Dead Man Dancing

by Marcia Talley

  Hutch brightened. ‘I’m not sure if I’m supposed to tell.’

  ‘Ruth’s been a bit cagey, but she’s got everything else organized within an inch of its life, so I figured the honeymoon was laid on, too.’

  ‘I’ll give you a hint, Hannah. It’s warmer than Annapolis in the wintertime.’

  ‘Surprise, surprise, surprise!’

  ‘If you won’t tell Ruth that I spilled the beans . . .’

  I pantomimed locking my lips and throwing away the key.

  ‘We’re booked into a resort called Maya Tulum on the Yucatan peninsula. Alicia taught yoga there and recommends it highly. Alicia says it’s perfect for us, a modern resort, but with New Age sensitivities. Eco tours, beach front cabanas, vegetarian cuisine, the whole mind-body-spirit sort of thing.

  ‘Sounds very Ruth,’ I said sincerely. Ruth would love it.

  ‘It is.’ Hutch hopped to his feet. ‘So, where the hell is she?’

  ‘Car trouble?’ I offered, hopefully. Ruth drove a clunker, a battered green Ford circa 1990. ‘I didn’t see her Taurus in the lot.’

  ‘Damn thing died. Not worth fixing. She’s driving a rental until we can replace that old heap.’

  ‘What kind of car is she renting, Hutch?’

  ‘A Ford Focus.’

  Suddenly I could hardly breathe. I could picture the car clearly. I’d just seen it outside, a red Focus, bright as lipstick against the snow bank that had been plowed up into piles all around the parking lot. ‘Is it red?’ I asked, praying that it wasn’t.

  ‘Yes. Why?’

  ‘Oh my god! There’s a red Focus in the lot. Come with me.’

  Without taking time to grab our coats, Hutch and I flew out the door. ‘This way!’ I yelled. We raced around the building and through the lot, slipping on patches of black ice where the day’s run-off had refrozen on the tarmac.

  ‘That’s it, that’s the car,’ Hutch shouted, pointing wildly.

  By that time, I was close enough to the vehicle to see through the window on the passenger side. ‘No one’s inside.’ I paused, breathing hard. ‘Maybe it’s someone else’s car.’

  ‘No. That’s Ruth’s. See that striped hat in the back window? That’s hers.’ Hutch swerved to avoid a pothole, tripped, arms pinwheeling to keep his balance. By some miracle, he managed not to fall.

  I recognized the hat, too, so I pumped my legs harder, rounding the rear of the vehicle and arriving at the driver’s side.

  Ruth lay sprawled on the ice, face up, whimpering. At first, I thought my sister had slipped on the ice and fallen. Until I saw the blood.

  I knelt on the cold ground beside her. ‘Ruth! What happened?’

  She simply moaned.

  Hutch screeched to a halt behind me, his arms dangling helplessly at his sides. ‘Ruth. Oh, god. You’re hurt.’

  ‘He stole my purse,’ she sobbed. ‘It had the cash receipts for the day in it. I couldn’t let him . . . Ow!’ she cried as I touched her leg.

  ‘Screw the money, Ruth.’ I looked up at Hutch. ‘I think her leg is broken.’

  Ruth sucked in her lips and rocked her head from side to side.

  Hutch knelt beside me and squeezed my arm. He jerked his head in the direction of Ruth’s leg, and I saw what he saw. A piece of metal – Glass? Bone? – poking through the fabric of Ruth’s blood-soaked tights.

  ‘Hutch is here,’ I told my sister as her fiancé and I, via some form of telepathy, agreed to exchange places. Hutch lifted Ruth’s head to his thigh and pillowed it there. ‘You’ll be fine, Ruth,’ he soothed.

  ‘The son of a bitch stole my money! Eleven hundred dollars!’

  ‘It doesn’t matter, Ruth. It’s only money.’

  While Hutch tried to calm Ruth down, I walked around to the other side of the car and dialed 9-1-1.

  ‘9-1-1. What is your emergency?’

  ‘There’s been a mugging,’ I told the operator. ‘We need police and an ambulance.’ I gave the woman our address, then went back to see about my sister.

  ‘Hand me her scarf,’ I told Hutch.

  I was afraid to touch Ruth’s wound, but I used her scarf as a makeshift tourniquet, wrapped it as tightly as I dared around her thigh and twisted it tight, hoping to stop the flow of blood that continued to ooze from her calf and on to the pavement. ‘How did you break your leg,’ I asked as I worked. ‘Did you fall? Did he push you down?’

