by Lila Dare
I stood there stunned. “I had no idea. His poor parents. That’s awful!” I shut up; there weren’t any words that could begin to address the McCullerses’ family tragedies.
“Yeah.” Lindsay bowed her head and I thought for a moment she might be praying, but when she slanted me a look, I realized she was waiting for me to chop off her hair.
I cut off the braid and put it aside to be mailed to Locks of Love with the others when we’d collected them. Then, I led her to the shampoo basin and washed her hair, enjoying the fragrance of our new lavender-scented shampoo as it bubbled in the sink.
By the time I’d finished giving Lindsay a jaw-length bob, the other girls were trickling in, looking around curiously. “This is way cozier than Chez Pierre out on the highway,” one of them observed, running a hand through the fern fronds dripping from a hanging basket. “I need to tell my mom about this place.”
Mom beamed and swept her off to the shampoo sink. Althea and I each hooked up with a teenager, and the three of us were busy for an hour and a half. By the end of the afternoon, we had ten braids of varying length and thicknesses to send along to Locks of Love. I’d even remembered to take photos so Rachel could use them in the yearbook.
“I’m bushed,” Althea said when the last girl left. She sat on the love seat, kicked her shoes off, and began to massage the ball of one foot.
“Let me do that for you, Althea,” Stella said. She brought over the foot basin she used for pedicures and gently submerged Althea’s feet.
Althea leaned back and closed her eyes. “Thank you, Stel. That feels right good. I don’t know what’s more tiring—being on my feet all day or listening to all that chatter. Bunch of magpies!” But she said it with a tolerant smile.
“It reminds me of when you and Alice Rose were in high school,” Mom said, plopping her combs into the container of blue germicide. “And all your friends used to come around. Maybe we should do some kind of promotion to attract a younger clientele. Maybe Rachel would have some ideas. I hope she’s doing okay.”
“Nobody’s okay ten minutes after someone they cared about dies,” Althea said testily, opening one eye. “You of all people should know that, Vi.”
“I do.” She thought for a moment, standing with a comb forgotten in her hand. “I guess I was guilty of thinking that things like this don’t hit young people as hard because youth is so resilient. But they do. Sometimes harder.”
The salon door creaked open and we all turned, surprised, to see a young man on the threshold. He was tall, with a football player’s broad shoulders and thick neck. He wore the same letter jacket he’d had on at Rothmere. Mark Crenshaw. He shifted from foot to foot, looking uncomfortable in the feminine salon, with four pairs of female eyes—five, if you count Beauty—staring at him.
“Um, is Lindsay here?” he asked. “Lindsay Tandy?”
“She left almost two hours ago,” I said. “She said something about volleyball practice.”
“That’s just it,” he said, bringing his thumb to his mouth to gnaw on the cuticle. “I was supposed to meet her after practice, but coach said she never showed. She’d never skip practice. Something’s happened to her.”
Chapter Ten
IMAGES OF A GHOSTLY FIGURE PUSHING BRADEN down the stairs and a werewolf smothering him in his hospital bed jumped into my mind. Could some deranged killer be after all the kids who were on the field trip? What if—
Mom cut into my lurid thoughts with her usual calm good sense. “You say she’s only been ‘missing’ for a couple of hours? I doubt anything’s happened to her. Maybe she had more homework than usual and skipped practice to do it, or maybe . . . was she close to Braden McCullers?”
“He was more my friend than hers,” the teen said, looking less tense than he had.
“Well, but she knew him. Maybe she just needs a little space to come to terms with his passing.”
Althea nodded in agreement. “Uh-huh. I’ll bet your gal’s holed up somewhere having a good cry.”
“You could be right,” he said, doubt and hope in his voice. “She was a real mess when we first got the news.”
“Have you checked at her house?” Stella asked, rocking back on her heels. Using a towel, she dried Althea’s feet.
“I called, but no one answered. Both her folks work. Maybe they’re home now.” He rubbed at a dark bruise that discolored his left cheek, then winced.
I could see why Alice Rose didn’t want to let my nephews play football. “You get hurt playing football,” she declared every time her husband, a second-stringer during his time at Auburn, tried to persuade her to sign six-year-old Logan up for a league.
“You’re right,” Mark said. “I’ll run over there. I’m sorry for interrupting.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Mom said to his back as he pushed through the door and pounded down the veranda steps.
