Dead Man Dancing

by Marcia Talley

  ‘Yes, he did. He’d brought his costume in a plastic garment bag, but when he changed, he stuffed his jeans and toiletries into a gym bag.’ Hutch got up from his chair, walked to the window, then turned around to face the officers again. ‘I presume from your questions that you’ve interviewed the staff at the Hippodrome, and that you’re aware that I took the bag away from the Hippodrome after Jay was taken ill. But you’ll have to ask Jay’s widow about the bag. It’s been returned to her.’

  From my seat by the window, I began to squirm. I’d completely forgotten about Jay’s bag. Bright red, with a blue International Dance Sport logo, it was still in the trunk of my LeBaron. With Hutch’s and my fingerprints all over it.

  ‘Uh, Hutch?’

  ‘Not now, Hannah.’

  ‘Can I see you in the kitchen for a minute?’

  Hutch fixed me in a steely glare, guessing (correctly) why I wanted to speak to him. ‘Jesus Christ, Hannah! You didn’t return the bag to Kay?’

  ‘I’m sorry, no. I put the bag in the trunk of my car, then Paul took the car in for an oil change. With all that’s happened, I simply forgot.’

  Suddenly I became the unwelcome center of attention.

  ‘Do you still have the bag, ma’am?’

  I glanced quickly from the detective to Hutch, and when Hutch nodded, I said, ‘I think it’s still in my trunk. Shall I get it for you?’

  ‘Please.’

  ‘It’s got our fingerprints on it,’ I added helpfully.

  ‘That’s to be expected,’ the detective said. ‘Look, none of you are under suspicion at this time. We appreciate your cooperation with our investigation.’

  Across the room, Ruth let out an audible sigh of relief.

  When I returned with Jay’s bag and handed it over to the senior detective, he thanked me and said, ‘We’ve been asking everyone if they knew anyone who had a reason to want Mr Giannotti dead.’

  I do, I thought, but decided for the moment to keep it to myself.

  After yesterday afternoon, I was deeply suspicious of Kay, but somewhere in the middle of the night, Paul had convinced me that an old photograph constituted the flimsiest of evidence, everyone is supposed to have a doppelgänger, and that if the proverbial jury wasn’t still out, it sure as hell ought to be.

  After Kay, Tom and Laurie’s fear of exposure sprang immediately to my devious mind, but no way was I going to out them unless I had to.

  Then there was Shirley, but I hadn’t worked out exactly why. I disliked the woman intensely, so it was probably just wishful thinking on my part.

  Were there thugs in the dance franchise business, I wondered? According to Google, Saddam Hussein had favored thallium to rid himself of potential rivals. Maybe a rival studio head had taken Jay out.

  Suddenly I realized that everyone had stopped talking and were once again staring at me. Hutch’s elbow shot into my ribs. ‘Your turn, Hannah.’

  ‘Everyone loved and respected Jay,’ I added helpfully. I felt my face grow hot. ‘Except for his killer, of course.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’ The detective and his sidekick rose to go. ‘Thank you for coming forward with the bag, Mrs Ives.’

  ‘You’re welcome. I’m sorry that I didn’t think of it myself, but I really and truly forgot.’

  The detective passed Jay’s bag to his associate. ‘It happens to the best of us,’ he said. ‘If necessary, we’ll be in touch.’

  For some reason he handed me his business card. ‘And if you think of anything else . . .’

  After the police left, I apologized again to Hutch. ‘I’m sorry if I embarrassed you in front of the police.’

  ‘Not a problem.’

  ‘You know,’ I said, ‘it’s probably a good thing I didn’t give the bag back to Kay before Jay died.’ I described what had happened at the Giannotti home in Gingerville the previous afternoon. ‘If we had returned the bag and there was evidence of thallium poison in it, and Kay is involved, like O.J.’s bloody knife, that bag would have been history by now.’

  Hutch sighed and reached for his mug, sipped the liquid, probably cold by now, and made a face. ‘The cops won’t be happy about chain of custody issues – anybody could have added to or taken from that bag between the time it left the Hippodrome dressing room area and today. But it’s better than nothing.’

  From her chair across the room, Ruth bristled. ‘You two are taking this awfully calmly. Kay is supposed to be doing your choreography for Shall We Dance?, Hutch. What if she gets arrested? What if you get arrested?’

