The Wrong Quarry Read Online Free PDF Page A

to the short flight of cement steps up to the rear doors of the dance studio.
    I hopped out of the Pinto and caught up with her, where at the bottom of the stairs she had paused to take one last drag of her latest smoke before sending it spark-spitting into the night. A few other parents were heading up there, as well.
    “Well, hello,” I said, falling in next to her. The cement steps were wide enough for that.
    “We meet again,” she said pleasantly, just a little promise or maybe tease in her tobacco-husky voice. “What brings you back? You’re not lost again, are you?”
    She’d gathered from my questions last time that I wasn’t another parent, though I was hoping anybody who noticed me—though Mateski was no risk at the moment—might make that assumption.
    “I’m a writing a story about the arts in small Missouri towns. For the St. Louis Sun.”
    “Reporter, huh?”
    “Not exactly Woodward or Bernstein. I do puff pieces.”
    We were at the top of the stairs now. Several other parents moved around us as we stopped and chatted, though nobody went in yet. Just milled, half a dozen of them—four mothers, two dads, expensive coats. Music inside—“One Singular Sensation,” a recording with no vocals—meant practice was still on. Even though her breath was already smoking in the cold, my mink mom was getting a pack of cigarettes out of her purse for a fresh one.
    Yes, Virginia Slims. You’ve come a long way, baby. I bet that’s what they said at the door to the cancer clinic. “You know, I could help you out on that,” she said, meaning the non-existent article. “I’m very active in the local arts scene.”
    “That’d be great.”
    As she extended her leather-gloved right hand, she left the cigarette in her mouth, where it bobbed like she was a blackjack dealer in an illegal game. “Betty Stone. My husband travels. You’re at the Holiday Inn, right?”
    That was pretty direct.
    “Right. John Quarry. Nice to meet you, Mrs. Stone.”
    “Betty Ah, there’s Mr. Roger.”
    She had turned her head toward the door, where finally the turtle was sticking its head out of its shell.
    “Hel-lo, everybody,” he said, leaning out with one hand on the door, flashing a wide white dazzling smile in a narrow tan face. Handsome in a hooded-eye fashion, with short black hair, heavy black eyebrows and a well-trimmed Tom Selleck mustache. About my height, trimly muscular in black t-shirt, tights and Capezios.
    “Come on in, come in,” he said, almost blatantly swishy, I thought. He held the door open for the waiting parents. “It is still frigid out there, isn’t it? Brrrrrr.”
    Everybody piled in, including me. We were backstage, but the rear curtains were open, so the stage itself spread out before us, beyond which theater seats extended into darkness made more pronounced by bright footlights. Girls ranging in age from thirteen to eighteen were twirling around doing ballet poses and jazz dance stances, all in tights and ballet slippers. The tights were red or blue, with only one girl in white—the petite pretty Mustang Sally herself, who had a whistle around her neck like a football coach, her tawny blonde tresses a frizzy mane.
    So was she his assistant? On closer look, she was closer to eighteen than thirteen—a favorite, a star performer, who had been elevated to first mate on this ship? Although looking at Roger Vale, I didn’t think he was mating with anybody, at least not of Sally’s sex. That Sunday afternoon must have been strictly Colonel Sanders and VHS. A waste of a Sunday afternoon, if you asked me.
    “Ladies!” Vale said, moving among them with an athletic grace, despite making a shooing motion as if he were guiding chickens to their coop. “Ladies! Dressing rooms, please. I have a parents’ meeting to attend to.”
    Though she didn’t blow the whistle, Sally helped herd the girls to either side of the stage, the younger girls (in blue) going left, the older ones (in red) heading right,