Slow Dancing (12 page)

“What happened to his wife?” Alan tried not to seem too interested, or too eager, but it made no difference to Miss Logan because she launched right in.

“Oh, that’s such a sad story. I remember the day Margaret came to Seymour. She had the kind of looks that make everyone; man, woman and dog stop and take notice. The car she was drivin, an old beat up thing, died right in front of Frank’s garage.”

“Why’d she come to Seymour?” Alan interrupted.

“Evidently, she was on her way to some place in Texas and got lost. Travelers make a wrong turn back in Mobile and end up in Seymour, but Margaret was the first I knew of that stayed. Anyway, she had a little one with her, so Frank had her to wait over in the café across the street from his garage. If you ever visit the town, you best try the pie at the café. Any kind is delicious. My favorite is the cherry.” She sipped her coffee and Alan waited.

“I will definitely try the pie,” Alan replied patiently. “What happened next?”

“Frank needed a part for her car so he couldn’t get it fixed for a few days. Mary, the waitress I told you about at the café, also rents rooms in her house and arranged for Margaret and the little girl to stay there. Over that weekend she and Frank fell in love and she never left Seymour.”

Hearing this, Alan became livid.
It took one weekend for that whore of a woman to hook the only single guy in town.
He struggled to slow his breathing down so Miss Logan would keep talking; he wanted to yell at her but knew he wouldn’t get much more out of her if he did.

“When did they get married?” Alan asked softly, his pulse pounding in his throat.

“They waited a month. The town talked regardless. Frank was a bachelor and didn’t date much at all that we could see after high school.” She leaned closer and whispered. “There was even talk that he might be, you know,
sweet
.” Disgusted Alan ignored her. Getting her to talk about what was happening in Frank and Margaret’s lives now might anger Miss Logan once the truth about him came out, but it was a risk he was willing to take.

“Their marriage has lasted all these years, so that mustn’t be an issue,” he stated, trying to get down to business.

“Oh yes, that’s true. They were happily married until she took sick. Spent the last ten years of her life in the mental hospital, right up until she died last March.” The wind sucked out of Alan’s lungs when he gasped, Miss Logan didn’t notice and continued talking. “They were only together those few years and then the judge committed her to Hallowsbrook. Me and the rest of the people thought it was premature; it didn’t seem like they’d given her much time to clean up her act. But the judge threatened Frank, or so the story goes. Either allow the commitment to stay in place or lose the girl.” Alan thought of what it would mean for a man to have to care for a small child all those years. He remembered Ellen’s scream for Frank in the dark. He was her source of protection when Alan didn’t even know she existed. Strange feelings of jealousy were trying to work to the surface, but he wasn’t going to pretend he was something he wasn’t. He might not have been involved in the kid’s life even if he’d known about her when she was an infant, thinking back to a time when it was so easy to take the woman’s money and skip out on her. She’d pleaded with him and he wondered now if it was because she knew she was pregnant. The janitor back in Saint Augustine said she’d lost her job; she must have felt desperate. At the time, if he was honest with himself it wouldn’t have mattered.

He felt differently now.
Margaret was dead and the kid was his flesh and blood, maybe. He had to know. If she wasn’t his, he’d be fine with it. But she might be.
There were new tests, blood tests that could determine almost one hundred percent if a child was a man’s own. He read the paper, he knew about such things. Getting to the point of demanding such a test had to be navigated with finesse. It would mean approaching Frank McPherson. Miss Logan could fill in the blanks and make it possible for him to sound like he knew what he was looking for when the time came.

“How’d Margaret act that got her into trouble? Was it something Frank knew from the get-go? Or did it take him by surprise?”

“Oh no, no one knew about it. She was insane. Mary said she saw right away, but it wasn’t her business. Now Mary is a busy body, so you can’t be sure to trust what she says. I myself didn’t see anything untoward. Right after the wedding, they stayed isolated out at Frank’s place. He did all the shopping and what have you, Margaret stayed home with the child and did the garden. The garden is fabulous, by the way; you need a treat for the eye, go out to Frank and Ellen’s and see it for yerself.” Alan stifled a yawn; he’d have to keep steering Miss Logan back to the story.

“So when
could
Frank tell she was sick?” Miss Logan looked at him strangely.

