Dancing Made Easy (A Flap Tucker Mystery Book 4) Read online

  I didn’t even notice that Dally had come in. Which was an indication of how far away from normal I actually was.

  “Flap?”

  “Oh. Hey.”

  “Jeez, what’s on your mind?” She sat beside me. The very faint perfume was like hyacinths.

  “My mind?”

  “The way you’re staring out that window.” She shook her head. “Maybe you’re not awake yet.”

  “Not entirely. How’s the club? Any other damage besides the door?”

  “No. But next time you’re there all by yourself? Lock up before the men with guns get there, okay?”

  “Men with Guns, I loved their first album.”

  “So” — she put her napkin in her lap — “what makes Dane think the kid on the lamppost was his niece?”

  “He’s the one they called to identify the body. You know how they like to have some unhappy family member look at the body to make it official.”

  “What about fingerprints?”

  I nodded. “That’s what they had to use. No ID on her, and that face was pretty messy. I don’t see how anybody could have identified that.”

  “She’d been beaten?”

  “No, but the … you really want to talk about this before lunch?”

  She shrugged. “Just don’t get too graphic.”

  “Sometimes” — I tilted my head to one side — “the face can get a little gargoylelike in a hanging body situation, is all.”

  Timing being everything, Irgo Winfred Dane chose that moment to enter the establishment.

  I stood.

  He turned heads. He was a big man, entirely bald, regal, hard to miss, and lots of people had seen him play, or seen his likeness in the papers, mostly the Sunday arts section.

  “Mr. Dane.”

  He took my hand and squeezed very firmly. “Mr. Tucker.” He looked down. “And you must be Ms. Oglethorpe.”

  “Yes, I suppose I must be.” She stood too.

  “I thought so.” He took her hand.

  “See?” I smiled at her. “Your reputation precedes you.”

  They shook hands.

  He sat at our little round table, across from Dally and beside me, leaving the fourth chair, directly by the window, vacant so we could all see out at the pansies in the window box.

  He picked up a little stub pencil and an order ticket. “I’m very hungry.”

  Dally smiled, and started filling in her ticket too. All I wanted was the vegetable plate — but not for health reasons. I got fried okra, fried squash, turnip greens boiled with ham, and black-eyed peas boiled in other ham. Might as well have been a fatty hamburger, but I knew that it surely would eat good.

  Once the waitress had picked up our tabs, we got down to business.

  “Mr. Dane, do you have any idea how the cops got to you so quickly in the first place? There was very little in the way of identification or clues as to who that young woman was, as far as I could tell, and random fingerprint searches usually take more than a few hours.”

  Dane looked surprised. “Didn’t your friend tell you?”

  I glanced over at Dally. “My friend?”

  “Mr. Adder.”

  “Tell me what?”

  He leaned back. “He knew her. He knew Beth.”

  I looked at Dally again. “Her name was Hepzibah, but everyone called her Beth.”

  Dally kept her eye on Dane. “I’m glad for her sake. What’s this about Joepye knowing her?”

  He let go a hefty sigh and closed his eyes for a moment. “He’d seen her in the park … working. He recognized her clothes.”

  I nodded. “They were fairly distinctive.”

  He agreed. “Yes.”

  “But Joepye knew who she was,” Dally pushed, “and didn’t tell Flap?”

  Dane squinted. “Yes. That comes as a surprise to me too.”

  I leaned forward. “And once they knew who she was, why didn’t the cops call her parents?”

  Dane looked at the tabletop. “They wouldn’t have come. They’d given up on her. They didn’t even care enough to take care of her arrangements. I’ve had to see to her cremation.” He shook his head. “And they live in Hilton Head now anyway. I was the nearest relative.”

  I sat back. “And the police knew who she was because of Joepye, who got me out of bed early in the morning to stare at the body but didn’t tell me he knew who she was.”

  Dane’s voice was hesitant. “Excuse me, I know Mr. Adder is a friend of yours, but wouldn’t you describe him as a little … confused most of the time?”

