Dead Man Dancing

by Marcia Talley

  ‘And in the meantime?’ Eva’s eyes were as pleading as the cat’s.

  ‘Oh, oh. I have a feeling there’s a litter box in my future.’

  ‘As a guest, I can’t possibly bring a cat into a house with two dogs! I can’t keep the cat, Hannah. Particularly not now. Maybe when I move back into the parsonage.’

  We hadn’t owned a cat for years, not since Emily left home and Marmalade, age twenty, died. I couldn’t see any reason not to, so I agreed to host the cat temporarily. ‘I’ll have to ask Paul, but I think he’ll be OK with it.’

  Eva hugged me. ‘Thank you, friend!’ She closed the door and locked it, leaving the window cracked as before. I was grateful that the day had dawned cloudy and cool, so there was no danger of little Bella What’s-her-Name overheating while we attended Jay’s funeral service.

  Inside the church a few minutes later, the organ prelude had already begun, a ponderous and solemn hymn that I didn’t recognize. On the left-hand side of the aisle, about halfway down, I could see Emily discreetly waving. Eva and I hurried past the photographs of Jay that were on display at the back of the sanctuary, accepted a program from a young second cousin, blue-suited, scrubbed and polished within an inch of his young life, and slid into the wooden pew next to my daughter.

  I leaned across Emily to plant a kiss on Chloe’s cheek, gave one to Emily, too, then sat back to examine the program: Mass of the Resurrection for Jerome I. Giannotti, 1958-2008. So, Jay had been fifty. He looked much younger. Centered on the program cover, in full color, was a picture of Jay taken at the same event as the 18 x 24 I’d recently seen in Kay’s dining room. In this pose, however, Kay was facing away from the camera, while Jay looked over her shoulder, smiling directly into the lens.

  Sadly, what was left of that gorgeous man lay in a polished rosewood coffin, sitting on a bier just in front of the altar, surrounded by flowers.

  I pulled a handful of tissues out of my purse. I was going to need them.

  ‘Swing Low, Sweet Chariot’ played softly as the sanctuary gradually filled up around us. Hutch arrived, pushing Ruth in a wheelchair, her leg extended stiffly in front of her. Although I caught their eye and waved them forward, they took an easier route and sat in the back. When Daddy and Neelie arrived, they took the pew immediately behind us, sliding all the way over to the wooden divider to make room for Alicia and Chance when they arrived. I caught sight of Tom and Laurie, sitting together near a bas relief plaque depicting the seventh station of the cross and waved. Melanie I didn’t see anywhere.

  A mystery tune segued into the more familiar ‘Morning Has Broken’, and then it was time for the opening hymn. We stood, and the congregation managed – just – to muddle through the next hymn:

  Be not afraid.

  I go before you always.

  Come follow me,

  And I will give you rest.

  ‘I’m not familiar with this hymn,’ I whispered to Eva somewhere in the middle of the verse about raging waters and burning flames. ‘It’s not very singable.’

  ‘Another legacy of the Folk Mass debacle,’ she whispered back. ‘Some of that St Louis Jesuit crap, written by priests whose mothers were struck in the head with guitars while pregnant with them.’ She raised her eyes to the blue, star-studded sanctuary ceiling and added, ‘May God forgive me for saying so.’

  I missed the next half stanza while biting my tongue and concentrating on the stained glass windows in order to keep from laughing.

  During the eulogies, I located Shirley and Link sitting with Tessa in a pew near the front, and a block of graying heads that I suspected belonged to the Swing and Sway Seniors since I’d seen their Ford Econovan parked outside. By mid-service I was intimately familiar with the backs of several hundred heads of people I didn’t know, but no Melanie.

  Before I knew it, the priest was holding up the host and saying, ‘This is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world . . .’ and we were responding, ‘Lord I am not worthy to receive you . . .’ and I’d still not located her.

  ‘Have you seen Melanie?’ I asked Eva as members of the congregation began filing up to the altar rail to receive communion.

  ‘Is she Catholic?’

  ‘I’m pretty sure. Of the evangelical persuasion.’

  ‘If she’s a faithful Catholic, she’ll go up to receive. Keep watching.’