“She was mental, not sick. If I remember correctly, she kept takin’ off. He’d have to enlist the aid of the sheriff’s office from time to time and they usually found her within an hour. But the last time she was gone over a period of days and the judge thought that was enough reason to lock her away for good. She’d already had thirty day stints and they’d give her drugs and electric shock.” Alan reeled and this time she noticed. “Yep, you heard me. Even that wasn’t enough.” As much as his curiosity was peeked, he’d heard all he could bear. He was a man, not a monster. He did have feelings of a sort for the woman at one time. Imagining her being kooky enough to have to be electrocuted made him feel awful. But he had one more question.

“How’d she die?” He was almost afraid to ask, but his curiosity got the best of him.

“No one knows,” Miss Logan said. But then she leaned in and whispered. “Mary, Miss Busy Body, visited Margaret every week. She was the only one allowed to go in. She said she took her own life.”

“She
killed
herself?” Alan asked, horrified.

“That’s what it means,” Miss Logan replied. “She was perfectly fine one day and dead the next.”

“How? How’d she do it?”

She shook her head. “No idea. Don’t even know if it’s true. There was something not right between Mary and Margaret, you ask me.” Once again, she’d managed to shock him. Appalled Alan stood up. He’d heard enough out of her. He wanted to run away, to tell her she was disgusting, but the thought came to him that he better keep Miss Logan on his side in case of more pressing matters, like paternity questions. The Margaret Fisher he knew wouldn’t answer the door without full makeup on; he didn’t see her committing suicide.

She was looking at him from the corner of her eye. “You seem pretty upset for not knowin’ the family.” He decided to keep his ruse under cover for now.

“Well it was an awful story, Miss Logan. I beg your pardon if I’m upset by it. I cannot imagine what the poor husband must have felt, getting that news.”

“Tell you the truth; they didn’t make much of it. The funeral was simple; no one spoke on her behalf except Frank. Mary was the only other person who knew her well enough to say anything, and they didn’t invite her to speak.” Miss Logan leaned in again. “I thought it very strange that they put her in her wedding dress, too. You could see the side seams running along the front of her bodice; the dress was so small. It was a crime Frank didn’t get her something more appropriate to lay in. Being a hairdresser and all, I looked for evidence of the, um, suicide, but couldn’t see anything. Crazy people go to such lurid lengths to end their lives, I thought for sure her wrists would be cut or her neck; something dramatic. But there wasn’t nothin’ to see.” Alan moved away from the table and nodded his head in her direction, but was afraid to open his mouth. She was awful; the little respect he had for Miss Logan vanished for the time being.

Quickly going up to his room, he wanted to think about Margaret for a bit before he drove into Seymour. After he called Noelle, he was going to go to the café for lunch and hopefully hook up with Mary, surely a better source of information about Margaret since she and Ellen had lived with her for a brief time and according to Miss Logan, knew Margaret. He couldn’t associate the Margaret who would kill herself with the one who was so generous and happy back in Saint Augustine. It didn’t meld. Was she that good an actress? Or did his poor treatment of her, the taking of her money and abandoning her push her over the brink? Alan Johnson had just the kind of deluded ego that would make him think he was worthy of driving a woman insane.

“Poor Margaret,” he said out loud. “I’m sorry.” He sat on the edge of the bed and thought about what he’d done with his life, the people he’d used, the lies he’d told. It didn’t feel like he had much choice to do otherwise, always with an excuse. There was still part of him disappointed because he couldn’t get anything more from her, now that she was dead.

He got up and ran a comb through his hair. He could make a collect call from the phone in the hallway downstairs, but he wanted privacy when he talked to Noelle, so he decided to go back to the drug store. Thankfully, the dining room was empty when he walked past, Miss Logan on her way to Seymour. The sulfuric smell of breakfast egg casserole lingered.

“Have a nice day,” Cate said, sitting at her desk, startling him. Annoyed, he forced a smile and said goodbye. He needed to keep it pleasant in case he ran into money problems. It looked like Cate’s rooming house might have to be his address for a while.

Chapter 12

Three cars were waiting for service when Ellen and Frank arrived at the garage the next morning. “Oh boy,” he said. “Busy day ahead.”

