SHADOW DANCING

by Julie Mulhern

  “Let go, lady.” The man struggled against my hold.

  I threw my calf over the bend in his knee. “Anarchy!”

  The man raised up, his hand closed into a fist—a fist the size of Rhode Island—and he drew his arm back.

  I winced in anticipation of the coming pain. No matter what, I couldn’t let go. My grasp on his sweater tightened. I closed my eyes.

  His weight disappeared and I was half-dragged off the pavement by my hold on his clothing.

  “Let go, Ellison.” I opened my eyes and saw Anarchy.

  Per his instructions, I released the man’s sweater and thudded against the concrete.

  An enormous, craggy man scowled down on me.

  Anarchy had twisted the man’s arm. The hold looked painful.

  “Can you get up?” Anarchy asked.

  I nodded and rose slowly to my feet.

  “There are cuffs in the car. Go get them.”

  I nodded and hurried toward the car parked on the street.

  “They’re in the glove box,” Anarchy called after me.

  I yanked open the glove box, grabbed the cold metal, and raced back up the walk.

  Anarchy closed the handcuffs around the man’s wrists. “Let’s get out of the rain.”

  With Anarchy propelling him, the man stepped back inside. I followed.

  Anarchy pushed the man into the kitchen.

  Someone had destroyed Madame Reyna’s home. And not just the living room. The kitchen drawers had been emptied onto the rust-colored linoleum floors, plates and glasses had been pulled from the cupboards, and the avocado-green oven door hung at a drunken angle. Miraculously, Madame Reyna’s Mr. Coffee had survived.

  Anarchy caught me looking. “Crime scene. You can’t make coffee.”

  I sighed.

  He forced the man into a kitchen chair. “Meet Rocky O’Hearne.”

  I’d heard that name before.

  Anarchy, who stood behind O’Hearne, mouthed, “Bookie.”

  A bookie? Now I remembered, Anarchy had told me about him. Rocky O’Hearne wasn’t just a bookie. He had his finger in every illicit pot in the city. I shifted my gaze to the man in the chair. My first impression had been spot on. He was craggy. His face was deeply lined and his faded red hair looked wind-swept as if he’d just returned from a walk on the moors. He wore a shapeless, moss-colored sweater (the sweater probably had more shape before I grabbed hold of it), a leather jacket spotted with damp, and corduroy pants. He also wore a bored expression—as if getting cuffed by a homicide detective was nothing more than a tedious inconvenience.

  Did Rocky O’Hearne know where Grace was?

  Flying across the table and choking Grace’s whereabouts out of him probably wouldn’t work. Mother, who seldom followed her own advice, often told me that I’d catch more flies with honey than vinegar. Honey was worth a try. “Pleased to meet you, Mr. O’Hearne.”

  Both Anarchy and Mr. O’Hearne blinked.

  “I’m sorry I ruined your sweater.”

  They blinked again.

  The panic that had subsided on the drive over, when I’d been sure we’d find Grace at Madame Reyna’s, was building again. Deep breath. “We’re looking for my daughter.”

  Rocky did not reply.

  “She’s sixteen.”

  Rocky did not look interested.

  “She disappeared this morning.”

  Rocky looked terminally bored. His gaze traveled the kitchen, catching on Mr. Coffee as if he too wanted a cup of liquid heaven.

  “She’s with a girl named Jane—Starry.”

  I had his attention now. His gaze—the cold, pale blue of a January sky—locked onto me. “You know Starry?”

  “I do.”

  “Smart kid.”

  “She worked for you?” I asked.

  Rocky O’Hearne glanced over his shoulder at Anarchy then settled back into silence.

  Now it was my turn to look at Anarchy. I pleaded with my eyes. Was there nothing he could do to make this Rocky person tell us where the girls were?

  Anarchy righted two additional chairs. “Sit.”

  I sat.

  He took the other chair. “This lady is worried about her daughter.”

  Rocky swung his bored gaze my way. “The kid ran away?”

