1 A Cop and a Coop

by Hillary Avis

  I followed her out of the back room into the main salon. “That guitar isn’t her pageant stuff, though. She was hiding it there!”

  Ruth suddenly became very busy cleaning up the remnants of our lavender masks. She gathered up the damp towels and wiped down the chairs, then began rinsing out the bowls in the sink while I stood in the middle of the room, hands on my hips, watching her in disbelief.

  “Ruth!”

  She turned off the sink water. “What?”

  “I know you want to, but we can’t ignore it.”

  “We don’t have to get involved,” she said stoutly. “It’s none of our business.”

  “The guy who owned that guitar is buried on my farm. The farm you sold to me. The farm where your brother worked for decades! We’re involved. If we cover up evidence and it comes out, we could get in trouble!” I pleaded.

  Ruth crossed her arms. “We don’t even know what we’re covering up. This is Tambra we’re talking about here. She was a child back then—she didn’t commit murder.”

  “I seem to remember you thought you were pretty grown when you were seventeen. Anyway, I don’t think she killed anyone, either. But I do think she knows more about what happened to Joe twenty years ago than she’s letting on. She wouldn’t be hiding this guitar inside a pageant dress for no reason. We have to take it to Eli.”

  “Give me a minute to decide.” Ruth fanned herself, took a few deep breaths, then went to the small mirror-topped table filled with crystals, shells, and candles. She lit a yellow candle and stood back, her eyes closed.

  “What’s that for?”

  “Clarity,” she murmured. She picked up a stone from the table and rubbed in on the center of her forehead as she hummed a low tone.

  This was all getting a little bit weird for me, so I retreated to Tambra’s manicure station. Although plenty of my so-called friends in Beverly Hills had practiced wacky rituals like colonics, mushroom smoothies, and injecting fat from their rear ends into their faces, I’d never indulged in New Agey stuff to any degree. In fact, hanging up stockings at Christmas was about as religious and dogmatic as I got. Ruth had always been more inclined to seek spiritual guidance, though, whether from her church youth group when we were kids or the collection of crystals and candles on her salon’s makeshift altar now. If that’s what she needed to figure this out, so be it.

  I only had a few more minutes to wait. After ringing a small gong, Ruth disappeared into the back room. When she rejoined me, she had Joe’s guitar in hand and a beatific smile on her face. The candlelit forehead massage had done the trick, apparently.

  “We’re going to the picnic,” she announced, grabbing her purple purse with her free hand. “Tambra can explain why she has the guitar before we throw her to the wolves.”

  “Eli’s not a wolf,” I protested, scurrying after her. “He’s kind and fair.”

  “You think so? I guess that explains why you let him stay overnight at your place and then chauffeur you around town.” Ruth grinned and handed me the guitar to hold while she locked the salon door behind us.

  “How—” I broke off and rolled my eyes at the question I’d been about to ask. Of course Ruth had heard that Eli didn’t go home last night; she heard everything. “We’re just friends,” I said firmly.

  “Uh huh.” Ruth swiped the guitar from me and laid it gently in the back seat of her car. Something inside the instrument made a dull clunk.

  I froze at the sound. The last time something had mysteriously clunked on my watch, it turned out to be a dead guy’s foot bones.

  Chapter 16

  I put my hand out to stop Ruth from closing the car door. “Wait. What was that noise?”

  She cocked her head, listening. “I don’t hear anything. Was it a freight train whistle?”

  “No, the guitar! It made a noise when you set it down. I think it has something inside!”

  Ruth slid the guitar back out and shook it gently. Something within the body of the guitar shifted from side to side.

  “I told you.”

  She peered through the strings into the sound hole. “I can’t see anything. It’s too dark.”

  I pulled out my phone and turned the flashlight on, aiming it at an angle into the guitar’s interior. “Now try.”

  “Ah, I see something!” She held up the guitar and jostled it gently until a white object showed at the edge of the sound hole, then squeezed her hand under the strings and nabbed it with two fingers. “Got it!”

  She pulled out a roll of paper held closed with a blue rubber band and set the guitar down on the back seat again. “What do you think it is?”

