Dancing Made Easy (A Flap Tucker Mystery Book 4)

by Phillip DePoy

  “You’re right.”

  “I love being right.” She smiled. “About what?”

  “Something’s got me spooked. That’s my problem.”

  “I see.” She finished her espresso. “Like what?”

  “I don’t know. But it’s — I’m not used to it, this feeling.”

  “Doesn’t happen to you very often. What exactly are you afraid of, I mean in general?”

  “Bad wine, the wrong kind of work, and truck drivers who fall asleep at the wheel beside me on the highway.” I finished my espresso and plunked a ten on the table — about the same time I finished my introspection loop apparently. I’d just have to deal with the fear a little later. “Let’s get back to the station house and see what the kid’s scared up.”

  “To coin a phrase,” she told me, standing up.

  *

  Dirt Gainer was staring at the computer screen when we came into the lab. He didn’t even look our way when he spoke to us.

  “Y’all ain’t about to believe this.” He took a deep, shaky breath and leaned back.

  We came over and looked. On the screen was a very clear photograph of a young girl, topless, dressed like a cheerleader only holding her skirt up so you could see her underpants, and crying. She looked vaguely familiar.

  “What the hell is this?” Dally whispered.

  “That,” the kid said even softer than Dally, still staring at the screen, “is the late Beth Dane.”

  “Beth Dane?” I stared. It was like seeing a ghost.

  “That’s right,” the kid said, transfixed. “And here’s the worst part …” He finally looked up at me and Dally, with an expression that was all but begging for some kind of explanation. “This is a Website that’s designed by Irgo Winfred Dane.” Then he looked back at the screen, baffled. “Her uncle.”

  31. Dancing Footprints

  We stared at the screen for another minute before he spoke up again. “The rest of the pictures — they’re lots worse than this.”

  Dally patted him on the shoulder, staring at the photo. “If it makes you feel any better, the crying is fake. Staged.”

  “What?” He looked up at her.

  “She’s wearing tons of cheap mascara, but it’s not running. Also, the rims of her eyes aren’t the least bit red, and, finally, don’t the rills seem kind of thick?”

  “Glycerine,” I confirmed. “Movie tears.”

  “Really?” He looked back at the screen. “You think?”

  I nodded. “Doesn’t make it any less troublesome, but yeah. I mean, look at her expression. Isn’t it a little … exaggerated?”

  “I guess.” He was staring at it.

  But we all knew we were trying just a little too hard to distance ourselves from the image.

  “How’d you come up with this?” I looked at the kid.

  “Oh,” he said, “I went to the Web master part, and then you do this and you do that and I traced the account to the server and it was the same account as the E-mail address we found, which I dialed up and it’s the guy, so —”

  Dally sat down. “So she wasn’t just trying to get out of the life, as you were saying. She was trying to get away from this? From her uncle?”

  I found I had to take a seat too. “This is all a little too much to swallow at the moment.” I looked at her. “I’ve admired this guy for a good many years. I mean, he plays jazz, for God’s sake.”

  “Your argument being” — she looked at me from beneath arched eyebrows — “that depravity and good taste don’t go hand in hand? Ever hear of a little French aristocrat name of de Sade?”

  “Yeah.” I nodded. “I hear he really knew how to decorate a room, but Dane is … I just have to adjust my opinion of the guy, and it’s going to take a minute, okay?”

  “Okay.” And she left it alone.

  Officer Gainer looked at me. “What does this do to our case?”

  I folded my arms. “I guess it could actually further the cause of the difficult-to-believe suicide scenario.”

  “Or it could make Dane a very bad man indeed,” Dally said.

  I turned to her. “As in like, he killed her? Because she wanted out … of some kind of life he had a part in?”

  “Isn’t it possible?” She stared right back at me.

  I took a quick look at the screen, then back at Dally. “I guess anything is possible, huh?”

  “Anything.” She meant it.

