Dead Man Dancing (27 page)

‘I knew right then that somebody'd died, but I thought it'd be my grandmother. She's ninety.' His fingers brushed vigorously over the stubble on his head as if he were trying to drive the bad memories away. ‘When the chaplain told me it was Melanie, my whole world crashed and burned. An hour later I'm sitting on a Medevac plane in a seat they'd saved for me, and now here I am, talking to you in a freaking funeral home. Totally unreal. Like punch me, it's a bad dream, I
gotta
wake up.'

‘I'm so sorry, Don.'

‘Melanie's going to be cremated,' he continued. ‘She'll be buried in the family plot up in Chilmark on Martha's Vineyard.'

I was surprised to hear that. ‘Didn't Melanie tell me she was from Kansas?'

‘She was, but her parents died when she was way young. My parents loved her like she was their own.' A tear as big as the Atlantic Ocean slid down the big man's cheek. ‘It's Abel's Hill, the same cemetery where they buried John Belushi. She'll like that.'

‘Everyone loved Melanie,' I said. ‘She was enormously talented. It's a big loss for all of us.'

‘Yes ma'am. Except for the son-of-a-bitch who killed her. Begging your pardon, ma'am.'

‘Please, call me Hannah,' I insisted, taking my time, not wanting to push the grieving young man, or cut him off prematurely.

Don blushed. ‘I'll try, but they sort of drill the “ma'am” into us, if you know what I mean, ma'am.'

Don opened his duffel, rooted around for a minute, came up with an unopened bottle of water and held it out.

I raised a hand. ‘No, thank you.'

‘May I?'

‘Of course.'

He twisted off the cap, and took a long drink, draining half the bottle in the process. ‘OK . . . Hannah. I gotta tell somebody or it's gonna drive me freaking nuts. I think I know who killed Melanie.'

Resisting the urge to leap out of my chair, I said calmly, ‘Tell me about it.'

‘We were very close, Melanie and me. She told me everything. Her worries, her fears. A couple of weeks ago, she picked up something at the dance studio, so she asked me about it. “What do I do, Don? Do I keep quiet about it, or do I tell?”'

I reached out and patted his hand. ‘When we had lunch that day, Melanie told me about it, too. I know she told Jay, but I think he died before he could tell anyone else, even if he'd wanted to, which I don't think he did.'

Don looked puzzled. ‘What do you mean, she told Jay? No way she'd tell Jay! She told Kay.'

I sat up straight. Something wasn't computing. ‘She told Kay?'

Don nodded vigorously. ‘Melanie picked up on something, I don't know what, but whatever it was she was totally convinced that Jay was having . . .' He paused, swiping at his glistening brow with the sleeve of his uniform. ‘I guess it's what you'd call an “unnatural relationship” with this little girl he was teaching. Tessa Douglas.'

While I stared in disbelief, Don charged on. ‘Melanie suspected that Jay was just being nice to Tessa's mother so that he could be near the little girl.' He shook his head, screwed up his mouth as if being forced to eat something particularly horrible, like liver with onions, or haggis.

I sat back, shocked to the tips of my toes. I'd been convinced that Tess was Jay's daughter, when all along . . . My gut twisted. Suppose Jay was a pedophile, attracted to the child because she
resembled
his sister. I felt ill.

Don blinked rapidly, fighting tears. ‘Melanie asked me what she should do, to protect Tessa and the reputation of the studio and all, and I told her to tell Kay. The wife is always the last to know, I said. Oh, sweet Jesus,' he wailed. ‘It's all my fault. What a rotten piece of advice that was! Now Kay's up and killed my sweet little girl, too.'

Too
. Don and I were definitely on the same wavelength.

‘Don, do you still have copies of those emails?'

‘Yes, ma'am. On my cell phone, and on the server, too.'

‘You need to print them out and share them with the police.'

If Jay had been abusing Tessa, that threat was now gone. But if Kay had killed Jay to protect the studio, and killed Melanie to keep her from her spilling the beans about Jay, what would keep Kay from silencing a nine-year-old girl?

‘Don,' I added, laying a hand on his arm for emphasis, ‘you need to do it soon. If what you suspect turns out to be true, that little girl's life may be in danger, too.'