  We sang the communion hymn ‘I am the Bread of Life’, repeating the refrain ‘I will raise them up’ so many times I thought I would scream, and still no Melanie.

  Not at the rosary service.

  Not at the funeral.

  I was getting seriously worried.

  The Mass ended, we were directed to go in peace, and the congregation recessed silently while a soloist sang the Prayer of St Francis of Asissi, ‘Make Me an Instrument of Peace’, in Spanish, in a clear, high soprano voice that tore at my heart.

  Rather than following my family and friends out of the sanctuary, I loitered at the back, listening, all the while studying the photographs of Jay, silently mourning the man who, against all odds, had taught my lead-footed husband how to waltz.

  Oh, Señor, hazme un instrumento de Tu Paz . . .

  Porque es:

  Dando, que se recibe;

  Perdonando, que se es perdonado;

  Muriendo, que se resucita a la

  Vida Eterna.

  It’d been years since I took Spanish, but with what I knew of French, I translated the words silently as she sang:

  Lord, make me an instrument of peace.

  Where there is hatred, let me sow love.

  Where there is injury, pardon.

  Where there is discord, vision.

  Where there is doubt, faith.

  Where there is despair, hope.

  Where there is darkness, light.

  Where there is sadness, joy.

  O divine Master,

  Grant that I may not so much seek to be

  Consoled as to console;

  To be understood as to understand;

  To be loved, as to love;

  For it is in giving that we receive,

  It is in pardoning that we are pardoned,

  And it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

  One day, I thought as I stood there quietly sobbing, we’ll all be gone and forgotten. The HIA monogram on my towels faded, their edges frayed, the terrycloth cut up into squares for polishing whatever passes for cars by then.

  As the last notes of the song died away, I was startled out of my reverie by a voice behind me. ‘He was the love of my life, you know.’

  I turned to find Kay regarding me with puffy, red-rimmed eyes. Behind her stood a priest. With a light touch of her hand on his surplice, she indicated that he should go ahead without her.

  ‘The pictures you selected are wonderful,’ I said after the priest had disappeared through the doors that led to the narthex.

  A corner of her mouth twitched. ‘Lorraine went a bit overboard, so I had to pare it down a bit from what you saw at the house the other day, but I think it’s representative, don’t you?’

  I scanned the photographs, a dozen or so, that were arranged on the table just as they had been at Kramer’s the night before. As then, there were none that featured little Lorraine. Once again, I wondered if Kay had noticed Lorraine’s resemblance to Tessa or if, as Paul kept suggesting, my overactive imagination was running away with me.

  I blew my nose, carefully considering my answer. ‘I didn’t know Jay as a youth, so it’d be hard to say, but seeing him looking so happy in these pictures makes me wish I did, and feel even sadder that such a promising career was cut short.’

  ‘He set his goals very high,’ she said. ‘Sometimes I thought he’d bitten off more than he could chew.’

  I froze. Was she talking about Jay’s plan to franchise J & K? His crushing workload? His personal life?

  While dabbing at my eyes I studied his widow’s face, looking for clues. It was as if she’d drawn a line in th
e sand and was waiting – composed, and lethal – for me to cross it.

  I knew I’d have to force her hand.

  Even though I stood in a church sanctuary only inches from the holy water, the devil made me do it.

  I took Kay’s pale, too-cool hand in both of mine, looked straight into her ice-blue eyes and said, ‘By the way, Kay, sometime when you’re not so busy, and all this is over, I need to return Jay’s gym bag to you. From the Hippodrome? Hutch retrieved it simply ages ago and gave it to me, but with all that’s happened, golly, I’m sorry, I simply forgot about it. There’s probably nothing of value in there, but I’d like to get it back to you sometime. At your convenience, of course.’

  As I rattled on, I noticed that Kay’s chest had stopped rising and falling – appropriate for a funeral, I suppose – but it told me more or less what I wanted to know. If she had been going about the business of widowhood feeling secure, I sure as hell wanted to give her something to worry about.

  I dropped her hand, tossed a cheery, ‘Just give me a call, will you?’ over my shoulder as I turned and headed for the door.