  ‘He whacked me with a baseball bat.’

  ‘Oh, love, why didn’t you just let him have the stupid purse?’ Hutch said desperately.

  ‘No way that motherfucker was going to get my purse,’ Ruth said.

  ‘I suppose you told him that.’

  ‘Uh huh.’

  Hutch rolled his eyes. ‘Why didn’t you call me on your cell phone?’

  ‘He smashed that, too.’ Ruth raised an arm, then let it drop to the pavement. ‘It’s around here somewhere.’

  ‘I see it,’ I said. ‘It’s under the next car.’

  And it was, if you could call a scattering of plastic shards, circuit boards, SIM cards and batteries a cell phone. ‘The good news is, I think you’ll be getting that iPhone you wanted for Christmas.’

  In spite of everything, Ruth managed a weak smile. ‘I’m cold,’ she said after a few seconds.

  ‘Don’t worry. The ambulance is on the way,’ I said, willing it to hurry.

  Hutch had already pulled the flaps of Ruth’s jacket together and buttoned them up to her neck, but he cradled her more closely to the warmth of his chest. She gazed into his face, and burst into tears. ‘Oh, Hutch, I’m so sorry. We won’t be able to audition for the TV show, will we?’

  Hutch lowered his cheek to her cheek and stroked her wet and matted hair. ‘Shhhhh. It doesn’t matter, sweetheart. The only thing that matters to me is you.’

  Ruth’s face was white as the fresh snow that covered the snow banks behind her, and she started to sob, gasping uncontrollably. ‘She’s hyperventilating, Hutch,’ I said as calmly as I could. ‘She may be going into shock. Lower her head, and we’ll need to keep her warm.’

  ‘Shit. Why did we leave our coats inside?’ Hutch raised up on one hip, eased a hand into his pocket and withdrew a fist full of car keys. ‘There’s a football blanket in the back seat of my Beemer.’

  When I returned with the blanket, Hutch helped me wrap it tightly around my sister. She shuddered, air hissed raggedly in and out between her clenched teeth as we waited together for the welcoming wail of an approaching siren.

  Ten

  Feeling like fifth wheels, Hutch and I followed the ambulance in his car, running traffic lights willy-nilly until I expected the cop who was riding in the ambulance with Ruth to pop out the back doors, waving his ticket book.

  Hutch made a right turn against the light on to West Street, then veered immediately left on Admiral Drive, following the old back road to the hospital. He took the left at Jennifer Road on two wheels, ran a red light at the firehouse, nearly knocked into a pedestrian in the cross-walk of the County Detention Center, then ran another red light before turning off on to Medical Drive.

  ‘Drive around to the ER,’ I ordered. ‘You get out there, and I’ll take the car into the parking garage.’

  The ambulance was offloading Ruth on a stretcher when we pulled up under the ‘Emergency’ portico. An oxygen mask covered her nose and mouth, and an IV dripped clear fluid into a vein in her arm. Poor Ruth! I hurried around to the driver’s door and gave Hutch a reassuring pat on the cheek as he climbed out of the driver’s seat and hurried after the stretcher. ‘Stay with her,’ I called as I eased behind the wheel. ‘I’ll be back as soon as I can.’

  It took forever, of course, to find a parking space. I scoured the garage, spiraling upward ever upward until I managed to squeeze Hutch’s BMW 750 sedan into a space on the roof clearly designed for a compact. Once I’d wormed my way out of the narrow space between the BMW and the SUV next door, I punched the lock button on the keyless fob, and made a mad dash for the
elevator, which took me down eight floors and spit me out into the main lobby. I turned right, straight-armed the swinging door, rushed past the visitors’ desk – I knew my way around Anne Arundel Medical Center so well I could draw a map from memory – and hustled down the long hallway that led to the ER waiting room. When I got there, Hutch was standing at the reception desk, filling out a form.

  ‘They’ve taken her to X-ray,’ he told me. ‘The policeman is with her.’

  When I next saw my sister, she was in a treatment cubicle, half-sitting/half-lying on a gurney, with a blue surgical dressing draped lightly over her leg. Someone had stuffed her clothing, including the torn and bloody tights, in a plastic bag and stuck it on a shelf underneath the gurney. There was no sign of the policeman.

