The Wrong Quarry (4 page)

Now and then you catch a break, and I caught a good one. Small, but good. That same mink-coat mom was getting out of her Buick Riviera coupe with its vinyl roof to head over to the short flight of cement steps up to the rear doors of the dance studio.

I hopped out of the Pinto and caught up with her, where at the bottom of the stairs she had paused to take one last drag of her latest smoke before sending it spark-spitting into the night. A few other parents were heading up there, as well.

“Well, hello,” I said, falling in next to her. The cement steps were wide enough for that.

“We meet again,” she said pleasantly, just a little promise or maybe tease in her tobacco-husky voice. “What brings you back? You’re not lost again, are you?”

She’d gathered from my questions last time that I wasn’t another parent, though I was hoping anybody who noticed me—though Mateski was no risk at the moment—might make that assumption.

“I’m a writing a story about the arts in small Missouri towns. For the
St. Louis Sun.”

“Reporter, huh?”

“Not exactly Woodward or Bernstein. I do puff pieces.”

We were at the top of the stairs now. Several other parents moved around us as we stopped and chatted, though nobody went in yet. Just milled, half a dozen of them—four mothers, two dads, expensive coats. Music inside—“One Singular Sensation,” a recording with no vocals—meant practice was still on. Even though her breath was already smoking in the cold, my mink mom was getting a pack of cigarettes out of her purse for a fresh one.

Yes, Virginia Slims. You’ve come a long way, baby. I bet that’s what they said at the door to the cancer clinic. “You know, I could help you out on that,” she said, meaning the non-existent article. “I’m very active in the local arts scene.”

“That’d be great.”

As she extended her leather-gloved right hand, she left the cigarette in her mouth, where it bobbed like she was a blackjack dealer in an illegal game. “Betty Stone. My husband travels. You’re at the Holiday Inn, right?”

That was pretty direct.

“Right. John Quarry. Nice to meet you, Mrs. Stone.”

“Betty
Ah,
there’s Mr. Roger.”

She had turned her head toward the door, where finally the turtle was sticking its head out of its shell.

“Hel-lo, everybody,” he said, leaning out with one hand on the door, flashing a wide white dazzling smile in a narrow tan face. Handsome in a hooded-eye fashion, with short black hair, heavy black eyebrows and a well-trimmed Tom Selleck mustache. About my height, trimly muscular in black t-shirt, tights and Capezios.

“Come on in, come in,” he said, almost blatantly swishy, I thought. He held the door open for the waiting parents. “It
is
still frigid out there, isn’t it? Brrrrrr.”

Everybody piled in, including me. We were backstage, but the rear curtains were open, so the stage itself spread out before us, beyond which theater seats extended into darkness made more pronounced by bright footlights. Girls ranging in age from thirteen to eighteen were twirling around doing ballet poses and jazz dance stances, all in tights and ballet slippers. The tights were red or blue, with only one girl in white—the petite pretty Mustang Sally herself, who had a whistle around her neck like a football coach, her tawny blonde tresses a frizzy mane.

So was she his assistant? On closer look, she was closer to eighteen than thirteen—a favorite, a star performer, who had been elevated to first mate on this ship? Although looking at Roger Vale, I didn’t think he was mating with anybody, at least not of Sally’s sex. That Sunday afternoon must have been strictly Colonel Sanders and VHS. A waste of a Sunday afternoon, if you asked me.

“Ladies!”
Vale said, moving among them with an athletic grace, despite making a shooing motion as if he were guiding chickens to their coop. “Ladies! Dressing rooms, please. I have a parents’ meeting to attend to.”

Though she didn’t blow the whistle, Sally helped herd the girls to either side of the stage, the younger girls (in blue) going left, the older ones (in red) heading right, a glorious giggling array of slender legs and high hair and perky breasts, nipple nodules fighting tight fabric. And speaking of tight, so were my shorts.

There, I’ve done it. You’ve lost respect for me.

Now Vale motioned toward the parents, bringing them— us—in around him, huddling. He was a born director, this guy.

“Now,” he said, over-enunciating, “Sally has handouts for the recital next month, with instructions and guidelines and everything you’ll need for the trip. It’s an overnighter, so we need not just drivers but chaperones. Everybody understand that? Good!”

