Dancing Made Easy (A Flap Tucker Mystery Book 4)

by Phillip DePoy

  The fire was dying, and the room was dark and warm and orange.

  “No. After it’s all said and done,” I told her, leaning into her shoulder, “would you like to know what really gets me?”

  “I think that was my question, yes.”

  “Okay. Here goes.” I steadied myself with a long breath. “All the things that should have been clues — a lot of them, anyway, like the Raggedy Ann doll, or the notes, for instance — which I could have used to deduce that Beth was still alive? Those clues meant nothing. Some of them I didn’t even find, like the way Beth registered at the hotel.”

  “Maybe it’s because they weren’t real clues, Flap.” She rolled out reasonably. “They were manufactured. They were phony. That’s not how you work. You find the real clues. I’m not surprised you ignored the faked ones.”

  “But the thing that really had the biggest impact on my figuring out what happened” — I kept on, brow wrinkled — “was that the girls were coming out of picture frames and the pictures were switched, and it’s got me worried.”

  “Worried? I’m not sure I even understand how that image —”

  “You know how I’m always saying there’s nothing special about my little trick —”

  “All the time you’re saying this, yes.” She was smiling, I could tell by the sound of her voice.

  “And that it’s all just a putting together of the picture puzzle pieces from the big picture: simple observation from the subconscious, nothing mystical about it … that sort of thing.”

  “I know the rant,” she assured me.

  “Then tell me this: What did I observe that could possibly have led me to know anything about Beth Dane’s switching bodies and identities the way I saw in the thing?”

  No answer.

  I sat up. “Dally?”

  “Yes?” She sat up too, peering into my eyes in the darkness, half amused, a little sleepy.

  “See, I’m saying it didn’t work the way it usually does, did it? First I couldn’t do it at all; then I got what seems to be what they might call in the spiritual game insider information — stuff that I could not possibly have known.”

  “And?” The big shrug.

  “What if there really is more to my little trick than meets the eye?” My face was nearly touching hers.

  “Oh, I see.” She moved even closer.

  “Oh, you see what?” I could feel her ear touch my cheek. The light from the fire was nearly gone from the room.

  “You’re afraid” — her lips were touching my ear, and her voice was a sigh — “that you might actually become a man of some faith.”

  I turned, and I had only a split second to catch the look in those green eyes before she kissed me.

  *

  I always like to say that faith is nothing but experience, that you don’t know something until you do it. But when you come across something outside the realm of your actual experience and it still has a profound effect on you, then you start to examine the whole concept of faith. Or I do, anyway.

  And here are my conclusions after such an examination. Faith does not exist to move mountains. Mountains will eventually crumble into the sea all by themselves, so what’s the point of moving them at all? Here are the reasons you really need faith: To get you through the day. To help you sleep at night. To ease your mind about the things you can’t explain, to give you the occasional insight into the unknowable.

  But most of all, you need faith to help you accept a kiss, when it’s given to you, without right away asking all the wrong, stupid questions that would just mess the whole thing up.