  “No!” My voice was too loud in Madame Reyna’s small kitchen. I adjusted the volume. “She didn’t run away.” Tears filled my eyes, blurred my vision. “Grace went with Jane—probably because she thought she could help her.”

  “With what?”

  “I don’t know. I just know she’s in trouble. Ray’s dead—”

  Rocky’s eyes widened and he rose from his chair. “Ray’s dead?”

  “Sit down,” instructed Anarchy.

  Rocky sat and lowered his head so the fall of his hair and his wild brows hid his eyes.

  “Ray was murdered,” I said quietly. “Last night. At my house.”

  Rocky’s head didn’t move.

  “Someone threatened my daughter.” If I fell to my knees on Madame Reyna’s linoleum, would Rocky listen to me? Would he tell me what I needed to know? Did he even have the answers?

  Like Rocky, I lowered my head. Unlike Rocky, I was not silent. A sob ripped from my chest. The first sob was followed by a second and a third.

  “Shut up.”

  No one had told me to shut up since I was five. My sister, Marjorie, yelled at me when I sang “Marjorie and Chet sitting in a tree” one too many times. Marjorie didn’t count. Rocky’s rudeness surprised me enough to quiet my crying.

  “I can’t stand it when women cry.”

  Then he was in the wrong business. There couldn’t be too many happy women at strip clubs.

  “She’s sixteen.” My voice was still choked with emotion.

  “She made a choice.”

  “Were all the decisions you made at sixteen wise ones?”

  “When I was sixteen, I was in juvie.”

  “There you go. You’d made a bad decision.”

  “I turned out fine.”

  He’d turned into a monster. “No one was feeding you drugs. No one accepted money to let men rape you. No one made you dance around a pole. No one—”

  “Shut up!” He lifted his head and we stared at each other.

  “Why are you here, Mr. O’Hearne?” I asked. “At this house?”

  He couldn’t cross his arms—not with his wrists cuffed—but he extended his legs and slouched in his chair.

  “You have the right to remain silent,” said Anarchy. “Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot—”

  “You’re arresting me?” Rocky O’Hearne sounded annoyed (bothersome-mosquito annoyed) “On what charge?”

  Anarchy’s gaze traveled the destroyed kitchen. “Breaking and entering. Destruction of property.” He looked at me. “Assault.”

  “I’ll be out in an hour.”

  “If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be provided for you. Do you understand—”

  “Yeah, I understand ‘em.”

  “Why are you here, Mr. O’Hearne?” Every bit of sadness and hope and exhaustion and yo-yoing emotion I’d felt that day came through in my voice.

  He stared at me, his face impassive.

  I wiped a tear from my cheek and my gaze dropped to my lap. He wasn’t going to tell me anything. Not one thing.

  “I didn’t wreck this place,” said Rocky. “It was like this when I got here.”

  I lifted my head in time to see Anarchy nod as if he’d expected as much.

  “Why are you here?” I asked.

  The expression on Rocky’s face was almost wry. “I’m looking for Starry.”

  “Why?” I insisted.

&n
bsp; “She witnessed a murder.”

  Nineteen

  “Whose murder?” Anarchy’s cop-face was firmly in place.

  Rocky took a moment and glanced around Madame Reyna’s trashed kitchen. Without the broken plates, emptied drawers, and destroyed appliances, it probably looked much like the kitchens in the neighboring houses—cabinets stained an orangey shade of brown and avocado green everything else. A small table sat in front of a window with a view of the bleak backyard. A beehive lantern (also avocado green) hanging above the little table cast sickly light on everything in the room.

  “Whose murder?” Anarchy repeated.

  “Girl named Leesa. Starry saw the guy who killed her.”

  She had? She’d never said. Never even hinted.

  “Did she describe him?” I asked. Surely the girl would have told me something.

  “Nah. She didn’t have to.”

  Anarchy crossed his arms and watched me as if he was curious about what I might say next.

  Rocky’s lips pulled back into a thin-lipped smile and his eyes narrowed until they were mere slits with pouches beneath them.