He was damn near hamming the sibilant effeminacy. He seemed obviously gay, maybe too much so. That could be a good cover for a heterosexual male to get close to impressionable, malleable young girls without alarming their parents.

Vale went on with more information about the upcoming recital in Hannibal next month, answering questions about wardrobe and food allowances and so on. This took about fifteen minutes, after which the girls began to emerge from their respective wings, all bundled up in fall and winter coats, the junior high girls still giggling, the high school girls paired off in confidential conversations.

Some girls went on out to meet parents waiting below in cars, while others joined parents from the recital trip committee, though a few lasses lingered in private confabs while parents waited patiently. My presence among this dwindling contingent had been noted by Vale, who was approaching me with a wary smile.

“I don’t believe we’ve been introduced,” he said. Not quite so overtly gay. “You must be one of the dads I haven’t met yet.”

“No, actually—”

Betty Stone, who’d been at my side through the meeting, said brightly, “This is John Quarry, Roger. He’s a journalist, doing a story about small towns and the arts for a St. Louis paper.”

“The
Sun,”
I said with a nod.

Nice of her to come to my rescue.

Vale smiled, teeth very white under the thick dark mustache. His tan may have come from a bottle, judging by its orange-ish tinge.

“Welcome, Mr. Quarry,” he said, and extended his hand.

I shook it. Firm. Confident.

Betty, rounding up her two girls, gave me a smile accompanied by a twinkle in her dark eyes that said,
Aren’t I nice and worth knowing
?

I nodded at her, she nodded at me, and then she was gone, and suddenly so was everybody else, except for the little blonde, who was still circling in her white tights. She seemed vaguely irritated, but she was extremely pretty, her features delicate. Even her pert breasts seemed irritated, nips pointing scoldingly at me.

“Will you be needing anything more tonight, Mr. Vale?” she asked. Her voice was high and young, her expression pouty.

“No, thank you, Sally. You’ve been most helpful.”

“I’m glad,” she said, just vaguely snippy.

She went off somewhere, and Vale grinned. The contrast of dark mustache and white teeth was almost startling.

“Sally’s a little possessive,” he said quietly, a priest reflecting on a troublesome parishioner.

“Girls will be girls,” I said.

“Won’t they? So, Mr. Quarry, how can I help you? We could set up a time to talk.”

“If you’re free now, we can get this out of the way. If you can spare, say, half an hour?”

“I can do that. If you don’t mind sitting and talking to me when I’m still all sweaty.”

I shrugged. “I can wait while you shower.”

“No, I don’t think that’s necessary. I don’t mind if you don’t.”

“Very generous of you.”

Little Sally, swathed in a white fur coat, moved through without a word and exited into the night.

“Cute kid,” I said. “What’s she, a senior?”

“Yes. Very talented. She’s my right hand.”

He went over and, with a twist, locked the deadbolt. I’m no genius with lock picks, but I could have opened that thing in thirty seconds.

He returned and said, “We can talk in my quarters.”

Interesting way to put it—quarters. Not office or even room.

“That’d be great,” I said.

He turned off the footlights and a few others, then hit a switch that brought up subdued lighting in the audience area beyond. Soon I was following him up the slightly sloping center aisle.

He had a towel around his neck as he led the way. “This used to be a skating rink, you know.”

“I heard that.”

“When I bought the building, I figured I better live here as well. To get a little bang from the buck.”

“Ah.”

Then we were on a slightly raised area by the double doors of the entrance. Just inside the glass doors, a ticket booth faced a coat check window. The lobby, where we stood under a single yellowish light, was modest. On either side—where kids once rented skates, and bought popcorn and pop—black walls had been dropped, home to big frames displaying posters of upcoming and past events. Doors to these facing rooms were painted black, too, even the knobs, and all but disappeared.

He gestured to the room at our left. “That’s where I sleep.” Then he nodded to the right, before heading that way. “This is where I do business, but also relax.”

I followed him in. The walls were a light pink, the one at my right engulfed by a many-shelved media center—high-end turntable, cassette tape player, assorted speakers, voluminous LPs, cassette tapes, pre-recorded videotapes, a 24-inch TV, a Betamax VCR. At my left was a kitchenette with cabinets, a counter, a fridge and a fifties Formica table and chairs. Tucked against the wall of the door we’d come in was an ancient rolltop desk, open to reveal stacks of bills and music and assorted paperwork, a swivel chair in attendance, overseen by an array of wall-hung framed photos of what I gathered were local dance recitals Vale had directed.