  The kid finally shook his head, like he was trying to clear it. “Y’all mind if I just get out of this site? I don’t have to shut it off entirely, but can I take this photo off the screen at least?”

  “Absolutely.” Dally and I jumped at the same time.

  Then, from behind us: “This is an interesting party.”

  I didn’t even have to turn around. I recognized Huyne’s voice.

  “Detective.” I nodded but didn’t look.

  “What’s going on here?” He’d addressed the question more to Officer Gainer.

  “Helping out Ms. Oglethorpe,” he said right back. “She’s always so good to us I figured … you know …”

  Huyne was in the room. “I know.” He smiled at Dally. She smiled back. Then he sat down at the table with us. “Looked like Beth Dane on the screen a little.”

  “It was.” I finally looked at him.

  “How’d you find that picture?”

  “Mr. Tucker had an idea.” The kid began, then trailed off.

  Huyne looked at me hard. “Yeah, he’s full of ideas.”

  “In this case” — I stared right back — “I got the idea to look into Dane’s involvement with anything on the Internet. This is one of the things we came up with.”

  That shut him up for a second. His eyes got bigger, and his chin jutted forward for half a second, but he was cool.

  “Dane’s got a site that features his niece half dressed?”

  We all stared at the picture the kid hadn’t had a chance to cut off.

  Dally nodded. “That’s what it looks like.”

  “There’s other pictures here too.” The kid spoke up.

  Huyne stared at the screen. “Can you copy this or save it all somehow and give me a disk?”

  The kid nodded.

  “Also” — Huyne went on — “a report involving what other links are involved, how the site is connected, I mean exactly, with Dane. What —” He looked at the officer. “I’m assuming he used some kind of coding to hide himself?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Then also include in your report what coding and so forth, right?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Dally patted the kid’s arm. “Sorry. Looks like I got you in paperwork hell.”

  He smiled at her. “Shoot. This is great. I get my name on the case.” He looked at Huyne. “I discovered key evidence.”

  Huyne folded his arms. “I thought Mr. Tucker —”

  “I only had an idea, remember?” I smiled. “Officer Gainer here actually discovered the evidence. I was out getting coffee at the time.”

  He took only a second to think about it. “Okay, Officer Gainer. You discovered key evidence in this case, and it’s duly noted.”

  “Thank you, sir.” But he smiled at Dally, not at the detective.

  Huyne turned to Dalliance. “Anyway, I’ve been looking for you.” Shot a glance to me. “You too.” Back to Dally. “I went to your club, which is where Tucker told me he was going —”

  “Which is where he did go first,” she told him, “but I made him go home to do a little work.”

  “Work?” He made it sound like he couldn’t believe I’d ever done anything like work.

  “He had to cogitate,” she said simply.

  “Ah,” Huyne shot back, in something of a wry fashion. “By which you mean he sat around his digs performing his hocus-pocus all over the place.”

  “I’ll thank you to watch that pocus talk in mixed company, pal.” I stood. I was in no mood to be in the same room with Huyne at that point. “Now the fact
is, I actually do have work to do, however difficult it may be for you to believe, and I’d like to be on my way. So if you will excuse me and Ms. Oglethorpe —”

  She stood too, on cue. “I’m his chauffeur.’'

  “Don’t you want to hear what else we found in the park?”

  He knew that would stop both of us.

  He paused, just for the sake of theatre, and then went on, not looking at either of us. “We found footprints in the embankment under the bridge that we’re pretty certain belong to Joe Adder.”

  “How would you begin to find that out already?” I had to know.

  “Didn’t you ever notice that he had that duct tape on one of his boots?” He looked at Dally. “Joe wears army surplus paratrooper boots most of the winter, but one has a thin sole so he’s wrapped duct tape around it. Makes a very distinctive footprint.”

  “I’d imagine.” She nodded.

  “You never noticed that about him?” He looked my way.

  “I’ve already told you once this evening that you win in the print identification competition. Goes for fingers and feet both.”

