The Dance (7 page)

Polly hadn’t lied to Michael—she really had been on her way out when he called. She had to go to the market for groceries, and to the family clinic for contraceptives. If Russ’s sexual appetite matched his appetite at the kitchen table, she figured she had better be prepared. All day he had done nothing but watch TV and eat. Her aunt didn’t know he was in the house, and since she never left her bedroom, Polly saw no reason for her ever to know. Polly had told Russ to keep his voice down when they talked.

But after speaking to Michael, Polly couldn’t find her keys. They weren’t where she always left them, on the counter beside the microwave. She was searching in the drawers when Tony Foulton, the architectural engineer at her construction company, called. He had some concerns about the float he was building for the dance.

“As I told you last week, Polly, this is a little out of my line. I think Sara would have been better off hiring a company that specializes in floats.”

“I told her the exact same thing. But she says the school can’t afford it. How’s it coming along?”

“The platform itself is no problem; it’s the fact we’re building it on top of a pickup truck that bothers me. How far did you say it has to be driven?”

“Only a hundred yards. We can have it towed to the school.”

Tony considered. “Would it be possible to rent a real float carrier?”

“How much would it cost?”

“They’re scarce this time of year with all the holiday parades, but I could check around town. Less than a thousand dollars.”

“A thousand dollars is a lot of money.”

“I don’t think it would be that much.”

“But haven’t you already begun construction?”

“We’re about half done with it, yes. But it wouldn’t take long to pull it down.”

Polly knew what her carpenters charged per hour. This was turning out to be expensive. Sara had a lot of nerve putting her people through all this. “But why? It’s not going to cave in if someone stands on it, is it?”

“No, it won’t do that. But as I said before, it lacks stability.” He paused. “As an engineer, I would feel better if we didn’t use the truck.”

“Are you going to be in tomorrow, Tony?”

“Yes. I usually work till noon on Saturday.”

“I’ll come by about ten and look at it. Oh, how’s Philip?”

Philip Bart was a foreman who’d been with the company since her father had founded it fifteen years earlier. Recently McCoy Construction had won a big contract in the mountains near Big Bear Lake for a two-hundred-room hotel. Prior to laying the foundation, a hard vein of granite had to be removed from the soil using dynamite. Somehow, in the middle of one of the blasts, Philip had been struck on the head by a flying rock. He’d gone into a coma and the initial prognosis had been poor. Fortunately, in the last couple of days, he had regained consciousness.

“Much better,” Tony said, his voice warming. “He’s sitting up in bed and eating solid food. He told me to thank you for the check you sent his family.”

“It was the least I could do. I’m glad he’s going to be all right. Give him my best. But Tony, next lime, have everyone stand back a little further, OK?”

He laughed. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Polly.”

Russ came in the kitchen as she set down the phone. He had not shaved. He looked very masculine. When he had arrived the night before in the rain, he had a suitcase outside in his truck. Now he had on running shorts, shoes and socks, and nothing else. “Where are you going?” she asked.

“I have to run,” he said, sitting down and checking his laces.

“Why? I thought cross-country was over?”

“I run year round.”

“Where are you going to go?”

“Wherever my feet take me.”

“You won’t tell me?”

He glanced up. “I don’t know where I’m going, Polly.”

“But it might rain on you. It rained yesterday.”

He stood, stretching toward the ceiling, then reaching for his toes, his powerful back muscles swelling around his shoulder blades. “The rain and I are old friends.” Straightening, he headed for the door. “I’ll catch you later.”

“Wait! I have to talk to you about something.”

He stopped, his hand on the knob. “What?”

“Jessica called a few minutes ago. She told me how Sara locked you in the freezer. I never knew she hated you that much. God, it must have been awful for you. I knew last night something was wrong when I saw how red and sore your hands were.”

“Yeah, well, it was probably my fault.” He nodded. “See ya.”

She watched him go. He sure was cool, maybe too cool. He let people walk all over him. She used to have that problem. She hadn’t told Jessica where Russ slept last night. She respected his privacy, and hadn’t wanted to brag.

Polly never did find her keys, and had to fetch a spare set from her bedroom. Backing out of the garage into the driveway, she rolled down the window, feeling a chill in the air. It had been her practice last winter to always keep an extra sweater in the trunk. Putting her Mercedes in Park, she jumped out to check and see if it was still there.

She found the sweater, but that was all she found. It wasn’t until she was back in her car and heading down the road that she realized the ax she had taken from Russ the first week of school—and which she had been meaning to give back to him ever since—was no longer in her trunk. She had no idea what could have happened to it.

