Tutu Deadly Page 4

  “So, you didn’t hear anyone come into your apartment? There is no sign of forced entry. Have things been moved? The chain lock isn’t cut or altered, so I think that . . . Uh-oh. I know that look. You didn’t lock it, did you?”

  “I always forget. I locked the dead bolt. No one can get through that, right?” He didn’t nod in agreement, which meant I had been totally wrong for years. What was new? “Nothing bad has ever happened to me here. I live with old people. I have nothing to steal. And even the stuff that is not worth stealing is not gone. The only thing different is I just have cookie dough in my freezer where there was none before.”

  “Your own life should be enough to make you lock that chain, Jenny. You should use every defense you have against the bad guys.” He shook his head. “You’re sure nothing else is missing or gone? And you are also sure you didn’t have any cookie dough in your freezer?”

  “Hell, yes! You think I wouldn’t know if I had something edible in my freezer? I’d have eaten it last night! Four days until tuition is due! Stale bologna! No sane person would say no to cookie dough.” I was pretty sure I had waved my arms in the air when I said that, but that’s got to be understandable.

  He grinned, and I felt butterflies in my stomach as he showed off his white, even teeth and perfect dimples. My knees felt a little weak. Must have been all the excitement. Or the fact that if I had eaten the dough, and if it had been poisoned, I could now be just as dead as Sandra Epstein. Did someone want me dead—beside a slew of dance moms?

  “Well, the suspect dough is now at the crime lab, and it’ll be tested to see whether there is anything in it, and if so, whether it matches the poison we found in the dough Sandra Epstein was eating.”

  “Suspect dough? Heh. That sounds funny.”

  “You’re kind of weird.”

  He had no idea.

  After the police cars and the ambulance and the detective left, my apartment felt pretty big again. The neighbors were all out gawking, so I stayed inside. I didn’t want to have to explain why the missionaries were getting their stomachs pumped. They might have thought I was some radical anti-Mormon, and they were already suspicious because of my annual Book of Mormon sale. This whole mess was not conducive to receiving Christmas cookies and homemade candy.

  Inside, my phone was ringing, and, thrown off my usual check-the-caller-ID-stride—and being very worried about the missionaries—I answered, only to hear the one voice I was not prepared to deal with this morning. “Hello, Jennifer, dear, it’s Auntie Vi. I hear you tried to kill the missionaries.”

  Auntie Vi was my father’s sister, and she never had children of her own. This was somewhat of a cardinal sin in Utah, so to compensate she had schnauzer dogs she dressed in clothing, took shopping, and fed from the table, perhaps thinking that no one would notice her children had pointy ears, long snouts, and very wet black noses. My father called her eccentric. My mother called her a nutbag. Her poor dogs looked incredibly stupid in sweaters—especially the fat one named Sweetie—but no one dared to tell her that.

  My aptly named Uncle Mort owned a local mortuary—get it? Mort? Mortuary?—and thus made a good living burying the big families Utahns were prone to have. This allowed Auntie Vi to live a life of leisure, since dogs were not known to require as much maintenance as human children.

  With all this spare time on her hands, she had become the biggest gossip in Ogden, and had sources planted all over the city. “I didn’t try to kill the missionaries, Auntie Vi. Someone put some cookie dough in my freezer that might have been poisoned, and they found it, that’s all.”

  “And why would someone want to poison you, dear? I mean you’re just a dance teacher. Perhaps if you had kept your important job with the sheriff’s office, then I could understand it, but . . .”

  It always happened. After a moment of listening to Auntie Vi, all I heard was blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, sort of like the adults sounded in the Charlie Brown cartoons I watched as a kid.

  She blathered on, and I finally cut her off. “Gotta run, Auntie, I’m going to be late for class.” This was a bald-faced lie because I didn’t teach on Saturdays or Sundays. Good thing I wasn’t religious, or I might be worried I was going to hell for lying.

  The phone rang again before I could get two steps away from it. This time I looked at the caller ID, and sighed. There was no running from this one. “Jennifer? What in tarnation is going on?” It was my father, using his “you are in deep shit young lady” voice. Somehow, the fact I was now thirty years old—well past the legal age for parental scolding—had no effect on him.

