Dancing Made Easy (A Flap Tucker Mystery Book 4)

by Phillip DePoy

  I shrugged. “On average? Ten times a week?”

  She looked back down at her paperwork. “So you see my point.”

  Huyne was a little red in the face. I didn’t figure on a guy who saw the kind of crime scenes he did being embarrassed at a little comment. But he was.

  “Okay, don’t help.” He looked down. “And I’ll do the same.”

  “Hold on. No need to be that way.” I turned to look squarely at him. “You could look this up, this dancing business, so I’ve got to figure you’re here for some bigger kind of something.”

  “I see. You’re the perceptive type. Well, okay, Dane’s already hired you to work on this, as I’ve been told. His lawyer’s seen to it that I’ve got to work on it as well. Wouldn’t it be better if we had a nice collaborative approach?”

  I stared at him. “Dane and I have talked, but strictly speaking, he hasn’t actually hired me yet. Still, collaboration is good. That’s what you’re offering?”

  The single nod. “You tell me stuff; I tell you stuff.”

  I nodded slowly. “There would be the occasional confidentiality problem.”

  He sniffed. “Same here.” He was looking at his glass, still turning it slowly. I poured him a little more.

  I leaned forward with my elbows on the bar. “The tarantella is a dance that takes its name from Taranto, in the heel part of the Italian boot — or actually from a spider that is common to the area, the tarantula. At the time — post-Renaissance, I think — they thought the tarantula bite was poisonous and caused a disease called tarantism. The dance of the tarantella, get this, was actually supposed to be the cure for the disease. The music for the dance is in a compound double time — very fast, in other words — and the dance is very frenzied, and this somehow got the spider venom out. Also later, in the middle 1700s, there was a scientific treatise that very seriously put forth the notion that all insects will dance rhythmically if you play them a tarantella.”

  He let out a breath and looked me in the eye. “How in the hell do you know all that?”

  I glanced in Dally’s direction. “Why won’t anybody ever believe me when I say that I spend most of my time lying around doing nothing?” Back at Huyne. “An idle mind is apparently, also an absorbent one. The tarantella? I read about it somewhere.”

  “Then what does the note mean to you” — he stared for another minute — “and your idle mind?”

  I raised an eyebrow. “Well. Did you check the body for toxicological problems, for example?”

  He shook his head. “Didn’t seem like there was a need to since she died from being hanged.”

  “Maybe.”

  He leaned forward. “We’ll check. Tarantula bite?”

  “Naw. That’s not really poisonous. Your black widow or your brown recluse can do some damage, but not the tarantula.”

  “Huh. So what’s the pitch in the note then?”

  I shrugged. “Maybe the murderer is an Arthur Murray instructor, or maybe they used some kind of poison to put Beth Dane out of commission before they actually hauled her up a lamppost. I mean, it’s not something most people would do willingly, and the apron string was relatively tenuous.”

  Slow nodding. “I can see that. You’d have to knock out a person first. I can see that.”

  “Okay, your turn.”

  He put one elbow up on the bar and leaned his head in his hand. “My turn to what?”

  “To tell me something. How’s the Janey Finster case coming?”

  “Fine. Solved. We arrested Mickey Nichols, as you know. We’re pretty sure he did it.” He squinted in my direction. “You knew Janey too, didn’t you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Yeah.” He deliberately looked away. “In fact there was talk that she was living with you when she got it.”

  “Unfounded. She just stayed with me when she needed to get away from it all.”

  “She got around.”

  I shook my head. “Not the way you mean. Foggy might have been pitching to her, and she might have been considering it, but ultimately she was always true to Mickey.”

  “In her fashion.”

  I nodded. “In her fashion.”

  “So why was she staying with you?”

  I smiled. “I’m safe.”

  And God bless him, Huyne agreed. “I can see that. You could keep Mickey and Foggy away from her.” Then he glanced at Dally. “And maybe you’ve got other things on your mind besides a skinny little kid on the outskirts of semiorganized crime.”

