Slow Dancing

by Suzanne Jenkins

  ***

  At five, finished with his work, Frank came into the office to get his daughter. “Time to call it a day, sister. Family-Owned, here I come.”

  “Can I go to the store with you? I want to see what inspires me for dessert,” she said smiling. “I want somethin’ extra special for Margo tonight.”

  “You like her, don’t you?” Frank asked, wanting confirmation that it was in fact all right with her if he started to see Margo.

  “I like her fine,” Ellen said. After Mary, Margo was a breath of fresh air, someone who could be trusted with her secrets, who wouldn’t desecrate the name of her mother like Mary Cook had.

  Frank gave her a one armed hug as they crossed the street together, unaware of the stares of the motley group of characters who waited to carry groceries. “Those men give me the hebby jebbies,” Ellen said. “They seem dangerous, waitin’ there to ponce.”

  “They’re harmless,” Frank said. “The sheriff watches ‘em like a hawk.” They entered the store, patrons and employees smiling and waving at the handsome father and daughter who’d danced so beautifully the weekend before. Some even clapped, embarrassing Ellen.

  “This was a mistake,” she mumbled.

  “Let’s run through and get our burger and buns,” Frank said smiling and waving back, all in the name of promotion for the garage. Ellen chose a gooseberry pie with a double crust and vanilla ice cream for dessert.

  “I don’t know if I can wait to eat this!” Ellen said. “I love pie.”

  “I’ll teach you how to bake one,” Frank said, laughing at the notion; Frank’s pies were misshapen but delicious.

  “Sounds perfect. Makin’ my own pie could be dangerous though. I hope Margo likes pie.” The excitement in the truck was palpable as they drove to the cottage, and although they didn’t say it out loud, expectations growing that Margo Portland might someday be a part of their family and that Ellen would bake her pie. It wasn’t until they pulled into the driveway that Ellen remembered Margo couldn’t eat sugar.

  “What’s wrong with someone who can’t eat sugar?” Ellen asked. Frank frowned, thinking.

  “Not sure what you mean,” he answered.

  “When I was at Margo’s on Saturday she told me she couldn’t eat candy because it’s made of sugar and she can’t have it.”

  “She must be a diabetic,” Frank said. “How awful for her.”

  “I’ll think of somethin’ else to make for her,” Ellen said. “But you’re right. Not being able to have pie would be awful.”

  ***

  After Boyd visited Carol at the hospital, making sure she was on the mend, her burns healing and in good spirits, he stopped off at the station to see if the team uncovered anything in the search of Mary Cook’s house.

  “Same prints in both our victim’s rooms. Whoever killed Alan Johnson turned the air conditioning unit on. Cate Ashby said she never touched it because he’d moved out and returned unexpectedly. The same two fingers that unscrewed the light bulb next to Alan’s bed also turned the air on, and drank water from a coffee cup at Mary’s.”

  “Oh man that is big,” Boyd replied. “You have DNA from the cup, too.” DNA use in crime detection was its early stages, but they would utilize it fully for this.

  “Peter reminded me that the woman who met Mary on the sidewalk had an odd color hair. Sort of purple, so it could have been a wig. And she was wearing hospital scrubs. Navy blue. Evidently, navy blue scrubs aren’t standard uniforms at the hospitals in the area.”

  “Everything has a way of coming to the surface in time.” Boyd said, distracted. “What file is this?” He pointed to a file left on his desk.

  “Margaret McPherson,” Dave replied, sorting through paperwork on his desk. “Faye got the go-ahead to reopen her case. She had one of her nurse friends go over the lab work from the autopsy and McPherson’s glucose was undetectable, while she had a lot of insulin in her blood. The coroner said she could have injected herself with it, but the nursing staff said it would have been impossible for her to acquire the syringe. Evidently, all their syringes are kept under lock and key. What’s your take on it?” When Boyd didn’t answer, Dave looked up. Boyd was gone.