  Auntie Vi, the rat, had informed on me. Called them before she even called me.

  “Look, Dad, someone killed one of my dance moms two nights ago. They poisoned her with cookie dough that we were selling for a fundraiser. The police have questioned me because I didn’t exactly get along with her, but I’m not in any trouble.”

  “What’s this I hear about you trying to kill the missionaries?” I was going to get Auntie Vi—and maybe her little dog, too—if it was the last thing I did.

  I sighed heavily. “I didn’t try to kill the missionaries. They found some cookie dough in my freezer that I didn’t put there, and they ate it, so the paramedics took them to the hospital as a precaution.”

  “You know, Jenny, you can just tell them no. You don’t have to kill them to keep them from coming to your door . . .”

  “Dad!” I yelled into the phone. I didn’t like yelling at my dad, but I couldn’t help myself. Things had been a bit stressful lately. “I did not try to kill the missionaries.”

  There was a pause, and then my father pulled the trump card. “Your mother isn’t going to like this.”

  “Yeah, well her daughter isn’t too crazy about it, either. Good-bye, Dad.”

  “Jenny?”

  “Yes?”

  “Are you in some kind of trouble?”

  “Yes, Dad, I am in trouble, because I don’t know who is doing this, or why. But I’m sure the police will get to the bottom of it. Love you. Kiss Mom for me.”

  I hung up the phone and grabbed my purse and keys. Mrs. Emma Anderson had some explaining to do.

  FIVE

  EMMA and Ella Anderson lived on Polk Street, just far enough east of Harrison to be safe from the decay that had beset the downtown area. All the downtown Ogden streets were named for United States presidents, but I couldn’t tell you much more than that. I know about Washington, and even Madison (there was a musical based on that president’s wife! I know my musicals), but I’d always thought Harrison was an actor. You know, Harrison Ford? Anyway, the Andersons had a nicely maintained older brick home, set in a nicely maintained neighborhood, directly across the street from the not-so-nicely maintained abode of Sandra Epstein. A pack rat and garage-sale junkie, Sandra collected other people’s trash for a living. I knew about her collecting habits because I often took Taylee home after dance when Sandra failed to show to pick up her daughter from class. Even before her home was draped with yellow crime-scene tape, it had been rather unsightly, with bicycles, lawn gnomes, wheelbarrows, and oddly unrelated decorations strewn about the entire area. A fresh coating of snow made all the junk in Epstein’s yard look eerily threatening, like monsters or gremlins holding perfectly still until you got close, and then they’d come to life and jump out and get you and . . .

  Breathe, Jenny, breathe. I’d always had an overactive imagination, and today it was working in double time. I had to keep it under control. I turned away from the Epstein’s and turned to look at the home on my left.

  The Anderson residence was exactly the opposite of Epstein’s home. The yard was immaculate, even in the bitter cold of winter, and Christmas decorations were placed all around the snow-covered lawn. Here in Utah, Christmas season officially begins on Thanksgiving Day, so it was no surprise that Emma Anderson’s yard was decorated. White wire reindeer, intricately wrapped with Christmas lights, pranced through the yard. Christmas bulbs draped perfectly along t
he eaves, and on the porch, two elves stood with outstretched hands, beckoning visitors to come forward and stay a while. It was very inviting, even during the daytime, and I cringed a little as I thought about what I knew. Mrs. Anderson was a single mom whose husband had left her for another woman. The dance-mom rumor mill—famous for getting things horribly distorted, like the old game of telephone I used to play when I was a kid—said that after she was unable to produce more children, she became desperate to make Ella the perfect child, and began spending all her time and energy—and husband’s money—on creating FrankenElla. Mr. Anderson got tired of being ignored, and took up with his secretary. From that point forward, Mrs. Anderson began to strive to be the perfect mother and wife, as well as to have the perfect daughter. She spent hours fixing up her house. Hours fixing up her yard. Hours trying to fix up her daughter, who had absolutely no interest in being fixed.

  As I stared at the yard now, it all came to me, and a deep sorrow flooded my veins. Maybe Emma Anderson wasn’t a psycho dance mom for the same reasons other women became psycho dance moms. Maybe she was trying to create the perfect scenario—wonderful home, fabulous meals, talented beautiful daughter—that would bring her husband back home. It would explain a lot.

