Dancing with the Dead Read Online Free PDF Page B

to rectify tomorrow. But she wouldn’t think about them until morning.
    The flowers had arrived at work at eight-thirty, and she’d had to shyly acknowledge they were from Jake, all the while avoiding Victor’s knowing gaze. What the hell had he been staring at?—the bruised tissue under her eye was no longer noticeable beneath her makeup. She’d become adroit at applying cosmetics to disguise injury.
    She rummaged in her dance bag and found her wire brush, then began working its stiff bristles across the soles of her shoes, forward toward the toes. Satisfying work.
    “The husband’s name’s Rene,” Helen said, still with her nose in the paper. “It turns out Danielle was seen dancing in a couple of French Quarter hot spots. Doing some fancy jive, was the way one witness put it. Another place she was tangoing with some guy, and that was the last time she was seen alive.”
    Mary suspected that Victor, who was a fifty-year-old widower with male pattern baldness, had a crush on her. Well, the hell with him. He was too old for her, and he wore way too much perfumed deodorant, probably something male models dressed as cowboys splashed on in TV commercials. Why was that sort of man always interested in her? Did she send out some kind of goddamn vibes that attracted them, like smart bombs?
    “The husband wants the police to check out dance studios to find the guys she was dancing with, but they don’t see it as all that significant that she was dancing. Hubby thinks it is significant. The cop in charge disagrees and says she happened to be in places where there was dancing, so she danced. Cops for you.”
    “The cops might be right,” Mary said, standing up and shifting her weight from leg to leg, loosening her hips. She’d recently trimmed her toenails and one of them was digging into the side of the adjacent toe, but it was only a minor discomfort she could ignore. Once she began dancing she wouldn’t feel it.
    “No, no, Mary, she was a dancer. Like us. So I say right on, Rene, don’t listen to the fuzz.”
    “Nobody calls the police fuzz anymore,” Mary said, smiling.
    “They do if you hang around the right places.”
    “Where do you hang around?” Mary asked.
    “Here,” Helen said. A subtle sadness had edged into her voice. “This is what’s left of my social life now that George is gone. And I guess you’re right, nobody here calls the cops fuzz. They’re all too refined. Or they pretend to be.”
    Murder in New Orleans was bad enough. Mary really didn’t want to talk about Helen’s dead husband. Or the one she’d divorced last year after a disastrous two-month marriage.
    “Ladies! We ready to dance and learn?”
    Mel and Nick had come out of the office and were standing side by side behind them. Mel was much the taller of the two, smiling along with Nick, who winked at Helen. Nick looked Greek or Italian and was slightly overweight, but when he moved on the dance floor he seemed to weigh only two or three pounds.
    “ I’m ready to dance, anyway,” Helen said. Her voice suggested she was still thinking about George and the past. The past was sticky. It never really let go of anyone.
    “Don’t be pessimistic, dear,” Nick said, gliding over to her and gently gripping her elbow. “Not here. Here’s where we learn and have fun. ” He steered her out onto the floor, beneath twisted white ribbons of crepe paper and clusters of red and white balloons that had been strung for tomorrow night’s practice party. “Mambo tonight, dear,” Nick was saying. “We’ll practice arm checks, then I’ll show you how to do flicks.”
    “You okay, Mary?” Mel asked quietly, still smiling at her.
    She had to smile back. “Sure. I was just listening to Helen tell me about some woman who got herself killed down in New Orleans.” She nodded toward the folded paper Helen had dropped onto the bench before being escorted out onto the dance floor.
    Mel’s gaze followed the motion of her head, then he did