Dancing Dead

by Deborah Woodworth

  Gennie cried out in glee, then clamped her hand over her mouth. She reminded herself that Horace was crafty, and he’d been the one driving the Buick. He could show up at any moment. She fumbled at the knots holding the object to the bed, which were so complex they reminded her of a lock. She forced herself to slow down. If she couldn’t replicate those knots, Horace would know instantly that someone had been into his secret storage case. She leaned in close and tried to memorize each step as she loosened the strings. She could feel beads of sweat on her forehead; she swiped at them with her forearm without letting go of the knot she was puzzling over. Finally, after the longest five minutes of her life, she undid one knot. She repeated her actions. As the second knot loosened, the dark object slid onto the floor with a light thump.

  Gennie crawled under the bed frame and retrieved the prize. It was a small, battered, leather case, just big enough to hold writing paper. The case was too old and inexpensive to have a built-in lock, but Horace had cleverly laced the handles together with more string. This man has something to hide. Gennie applied herself to the knot. By now she’d become an expert, so it took only a few seconds to unravel the makeshift lock. Feeling like it was Christmas morning, she laid the case on the bed and opened it.

  Papers. She scooped them out, examined the case, even held it upside down and shook it, but nothing else fell out. She applied herself to the papers. The top page was handwritten, with small, neat letters and lines so straight they must have required a ruler. A centered title topped the page. It was a story—the same story Mrs. Berg had told them Saturday evening in the parlor, about the young Shaker sister who’d inherited a fortune and was killed for it. Gennie scanned several pages. Yes, it was very close, though some of Mrs. Berg’s details had been left out. But what did it mean?

  She began riffling through the stack of pages, hoping for a clue, but before she could read any more, she heard a rumbling sound outside. A car door slammed, and the rumbling started again. She didn’t have to look out the window to know what had happened. One of the brothers must have driven a hostel guest home. Probably not Horace—after all, he’d been driving the others—but she couldn’t afford to get trapped in his room.

  She selected one page from the middle of the stack, folded it into a small square, and crammed it into the pocket of her sweater. Now came the hard part—putting everything back the way it was. She stuffed the papers back in the case—more or less in the order she’d found them, she hoped. She applied herself to retying the string around the handles. Concentrate, she thought, and tried to envision each stage of the knot as it had untied. Before the image could slip from her mind, she retied the string around the handles of the case. She slid the case back into its string holder, and pulled the string ends through the bottom of the bed frame. Her fingers shook so violently that the strings slipped through them, and the case crashed to the floor. Gennie whimpered like a puppy as she crawled under the bed and dragged the case back into position. This time her hands obeyed her. The case stayed in its string container. She found the last set of strings and began the elaborate knot.

  The hostel’s front door slammed.

  With an effort of will, Gennie finished the last knot in record time. She dragged the mattresses back, one by one, and piled them on the bed, wincing as the frame creaked. The tangled bedclothes looked like an impossible mess. She extracted what she hoped was the bottom sheet.

  Somewhere nearby, a bedroom door shut. She hadn’t heard it open. Maybe, just maybe, she was safe for a time. She’d begun to feel dizzy, so she allowed herself the luxury of a deep breath. She still had to be very quiet, she knew that. Any unexpected noise might trigger curiosity and a knock on the door. Getting away unseen might become impossible. She tucked the rest of the bedclothes into place and stood back to assess her work. The bed looked okay—a bit sloppy, like she’d found it.

  She heard a scratching at the door, the distinct sound of a key entering a lock. She must have been mistaken earlier, when she’d assumed there was only one person in that car. Horace von Oswald had returned as well.

  The key turned in the lock. She’d lost the knack of ongoing prayer, so she just pleaded for help—inspiration, sudden invisibility, anything. She heard a click as the lock was released. The door creaked. She jumped to her feet and spun around frantically. She could see only one place to hide, and it was behind the opening door. She had little hope she’d get away, but maybe, if Horace was startled enough when he saw her . . .