“That young man is strung way too tight,” Althea observed. “If my William had fretted himself like that every time I was late or not where I was supposed to be, he’d have worried himself into an early grave and Beau Lansky wouldn’t have had the chance to murder him.”
“Now, Althea—” Mom started.
Althea had convinced herself that Georgia’s governor, Beau Lansky, with or without the help of the DuBois family, had killed her husband and his friend Carl. Their bodies had turned up in the old DuBois bank this past May, sealed into a wall, lending some credence to her obsession. Still, there was no evidence to tie Lansky to the crime, and Mom had tired of listening to her friend’s conspiracy theories.
“I’m just saying that boy needs to relax,” Althea grumbled.
Even though I agreed with her, I could see how it would be difficult to chill out when your best friend had been murdered in his hospital bed.
I said good night to Mom and Althea, who were planning to see the new Robert Downey Jr. movie, and to Stella, who was headed home to hem her daughter’s marching band uniform. “How’s it going with Darryl?” I asked Stella as we descended the veranda steps together. Beauty slunk behind us, stalking a mockingbird under the magnolia.
“One day at a time,” she said, but she sounded more happy than sad. “We’re still going to counseling; I guess we both had a lot of stuff to get out on the table.” She held her hair back against a gust of wind. “Funny how you can be married to someone for twenty years and talk all the time without saying the things that really need to be said. Or maybe we just weren’t listening. Either way, it helps that he’s got a job again.”
Darryl was a mechanic who’d been out of work for several months and he’d used his down time to have an affair. “I’m sure it does,” I said. I waved as she scooped up a frustrated Beauty and got into her car. I was about to head for my apartment when another car pulled to the curb. A white Corvette with California plates. The passenger-side window buzzed down. “Grace?”
The voice was familiar but I didn’t place it immediately. Curiosity warred with caution. I peered through the open window. Glen Spaatz leaned toward me, smiling. “Hey, I’m glad I caught you. The kids told me you were cutting their hair for free and I wanted to stop by and thank you.” He must have seen my puzzled look because he added, “I’m the senior class sponsor and I okayed the head-shaving fund-raiser.”
“Oh, well, you’re welcome,” I said. “Locks of Love is a great organization.”
“Do you have dinner plans?”
His question caught me off guard.
“Uh . . . no.”
He pushed the passenger-side door open. “Why don’t you join me? I’ve got a stack of exams to grade, but I was going to get a quick bite at The Crab Pot.”
Why not? He was attractive, single (I assumed), and I had nothing more exciting waiting at my apartment than a tuna sandwich or canned ravioli. “Okay,” I said, sliding into the low-slung seat. Leather. They must be paying teachers more than I realized. He put the car in gear and pulled smoothly away from the curb before accelerating well past the sp
eed limit.
“What’s the point of having all those horses under the hood if you don’t let ’em run?” he said, apparently picking up on my discomfort by my white-knuckled grip on the dashboard.
His mention of horses brought John Dillon to mind for a moment, but I pushed the thought aside. Glen pulled into a spot in the lot across from The Crab Pot a few minutes later and we walked into the restaurant, a cozy place with high-backed booths and décor that ran to strategically strung nets populated by plastic crabs and fish. I considered The Crab Pot a tourist haunt and rarely went there during the summer, but it was okay at this time of year. It sat on Ocean Drive and had a lovely view of the sound from the second-story deck. White caps made the sea look like a dark meringue tonight, and we opted to sit inside, out of the growing wind. A sprinkling of customers provided a background hum of conversation.
“Have you thought about evacuating?” Glen said. “I guess the storm’s supposed to hit late Wednesday.”
“If it doesn’t veer north like they usually do,” I said, opening my menu. No surprise: nearly every entrée featured crab in some form. “What about you?”
“I’ve never seen a hurricane—we don’t have them in California. I’m going to stick around to see what it’s like.” He flashed a white smile, clearly jazzed by the thought.
“No power or running water is not the stuff of high adventure,” I said prosaically, giving my order to the waitress: she-crab soup and a Caesar salad. “So you’re from California?”
“LA. Land of palm trees and movie stars, daahling. Kiss-kiss.”
“I take it Hollywood wasn’t your cup of tea?” I asked, smiling at his air kisses.
“Oh, I gave it a whirl,” he said, “but it seems I don’t have that star quality.” His grin this time combined both self-deprecation and a hint of bitterness.
“Were you in a movie?” I asked, surprised.
