Death of a Blueberry Tart

by Lee Hollis

  “I’m sorry, Hayley, I just finished up my last appointment for the day. Jeanette and I have a dinner reservation at Havana in a half hour.”

  “I’m not here to get my hair done, Julio, I just want to buy a bottle of your body lotion.”

  “I already cashed out the register. Can you come back when we open in the morning?”

  “Please, I’ll pay extra.”

  He stared at her quizzically, not quite understanding why it was so important, but then he shrugged—a sale was a sale, after all—and he unlocked the door and ushered her inside.

  “I really appreciate this, Julio.”

  He circled around the counter to grab a bottle off the shelf behind him. “Did you talk to Sergio? After you left, I called and gave him all the phone numbers of the women I talked to on the phone here at the shop on the night Caskie Lemon-Hogg was killed.”

  “I haven’t had a chance, but I have no reason to doubt you. Again, I am so sorry for my mother.”

  He eyed her suspiciously and then began tapping keys on the register until it rang and the empty cash drawer opened.

  “That will be thirty-five sixty-seven,” Julio said coldly.

  Hayley opened her bag and fished around for some cash and withdrew two twenties and handed them to him.

  He accepted the bills. “Like I said, I already cashed out and made the bank deposit for the day, so I don’t have any change right now.”

  “Perfectly understandable. I don’t need change. I just wanted a bottle of this lotion. Liddy swears by it so I’m desperate to try it out.”

  She unscrewed the cap and inhaled the scent. There was a strong scent of rosemary and mint but nothing remotely like honey. This was exactly what she needed to prove her theory: the original bottle with the listed ingredients, so the police could compare the bottle with the one Julio had personally prepared for Regina Knoxville with the extra added ingredient of honey extract.

  “Thank you so much for letting me come in here after closing, Julio. I’m going to call you tomorrow and make an appointment so you can help me tame this frizzy mess I’m dealing with,” Hayley said quickly as she spun around to beat a hasty retreat. Unfortunately she slammed right into a wall, or at least that’s what it felt like upon impact. She stumbled back in time to see that she had just collided with the broad, buffed, sculpted chest of Julio’s cousin Juan, who had just walked through the door. She dropped her bag to the floor and the contents scattered everywhere, most notably the bottle of Julio’s body lotion that she had borrowed from Albert Knoxville.

  Julio’s eyes fixed on the bottle instantly and he looked squarely at Hayley, frowning. “I thought you said you’ve never tried the lotion.”

  “I . . . I haven’t . . . that’s Liddy’s bottle. She lent it to me so I could see if I liked it . . .”

  Julio wasn’t buying her story. He bent down, scooped up the bottle, unscrewed the top and took a whiff, overcome by the strong smell of honey. “You didn’t get this from Liddy . . .”

  Hayley knew there was no way she could talk her way out of a potentially dangerous situation this time. So she turned and made a run for it, but Juan was blocking the door and his arms were outstretched to intercept her like a football flying at him in the final few seconds of the game. He wrapped his giant, muscled arms around her in a bear hug and half dragged, half carried her over to a dryer chair, where he forced her down and then strapped her in using the wide leather belt he ripped out of the loops of his tight khaki pants. Meanwhile, Julio lowered the bamboo curtains down over the windows to block the view of anybody who might be passing by the salon.

  Hayley struggled mightily in the dryer chair, but the leather belt holding her down was too thick and strong and Juan hovered over her menacingly, ready to intervene if she somehow managed to get herself free. But Hayley knew in her gut there would be no miraculous escape.

  Julio marched over to Hayley, shaking his head. “It’s such a shame. You’ve always been one of my favorite customers, Hayley. So friendly and charming. Most of the time I have to pretend to be interested in what my customers chat endlessly about while I do their hair, but you were different. You didn’t bore me. You were interesting and funny. And now you’ve gone and ruined it.”

  “No, I didn’t ruin anything, Julio! You did! You and Juan! By committing two murders!”