  Chapter 28

  Sitting in his patrol car, waves of nausea hit Boyd. He opened the door and threw up until there was nothing left in his stomach. Starting the car, he slowly drove out of the parking lot, wondering what steps he should take. He could just leave it alone and let the wheels of justice do their job. But he didn’t know if he had the patience to allow it. More about confrontation, he was an action kind of man, someone who liked to get things done quickly.

  Hoping he wasn’t making a mistake, he drove over to Margo’s house, praying no one would see him. The idea that the two biggest gossips in town were gone; Miss Logan home in Beauregard and Mary dead, gave him peace. If anyone saw his car there, they wouldn’t care. He parked in the alley and went through her backyard.

  She wasn’t home. He knew where the key was, but didn’t want to do anything without a search warrant. “You dumb ass,” he said out loud. “Why didn’t you do that in the first place? Go back to the station.” He went to his car and called the station on his radio.

  “Is Faye Baker still there?” he asked.

  “She is,” dispatch said. “She’s breathin’ down my neck.”

  “What is it Boyd?” Faye asked.

  “I don’t want to say over the radio,” he answered. “Can you stick around? I’ll be right there.”

  “Hurry up,” she said. He put his flashers on as he sped through town, getting back to the station in less than five minutes. A memory from a year ago, like a thrown shoe hitting him in the head pounded in his brain.

  He was waiting in bed while Margo got out of the shower. Modest, she put a robe on before coming out, but it was silky and flesh colored, hugging her body, as enticing as if she were nude. Then as if she were purposely trying to ruin the mood, he watched her draw up insulin in the tiny syringe, then open her robe and pinch flesh on her belly, throwing the needle like a dart.

  “A sure fire way to murder someone is to use insulin.” He sat up, resting on his elbows.

  “Who wants to commit murder?”

  “Oh, no, no, no. No one,” she giggled. “I’m just saying that it’s a way to do it. The insulin works quickly and is difficult to detect.”

  “Well, you’ve got it if we need it, is that what you’re drivin’ at?” She got back into bed, laughing.

  “I do indeed.” At the time, he wondered if she was hinting he kill his wife. But the idea sweet Margo would think of such a thing was so outlandish, he buried it.

  Was Margo waiting for Frank to be free? As Margaret’s nurse practitioner, Margo saw Margaret getting better, ready for discharge. It was all conjecture. She acted right away, before Margaret returned home, tired of waiting for Boyd to leave Carol. Frank would be single if the plan worked. Since she had access to her, she’d kill Margaret and get away with it. Almost. New technology could detect insulin, even in a corpse.

  ***

  Faye was waiting for him, pacing. “I hope you have something.”

  “I need a search warrant. Fast.”

  “For what?” He told her, watching her expression turn stony.

  “I need to get the judge before he leaves,” she said, running out of the room.

  ***

  “I hope this is isn’t a wild goose chase,” Faye said. She and Boyd were standing with the doctor who owned the office where Margo Portland was a nurse practitioner.

  “We don’t have the need to empty our sharps containers that often. So if insulin was injected and the syringe disposed of in March, it’s still here. There are two containers; one in the lab and one in the clinic. Margo would use the one in the clinic, unless she was trying to hide something. We don’t administer insulin in the clinic, ever. It won’t be difficult to find the syringe if it’s here.” Boyd didn’t think Margo was a sophisticated enough murderer to think that deeply
. If she injected herself, it would have her DNA, not Margaret’s.

  “Unless she got rid of it at Hallowsbrook,” Faye said, whispering.

  “I doubt that,” Boyd said. “They’ve got security cameras all over that place.” Turning to the doctor, he had one more request. “I’ll need your files for Margaret McPherson.”

  “We don’t keep those here,” he replied.

  “You might not think so, but I know Margo brings them home each night. I’ve seen her with the files.” The doctor shrugged, looking at him, curious.

  “Let’s head to her office. It’s in the clinic.” They followed him to the back of the building, the clinic off a large fenced-in parking lot, providing privacy for the patients who required clinic services. The rooms were dark and depressing, clearly not meant to be a place where a person would care to linger.

