Death of a Domestic Diva

by Sharon Short

  “Where is Paige?” I asked.

  Billy shook his head. “I can’t tell you that right now.”

  “You don’t trust me,” I said, while thinking, oh, Billy, are you trusting the right people? The Cruezes’ story was moving . . . if it was true. And I knew Paige had broken into my bedroom, lied about the mud stain . . .

  “I trust you—we trust you—enough to ask you to take this letter to her.”

  “I don’t understand how a letter from Paige to Tyra will help these two or their daughter . . .”

  “Let’s just say . . . I got to know Paige out at the Red Horse. By then, I’d already met Aguila and Ramon and learned about their and Selena’s situation. After going a little . . . nuts . . . with that T-shirt effigy in Paradise, I decided I should try to help these people. But I couldn’t come up with anything, until I met Paige. When I found out who she was, I let her have it with what I think of her boss’s labor practices.” Billy glanced at Ramon and Aguila. “She knew the allegations, of course. She was defensive at first. But when she learned more about the truth from Ramon and Aguila, and about Selena, she came up with a plan on her own that can help out Selena. Cover her medical care . . . and take care of any, ah, legal issues there might be with Ramon and Aguila going back home to their daughter.”

  Aguila muttered something, crossed herself.

  “She says,” Rosa said, “that America is a land of great opportunity. She still thinks so, even though their experience with Tyra Grimes was not good. She hopes that someday, she and Ramon and Selena can come back. But for now, she wants to go home to her daughter, and help her get the right medical care.”

  I looked at the envelope, still in Ramon’s shaking hand, still thrust at me. I could guess what Paige was telling Tyra. Paige probably had evidence—or could testify against Tyra—for her labor practices. But wouldn’t, if Tyra would contribute money and pull strings to get help for Selena, Aguila, and Ramon.

  I didn’t take the envelope yet. “Blackmail?”

  Billy crossed his arms, looked at me steadily with that new, serious, deep gaze of his. “If you want to call it that. I call it Selena’s best hope. If you want to help her—help these people—all you have to do is take the envelope to Tyra. Paige’s letter points out to Tyra why it’s in her best interest to help this family.”

  I’d come out here, wanting to find answers. Right and wrong should be easy to tell apart, shouldn’t they? That’s what the law is for, isn’t it—making it easy to know how to act right? That’s why I’d always admired Chief Hilbrink.

  But at that moment, in Rosa’s little house, it all seemed pretty muddled up. Blackmailing’s wrong. But so is forcing people to work against their will. Stealing is wrong, and breaking immigration laws is wrong. Certainly murdering is wrong—and I couldn’t be sure that Billy wasn’t trusting the wrong people, something that had gotten him into trouble in the past—and that in the heat of a confrontation Tyra was hiding, the Cruezes and/or Paige hadn’t been involved in Lewis’s murder.

  Still, it was also wrong that this couple had been taken in by false promises of good, legal work, and ended up separated from their daughter, who was now ill.

  So I did the only right thing I could think of to do.

  I took the envelope.

  13

  So that’s how I ended up once again driving down a country road with a letter to Tyra Grimes in my passenger seat.

  Of course, the first letter had been from me. This letter was from Paige, and she was relying on me to get it to Tyra.

  Well, truth be told, lots of people were relying on me to get it to Tyra. So this time, I drove extra carefully and slowly. I surely didn’t need Chief Worthy stopping me this time around, seeing the envelope on my seat—clearly labeled “To: Tyra, From: Paige”—and asking me a lot of questions.

  Billy had decided to stay with Rosa, Aguila, and Ramon. So I was alone with my thoughts about this latest development and my worries about Tyra’s big announcement coming up at Stillwater in just a few days, a date that hung out in the near future like a big old stain of doom.

  When I got back to Paradise, all the television vans and strange cars were still clogging the streets. Tyra wasn’t anywhere to be found. I went up to my apartment and carefully put the letter in my sock drawer.

  Then I went back down to my laundromat and started cleaning up the mess.

  Sometime that night, I heard Tyra, coming down the little hallway, singing, “Don’t cry for me, Argentina,” in the same warbling voice she’d used to sing show tunes when she’d arrived only a few days before. Only a whole lifetime before.

