most people did. I think she liked being kind to them. I think it made her feel better about all the ugly things she had to see.
Jeanna smiled back at Maggie, and for just an instant I got a glimpse of what Jeanna must have been like before she started taking off her clothes and dancing on top of a bar for a crowd of drunks. An image flashed through my mind: Jeanna, young, strong, healthy, tanned, dark hair blowing behind her as she stood at the prow of a powerboat, skimming the surface of an indigo lake, the sun shining bright above her. She was younger, happier, filled with hope.
How had she ended up here?
“I go up and start doing my thing,” she told Maggie. “But I couldn’t get that guy out of my mind. I was worried about Becky and Nan. They got bad judgment about men.” She laughed at the irony of her words, but it was not a humorous laugh. “I thought, oh, lord, what if one of them goes out into the parking lot with that man? They will not come back.”
She looked up at Maggie, her face frightened. “But he didn’t leave. He just stood there in that corner, staring at me with so much hatred I could feel it across an entire room. I could feel it across a hundred bodies. I could feel it washing over me each time that spotlight hit him.” She shivered. “I couldn’t take my mind off of it. I knew he was bad, and I knew he was looking at me and trying to decide where to cut me first.”
She was talking faster now and I wondered how much the speed had to do with what she had experienced and how much it was just that she had recognized Alan Hayes for what he was, when so many others had been fooled.
“Did he have something to do with the fight?” Maggie asked her.
“I can’t be sure. I didn’t see it start. First thing I know, there was trouble and chairs were flying and glass was breaking and I had to hop down behind the bar before I got hurt, and then people were rolling out the front door and the whole place emptied, and Roger was madder than hell and started outside with a baseball bat.”
“Did you see the man again?” Maggie asked.
The dancer shook her head and looked around her into the darkness. “I think I’m always going to see his face, though. In my nightmares. I get them a lot, you know. Nightmares.” She shivered. “I will tell you this. He may not have started that fight, but he had something to do with it. As soon as I saw him, I knew it—I knew that something real bad was going to happen.”
Maggie had put it together. Bobby Daniels. Danny. Alan Hayes. Their lives had all crossed paths at the Double Deuce. She didn’t know what they were trying to do, but she knew they had all been at the bar. Now she would question Daniels and maybe find out why.
“Here,” she said, sliding another twenty across the picnic table. “For the babysitter. And you make sure you get two guys to walk you to your car tonight.” She handed her one of her business cards. “Will you promise to call me if you ever see that man again?”
“Sure,” Jeanna said as she stared at the twenty in wonder. “You make a lot as a police officer?”
Maggie laughed. “Not as much as you.” Her smile disappeared. “The future’s a lot brighter, though.”
“What are you talking about?” Jeanna asked. “You could be shot dead at any time.”
Maggie didn’t want to say it—but she said it anyway. “I’ve still got a better chance at having a future than you do, at least if you keep on working here.”
Jeanna took her money and left.
Chapter 25
“Are you okay?” Maggie asked as she helped Bobby Daniels stand upright.
“I don’t think I can do this,” he mumbled. “It’s too much.” He wasn’t talking about his injuries, he was talking about the world. “There’s just so much noise and so many people.”
“You can do it,” Maggie told him. “And you’re going to. But it’s going to feel like that for a long time to come.”
“It’s just so much,” Bobby said. “All coming at me. And I don’t have anything left. What am I going to do? Go back to school? Get a job? Who will hire me?”
“You’ll figure it out,” Maggie promised