  They searched her desk and file cabinet and the doctor found the file marked McPherson, Margaret. The insignia for Hallowsbrook was marked on the front, clearly not an office file. “This is highly unprofessional,” he said, handing it over. “Files are never supposed to leave the unit.”

  Pointing to the sharps container outside of Margo’s office, the doctor lifted the container off the wall and deposited it in a red bag Faye was holding open.

  “Let’s get out of here,” she said, frowning. “You should try to brighten up this dump for the poor folk.”

  “Just because Margo Portland has diabetes doesn’t mean she’s the one who gave Margaret McPherson too much insulin,” Faye said as they drove back to the station, a red-bagged sharps container on her lap. “And if the syringe with her DNA isn’t in this bucket, we have nothing but your hunch.”

  “I’ve got more than a hunch, Faye.”

  “Why would Margo want to kill her? That’s what I don’t get.”

  “She wanted Frank,” Boyd replied. “Margaret was getting better and up for release. Margo wanted to make sure he stayed free.

  Boyd kept driving, knowing if they found the proof they were looking for, he’d have to confess in a public court of law that he was having an affair with Margo when she said those damning words, “A sure fire way of murdering someone is to use insulin.”

  Returning to the station, the file and each sheet contained within were dusted for prints by CSI and handed over to Faye. The first thing she noticed reading the notes was that Margo Portland saw Margaret early on Wednesday before she died. By the time Mary Cook visited later Wednesday, Margaret was already beginning to go into insulin shock.

  ***

  Boyd and Dave Madden sat outside of Margo’s house for an hour.

  “This has got to be hard for you,” Dave said. “I mean, of course it’s hard. But are you okay?”

  “Yes,” Boyd answered. “I thought I should bow out, but Thomas Walker said not yet. So here I am.”

  “Where the hell did she go?” Dave said. “I hope she didn’t get wind of what was happening and bolt.”

  “Let’s drive over to Frank McPherson’s,” Boyd said suddenly. “I know he was talking to Margo about taking care of his kid if he was charged with abuse.”

  “Why would she go over there?”

  “It’s just a hunch,” Boyd said, stony. He started the car and drove through the night, passing the lighted houses in the residential neighborhood on the outskirts of town, and then down a lonely dirt road, unlighted. The moon was bright, the stars invisible, unable to compete.

  “Is that it?” Dave said, pointing to a cottage lit up like a beacon.

  “That’s it,” Boyd replied. “I’m going to sneak up on them.” Like he always did, hoping to catch Frank doing something wrong, he turned off the lights and engine and drifted up the driveway. As clear as could be, in what appeared at first to be an intimate embrace, Margo Portland and Frank McPherson were standing together. Johnny Rivers played in the background, music floating through the open windows. But as the sheriff and the detective watched, the couple started to sway back and forth innocently as Frank led her in step. Ellen was jumping up and down, clapping.

  “They’re dancing! They’re slow dancing,” Dave said hitting his knee and laughing. “People still do that?”

  “Yep, it looks like they do,” Boyd said, sadly. “Poor Frank. If what I think is true, it’ll be the last time he dances with Margo.”

  Chapter 29

  Getting out of Mary’s house without anyone seeing her was no mean feat. The man who lived next door hung out on his porch for a while after the fight. The screaming and commotion had to rouse the rest of the neighborhood’s curiosity but no one called the police, or if they did, there was no response. Waiting until dark to go, she left Mary’s house from a back door that faced an alley. Not believing she’d get away with it gave her confidence she didn’t usually have. If she got caught, oh well. How would it change her life, really? Already living in self-imposed confinement; going to a job she loathed, the loneliness unbearable, and then finally succumbing to Alan’s lies, at least a murder trial and life in prison would bring some excitement, not to mention she’d have companionship in jail.

  After she killed Mary, she found a bottle of spray cleaner under the kitchen sink and wiped over the few places she touched, the door handles and the handle of the knife while it stuck out of Mary’s back. Exhausted, she went into the living room and sat down to rest, confident no one would come to the house because Mary had said so. “You’re in luck! The place is empty and I’m not expecting anyone tonight, so come on in!”

