Marcia Talley: Dead Man Dancing

I took Kay’s pale, too-cool hand in both of mine, looked straight into her ice-blue eyes and said, ‘By the way, Kay, sometime when you’re not so busy, and all this is over, I need to return Jay’s gym bag to you. From the Hippodrome? Hutch retrieved it simply ages ago and gave it to me, but with all that’s happened, golly, I’m sorry, I simply forgot about it. There’s probably nothing of value in there, but I’d like to get it back to you sometime. At your convenience, of course.’

As I rattled on, I noticed that Kay’s chest had stopped rising and falling – appropriate for a funeral, I suppose – but it told me more or less what I wanted to know. If she had been going about the business of widowhood feeling secure, I sure as hell wanted to give her something to worry about.

I dropped her hand, tossed a cheery, ‘Just give me a call, will you?’ over my shoulder as I turned and headed for the door.

Leaving Kay standing alone amidst the photos of her victim, I fled the church and joined my family who were waiting for me on the sidewalk.

‘Mother! Where have you been?’

I kissed her cheek. ‘Later, Emily.’ With a conspiratorial wink at Eva, I rounded up the stragglers and said, ‘Come with me to the parking lot. There’s somebody there that I’d like you to meet.’

I tried to reach Melanie for two days, texting repeatedly to her cell, but my messages were never returned. No one answered her land line either.

I drove to the Fosher apartment in Laurel, near Fort Meade, but no one was home. Melanie’s silver KIA Rio wasn’t parked in its assigned spot in front of the complex either.

I sat in my car and stewed, listening to Mozart on the radio and staring up at the drapes pulled across Melanie’s living-room window until it occurred to me – at long last – that something might have happened to Don. That he’d been wounded or killed, and that the army had called Melanie away. There had to be some good reason why she wasn’t picking up messages.

If she had to leave so suddenly, though, it was odd that she hadn’t told me. On the other hand, if somebody called me with the terrible news that something had happened to Paul, I might rush out without notifying anyone, too.

Three days later, the Capital reported the body of a woman between the ages of twenty-five and thirty had been found floating in the South River near Church Creek. The identity of the victim was being withheld pending notification of next of kin, but with a cry of anguish, I told Paul I knew it had to be Melanie.

I had to find out for sure.

Plan A was to call Dennis, my long-suffering brother-in-law slash policeman. But talk about not sharing information with anybody, when I called the station, I learned from an associate that he and Connie had taken advantage of an unexpected break in Dennis’s caseload by shouldering their skis and hightailing it off to Vail.

I was on my own.

So I waited.

I texted Melanie every day.

Five days later, I was still waiting and worrying when my cell phone rang with a caller ID I didn’t recognize.

‘Hello?’

‘Mrs Ives?’ His voice was deeply masculine, but tentative. ‘This is Don Fosher.’

‘Thank God! I’ve been so worried. Is Melanie OK?’

There was a pause. I waited, but heard only breathing, followed by a long sigh. The moment I heard it, I knew what had happened. Don only confirmed my worst suspicions when he said, ‘Melanie’s dead, ma’am. That’s why I’m calling.’

I felt like I’d been punched in the solar plexus. I couldn’t say anything; I couldn’t even breathe.

‘Ma’am?’

‘I’m here,’ I gasped. ‘What on earth happened?’

In halting voice, Don Fosher confirmed what I had suspected all along. It was Melanie’s body the crabber had found while checking his pots in the South River the previous week. ‘Melanie gave me your email address and telephone number,’ Don continued. ‘She told me that you could be trusted.’

Trusted? My thoughts were in a jumble, and I tried to sort them out.

When I didn’t say anything, Don said, ‘There’s something funny going on, Mrs Ives. The county police think she fell from the South River Bridge, hitting her head on a piling as she fell. But I don’t believe that, do you? What would Melanie be doing on the South River Bridge? Driving over it, maybe, but not jumping off.

‘Melanie texted me every night,’ Don continued in a lifeless monotone, ‘even when I was out on operations. But when I got back from the field this time, the last message I had from her was dated two Sundays ago.’

I took that in. The day before Jay’s funeral.

‘She didn’t drown, Mrs Ives. Melanie died of head injuries. I think somebody hit her over the head and pushed her in.’

Frankly, I was beginning to think so, too. Had Melanie shared something she’d overheard with Kay, or with somebody else, unwittingly putting her life in danger?

First Ruth, then Jay, and now Melanie. Taking lessons at J & K was turning out to be dangerous.

I needed more information. ‘I went looking for her car,’ I told the grieving husband. ‘Did the police find it?’

‘Someplace called Yellow Fin,’ Don told me, his voice breaking. ‘I’ve never heard of it.’

I had. Yellow Fin was a waterfront restaurant at the north-west end of the South River bridge, within walking distance of Gingerville. A little too close to Kay Giannotti for comfort.

‘Where are you now, Don?’

‘BWI.’

‘Do you need someone to pick you up?’

‘No, ma’am, but thanks. I’m just getting into a cab. I should hit town in about thirty minutes.’ His voice wooed and wowed and I thought I’d lost him until he said, ‘I have to go to the funeral home. Kramer’s. Do you know it?’

Unfortunately, I knew it all too well.

‘I do. I’ll meet you at Kramer’s, then. Will an hour and a half give you enough time?’

‘Without my Melanie, ma’am, I’ve got all the time in the world.’

Like the well-trained mother I was, I added, ‘And you’re coming home with me for dinner.’

Like the well-bred boy he was, he couldn’t refuse. ‘Yes, ma’am.’

When I got to the funeral home at three, Don was waiting for me on the steps. I recognized him at once. It wasn’t hard. Like most returning soldiers, Don was dressed in desert fatigues. A duffle bag leaned against the steps at his feet.

‘Don?’

‘Ma’am?’ He removed his cap with one sweep of his hand, crushed it in his huge fist, and extended the other ham-sized hand to me.

Even though we had just met, I gave him a hug, rubbing my palms comfortingly across the massive expanse of his back. ‘I’m so sorry about Melanie. She was a lovely girl, and we were just getting to be good friends.’

‘Melanie liked you, too,’ he said sadly. ‘She’d been emailing me about you. Taking her to lunch and like that. That was nice of you.’

Wandering tourists and pedestrians passing on urgent business had to swerve off the narrow brick sidewalk and on to the street in order to get by us so I suggested we move inside Kramer’s. ‘Let’s find a place where we can chat more comfortably.’

Back again, way too soon, in the funeral home’s House Beautiful lobby, I looked around for Kramer, Jr. and his impeccable three-piece suit, but didn’t see him. ‘Have you talked to the funeral home people yet, Don?’

Looking miserable, he nodded.

‘Then they shouldn’t have a problem about our sitting in here.’ I turned to my right and opened the door of a miniature meeting room (the brochure would describe it as ‘intimate’) containing a small desk, three upholstered chairs, a backlit stained glass window, soundproof walls to mask the wails, and uplifting music like ‘You Light Up My Life’ and ‘Wind Beneath My Wings’ drifting in at low volume over the intercom.