Dancing with the Dead (15 page)

When the apartment was reasonably neat, and she’d finished her frozen sirloin tips dinner, she put on her flat-soled training shoes and practiced dancing in the spare bedroom. For over an hour she did tango steps in front of the full-length mirror, gliding and swirling gracefully, perfecting her head movements during fans and promenade turns. She looked good. She knew she’d improved dramatically in only the past few weeks. It was like that with dancing; you’d hit a sticking point and think you’d never make progress, then suddenly it was as if a dam gave and you were surprised to stride out on the floor a much better dancer. Moments that made life worthwhile.

When her legs were tired and her feet began to ache, she switched off the light and walked into the living room. She sat on the sofa and removed her shoes, stretched out her legs and crossed them at the ankles.

But she couldn’t relax. She wondered again if there really
was
a resemblance between her and the two murder victims. Other people didn’t seem to see it. Was the reason for her fascination with Rene Verlane really the fact that he was suspected of murder? She’d heard about eager victims flirting with death, but she certainly wasn’t one of them. Was this a lucid moment, or was her imagination running wild now?

You’re being ridiculous, she admonished herself. Facts are facts, and talk show psychology won’t change them.

Feeling, even hearing, the pounding of her heart, she found her gaze drawn to the phone.

Weary but restless, she stood up and carried her shoes into the bedroom. She sat on the edge of the bed and slipped a pair of white cotton tube socks onto her feet, then her comfortable old Reebok jogging shoes.

She left the apartment and walked for blocks, all the way over to Arsenal Street. The air was so humid it seemed to press like velvet against her flesh. She was perspiring. Tower Grove Park lay to her right like a dark and dangerous void. She knew she shouldn’t be walking at night after what had happened to her recently, but something in her compelled her to press on, striding parallel to the edge of the park.

It was a few minutes before ten when she got home. Coincidence? Or had she hurried to reach the apartment in time to settle back down on the sofa and watch the ten o’clock news?

There was nothing on the news about the Verlane or Roundner murders. Mary used the remote to mute the “Tonight” show and watched Jay Leno, nimble for such a big man, dance slowly about and clasp and unclasp his hands during his monologue.

It was two hours earlier on the West Coast. As she stood up and moved to the phone, she realized she’d memorized the number of the Marriott Hotel in Seattle.

Rene Verlane was in his room. He answered the phone on the second ring. She recognized his voice from the television interviews, and she had a vision of him speaking to her from one of the news tapes shot in his New Orleans home, a conversation real yet unreal.

He said hello again, puzzled, and Mary cleared her throat.

This was madness, but she was determined not to panic and hang up.

S
HE CLEARED HER THROAT
again, swallowed, and said, “I want you to know first off I’m not some kind of weirdo calling for kicks because your wife was murdered.” Oh, God, should she have said
that?

For a long time he didn’t say anything. Silence hummed and crackled on the connection that stretched more than a thousand miles. Was he ever going to speak, or would he simply hang up?

Then: “All right, but what and who are you?”

Relief rushed through Mary. “I’m a serious ballroom dancer, like your wife was. My name’s Mary Arlington.”

Again a pause. “So why’re you calling, Mary?” His voice was calm but tight with wariness.

“To let you know I understand why you think dancing has some connection to the murder. And because I dance. I guess you could say I’m offering my sympathy and moral support. I don’t want anything in return.”

She could hear the thermostat click and the air-conditioner take on a throatier tone. Her fingers squeezing the receiver were starting to stiffen and ache; she loosened them one by one, flexing them.

“Okay, Mary, I appreciate that.” He still sounded dubious, not quite sure he should be talking to her. “However’d you find me?”

“I saw on the news you went to Seattle, so I phoned some of the hotels. Got lucky the second call. I agree with you about how maybe the same person killed your wife and Martha Roundner. I knew it the moment I saw—” She stopped herself; she didn’t want to go too far and have him think she was one of those crank callers, the kind played by wild-eyed actresses in movies and on TV slasher films.

“Saw what?”

