Dancing Made Easy (A Flap Tucker Mystery Book 4)

by Phillip DePoy

  Huyne himself stepped up it, while three others held. The detective glanced at the note, made a crude remark, and then reached up to unhook the rest of the dummy from the lamppost.

  He dropped it and got down the ladder fast.

  The torso fell face up — if you could call panty hose crammed full of balls of newspaper a face — and the note presented itself for us all to see.

  “‘Dance, Scarecrow.’” The beefy guy was apparently the kind of person who read better out loud. He looked up. “Huh?” Then at me, for some reason. “What’s it mean?”

  Huyne jumped the last step and stood over the top half of the scarecrow. Very softly: “What the hell?”

  I smiled. “Well, I think that’s enough for me.” I looked over at Huyne. “Unless you have any more tests for me, I’d like to head on home now.”

  “You want to go home now?” He jutted his chin in my direction. “With all this?”

  “All what?” I looked around. “This is just somebody, maybe not even the murderer, playing the police for saps — if you’ll excuse my saying so. As I am not a policeman, I think this is more your party than mine. Besides, I promised I’d call Dally, remember?”

  He gave out with a big sigh, and it trailed white in the cold air, but he finally nodded. “Okay.” Then he took a quick step toward me. “But no talking with her about our earlier discussion, right? It’s police business. And I’ll be checking in with you later tonight.”

  “I’ll be at the club,” I told him. “And I’ll tell Dally everything. I always do.”

  He stared at me for a second longer, then decided it wasn’t worth his time to keep messing with me, so he made a face and waved his hand. “Get lost.”

  “Can do.” I nodded, turned back toward the bathhouse, and strolled away in the evening air.

  Stars were beginning to blink on, and there was a nice moon, still nearly full. I had shuffled down the stone stairs and headed for where my car was parked before I saw the fire.

  It was just a small orange blaze a little left of the bridge. The smoke was drifting south, out over the little lake. I stopped in my tracks. The fire was burning exactly where I’d been standing with Detective Huyne only moments earlier, and I was pretty certain that I knew what was burning.

  Even though all I really wanted to do was just head for the car, not stop until I hit my stool at Easy, and have a glass of something red, still, I turned around and hiked right back up the steps again.

  At the top I waved my arms and shouted, “Hey! Huyne! Fire!”

  I don’t think they heard me at first. Even though the night air carries sound pretty well, you just don’t expect a man to be yelling “fire” on a cold, damp night.

  But they headed my way. I was obviously shouting something and waving my arms, and Huyne came toward me at a pretty good clip. I decided to wait for him. He was just the sort of person who might get the mistaken impression that I could be the guy who started the fire, and I didn’t need that.

  He got close before I turned in the direction of the bridge. “Fire. By the bridge.”

  He picked up his pace, got to my side, stared, then registered. “Oh, my God. My files.”

  We all ran toward the orange glow. I had a second of thinking how comical we all must have looked to someone far off, a little like the old Keystone Kops, running back and forth like idiots.

  The flames were already dying out by the time we got to the bridge. Huyne’s briefcase and his folding stool were charred black, and the thermos had exploded. There were pieces of it all around.

  Huyne kicked at the mess, and it was clear that the files were completely destroyed.

  He looked up at me. “I guess you didn’t see who started this?”

  I shook my head. “It was cooking by the time I got to the stairs back there.”

  “Damn.” He stared down at the smoking mess.

  “Those were just copies, right?” I stared with him.

  “Sure, but —”

  “But what?” I asked when he wouldn’t finish his sentence.

  “There were things in there that I can't replace. My notes, some phone numbers.” He looked around at the cops. “You all fan out from here, see if you can get anything. Footprints, pack of matches — anything.”

  The policemen moved immediately to search the area, and Huyne stepped close to me.

  “Somebody’s been messing with these files already, see?” he said, barely above a whisper. “Little things out of place. No one but me would notice. And this scene, the dummy, the fire.” He stared into my eyes. “What the hell’s going on, Flap?”