‘O
n the other hand,' I mused to my patient husband from the comfortable depths of our living-room sofa after we'd fed Melanie's husband dinner and sent him up to our third-floor guest room for the night, ‘as much as I like Laurie, you have to agree she has a pretty good motive for wanting Melanie out of the way, too.'

‘Why don't you ask her?'

‘Oh, right, sure. So I meet Laurie for lunch, ask her point-blank if she murdered Jay and Melanie, and would you like French fries with that?'

‘I think you know Laurie pretty well, and you're good at reading body language.' He wrapped an arm around me and pulled me close. ‘Before you do, though, make sure it's in a public place and that Laurie knows you told me you were meeting.'

I took Paul's advice, and arranged to meet Laurie the following day at the food court in the mall, the Johnny Rocket's end. ‘Coolness,' she said over the telephone. ‘Afterwards we can go shopping!'

I rang off, thinking that after our little chat Laurie might not be much in the mood for shopping.

At the appointed time, Laurie caught sight of me first. She stood on tiptoe near the escalator that led up to the movie theaters, waving and ‘yoo-hooing'. Judging from the bags from Ann Taylor Loft and Claire's Boutique that she carried I figured she'd got a jump start on the shopping.

I visited Panda Express while Laurie went to Hibachi-San and we joined up again at a table near the escalator. ‘At least we're on the same continent,' Laurie commented (incorrectly), eyeing my shrimp-fried rice as she sat down.

Between bites, Laurie showed me the blouse she'd bought at Ann Taylor, and I described the shoes I was looking for to go with my new red skirt. I'd eaten my last shrimp, and she'd finished up her tempura, but I'd still not found a way to work SRS casually into the conversation, so I thought, screw it, and dove in with both feet.

‘Laurie,' I said as I twisted my napkin to shreds on my lap underneath the table. ‘Before she died, Melanie told me something about you, and I'm just going to come right out with it and ask you if it's true.'

As I spoke, a smile began tugging at the corners of Laurie's mouth, and by the time I'd reached the end of my convoluted sentence, it had turned into a full-blown grin. She moved her tray aside, leaned across the table toward me and said, ‘She told you I used to be a guy.'

My breath flew out of me in a rush. ‘Yes!'

‘And you worried that I might have bumped Melanie off to make sure she kept quiet about it, is that right?'

‘I'm ashamed to say that the thought had flitted across my mind.'

‘Honey, I've been living RLS, real life experience, for three years, my SRS is next month, and I couldn't care less who knows it!' She retrieved her handbag from the floor, plopped it on the table, pried it open, and drew out her wallet. ‘Look at this,' she said, showing me her driver's license. It was from Illinois, her name was Laurie R. Wainwright, it pictured Laurie as she sat before me now, and there, in the critical box reserved for ‘sex' was the letter ‘F'.

‘Isn't that the most beautiful thing you've ever seen?'

‘I guess it is,' I said with a laugh. I slid the tangible proof of her new identity back across the table, relief flooding through me. ‘I look like a convict on my driver's license,' I added, but I knew it wasn't the picture to which Laurie was referring when she used the word ‘beautiful'. It was the letter ‘F' for ‘female'.

‘I've got a temporary passport in my name, too, but that's so precious I leave it at home.'

I felt my face grow hot. ‘I'm thoroughly embarrassed.'

‘Don't be! It may be some sort of secret down here in Maryland, but it's just because Tom and I don't talk about it much. Everybody knows back in Chicago!'

Still thinking about the license I asked, ‘Is it hard to get all the paperwork changed?'

‘Honey, it's a freaking nightmare, and Illinois is easier than most. To get the license changed, I had to see a shrink and babble on about how much I hated myself, yada yada yada, until he got totally bored listening to me boo-hoo and he filled out the report I needed. Then my doctor had to do a report. After SRS, it'll take an affidavit from the surgeon saying the operation is complete, but it won't be long before I'll have a brand new birth certificate, social security card . . . you name it.'

Laurie picked up her Diet Coke, leaned back in her chair, inserted the straw between her glossy, cherry-red lips and sipped thirstily. She smiled around the straw, as if something amusing had just occurred to her. ‘And if the Social Security Administration thinks I'm a girl, who's going to argue with them?'

‘Will you be able to dance professionally?'