  Juan shot Julio a panicked look, but with one wave of his hand, Julio calmed him down and he stood there like a docile animal.

  “I told you I was here in the shop when—”

  “I know you were. You had the perfect alibi with all of your adoring customers who called here that night, ready to back you up. But none of those women talked to Juan, did they? You just said he was here, that you were training him, but we only have your word. He wasn’t here at all. He was over at the bed-and-breakfast strangling Caskie Lemon-Hogg!”

  Julio flinched slightly, but kept up his steady, unruffled demeanor. “That’s ridiculous. What would Juan have against Caskie? He’s just arrived in town.”

  “With a long criminal record,” Hayley said.

  Juan gasped. “How did you know about—”

  Another look from Julio instantly shut him up.

  Hayley stared at Juan. “You’re right. Juan had nothing against Caskie and neither did you.”

  “Finally, some progress. So tell me, Hayley, what is it you’re talking about?” Julio said, appearing to feel a bit more confident and emboldened.

  “Juan didn’t go over there to kill Caskie. He went over there to kill Regina.”

  Julio’s placid exterior finally began to slowly melt away at hearing the words come out of Hayley’s mouth, and he became a bit more noticeably agitated.

  “Your affair with her had ended, badly I presume, and Regina was threatening to go to your wife, Jeanette, and spill everything. You desperately didn’t want that to happen so you offered to buy Regina’s silence since you probably knew that she and Albert were having money problems after some bad investments. Albert said that Regina had told him right before she died that she was about to come into some money.”

  She could tell from Julio’s pained expression that she had just nailed that bit, so she kept going. “But you never had any intention of paying her, did you? You arranged to meet her at the B and B, ostensibly to hand over a bag of cash, but instead you stayed behind at the salon to establish your alibi and sent your cousin to do your dirty work. Juan used Rupert Stiles’s stolen credit card, the one you swiped from him when he came in here to get his beard trimmed. It was Juan who wore the long beard I found in the back of your bedroom closet, and probably some old smelly baggy clothes. Just in case anyone saw him, he resembled Rupert. The desk clerk probably didn’t pay that much attention to him, but from his loose description and the credit card on file, the police would be able to confirm it was him. A lot of people knew Rupert had a mad crush on Regina his whole life. The cops would just assume it was a crime of passion. That Rupert somehow got Regina to agree to meet him over at the B and B, she rejected him again, and he just lost it, unable to accept that she didn’t love him and would never love him and so he killed her, maybe by accident or in a moment of insanity. It would be so easy to mount a case against him.”

  Hayley let the theory hang there for a few quiet moments.

  Julio bit his bottom lip, but was unwavering in his resolve to not react hysterically as Hayley plainly laid out the facts. Juan, on the other hand, was sweating as if he had just emerged fully clothed from a sweltering sauna.

  “The only problem was, instead of Regina, Caskie showed up first. She went to the B and B to talk to my mother, who was staying in room nine. But instead, Caskie knocked on the door of room six. That’s because Caskie had dyslexia, or some version of it, an affliction that had been diagnosed way back when she was in high school. She mixes up numbers. She looks at something and sees something else. And instead of a six, she saw a nine. Her fatal mistake was going to the wrong room. She walked right into a trap.”
r />   Juan started to shake. “Julio . . .”

  “Shut up, Juan!” Julio barked.

  Hayley kept going. “Juan, who was new to town and didn’t really know either woman, was just waiting for his mark to arrive. He simply assumed Caskie was Regina when she entered the room and strangled her from behind, never getting a good look at her face. When Regina showed up for her money, she probably purposely avoided being seen by the desk clerk, not wanting anyone to witness her there with you. She knocked on the door to room six and when no one answered, she left, having no idea that Caskie’s body was on the other side of that door, and Juan was probably still there too, ready to take care of her as well if she barged in and saw what he had just done. After that, Juan must have run off, leaving the door ajar, which was how my mother found the body. Poor Caskie was never the intended target. It was Regina all along.”