  “I hate this,” I began. “I mean, I hate telling you what I’m about to tell you, but you know what made the Scarecrow dance?”

  “What?”

  “Fire.” I shrugged. “The witch throws the fire at the Scarecrow, and he dances.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Wizard of Oz. I don’t care for it personally, but Dally watches it every time it’s on television. Every time. One of her rare girl things, that’s how I explain it to myself.”

  “Wizard of Oz?”

  “The Scarecrow is afraid of fire.”

  He took a beat, and he was still edgy. “This explains the dummy and the fire?”

  “Maybe.”

  “I don’t buy that.” He shook his head. “It’s like something a kid would do. A weird little kid.”

  “Yeah,” I told him, “or an adult somebody whose mind was like that always.”

  He snapped his head up again and shot me a look. “Adder.”

  I nodded again. “Well, that’s what I’m thinking. But you’ve got him in lockup, right?”

  He craned his head around until he caught the eye of the nearest cop and beckoned. “Come over here for a second, would you?”

  The cop came over, and Huyne continued. “Check in with Verna downtown, please, and make sure Joe Adder is still in lockup, okay?”

  The guy cranked up his shoulder radio, talked a little, made small talk, and waited.

  I looked at the ashes. “Why’d they put the thermos in? They had to know it’d blow up.”

  “Maybe they wanted it to,” Huyne said, staring down at the pieces. “Maybe they knew it would blow up and somebody would catch the shrapnel.”

  “Well, that doesn’t sound like Joepye.”

  “And poisoning young girls so he can hang them up in the park? That does?”

  “Okay.” I nodded.

  The cop who’d called into the station house turned around. “He made bail, Detective.”

  We both jerked our heads in his direction.

  “Bail?” Huyne sounded sick. “When? No, wait. Ask them who?”

  He smiled. “Already did. Thought you’d want to know. It was somebody named Dames.”

  “Dane?”

  “Could have been.” The cop nodded. “I think that’s what she said, something like that. And it was around three hours ago, maybe more.”

  “Jesus, he’s out.” Huyne turned my way. “It’s Adder.” Still sounded a little sick. “He’s the one.”

  “I don’t really want to agree with you,” I told him. “But I do.” Then I turned and started toward my car.

  “Wait. Where you going now?”

  “Same as before: Dally,” I called out over my shoulder. “I’ve really got to talk to her. Come on over to the club when you’re done here, why don’t you? We’ve still got plenty to talk about too, don’t we?”

  “Yeah, I guess we do.” He turned back to the smoking briefcase. “I’ll be over after a while.” Then suddenly: “Hey. Why did Dane bail him out?”

  “Right.” I said. “That’s just one of the things I’d like to know.”

  All I could think about was the image in my little dream state of Dane sawing a naked woman in half like he was playing his bass. I had just realized that the tune he’d been playing was in fact “Over the Rainbow.”

  28. Strays

  I couldn’t decide which
I needed most: another crack at doing my trick — see if I could clear up some of the fog — or a nice glass of the Château Simard. If you open it up and let it hang around for an hour or so, even the recent years aren’t so bad. Hal, the bartender, had picked up a bottle for me and hidden it behind the bar.

  I drove toward home, but wine always wins. I ended up pulling my car into the alley behind the club and slipping in through the kitchen.

  Marcia was working the grill. She used to wait tables at the Majestic, but she’d had dreams of being a chef, so Dally’d hired her to cook while she was getting her degree from cooking school, or whatever they called it. Somebody had ordered the mahimahi, which is marketingese for dolphin. But it’s okay to eat it because it’s the dolphin fish, not the dolphin mammal. It’s just that calling it mahimahi makes it easier to distinguish from Flipper.

  “Hey, Marcia.”

  She turned. “Oh, hey, Flap. Long time no see.”

  “It’s only been three days.”

  She gave me a look you can only learn from waiting tables. “For you, that’s a long time.”

  “Turn your fish over, sugar. It’s done on that side.” She looked. “So it is. Thanks, sweetie.”