  “Maybe your vaunted powers of deduction aren’t all they’re cracked up to be.”

  “Vaunted?” I think I managed an ironic twist of the mouth. “I wouldn’t know about that. Sometimes it just works, and sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes the angel kisses you, and sometimes she doesn’t.”

  He ignored me. “So, the thing is, I’ve just about set my mind on him. He’s the murderer. Shouldn’t be hard to gather up.”

  “So who’s his helper?” I started moving for the door.

  “Hmm?” He was momentarily distracted by our movement, I thought.

  “Who was with him tonight or, you know, in on this thing with him tonight?”

  “What do you mean?”

  I stopped in the doorway and turned slowly. “While Joe was setting fire to your little campsite, who was tossing the dummy up the lamppost? No matter how you drive, I don’t think you can get from the Piedmont side of the park all the way around to the bridge where your stuff was hidden, set a fire, and disappear again in the time frame in question.”

  His mouth formed a word, but it never made it into the sound dimension. I could see he was thinking, trying not to come up with the same conclusion as I’d just presented.

  “You’ve got to drive down Piedmont, right on Monroe.” He was tracing the path in his mind’s eye. “Then you turn in there at that little street. If there’s no traffic and the lights are with you, it’s got to take … say, seven minutes to drive around to where the bridge is. You don’t think we spent that much time over on the Piedmont side of the park?”

  “Longer, but you don’t just run up, start a match, and beat it. He had to gather up your stuff and douse it and — besides, how did he even know you were there? He had to be watching you, don’t you think?” I nodded. “That’s my theory. Joe was hidden down the ravine north of the bridge, because that’s where he camps a lot of the time anyway, and he was watching you, and when we left, he just walked up and started with the pyrotechnics. Somebody else tossed the dummy.”

  “And do you have a theory about that as well?” He folded his arms and held his ground.

  “As a matter of fact, I do.” I took one more look at the title of Dane’s Website, then offered Dally my arm, and we started out the door. “But we’re leaving now.”

  I could see that he was thinking about coming after us, but he wanted to stay cool in Dally’s presence, so he just smiled and let us leave.

  But finally he couldn’t resist. He called out after us, “Well? What is your theory?”

  Now, I wasn’t about to say anything else to him, but just as we hit the door into the waiting room of the station house, I heard the kid’s voice.

  “He thinks it’s Dane.”

  When we opened the door to the station house, we were hit with a knifelike jab of the coldest air I could remember in January. But it wasn’t as cold as the name we’d seen on Dane’s pornographic Website. It was called “The Little Dancers.”

  32. Single-Bullet Theory

  As we made it to Dally’s car, she looked down the dark streets in front of the station house.

  “I’ve got this image,” she started, “of Dane and Joepye, like they’re Frankenstein and Igor, trundling down the street, body snatcher style.”

  “And this troubles you.”

  She nodded, getting her keys ready. “It’s like I’m not taking all this seriously enough, you know?”

  “Or,” I told her as she unlocked my door, “maybe it’s just a little psychological insulation — in keeping with your current interest in such things.”

  She moved to the driver’s side. “Sorry?”

  “You’re hoping that an image like that will distance you from the actual events. You’re trying to keep the harsher truth at bay.”

  “Could be.”

  We got in. She cranked the car, then turned my way. “So where to? I’m assuming we’re not through.”

  “Right. But I think I’ll have this all wrapped up tonight.”

  “Tonight?” She apparently couldn’t help the incredulity.

  “At least the murders of Beth Dane and Minnie,” I nodded. “I’m hoping that Dane and Joe are over at Dane’s right now.” She pulled out into the street. “I’d like to speak with them.”

  “You obviously think they killed the girls.” She headed toward the park. “And I’m not saying I don’t agree.” Still, she set her head at an odd angle. “Beth I get, in a way — she was maybe part of some weird ring of prostitutes and Internet stuff or something — but why Minnie? And why the spooky hanging thing?”