  Leaving Kay standing alone amidst the photos of her victim, I fled the church and joined my family who were waiting for me on the sidewalk.

  ‘Mother! Where have you been?’

  I kissed her cheek. ‘Later, Emily.’ With a conspiratorial wink at Eva, I rounded up the stragglers and said, ‘Come with me to the parking lot. There’s somebody there that I’d like you to meet.’

  Twenty-Eight

  I tried to reach Melanie for two days, texting repeatedly to her cell, but my messages were never returned. No one answered her land line either.

  I drove to the Fosher apartment in Laurel, near Fort Meade, but no one was home. Melanie’s silver KIA Rio wasn’t parked in its assigned spot in front of the complex either.

  I sat in my car and stewed, listening to Mozart on the radio and staring up at the drapes pulled across Melanie’s living-room window until it occurred to me – at long last – that something might have happened to Don. That he’d been wounded or killed, and that the army had called Melanie away. There had to be some good reason why she wasn’t picking up messages.

  If she had to leave so suddenly, though, it was odd that she hadn’t told me. On the other hand, if somebody called me with the terrible news that something had happened to Paul, I might rush out without notifying anyone, too.

  Three days later, the Capital reported the body of a woman between the ages of twenty-five and thirty had been found floating in the South River near Church Creek. The identity of the victim was being withheld pending notification of next of kin, but with a cry of anguish, I told Paul I knew it had to be Melanie.

  I had to find out for sure.

  Plan A was to call Dennis, my long-suffering brother-in-law slash policeman. But talk about not sharing information with anybody, when I called the station, I learned from an associate that he and Connie had taken advantage of an unexpected break in Dennis’s caseload by shouldering their skis and hightailing it off to Vail.

  I was on my own.

  So I waited.

  I texted Melanie every day.

  Five days later, I was still waiting and worrying when my cell phone rang with a caller ID I didn’t recognize.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Mrs Ives?’ His voice was deeply masculine, but tentative. ‘This is Don Fosher.’

  ‘Thank God! I’ve been so worried. Is Melanie OK?’

  There was a pause. I waited, but heard only breathing, followed by a long sigh. The moment I heard it, I knew what had happened. Don only confirmed my worst suspicions when he said, ‘Melanie’s dead, ma’am. That’s why I’m calling.’

  I felt like I’d been punched in the solar plexus. I couldn’t say anything; I couldn’t even breathe.

  ‘Ma’am?’

  ‘I’m here,’ I gasped. ‘What on earth happened?’

  In halting voice, Don Fosher confirmed what I had suspected all along. It was Melanie’s body the crabber had found while checking his pots in the South River the previous week. ‘Melanie gave me your email address and telephone number,’ Don continued. ‘She told me that you could be trusted.’

  Trusted? My thoughts were in a jumble, and I tried to sort them out.

  When I didn’t say anything, Don said, ‘There’s something funny going on, Mrs Ives. The county police think she fell from the South River Bridge, hitting her head on a piling as she fell. But I don’t believe that, do you? What would Melanie be doing on the South River Bridge? Driving over it, maybe, but not jumping off.

  ‘Melanie texted me every night,’ Don continued in a lifeless monotone, ‘even when I was out on operations. But when I got back from the field this time, the last message I had from her was dated two Sundays ago.’

  I took that in. The day before Jay’s funeral.

  ‘She didn’t drown, Mrs Ives. Melanie died of head injuries. I think somebody hit her over the head and pushed her in.’

  Frankly, I was beginning to think so, too. Had Melanie shared something she’d overheard with Kay, or with somebody else, unwittingly putting her life in danger?

  First Ruth, then Jay, and now Melanie. Taking lessons at J & K was turning out to be dangerous.

  I needed more information. ‘I went looking for her car,’ I told the grieving husband. ‘Did the police find it?’

  ‘Someplace called Yellow Fin,’ Don told me, his voice breaking. ‘I’ve never heard of it.’

  I had. Yellow Fin was a waterfront restaurant at the north-west end of the South River bridge, within walking distance of Gingerville. A little too close to Kay Giannotti for comfort.

  ‘Where are you now, Don?’

  ‘BWI.’

  ‘Do you need someone to pick you up?’