  Hutch smiled benignly. ‘Cool your jets, Ruth. This is still February. The competition isn’t until April. Surely things will be settled by then.’

  ‘Maybe you need a lawyer, darling.’

  ‘I don’t need a lawyer, I am a fucking lawyer!’ Hutch raised a hand. ‘I know, I know. You don’t have to say it. A lawyer who represents himself has a fool for a client.’

  ‘I’m just worried, that’s all.’ I recognized the tone. Ruth was struggling to remain cheerful. ‘This is your big chance, sweetheart. Maybe we should hire another choreographer to work with you and Melanie.’ Ruth patted the arm of her chair, and Hutch, like an obedient little fiancé, closed the distance between them, settled his lawyerly buns on the spot she’d indicated, and snaked his arm behind her shoulders. Hutch examined the top of Ruth’s head, located a spot where the gelled-up spikes might prove less lethal, and planted a conciliatory kiss there. ‘And here I thought I was going to make my name in wills, trusts and estates.’

  I blinked. ‘Surely you’re not giving up the law?’

  Hutch chuckled. ‘Of course not. But I’ve been scrambling to settle what I can settle, and reassign ongoing matters to my long-suffering associate so I can be free for a couple of months. She hates me now, but it’ll be character-building for her to fly solo.’

  ‘What happens if that Market House thing blows up?’ I asked. ‘There was something about it in the Post again this morning.’

  Hutch represented one of the heirs in a never-ending battle over the historic Annapolis market, built in 1784, and deeded to the city on the condition that unless the property be used ‘for the reception of sales and provisions’ it would revert to the heirs of the original owners. The gourmet market sat on valuable property at water’s edge and was now being run, unprofitably it seems, by an out-of-town management company. There was talk – again – of tearing it down.

  ‘That market’s been putting shoes on the children of lawyers for three hundred years, and it’s not going to stop now. Any attempt to tear it down will be blocked by Hysterical, er, Historical Annapolis,’ he said with a grin. ‘I’m not worried.’

  ‘To change the subject for a moment,’ Hutch continued. ‘I have information for you, Nancy Drew.’

  ‘You do?’

  ‘I talked to my buddy up at the Medical Examiner’s . . .’ He paused, I swear, just for the dramatic effect.

  ‘Stop it! You are making me crazy!’

  He raised his free hand. ‘OK. The autopsy’s done.’

  ‘So soon?’

  ‘Homicide put a rush on it. The report won’t be official for a couple of days, not until it’s typed up and the M.E. signs off on it, but they did a segmental analysis of Jay’s hair, and it turns out that his exposure to thallium had been going on for quite some time, perhaps more than a year.’

  ‘Oh my God! Well, that shoots my thallium in the Tylenol capsules theory all to hell.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  Hutch drained his mug and set it down on the end table. ‘What was in Jay’s gym bag, Hannah? Do you remember?’

  ‘You didn’t look into it?’

  ‘I didn’t see any reason to.’

  I stared at the bright floral drapes and tried to picture the bag’s contents. ‘Clothing, running shoes, socks, hair goo, talcum powder, bottled water . . .’

  Hutch looked thoughtful. ‘Could have been in the water, I suppose, the dose that sent him over the edge.’

  ‘Or
. . .’ Several thoughts were niggling the back of my brain: Jay’s powdery footprints on the floor of the studio, and something I’d read on the Internet. I sent my cerebral messenger down to retrieve them, and a few seconds later, the little fellow came up trumps. ‘I think I know how it could have been done!’

  Hutch stopped toying with Ruth’s fingers, and sat up straight. ‘How?’

  ‘Thallium is a white powder. Somebody put it in Jay’s talcum powder.’

  Ruth made a face. ‘You don’t have to swallow it?’

  I shook my head. ‘Thallium can also be absorbed through the skin. Even more quickly, I would think, through hot, sweaty dancer’s skin.’

  ‘How would anybody know that?’ Ruth wondered.

  ‘The same way I do, from reading about it on the Internet.’ I leaned forward, resting my forearms on my knees. ‘Two articles come to mind. Back in the sixties, the CIA hatched a plot to discredit Castro by putting thallium in his shoes when he set them outside his hotel-room door for a shine. They didn’t want to kill him, just embarrass him silly by making his trademark beard fall out.’