  “You know who killed Leesa,” I said. A statement not a question. No one could look that smug and not know.

  “I got a pretty good idea. They want us outta downtown. They think the neighborhood looks seedy enough—” he added a Gallic shrug, complete with not-my-fault pursed lips and a tilt of his shaggy head “—the public will force us out early.”

  “They?” Better to pursue they than point out that if the neighborhood was seedy, he’d definitely had a hand in making it that way.

  “Developers.” Rocky twisted the word into something ugly.

  “You’re saying a real estate developer killed Leesa?” Disbelief colored outside the lines of my words. Rocky was delusional.

  “They got millions invested in building that new hotel. It don’t get built on time, they lose. Big.”

  I wasn’t about to argue the ins and outs of real estate investing with a hand-cuffed thug, but the real estate developers I knew wouldn’t risk spending the rest of their lives in prison for one hotel.

  Rocky must have read the doubt on my face because he added, “They killed all those girls. The lawyer too.”

  A shot of adrenaline hit my system and my mouth dried. “The lawyer? Patrick Conover?” That couldn’t be right. Patrick Conover worked for the development company. Now I knew where Rocky got his name. The man had rocks for brains if he thought I’d actually believe his cockamamie story.

  “Why would a development company have their lawyer killed?” Anarchy didn’t believe Rocky’s story either.

  Rocky’s smile was tight and mean. “Maybe the lawyer had more than one client.”

  Patrick Conover had put his law license, his livelihood, and his family on the line for a man like Rocky O’Hearne? I thought not. “You’re saying Patrick worked for you?”

  “I ain’t sayin’ nothin’.” There was a truth.

  Of course he wasn’t. For all he’d told us, he’d said nothing incriminating.

  “But—” Rocky shrugged again (almost Gallic, not quite) “—maybe he had a weakness for young girls.”

  A weakness for young girls? My stomach tightened into a hard, angry knot.

  “And you provided young girls.” Anarchy sounded as disgusted as I felt.

  Those poor girls.

  Grace was a young girl.

  The man in the chair was a monster. Plain and simple.

  “I didn’t say that.” Rocky crossed his ankles. “Can’t blame me some guy likes ‘em on the young side.”

  I did blame him. He made the young girls available.

  I stared into Rocky O’Hearne’s blue eyes. They had all the warmth of ice and all the humanity of diamond chips. The man didn’t care about who he damaged—not the girls, not their families. Teen-aged girls forced into prostitution and drug addiction meant nothing to him. The man lacked a soul.

  My shoulders shivered with a coldness that had nothing to do with the weather.

  “Course, there’s some guys like ‘em past first bloom.” He chuckled. “Like Jones back there.”

  Anarchy and a prostitute? Impossible. Then it dawned on me. Rocky was talking about me. Me. I was past first bloom.

  I couldn’t argue. Not with the skin on the underside of my arms starting to sag, incipient laugh lines, and thinning lips (why did no one tell me that would happen?).

  But women past first bloom knew a few things their younger (still in bloom) sisters did not.

  Something other than humanity propelled Rocky through his days. Greed? Lust for power? Or maybe life was just a game to him—a game where he won and the girls he exploited lost.

  He’d told us nothing. Nothing we could verify. Nothing that rang true. All he’d done was cast suspicion elsewhere.

  The reality was the girls who’d been murdered were probably causing him trouble. Just like Patrick Conover had probably caused him trouble by advancing the eviction schedule for 12th Street.

  Rocky’s relaxed pose hadn’t changed. He still lounged in a straight-back chair. “I got places to be. You want to take off these cuffs?”

  Anarchy snorted.

  “What are you charging me with?”

  “Breaking and entering,” Anarchy replied.

  “Prove I wasn’t invited.” Rocky looked around the destroyed kitchen and his shaggy brows rose, the very picture of wronged innocence. “I came to visit a friend, get my fortune told, and the place was like this when I got here. Looks to me like the house was burgled.”

  No one was buying Rocky’s wronged innocence schtick. Least of all, Anarchy. “Looks to me like someone was looking for something.”

