Footprints of a Dancer (Detective Elliot Mystery) (29 page)

“Get it yourself.”

“There’s nothing to get. If you give me some money, I’ll go to the store.”

“Give me this, give me that. Do you know how tired I am of hearing your whining?”

She paused, and when she spoke again her voice had softened. “I don’t have any money, Kenny. I’ve been sick, haven’t been able to work.”

Kenny knew what he was going to say wasn’t what his mom wanted to hear, but something had to be done. “What about Maggie?”

“Oh, that’s the answer, isn’t it? Go get Maggie. Maggie walks on water. Well I don’t see her hanging around, doling out any food, do you?”

“I know where she lives. I could go there. She’d help. I know she would.”

“Oh wise up, Kenny. The old bat’s a nut case. You ought to know that by now.”

“She is not. Besides, what if she is?”

Again her face softened. “Let’s not fight. Listen, if you’ll help me, I’ll get up and find some food somehow.”

Kenny wondered what she meant by that. He had a feeling it wouldn’t be good. “Maybe you should stay in bed. I’ll find something.”

She managed a smile. “My medicine. I don’t know why I left it there. Just bring it to me, okay?”

As quickly as his appetite had erupted, it began to deteriorate. He knew he should have left her alone, let her sleep. “No, Mama, it’s what’s making you sick.”

She squeezed harder on his wrist. “Don’t you dare take that tone with me. I’m still your mother. Now do what I tell you.”

Kenny shook his head, even closed his eyes, hoping that somehow everything might be okay when he opened them again, but that did not happen.

His mother now had a needle in her hand, one she’d pulled from the drawer of the nightstand beside her bed. She pushed the plunger and watched as a small amount of the liquid squirted into the air. “You think I don’t know you look down on me, like I was a piece of garbage you just scraped off your shoe? Well that’s fixing to change, sonny boy. Now give me your arm.”

Kenny pulled back, but his mother’s grip was firm. “No, Mama, don’t make me sick, please don’t.”

“Shut up, you ungrateful brat. It won’t hurt much. This time tomorrow, you’ll be asking me to do it, begging to put the needle in you one more time.”

Her lips curled into a smile as she plunged the needle downward.

Kenny closed his free hand into a fist and brought it down, like a club, against his mother’s arm.

She let out a sound unlike Kenny had heard before, like a scream and yet not like that either. The needle fell to the floor.

“I’m sorry,” he said, “sorry I had to hurt you.”

He tore free from her grip and ran from the room.

As he crossed the hall and entered the living area, he chanced a look back and again he saw his mother. She had gotten out of bed and was coming after him, dragging one leg behind her as if it had become paralyzed. When she spoke, it was not the strained voice she’d used before, but one with power, and the words were not her words, but something foreign.

Kenny reached the front door but it was locked, and there wasn’t enough time to open it. Continuing to spout words he could not understand, his mother kept coming, and as she drew near she held the needle like a weapon, raised high above her head.

Wondering if he would have to fight his own mother, Kenny backed away, his eyes and hands frantically searching for a way out.

His mother’s eyes grew wide and she screamed as she stabbed with the needle.

Kenny ducked, stepped around his mother and ran toward the windows. He picked up as much speed as he could and aimed for the middle window, tucked into a ball as he jumped the couch, smashed through, and ran as fast as he could.

“You better stop while you still can.”

His mother’s voice sounded like she was right behind him. He didn’t know how that was possible. He was pretty fast, and before today it was all she could do to walk to the bathroom. When a familiar car pulled up, he opened the passenger door and jumped in.

“Go,” he said. “Get me out of here.”

Marcia Barnes put both hands on the wheel and floored the Mustang. The tires squealed and the car shot forward, picking up speed quickly as she kept her foot in it.

Kenny checked the side mirror and saw his mother in the middle of the road, walking after them, dragging one foot behind her. “Man, am I glad you showed up.”

Marcia eased up on the gas and turned toward Kenny, her long blonde hair falling across her shoulders. “What was that all about, anyway?”

Kenny took a breath and let it out slowly. He didn’t usually allow thoughts of what happened at home to roll through his head. He’d always thought it best to keep it private. But now, he wanted to tell Marcia about it, wanted to let someone share in his personal grief, though what he wanted to say seemed out of place somehow. “It’s Mom,” he said. “She’s been acting…”

Marcia leaned against the car seat, “Are you sure you’re all right?”