There. I'd asked the million-dollar question.

Laurie didn't skip a beat. ‘You bet'cha. The organizers have the right to demand verification of anything I write on my application, but if I put down an ‘F', and I've got the documentation to back it up . . . no problem.'

‘I'm really glad about that.'

‘One thing I can't do, though, is run in the Olympics.' She threw her head back and laughed out loud. ‘Not until they figure out a way to get rid of my Y-chromosome, anyway.'

We sat quietly for a moment. Laurie was first to break the silence. ‘You know what your friend Melanie said when I told her I used to be a guy?'

I shook my head.

‘Deuteronomy 23:1.'

I rolled my eyes. Deuteronomy again. ‘Since Pastor Eva's not here, you'll have to help me out a bit, Laurie.'

She stared up, as if reading the words off the ceiling. ‘“He that is wounded in the stones, or hath his privy member cut off, shall not enter into the congregation of the Lord.”'

‘Oh, for heaven's sake.' Frankly, I was getting sick and tired of Deuteronomy. Surely there was some book in the Apocrypha we could replace it with. The Book of Judith, for example. I made a note to ask Eva about it.

Laurie placed her empty cup on her tray. ‘That Melanie was one crazy, mixed-up little bitch, but she sure as hell could dance.'

I grinned. ‘My husband says the same thing about you, Laurie, but not the crazy, mixed-up part.'

‘He does? Sweet boy. I probably should thank him.'

To my amazement, Laurie raised an arm and began jangling her bracelets. I twisted my head to see Paul ambling in our direction, carrying a tray of half-eaten barbeque. ‘I didn't want to interrupt the gab fest,' he said, pulling out a chair and sitting down to join us. ‘But, have you picked out a fresh, spring color for your hair yet, Hannah?'

I popped him one on the side of his head with the flat of my hand. ‘You were spying on me. Admit it.'

‘Never.'

I gave him a peck on the cheek. ‘Thank you.'

‘Well,' Laurie said, rising from her chair. ‘Are we going to go look for shoes or not?'

‘We are.' I stood up, too, and looked at Paul. ‘Will you take care of our trays,
sweetheart
?'

‘Of course,
darling
.'

I waggled my fingers at him. ‘Toodle-loo!'

As Laurie and I strolled up the ramp from the food court in the direction of Nordstrom at the opposite end of the mall, Laurie said, ‘Your Paul's a great guy. You should keep him around.'

‘I intend to,' I said with a grin. We paused for a moment in front of Borders's window to check out a display of cookbooks. ‘Do you mind if I ask you what your name was before?'

‘You'll laugh,' Laurie said as we moved on.

‘No, I won't.'

At Hot Topic Laurie stopped to admire a spaghetti-strapped black dress with white polka dots and red buttons. After a moment she said, ‘Oscar.'

I stared at my friend, sputtered, giggled, and finally laughed until tears ran down my cheeks.

‘I told you so,' Laurie said. ‘Now, stop laughing, girl, and let's go get those shoes.'

I'
d hoped for a quiet day, but it wasn't to be.

I fed Don Fosher breakfast, supplied him with a house key, then waved him off to the police station where he had an appointment to turn over the printouts I'd helped him make of Melanie's email. After he finished at the police station he had an even sadder mission: reporting to Kramer's where he would pick up Melanie's ashes and carry them home with him to Massachusetts on a flight out of BWI later that evening.

With no evidence to the contrary, the county police were treating Melanie's death as accidental. At least that's what was reported on the front page of the
Capital
. I hoped the information Don provided would help the police reconsider.

Ruth called at ten, in tears. Hutch had officially withdrawn from the
Shall We Dance?
competition. A stand-in for Melanie was against the rules. ‘Maybe next year,' the producer growled. Ruth downed two Excedrin and took herself to bed.

Hutch stopped by at eleven on the way to his office. I gave him some coffee and half a pan of home-made cinnamon rolls. He seemed remarkably unruffled about
Shall We Dance?,
perhaps even relieved. ‘Since I've blocked out the time,' he said mysteriously, licking sugar off his fingers, ‘perhaps I should do something constructive with it.'

Ten minutes after Hutch left, Paul popped home for a tuna fish sandwich, then headed back to the Academy to teach a one thirty class.