  Hayley looked at Juan and then at Julio. She had them dead to rights and they all knew it.

  Hayley leaned forward, still restrained by the leather belt, and asked, “Once Regina found out what happened, why didn’t she go directly to the police? Caskie was her close friend . . .”

  Julio sneered. “Regina wasn’t anyone’s close friend. It was all an act. Once she realized our big mistake, she just tripled her price to keep quiet.”

  “Wasn’t she afraid you might try to kill her again instead of paying her off?”

  “No, because she didn’t think we’d be stupid enough to risk committing two murders, and she was right. That’s why it was so important that her death look like an accident.”

  “But why did Regina point the finger at my mother, Celeste, and Jane if she already knew that you and Juan had killed Caskie?”

  “She was greedy. She wanted to keep the attention off us until she got her money. I told her I needed time to get the cash together, but I was just buying time until I could figure out how to solve the problem.”

  “And that’s when you came up with the body lotion solution.”

  “There was a bee in the shop once when I was doing her hair and she freaked out and hid in the bathroom until we could squash it with a magazine. I knew from that point on she was allergic, and I knew where she went every Saturday, so I put the honey in her body lotion. Juan went out to move the beehive close to the blueberry patches. I honestly wasn’t sure if it would work, but it did, like a charm. Chief Alvarez was certain Regina’s death was just a tragic accident. And now, besides your mother, who doesn’t have the brainpower to put all of the pieces together, you’re the only one who knows the truth about what really happened.”

  Julio took a step toward Hayley, whose whole body tensed. She locked eyes with him. “How are you going to explain another dead body?”

  “I won’t have to,” Julio said calmly.

  “You’re not going to kill me?” Hayley asked, a skeptical look on her face.

  “No, not at all. I don’t have the stomach for physical violence, never have,” Julio said, before turning to his cousin, who scowled at Hayley. “Luckily, my cousin does. And nobody has to explain a dead body if it’s never found.”

  Juan grabbed a black hair-stylist apron off the back of a chair and rolled it up into a taut noose, and then slowly advanced toward Hayley, sliding in behind her before dropping it down in front of her and tightening it around her neck.

  Chapter 40

  As Juan yanked back hard on the makeshift noose, Hayley opened her mouth and let out a quick gasp, but that was the only sound she managed to make as the pressure violently cut off her breathing. As hard as she fought to escape, she knew it was hopeless as the belt kept her firmly pinned to the chair and there was nowhere to go. Julio stood in front of her, his arms folded, calmly watching the scene with cold black eyes. His lips curled into a sickening sneer. Hayley reached up to claw at the apron wrapped around her throat, but Juan was too strong. She felt a sense of dread and hopelessness.

  Suddenly there was a loud banging at the front door. Startled, Julio whipped his head around toward the salon entrance but couldn’t see who was outside because he had drawn all the curtains. He turned back to Juan.

  “Hurry up and get this done,” Julio hissed, gesturing toward Hayley, whose eyes were about to roll up in the back of her head as she fought hard not to pass out. She managed to stay conscious long enough to see Julio tiptoe over and press his ear to the door to see if he could hear anyone talking on the other side. Another loud knock caused him to jump back, and then Hayley heard the sweet, welcoming sound of her mother’s voice.

  “Julio, I know you’re in there with my daughter! Open up!”

  Hayley, reignited with a faint bit of hope, tried calling to her mother, but anticipating the move, Juan squeezed the noose tighter, almost crushing her windpipe.

  More banging, this time more aggressive, more insistent.

  “Julio, open this door right now!” Sheila cried.

  Julio walked back over to where Juan was in the final throes of asphyxiating Hayley. He kept one eye on the door but whispered, “She’ll give up and go away soon enough . . .”