  “Oh, he’s confused all right,” I nodded, “but he’s usually consistently confused. I’m just saying he had the presence of mind to think of the situation as a case, but he held back some fairly key information. Why did he do that?”

  Silence.

  Dally arranged her silverware. “We kind of skipped the part where we were supposed to tell you we were sorry about your niece’s being … gone.”

  Dane lifted his head.

  I nodded. “Sorry.”

  He looked out the window. “How does it happen that a beautiful child — and so intelligent — loses her way so deeply? What makes that happen?”

  I looked down. “I know that’s what you want, Mr. Dane. You want me to find out why her life went the way it did and why these things happened to her. Finding the murderer is almost secondary to you.”

  He nodded, still staring out at the street. “I don’t want revenge or even justice, in that sense. I just want an explanation.”

  I knew what he meant. It’s tough to figure why we’re all so cold sometimes, when all we want is a little kindness and a chance to be happy at the end of the day. After all, every dead hooker was somebody’s little girl. Still, it occurred to me then to wonder why we weren’t at least mentioning the odd note about the tarantella that had been pinned to the body. He had talked about it last night. But maybe Mr. Dane just wasn’t as interested in dancing as he said Beth had been.

  In fact he seemed to be completely lost for a second or two. Then he looked back at us. “I don’t want to suspect Mr. Adder.”

  Just like that.

  Dally nodded. “So why would you?”

  He looked at me. “Don’t you find his lack of disclosure disturbing?”

  “I do,” I assured him. “But I’d be a long way from suspecting Joepye of anything at all. He’s a harmless old guy. Back in the days when he was teaching at Tech …”

  But I couldn’t finish. Dane’s eyes widened. “That man taught at Georgia Tech?”

  “Yeah.” I resumed. “Electrical engineering. He hasn’t always been a drunk, you know.”

  “But” — Dane sat back — “electrical engineering?”

  I couldn’t quite figure out why he seemed so shocked. “Okay, so it was mostly courses about wiring houses for building contractors. He was pretty good at it, though.”

  “What happened to him?”

  I leaned forward. “You don’t sit in your grammar school and say to yourself, ‘When I grow up, I’m going to fall in love with alcohol and not be able to stop.’ You’re not born a lush.”

  “No,” he nodded slowly, “I guess you’re not.”

  “I started to say that when he was at Tech, he had the reputation of being able to keep a secret and not gossip — apparently something of a unique quality in the academic world. He’s just a little closemouthed, is all. He doesn’t smear his smarts all over the place.”

  Dane was still staring out into space. “No, he certainly doesn’t. In fact you’d hardly know at all.” Little sigh. “I’ll let my suspicions relax — for the time being.”

  “Good.”

  “It’s just that his connection with this situation seems a little coincidental.”

  Dally looked down at her place mat. “Uh-oh.”

  Dane cocked his head in her direction.

  I filled him in. “She’s making mock of my predilection for dismissing coincidence.”

  “Dismissing it?”
/>   “I think there’s no such thing. It always means something. It’s never really just random, accidental events that only seem to have been planned or arranged. Somehow, they actually were planned or arranged.”

  Dally touched my arm but looked at Dane. “Let him eat, Mr. Dane. He’s much more coherent after he’s eaten.”

  Once again timing interceded, and our food arrived. We ate it with very little conversation.

  When the plates were empty, Dane dabbed his mouth and threw the napkin on the table in front of him. “So, will you do this for me, Mr. Tucker? Will you find out why this happened?”

  I sipped my sweet tea. “Have you got a recent photo? I don’t even know what she looked like, really. Sorry to say this, but you realize yesterday’s look at her doesn’t count.”

  “Yes, I thought you might need one.” He fished in his wallet for a moment. “This was just taken at Christmas. Will it do?” It was a sweet face, smiling, holding up an unopened package, a strangely familiar face. But it couldn’t really have been familiar to me, given that grim blue mask she’d worn the only time I’d ever seen her.

