“What happened?” Tinkie asked.
“I did urge Claudia to do the lift. She was like a golden butterfly. She seemed to defy gravity when she danced.” He looked away and swallowed. Then he continued. “It was the big Christmas competition on the cruise line. Claudia was my first professionally trained dance partner. It was … incredible, the way she could move, her frame, her footwork. And she was such a nice person. She came from a family of dancers from somewhere in the Midwest. I think her folks had a dance studio.”
“How did she end up in Mobile?” I asked.
“She was working as a nurse at the state docks in Mobile, and she won a free ticket on the cruise line that leaves from the Mobile port. I’d been hired to put on a dance show every night of the cruise and also to dance with the customers. The dance boys, as they called us, were big draws for women who had non-dancing husbands, and for a few who were looking for a little action off the dance floor.” He shrugged. “That was never for me, but some of the dance boys saved up enough over a summer to pay the full ride to college or a down payment for their first home.”
“Those were some busy boys,” Tinkie said under her breath. Normally Tinkie was always stomping my foot or poking my ribs for ill-timed or inappropriate remarks. This time I pinched her at the waist just above her left hip and was gratified when she jumped a little.
“Anyway, I met Claudia. I discovered that she and Betsy had long been friends. I think they met in nursing school, but I’m not certain.”
The history lesson was great, but I wanted to know if he’d dropped the woman with malicious intent. Still, I’d learned that letting a suspect or witness wind down in his own way was often the quickest way to an answer.
“The first time I danced with Claudia, I knew she was the real deal. She could take on an international competition. She was that good. But she was insecure. I don’t know what happened to make her doubt her ability, but she was always too cautious. I wanted to help her get over that, even if she ultimately left me behind. After all, I had a life and a business. I couldn’t globe-trot to all the big ballroom competitions. But she could. She had it, that magical quality where she seemed to express the music with her body. People couldn’t take their eyes off her.”
It was clear Erik still mourned what had happened to her. I wondered if he knew she was dead.
“Anyway, sorry for getting lost in the past. It was a simple lift. I don’t know what happened. I think her ankle twisted at the very last minute before she took the leap. She was off balance, and I did everything I could to take her down easy. I didn’t drop her. Not exactly. It’s more like she fell … It was one of the worst evenings of my life.”
“Was she instantly paralyzed?” Tinkie asked.
“That’s the weird part. She wasn’t. The ship’s doctor said she’d bruised her spine somewhere in mid-back. He recommended a course of strong anti-inflammatory drugs, traction, and rest.”
“The cruise line offered to get a helicopter to take her back to the mainland, but she refused to go. She said she wanted to finish the cruise even if she couldn’t dance. That’s when I met Johnny Braun. He was dancing with Patrice.”
“When the cruise was done, I went home to Lucedale and Claudia’s brother was visiting her. The next thing I knew, she was in a Mobile hospital and was paralyzed.”
“I’m so sorry.” I’d come to believe Erik didn’t lie, and if his account of this story were true, I didn’t see how Betsy Dell could hold him responsible for Claudia’s fate. “I hate to tell you, Erik, but Claudia died earlier this year.”
“What?” He put his hands on the counter for balance. The news hit him hard. “I didn’t know.”
I paused, then with a rueful face, said, “Suicide, by the looks of it.”
“I lost touch with her. I did try. I called and wrote but she stopped answering the phone and my letters were returned unopened. I figured she blamed me for the paralysis, and so I let it go. I didn’t want to cause her any more distress.”
“I’m sorry for both of you,” Tinkie said. “Do you know if she followed the doctor’s orders?”
“I don’t. I honestly thought she was fine. She was in Mobile, and I had to come back to Lucedale and get busy. I have to be here, at the pharmacy. That’s what people expect, and if I’m gone, my business suffers. I assumed she was healing, until I called and her phone had been disconnected. Then I started looking for her and Patrice told me she’d been paralyzed. I was stunned. Claudia’s family had come to get her, and they told Patrice that they never wanted to hear from me again, that I had destroyed their daughter’s life.”
