Death of an Irish Diva (3 page)

It had been two weeks since the scrapbookers had gotten together, all of them in one place, to scrapbook. Last weekend the big Saint Patrick's Day parade and festival occupied them. Since Vera's dancers were performing, and Sheila was just getting back in town Saturday evening from a scrapbook conference, the other croppers had called it off. Annie took a long swig of her beer and set the bottle down gingerly next to the scrapbook she was working on for her parents, who were divorced years ago and were now back together, which made her uneasy. But she thought it would be fun to try to record in a scrapbook their lives before the divorce. She had decided on a black-and-white album, and it was turning out to be gorgeous.

“It's really awful what happened to Emily,” Sheila said. “I mean, she was a bitch, but who would have wished her dead enough to actually kill her?”

“Well, it wasn't me. And I think I have Bryant convinced of that,” Vera said. She sounded more convinced than she looked.

“Bryant,” DeeAnn said with disdain.

“Isn't that a lovely photo?” Sheila said, pointing to DeeAnn's picture of a huge rustic pie—crusty and thick, with berry juice spilling over the edges. DeeAnn's project was a scrapbook for her bakery. She had had the bakery in town for about five years and had taken photos all that time, just like a good scrapbooker. “I respect how you are recording and journaling your bakery. You are on top of it.”

“Thanks,” DeeAnn said. “I wish I'd been better about recording the kid's stuff.”

“The way Emily walked around town like she owned it because she was a McGlashen really annoyed me,” Paige said after a few moments. “And it annoyed all of us in the historical society. I mean, just because she traced her lineage back here doesn't mean she had any right to behave like that.”

“Evidently, all you ladies at the history society were not the only ones annoyed with her,” Annie said.

“So are you going to write about this one?” Sheila asked, looking up from her laptop. She was trying to learn all about digital scrapbooking. She'd tried to get this group excited about it, but there were no takers, at least not yet.

Annie shrugged. “I'm keeping my eye on the story to see if it develops into something. I mean, it's getting to the point that murder is almost commonplace around here.”

Vera gasped. “Don't say that, Annie. I know it must seem like it to you, because it's been like that for the past several years. But it's just some kind of strange fluke. All these new people moving to town in droves. I'm sure the police will find out who killed Emily, and it will all be resolved soon and we can go back to our safe little lives.”

“Humph,” said DeeAnn. “The police didn't solve those other murders. It was us, but mostly Annie, remember?”

And Annie wanted to forget all of it. She wanted it all to go away. She and her husband, Mike, had moved here from Bethesda, Maryland, to raise their boys in a safer, quieter place, where they would not be spending all their time stuck in Beltway traffic, shuttling their kids around. The plan was for her to stay at home, give up journalism, and just focus on the boys. But somehow she'd been sucked back into journalism. Mike wasn't too pleased about it. The situation was becoming an issue in their marriage, so she had talked about it with her brother, Joshua, who was a psychiatrist.

“You have an addictive personality,” Joshua had said to her during one of his visits. “You're addicted to the adrenaline rush of a good story. The more dangerous, the better. Careful, Annie. You know all about Mom and her addictions.”

“Oh, please, Josh,” she had said and waved him off.

But she was afraid, and it had nothing to do with her mother's cocaine addiction. She was not in the least attracted to cocaine. Still, there was something that kept gnawing at her, that pulled her into these dangerous situations. Why couldn't she be at peace?

Now her eyes glazed over the silver SHALOM sticker. She was deciding where to place it. Shalom. Peace. She told herself it was really all she wanted in her life.

“My mom always said to leave the past alone,” Paige said, then grinned. “Maybe that's why I love history so much.”

“But why didn't you get along with Emily, then? I mean, she was all about the past,” Sheila said.

“It was the way she was about it. Okay, she traced her family back to the founders of the town. Big deal. Many of us here could say the same thing, I bet. She came in making demands from the society, throwing her money around. Wanting to dig in several areas, no matter whose property it was. And for what? So she could strut around town and make everybody else feel small,” Paige replied.