  I breathed in. “What if the answer’s only that sometimes these kids get killed for no reason?”

  “I’ll still want details.”

  I wadded up my napkin. “What if the cops find out about all that first?”

  He squinted. “They won’t. Not the way I want.”

  “Why not?”

  He folded his arms in front of him. “Mr. Tucker, don’t you have a person you care very much about in this world? And if you do, wouldn’t you want to know more than the facts if something like this happened? Wouldn’t you want an investigation of this sort to be more … personal?”

  I nodded slowly. “I guess I would.” And there it was again: the sleeping profile of little sister Janey floating in my mind. “You want me to do this because the cops take it as business, and you know I’ll take it personally.”

  “That’s your reputation.”

  “According to Joepye Adder.”

  He flexed his forehead. “According to the police, actually.”

  “You asked them about me?”

  “I did.”

  “And they told you I would take it personally?”

  Dally smiled. “Your reputation precedes you.”

  Dane reached into his suit coat. “Shall I make out a check now to retain you? Is that customary?”

  I rubbed my right eye. “Mind if I talk it over with Ms. Oglethorpe for a while? We’ve got to go to the police station now on some other business, and I rarely do anything at all without talking to her first.”

  He nodded. “I understand.” He shifted and went for his wallet. “Here’s my card. Call me.” He also pulled out his credit card. “Lunch is on me.”

  Dally smiled. “Thank you, Mr. Dane. That’s very kind.”

  I turned to face him. “One night, I don’t know exactly when — I guess last year sometime — I saw you play the Atlanta Opera’s Faust over at the Fox. And that same night, much later, I saw you at that place over in Little Five Points. I saw you sit in with Mose Allison.”

  He smiled for the first time in our meeting. “Mose.”

  “You took a break on ‘Was’ that went all the way out of the known galaxies.”

  He nodded, still smiling. “Three-quarter time. Used a lot of bow. I remember.”

  I smiled back at him. “If I do this job for you, that's why. Because of that solo — and others like it.”

  His head flinched just like he’d been stuck with a pin, and his eyes blinked just a little too much, I thought. He sat for a moment, trying to figure out what to say to that. All he came up with was “Well.”

  My lips thinned. “So I’ll be in touch.”

  I stood; Dally did likewise.

  He looked up at me, then. “‘Big Noise from Winnetka.’”

  It caught me off guard. “Hmm?”

  He smiled. “That’s what I played when I sat in with your band all those years ago. I’ve been trying to think of it since we talked last night.”

  I shook my head. “Jesus, man. How would you remember that?”

  He stood too, all our checks in his hand. “You don’t forget a night like that.”

  “I don’t.” I nodded. “But I figured you’d have had hundreds of nights like that.”

  “I have. I don’t forget any of them.”

  He headed for the cash register.

  I was right behind him. “Well, you’ve got a great memory.”

  His voice was quiet. “I do. But that’s not always a good thing.”

  Right. For example, it suddenly occurred to me that somewhere in the city there was probably an antique Raggedy Ann doll worth a lot of money just sitting around with nobody to come home to it. I couldn’t say why that had come to me exactly. But I didn’t care much for the image. Something about it made me picture the face of Dane’s niece, sleeping with that doll. Then, with very little effort on my part, that face was superimposed on Janey’s face as she slept on my sofa. They were nearly the same. Maybe it was just because they were both kids who didn’t deserve to be dead. Or maybe it was because I was having one of my moments. Sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference between satori, a flashback, and cognitive dysfunction. That’s one of those things that keeps a guy like me on his toes.

  Nevertheless, there they were: those two sweet faces swimming in the fluid of my sight, sleeping the peace that passeth understanding — and still whispering my name.

  5. Foggy New Year

  “Suicide?” I stared at the detective.

  He nodded, but he didn’t look me in the eye.

  Dally shook her head, staring at the floor. “She shimmied up the lamp, tied an apron string around her neck —”

  I interrupted. “Don’t leave out the note.”