  ‘Makes me proud to be an American,’ Hutch quipped.

  ‘The other side in the Cold War wasn’t so bright, either. Not long ago, a group of Russian soldiers discovered an unlabeled bin of the stuff lying around a dump in Siberia, so they said, what the heck, rolled it up in their cigarettes and used it to powder their feet.’

  ‘Not much in the way of entertainment in Siberia, I’d guess. No USO.’

  Ruth punched her fiancé on the arm. ‘Be serious for once.’ She turned to me and asked, ‘Did the soldiers die?’

  I shook my head no. ‘They became desperately ill, but eventually recovered.’

  Hutch regarded me seriously. ‘It’s an interesting theory, Hannah, but it’s simply that, a theory.’

  Personally, I thought my theory was brilliant and fit the facts as I knew them, but far be it from me to say so. ‘Will the cops let us know if they find anything suspicious in Jay’s bag?’

  Hutch snorted. ‘We’ll probably read it first in The Sun, but I have a couple of contacts in Homicide who owe me favors, so perhaps we can get a head’s up.’

  I smiled at the two of them snuggled up like teenagers and said, ‘Well, for what it’s worth, lovebirds, I’m betting all my money on the grieving widow.’

  Twenty-Seven

  Jay’s departure from this world had been agonizing and slow, so it was only right that he be carried off to heaven in a proper, gentler way.

  The Capital obituary was laudatory and long, highlighting Jay’s raised-by-his-own-bootstraps journey from oil rig roustabout to ballroom dancing star. The obit in the Sun had been edited with a heavy hand, but both papers invited friends and family to a rosary service at Kramer’s Funeral Home on Monday night at seven, followed by a funeral mass at St Mary’s at ten the following day.

  ‘C U @ kramer’s,’ Melanie had texted. ‘Something 2 tell U.’

  When Paul and I arrived at Kramer’s, it was just as I had remembered it. Rich oriental carpets, a mahogany highboy, a massive circular table supporting a flower arrangement – fresh and very real – the size of a Volkswagen Beetle. To our right, a carpeted staircase led upstairs, but I had never seen it anything but roped off. To our left was the receiving line, and beyond that, an easel and a table decorated with flowers where Giannotti family photographs were on display.

  As my husband and I were passed down the receiving line, offering condolences to tanned, rugged Texans who, with the exception of Kay and Lorraine, I did not know, I wondered which photographs Lorraine had chosen. When I got to Lorraine – who wore a suit of in-charge navy blue with bold brass buttons – she greeted me like a long, lost sorority sister, then handed me over to Kay.

  Kay looked serene and fragile in a St John’s knit jacket and matching flared skirt that couldn’t have cost a penny less than twelve-hundred dollars at Neiman Marcus. The black color complimented her hair, and emphasized her paleness. ‘I’m so sorry about Jay,’ I told her sincerely as I squeezed her hand. Silently, I admired her notched collar, flap pockets and the elegant gold buttons that marched down her front and thought, Is this what a murderer looks like?

  Who was it who said that poison was the weapon of choice for a woman? Dame Agatha Christie again, I suppose. Roman matrons certainly had a field day with it, possibly inspiring those modern-day women who rid themselves of burdensome husbands with loving doses of ‘inheritance powder’. If I crossed her, Kay might not come after me with a gun, but I’d better watch what I ate.

  Moving away from the line, I looked around for Melanie, but didn’t see her. We said hello to Chance, and to Tom and Laurie – who had jettisoned her scarf in favor of a violet, scrunch-neck turtle. Under her overcoat she wore a short A-line skirt in a deep, dark purple that matched her heels. Tom, on the other hand, appeared in neat jeans and a collarless shirt. As the four of us dawdled at the photo display I couldn’t resist teasing Laurie, ‘You couldn’t dress down if they paid you to do it!’

  She rattled her bracelets at me and said, ‘Girl, if you’ve got it, flaunt it!’

  When the pair moved on to the Blue Room to find seats, I examined the photographs more closely. Lorraine had chosen a retrospective picturing Jay alone, acknowledging, I suppose, who was actually the star of the show.

  Silently, with his hand on my elbow, Paul nudged me forward.

  No open casket, I was relieved to see, and the service, once it started, was short and sweet. In preparation for saying the rosary, I’d rummaged through my jewelry box at home and located the rosary I’d bought from a street vendor in the shadow of St Peter’s in Rome. I brought it to the funeral home with me, hoping as I prayed my lap around the beads that its origin would give them extra oomph.