  I found her in the hallway as she was letting herself into Billy’s old apartment and pushed the envelope at her.

  She took it and stared at it. She seemed to be having trouble focusing. I wanted to say, “Just where have you been, young lady?” I’d been worried about her.

  Instead I said, “Tyra, all I know is I’m supposed to give you this. This envelope holds information that is a matter of life and death.”

  Tyra sucked in her breath at that and seemed finally to focus. Then she went on in to Billy’s old apartment, giving me a little wave as she shut the door.

  The next day, I kept busy, getting my laundromat straightened up—and then some, scrubbing the floors and all of the folding tables and the inside of the washers and dryers, even the lint traps. I worked on laundry for my customers who I knew would have normally have come in, picking up their loads, taking the clothes in, washing them for free, even doing a little ironing on a few pieces, like Mrs. Beavy’s blouses, which always seemed to me just a little bit wrinkled. I figured it was the least I could do, considering that my laundromat was closed.

  I also tried getting ahold of Winnie, without success. I talked once to Owen on the phone, but he seemed really distracted and distant. And my scalp itched. I tried every ointment I could think of—hair conditioner. Baby oil. Vaseline. It still itched. I even called Cherry and told her about my hair, but she just sniffed and said it wasn’t her fault if I couldn’t take care of my own hair, and that she did complimentary hairdos only for stars, which now that I wasn’t going to be on the Tyra Grimes show after all, I didn’t qualify for, so she’d be sending me a bill. Word had gotten around town that Tyra didn’t plan to have me on her show, that she was really in town because of her mysterious press conference at Stillwater.

  And I watched, from a distance, Tyra’s comings and goings. She went to lunch at Mayor Cornelia’s house, and went out, riding up to Masonville, with various members of the media.

  I called Stillwater and talked to Don just to make sure none of the reporters were being a nuisance. He said some of them had come over and tried to talk with him and a few of the residents, but now they had the front gate—usually left open—locked at all times, so the residents weren’t being bothered too much. Every time I talked with him, he was eager to end the conversation.

  I went over to Sandy’s Restaurant for lunch, for the meat loaf stack special (gravy on top of onions on top of cheese on top of meat loaf on top of mashed potatoes on top of gravy) and a slice of cherry pie à la mode, thinking a little comfort food would be, well, comforting, but I can’t say I really enjoyed it. Sandy served me the food, but shortchanged me on both gravy and ice cream. The regulars there looked away when I came in and pretended they didn’t hear me say “hello.”

  Henry Romar from the Paradise Advertiser-Gazette came in and asked everyone—except me—what they thought of all the reporters being in town. Bill Tiley said he didn’t like all those outsiders coming in, taking up parking space. Sarah Goodsdale had seen a few of them littering and one even spitting on the sidewalk. And Micky Longensprat had overheard a few reporters talking about what a dinky little town Paradise is, and why on earth would someone like Tyra want to come here for whatever announcement she had to make?

  That pretty much summed up my position in Paradise now. I’d gotten the town the attention it supposedly wanted. But now that
it had it, the town didn’t really like the price of fame.

  So I slunk on back to my laundromat, kept on cleaning and washing, even cleaning up the stockroom.

  Sounds like I was really busy, doesn’t it?

  But truth be told, I was really waiting.

  You see, Tyra’s upcoming announcement felt like a big fat dark storm waiting to break wide open and suck up all of us—Owen, Winnie, and Elroy; Tyra, Paige, and Billy; Vivian, Verbenia, and Guy; Rosa, Aguila, and Ramon; even my customers and me and everyone in town—and spin us around until we were dizzy and confused, then spit us out back to earth.

  I was waiting for the storm to hit. But there were no provisions to take in, no way to prepare to protect the people I knew and loved. So I just waited, hoping I was wrong, hoping it wouldn’t come at all.

  But of course it would. It had to.

  And when the storm finally did break, I didn’t even recognize it as such.

  After all, it was just Winnie calling me that Thursday evening, an hour or so before Lewis’s viewing.