  She nodded. “After pinning the mysterious note to herself, then flung herself swinging and dangled there …”

  The detective had had enough. He closed up his notepad. “Until she expired. Yes.”

  I blinked. I enunciated. “And just who, do you think, will believe this?”

  He finally looked at me. “It was a cry for attention.”

  I didn’t mean to laugh at such an absurd suggestion, but it was necessary. It just made the detective mad.

  “Look, Tucker, I don’t see how it’s any of your business anyway.”

  Dally smiled. Have I waxed poetical, before, about the effect of that?

  “Actually, Detective, Mr. Tucker has been hired by the uncle of the deceased.”

  Her expression had its fabled effect once more: The detective smiled back. “Yes, ma’am.”

  I lowered my voice. “You don’t believe this suicide idea.”

  He looked out across the desks in the room. “I don’t have to believe anything about it. That is what the facts support. There were no fingerprints anywhere on the body, the lamp, the apron, the note, or the pin. Nothing.”

  Dally nodded. “Not even hers?”

  He still stared. “There were a few of her prints on some of her clothes.”

  I folded my hands in front of me. “On her shirt, inside the jacket, that sort of thing.”

  He gave a single nod.

  I went on. “Where a person who was wiping prints away might not get to.”

  Another nod.

  Dally leaned in. “So the thought that prints might have been wiped has occurred to you.”

  He was clearly irritated. “Yes, ma’am, it has. I’ve been investigating crime scenes for seven or eight years now. It would surely occur to me that prints might have been wiped.”

  I opened my hands. “Then …”

  He stood up. “Look, we have seventeen unsolved murders pending in this precinct right at the moment, and the sad and sorry fact is that an unhappy hooker is a low priority.” He finally looked at us again. “These kids, they have a high rate of suicide. A lot of them, they’re very dramatic about it. You’d be surprised how much bad poetry there is i
n my files.”

  Before I could stop: “And what would qualify as good poetry to you, Detective?”

  He fired right back. “I’m a Wallace Stevens fan personally. Went through a Richard Brautigan phase when I was younger, but who didn’t?”

  I sat back, duly chastised. I glanced at the nameplate on the desk. Detective Burnish Huyne. I nodded. He was a tough, wiry sort of guy with jet black hair falling onto his forehead and coal black eyes staring my way. “Detective Huyne.”

  He still sounded a little defensive. “Yes?”

  “Do you have an opinion of wine?”

  “What?”

  Dally tried not to show her amusement.

  I lifted my head in his direction. “I say, do you care about wine one way or the other?”

  His eyes narrowed. “Depends.”

  “On?”

  One shoulder lifted. “The region mostly, the year, sometimes the chateau.”

  Dally beat me to the punch line. “Louis, this looks like the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”

  He looked at her. “Louis?”

  She brushed past the reference. “Doesn’t matter. Mr. Tucker here would like to buy you a glass of something when you get off work tonight. You know where Easy is?”

  He finally relaxed enough to sit back. “I heard you had a little trouble over there last night.”

  She nodded. “A little. That’s actually why we’re here today. Had to take care of the paperwork. No big deal.”

  I picked up. “Our visit to you was secondary. But the offer of a glass or two over at Easy still stands. I wouldn’t mind discussing all this in somewhat less … austere surroundings.”

  He took a good twenty or thirty seconds of silence. Then: “I get off at seven-thirty tonight.”

  I smiled. “I think something in a nice St. Emilion — around ’86. I’m partial to the Simard, but mostly because it’s handy.”

  “Handy?” He blinked. “At Easy? No offense.”

  Dally stood. “Flap’s got his own stash. See you tonight?”

  He stood too. “Is there a band?”

  “Gwen Hughes.”

  He nodded. “Jazz and cocktails.”

  I was the last to stand. “Lush Life.”

  He stuck out his hand. “I guess it’s possible we could have a thing or two in common.”