  She held her breath as the door opened toward her and stopped just before it would have bounced off her toes. For several seconds, she heard nothing, no footsteps. The door remained open. She heard a drawer opening and realized Horace had entered soundlessly and gone to his built-in dresser, which meant his back should be toward her. She had a chance. She’d have to slip out soon; Horace would surely close his door for privacy.

  She peeked around the edge of the door, into the room. The back she saw didn’t belong to Horace von Oswald. It was Beatrice Berg. She bent over an open drawer, pawing through the contents. It was now or never. Gennie took a deep breath and slid around the end of the door. She was fully visible for one agonizing second before her escape was complete. Still afraid to release her breath, she ran on tiptoe down the hallway toward the stairs. She didn’t dare go to her room; Beatrice would hear the door open and close. Instead, she hurried to the kitchen, where she dropped the master key back in Beatrice’s apron pocket. She slipped out the kitchen door, which Beatrice wasn’t likely to hear or see from Horace’s room.

  Gennie ran and ran, ignoring the mud coating her shoes, until she reached the maple grove behind the foundation of the burned-out Water House. Only then did she stop. Leaning against cool tree bark, she gasped for breath. Questions swirled in her mind. How did Beatrice Berg get a second master key—and why? Was she just snooping around, or did she have a reason to visit Horace’s room while he was gone? What was she doing back from town, anyway? Had she discovered her key gone from her apron pocket? If so, she’d surely tumble to the notion that only Gennie had been home that afternoon. Gennie felt scared, excited, and guilty all at the same time. Though she had never signed the Shaker Covenant, she decided it was time for a confession—to Rose, definitely not to Grady. Not yet, anyway.

  Eleven

  “AM I STILL GOING TO HAVE A BIRTHDAY?”

  Rose resisted the urge to hug Mairin; the child wasn’t comfortable with sudden touches, even ones meant to be affectionate and comforting. Instead, she stretched out her hand and silently invited Mairin to take a walk. The ground was still wet, so they followed the path from the Children’s Dwelling House to the unpaved central road. It was far from private; people from the world wandered about, seeking thrills of one sort or another. Rose tried not to dwell on their presence. Surely they would lose interest once Mina Dunmore’s murder had been solved and the ghost explained away. The sooner they accomplished both, the quicker North Homage could return to peace and worship and hard work.

  “Yea, of course you’ll still have a birthday,” Rose said. “It’s just that it will have to be delayed for now, and . . . Mairin, you know that we’ve been having some troubles lately, don’t you?”

  “A lady got killed,” Mairin said. “And some folks said Brother Linus killed her.”

  “Who said that?”

  “Folks from town. I heard them talking to each other. Did Brother Linus kill the lady?”

  “I don’t think so. I think someone else did, but I don’t yet know who. That’s why I . . . I might not be able to come to your birthday party.”

  Mairin said nothing. Rose glanced sideways to find her staring at the ground as she walked. “Do you understand, Mairin? I am eldress of the community; that’s like being a mother. Wilhelm is elder, like a father. We have a responsibility to take care of our charges, like a mother and father take care of their children. Sometimes that means we can’t do what we’d really like to do.”

  Mairin’s only response was to kick
a stone out of her way. Rose felt like kicking, too, but not at a stone. Here she was spouting the Shaker way of living in a family, and Mairin, at about five years of age, had watched her father kill her mother. She’d been neglected much of her short life. Rose and Agatha were the closest she’d gotten to being cared for by loving parents. And now she was being told that she didn’t count because the Shakers were Rose’s “real” family.

  “All the other children will be at your party, and Sister Charlotte. Sister Gertrude is baking you an apple cake. And Sister Agatha wants you to come specially to her retiring room afterward, you and Nora both, to tell her all about the party.”

  “She’s too sick to come,” Mairin said. It was a statement of fact and also made it clear that Mairin considered Agatha’s excuse valid. “Can I go now? I have to feed Angel.”