  ‘No, ma’am, but thanks. I’m just getting into a cab. I should hit town in about thirty minutes.’ His voice wooed and wowed and I thought I’d lost him until he said, ‘I have to go to the funeral home. Kramer’s. Do you know it?’

  Unfortunately, I knew it all too well.

  ‘I do. I’ll meet you at Kramer’s, then. Will an hour and a half give you enough time?’

  ‘Without my Melanie, ma’am, I’ve got all the time in the world.’

  Like the well-trained mother I was, I added, ‘And you’re coming home with me for dinner.’

  Like the well-bred boy he was, he couldn’t refuse. ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  When I got to the funeral home at three, Don was waiting for me on the steps. I recognized him at once. It wasn’t hard. Like most returning soldiers, Don was dressed in desert fatigues. A duffle bag leaned against the steps at his feet.

  ‘Don?’

  ‘Ma’am?’ He removed his cap with one sweep of his hand, crushed it in his huge fist, and extended the other ham-sized hand to me.

  Even though we had just met, I gave him a hug, rubbing my palms comfortingly across the massive expanse of his back. ‘I’m so sorry about Melanie. She was a lovely girl, and we were just getting to be good friends.’

  ‘Melanie liked you, too,’ he said sadly. ‘She’d been emailing me about you. Taking her to lunch and like that. That was nice of you.’

  Wandering tourists and pedestrians passing on urgent business had to swerve off the narrow brick sidewalk and on to the street in order to get by us so I suggested we move inside Kramer’s. ‘Let’s find a place where we can chat more comfortably.’

  Back again, way too soon, in the funeral home’s House Beautiful lobby, I looked around for Kramer, Jr. and his impeccable three-piece suit, but didn’t see him. ‘Have you talked to the funeral home people yet, Don?’

  Looking miserable, he nodded.

  ‘Then they shouldn’t have a problem about our sitting in here.’ I turned to my right and opened the door of a miniature meeting room (the brochure would describe it as ‘intimate’) containing a small desk, three upholstered chairs, a backlit stained glass window, soundproof walls to mask the wails, and uplifting music like ‘Y
ou Light Up My Life’ and ‘Wind Beneath My Wings’ drifting in at low volume over the intercom.

  After I sat down, Don closed the door, dumped his duffel, and slumped in the chair opposite, sending it jittering back a few inches on the carpet. ‘This has been the worst week of my life!’

  I smiled sympathetically, feeling like a shrink. ‘Do you want to tell me about it?’

  Don looked relieved, and it all came tumbling out. ‘I’m out on a five-day operation, see. I come back to base, I’m fresh off the truck and all I want is a cheeseburger and a hot shower. On my way to the shower, I’m stopped by my first lieutenant and this other officer I don’t recognize, but he identifies himself as a chaplain, and asks if we couldn’t go someplace quiet. So he takes me to the canteen, buys me a cup of coffee and sets me down. “Sorry, son,” he says. “I have some bad news for you.”

  ‘I knew right then that somebody’d died, but I thought it’d be my grandmother. She’s ninety.’ His fingers brushed vigorously over the stubble on his head as if he were trying to drive the bad memories away. ‘When the chaplain told me it was Melanie, my whole world crashed and burned. An hour later I’m sitting on a Medevac plane in a seat they’d saved for me, and now here I am, talking to you in a freaking funeral home. Totally unreal. Like punch me, it’s a bad dream, I gotta wake up.’

  ‘I’m so sorry, Don.’

  ‘Melanie’s going to be cremated,’ he continued. ‘She’ll be buried in the family plot up in Chilmark on Martha’s Vineyard.’

  I was surprised to hear that. ‘Didn’t Melanie tell me she was from Kansas?’

  ‘She was, but her parents died when she was way young. My parents loved her like she was their own.’ A tear as big as the Atlantic Ocean slid down the big man’s cheek. ‘It’s Abel’s Hill, the same cemetery where they buried John Belushi. She’ll like that.’

  ‘Everyone loved Melanie,’ I said. ‘She was enormously talented. It’s a big loss for all of us.’

  ‘Yes ma’am. Except for the son-of-a-bitch who killed her. Begging your pardon, ma’am.’