“She never even let you know?”
He shook his head. “I can be selfish and self-centered sometimes, but I would never have ignored her. I liked Claudia. I wish I’d persisted in trying to stay in contact. I wish I could change a lot of things.”
31
We’d just stepped out of the drugstore when Tinkie gripped my arm. “We need to talk to that Ana Arguello dancer woman. No matter which way this case turns, it always comes back to dancing.”
“Sheriff Glory was going to talk to her, but I don’t think she ever made it. She’s had her hands full with Snaith and Betsy and Cosmo.” I’d forgotten about Erik’s other dance partner, but Tinkie, per usual, was right. And I still had Ana’s phone number. “Let’s give her a call.”
The phone rang and rang, never going to voice mail, which was pretty strange. I didn’t know how to turn my voice mail off. I had a vast collection of voicemail robo-calls from solicitors I’d’ve liked to stop.
Tinkie checked her watch. “Look, let’s just run over there. It’s not twenty minutes from here to that part of Mobile County. We have time to go there and get back.”
“Let’s roll.”
We went back to the courthouse and I actually left a note for Sheriff Glory outlining our plans and telling her about the strange text Cece had sent Jaytee. Why not cooperate with someone who was trying to keep us safe? It was kind of a novel idea.
Mobile really was within spitting distance, and the GPS on my phone took us right to Ana Arguello’s door. The hot-stuff Latin dancer didn’t open the door when Tinkie pounded.
“You knock,” Tinkie said. “Your hands are bigger than mine and make more noise.”
“Okay.” I pounded hard on the door, then turned the knob. To my surprise, it creaked open. We were looking right into Ana’s foyer. The house had an eerie quality of emptiness.
The neighborhood was upper middle class with perfectly manicured lawns and brick structures with high ceilings, dark shingle roofs, and a big energy footprint.
“Ana!” Tinkie and I called in unison. “Ana Arguello!”
Her name bounced off the beautiful tile floors and echoed. Empty. The house sounded empty.
“Do you think she’d care if I used her bathroom?” Tinkie was literally crossing her legs as she stood beside me.
“Go. We can beg forgiveness later if we find her.”
Tinkie found a bathroom under the stairs that led to the upper floor and I drifted into the den area, which was furnished in vibrant colors and materials that reflected a love of the Southwest. I appreciated Ana’s taste. In a glass cabinet in a corner were dozens of dance trophies. I paused to look at them. I was only a little creeped out by stumbling around a woman’s home when we hadn’t been invited in.
I heard the toilet flush and went back to the front door to wait for Tinkie. Ana wasn’t home. We’d made a trip for nothing. When Tinkie didn’t appear, I called her name.
“Just a minute.” Her voice came from upstairs. “While I’m here I’m poking—Oh no! Sarah Booth, get up here, fast.”
I took the stairs two at a time until I found her in a narrow hallway. She was leaning against the wall and breathing heavily. “What? What happened?”
She pointed into a room. I eased past her and walked into what looked like an office/study. The smell hit me first. Then I saw a woman’s legs extending beyond the base of a big
desk. I didn’t have to look, but I did, while I was pulling out the phone to call Sheriff Glory.
There was a reason Ana Arguello hadn’t answered her phone or the door. She was dead, and had been for a day or two, if the color of the corpse and the buzzing flies were any indication.
Tinkie took the phone from my hand and called Sheriff Glory. “You aren’t going to believe this, but Sarah Booth and I are in Mobile. We’ve found another body.”
* * *
By the time the Mobile, Alabama, police detective finished taking our statements, we were close to being suspects in the murder. If Sheriff Glory hadn’t showed up to speak for us, we might have gone straight to the police department to cool our heels while our statements were verified.
After dealing with the police, Glory followed us out to the car. What we’d learned was that Ana had also been poisoned, and the estimated time of death was during a span of hours when Erik didn’t have an alibi. Glory leaned against the Roadster. “Every death goes back to Erik’s dancing career. Even your friend Cece’s disappearance has dancing involved. ‘Dancing with the Devil’s bones’ was in her note,” Glory said. “I’m going to pick Erik up. I don’t have a choice. I’m charged with protecting the citizens, and right now he’s looking like a serial killer.”