  It took Rose several moments to understand that Mairin was talking about her kitten, not the ghost. “Of course, Mairin. How is Angel doing? Is she getting stronger?”

  “Yea, lots stronger. She wriggles a lot more, and her voice is louder. She knows I’m her mama now. Bye.”

  Rose watched her run on awkward legs, so agile in trees. Mairin headed for the Children’s Dwelling House. Perhaps she would become so engrossed in caring for her kitten that she’d forget Rose’s bumbling attempt to comfort her.

  With less reverence than the book deserved, Rose arranged a copy of Shakerism: Its Meaning and Message, by Anna White and Leila S. Taylor, on the shelf in the new library. On impulse, she pulled it down again and opened it to a section that described the reappearance of Sister Caroline Witcher some months following her death. Sister Caroline had materialized as she had been in the flesh, and she had visited the sick, to spread comfort among them. She hadn’t roamed around empty buildings, putting on performances that drew the world into her village.

  Rose was worried to distraction about her community, and what would become of it if the world came to believe that a brother had murdered one of their hostel guests—and that he hadn’t been the first North Homage brother to kill a woman. What would happen to them if the world truly believed the North Homage Shakers had been hiding a murder for a century?

  Sheriff Grady O’Neal and his men were combing the countryside, with the help of a group of townsfolk, in search of Brother Linus Eckhoff. They all felt certain that poor, gentle Linus was indeed the killer. A thorough search of his retiring room in the Center Family Dwelling House had revealed nothing suspicious. It looked as if he had slept in his bed for at least part of the night. His wool work jacket and heavy work shoes were missing, as if he had dressed to go out in cool weather. Otherwise, his retiring room was as plain and sparsely furnished as any other Believer’s. His small comb and shaving mirror lay on a table that also held a basin of water. There was no evidence that he had shaved that morning.

  Linus wasn’t a reader—he had no books in his retiring room, but he did keep a journal. It lay in full view on his pine desk. Rose and Grady both read through it and found no references to Mina Dunmore. In fact, Linus rarely mentioned people at all. He’d expressed far more interest in how to repair buildings and objects as simply and effectively as possible. In his journal, he’d relived the pleasure he got from finding creative ways to patch and restore. It was surely not the journal of a murderer, Rose thought. But Grady was unconvinced. “People just snap sometimes,” he’d said. “He’s our man, I’d bet on it.”

  When the bell rang for evening meal, Rose made a desperate decision. She would go, unannounced, to dine at the hostel. Mrs. Berg would be furious, but that didn’t concern her. She had no appetite at the moment; she wouldn’t eat much. It might be her last chance to observe and question the hostel guests. If Linus were found and charged with murder, there would be no reason to keep the guests from leaving.

  She dumped her pile of books on a library table and headed out the door, hoping not to run into worried Believers arriving from their various work assignments. The last thing she wanted to do was raise hopes that the killer was someone from the world, then find no support for those hopes. Dining at the hostel might easily yield nothing helpful. The guests were on their guard. But she had to try. Wilhelm would be arriving home on Tuesday, and he would blame her for the mess they were in. Not that Wilhelm’s opinion concerned her—she was well beyond caring—but he could make her work far more difficult if he believed he could show her to be incompetent. The one consolation to Wilhelm’s return was that Andrew would be with him. Andrew would help her to the best of his ability, and that knowledge gave her comfort.

  Rose arrived at the Shaker Hostel just as the guests were convening in the parlor for a drink before dinner. Saul Halvardson bounded down the stairs with a bottle of sherry in each hand. He pulled up short when he saw Rose in the entryway.

  “I hope you don’t mind,” he said, holding up the bottles. “I think you’ll agree we’ve all been under a strain.” He slid past her into the parlor. Rose decided to let them have their drinks in peace, and she headed for the kitchen.

  “Don’t expect nothin’ fancy tonight,” Beatrice said, when Rose told her there’d be an extra person for dinner.

  “I promise to eat very little.”