“I hate to speak ill of the dead, but good riddance,” Vera said.

Annie shivered, thinking of seeing the young woman's twisted body. She silently thanked the universe that she couldn't see Emily's pretty face. It would have been devastating. Yes, she wasn't well liked by many of the locals. But Annie was curious about her. Why would an international dance champion come to Cumberland Creek to open a studio? It had never made sense to Annie. She was certain there was more to her story. Maybe she would investigate a little further on her own, if she could find the time. But she would have to be quiet about it because Mike had had just about enough of her investigating. At that thought, a hard ball formed in her throat.

She looked around the table at the women she called her friends: Sheila's face slightly blue from the glow of her laptop; DeeAnn's large arms leaning on the table, her brow knitted; Paige pasting a flower sticker onto her scrapbook page, then tucking a piece of her wavy blond hair behind her ear; and Vera, the dancer, who used to dye her hair a different color once a month and used to be perfectly coiffed at all times. But no longer. The past few months had taken a toll. She had bags under her blue eyes and gray hair sprouting everywhere. Annie wondered if Vera even realized it.

“Vera, I didn't get a chance to tell you,” Annie said. “I loved watching your dancers at the festival.”

“Oh, thanks,” Vera said, smiling. “I thought they did very well. Of course, Emily was sneering at me the whole time my dancers were onstage. I tried to ignore it.”

“Oh, I saw it,” Sheila said. “I also picked up one of these flyers. She was handing them out.” She read the flyer out loud. “Do you know? Emily McGlashen, an international Irish dance champion and
Riverdance
sensation, is now taking students in Cumberland Creek, at her new dance studio. Irish dance and performance classes are less than half of what locals have been paying for ballet at the other local studio. Irish dance is better for students' intellectual, physiological, and physical development.” Sheila paused.

“According to who? Where did she get this stuff? It's just so unprofessional of her. Of course, issues are debated within the dance community. But to go around making public statements?” Vera said. “I'd never do anything to hurt kids. Ballet is good for them. I know that, even though Cookie used to say kind of the same thing, that it went against natural body alignment. And it's true. But if you develop the strength to support those positions, it's just not a problem for most students.”

“Thought we weren't going to mention her again,” Annie said more sharply than what she had intended. Cookie Crandall, a past member of their group, was arrested on suspicion of murder and had escaped jail. None of them had heard from her ever again.

“I'm sorry. You're right. I never should have mentioned her,” Vera said, then bit her lip.

Silence fell over the Cumberland Creek crop. Annie felt as if her breath had been sapped out of her. Vera sighed.

“It's getting late,” Vera said, gathering up her things. “I need to go.”

“Sounds like a good idea to me,” Annie said and then drank the last bit of beer.

When Vera woke up, she was standing at the kitchen sink. It was still early enough to be dark, and in her confusion she groped around and cut her finger on a knife left in the sink.

“Damn,” she said out loud to nobody. Elizabeth had spent the night with Beatrice and Jon. She flipped on a light switch and was startled by the amount of blood splashed in the sink. She ran cold water over her finger and realized that she must have been sleepwalking, which she hadn't done since she was a child.

She reached for a paper towel. Damn, where were the bandages? She knew there was a package of Sesame Street ones in Elizabeth's room. She tiptoed over the toys in her room and reached for it. She wrapped her finger with an Elmo Band-Aid.

After her first cup of coffee, finger all wrapped up, she sat at her ugly plastic kitchen table and ate a toasted blueberry waffle, reveling in the silence of the apartment without Elizabeth.

She telephoned Sheila.

“What are you doing?” she said into the phone when Sheila answered.

“Just back from my run,” Sheila said. “You?”

“Getting ready to go and get Lizzie in a little while.”

“Lonely?”

“Well, maybe. I mean, I don't know. I like the quiet. But at the same time . . .”

“It's mother guilt,” Sheila told her. “You can't enjoy your time to yourself, because you feel like a good mom should be missing her child. I know.”