“Oh for heaven’s sake. Erik is no serial killer.”
“I have two dead bodies in George County and one in Alabama that all relate to Erik. Two attacks on people that also are connected to Erik.”
“I do believe Erik is being framed,” Tinkie said. “There’s not even a motive for him to kill Ana Arguello. The only thing he said to me about her was that she was a firecracker of a dancer. As far as I know they were planning on doing the solstice competition on the cruise line. Why would he kill his partner who could help him win a fifty-thousand-dollar purse?”
“Your logic is infallible,” Glory said. “But serial killers are driven by compulsion and deviant behavior, not logic.”
I felt like a two-hundred-pound weight had been put on my shoulders.
It was just coming on six when we crossed the state line back into Mississippi. Tinkie called Donna to let her know we’d be back for the night, and we decided to go straight to the Garden of Bones to see if we could find Cosmo—in the hope he could identify his attacker. Betsy Dell could only say her attacker was a tall smooth-shaven man. I hoped Cosmo could add more detail, and the gardens were the logical place to look for Cosmo. Tinkie and I would soon qualify to be tour guides of the gardens if we spent much more time there.
The sign for the slain Perry Slay was still blinking purple, green, and gold when we passed. By the time we pulled up in the parking area, it was completely empty. Reynolds wasn’t in his office. We backtracked and went to Cosmo’s house, which was also empty.
“Maybe the aliens sucked everyone up into the mothership,” Tinkie said. “This is weird.”
We got flashlights and a gun out of the trunk and doused ourselves with mosquito repellant just in case. My partner did look tired and done in, but she didn’t complain.
As we walked toward the miniature Holy Land, I put in a call to Coleman, hoping against hope that Cece had turned up. When he answered, I knew from his voice that he didn’t have happy news.
“Jaytee is worried. So are Ed and Millie.” Coleman sounded lower than the bottom of a well. “This is my fault. I should have caught Gertrude by now. How is it possible she escapes every trap I set?”
“It’s not your fault.” I so desperately wanted to be with Coleman, to give him comfort and to also take the comfort he offered me. Worry bored into my brain like an earwig. “Hans hasn’t shown up in Memphis?”
“No, and no word from him. Have you had any indication Gertrude is still in your area?”
“Glory only has one deputy, but she has a lot of community support. No one has reported any sightings. She’s gone to ground.” With my friend and the TV producer/star with her.
“How’s your case?” Coleman asked.
I told him about Ana Arguello’s murder. “Glory is going to arrest Erik and hold him. That may be for the best. If he’d been in jail this whole time, he could have avoided a lot of trouble.”
“She doesn’t have a choice,” Coleman said. “She has to do it.”
“I know.” I couldn’t help that I sounded defeated. “This should have been a simple case. The problem is that the person behind all of this, the person who concocted the frame for Erik, is plenty smart. And completely relentless. I don’t know how anyone could hate Erik this much.”
“Sane and rational thought doesn’t always apply.”
Coleman sounded a lot like Sheriff Glory.
Tinkie had been shifting from foot to foot and now she signaled she needed a word. “Hold on, Coleman.”
“I have to pee. I’m about to pop. I’m going back to the restroom at the parking lot. I’ll be back in a jiffy.”
“Should I come with you?”
“I have the gun,” Tinkie reminded me.
“Keep your eyes open.”
She disappeared down the trail and I returned to Coleman. I was just about to tell him how much I loved and missed him when he said, “I’ll call you back, Sarah Booth. Someone may have sighted Gertrude.”
“Call me,” I said before he hung up.
32
Pacing around in the woods as the sunlight faded, I looked down the trail for Tinkie and saw someone approaching. This was not my petite friend, but someone taller, but just as elegantly turned out. This woman wore a sleek blond bob and a fitted white suit with a perky little fascinator on her head. Definitely British.