“I don’t know. It’s been a weird night.”

“Seriously, Kenny? Your mom?”

Once again, he checked the side mirror. This time he saw only the open road behind them. “I know I don’t talk about her much, but I need to right now. I thought maybe you’d understand.”

“Your mom’s dead, Kenny. At least that’s what you told me.”

Kenny turned away and stared through the windshield. Marcia was right. How could he have forgotten? His mother had died from a drug overdose. It’d been nine years ago. He’d had a lot on his mind lately. He suspected the stress had finally gotten to him. Out of a desire to change the subject, and a bit of true curiosity, he asked, “Where’s Johnnie?”

With a look somewhat like a parent who’d given up on an unruly child, Marcia shook her head. “You’re kidding, right?”

He shrugged.

“You’re something else, Kenny. When a guy asks a girl out, he doesn’t usually want the boyfriend to come along, too.”

“I didn’t mean it like that. Johnnie loves his car, and I’ve never known him to let anyone else drive it.”

“You’re not making this any easier. Don’t you think I have any feelings at all?”

She smiled and wiped her eyes. “I like you, Kenny. A lot. I always have, else I wouldn’t be here, wouldn’t be doing this.”

Even as he leaned across the car seat and kissed Marcia’s cheek, glimpses of events of which he understood neither their significance nor their sequence in time ran through his head. Had he just dreamed he was nine years old again? It certainly hadn’t felt like a dream, but it must have been. He was a senior in high school. “I’m sorry. I’m definitely not myself today.”

Marcia slowed the car and pulled onto a dirt road that meandered through a wooded area at Murphy’s Point. Near a clump of oaks, she brought the car to a stop and shut off the engine. In the patches of moonlight filtering through the foliage, her complexion looked almost ethereal. She leaned across the seat and pressed her lips against Kenny’s.

Kenny pulled back and gazed into her eyes. “I don’t know if we should be here, Marcia.”

She turned away and flopped against the car seat. “Okay, Kenny, last chance. What’s going on, what are you up to?”

He tried to sort through his thoughts, but nothing seemed to make sense. “I don’t know how to explain it, but something bad is about to happen.”

“You’re not the same boy I talked with at school today. I wish I could understand, but I don’t.”

Kenny noticed his class ring suspended from a gold chain and hanging from the car’s rearview mirror, and as it twisted in the semidarkness, catching the light of the moon and sparking like some distant star, he knew that he had lived this moment before. He glanced in the mirror and saw the blood smeared words written across the back window:
Johnnie Boy was here.

“We have to get out of here,” he said. But his words would have done just as well to have remained unspoken, for they were eclipsed by a scream from Marcia.

Kenny followed her line of sight and saw the source of her terror, something grotesque, not an animal but not quite human either, standing outside the car.

The door flew open and the thing leaned into the car, grabbed a handful of Kenny’s shirt and jerked him from the vehicle.

“My Dear God. What have you done, Kenny? My God, what have you done?”

Kenny glanced into the car.

Marcia Barnes stared back at him, her eyes, though lifeless and unmoving, asking the same question, her body sprawled across the driver’s seat, a steady flow of blood seeping from her throat and staining the front of her dress.

Kenny shook his head. “It wasn’t me. I didn’t do anything.”

It was Chief Johnson. It had been he who had pulled Elliot from the car. “How do you explain that, son?”

Marcia’s blood covered Kenny’s hands and the knife he held, a knife with a shiny blade of obsidian.

Kenny shoved Chief Johnson aside and ran, bolted into the darkness and the covering of trees. For a while, he could hear Johnson’s voice, calling for him to come back, but eventually it faded and Elliot continued tearing through the trees and the brush until he was completely alone and hidden in the thickness of the woods.

Later his lungs began to burn so he slowed his pace, and when he came upon a large rock, he sat down to rest.

At the sound of someone calling his name, Elliot opened his eyes into the light of a cold but sunny day. He had fallen asleep, he suspected, and lost track of time. Again, he heard the voice.

“Kenny, are you all right?”