  I was in my bedroom, digging through my dresser, trying to find something proper for going to a viewing. The last one I’d gone to had been my Aunt Clara’s, but the black dress with the frilly collar and sash tie and drawstring cuffs that I’d worn at 19 didn’t seem like a good idea now, at 29. Even if I still owned it, which I didn’t. Or even if I could still wear a size 8, which I couldn’t. So far, I’d identified fresh panties (pink), bra (white), and two options in socks—white, or black, depending on what else I could find that might work to wear to Lewis’s viewing.

  Then the phone rang, and I answered it, suddenly hoping against hope it was Owen. Then I could ask him just where the heck he’d been these past few days.

  Before I could even finish saying hello, though, I heard these words: “Josie, you’re just not going to believe what I’ve found out.”

  It wasn’t Owen, and I suddenly knew I wouldn’t have yelled at him if it had been. I’d have asked him to come over. I stuck the phone receiver up to my ear, holding it in place with my shoulder, then kept digging through my clothes.

  “Winnie, what’s going on? I’ve been calling and calling your place, but every time I get a hold of Tom and he says you’re out. I think he misses you. He sounds grumpy.”

  “I’ve gone to earth.” Winnie whispered the words. “I have a lot to tell you—but can’t tell you right now. I’m at a public phone now, at the McDonald’s in Masonville, but you never know who might be a reporter and overhear.”

  I stopped pawing through clothes, going rigid for a moment like a statue: stunned-girl-with-T-shirts-improper-for-viewings-of-dead-people.

  Then I unfroze, dropped the T-shirts, sat down on the edge of my bed. “Uh, Winnie, are you okay?”

  “Oh, yes,” she whispered. “Quite fine. But what I’ve found out about you-know-who is going to shock you.”

  “You mean, about Tyra?”

  “Shhh!” Somehow, Winnie practically shouted that. Then she whispered, “I just said, I can’t tell you right now. I just want to make sure you’ll be at Lewis’s viewing.”

  “You’ll tell me there?”

  “Well, no. We’ll either try to sneak away—or maybe I’ll slip you instructions on where to meet me later. We probably shouldn’t be seen together. So if I act like I’m snubbing you, don’t take it personally.”

  I didn’t think I could take much more of anything at all. Everyone and everything I knew had gone wacky. My hometown. My cousin Billy (although it seemed almost an improvement on him). Now Winnie, the most stable person I’ve ever known.

  I’d just asked her to do a little simple background research on Tyra Grimes, and suddenly she was acting like a spy out of some action movie. Winnie—Winnie Porter. Who takes her slushees frozen, not stirred. Uh huh.

  “Look, Winnie, I’m not even sure I’m going to go to Lewis’s viewing tonight,” I said. “So maybe you could tell me—”

  “What? Why wouldn’t you go?”

  “Let’s see. I wasn’t all that close to the man.” The image of him lifting little Haley free of the sidewalk crowd arose again, and I felt sad that I hadn’t ever gone beyond his gruff front to get to know him better. “Plus, the way this town’s gone nuts since Tyra’s gotten here, I’m almost afraid to go. Hiding seems a better idea. Plus, I’m not sure what to wear. And frankly, my head is a mess. My scalp keeps itching and the only thing that makes it feel even a bit better is Vaseline, so now my hair looks gross and greasy.”

  “Oh, Josie,” Winnie said, sounding like her old self again, which cheered me. “Just wear something you’d wear to church, only make sure it’s dark. And wear a hat, a black one.”

  I was about to thank her for the advice—maybe get her to chat some more while she was back to her normal self, but suddenly she was whispering again. “Gotta go. That man was looking at me funny. Can’t be too sure.”

  With that, Winnie hung up.

  I ended up wearing black pants, a gray knit shirt that was finer than my usual T-shirts, black socks, and black shoes.

  My major problem, though, was the hat. The only hats I have are baseball caps—not really a proper topper for funeral home viewings. But the other choices were to go with my hair all greasy from the Vaseline I had put in, or to wash my hair out and end up scratching my scalp the whole time. Neither of those choices seemed so great, either. So I was pretty pleased when I dug out a black baseball cap. After all, black formalizes everything, from jeans to baseball caps, right?