“Remember, if you find someone to love in your life, then hang on to that love.”
“Princess Di.” I knew it was Jitty. She’d come to haunt me in the guise of one of England’s most beloved royals, and the one woman that Millie Roberts from the café in Zinnia would never hear a bad word about. Millie adored Diana, Princess of Wales. And Elvis. To her, they could do no wrong. I, on the other hand, was a little apprehensive. Diana had lived a sad, and to me, lonely life. Since I was consumed with worry about Cece, again, I didn’t want to wallow in sad and lonely. “What can I do for you?”
“Your friends are your family, Sarah Booth, and family is everything.”
I knew the paraphrased quote, one Di was famous for. But what did this mean? Cece was my family, and she was missing. I didn’t even know where to look for her. “Do you know where Gertrude is?” I asked.
“I’m not allowed to tell you factual things.”
The rules of the Great Beyond were more than frustrating. “Cece is at risk. Couldn’t you bend the rules just this once?”
“Is that really what you want?”
Jitty was good at throwing my questions back at me. If she broke the rules, she might be gone from me forever. Did I want to know something more than I wanted Jitty to continue in my life? “Can you tell me if she’s safe?”
“Think, Sarah Booth. You have to shake it all up and look at the picture anew. I gave the British people a different kind of monarch to look at, a different focus on war crimes and the horror of children suffering under brutal regimes. Because I showed the world those pictures with love instead of judgment, the world looked at them and responded. You just have to reimagine the way you’re looking at what’s happening around you.”
“Shake what up? We don’t even have any real clues as to where she might be.”
“Only do what your heart tells you.” Another famous Di quote—and one I would gladly throttle Jitty for, if I could get my hands on her. Too bad she was beginning to fade.
“My heart tells me to find Cece,” I yelled at her as she vaporized.
There was a cackle of laughter and Princess Di disappeared to be replaced by Jitty. “Exactly,” she said. “Di sure knows how to make her points. Quit lollygagging and find your friend.”
With a little pop, like a champagne cork, she was gone, leaving the trees and velvet black sky glittering with
stars. Only a few clouds floated high above. Tinkie came up the hill. Thank goodness Tinkie hadn’t heard me talking to Jitty. My escapades were getting harder and harder to explain away.
“I feel a lot better,” Tinkie said. “It’s terrible, but the urge just comes on me and it’s all I can do to run to the closest bathroom. If this is what old age is going to be like, I’m going to invest in adult diapers.”
“It’s just because you’re pregnant.” I tried to be comforting, but my thoughts were on the puzzle Jitty had left for me. Shake it all up and look at the pieces anew. “Help me think where Cece might be,” I asked.
“In the trunk of Gertrude’s car.” Tinkie had quickly gone to the dark side. She wasn’t being sarcastic, but she was that afraid. She was about to burst into tears.
“I think she’s still here in George County.” I wasn’t certain that’s what Princess Di’s visit was all about, but that’s what my heart told me.
“Why do you think that?”
I couldn’t tell her it was because of Jitty/Princess Di. “Remember what Jaytee said. She’d sent him a text about dancing with the devil’s bones. It has to be a clue. We just haven’t put the puzzle pieces together properly. Let’s review. She didn’t eat breakfast.” I held up one finger.
“That isn’t like Cece at all. She eats like a house on fire.”
“She left without saying goodbye. Her car was found only a few miles from the B and B. Hans’s car was never found and hasn’t been seen.” Three more fingers popped up.
“Do you think the killer here has both of them?”
“That’s exactly what I think. We’ve been focusing our search on the highway between Lucedale and Zinnia. We’ve wasted time. She’s here.”
“Where here?” Tinkie leaned against a tree and shucked off one shoe to give her foot a break.
“Remember about the legend of the Devil’s Bones. Supposedly the bodies of two murdered Union soldiers are buried right around here.”
“That’s right. That’s why this place didn’t become a cemetery, but a garden instead. I don’t see how that points to Cece’s and Hans’s whereabouts.”
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