  “Lots of other things.” I tilted my head. “So you’re not investigating anything else about Janey then?”

  He squinted. “No. Should we?”

  “Just curious.” I shook my head. “Like you said, I knew her.” No point in telling him everything on our first date. Still, I couldn’t resist messing with the situation a little. “It’s just that Mick is more of a shoot-’em-up/blow-’em-down sort of a person, wouldn’t you say? That’s his rep, anyway. Don’t figure on a guy like that smothering somebody. Janey was smothered, right?”

  He gave a curt little jut of his chin. “She was found smothered to death in her own bed with his prints all over her apartment.”

  “Smothered how?”

  “With a pillow.”

  I slid off my barstool. “Doesn’t sound like Mickey.”

  He seemed a little surprised at my abrupt movement and stood too. “Are we leaving?”

  I rapped on the bar. “I’m seeing Ms. Oglethorpe home. I don’t know what you’re doing.”

  He took a long look at me, then let out a hefty breath. “Me? Well, I’m going back to the office.” He started out the door. “I’ve suddenly got the idea I might open another damn case back up.”

  7. Arabesque

  Taking Dally home always gave me the same feeling. Whether it was carrying her books for her in the sixth grade or driving her through the dark midtown streets, dog tired at four in the morning, I always felt complete.

  I was driving. The moon was high. The world was quiet. Streetlights were on, house lights were off.

  I turned down Penn. “I didn’t tell you the oddest thing Mickey said.”

  She was slumped down beside me, eyes half open. “What was that?”

  “He said he thought Beth was there at Foggy’s New Year’s Eve party with Joepye Adder.”

  She sat up a little. “What?”

  “That’s what he thought.”

  “Wow.”

  “Which, if it’s true, makes two things I have to ask Joepye about.”

  She closed her eyes. “How do you know him anyway?”

  I eased down to third, getting closer to her apartment. “You remember my pal Paul over at Tech? When Joepye was still teaching there, years ago, Paul introduced me. This was in the days before demon alcohol took ahold of Joe.”

  “They were friends?”

  “Colleagues.” I shook my head. “There’s a diff in the world of academia.”

  “How?”

  “Far as I can tell, colleagues lunch together, friends have dinner.”

  “I see.”

  I pulled up to the curb in front of the old house. I was just about to switch off the engine when I caught sight of a movement close to Dally’s door. Somebody had ducked into the shadows on her porch.

  I lowered my voice, kept the motor running. “You’ve got company.”

  She opened her eyes. “What?”

  “Don’t look now, but there’s somebody hiding on your porch.”

  She couldn’t resist sliding her eyes in the direction of her front door. “Wouldn’t be the first time.” Shook her head a little. “This neighborhood.”

  “You want to come back to my place?”

  Eyes sliding back to me. “Have you vacuumed the sofa since Janey slept on it?”

  “Oh.” I looked back at the porch. “Look, could we deal with the intruder at your door before we get into your unwarranted jealousies?”

  “I’m really tired. I’d like to sleep in my
own bed. Just go kill that guy or shoo him away or something.”

  I opened the driver side door a little, took the rest of my keys from the one in the ignition so the car could stay running. “Look. Slide over here behind the wheel. If there’s big trouble, just drive away.”

  “Yeah, like I’m about to drive away if you’re in trouble.”

  “To go get help. You’re the policeman’s friend, remember?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  I got out. She hesitated, but she knew I wouldn’t move until she at least moved over behind the wheel. She did.

  I buttoned my coat, pulled my hat down, and started for the porch. I waved at Dally bigger than I had to. “Thanks for the lift.”

  I turned to face the door and headed up the walk. I could see the shadows shift. The figure was to my right, just beside the door. I fumbled loudly in my pocket for my keys, pulled them out, and bounded up the three steps to the porch.