  Arriving at Mary’s that second time; a police car pulled up to the house just as she’d given up knocking on the door and walked down the steps to leave. It threw her into a state of panic so intense she almost ran, thinking they were coming for her. But the cop was just dropping Mary off. Jealousy surged seeing Mary; thin, animated, pretty; everything she wasn’t. Imagining her in Alan’s arms intensified the rage; up until that moment, she only wanted to talk to Mary but anger would be the deciding factor in Mary’s demise. Following the exact same procedure she did with Alan, only this time she used Mary’s very own kitchen knife, originally lifted from the café, to stab her in the back.

  The logistics of killing Alan the evening before were trickier. When he called her from Mary’s house earlier that week, giving her the ax, it was simple for Noelle to get the number he was calling from. Dialing star six nine, the number was repeated by a recorded voice. A wait of a few days to decrease suspicion, Noelle called the number.

  “I’m coming into Seymour tomorrow and want to reserve a room,” she said.

  “No need for a reservation,” Mary said, putting lipstick on, anxious to leave for Beauregard. “Just come by when you arrive.”

  “Can I have your address?” Mary gave it freely, not cautious at all.

  “How’d you hear about me?” she asked. But Noelle had already hung up.

  Mary Cook was the woman she was looking for, and Noelle made the decision to leave Florida and go to Alabama; there was no other alternative. Years of systematic emotional abuse by men culminated in Alan’s mistreatment of her and he would be the scapegoat, paying the dues for all those who went before him.

  The bus ride was awful, reminding her of nightmares of youth, going across the border with her mother to visit relatives. Arriving in Seymour in the early afternoon, the bus dropped her off at the corner of Mary’s street, relief when the whoosh of the hydraulic doors opened and fresh air could finally flood in. The café’ in town offered her a chance to regroup, and it was empty, business almost done for the day. An older woman with a tired limp put a menu and a glass of water down on the table. “Where’s the bathroom?” she asked.

  “In back,” the waitress said, pointing to the left of the lunch counter while she returned to filling a tray of saltshakers. On the way to the bathroom, the perfect weapon presented itself; a six inch carving knife in a plastic bin of knives. Slipping the knife into her bag, adrenalin surged through her body. She just made it to the bathroom before bursting into tears, unable to bea
r the pain for another minute. Locking the door, she knelt down on one knee on the dirty floor and rolled up her pant leg. Using the knife from the café, she very slowly nicked the skin below her anklebone. When she was sure she missed any major vessels, she cut a little deeper, the relief coincided with the rush of air from her lungs. Wrapping the wound with gauze she always carried, she wiped the tip of the blade off and put it in her bag with her bandage supplies. She’d be able to do this.

  Alan’s unlocked car parked in front of Mary’s house was a perfect place to hide and wait. Carefully opening the door, she got in the backseat and immediately fell asleep.

  What she wasn’t expecting was to be a witness to the fight. The noise woke her up and at first, she couldn’t tell where it was coming from. Just as she peeked up over the back door to look out the window, he flew down the steps with his suitcase. Fortunately, he opened the front door and threw it in the passenger seat. Nerve building to enable her to kill him as he drove down the deserted road, she was just getting ready to plunge the knife into his neck when he pulled into a well-lit gas station and got out to make a phone call. Heart bounding in her chest, she tried to slow her breathing down before he heard it.

  The car stopped at Towering Pines. Waiting until he went into the dining room to sneak inside the house, no on noticing due to the fuss they made over Alan’s return, she hid under the staircase, not sure what would happen next. She listened to their conversation, hearing Cate say he could have his old room at the top of the stairs. Alan and another woman named Margo chatted, and their attraction for each other was clear in his voice. Someone brought up Mary’s name, enraging her further. Having heard enough, she tiptoed up the stairs, opened the door at the top of the stairs, the heat blasting her in the face. Not thinking it might alert someone, she turned the air conditioning on, hid next to the wardrobe and waited.