Euclid leaned down on the bar so he could look her eye-to-eye. “Girl, you need to stop whatever plan is churning in that brain of yours. I see clear as day you’re about to get yourself caught in a gill net. That kind of ending isn’t pretty.”
“Where’s Lyda?” She finished her soda with a loud slurp.
“In the back. You should leave her alone. She’s not feeling good.”
“I need to ask her something.”
“Don’t let Johnny catch you back there. He says you make the girls unhappy by telling them things they don’t need to hear.”
“Yeah, like in five years they’re gonna be strung out, diseased, and living in a homeless shelter?”
“Yeah, stuff like that.”
Jackie nodded. “I won’t be but a few minutes.”
“If Johnny comes back, I’ll play Frijid Pink on the jukebox.”
Jackie ducked behind the curtain that separated a long, narrow hallway with doors on either side from the rest of the bar. As she passed a door, she heard a man laughing. Some of the girls were already at work.
She knocked on the third door to the left and opened it. “Lyda?”
The young woman was stretched out on a sofa, her gaze unfocused. A half-finished vodka on the rocks was sweating on the bedside table. “Go away.”
“Lyda.” Jackie sat on the floor beside the bed. “I’ll get some coffee for you.”
The woman shook her head. “Let me ride this high a little longer. You don’t know what it’s like to be free.”
Jackie shifted to her knees and brushed the hair back from Lyda’s forehead. Lyda March was only a few years older than Jackie, and she had once been beautiful. She’d danced in New Orleans in the finest gentlemen’s clubs. Now she was back home, performing as Lyda Monarch to avoid soiling her family’s name.
Jackie got coffee from the bar. She had to get Lyda on her feet. Johnny Zenata didn’t put up with dancers who were too loaded to work. “Lyda, do you know a girl named Cornelia Swanson?”
Lyda looked down. “Sweet Cornelia.”
“Lyda, she’s dead. Did you know that?”
Lyda nodded. “Newspaper. Car wreck.”
Jackie heaved a sigh of relief. Lyda wasn’t as far gone as she seemed. “Did you know any other of those girls? The White Angels?”
“I know things my daddy did that you’d like to know.” Lyda pushed past her and went behind a screen to dress. She was done talking.
Twenty minutes later, a shaky Lyda was in her cowgirl costume and standing upright. Jackie ushered her to the stage just as Johnny Z. came in the back door. He scowled and started to push Lyda, but Jackie stepped into his hand.
“Don’t.”
He grinned. “What’s Lyda to you?”
“A human being.” Jackie’s fists were clenched.
“If you say so. I don’t care if she’s a one-legged pig as long as she dances and the men buy drinks.” He waved around the bar, which had begun to fill up with shadowy men who sought out the dark booths around the edge of the room. In a far corner, pool balls clacked. Johnny started to turn away but Jackie grabbed his arm.
“I want to take Lyda home to her father. She needs to dry out and get clean.”
Johnny’s eyes narrowed. “Her daddy doesn’t want her. What do you have between your ears, mashed potatoes? He don’t want a junkie stripper whore showing up on his doorstep. Lyda has enough sense to know that even if you don’t.”
“He’ll take her in.” He would too, or she’d print the photos of Brother Fred and his negligee-clad mistress and glue them to the doors of his church. The things he’d done... nice people didn’t talk about those things and no one would believe Lyda now. It wasn’t the same, but at least Jackie had the goods on him with his mistress.
Johnny eyed her. “You involved in digging that girl up? I knew you were crazy, but that takes it. You’re trying to play in the grown-ups’ sandbox, Jackie. You’re gonna get hurt. Jet Swanson will cut out your gizzard and feed it to you.”
The ringing phone woke Jackie and she knew the newspaper had run the photos of the empty coffin — with her photo credit.
“Hello.” She turned on the burner for hot water.
“Stay away from that still.” The line went dead.
The caller was male. She walked to the end of her driveway in her T-shirt and panties. There were no other houses around. She picked up the paper and opened it to State News. There was the photo of the coffin and a much more suitable shot of tombstones shaded by the big oak tree in the cemetery. It looked haunted and sad. The empty grave seemed... depraved. She sighed. It was going to be a long, long day.
She showered and built up the wood for cooking. The two Taggart boys would be by to keep the fire burning.
It was only six o’clock when she got to the paper, so she went into the darkroom and processed the film she’d taken of Brother March. She printed up ten big glossies of March with his mistress in his arms. Both faces were clearly visible. She went to her desk and tucked them into a manila envelope and put them in her purse.
From the cross-reference directory she looked up the address of the house Brother March was partial to visiting and got the name of the woman who lived there. Charlotte Rush. She addressed an envelope to her, slid in a photo, and put it in her purse to take to the post office.
She wrote six more obituaries. The afternoon deadline came and went.
Clint came out of his office. “Jackie, the sheriff called. They have a lead on that missing body. The sheriff asked for you. Specifically.” Clint stared at her, giving her the chance to explain.
“Where is it?”
“They left her sitting on the front porch of a house, 125 Walton Street, in the Golden Heights subdivision on the west side of town.”
She felt the flush rise to the roots of her hair. It was the same address on the envelope she was getting ready to mail.
“Does that mean something to you?”
She shook her head.
“What’s going on with you?”
She felt the weight of what she knew pressing on the back of her throat, but she swallowed it down. “That’s just such a gruesome thing to do. Leaving a dead girl’s body on someone’s porch.”
“Put her in a rocking chair by a geranium. Run out there and get some photos and interview Charlotte Rush. Find out how she’s connected to all this.”
“Yes sir.” She grabbed her purse with the photos in it and her camera.
“If folks were upset with an empty coffin this morning, they’re going to be choking on their toast over this. Do your best to be tasteful.”
“Right. Tasteful.” And she was out the door.
She went to the post office and sent the photo to Charlotte Rush. Dead girl on her porch. Blackmail photos. Tomorrow would be an interesting day in Fred March’s life. And it was just the first drop in the bucket.
She parked behind a patrol car, glad that by the time she got there the body was covered with a sheet. It sat bolt upright in a chair, the position of the body telling her that rigor mortis had already set in. She had to wonder how the grave robber had gotten the body to bend into a sitting position. It was downright creepy.
She set to work under the watchful eye of a deputy. The sheriff pulled up and stopped in the drive to talk with some of the other law officers. Jackie ducked inside to find Charlotte Rush sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee untouched in front of her.
“Get out,” Charlotte said. “I don’t want the newspaper here.”
“Did you know the Swanson girl?” Jackie asked. “Cornelia was such a good girl. She was an Angel in White in the church right down the road.”
Charlotte stood up. “What are you talking about?”
“Cornelia Swanson. The dead girl on your front porch.”