after the coffee we ordered arrived. Dolly glanced over my shrugging shoulders and shook her head.

“Not yet. Their mother, Mary Margaret, first, I'd guess. Those guys are both full of crap. Gilbert there's a gambler. His brother's a drinker. All kinds of stories about that pair.” She took off her hat and set it on the table between us. Her head looked like there'd been a bowl sitting on it. A flounce of damp hair stood out from her hat ring.

There were plenty of people in the restaurant today, sitting primly with their hands folded, waiting for service as they avoided looking directly at me and Dolly.

Gertie, of Gertie's Shoppe de Beauté, leaned out from a front booth and waved. She eyed my ragged, skunk-striped hair and gave a sad shrug. Dolly noticed and smirked. “We'll do something about your hair before Saturday,” she said. “I'll pick up some Clairol. But you'll have to pay me back.”

I agreed. Dolly pulled out a flip-up notebook and studied the notes she'd made. “I've been thinking,” she said, glancing up. “Let's outline this so we don't miss anything.”

“Good,” I said. “That's the way I write my mysteries.”

She gave me a non-supportive, skeptical look and made more notes. “What do you think of talking to Amanda Poet next? If anybody knows anything about her mother, it should be her.”

“Then the other women in Ruby's religious group—or whatever it was. Mary Margaret Murphy. We should see her right away. Maybe we could call Joslyn Henry and set up an appointment. Or go over and talk to Ernie at his repair shop.”

“The other lady, too,” Dolly said. “Flora Coy. I know Miz Coy pretty well from helping the garden club plant petunias down Main Street last spring, and before that she was with the Welcome Wagon and brought me a bunch of leftover free stuff one time.”

I nodded. Sounded like a plan.

“Don't forget the pastor at that church.” I motioned for her to write him down.

She nodded, wrote, then held the notebook up to look at our list in the light from the flyspecked window. She flipped the notebook shut and stuck it in her shirt pocket, looking satisfied. “That's a good start. I've already got a feeling we're onto something …”

“What would that be?” I asked, not sharing her confidence.

“Well, I mean, you know, it's got to be somebody here in Leetsville and right there the field is limited.”

“Why Leetsville? Remember how Harry Mockerman lied about being out at the road? And Ruby Poet's body is coming from somewhere in our woods. Harry's my neighbor. What's to say Harry didn't have a hand in this whole thing?”

“He said he didn't even know Miz Poet,” she argued, frowning at me, wrinkling her nose.

“And you said he was lying.”

“Hmm,” was all Dolly came up with. I had the sinking feeling neither of us had a clue how to go about finding the murderer of a harmless old, nature-worshipping lady.

We got up to leave and were stopped at one table after another by people asking if it was true we were looking into “poor” Ruby's murder. So much for that big secret, I thought, and couldn't help but shake my head and wonder how the heck a murderer expected to get away with keeping such a thing as doing a murder from all these folks. They didn't need cops and reporters in Leetsville. All they needed was somebody to make the rounds at Fuller's EATS and take notes.

Dolly smirked at people and kept pushing her way out. I stayed close behind, like a ship after a tug.

We drove both our cars the four blocks over to Amanda Poet's house and parked behind a blue Dodge Dart on the street.

I'd noticed the Poet's house before. A tiny place. A gingerbread house, barely large enough for two grown women, it had a peaked roof with carved trim and a tiny porch, where a child's rocking horse rocked. I'd thought it a playhouse the first time I drove through town, three houses down from Bailey's Feed and Seed, across the street from the Church of the Contented Flock.

The garden was always beautifully kept. In the spring, it was filled with tulips and jonquils. In the summer, the beds were a blast of color behind the low picket fence. I hadn't realized this was the house of the old woman who'd disappeared. Now, standing behind Dolly as she knocked at the door, I looked around. The garden was an unkempt tangle. No one had pulled the late summer weeds or deadheaded the last of the daisies. The daughter, Amanda, had obviously let the whole thing go. Probably distraught over her mother's disappearance, but why Ruby Poet's gardening friend, Joslyn Henry, or one of the other nature-loving women hadn't leaped in to save her friend's garden, I didn't understand.

There is something especially poignant about an abandoned garden. Maybe because you know it had been loved and tended once. I took a lot of joy in planting and watering and tending. I always imagined, in some sloppy sentimental way, that my plants were like a nursery full of children, needing care and constant supervision, rewarding me with beauty.