  “I don’t know! Look and see!”

  Ruth shook her head and held the paper tube behind her back, out of my reach. “Let’s talk to Tambra first. It could be private.”

  I wanted to scream with frustration. “Joe’s dead, Ruth! He wants us to find out who killed him.”

  “Who says this belonged to Hobo Joe? Just because it’s in his guitar doesn’t mean he put it there.” Ruth set her jaw stubbornly. She wasn’t going to budge on this; the strength of her friendship with Tambra clearly outweighed any argument I could make.

  I yanked open the car’s passenger door and plopped in the seat. “Fine. Let’s go.”

  “See? That wasn’t so hard.” Ruth tossed the paper roll into the back seat with the guitar and, sliding behind the wheel, started up the car.

  It was only a two-minute drive to Honeytree Park, where the picnic was in full swing. Dozens of children swarmed the play equipment while adults mingled near the covered picnic area, chatting and eating corn on the cob. “It looks like everyone in town is here!” I said, my stomach rumbling at the sight of the barbecue buffet on the other side of the park.

  Ruth pulled into a parking spot next to Tambra’s Prius and nodded. “They are. Look, there’s Tambra.” She pointed to a picnic table under a tree, where Tambra’s long red hair acted like a flag in the summer breeze.

  I wasn’t surprised to see that Tambra was talking to Eli. I’d assumed that when he left the salon, he’d come over here to the picnic. What was a surprise was their body language. I watched as he threw his head back and laughed uproariously, and Tambra reached out to touch his arm.

  Ruth’s eyes darted to me. “He’s probably questioning her about Joe, following up on the lead you gave him.”

  “That doesn’t look like an interrogation,” I muttered. Why was anger fluttering under my skin? I had no reason to be angry at either of them. It wasn’t anger, I quickly realized—it was jealousy. Stupid, petty jealousy.

  I rolled my eyes; I had nothing to be jealous about. I must have absorbed Ruth’s insinuation that Eli and I had something going on. Just because we dated forty years ago didn’t make us an item, and I had no claim on his attention—thank goodness. I didn’t want it anyway. I pushed open the car door and got out, and Ruth quickly followed.

  When I reached for the door to the back seat to retrieve the guitar, she rushed to stop me. “Wait. Leave it in the car. If we flash that thing around the park, people will recognize it, and that means everyone will have questions. I want to talk to her before we turn it over to Eli, in case there’s an innocent explanation for why she hid it inside her goddess dress.”

  I nodded, understanding fully the desire to avoid attracting the interest of Honeytree’s citizens. I didn’t even like the idea of parading my painted-and-curled self across the park, let alone showing off evidence in a murder investigation. It was better to stay under the radar for as long as possible.

  Ruth put her hands to her mouth. “Tambra!” she shouted.

  All heads swiveled toward us.

  “Subtle,” I said darkly. Ruth shrugged, unapologetic, and waved across the park at Tambra.

  Tambra spotted us and waved back, leaving Eli’s side to jog toward us. For a moment I was transported into the Baywatch intro, as Tambra’s stride lengthened and she seemed to run in slow motion, her hair whipping back and forth. Half the adults
in the park were in thrall watching her lithe movements—you can probably guess which half.

  Tambra slowed as she reached us, slightly out of breath. “Well, shoot, you two look straight out of a magazine. I like the purple on you, Ruth. What’s going on? Playing dress-up at the salon?”

  Ruth shared a look with me. “Sort of. Get in the car.”

  Tambra checked on the playground over her shoulder where I assumed her kids were playing and then slid into the back. The second her cheeks hit the seat and she saw the guitar, she gasped. Ruth closed the door on her and, with another grim look at me, went around to the other side and got in. I took the front passenger side, leaning to see them both through the gap between the front seats.

  “I didn’t think anyone would look there,” Tambra said quietly, running her fingers over the guitar’s frets. She gently plucked one string and the sound thrummed through the car.

  “We were just going to try on some of your pageant stuff. We didn’t mean to pry. I’m sorry, hon.” Ruth bit her lip.