  Beatrice cracked another egg into a large bowl and whipped the contents as if they were responsible for her being stuck in North Homage.

  “Just so’s you know,” she said, “I’m leavin’ soon as I get the word I can go.”

  “Will you go back home?” Rose asked.

  “Don’t know, don’t care. Anywhere’s fine with me, long as it ain’t here.”

  “Where is home, by the way?” Rose tried to keep her tone conversational, but it sounded strained to her own ears.

  “No place, just a holler down south. You wouldn’t’ve heard of the place.” Her voice softened. “I liked it, though. We was poor, but we managed. My ma could cook up a mess of cornmeal so’s it tasted like fried chicken.”

  For the first time, Mrs. Berg didn’t sound bitter, and Rose wanted to keep her in that mood.

  “Is that where you learned to cook?”

  “Yeah, from my ma. Pa used to say she was the best cook in all Kaintuc. She was somethin’, my ma. Bodacious, too—she once took her broom to a black bear that come right up to our door, and she chased that critter down the holler and up the other side. That bear never knowed what hit him.” She chuckled. “Never should’ve left.”

  “Why did you leave?”

  “On account of Mr. Berg, that’s why.” Her voice had regained its familiar edge. “Right mean, he was. Never should’ve married him. Ma warned me, but I wouldn’t listen.” Mrs. Berg’s face pinched and puckered as if she were watching an internal film. “Beat me, he did. But he got his comeuppance.”

  “I beg your pardon?” Rose asked.

  Beatrice’s head jerked toward her. The eggbeater dripped golden slime on the floor. “I said, I’m fixin’ to serve supper in twenty minutes, if I can get some peace.”

  “Of course,” Rose said. “I’ll leave you to your work.”

  “Rose, thank goodness.” Gennie was pacing a small circle in the hallway outside the kitchen. “I thought I saw you through the parlor door. I’ve been dying to talk to you. Come on.” She pulled Rose by the elbow toward the stairway, past the closed parlor door.

  “I’ve learned some things, and I just can’t wait to tell you,” Gennie whispered as she shut the door of her upstairs room. Her eyes sparkled, which lightened Rose’s heart and aroused her suspicion. This was the first time Rose had been in her room, and she quickly noted the small touches that showed Gennie had joined the world—the pretty suits and dresses on hangers hooked over wall pegs, the array of perky hats, a lipstick tossed on her desk. She even smelled a hint of perfume, something sweet and flowery.

  “You’ve been investigating on your own again, haven’t you?”

  “Yes, and I’m good at it, too.” Gennie grinned and flopped on her bed. “Although this time I had a narrow escape.”

  “Oh,
Gennie, do be careful.”

  “Grab a chair, we don’t have much time. Saul will probably hand around seconds on sherry, but they’ve almost finished their first glasses.” Gennie told Rose about her conversation with Saul the day before.

  “So,” Gennie concluded triumphantly, “Grady was wrong not to question Saul. To know there was a port bottle in Mrs. Dunmore’s room, he must have been there—or maybe he even gave the bottle to her.”

  “Could he have been the man in her room?”

  Gennie frowned. “Well, he did claim to have heard the man, but he hadn’t mentioned it at breakfast, when Mrs. Berg told us about it. He seemed to find Mrs. Dunmore so unattractive—though I guess he could have been pretending. But why wouldn’t he throw suspicion on Horace when I gave him the chance?”

  “He insisted the voice didn’t belong to Horace?”

  “It was more that he couldn’t believe the possibility,” Gennie said. “But I did believe it. That man is so creepy, he’s got to be up to something. All the time I talked with Saul, Horace just stared at us with those dead eyes. So I had to see what I could find out about him.”

  “Gennie, you didn’t . . .”

  “I did. I sneaked into Horace’s room when he went out for a while. I wasn’t sure when he’d be back, so I had to hurry, and I was just a bundle of nerves.” She grinned again, showing lovely teeth and bubbling excitement.