She screwed up by going to the market first. She bought all kinds of frozen goods and milk and stuff and then realized it would have to sit in the car while she was in the family clinic. It was really a question of priorities, she thought, after deciding not to go home before visiting the clinic: the welfare of her body over the welfare of a few lousy frozen carrots. Obviously, if she was going to have sex like a mature woman, she was going to have to act like one and take the precautions necessary to keep from becoming pregnant.

Walking up the steps to the clinic, Polly congratulated herself for coming here instead of making an appointment with her personal physician. Dr. Kline had known her since she was a child. He was old and conservative and would have asked her lots of nosy questions. Besides, it was more fun this way. She might run into someone she knew.

Polly did precisely that. But first she had a hard time making the nurse—Polly assumed she was a nurse, she was dressed in white—understand what she wanted. They weren’t speaking the same language. Sure, she had read about condoms and diaphragms in women’s magazines, but all the articles had been written with the assumption you knew what those things were. Polly wasn’t even sure which ones the boys wore. She finally told the nurse she wanted a birth-control method that wasn’t too gross. The nurse smiled and told her to have a seat. The doctor would see her in a few minutes.

The waiting room was crowded—thirty people at least, and only three of them were guys. The few minutes had become more than a half hour and Polly was beginning to feel restless when Clair Hilrey suddenly appeared through the inside swinging green door. A nurse was holding on to her elbow; she was having trouble walking. The nurse guided her into a chair directly across from Polly, who had never seen Clair with a hair out of place, much less ready to keel over. Before leaving, the nurse asked if she’d be all right. Clair nodded weakly.

Polly sat and watched Clair for several minutes, all the time wondering what her problem could be. The girl was perspiring heavily, her eyes rolling from side to side. At one point, she even bent over and pressed her head between her knees. Polly was relieved when Clair didn’t throw up.

“Are you all right?” Polly asked finally.

Clair took a deep breath, rested her chin in her hand, didn’t look up. “Yeah,” she mumbled. “I’m waiting for someone.”

“But you look sick. Are you sick?”

“No, not now.”

“That’s good. I didn’t go to school today, but Jessica told me the two of you were elected to the homecoming court. That’s neat.”

Clair sat up. “Huh?”

Polly smiled. “Jessica said—”

“Jessica Hart?”

“Yeah, she’s my best friend. Don’t you remember me? I’m Polly McCoy.”

Clair put a hand to her head, dizzy. “Yeah, Polly, yeah. Of course, I remember you.” She glanced toward the exit door. “How are you?”

“Great. Just stopped by to buy some contraceptives. You know Russ Desmond? He’s staying at my house. What kind of contraceptives do you use, Clair?”

“I don’t.”

“You don’t?”

“I mean, I don’t need any.” She got up, staggering slightly. Bubba had appeared in the hallway. “I’ve got to go, Polly. Take care of yourself.”

Bubba took Clair by the arm and helped her across the floor. Clair said something to him about his being late, but they were out the door before Polly could hear his response. Polly didn’t know why Jessica didn’t like Clair. She seemed a nice enough girl.

Michael stopped at the gas station where Kats worked on the way home from school. Because of his one-on-one game with Nick and his talk with Bubba, he was late leaving campus. The sun had already begun to set, and he was anxious to shower and get dressed for his date with Jessica. But he had set the investigative ball in motion and felt he had to stop to have a little chat with Kats—just for a minute. If he’d been asked to pick a murderer of Alice, it would have been Kats. He parked at the full-service isle—something he never did—and got out. Kats appeared from beneath a jacked-up Camaro inside the garage. He had on an oil-stained army-surplus jacket that could have used a rinsing in a tub of gasoline, and a cigarette dangled between his lips. He must have just been in a fight. Michael noticed he was missing a front tooth—and he had been ugly to begin with.

“Hey, Mikey, how come’s I never see you anymore? Where you been hanging out?”

“I’ve been around. What are you up to these days?”

Kats wiped at his greasy black mustache. “Working and going to night school. You know, I’ll probably get my diploma when you guys do.”

“I didn’t know that.”

Kats giggled. He might have been high on something. “Yeah, I might be at your graduation! Imagine that!” He lowered his voice. “You wouldn’t let me come last year.”

“Not me.”

“Huh?”

“Nothing.” They were the only ones at the station. Michael nodded to his car. “Could you fill it up with unleaded, please?”

Kats paused, eyeing him. “Since when are you too important to pump your own gas, Mikey?”

“Since I started paying for full serve.”

Kats glanced at the pump, grinned. “Hey, you’re right. You’re parked where all the big shots park. Sorry, I didn’t see that.” He threw away his cigarette and started to unscrew the gas cap. “You mustn’t be counting your nickels and dimes anymore. Things going good? They’re going good with me. The day I get ahold of that diploma, I’m out of this joint.”