“I’ll get the mail,” Ellen said.

“Careful crossing,” Frank said, distracted, nodding his head at the street.

Ellen looked both ways before stepping off the curb. Going into the post office was one of the things she liked least about coming into town with Frank, but never complained for it was such a simple thing to do. Jessie was annoying in that she was always looking for a story. When she handed the mail over to Ellen this time, Ellen didn’t even look at it.

Jessie couldn’t help herself. “You got somethin’ else from that dance academy,” she said nodding her head toward the pile. “I bet they want you two to dance in Beauregard.” Ellen paused, trying to decide if she should laugh it off or give in to Jessie’s curiosity and open the letter.

“You’ll be the first to hear if that’s what it is,” Ellen said respectfully, hurrying out the door. She waved and gave Jessie a little smile so the woman couldn’t complain to the rest of the village that Ellen had been rude.

As soon as she opened the door to the garage office, Frank called to her. “Now I need you to run over to the auto parts store. Are you okay with going?”

“Of course,” she answered, forgetting the letter from Phillip Anderson Dance Academy. The garage was busy all day, and it wasn’t until they were getting ready to leave and Frank scooped up the pile of mail that Ellen remembered the letter.

“Oh! Frank I forgot. We heard from that dance place again,” she said as they walked to the truck.

“The academy?” he replied, snickering. “Such a grand name for a ballroom next to a pool hall. Read it to me if you want.”

She carefully tore the envelope open. “Dear Mr. McPherson. You and Miss Ellen are cordially invited to attend our June Extravaganza. Prizes will be awarded for the following categories…” The invitation listed the possible entries. Ellen looked over at Frank as he drove. There was a slight grin on his lips.

“What’d you think?” she asked. “It might be fun. Something different.” She imagined getting dressed up again and twirling around the dance floor, how good it made her feel to know they danced well together and that people admired them. In Beauregard, onlookers would be strangers, not the gossipers of Seymour. Picking up the letter, she started to read again. “Prize for the couple who wins First Place will receive Five Thousand Dollars Fireworks will follow the dance.”

“If we won First Place, I’d make my own fireworks! Do you want to go, sister?” He was smiling now, pleased that she was asking something for herself, a rarity.

“I think I might,” she answered hesitatingly. “I can wear my dress from graduation.”

“Oh, I think a new dress is in order. This will be our first real dance in the city.” Not that Beauregard was a city. “It won’t make you sad now, will it?”

“You mean Hallowsbrook and all?” Ellen asked and Frank nodded. “Nope, I don’t even think of it, tell you the truth. When I do every so often, I just get mad at her. But that’s all. Not sad, not even sorry. Just mad.” Frank reached out for Ellen’s hand. They weren’t used to touching or gestures of love unless they were dancing. The squeeze of his hand had the immediate affect of comforting her.

“Okay then, it’s a done deal. We go to Beauregard for the June Extravaganza. I might wear my hula girl tie, if you talk me into it.”

Ellen began to giggle, covering her face with her hands. “Oh no, please Frank, not that tie!”

“You talked me into it!” Frank laughed. Reaching the house, they got out of the truck, happy to be home.

Once inside, Frank asked her to start dinner for him tonight. “I’ve got a call to make. I’ll just take a minute.” He’d removed a package of chicken from the freezer before they left for the garage that morning. Measuring flour into a bowl, she added salt and pepper and mixed it with a spoon, straining to hear what he was saying, but his voice was so low and he was speaking so softly, there was no point. She’d make fried chicken. The chicken preparation occupied her so that when he came to her, she jumped.

“Sorry for scarin’ you,” he said. He picked up a fork and pierced the chicken with it but it was too tough. Trying not to laugh, she’d fried a stewing chicken. “Sister, I think we might have a time eatin’ this, no offense.” She paused and looked at the pan with the pieces bubbling in the hot oil.

“What’d I do, Frank?” Ellen’s hands dropped to her side, and the look of defeat was too much for Frank, so he hugged her to his chest, stroking her hair.

“That’s a stewer’ you got there, that’s all. Cook it up good and crisp and we might be able to get our teeth in into it.” He couldn’t help himself; he started to laugh as he released her, putting his arm around her shoulder. They looked at the pan of chicken and laughed out loud.