Marcia Talley - Dead Man Dancing

Shirley leapt to her feet, her back rigid. She loomed over Kay, still seated on the bench, hands primly folded in her lap. ‘Abuse Tessa?’ Shirley screamed. ‘You are out of your fucking mind, lady! Jay wasn’t an abuser.’

‘Pimp,’ Kay snarled.

‘What?’ Shirley paled.

‘You disgust me. Don’t you have any pride at all? Using your daughter like that. It’s despicable. You’re no better than those so-called parents who allowed their kids to spend the night at Neverland and then sued Michael Jackson for the hanky-panky they knew was bound to take place.’

‘I…’ Shirley began, obviously reeling from Kay’s full-frontal assault.

Kay seized the advantage. ‘Chance clued me in on the hush money Jay’s been paying you.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘Does the name Michael Lombardo ring any bells?’

Shirley shook her head, genuinely puzzled.

‘He’s Jay’s cousin, currently serving five to seven in the Texas State pen at Huntsville for robbing a pawn shop.’

‘So Jay’s cousin is a crook. So what?’

‘So why is Michael Lombardo on the J & K Studio payroll, and why is his paycheck being automatically deposited to a trust account in Tessa’s name at Bank Annapolis?’

Shirley’s eyes widened. ‘Jesus.’

Kay puffed air out through her lips, and turned to me. ‘You watch, Hannah. She’s going to pretend she didn’t know about it.’

Either Shirley was a consummate actress, or she really didn’t know. She took a step backwards, a strategic retreat, as if to gather her thoughts.

But Kay wasn’t finished with Shirley yet. She stood up, too, so she could look Shirley straight in the eye. ‘You must be blind. Either that, or an enabler. Melanie told me.’

If Shirley was intimidated by Kay, she certainly didn’t show it. She stood her ground, puffed herself up and played her trump card. ‘You’re the one who’s blind, Kay! Jay didn’t abuse Tessa. Tessa was his daughter!’

I grabbed Eva’s hand and squeezed. It felt good to be right about Jay. He wasn’t a pedophile after all. He was a father.

Kay gasped, put a hand to her chest, staggered backwards, catching her heel on a brick. She would have fallen had she not reached out to steady herself on the rim of the fountain. ‘You’re lying!’

I was dumbfounded. ‘Kay didn’t know,’ I whispered to Eva. ‘I don’t know how it’s possible, but she really didn’t know!’

Shirley took the offensive then, quickly closing the gap between Kay and herself. ‘Why do you think we stuck with your studio all these years when there were other, better studios in the area? Loyalty, that’s why. Jay always looked after Tessa.’ She paused to draw a breath. ‘Besides, he wanted to spend time with his daughter.’

She fixed Kay with a look of pure venom. ‘It’ll all come out in his will, you know. He’s leaving his half of the studio to Tessa.’

Kay’s face grew dangerously red. ‘The hell he is!’

Shirley folded her arms and glared Kay down. ‘You don’t know anything. Jay loved me. Me! He loved Tessa. You were too selfish to give him kids.’ She smoothed her hands over her narrow hips. ‘Boo-hoo-hoo. Might spoil your figure for dancing.’

Kay stood galvanized, rapidly blinking.

‘When I got pregnant, Jay was overjoyed. He wanted to tell the whole world, but I wouldn’t let him. He’s…’ Her voice caught. ‘He was one of the most unselfish men I’ve ever known.

Kay suddenly revived. ‘I don’t believe that Tessa is Jay’s child. You’ll have to prove it.’

A sly smile crept across Shirley’s face. ‘There’s DNA.’

Kay laughed out loud. ‘DNA? How? Jay’s been cremated. In a couple of hours, I’m taking his ashes back to Texas.’

I was thinking that comparing Lorraine’s DNA to Tessa’s would probably do the trick when Shirley crowed, ‘We had a paternity test done when Tessa was born. I was married to Link, so we had to be sure.’

Eva breathed into my ear, ‘Sounds like Jay didn’t trust Shirley much, either.’

Eva’d said it quietly, but Shirley must have overheard because her eyes darted in our direction. ‘And before you ask, Link knew all about it, but agreed to raise Tessa as his own. Link had a severe case of mumps as a kid, so he could never father children. It was the perfect solution for all of us.’

The perfect solution? I thought back to the day I’d comforted Tessa as she huddled miserably on a cold tile floor, hunched over the commode. Tessa was the glue that held that marriage together, but at what cost?

Kay stumbled to the bench and lowered herself down on it. ‘Melanie was wrong?’

I handed Coco’s leash to Eva and moved closer to Kay’s bench. ‘I don’t know what Melanie thought she saw, Kay, but whatever it was, it was clearly misinterpreted.’

Kay’s eyes swung from me to the red bag and back again. ‘That’s not Jay’s bag, is it?’

‘No, it’s not. The police have Jay’s bag. They’ve had it all along.’

Kay rested her head against the back of the bench and closed her eyes. ‘Jay was from a big Catholic family. He wanted children, lots of children.’ Her eyelids fluttered open and, for some reason, she was looking again at me. ‘I couldn’t give them to him. It’s complicated, but I just couldn’t.’

‘Kay…’ Shirley began.

Kay waved a tired hand, cutting her off. ‘About the will.’

Shirley went on alert. Had she been Coco, her ears would have quivered. ‘The will? What about the will?’

Kay’s head lolled slowly to the other side until she was looking directly at Shirley. ‘Tessa’s not getting the studio. The studio comes to me. Everything comes to me.’ She drew a deep breath and exhaled it slowly. ‘But I guess where I’m going, there won’t be any need for a studio, or a house, or anything else.’

‘But the will?’ Shirley wouldn’t let the matter drop.

Kay smiled blandly. ‘Jay intended to make a will favoring Tessa, but I found a draft on his computer and put a stop to it. I thought you found out about the abuse and were blackmailing him.’ Her head lolled back. ‘I made a mistake there, too, didn’t I?’

Something rustled the ornamental hedge behind me, and suddenly he was there: Don Fosher, a mountain in cammies, waving a dull gray pistol. ‘Move away from her, everyone. I have no beef with you.’

I stood rooted to the bricks. ‘Don…’

‘I’m sorry, Mrs Ives. I came back for my stuff, and I overheard you arranging to meet this, this…murderess!’ He steadied the weapon with his left hand, and pointed the barrel directly at Kay’s head. At a distance, Don could probably shoot the eyebrows off a fly. At close range, Kay didn’t stand a chance.

Tears coursed down Don’s face, but his grip on the gun didn’t waver. ‘Why did you kill her? Why? Tell me why?’

I would have been petrified, but Kay didn’t even blink. ‘Melanie said… oh, what does it matter? It’s a little late for me to be sorry about it now.’

That wasn’t the right answer.

Deep down, the horrible scream began, rumbling up through Don’s chest and out through his mouth, a cry of such agony, such desolation that my heart nearly broke. His finger twitched on the trigger.

‘Stop!’ someone yelled.

We all froze as a figure shot past, tripped over Coco’s leash, and dived like a missile at the feet of the gunman. Big as he was, Don Fosher went down, his gun bouncing and skittering along the bricks.

‘Thou shalt not kill!’ Kay’s rescuer shouted.

Over Coco’s frantic barking, Eva yelled, ‘Sweet Jesus, it’s Jeremy!’

‘Get the gun!’ Jeremy screamed, but Don’s arm clamped over his throat, cutting off his air. Don was trained in hand-to-hand combat; Jeremy was no match for him.