I hung behind Dolly, not certain what we were going to use as an excuse for being there, intruding on Amanda's grief. I figured Dolly'd come up with something, but when the door opened all she did was turn to me and roll her eyes.

Amanda Poet was a tiny woman, extremely thin, quite pretty in a fainting Truman Capote way. She had an anxious face and nervous eyes that flicked from Dolly to me and back to Dolly. She took in Dolly's uniform inch by inch before smiling wanly. “Yes?”

Dolly told her who we were and that we were looking into her mother's death. The woman, in her early forties with blond-going-to-faded hair piled on her head and caught with big combs at the top, had a waif-like air to her. Big-eyed, and still smiling without comprehension, Amanda tilted her head and said sweetly again, “Yes?”

“Could we come in, Amanda?” Dolly asked, reaching for the edge of the door. Dolly was impatient with this fey little woman.

“Why, of course.” Amanda Poet pushed the door open, inviting us into a tiny living room that must once have been a lot neater than it was now. I had a feeling that when Ruby Poet was alive her house never looked quite this messy. The living room was one of those faux country rooms, cute enough to give you a queasy feeling. There were metal moose picture frames on the tables, and tiny stuffed animals sitting on the chairs. Tabbed cambric curtains hung at the low front window and rag throw rugs were laid at odd angles over the floor. A plate rail near the ceiling held a collection of hand-painted flower plates. On a pie-crust table someone had gathered apple-head dolls into a little village. A rumpled Raggedy Ann sprawled face down in a bent wood rocker.

Newspapers lay everywhere around the room, open, spread on the rag rugs. A gold crocheted afghan hung half off a La-Z-Boy chair. Dirty glasses and pop cans sat in the tableau of apple dolls so it looked like a skewed Mr. Bill advertisement for Coke.

Just standing there, feeling overly large in a room meant for small people and small things, I knew that if Ruby Poet walked back in right now she would be appalled. It was that kind of house, where you could predict the reactions of the owner. If I knew anything about Ruby, from the garden she used to keep, I knew she wouldn't have liked what her daughter had let happen to their life.

Obviously Amanda Poet hadn't inherited her mother's penchant for order—inside or out. She looked to me like the kind of woman who never quite grew up, who stayed at least partially dependent forever, and sucked the life out of the poor soul elected to be her keeper.

But maybe that wasn't fair. She seemed nice enough, scurrying around picking up the newspapers, though she dropped them in another spot without improving the look of the room.

“How can I help you, officer?” Amanda gave up her efforts at straightening and sank into the rocker, squashing poor Raggedy Ann. The woman looked exhausted, as if she'd just run a mile or two. Next, she might put the back of her hand to her forehead and faint dead away—she was that kind of person. I'd once known just such a woman back in Ann Arbor. I'd interviewed her when her husband came up missing and was ever so sorry for her, going way out of my way to help, posting missing-person bulletins on lampposts and fences and basking in her feinting thank-yous and quiet tears—until her husband was found floating in Lake Erie with forty-two knife wounds in his back, and a couple who'd been making out under a tree nearby identified my poor-soul lady as the person they'd seen drive down to the lake and pull a body from the trunk of her car. I'd learned then about getting too close to the people I wrote about.

“I'm with the
Northern Statesman
,” I said, wanting my role here straightforward so I didn't feel as if I was taking advantage of poor distraught Amanda Poet.

She smiled.

“And your … er … mother was found out by my house.”

“
Your
garbage can?” She looked incredulous.

I nodded.

“My, my, my. Isn't this just the most terrible thing you've ever heard of?” She looked at the purse I'd set beside me on the floor and waited.

“Aren't you going to take notes?” she finally asked, eyebrows up.

Surprised, I hurried to flush a notebook from my purse, then hunted for a pen. Dolly handed me hers.

“I mean, my poor mother never hurt a soul on this earth and look what's been done to her.” Amanda took a swipe at her left eye and waited until I'd written down what she said.

“Do you know if there's anyone who was angry with her?”

“With my mother?” Amanda gave a limp sweep of her hand, whisking away such thoughts. “No one. And, you know …” She looked directly at Dolly. “Other officers, from the state police, have been here asking the same things. I told them there's never been anybody who didn't just love my mother. If you talk to them, I'm sure they'll tell you what I said. I didn't know a thing that could help them.”