  I couldn’t understand why she was dancing around the topic. “Listen, we need to know why you have it.”

  “Did Joe give it to you?” Ruth added, leaning toward Tambra in the back seat. I’d watched enough cop TV shows to know she was leading the witness. She must have sensed my disgust because she added. “What?! They were friends!”

  Tambra twisted her hands, and tears, dark with mascara, began to leak down her face as she ducked her head. “Actually, I stole it from him.” She scrubbed her cheeks, smearing her makeup so I could see that she did indeed have freckles like mine underneath the heavy layers of concealer and foundation.

  “You stole the guitar from Joe?” Ruth’s forehead furrowed. “Why’d you do that?”

  “So he’d come get it back! But he didn’t.” Tambra’s face crumpled again. “He didn’t come. I should have known something bad had happened!”

  Ruth rummaged in her purse and produced a pack of tissues that she handed to Tambra. “I don’t understand, honey. Can you explain?”

  Tambra dabbed her eyes and nose with the tissues. “I had a terrible crush on Joe. He wrote the most beautiful love songs and sang them when we all sat around the bonfire.” She reached out and caressed the guitar again. "I was sure they were for me. I mean, I was sure. They were about how we couldn’t be together, but he’d love me from a distance. He even looked at me when he sang, sometimes.”

  “It’s understandable why you’d be smitten by that,” Ruth murmured, nodding. “Did he know how you felt?”

  Tambra lifted her head. “Oh, he knew. I confronted him one night and laid it all out there. I said I knew he’d written the songs for me and that I shared his feelings. I said I wanted to be with him. It sounds stupid now, but you have to remember I was seventeen. All I wanted was to be in love.”

  I swallowed, remembering my own seventeen-year-old dream—to leave my dumpy hometown behind and live a glamorous life in the big city. Look where that got me. “Be careful what you wish for, I guess,” I said.

  Tambra nodded. “Turned out he didn’t feel the same way. I was fifteen years younger than him. He thought of me as a little sister. The songs weren’t for me. He was so nice about it.” A hiccupping little sob erupted from her throat and she smiled through her tears as she dabbed them away. “I was devastated, but he put his arm around me right there by the fire and just held me until I stopped crying. And then he thanked me.”

  “For loving him?” Ruth asked, her hand pressed to her chest and her eyes shiny with emotion.

  “No, for telling him about it. He said my confession made him realize that he needed to tell the woman he loved about his true feelings. He was about to go see her when Rusty interrupted us. Joe set down the guitar next to me and went off to argue with him in private, and I saw my chance—I took it and left the bonfire.”

  “You thought he’d come after you to get it back,” I said.

  She nodded, chewing on her lower lip until her lilac lip gloss was nearly gone. “I told you, I was young and dumb. I wanted another shot to convince him that we were meant to be together before he told this other woman about his feelings. You know, because he couldn’t sing to her without his guitar. I thought for sure he’d know I had it and show up on my doorstep looking for it.” Tambra balled up the tissue in her fist and pain flashed across her face. “But he didn’t. I never saw him again.”

  Ruth grabbed Tambra’s other hand and squeezed. “I’m sorry, honey. That must have stung when he didn’t come.”

  “I’m just mad I didn’t make a fuss when he disappeared, you know? I knew he wouldn’t leave town without that guitar. I knew it! Even if he went to the woman he loved without his guitar, he wouldn’t take off without trying to get it back. And he had to know I was the one who took it because it was sitting right next to me at the bonfire. He’d at least come ask me about it, right?”

  I couldn’t imagine the guilt and grief that must have been running through Tambra’s veins since Joe’s skeleton was discovered. “You were just a kid. All these grownups were convinced he hopped a train, and there’s no way you could have changed their minds. You couldn’t have done anything.”

  “I could have told them about the guitar,” she said quietly, her gaze locked on the crumpled tissue in her hand. “Maybe if I’d said something about the guitar, they would have believed me.”

  “Or maybe not,” Ruth said. “Grown ups are pretty hard-headed sometimes. Don’t beat yourself up about it.”