Vera smiled. “I guess. Four kids. How is Donna?”

“She's doing better this semester,” Sheila said. Her oldest daughter, Donna, was in college, studying design, and Vera's had yet to learn the alphabet. “That first year was rough, though.”

“I woke up at the kitchen sink this morning,” Vera said.

“Sleepwalking?” Sheila said after a minute.

“Yes, and I cut myself,” Vera said.

“Well, it's no wonder. You have to be stressed with all the changes. I mean, why don't you admit it? Why do you go along like nothing is wrong?”

“There's no point in bitching and moaning, or feeling sorry for myself,” Vera responded.

“I know that. But you're broke. Your ex is living with a woman in Charlottesville. You have a three-year-old that keeps you hopping. And you were hauled down to the police station for questioning. None of that is pleasant. And you are allowed to bitch and moan a bit.”

Vera sipped her coffee. “I suppose.”

“And now you're sleepwalking. That's just great,” Sheila said. They had been friends since they were girls, and she remembered Vera's first bout with sleepwalking.

Soon their conversation was over and Vera was out the door, off to get Elizabeth from her mom's place.

She walked down the steps, glanced over at the still closed inside studio door in the foyer. One of the reasons she had chosen this space for her studio was that she liked the foyer, which meant that people were not walking straight off the street into her office and studio. She opened the outside door in front of her and was almost smacked in the face with a black leather shoe hanging in the doorway. She gasped as she realized what it was—a gillie, an Irish dance shoe, with a note attached to it. Someone had hung the dance shoe in her doorway. Vera walked backward into the stairwell and raced back upstairs to her apartment. Her heart pounded and tears stung at her eyes as she called the police.

Why would someone do this to her?

She sat on her couch and waited for them to come. This would be the second time in two weeks she'd have to deal with Detective Bryant. She dreaded his crooked smirk and shifty eyes. But now, obviously, it had gotten out that she was questioned at the station. Someone else must think she killed Emily McGlashen. Was that Emily's gillie in her doorway? Why hadn't she heard someone hanging the shoe there? Maybe she had. And maybe that made her sleepwalk? Could she tell the police that? Well, she wasn't certain she had heard anything. So maybe she should keep the whole sleepwalking thing to herself, lest they think she killed Emily while she was walking in her sleep.

But had she? Surely not. Surely she'd have awakened if she was struggling to kill someone. Just like with the knife cutting her, if she was touched, she'd wake up. Or at least that was how it had always been when she was a child.

She clasped her hands together, noticing that her knuckles looked white, as she listened to the noise at the door. She was sure it was the police doing whatever it was they did at a crime scene.

“Vera?” She heard Detective Bryant at the door.

“You can come in,” she yelled. “The door is unlocked.”

“I hope you don't keep your door unlocked,” he mumbled as he walked into the room.

“Certainly not,” she said. “I was going out and unlocked it when the shoe swung down in my face.”

She gestured in the direction of the gillie, a black leather slipper with strings hanging off it. The dancers tied the laces around their feet and ankles, like ballet pointe shoes.

His hands went to his hips, and he looked around the apartment. “Where's Elizabeth?”

“Mom's.”

He sat down next to her. “What did you do to your finger?” he asked.

“I cut it with a kitchen knife,” she replied.

“Now, Vera, I know this is upsetting—”

“Humph. You're damned right it's upsetting.” Her voice shook with anger, fear, and loathing. “First, I'm questioned about the murder of Emily McGlashen, and then this.”

“Someone wants us to think you killed her,” he said.

“And it's probably the killer.”

Vera shivered as she thought of the person who had strangled Emily being at her front door, the door to her studio, her apartment, her life.

She noticed a small piece of paper in Bryant's hand and realized he held the note that had been tacked on to the shoe.

“What's it say?” she managed to ask.

“Killer ballerina,” he said with a grimace.

Killer ballerina? If she wasn't so frightened, she might laugh.