  Just as I hit the top step, I pulled the right half of my body back, cocked my right fist, and splayed two keys sticking out between my first two fingers. That way I could bust the nose and jab both eyes at the same time — if I had to.

  The shadow moved back, and the voice made a little gasping noise.

  I was practically on top of the guy before we got to a place where the streetlight spilled between the square columns and I could see the face.

  I stopped and stood straight. “Damn it, Joepye.”

  “F-Flap?”

  “Damn it. I could have put your eyes out.”

  He was breathing hard. “What the hell you come at me for?”

  “How’d I know it was you?”

  His voice was still a little high and strained. “Now who the hell else would be waiting for you at this time of night?”

  “Waiting for me? This isn’t my house.”

  “Don’t I know, like, how you’re a gentleman and all? And couldn’t I figure you’d take Dally home most of the time, or something?”

  I leaned in. “You’ve been drinking.”

  “Does the pope wear a funny hat?”

  Dally couldn’t sit still anymore, I guess. She started honking the horn and yelling, “Flap?”

  “Shh.” I stepped back over toward the car. “It’s all right. It’s Joepye.”

  She lowered her voice. “Speak of the devil.”

  I nodded.

  She turned off the lights, then the engine.

  I looked back at Joepye. “You were waiting for me? Here on Dally’s porch?”

  “That’s right. I just got off working a little job sweeping up the post office back halls over there, and then I went and got me a little —”

  “Joe” — you had to interrupt the guy — “why were you waiting for me?”

  “I’ve got news.”

  “News?”

  Dally was coming up the walk. “You two keep it down. People are trying to sleep all over the neighborhood.”

  I stared at Joepye. “What news, pal?”

  “Found another dancer.”

  “What.”

  Dally was up the porch stairs, standing beside me, staring at the little guy in the dirty coat.

  He smiled. “Hey, Dally.”

  “Hey, Joepye. Waiting to see me?”

  “Naw. I was waiting for Flap. I got news.”

  I squinted at him. I was afraid I knew what he was going to say. “What do you mean, another dancer?”

  He shifted his weight and tried to focus on us. “Why do you think I’m up drunk this late? There’s another girl, Flap. Hanging from a light over there, just around the corner.”

  8. The Tango

  When you know you’re walking to a place where there’s a dead girl swinging from a lamppost, the whole world takes on a certain angularity — like a Fritz Lang movie. I’m saying the old familiar neighborhood was something out of a black-and-white silent movie about the horror of the human condition.

  Despite the suspicions, the questions I had for my companion, we didn’t talk. The whole scene demanded silence.

  We rounded Penn, right on Tenth, and even from a couple blocks away, I could see her silhouette. As we got closer, the harsh downlight made it impossible to tell what her face looked like. I was glad of that.

  We got within a few feet and stopped.

  I stared up. “Well, you were right. There’s absolutely a dead girl hanging there.”

  He nodded. “Note on her too. Just like the last one.”

  I squinted. “Yup.”

  He looked at me. “You think you’ll get this one down or let her come down on her own, like the last one?”

  I shook my head. “All I’m doing is standing here until the police come.”

  He cocked his head. “You think the police know about this?”

  I looked down the empty streets. “They do now. Dally called them.”

  “What? When?”

  “Just now. When we left.”

  “How you know that?”

  “I asked her to, but I think she would have done it anyway. We’re getting to know the detective who’s handling the other one, the other case like this.”

  “That Huymish guy?”

  “Burnish Huyne.”

  “That’s a name.”

  I smiled. “Look who’s talking.”

  He didn’t smile back. “What in this world you want with the police? You’re the one who gets all the spooky messages just by staring at nothing. You’re the one who can figure it out. The police, all they want is to close the case so they can go home. They don’t care a thing about it. They just want to run you in for doing nothing.”

  I shook my head. “I know your association with the police hasn’t been the finest —”

  His voice rose a little. “They just want to run you in for nothing!”