“Well, I can’t deny that your wife, Martha Roundner, and I, we’re all more or less the same type. I mean, same shape face, same color hair, probably the same complexion, though that’s hard to tell on TV or in photographs. There’s a real similarity in our features, too, the sorta general look we have. Everybody who’s seen the photos remarks on it.”

“I see.” She could hear him breathing. “You think you’re in some kind of danger, Mary?” He still sounded puzzled.

“Oh, no! What I mean is, because of the similarity, and the dancing, I suppose I feel personally involved in some way with what happened.” Hearing herself say it, she wondered again if it made sense. “Listen, if you think that’s crazy, I don’t blame you.”

“No, no, not crazy. Crazy’s what’s been happening to me lately.”

Mary pressed the receiver harder to her ear. “Have you found out anything yet? In Seattle, I mean?”

It was a very long time before he answered, then there was a change in his voice, a weary disillusionment. “You’re not from the press, are you?”

“Me? God, no! I absolutely despise what the press is doing to you!”

“What are they doing to me?”

“Not taking you seriously when you say your wife’s murder had something to do with dancing. And they keep badgering you; at least that’s the impression I get from the news.”
And they see you as a suspect.

“They really haven’t been all that bad,” Verlane said. “It’s the police I can’t stomach.” His southern accent made them
poh-lice.
“They play their little mind games, keep their secrets. You can’t imagine what they can be like till you actually get involved with them the way I have. Sweet Lord, they’ve even suggested . . . Well, never mind.”

“When Martha Roundner was murdered, was there a ballroom dance competition about that time in Seattle?”

“That’s one of the things I’m going to find out. I only got here last night and haven’t had a chance to do much. The Roundner murder was three months ago; do you recall any kind of competition then
anywhere at all
in this part of the country?”

“No, but that doesn’t mean there wasn’t any. Ballroom dancing’s really getting popular, and there’s almost always a competition going on somewhere. If there was a competition in or around Seattle at that time, it oughta be easy enough to find out about it.”

“Should be,” he agreed. “Do you enter dance competitions?”

“Sometimes,” Mary lied. “My next one’s the Ohio Star Ball in November.”

“That’s an important one, isn’t it? I remember Danielle talking about it, but she never danced there.” A catch in his throat. “Never had the chance.”

Pity swelled like a balloon in Mary. “You danced sometimes, too, didn’t you?”

“Never in competition,” Verlane said. “I only got good enough so I could keep up with Danielle at social dancing.”

“She was beautiful. I mean, I don’t say that because we look something alike—It’s just such a shame, what happened.”

“Did you and Danielle ever dance in the same competitions? Do you remember her?” Something sad and eager in his tone now, as if he yearned for more memory to hold onto.

“No, but some of the dancers at my studio recognized her photograph and remembered her dancing. They said she was terrific, especially in the smooth dances.”

“What studio do you dance at?”

“Romance Studio. Part of the chain.”

“It just occurred to me I don’t even know what city you’re calling from.”

“St. Louis.”

“Ah, I was there about three years ago. A bond fund convention. I’m a stockbroker.”

“I know you are. It was mentioned more than once on the news.”

“You must watch the news a lot.”

“I do. And I read a lot.” She decided to take a chance. Her heart double-clutched and began to race. “Listen, if you ever need to know anything about ballroom dancing, I mean how things work with competition or anything, you can give me a call anytime and I’ll try to help.” She realized her words to Verlane were almost exactly those of Victor offering to help her with Angie.

“All right, I might well do that. Thanks, Mary.”

She suddenly didn’t know what to say. Several slow seconds passed. Thick silence built in the line, clogging it like cholesterol in a vital artery.

“I guess I’ll hang up now,” she finally managed to stammer. “I’m sorry.”

“Sorry?”

“About your wife and all.”

“I see. Thanks for that, too.”

She told him her phone number. He didn’t ask her to repeat it, or excuse himself to find a pen or pencil. She hoped he was really writing it down. Well, hotels usually had stationery and pens handy by the phone, didn’t they?

He thanked her again for calling, then told her good-bye.

“Good luck,” she said, and hung up.

She sat with her fingers lingering on the phone, her blood racing. Her mind was whirling somewhere above her and seemed to circle back to where and who she was with infinite slowness. What a thing to have done—to call the husband of a murdered woman!

