Dead Dancing Women Read Online Free PDF

how far back in time she’d managed to wade. Unfortunately, most of Eugenia’s ancestors had been either hung or tarred and feathered, or they had died in jail; but that didn’t deter her from tracing them, nor squelch her pride in the whole bunch.
    EATS was where most of the town politicking and character assassination took place; where news was spread: someone in need, someone’s loss, someone’s misfortune. It was the place where money was collected for groceries and clothes after a fire out at the mobile home park on the state road. It was the very place the preachers from the town’s three churches came for breakfast after Sunday morning sermons, still bristling with their topic of the week, trying to outdo each other from the center of their flock, and giving blessings over stacks of blueberry pancakes.
    Then, there was George’s Candy Shoppe (but George’s wasn’t so busy anymore since Lucky Barnard busted him for selling porn out of the back of the store). At least the front of the store wasn’t busy anymore.
    Over on the corner of Griffith and Mitchell, a block off the main highway running straight through the middle of town, stood Murphy’s Funeral Home—a big, white, peeling, house with leaning pillars across the front. The widow Murphy carried on the family business downstairs, while living above the store with her two dim sons, Gilbert and Sullivan.
    Gertie’s Shoppe de Beauté was behind Murphy’s Funeral Home, on Mitchell. I didn’t trust Gertie, that’s why I went into Traverse City to have my hair done. Gertie’s own hair was very red, a kind of mahogany with orange highlights. And it was very thin. Gertie’s scalp shone through all that mahogany hair like a sandy beach with a few patches of sea grass.
    Across from Gertie’s was Bob’s Barber Shop—a decaying storefront so thick with smoke you couldn’t see in the windows and, I heard, the magazine racks were filled with Michigan Militia literature, so the place scared me a little, just looking at the cramped little building with a wooden Indian standing at the door, carved from a single log, announcing how retro and politically incorrect the place was. Personally, with the Native American casinos fast making the tribes some of the wealthiest and most powerful people in the state, I wouldn’t have set that wooden effigy out there to draw attention to my politics—or lack of them. But then, in Leetsville, like out in the woods, people took pride in their independence of thought, right along with the busted couches sitting on their front porches, their pickups with full gun racks, and their groaning deer pole every November.
    And they took pride in their two-minute-long Labor Day Parade for which they elected a Miss Leetsville and invested in a rhinestone crown, which, that past year, was trampled in the beer tent when Miss Leetsville got drunk and lost badly in an arm wrestling contest.
    To round out the shops, there was Bailey’s Feed and Seed, where I could buy bag balm and hog wash—if I should ever need such items. There was Ernie Henry’s small-engine repair, Spinski’s Five and Dime, and a resale shop. There was Pansy’s bakery, the U.S. post office, and Jamison’s Wood Products where most of the town’s people worked. The Skunk Saloon. Tom’s bowling alley. A few other stores and, for the most part, houses. There was a Catholic church and a Baptist church and a Church of the Contented Flock, which didn’t belong to any denomination I’d ever heard of. There were a few municipal offices, and not much else. A bank—but I wasn’t happy with the bank because their ATM ate my card without reason and the bank manager, Willy Jensen, wouldn’t give it back to me because I could be a wanted fugitive, he said—after knowing me for three years. Anyway, that ATM wouldn’t take my deposits either so I figured it