Against the far wall was a modern brown-leather couch with a pair of matching easy chairs separated by a low-riding coffee table with a big hardcover book called
Broadway Musicals.
Speaking of which, over the couch hung framed posters of recent shows—
Pippin, A Chorus Line, Follies, Dreamgirls
. This area had a multi-color shag rug on the old wood floor. Very neat, this space was. With the exception of the desk’s clutter, it was more like the set for a play than somewhere anybody lived. But the stage was at the other end of the building, right?

He rubbed his face with the towel, wadded and tossed it on the Formica table, and headed toward the refrigerator. “Something to drink? I have bottled water, orange juice, Diet Coke. I don’t drink alcohol, I’m afraid.”

“Diet Coke is fine.”

“Good choice.” He got us two cans and brought mine to me. “This is
so
much better than that Tab shit, don’t you think?”

Still in my fleece-lined leather jacket, I was standing at the edge of the shag carpet. “Yeah, I could never stand that stuff,” I said, taking the can of pop.

We were bonding now—he had said “shit” in front of me and everything.

He gestured toward the couch and I sat, while he took the nearby overstuffed easy chair. It had a little side table with a coaster for his Diet Coke. He leaned forward, knees akimbo, folded hands draped between them. “What can I do for you, Mr. Quarry?”

I was getting out of the coat, and as I did, I brought the nine millimeter out.

Not surprisingly, he sat back, dark eyes no longer hooded, and his hands went up, chest high, palms out, as if I were a hold-up man.

“You don’t need to be concerned about me,” I said pleasantly, resting the nine mil on the coffee table, then tossed the jacket on the cushion next to me. “But there’s somebody else you
do
need to be worried about.”

“What the hell is the meaning of this?” His tone was hushed, with nothing even vaguely swishy in it now.

I squinted at him. “Listen, are you a fag or what?”

“That’s an offensive term.”

“You’re right. I apologize. Are you?”

“Gay? Yes. Why? What the hell does that have to do with anything?”

“I don’t know yet. Maybe nothing. But at least you’ve dropped the phony flamer routine.”

He was still sitting back but his hands were on his thighs now. The gun on the coffee table was offputting, but he was handling it well.

He said, “It, uh...comforts some of the parents to think I’m a harmless queen. This is a very backward part of the country, you know.”

“Not as backward as some of it.” I gestured toward the theater beyond this enclosed space. “You have a prosperous clientele. Some may even be well-educated.”

He frowned at me, his eyes searching. “Is this some kind of shakedown? You’re barking up the wrong tree, let me tell you. I’m not wealthy by any means.”

“I imagine you do all right, considering what you can get away charging these rich yokels. But I’m not here to shake you down, Mr. Vale.”

“Why the...why that
thing,
then?”

He meant the gun. It was old and not pretty.

“I was just making a point,” I said, but I left it there. “I’m here to help you.”

His lip curled in a slight smile; he had stopped being quite so scared. “I’m not interested in selling Shaklee.”

That made me laugh. “No, I suppose you aren’t.” I leaned forward. “Look, I apologize for the melodramatics. I needed to get your attention.”

“I appreciate good showmanship.”

“Yeah, well, this isn’t playtime. It’s very real. Somebody wants you dead. I’m here to help you stay alive.”

He frowned again, only this time something in the dark eyes said he understood why what I’d just said wasn’t ridiculous— that it made terrible sense.

But he said, “I thought the melodramatics were over.”

“We’re way past that stage, actually.”

“Who are you?”

“Call me Quarry. No mister necessary. I’m an investigator of sorts.”

“Of sorts? Not police?”

“Not police. Private, but not licensed. I followed a man here who was sent to ascertain your habits. Your pattern. He’s doing that to provide information to another man, who will arrive any day now. To kill you.”

His eyes were hard now, though his chin was quivering. If he didn’t know what I was talking about, he’d have dismissed that last bit as more melodrama. He didn’t. He sure didn’t.