  “Like I said, the place was like this when I got here. Maybe the lady of the house is a lousy homemaker.”

  Rocky O’Hearne was wasting our time. Was he frittering away minutes on purpose?

  We could waste hours questioning him and learn bupkis. I rose from my chair.

  “Where are you going?” Anarchy asked.

  “I’m going to find my daughter.”

  “Wait.”

  I waited, but only because I had no way to leave.

  “I’ll call patrol and we’ll have someone pick him up.”

  “You’re arresting me? Seriously?” Rocky sounded put out.

  “Seriously.” Anarchy sounded serious as a heart attack. Serious as a missing daughter. He picked up the avocado-green (to match the appliances) phone, called the Prairie Village Police Department, explained who he was, and requested a patrol car come pick up a suspect.

  We waited with Rocky, who’d acquired a fatalistic you-ruined-my-Sunday-but-what’s-a-man-to-do air.

  When the police officers came, they conversed quietly with Anarchy in the corner. I leaned toward them but couldn’t hear a word. Really, missing their conversation wasn’t important. The looks the two Prairie Village officers gave Rocky spoke volumes. They weren’t happy about taking a notorious (locally, at least) criminal into custody.

  Anarchy seem to share their concerns. He scowled at Rocky and the police officers. “We’ll get the paperwork to move him to Missouri filed first thing in the morning.”

  That I heard.

  So did Rocky. He chuckled. We might be ruining his Sunday, but he planned on making it home in time for dinner.

  The two officers led Rocky away.

  Anarchy and I followed—at least to the curb.

  He opened my door and I climbed into his car.

  He circled the front of the car and took his spot behind the wheel. “Where to?”

  I had no idea. If I was in trouble and afraid to go home, where would I go? I’d go to Mother’s because she was scarier than anyone. “Let’s try my parents’.”

  Anarchy put the car in gear.

&nbs
p; “Unless you’ve got a better idea.”

  He shook his head and pulled away from the curb.

  “What do you think happened to Madame Reyna?” I asked. I’d been so worried about Grace, I’d barely given the missing madame a single thought.

  “No idea. Maybe, if we’re lucky, she’s at the market or out with friends. At least we know Rocky’s people don’t have her. He wouldn’t have been there if they did.”

  “Tell me about Rocky O’Hearne.”

  He shifted his gaze away from the wet road. “You saw him. He’s a bad guy. If you see him again, and I’m not with you, run.”

  “You just sent him to jail.”

  “He’ll be out in time for cocktails.”

  “Then why arrest him?”

  “He broke the law.” And Anarchy followed the rules. Starry had broken the law. She’d stolen a car. Would Anarchy arrest her when (not if) we found them? I stared out the windshield at a day that grew more gray and sullen with each passing moment. Anarchy could arrest Starry, but I would not press charges.

  “Is he from here? Kansas City, I mean?”

  Anarchy answered with a short nod.

  “How—” how to phrase the question? “—how did he end up a criminal?”

  “Family business.”

  Ah. “Turn here.” I pointed to the left.

  A few minutes later we pulled into Mother and Daddy’s drive.

  Anarchy stared at the house. “Nice place.” His tone was dry.

  Mother and Daddy did have a lot of house for two people, but Mother entertained. And kept things. And God help me if they ever decided to move.

  I dug my keys out of my purse, unlocked the door, and stepped inside.

  One of Daddy’s coats hung over the newel post (a thing that would never happen if Mother was home) and a few of the flowers in the arrangement on the circular table in the foyer drooped (Mother would have pulled them immediately).

  “Grace,” I called.

  There was no answer.

  I walked toward the kitchen. “Grace!”

  “Hold on.” Anarchy pulled a pager off his belt and read the number. “May I use the phone?”

  “This way.” I led him into Daddy’s study. Unlike the study at my house, Daddy’s didn’t feel like a cave. The walls were a soft shade of gold, a Mahal rug in light shades of blue, gold, and terracotta covered the hardwood floor and attractive drapes hung at the windows.