  ‘It wasn’t bone,’ Hutch informed me, relief written all over his face. I knew he was referring to the object we’d seen sticking out of Ruth’s leg. ‘It was a fragment of wood from the bat. They’ve cleaned out the wound, and stitched it up.’

  ‘How many stitches?’ asked Ruth, sounding competitive and more like her usual self.

  ‘Only three,’ her fiancé teased, ‘so don’t expect any sympathy from me.’ Hutch turned to face me. ‘But her tibia is definitely broken, Hannah. A clean break, thank goodness. They’re going to start her on antibiotics, pump some fluids into her, and keep her overnight for observation. They’ll set the bone in the morning.’

  ‘Tibia,’ I said, scrambling to remember the litany of bones I’d had to memorize for some long-ago zoology class at Oberlin College. ‘That’s the shin, isn’t it?’

  ‘That’s correct.’ A nurse wearing white pants and a colorful surgical top decorated with teddy bears stuck her head into the room. ‘We’ll be admitting you shortly, Mrs Gannon, so don’t go anywhere, OK?’

  Ruth smiled. ‘As if.’

  ‘The policeman told me to tell you he’ll be right back,’ the nurse said, and then she disappeared as mysteriously as she had arrived.

  Thinking about the policeman, I asked, ‘What were you able to tell him, Ruth?’

  Ruth rested her head against the pillow and sighed. ‘Not much. He seemed to think that the guy followed me from the store, that he knew I had the receipts with me. But, I don’t think so. The creep came out of the parking lot of the Rapture Church.’

  ‘Did you hear anything? A getaway car starting up, for example, or a motorcycle?’

  As tired as she was, Ruth still managed to follow my train of thought: the Harley-Davidson motorcycle dealership was next door to J & K. ‘Harleys are popular with badass dudes in their 50s and 60s,’ she said. ‘This guy didn’t look the type. Black, maybe sixteen or seventeen. I doubt he could afford a Kawasaki, let alone a Harley.’

  ‘What’d he look like?’

  My sister shrugged. ‘Like any other African-American teenager on America’s Most Wanted.’ She held up an index finger. ‘But when they find him, he’ll have an ugly scratch on his neck.’ She examined her fingernail carefully for a moment. ‘Wait a minute! Can’t they get some DNA from under this?’

  ‘Maybe they’ll take a scraping,’ I suggested, ‘but I doubt the police will place a high priority on DNA analysis for a simple robbery and assault. It’d be expensive, and even then it’d take months for the results to come back.’ I sidled up to the gurney and patted her good leg. ‘Not likely a petty crook will be in the CODIS database anyway.’

  ‘What? No fancy machines, no flashing lights, no instantaneous test results like you see on TV?’

  ‘No, ma’am.’ The policeman had returned. ‘No designer suits and two-hundred-dollar haircuts, either. But, we’re sending a sketch artist over in the morning.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Ruth said, and closed her eyes.

  In less than a minute, she was asleep. Leaving Hutch sitting by her side, holding her hand, I took the long walk down to the cafeteria – where the use of cell phones was allowed – to telephone Paul and let him know what the bloody blazes was going on.

  Eleven

  Two days before Christmas, sporting a festive, holly-green cast on her leg, Ruth went home. Hutch installed his bride-to-be in the first-floor guest room periodically used by his mother so Ruth wouldn’t have to cope with the stairs.

  Christmas came and went; a joyous time. Santa delivered the necklace I’d been hinting for, Ruth’s iPhone, and Chloe found lavender leotards, a matching tutu, and a glittery ‘amethyst’ tiara under the tree. Santa’d got the message. The old elf was no fool.

  As usual, 193 Prince George was Holiday Central with feasting and merriment practically 24/7. Thank goodness for large-screen TVs, Christmas DVDs, and microwave popcorn to keep everyone occupied between unwrapping presents and eating until they could only waddle.

  When Hutch returned to the business of running a law firm, I volunteered for Ruth detail. I arrived mid-morning on the twenty-sixth to find Ruth stumping around on crutches, determined to drive herself to the Safeway.

  ‘The hell you are!’ I said. ‘You can’t even get down the front steps.’

  ‘I can, too. On my butt. And it’s my left leg, Hannah. I don’t need it to drive.’