  “That’s what I want to speak with them about.”

  She drove a little faster. “Are we worried about confronting the monster in its lair?”

  I smiled at her. “I think you could kick Dane all over town if you wanted to. And Joepye gets confused about which foot to walk with, so …”

  “Still, you wouldn’t like to call up Daniel now, see if he’s busy?”

  “Please” — I shifted in my seat — “one problem at a time. If I call Daniel, he’s going to tell Foggy, who will only want to know what I’m doing about Janey —”

  “Which, at the moment, is bupkis.”

  “Exactly.” I nodded. “So let’s just include them out at the moment, okay?”

  “Like you said,” she affirmed, “one crime at a time.”

  The night seemed blacker than usual, and the moon had gone behind some charcoal clouds. The cold and the humidity made the streetlights churn out steam like a cheap fog machine. It wasn’t late, but the streets were empty.

  Dally clicked on the radio hoping for some cheery music and got a weather report instead: chance of an ice storm.

  We pulled up across the street from Dane’s big old house, killed the engine, and sat in the car a moment.

  “This wants a little caution, at least,” I told Dally, staring at the house. “My plan is to go around back first, peer in a couple of windows.”

  “While I do what?” She was already shivering. The car heater hadn’t even had a chance to warm up, and now it was off again.

  I turned in her direction. “There’s probably no sending you off to your nice warm nightclub.”

  “Not really,” she told me languidly. “Band hasn’t started yet.”

  I glanced at my watch. She was right. It wasn’t even nine o’clock. Seemed like midnight.

  “So, cover me.” I smiled. “I’ll come back around front in a minute, and we’ll just go in for a nice visit. If you see anything that looks like trouble, blast the horn.”

  “Can do,” she finally agreed. “But don’t take forever. I’m freezing.”

  “I’ll hurry,” I told her, and braced myself for the air.

  I shot across the street, avoiding the brightest part of the streetlight. I rounded the house. The only lights besides the porch light came from several upstairs rooms.

  I sho
t a glance into a few side windows, but it was too dark to see inside.

  I made it to the backyard, and I was about to peek in the kitchen, where there was a little night-light or something, when I heard a thumping noise come from the direction of the gazebo.

  I dropped low, spun around, and tried to adjust my eyes to the wet black night.

  Somebody was kicking something in the gazebo. I tried not to let my mind get carried away, but images of dead bodies — or worse not quite dead bodies — getting booted around sort of drifted into my inner eye.

  I stayed low, kept close to some bushes, and got to a place where I could see into the interior of the gazebo.

  There, lashed to the banister with duct tape, was Joepye Adder. He was looking right at me and kicking the hell out of the floor. His eyes were wild. His mouth was covered with more of the silver duct tape, and his breathing was labored.

  I checked very carefully around the whole yard but finally gave up. There could have been twenty guys hiding in twice as many dark places. I just took a deep breath, stood up, and moved as calmly as I could toward the poor guy.

  First order of business was to get the tape off his mouth. He was really having a hard time breathing through his thick red nose.

  “Ack!”

  Honest to God, that’s what he said, and it was really loud.

  Then he lowered his voice. “Flap.”

  “Hey, bud. What are you doing?”

  “Oh” — he was catching his breath — “nothing much. Could you get my arms aloose? I got a cramp or a charley horse something fierce.”

  “How long you been out in this cold night air?” He looked around like he could see how cold the air was. “Not long. But you know, in my condition …” He left the rest of the sentence to my imagination.

  “Who left you here like this, Joe?”

  “Mr. Dane. But he didn’t mean a thing by it. He was just making sure I didn’t wander off to get a drink. I’d have done it too. I really need a drink.”

  I had taken out my keys and was using one of the jagged edges to saw the duct tape. I got one arm free.

  “You know” — I looked at his face, gray and smeared — “I saw you in the park awhile ago.” Why not give it a try? I thought.