Now that she’d spoken with Rene Verlane and he was real and not simply another image on TV, it bore down on her with new and unexpected weight that he was not only the widower of a homicide victim, he was suspected of committing the crime. She’d actually talked to a murder suspect. How many people ever did that?

How many people were crazy or desperate enough to try?

She considered phoning Helen and telling her what had happened. She even started to lift the receiver. Then Mary decided she didn’t want to share any part of her and Rene Verlane’s phone conversation.

Why should she? It was private. It was intimate.

S
EATTLE HAD CHANGED THINGS
.

Morrisy sat before his half-finished eggs Benedict at Brennan’s and stared at the fax sheets he’d been carrying around in his pocket. The similarities in the Roundner and Verlane homicides couldn’t be discounted, and it did seem that ballroom dancing figured into whatever psychosis the killer carried in his sick mind. Morrisy had seen Schutz about it, and Schutz had agreed, but he’d said there wasn’t enough data or insight to determine just how the dancing fit in, or even if it did for sure.

Fingering the smooth meerschaum pipe in his shirt pocket, Morrisy thought about how he hated to dance. Bonita had dragged him out on the floor a few times, forcing him to do his awkward box step. Finally he’d deliberately stomped on her toe and she’d believed he was no dancer. It took something like that with a woman like Bonita.

The waiter wandered by and refilled his coffee. At the next table another waiter had touched flame to liqueur and some kind of fancy breakfast dish blazed. It had always struck Morrisy as ridiculous to set food on fire. He enjoyed eating at a place like Brennan’s, though, with its high-toned atmosphere and its lush garden; it was one of the perks of his position and if he continued to put on weight the hell with it.

He stared into the flames until the waiter extinguished the fire. Then he gazed into the dark depths of his coffee cup, thinking. The Roundner woman’s body had been decomposed to the point where determining time of death was difficult, but she was probably killed on a weekend. Rene Verlane claimed to have spent that time at home, but it was possible he could have taken a flight to Seattle under an alias, committed the murder, and returned home. Only his wife, Danielle, would know for sure, and Danielle was dead. Maybe that was
why
she was dead.

And Verlane was in Seattle now, had even announced on TV he was going there. Snooping around, as if an amateur could uncover something the police had overlooked. Like goddamn Rockford or something. It was all an act, anyway, Morrisy thought. Verlane was playing the bereaved husband to the hilt, trying to get the media on his side and divert suspicion away from him. The guy did have brass nuts, Morrisy would give him that. But that’s all he’d give him other than a shitpot full of trouble.

Morrisy sipped coffee, wondering about the dance connection. Maybe there really wasn’t any except for the fact the killer figured women wrapped up in ballroom dancing were kind of natural victims from the beginning. They literally yearned to be swept off their feet, to give themselves up to music and whoever they were dancing with. Vulnerable romantics of the sort who made work for Morrisy. At least that was how Morrisy saw it. He figured most men regarded that kind of dancing as nothing more than an opportunity to cop a feel, find out where they stood for the rest of the night with their partners when the dancing was over.

Either way, he’d continue to downplay the dance angle with the media. That was the kind of strategy that boosted career chances. Why shoot himself in the foot by looking like a second-guessing fool for maybe no reason?

But women who danced, maybe they did have something meaningful in common. He’d have to ask Schutz about that. And ask him about how Verlane might feel about dancing, the way his dead wife was so hung up on it. Schutz still had the idea the killer might be doing these women and then not remembering any of it afterward. And Morrisy still didn’t see how that was possible. How could anyone who’d seen the Danielle Verlane crime scene think whoever’d been responsible could ever forget it?

Schutz had come to believe that Rene Verlane didn’t necessarily fit the profile of the guy they were looking for, but Morrisy didn’t buy into that notion, either. He was 90 percent sure about Verlane. Instinct, maybe, but it was instinct that had gotten him to where he was in the department, so it wasn’t something to be ignored. He only wished he hadn’t gone public with his stand against a dance tie-in, because his instincts were sure beginning to whisper something different now, especially since there’d been a dance competition in Seattle around the time of the killing.