  Suddenly, without warning, Hayley heard a hissing sound and a man screaming. The noose around her neck loosened and she was able to pull it away from her neck. She twisted her head around to see Jane, armed with a can of DevaCurl Flexible Hold Hairspray, her finger pressed firmly down on the nozzle, shooting it directly into Juan’s eyes. She had come out of nowhere and surprised the two men. Juan fell back against the mirror, covering his eyes with his hands.

  Julio was so stunned he didn’t move at first.

  Hayley seized the opportunity and grabbed the sides of the dryer chair with her free hands and drove her knee up into his groin. It knocked the air out of him and he doubled over in pain.

  Then Celeste appeared with a curling iron and began violently whacking Julio on the head with it. Hayley couldn’t believe her eyes. Liddy’s prissy, socialite mother was screaming like a wild animal, thrusting the curling iron to and fro like she was a Game of Thrones warrior.

  With Juan blinded and moaning from the chemicals in his eyes and Julio on his knees covering his head to protect himself from Celeste’s relentless, vicious attack, Hayley felt someone behind her unbuckling the belt that was keeping her tied to the dryer chair, and she was finally freed. It was Jane. “Go let your mother in, I’ll handle this one!”

  She was referring to Juan, who had just lowered his hands to reveal the burning red skin around his eyes. He had just enough time to look around and see that the cavalry here to rescue Hayley were two elderly women, when Jane grabbed some cutting shears off the counter and wedged the sharp tips up underneath his Adam’s apple, ready to draw blood. “One move, and I’ll cut you a new smile!”

  Hayley jumped to her feet, ran to the door, and unlocked it to let her mother inside. Sheila grabbed her in a hug and began to cry. “Oh, honey, I was so worried about you!”

  A police car came roaring up the street, sirens blaring, and seconds later Sergio and Officer Donnie barged into the salon, but stopped short at the sight of Julio writhing on the floor as Celeste stood over him, ready to strike again with the curling iron. Juan stood up against the mirror, hands in the air, as Jane kept the shears pointed at his neck.

  Sergio and Donnie exchanged astonished looks before taking the two men into custody.

  Hayley turned to her mother. “I don’t understand. How did you know?”

  “A mother always knows,” Sheila said matter-of-factly. “I already suspected Julio was behind all this, which is why he kicked me out of his shop. When you called and told me you were on your way to the salon, well, I had a bad feeling, call it a mother’s intuition, and so I called the girls and told them to meet me over here, and then I texted Sergio and said we might need backup.”

  “But how did Jane and Celeste—?”

  “We took a chance that Juan hadn’t fixed the broken lock on the back window that Julio mentioned when we were last here getting our hair done. The plan was for me to keep them d
istracted by pounding on the door while Jane and Celeste snuck around back and climbed through the window.”

  Hayley stared at her mother, impressed. “You’re like a post-menopausal Navy SEAL team.”

  “You could have just left it at Navy SEAL team, dear.”

  “Sorry.”

  Chapter 41

  As hard as she tried, Hayley couldn’t stop herself from crying. The tears rolled down her cheeks and she tried wiping them away with the palms of her hands, but they just kept coming.

  Sheila, who stood in the kitchen with her and a large suitcase, pressed a hand to her heart, touched by the sight of her daughter overcome with such genuine emotion. “Oh, Hayley, don’t despair. I’ll be back to visit again, I promise. Just not in the winter. My body is no longer equipped to deal with the cold weather.”

  “I’m just going to miss you so much . . .”

  Sheila threw out her arms and grabbed Hayley, squeezing her tightly. “And you and Bruce are welcome anytime to come down and stay with me in Florida.”

  Hayley sniffed, trying desperately to get herself under control, but she just couldn’t.

  Sheila gently patted Hayley on the back. “There, there, I had no idea you’d be this sad to see me leave.”

  Hayley nodded, not having the heart to tell her mother that she was actually ecstatic over the fact that her mother was finally leaving. No, her grief and sorrow, her endless stream of tears, actually had nothing to do with her mother’s departure. But she was not about to admit it, especially with her mother so close to finally walking out the door after three long weeks.