  I put my own (very healthy) foot down, and drove Ruth to the grocery where she embraced her newfound freedom by speeding down the cereal aisle in an electric Mart Cart, terrifying the other shoppers. Backing up at the deli case to take another look at the potato salad – beep, beep, beep, like a heavy construction vehicle – she bumped into a pyramid of party crackers, and they all came tumbling down.

  ‘Ooops, sorry.’ But she didn’t seem very – sorry, that is.

  That night I stayed on at Ruth’s to help with dinner, while Paul relaxed at Emily’s. Frankly, I’d rather be watching Ratatouille with my husband and the grandchildren than hovering over a hot stove in my sister’s kitchen, steaming plum puddings, even though it was my specialty, a secret recipe handed down from my grandmother and steamed in her tin pudding molds.

  J & K Studio was closed between Christmas and New Years, so we were surprised when Jay showed up at Hutch’s around eight in the company of a woman – not Kay – who I guessed to be in her early thirties. Her blonde hair was feathered attractively around her cheeks, falling in layers to her shoulders, a hip and modern do, but with a salute to the eighties.

  Hutch invited them in.

  We’d just sat down in the living room to eat dessert, so I asked, ‘Coffee? Plum pudding?’

  ‘If it’s decaf,’ Jay replied.

  ‘A Diet Coke, if you have it,’ the girl replied.

  ‘This is Melanie Fosher,’ Jay said, as he helped Melanie out of her coat and handed it to Hutch. ‘A private student.’

  ‘Pleased to meet you,’ Melanie said, in an accent that was hard to place. Boston?

  I raised a finger – hold that thought – and went out to the kitchen to fetch their drinks. As I fussed with the glassware, I wondered where I’d met the girl before – she looked vaguely familiar – but what the heck was she was doing in my sister’s living room with Jay Giannotti?

  When I returned to our guests, mug in one hand and a highball glass in another, everyone was seated comfortably (although Jay had taken my chair) and Jay was saying, ‘I have a proposition for you.’

  Melanie, I noticed, was watching her teacher closely, her bright blue eyes intent.

  Hutch raised a suspicious, lawyerly eyebrow. ‘Yes?’ he said in a tone that was usually reserved for the big ‘but’ that came after ‘Congratulations! You are the winner of a new laptop computer!’

  ‘It concerns the Shall We Dance? auditions.’

  ‘That,’ Hutch said, acknowledging Ruth’s predicament, ‘is ancient history.’

  Jay raised a hand. ‘Hear me out.’

  ‘I’m listening.’

  ‘Melanie, here, is one of my best dancers. She’s been studying with me privately for two years.’

  I’d assumed Melanie was single, but then I noticed a platinum wedding band and a diamond the size of a plump raisin on the ring fin
ger of her left hand.

  As I watched, Jay picked up that hand, and gave it a gentle squeeze. ‘Her husband is her usual partner, but he’s in the army, and his unit’s been sent to Iraq.’

  At the mention of Iraq my sister stiffened. She hated the war, but in contrast to her usual outbursts, she knew to behave around an army wife with a husband in Iraq.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ Ruth interjected. ‘Will he be there long?’

  ‘Thirteen months,’ Jay replied, before poor Melanie could get a word in edgewise.

  ‘You must be terribly worried,’ I said to Melanie as I handed her a coaster so her glass wouldn’t leave a water ring on Hutch’s expensive, highly-polished end table.

  Melanie set the coaster on the table, and centered her glass on it. ‘We thought we were pretty safe being stationed at Fort Meade, but then Don was cross-leveled.’

  I thought I’d misheard. ‘Cross what?’

  ‘Leveled. When there’s a shortfall of a specific skill in another unit, the army can transfer you just about anywhere. Don’s in military intelligence,’ she explained. ‘He must have some super-secret skill that they’re dying to have.’

  ‘Is he fluent in Farsi?’ asked Hutch.

  Melanie grinned, and we suspected Hutch had scored a bull’s eye. ‘If I told you, I’d have to kill you, then, wouldn’t I?’

  ‘Well, anyway,’ Jay said, in a transparent attempt to steer the conversation back to the topic with which he’d begun. ‘With Ruth incapacitated – how are you feeling, by the way, Ruth?’

  The man couldn’t have cared all that much about the state of Ruth’s health, because he paused only a fraction of a second before barreling on. ‘Melanie is a superb dancer, Hutch, and you’re a great lead. I’m suggesting you partner Melanie for the Shall We Dance? auditions.’

  I nearly choked on my coffee.

  Ruth sucked in air.