Dead Man Dancing

Twenty-Eight

I tried to reach Melanie for two days, texting repeatedly to her cell, but my messages were never returned. No one answered her land line either.

I drove to the Fosher apartment in Laurel, near Fort Meade, but no one was home. Melanie’s silver KIA Rio wasn’t parked in its assigned spot in front of the complex either.

I sat in my car and stewed, listening to Mozart on the radio and staring up at the drapes pulled across Melanie’s living-room window until it occurred to me – at long last – that something might have happened to Don. That he’d been wounded or killed, and that the army had called Melanie away. There had to be some good reason why she wasn’t picking up messages.

If she had to leave so suddenly, though, it was odd that she hadn’t told me. On the other hand, if somebody called me with the terrible news that something had happened to Paul, I might rush out without notifying anyone, too.

Three days later, the Capital reported the body of a woman between the ages of twenty-five and thirty had been found floating in the South River near Church Creek. The identity of the victim was being withheld pending notification of next of kin, but with a cry of anguish, I told Paul I knew it had to be Melanie.

I had to find out for sure.

Plan A was to call Dennis, my long-suffering brother-in-law slash policeman. But talk about not sharing information with anybody, when I called the station, I learned from an associate that he and Connie had taken advantage of an unexpected break in Dennis’s caseload by shouldering their skis and hightailing it off to Vail.

I was on my own.

So I waited.

I texted Melanie every day.

Five days later, I was still waiting and worrying when my cell phone rang with a caller ID I didn’t recognize.

‘Hello?’

‘Mrs Ives?’ His voice was deeply masculine, but tentative. ‘This is Don Fosher.’

‘Thank God! I’ve been so worried. Is Melanie OK?’

There was a pause. I waited, but heard only breathing, followed by a long sigh. The moment I heard it, I knew what had happened. Don only confirmed my worst suspicions when he said, ‘Melanie’s dead, ma’am. That’s why I’m calling.’

I felt like I’d been punched in the solar plexus. I couldn’t say anything; I couldn’t even breathe.

‘Ma’am?’

‘I’m here,’ I gasped. ‘What on earth happened?’

In halting voice, Don Fosher confirmed what I had suspected all along. It was Melanie’s body the crabber had found while checking his pots in the South River the previous week. ‘Melanie gave me your email address and telephone number,’ Don continued. ‘She told me that you could be trusted.’

Trusted? My thoughts were in a jumble, and I tried to sort them out.

When I didn’t say anything, Don said, ‘There’s something funny going on, Mrs Ives. The county police think she fell from the South River Bridge, hitting her head on a piling as she fell. But I don’t believe that, do you? What would Melanie be doing on the South River Bridge? Driving over it, maybe, but not jumping off.

‘Melanie texted me every night,’ Don continued in a lifeless monotone, ‘even when I was out on operations. But when I got back from the field this time, the last message I had from her was dated two Sundays ago.’

I took that in. The day before Jay’s funeral.

‘She didn’t drown, Mrs Ives. Melanie died of head injuries. I think somebody hit her over the head and pushed her in.’

Frankly, I was beginning to think so, too. Had Melanie shared something she’d overheard with Kay, or with somebody else, unwittingly putting her life in danger?

First Ruth, then Jay, and now Melanie. Taking lessons at J & K was turning out to be dangerous.

I needed more information. ‘I went looking for her car,’ I told the grieving husband. ‘Did the police find it?’

‘Someplace called Yellow Fin,’ Don told me, his voice breaking. ‘I’ve never heard of it.’

I had. Yellow Fin was a waterfront restaurant at the north-west end of the South River bridge, within walking distance of Gingerville. A little too close to Kay Giannotti for comfort.

‘Where are you now, Don?’

‘BWI.’

‘Do you need someone to pick you up?’

‘No, ma’am, but thanks. I’m just getting into a cab. I should hit town in about thirty minutes.’ His voice wooed and wowed and I thought I’d lost him until he said, ‘I have to go to the funeral home. Kramer’s. Do you know it?’

Unfortunately, I knew it all too well.

‘I do. I’ll meet you at Kramer’s, then. Will an hour and a half give you enough time?’

‘Without my Melanie, ma’am, I’ve got all the time in the world.’

Like the well-trained mother I was, I added, ‘And you’re coming home with me for dinner.’

Like the well-bred boy he was, he couldn’t refuse. ‘Yes, ma’am.’

When I got to the funeral home at three, Don was waiting for me on the steps. I recognized him at once. It wasn’t hard. Like most returning soldiers, Don was dressed in desert fatigues. A duffle bag leaned against the steps at his feet.

‘Don?’

‘Ma’am?’ He removed his cap with one sweep of his hand, crushed it in his huge fist, and extended the other ham-sized hand to me.

Even though we had just met, I gave him a hug, rubbing my palms comfortingly across the massive expanse of his back. ‘I’m so sorry about Melanie. She was a lovely girl, and we were just getting to be good friends.’

‘Melanie liked you, too,’ he said sadly. ‘She’d been emailing me about you. Taking her to lunch and like that. That was nice of you.’

Wandering tourists and pedestrians passing on urgent business had to swerve off the narrow brick sidewalk and on to the street in order to get by us so I suggested we move inside Kramer’s. ‘Let’s find a place where we can chat more comfortably.’

Back again, way too soon, in the funeral home’s House Beautiful lobby, I looked around for Kramer, Jr. and his impeccable three-piece suit, but didn’t see him. ‘Have you talked to the funeral home people yet, Don?’

Looking miserable, he nodded.

‘Then they shouldn’t have a problem about our sitting in here.’ I turned to my right and opened the door of a miniature meeting room (the brochure would describe it as ‘intimate’) containing a small desk, three upholstered chairs, a backlit stained glass window, soundproof walls to mask the wails, and uplifting music like ‘You Light Up My Life’ and ‘Wind Beneath My Wings’ drifting in at low volume over the intercom.

After I sat down, Don closed the door, dumped his duffel, and slumped in the chair opposite, sending it jittering back a few inches on the carpet. ‘This has been the worst week of my life!’

I smiled sympathetically, feeling like a shrink. ‘Do you want to tell me about it?’

Don looked relieved, and it all came tumbling out. ‘I’m out on a five-day operation, see. I come back to base, I’m fresh off the truck and all I want is a cheeseburger and a hot shower. On my way to the shower, I’m stopped by my first lieutenant and this other officer I don’t recognize, but he identifies himself as a chaplain, and asks if we couldn’t go someplace quiet. So he takes me to the canteen, buys me a cup of coffee and sets me down. “Sorry, son,” he says. “I have some bad news for you.”

‘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.’