  I looked up at the girl again. “You ever had any trouble with the cops while you were still at Tech?”

  “At Tech?”

  “When you were teaching at Tech?”

  He looked at me like he was looking through a window shade. “I don’t remember that. That wasn’t me. I wasn’t there.”

  “Okay.”

  When you drink a lot for a long, long time, you can seem like you’re fairly sober, sound like it too, but when it comes to facing anything like the truth about who you are and what you are, it all gets fuzzy and the center will not hold. Mr. Adder had largely been in charge of a set of glorified shop courses in another life. He’d understood the basic patterns of electricity. It seemed to me, there in the light of the lamp, in the shadow of its strange fruit, that somehow odd patterns of electricity had become a way of life for him.

  He was beginning to rant. “I mean it. Why’d you call the cops? Damn it, Flap! I just wanted to show this to you. Now I got to leave.”

  My voice was even. “Why do you have to leave?”

  He turned a chilly eye my way. “I need another run-in with the police?”

  “Why did you come get me?”

  “What? Why’d I come get you? So you could …” But he momentarily lost track of what he was saying.

  I locked eyes with him. “So I could what?”

  He squeezed his eyes shut and concentrated. “So you could get the next note off the body and find out more what happened to Mr. Dane’s little niece — no cops.” He opened his eyes. They were softer than they had been. “Beth. She’s a sweet kid. Real smart.”

  “Was, Joe.”

  He squeezed his eyes shut again, trying to get it all straight. “Yeah.” Big exhale. “Was.”

  I could see the car coming. I tapped his elbow. “Cops. You care to split?”

  He looked. “Naw, damn. They seen me now. Damn it, Flap. Why’d you call?”

  The searchlight hit us. The voice was iron. “Please place your hands in plain sight where we can see them.”

  We did. I held mine out, like welcoming an old friend. Joepye held his up, like he was standing at gunpoint.

  The voice from the car was no less hard. “Tucker?�
�

  I managed a smile. “That’s me.”

  “Detective Huyne is on the way.”

  The searchlight stayed on us, but the two cops got out of the car. The one who came from the passenger side nodded at my sidekick.

  “Joepye.”

  Joe didn’t look the guy in the eye. “So?”

  “You found this one?”

  He looked at me. “Flap found her. I just happened to see her here as I was, you know, what you call passing by on my way home.”

  The other officer snarled a little laugh. “And just where would that be at this point? Home?”

  I let my hands fall slowly to my side. “Joe here is like the lilies of the field.”

  The first officer shook his head. “Isn’t joepye a weed?”

  Joe was very affable under the circumstances. He smiled at the officer. “It’s got a pretty flower, though.”

  I added my two cents. “It’s a staple in some wildflower gardens.”

  The other officer patted himself obscenely. “Staple this.”

  Joe and I both knew better than to respond.

  I stared up at the girl. “There’s something really … the apron string/noose thing is really something.”

  Joepye nodded. “They say it’s Freudian.”

  “Who says that?”

  He inclined his head. “I heard some cop say it.”

  I looked over at the officers. “Is that right? You guys read a lot of Freud, do you?”

  Joepye looked down. “Maybe it was Mr. Dane who said it.”

  I nodded. “More likely.” I stared again. “But that’s not it — not entirely. It’s like there’s something familiar about it.”

  Joepye lowered his voice. “Familiar?”

  “Like a dream image, or a … something.”

  His voice was even more hushed. “You do your thing already?”

  “My thing? No. This is something else.”

  The passenger side officer interrupted. “Would it be all right with you two if you’d just shut up until Detective Huyne got here?”

  It wasn’t really a question.

  We stood in silence under the silver water of light the moon had ladled out over everything. Pale faces just outside the pool of artificial luminescence. No one wanted to stand directly under the body.

  I don’t think it was more than five minutes before Huyne showed up.