Elliot turned toward the sound of his name and looked into the cold-reddened but lovely face of Cyndi Bannister. His first inclination was to hold her, to know that she was real and not some false memory or an illusion brought on by the stress, the source of which was also just out of grasp. He seemed to be caught up in a place where time had no meaning. He attempted to stand but an onset of dizziness changed his mind. “Thank God you’re safe and unharmed,” he said.

The words had formed in his head though it seemed as if someone else had spoken them.

Cyndi’s eyes glistened. “I thought I was going to have to call an ambulance or something. I shook you but you wouldn’t come out of it, like you were dazed or in a trance.”

A walking trail, lined with dormant azalea bushes, meandered in front of Elliot. As if trying to apply logic to the fading remnants of a dream, he struggled to recall how and why he’d come to be in Tulsa, at Woodward Park. “How long have I been here?”

“I’m not sure,” Cyndi said. “I saw you sitting on the rock, so I came over.”

Cyndi took Elliot’s hands and gently coaxed him to his feet then put her arms around him and rested her head against his chest. She wore a gray, wool coat with a red scarf thrown around her neck that not only complemented her complexion but tugged at Elliot’s memory as well. The smell of her perfume filled his senses and he began to remember.

Cyndi had been missing and Elliot understood nothing more, only that her absence had caused him pain. Had he reached a point of not knowing what was real and what was not? He drew her close and kissed the top of her head.

“I’m so sorry,” she said.

A few more memories fell into place. Elliot had purchased a ring and arranged for them to meet. He would have asked her to marry him, but she never showed. Even more, he had not been able to get in touch with her, had not seen her in several days.

“At first I thought you’d changed your mind,” he said, “But when I couldn’t find you, hadn’t heard from you, I thought something terrible had happened. Being a cop will do that to you. It’s hard to get close to people.”

“Oh, Kenny, I got scared that’s all, and I didn’t trust my feelings. I left town for a few days to think things over. It was wrong of me. I shouldn’t have put you through that.”

Elliot studied the walking trail and the barren azalea bushes that would bloom lush in the spring. “Do you trust your feelings now?”

Cyndi wiped a tear from her eye. “I’m happy when I’m with you. I want that to continue.”

Elliot pulled her close. Her answer had been evasive and yet it filled him with… He wanted to say hope but desire was closer to the truth. He’d never really understood the nature of their relationship, and yet there was no denying the attraction, a feeling so powerful it left not a trace of doubt in it being mutual. And how rare was that, when you thought about it?

Elliot tried to understand what was happening, and why he was confused, and it occurred to him it must be his feelings for Carmen. He still felt like he belonged to her, and yet he’d neither seen Carmen Garcia nor heard from her since high school. It was time he let go of her memory. “I’m willing to take it one step at a time,” he said, “if you are?”

Cyndi grabbed the lapels of Elliot’s jacket and smiled. “I’ve talked to my parents about it. They want to meet you.”

Elliot brushed a loose strand of hair from Cyndi’s face. In a few seconds they’d gone from one-step-at-a-time to meeting-the-parents. But he’d spent a lifetime blowing chances. “All right,” he said, “I’d like that.”

Cyndi pulled away and straightened her coat. “I was hoping you’d want to. Let’s go.”

Elliot didn’t see his car, and he still wasn’t sure how he’d gotten there, and now they were preparing to leave. “Where are we going?”

A curious look crossed Cyndi’s face. “To meet my parents.”

“Right now?”

“Is that a problem?”

“I guess not. Do they know we’re coming?”

Cyndi shrugged. As her breath condensed in the cold air, Elliot noticed, and not for the first time, just how beautiful and sensuous her mouth was.

He pulled his sport jacket together and buttoned it, wondering why he had not dressed more warmly. “All right,” he said, “let’s meet the parents.”

Cyndi slid her arm around his waist and they walked in silence to the parking lot. Once there, she dug her keys from her coat pocket and unlocked her car.

Elliot put his hands in his pockets. They were empty, no keys, no change, nothing. Again he checked the parking lot. He would have to ride with Cyndi, and though the question was on his mind, the words he spoke were different. “I’ve been thinking,” he said, “about my occupation, whether or not I should give it up, try something else.”