  The problem with this one, though, was it had—in white lettering—an advertisement for Elroy’s Gas Station and Towing. I didn’t think that would be too proper to wear to Lewis’s viewing, seeing as how Elroy was in jail as Lewis’s murderer. So, I grabbed a black marker from the junk drawer and colored in both the lettering and the little picture of a tow truck.

  I studied my handiwork and was pleased. Unless you squinted at it hard, you couldn’t see that much difference in the black I’d colored in, and the black of the cap’s cloth. So, I combed up my grease-laden hair into a top knot, and put on the cap, at a kind of jaunty side angle. (My days of hanging around Tyra Grimes hadn’t been completely in vain.)

  Then I stepped out of my apartment and locked up. I went over to Billy’s old apartment, gave a light tap, waited, then put my ear to the door. No sounds. Tyra wasn’t around.

  I stepped outside on the metal landing, started to lock up, but then had to clap my cap down on my head because of a sudden, strong wind that pushed me into the railing of the little landing at the top of the exterior stair and nearly knocked me over. With one hand I held my cap in place, and with the other I hung onto the railing. Then the wind died down a little. I peered up at the sky—it was strange looking. Purplish gray, angry-looking clouds . . . but gold rimmed, as if right behind them, the sun shone, bright and pure. The stinging, hard wind—but no rain.

  Now, I’m pretty sure—as I told Chief Worthy later—that I finished locking up the exterior door to the second floor over my laundromat. That I didn’t get so distracted by the weird weather—and almost losing my cap—that I forgot to do that. Considering what happened at my laundromat when I’d left it unlocked a few days before, I’m real sure—pretty sure, anyway—I wouldn’t let a little thing like a gust of wind distract me from finishing locking up the entrance to the apartments.

  But I’ll never really know for sure. I’ll always worry that maybe the wind did distract me enough that I left the door unlocked. That maybe—if I did leave the door unlocked—I made it just a little too easy for the second murder to happen.

  There were lots of people at the funeral home. We viewed Lewis. We mingled. We tried to say nice things about Lewis, and our efforts left us staring at the floor. Truth be told, he’d been good at burying dead people, but he hadn’t been much good at relating to live ones. And now that he was dead, we weren’t real sure what to say about him that wouldn’t sound, well, snippy.

  I wanted to tell the story of how
he’d rescued Becky’s little girl from the crowd that had protested my cousin Billy’s protest of Tyra, but it didn’t seem too appropriate. And no one was doing much more than giving me a polite nod and a brush-off anyway. I was pretty sure it wasn’t because of my hat.

  I didn’t see anyone there that I thought might still talk to me. Not Owen or Winnie. Not Paige or Billy, or even Tyra.

  I did see Vivian there, kind of standing off by herself. She gave me a brief nod. I nodded back, but didn’t go over. She seemed to want to be alone.

  I went on up to the casket by myself. A card on an easel identified the casket as being model number 891, from the top of the Ultra line, the best Rothchild’s has to offer, a little marketing touch from Lewis’s wife, I guessed, as she now owned the business—a touch I was sure Lewis would have appreciated.

  I looked in at Lewis. His makeup job was fine, his suit new and expensive looking. He’d have been proud of that, too. I thought about taking off my baseball cap—ever so briefly—to show my respect, but I feared I’d drip Vaseline on him.

  So I kept my cap on, and in my head I thought of a few words that seemed appropriate and close enough to a prayer for me: Good-bye, Lewis. And good luck.

  I thought that last part because I figure there’s no telling what happens after a spirit’s gone on from its earthly carrier (as I’d heard Lewis refer to the human body), and I figured Lewis could use the luck, wherever or however his spirit ended up.

  Finally, the pastor of the United Methodist Church started a brief service. (There’d be another one, graveside, at the burial the next day.) Members from the Exalted Order of the Moose Lodge #16618, of which Lewis had been a member, conducted a brief ceremony, which consisted of each guy reciting a few lines from a poem—which was mostly about the beauty of all of God’s creatures, particularly moose—then passing along moose antlers to the next guy. The final guy solemnly placed the moose rack at the foot of Lewis’s casket, then stated that it was up to Hazel whether she wanted to have the antlers buried with Lewis, or to keep them for display in her home. I was sitting near the back, so I didn’t hear if she said one way or the other. All in all, though, I think Lewis would have been touched by the program.