  I turned and caught sight of the untidy Epstein house with the snow-coated demons in the front yard. I didn’t know her story, even though, after a few years of teaching dance, I knew everyone had a story. Sandra Epstein had come to the studio with a daughter whom she believed to be the next Leslie Caron. No one knew much about her. No one ever really bonded with her, even though most dance moms can find someone else who is like them, or gets along with them. All we knew was that her daughter was very talented. Sandra Epstein was a study of all or nothing. Either she came to every practice, and stayed the entire time, or she didn’t show at all. Sometimes, for weeks at a time, Taylee took the bus to class and I often gave her a ride home, because it bothered me to see her sitting on the bus bench all alone, so small and defenseless.

  She opened up a little to me during those times, and we would talk about her dreams and aspirations. And I could keep her talking, as long as I didn’t question her too closely about her dance background or personal issues like who or where her father was.

  When Sandra did come to class, she sat there sullen and icy, and didn’t speak to the other moms, which immediately made her an outcast and object of suspicion, particularly among those trying to curry favor with me. Epstein became my mortal enemy shortly after Taylee joined Jenny T. Partridge Dance because she believed that Taylee should be the focus of every routine. I had seventy-two other girls to worry about, with seventy-two other moms, so I tried to be at least a little bit fair. This was hard to explain to strident stage moms.

  “Taylee is the best dancer you have,” she would say in her high-pitched, rapid-fire voice, tinged with a sharp, nasal, “back East” accent. And in a way, she was right. Taylee was good. She was fluid and strong, and had excellent ballet training and flawless technique from some prior studio that Sandra Epstein would not reveal. I had a hard time not placing her in front-row fifty in every routine, just because she could carry the dance. Your eyes found her and that was it. The entire team looked good because of her. Taylee would be my Sugar Plum Fairy—or at least that had been what I had planned. Now that her mother was dead, who knew what would happen?

  But I couldn’t stand the grief from the other moms if I didn’t give their daughters equal dance time. And I really didn’t care much for Sandra and her situation, whatever it was. I found the whole thing rather odd, just like the woman herself, with her dark brown unkempt hair, circles under her eyes, and large baggy clothing.

  I wondered where Taylee was now? As far as I knew, Epstein didn’t have any relatives in the area, and my heart pinged a little bit at the thought of the quiet, forlorn little girl in the care of strangers.

  Maybe I could take her home with me. Yeah, right. I couldn’t even keep plants alive. I sincerely doubted I was mother material. And right now, I was kinda the prime suspect in her real mother’s demise. But as I stared at her house, the memories of Taylee sitting on the floor before last year’s Nutcracker performance, carefully applying her own makeup while her mother watched, made me feel even worse. She had been only eleven then, but seemed so self-sufficient. Her mother’s strident rages and incredible pushiness didn’t translate into caring for Taylee—only into pushing the people surrounding her daughter into giving in to her demands. The more she yelled, the quieter Taylee became.

  I remembered the stormy and cold night she couldn’t get her mother on the telephone, and so I took her to my house after dance, because when we drove by her house it was dark. I made popcorn and we watched the movie Honey—the one where Jessica Alba is a really hot dancer—and we laughed and chatted, and when the movie was over, Taylee turned to me and said, “How come you don’t have kids? You’d be a great mom.”

  Of course, I knew she was wrong. I would not be a great mom. I couldn’t even take care of myself.

  “Where do you think your mom is, Taylee?” I’d asked.

  “Home,” she said quietly. “She’s probably asleep and didn’t hear the phone. She does that a lot.” She hesitated, then spoke again. “Don’t be mad at me, but I have a key. I could have just gone in. But I didn’t want to be alone tonight.”

  Right about then I started to believe that Epstein might have a tiny drug or alcohol problem, although I couldn’t really remember smelling booze on her. I’d wanted Taylee to stay over that night, but she’d refused, and I’d dropped her off around 11 p.m. There was a light on in the kitchen, so I figured Sandra had roused herself.