  While an electronic organ played softly, two cousins from Odessa and an uncle from San Antonio stood up to deliver remembrances of Jay. The old guy stuttered and stumbled, and got so involved in a chronological catalog of Jay-isms, punctuated by snuffling and dabbing at his nose with a napkin-sized handkerchief, that he’d only reached age ten before Lorraine took him gently aside, copiously weeping, or we might have been there all night.

  Hutch attended, but not Ruth. Shirley and not Tessa. If Tessa was Jay and Shirley’s child, it must have galled the woman when the immediate family traipsed around the corner after the service for a quiet dinner at Maria’s Sicilian Ristorante. Shirley could hardly expect them to include her, of course, especially if they didn’t know how she was ‘related’ to Jay. In the lull between the eulogies I studied Shirley’s grief-ravaged face and wondered, now that Jay was gone, what she was going to do.

  Daddy slipped in at the last minute, taking a seat in the back that Neelie had been saving for him. Alicia breezed in late, missing the service altogether. Surprisingly, Melanie never showed at all.

  But, I was sure I’d see her in the morning.

  Jay’s funeral was smack dab in the middle of a class day, so Paul begged off on the Mass. Eva called and said she wanted to go, so we agreed to meet on the steps of St Mary’s at 9:45.

  Occupying acres of prime real estate on the banks of Spa Creek, St Mary’s Catholic Church, red-brick and imposing, boasted a tall white spire, one of four with St Anne’s, the Maryland State House, and St John’s College that dominated the Annapolis skyline.

  I walked to the church from home, cutting down private alleys, around the controversial Market House, across Main and down Green, arriving there a bit early. Eva arrived early, too. I caught sight of her chugging down Duke of Gloucester, not coming from the direction of St Anne’s as I expected, but around the corner from the St Mary’s parking lot.

  I waved, and she hustled over to give me a hug. ‘Your family here yet?’

  ‘Not yet. Whoever got here first is supposed to save a pew.’

  Eva checked her watch. ‘Good. We’ve still got time. Come with me.’

  She grabbed my upper arm and practically dragged me down the drive
way and behind the church to the parking lot. ‘I have to show you something.’

  The back window on the driver’s side of her little gray Corolla was open a couple of inches, and I was about to say, ‘Hadn’t you better lock your car?’ when she wrenched the back door open. ‘Look at that.’

  Resting on the back seat was a brand new, two-toned, high-class pet carrier. Inside the cage, head on paws, staring morosely out the door with bright, golden eyes was a plump, gray cat.

  ‘Let me guess,’ I said, noticing the elaborate red bow tied to the carrier handle. ‘Jeremy.’

  Eva folded her arms across her chest and nodded.

  ‘I thought you had a restraining order!’

  ‘I do, but apparently that only applies to Jeremy Dunstan and not this beautiful animal. Whose name, by the way, is Bella de Baltimore.’

  Eva reached into the pocket of her overcoat, pulled out a legal-size envelope with a piece of masking tape still attached to a corner, and handed it to me.

  ‘I can hardly wait,’ I said, opening the flap and pulling out the paper inside.

  Dear Eva (I read).

  Even though you won’t go out with me, you can hold this sweet kitty and feel GOD’s love (and mine!) that way. But you can’t fight LOVE forever!

  Yours always,

  Jeremy

  P.S. Her name is Bella de Baltimore and she is a PURE-BRED Chartreux

  My eyes darted from the cat, to Jeremy’s letter, to the face of my friend, and back to the cat again, and for some reason, I started giggling. ‘It’s unbelievable! If you wrote this in a book, nobody’d believe it!’

  I was glad to see Eva giggling, too, but after half a minute of silliness her face grew serious. ‘What am I going to do, Hannah?’

  ‘With the cat?’

  ‘That, too.’

  ‘I’m at a loss at what to do about Jeremy. The man’s clearly deluded. As for the cat, it’s pedigreed, you can take it back to the breeder.’

  ‘And just who might the breeder be?’

  I admired the gorgeous animal, marveling at its woolly gray-blue fur and unique golden eyes. ‘We have the cat’s name, so there’ll be records. You can check with the Cat Fanciers’ Association.’