“Are you still planning on joining the army?” Michael asked, leaning against the car. He’d opted for full serve, feeling it would give him a psychological advantage while questioning Kats. For the moment, he was the boss.

“You kidding me? Those pussy-foot children?” Kats unhooked the pump. “I’m going to be a marine, or I ain’t going to be nothing.”

“Have they accepted you already?”

Kats nodded. “Get your schoolin’ done and you’re in. That’s what they told me.”

“Was that before or after you got arrested the night Alice McCoy died?”

He had purposely phrased the question to shock Kats. Yet Kats was either too smart to fall for the bait or else too stupid to recognize it. He stuck the gasoline nozzle into the tank, set the grip on the handle to automatic feed. “I don’t remember,” he said, whipping a rag from his back pocket. “Want your oil checked?”

Michael could have backed off at that point and asked Kats a couple of civil questions about the night of the party. But he decided to push him further. He would get more out of an upset Kats, he decided. The guy had one of those mouths that spilt wider the greater the pressure inside.

“Yeah, you remember,” he said. “It was before Alice died. But the way things are now, I bet the marines wouldn’t let you hold an empty rifle in basic training.” He knew this wasn’t true. The marines were looking for a few good men, but weren’t above taking a few good killers. Kats didn’t know that. He started to warm to the discussion.

“I didn’t do nothing,” he said, throwing open the hood. He sounded both hurt and angry. “I didn’t kill that girl. I wouldn’t do that, Mikey. You know me. We go way back. When did I ever kill a girl?”

Michael followed him to the front of the car. “It was your gun in her hand. It was your bullets. Your fingerprints were on both. Explain that to me, why don’t you?”

“I had it in my car. I don’t know how she got ahold of it. I told the police that. They had no right to go to my place and take all my pieces.”

“A girl dies, and you’re worried about your gun collection?”

“I didn’t kill her!”

“Who did?”

“I don’t know!”

“What were you doing on the roof porch when the gun went off?”

Kats’s pride had been offended. He began to sulk. “I wasn’t doing nothing.”

“But you were on the second floor. Why did you take so long to get to the bedroom after the gun went off?”

“Why should I talk to you? I thought you were my friend. You’re worse than the police.” He let the hood slam, turned to walk away. “Get your own gas and get the hell out of here.”

Michael grabbed Kats’s arm, realizing he might have made a mistake with his hard-nosed tactics. Here he thought he was proceeding logically when deep inside he probably just wanted to find someone to blame. Michael realized he hadn’t changed from the day of the funeral, not really. Kats shook loose, jumped back a step. “Lay off!” he snapped.

Michael raised his palms. “All right, you don’t know anything. Neither do I. But you can still answer the question.”

Kats fumed, debating whether to talk to him. Finally he said, “I didn’t go straight to the room. I went into the backyard first.”

“What? You jumped off the roof?”

“No, I didn’t jump off the roof. I’m not that dumb.”

“But why didn’t we run into you going up the stairs?”

Kats shook his head impatiently. “I was out on the porch. I thought I saw someone in the backyard.”

“Polly was the only one in the backyard.”

“I didn’t know that. I went to the edge of the roof to see who was there. That’s when I saw Polly. She was running into the house.”

“Yeah, after the shot,” Michael said. “That’s what I’m talking about, after the shot. I saw her run through the back door. I figured someone must be after her. I kept looking for whoever fired the gun, but didn’t see them.”

“Go on.”

“Then I went downstairs, and out into the backyard.”

“What did you see?”

“I told you, I didn’t see nothing.”

“Then what are you talking about?”

“You asked me why it took me so long to get to the room and I’ve told you. I told the police the same thing and they kept me in jail for a week.” Kats was disgusted. “I don’t know what’s wrong with all you people.”

Kats must have still been searching the backyard from his vantage point on the second-story porch when they passed his door in the hall. But the main inconsistency in his explanation was so obvious Michael almost missed it. “Wait a second,” he said. “We were downstairs, and we could tell where the shot came from. How come you couldn’t?”

“Quit hassling me, would ya?”

“But you’re supposed to be an expert when it comes to guns. Christ, you’ve practically slept with them since you were twelve. How could you make such a mistake?”

Kats paused, and he seemed honestly contused. “I don’t know.”

Could someone have shot Alice from outside?

It made no sense. The bullet couldn’t have passed through the screens on the windows. Certainly, it couldn’t have penetrated the walls without tearing out the plaster. And she’d had the gun in her hand. No, Kats was either lying or else he needed his hearing checked. There hadn’t been anyone in the backyard except Polly. And even if there had been, even if, say, Clark had been somewhere in the bushes, he couldn’t have gotten to Alice. The only way he could have put that bullet in her head was if he had been in that room with her. Now that was a possibility.

He paid Kats for the gas and left.