  Tambra sighed as she absentmindedly shredded the tissue. “I just wish I’d done more.”

  “Why didn’t you tell anyone about the guitar?” I asked. Ruth shot me a look that said shut your pie hole, Leona.

  Tambra shook her head. “It’s OK, Ruth. It’s a fair question. I didn’t want to get in trouble for stealing it, so I didn’t tell a soul. That guitar’s been under my bed for the last twenty years—at least, until they pulled that guitar case out of the ground. Then I realized it could tie me to a murder, so I moved the guitar to the salon just until I could figure out what to do with it. I’m sorry, Ruth. I didn’t mean to get you involved in anything, I just panicked.”

  “You have to give the guitar to Eli now,” I said.

  At my suggestion, Tambra’s nostrils flared and her jaw tightened. “What if he thinks I had something to do with Joe’s death? I can’t think how the guitar will help them. I took it before Joe was killed, so it’s not related to the murder.”

  “Maybe it will make you feel a little better to get rid of it,” Ruth said gently. “Cleanse your aura of all that guilt you’re feeling.”

  Tambra shook her head vehemently. “No...no. I already told Eli everything I remember about that night. I left out the guitar, but he knows everything else. The guitar is just a distraction—if I turn it over, Eli will tear apart my life, and you know I won’t be able to put it back together again, not if everyone knows about it.”

  She was right—at least about how the stain of being a suspect in the investigation would stick to her forever in a town like Honeytree. I could picture the conversation now:

  Where’d you get your nails done?

  Oh, Tambra down at the Do or Dye—she’s real good.

  Is that the girl who killed the train-hopper who played the guitar? I heard that she and him had plans to run off, and when he changed his mind, she murdered him.

  I don’t know about that, but she sure can murder a manicure!

  Tambra gnawed off the last of her lip gloss before she replied. “The cops shouldn’t be looking at me. They should be looking at whoever Joe was in love with. She was probably the last person to see him alive.”

  “Did Joe tell you her name?” I asked.

  Tambra shook her head. “No. And honestly, I was half convinced he just made her up to let me down easy. That’s part of why I thought that taking the guitar would work. I was young and dumb, but I wasn’t completely stupid.” She cracked a rueful smile.

  “Well, we’re not
here to make you do anything,” Ruth said comfortingly, patting Tambra’s hand before she released it.

  “Yes, we are!” I blurted out. “That’s why we brought the guitar with us—to turn it in. Even if it doesn’t help with finding the killer, maybe it will help them identify Joe. I’m sure his family has been missing him all these years and would like to have it back.”

  Tambra’s eyes welled with fresh tears, and Ruth scowled at me. “What good is dragging her through the mud, Leona? The poor thing has been through enough! Why don’t we just say we found it at the salon, but we don’t know who put it there? That way it can get back to Joe’s family without causing problems.”

  “Why would Joe’s guitar be in the salon?” I asked, incredulous, feeling the heat rise in my face. “Eli will see right through that—it’ll either be on you, the person who owned the farm where the body was buried, or on Tambra, anyway. This isn’t about dragging anyone through the mud, it’s about doing what’s right. Any time we’re not doing what’s right, we’re doing what’s wrong.”

  “Hm.” Ruth sat back and stared straight ahead while she thought, and I rubbed my neck where a crick was developing from twisting to see them in the back seat.

  “What’s this?” Tambra leaned to pick up the roll of white paper from the floor of the car. I’d forgotten all about it in the excitement over the guitar.

  “That’s not yours?” Ruth asked. “We found it inside the guitar.”

  Tambra shook her head and I shot Ruth a triumphant look. I’d been right—they were Joe’s papers. “See? All the more important that we turn the guitar in.”

  Tambra snapped off the rubber band and unrolled the papers. Her eyes widened as she looked at them. “It’s music. It’s his songs! I can’t believe these were inside the guitar for so long.”

  She riffled through the pages incredulously and then turned them toward me so I could see more than the blank backside of each page. Sure enough, it was music, of a kind—scribbled lyrics with chord notations. Printed in pencil at the top of the first page in block letters was the title of the first song: “FOR ANNE.”