  She went back to work, I went into the club.

  Dally was over by the stage, talking with Gwen Hughes about her nouveau swing-style band. I only overheard a little of the conversation, but it made me smile.

  “So I told him,” Gwen was explaining to Dally, “when you find me somebody alive today who can write a song as good as Strayhorn or Ellington or Fats Waller, then we’ll do more original material. Until then shut the hell up. Besides, this stuff gets everybody dancing.”

  “Right.”

  Gwen nodded a final punctuation to her point and then continued setting up the stage. I’m certain that my face registered open admiration when she turned her red hair in my direction and smiled.

  Dally started for the bar, saw me, and headed my way instead. “I thought you were going to call.”

  “I just came straight over, okay? Huyne didn’t shoot me.”

  “I can see that.” She patted my arm. “I’m happy.”

  “But he wanted to. He just got distracted.”

  We moved toward the bar. Dally knew what I needed. All she did was raise an eyebrow to Hal, and he moved like a dancer to get my bottle.

  We sat.

  “What makes you think he wanted to shoot you?”

  “He was pointing his gun at me.”

  “Really?”

  “With menace.”

  “I see.” She wasn’t upset. No need. I was alive and well. “And what distracted him?”

  “The third body.” A little drama on my part.

  “Get the hell out!” Her eyes were wide.

  “But get this. It was a dummy. A scarecrow, in fact.”

  What?” She pulled back from me a little.

  “Uh-huh. And wait till you hear what the note said and what happened next.”

  Hal brought the bottle and two nice glasses, opened, smelled the cork himself, nodded, and set it down beside my glass.

  “It’s going to take about half an hour,” he announced.

  I grinned and shook my thumb in his direction. “Look who’s Mr. Wine.”

  He rolled the toothpick in his mouth, looked down his nose at me, and winked with no expression whatsoever. “Learned from the master.”

  Dally was too impatient for any further male bonding to take place. “Third body?”

  “Was a dummy stuffed with newspaper. Here’s the scene. Huyne is showing me some kind of odd fingerprint anomalies in Beth Dane’s file and then something about the third toxin — he’s got these police files he’s showing me —”

  “Because?”

  “He wanted to see how I’d react, I think. He expected me to act some way that would tip my hand to him, so to speak.”

  “But you disappointed him” — she leaned forward — “because you tip your hand to no man.”

  “Exactly. So then he gets all nervous and starts pointing his little snub-nose pistol at me —”

  “Obviously not his official police piece.”

  “Exactly, again, and I think it’s on his mind to shoot me in some important place, when all hell breaks loose on the other side of the park.”

  “Tenth Street?”

  I shook my head. “Piedmont. Up by the Driving Club. It was staked out, but the cop up there was slow. Somebody pulled up — alone, by the way — ran over to the nearest lamp, tossed the dummy up so it hooked on the crook right by the light, and got back in the car in a matter of seconds, speeding away.”

  “Already I don’t believe this.”

  “Of course, we don’t know it’s a dummy, so we run over expecting to see the third body, when one of its little feet falls off and we see it’s not a real person at all. And guess what the note said?”

  She leaned even closer. “It had a note, like the other ones?”

  “Right. It said, ‘Dance, Scarecrow.’”

  “It said what?”

  “Yeah.” I was really enjoying her reaction. “And so I decide to beat it back here or go home and do my thing again, see what’s up with this —”

  “So you think your thing’s working again?”

  I shrugged. “Not like usual, but at least the power’s not off entirely. So, anyway, I’m headed for my car when I see the bridge where I met Huyne —”

  “Over by the bathhouse.”

  “And it’s on fire. Or there’s a fire over beside it.”

  “A fire?” Her shoulders sank, and I could see on her face that she was just about to connect the dots between the dummy and the fire.

  “And Huyne’s files and briefcase and everything is all burnt up.”

  “‘How about a little fire, Scarecrow?’” She was shaking her head

  “I knew you’d get it.”

