Marcia Talley: Dead Man Dancing

Yet somehow Jeremy squirmed free, and fell on Don’s back like a human cinder block. Don rolled over, throwing the smaller man off, while Coco nipped at his heels.

While the two men wrestled, I searched frantically for the gun, but it must have slipped under one of them. First Don was on top, and then Jeremy. Don roared, flipped Jeremy like a pancake, straddled him, and pinned him to the bricks.

‘It’s over,’ said the big man, back in control of the gun and pointing it at Jeremy’s head.

Jeremy squeezed his eyes shut. ‘“The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want, he makest me to lie down…”’

‘Shut up !’ Don screamed, and clipped Jeremy in the temple with the butt of the gun.

Jeremy’s glasses flew into the air, the Lord’s Prayer silenced. Blood began to pour from a gash in his head and puddle on the bricks.

Don reared back in horror. ‘Oh, God, what have I done?’

I took advantage of the lull to push firmly on Don’s shoulder, catching him off balance and causing him to topple sideways, unresisting.

I knelt at Jeremy’s side. He was still breathing, but his pulse was ropey. I found a wad of tissue in my pocket left over from Jay’s funeral, and I used it to press against Jeremy’s wound, staunching the flow. Time had slowed; seconds became minutes, minutes, hours.

Behind me, I could hear the beeps as Eva dialed 9-1-1.

I heard Shirley say, ‘I’ve got the gun,’ and didn’t feel anything but relief, until a few seconds later when the explosion of a gunshot deafened me.

Keeping the tissue firmly pressed to Jeremy’s head, I twisted around.

Kay lay slumped on the bench, a dark stain beginning to leak between the buttons of her camel hair coat. Don Fosher bent over Kay. First her mouth moved, and then his. I couldn’t hear a word, but after a moment his body language said it all.

Kay Giannotti was dead.

It seemed obvious at first. Don had killed her.

Then I saw it was Shirley Douglas who held the gun.

It took a while for the dust to settle. First, I had to apologize to Paul a million times for pig-headedly (his word, not mine) undertaking a dangerous mission with only my spiritual advisor along for support.

Shirley Douglas got out on bail. Link’s connections on Capitol Hill had netted Shirley a hotshot criminal lawyer with a win-lose record of sixty and nil, who wore his hair in a ponytail. Word was, she’d get off light.

Alas for Tessa, production of Tiny Ballroom was postponed indefinitely following a boycott of the show’s sponsors by Citizens Against Childsploitation. As a diversion, Tessa’s father enrolled her in a gymnastics class. Tessa excels on the parallel bars and hopes to be ready for the 2012 Olympic Games in London.

Shirley’s victim’s ashes were flown to Texas by a second cousin once removed, where they were interred in the Giannotti plot next to her husband of twenty-five years, Jerome Ignatius Giannotti.

Everyone agreed it was Don Fosher who’d brought the gun – unregistered – to the park, but the sergeant remembered nothing about the incident until he ‘came to’ and found himself scuffling with a total stranger for control of the weapon. Post-traumatic stress was mentioned. After counseling at Walter Reed Medical Center in Washington, DC, Sergeant Fosher was back in Iraq. He has extended for another year.

In March, Ruth’s attacker, Kenneth Parks, a sixteen-year-old student from Annapolis High was apprehended. Fresh out of Ruth’s cash, he attempted to use her cancelled VISA to buy a laptop computer on the Internet, asking that it be shipped to his home address. Needless to say, Kenny’s parents’ car didn’t sport a ‘My child is an honor roll student at…’ bumper sticker.

Eventually, we learned that lab analysis had identified the formulation of the thallium contained in Jay’s talcum powder as identical to Jardines Rat-a-Tué which hadn’t been sold in the US since 1978.

I was thinking about this one day while staring at Eva across her kitchen table.

Eva raised any eyebrow. ‘What? Do I have spinach on my teeth?’

‘Not your teeth. Your hair. I’m remembering your roots.’

‘Roots?’ She tugged on a lock of silver bangs and stared up at it, cross-eyed. ‘Thanks to Wally, I don’t have any roots.’

‘But when you did, wasn’t it because you used some off-brand hair dye that was years past its sell-by date?’

Eva laughed. ‘In Stanley, Utah, rotating stock was an alien concept. They never took stuff off the shelves in the stores. I saw thirty-year-old merchandise gathering dust, still wearing their original price tags.’ She grinned. ‘Never know when you’re going to need a tube of Ipana toothpaste.’

‘Maybe Hard Bargain, Texas has some old-fashioned farm supply stores, too,’ I mused.

I made this suggestion to the nice detective who’d given me his card when he drove all the way down from Baltimore, Maryland to relieve me of Jay’s gym bag. He’d said, ‘Thank you, ma’am,’ which I figured was nicer than ‘buzz off’. Nevertheless, he called later on to report that a clerk at Finkel’s Fair Store in Hard Bargain, Texas, had said yes-indeedy-do, Miss Kay Giannotti had bought some of that there Rat-a-Tué for her mother-in-law’s mouse problem, why it must have been over a year ago now, and they only had two cans left at $2.95 and should he hold them?

I paid a call on my spiritual advisor at her home in the parsonage to report on this interesting development. Eva invited me into the kitchen, and together we rustled up some tea while the gray Chartreux watched with round, copper eyes from her basket near the stove. ‘Hello, Bella,’ I said, kneeling down to give the animal a good scratch behind the ears.

‘I’ve changed her name,’ Eva told me. ‘She now answers to Magnificat.’

‘Certainly appropriate for a church-going cat,’ I said, getting to my feet, ‘but quite a mouthful. I can’t see you standing in the back yard calling, Here Magnificat, here Magnificat!, can you?’

Eva shook her head. ‘That’s why she’ll be Cat for short, although her breeder in Fulton, Maryland might think the name’s a bit undignified for such a fine, blue-blooded feline.’

As Eva poured hot water into our cups, she asked, ‘I know you talked to Don recently, and I’m curious. What was it that Kay said to him just before she died?’

‘It was a line from the movie, Dirty Dancing . “Nobody sticks Baby in a corner.”’

Eva plopped a teabag into her cup. ‘Poor thing. Thinking her husband was having an affair must have gnawed at her, but being told he was a pedophile would have sent anybody over the edge And I should know.’

‘Jay didn’t exactly win any prizes for faithfulness, but from everything I hear, he really loved her. And speaking of love,’ I continued with a grin, ‘how’s Jeremy?’

‘Fully recovered. He emails that during his hospital stay God came to him in a dream and suggested that he might not be cut out for life in the fast lane with a priest for a wife.’

Eva set the kettle back on the stove, and sat down. ‘Looking for guidance, Jeremy opened his Bible, closed his eyes and stabbed his finger down at Solomon 2:16: “My lover is mine and I am his; he browses among the lilies.” Believe it or not, Jeremy’s now dating a lovely girl who works as a sales associate in the greenhouse at Homestead Gardens. God has spoken, what more can I say?’

‘That reminds me.’ I opened my purse and pulled out a narrow box. ‘Now that you’re back in the parsonage, I think you’ll be needing this.’ I slid the box across the table.

Eva tipped up the top and peeked in. ‘Pastor Barbie! I don’t believe it!’ Tenderly, she withdrew from the box a Barbie doll decked out in full priest regalia. It had been made as an ordination gift for Eva by her sister. I’d rescued Barbie from the trash can where a despondent Eva had tossed her when she left St Cat’s on sabbatical. For the past several months, Barbie’d slept on a bookshelf at my house.