  Now I stared at the abandoned Epstein house as I thought of Taylee. Old beyond her years, she was one of my best students—quiet, reserved, respectful, always following directions. She truly was a natural dancer who lost herself while performing. What would happen to her now? Furthermore, where was she now? In all the rush and concern for myself, I hadn’t asked anyone where Taylee was. What kind of person was I?

  I sighed deeply and pushed the breath in and out of my lungs, watching it billow in white clouds after it left my pursed lips, as I contemplated my character—or lack thereof.

  I would have to ask Detective Wilson. Or Emma Anderson. Or probably Auntie Vi, who knew everyone in and everything about Ogden.

  I stared more determinedly at the Epstein house. I should go over there and look around. They did it on television all the time. The spunky heroine always solved the crime. Maybe I could figure out what had happened to Sandra Epstein, rescue Taylee, and get my own ass off the hook for the murder. I was spunky . . . wasn’t I?

  I could do this. If only someone was with me . . . Because my true nature was that of a big, fat scaredy-cat, I had called Amber to meet me here. She didn’t answer her cell phone. James was otherwise engaged, getting an “absolutely vital pedi and mani,” and my other friend, Alissa Miller, the only connection I still had with the Weber County Sheriff ’s Department, had to work. Marlys had four kids so her Saturdays were jam-packed with indoor soccer and swimming and other mysterious mom duties that I could not comprehend. I was on my own, so it was best to start at the house where a woman had not died. I walked up the stairs to the Anderson’s front door and knocked. Everything looked like it was locked up tight, and I rang the bell several times but didn’t get an answer. I walked around the side of the house to the back porch, my feet crunching loudly in the snow, making me wince, and tried to peer in the back window but could see nothing. At only five-two, I mostly had a bird’s-eye view of the nicely painted white windowsill.

  I surveyed the backyard for a moment, lips pursed as I thought, and then crossed over to the detached garage, also tightly locked up. I peered through the garage window, and saw nothing but a neatly maintained space, empty of any vehicle.

  Walking back to my car, I looked across at the Epstein house and got a glimpse of something shiny reflecting out one of the front windows. The house faced west,
and was not currently in the favored path of the miserly winter sun, positioned mid-sky but mostly hidden by thick clouds, so the reflecting flashes struck me as odd. Curious, I crossed the street and wandered as close to the crime-scene tape as I dared. I squinted my eyes to see if I could see the flashes again, but there was nothing. My mother always squinted when she was trying to see something, too vain to admit she needed glasses. My own vision was twenty-twenty.

  “Squinting is stupid,” I said. Time for a more proactive stance. Glancing carefully from side to side, but seeing nobody watching, I purposefully pulled up a small amount of the crime-scene tape and sashayed under it. I’m pretty limber and have sashaying down to an art, so I moved fairly quickly up the driveway and to a side window where I would not be seen by the neighbors, passing cars, and possibly a certain policeman who seemed to have a burning desire to see me behind bars.

  Staring through, I caught another glimpse of reflecting light, although the house was totally dark. One flash, then another, and my curiosity welled up, uncontainable as it had been when I was a kid. It was my curiosity that had made me overflow Grandma Gilly’s tub. I’d wanted to see if her falsies would make me float. To do that, I had to have a lot of water, and it was an old, deep tub. Sure enough, strapped around my skinny chest, the falsies did indeed float, and I was so intrigued I didn’t notice the water flowing onto the floor and out under the crack of the door.

  That same curiosity led me to ignore a big catch of fear in my throat—and the sense of the forbidden—and I walked farther back to the side door of the golden-color brick house. I passed by pink flamingos stuck haphazardly into dirt, identifiable up close from the patches of pink showing through where the snow had melted, and little lawn decorations made up to look like people with their big butts sticking out as they tended to the yard. The door, to my surprise, was slightly ajar, and I looked around guiltily before sliding inside, my heart pounding so loud I couldn’t hear anything but a steady thump-thump-thump. In the dark, I couldn’t see too much, and I stood there waiting for the pounding in my head to go away and my eyes to adjust to the dark. I stood in what appeared to be a kitchen, messy and unkempt, the smell of rotting food causing my stomach to churn and my eyes to water.