  “Well, of course I’d get it.” She finally leaned back and absently reached for the bottle. “I’ve only seen Wizard of Oz about forty thousand times.” She set the bottle down again, before she’d even poured, and stared at the floor. “But what’s it about?”

  “It’s a message to somebody about something.”

  “It is?”

  I nodded. “Isn’t it? It’s too much trouble and too dangerous for a prank, I think. And it’s too —”

  “Stupid?”

  I nodded. “For anything else.”

  “It’s like something a kid would do.”

  I grabbed the bottle away from her. “That’s what Huyne said.” I set the bottle down beside my other elbow. “We have to wait on this for a few more minutes.”

  “Okay,” she said, completely distracted. “But who’s the message from and who’s it for, if you’re right?”

  “It’s from the murderer.” I was just throwing out idle guesses, really. “And it’s to somebody who would find the body, like the police. Like Huyne.”

  “You’re still suspecting him?”

  “More than ever.” I straightened up. “He wanted to shoot me. I suspect everyone who wants to shoot me.”

  “So where’s Daniel all this time? You haven’t mentioned him.”

  “Yeah.” I nodded. “Where is he, I wonder?”

  “He wasn’t with you?”

  “I called. No answer.”

  “You went to the park alone?” Her voice was getting a little sharper.

  “The guy wasn’t home. What was I supposed to do? And as long as we’re on the subject of things that will rile you up, I couldn’t find your tape recorder either, so I have no proof that Huyne threatened me.”

  “Damn it, Flap.”

  “Plus, I kidnapped the Lindbergh baby. What do you want from me? I was in a hurry. It all worked out fine. I’m here, I’m alive” — I looked at the bottle — “and I’m drinking this wine before it’s been properly oxidized. Happy?” I poured without looking and plunked the bottle down in front of her for punctuation. Sometimes the best defense is a good drink.<
br />
  She stared at me. She stared at the bottle. She poured, gulped, and took a deep breath.

  “I’m finding you particularly exasperating lately, you know.” She didn’t look at me.

  “I know, but I’m finding you particularly fascinating, so it all balances out.”

  “None of your smooth talk, mister.” But she smiled, shaking her head.

  “Now are you ready for the punch line?”

  “There’s more?” She finally looked me in the eye.

  “Remember Dane was playing the bass in my little dream thing?”

  “Right, shaped like a woman.”

  “What tune was he playing?”

  She blinked. “You heard a tune?”

  “‘Over the Rainbow.’”

  “Get the hell out.”

  I held up my hand. “I wish I could, but I’m too far in.”

  “So what does it mean — the song?”

  I leaned on the bar and picked up my glass, “It’s got to mean that I know something that I don’t know I know, doesn’t it?”

  “Nice sentence structure.” She smiled into her wineglass. “Diction is so important.”

  “Still,” I shrugger, “I’ve just got to get clear about a few things.” Then: “Oh, my God.”

  “What?” She could see the look on my face.

  “In Beth Dane’s apartment.” I closed my eyes, and I could see it. “In the kitchen. There was a poster for the movie. It was like an old movie ad poster, with Dorothy’s face and those three animal guys around her.”

  “Nice. One’s a lion, one’s a tin man, one’s a scarecrow, and Dorothy’s a human being. Earth, water, fire, and air — they represent, I believe, the elemental forces of this world, which is why they can suborn the metaphysics of the dreamworld.”

  I pulled back from her and tried to show my amazement. “What the hell have you been reading?”

  “And furthermore, the elements are at war: tin man nearly rusted by water, scarecrow nearly destroyed by fire; the animal nature subverted in the natural environment — that is, the king of the animals terrified of his own nature. And in the center of it all, the human spirit, lost and searching for its center: home.”

  I took a long look at her face. She was absolutely delighted with herself, and I wondered for a second how long she’d been saving all that up. “Well, thank you, Mrs. Carl Jung, but all I had in mind was a kid who hated being a prostitute, dreaming of getting out of the life and into the beautiful land, which would have been anywhere but where she was.”