“Several. Infinitely forgettable.” He waved the topic away. “I got tired of doing auditions and brown-nosing casting directors and decided it was time to grow up and do something useful with my life. My degree was in biology and I heard there was a shortage of science teachers, so I picked up my teaching credential and taught for a couple of years in LA before moving out here. No wife or kids to worry about—like how I worked that in?—so I could suit myself and give Georgia a whirl. What about you? Are you living the life of your dreams?”
His question took me aback and I sipped my water, grateful that the server’s appearance with our salads gave me a chance to think. “I like my life,” I temporized, trying to think if I even had a dream. Once, it had been to marry Hank, have children, and live a life not unlike Mom and Dad’s, except for that whole Dad-dying-young thing. Now . . .
He apparently read my confusion because he said, “I’m sorry. That’s too deep a question for a first date. We should start with the basics. Ever been married? Children? Favorite color? Hobbies?” He forked up a bite of his salad.
I laughed, relieved to abandon soul-searching. “Divorced. No. Green. Singing.”
We chatted easily through the rest of the meal and I enjoyed his company, but the evening’s easy camaraderie dissipated when we pulled up behind a police car parked outside my apartment.
“What’s a copper doing on your doorstep?” Glen asked in a tight voice.
“My ex,” I said, having recognized Hank even in the near dark as he turned away from my door and tromped toward us. I got out of the car.
“I thought you’d be home, Grace,” Hank said, scanning the Corvette suspiciously. “I needed to follow up with you on the incident Halloween night. The explosion. Who’s that?”
“A teacher from the high school,” I said. I did not need a run-in with Hank to cap off my evening and I prayed Glen would have the good sense to just go. “Bye,” I encouraged him with a wave.
Glen climbed out of the car and came around to the sidewalk. He and Hank were of a similar height, but Glen was far less bulky, looking almost willowy beside Hank’s body-armored and uniformed figure. I introduced the two men and they shook hands, Hank glowering and Glen smiling easily. “Looks like the officer needs to talk to you,” Glen said. “We’ll do that nightcap another time.” And he astonished me by ignoring my outstretched hand and kissing me on the cheek, just at the corner of my mouth. Before I could recover, he was back in the car and zooming off in a way that must have had Hank itching for his radar gun.
He jotted down the car’s license number and turned to me. “What the hell—”
“Don’t start with me,” I warned him, trying to puzzle out Glen’s strange behavior. It was almost as if he were deliberately taunting Hank since neither of us had mentioned a nightcap. Why would he do that?
“Oh, good, you found Grace.” Mrs. Jones’s voice came from her veranda. “Now you can tell us what you found out. I’m dying to know.”
Turning my back on Hank, I trotted over to Mrs. Jones, who looked fully recovered from her ordeal in a plum-colored velour lounging suit, her hair frilled around her face. Hank trailed up the steps after me, saying, “I wouldn’t trust that man, if I were you, Grace. My cop instincts tell me he’s trouble.”
Your cop instincts or your jealous ex-husband instincts? I wanted to ask but didn’t since Mrs. Jones was standing there. “I can take care of myself,” I said instead.
“What man?” Mrs. Jones asked, her eyes wide. “Do you have a new young man, Grace? Was that him that just drove off? I liked that snazzy car. A pretty young thing like you should be playing the field, living it up. It’s about time you got over your divorce and moved on. Life doesn’t stand still.”
I could feel the frustration building in Hank as she spoke and I edged away from him.
“She was married to me,” Hank said, his jaw jutting forward pugnaciously.
“Well, of course she was,” Mrs. Jones said, eyeing Hank like he was a bit dim. “But you blew that all to bits with your philandering, didn’t you? Ka-boom! Just like my pumpkin.”
I bit back a giggle as Hank gobbled incoherently.
Mrs. Jones blinked at him innocently. “What did you find out about the explosion?”
Hank pulled out his notebook, either to hide behind or refresh his memory. “The lab tested some of the residue. It was aluminum and hydrogen chloride.”
“My goodness! Where would one get that, I wonder?” Mrs. Jones asked.
“There’s a toilet bowl cleaner that has it,” Hank said, clearly pleased to be able to demonstrate his knowledge. “Kids mix some of the cleaner in a container—like a plastic pop bottle—add aluminum foil, and run like crazy. If it explodes in your hand, it can blow off a few fingers. Well, you’ve seen what it did to your jack-o’-lantern.” He glanced up at the ceiling where a few pumpkin strings still clung.
“Mercy.” Mrs. Jones put a hand to her chest. “But why my jack-o’-lantern?”
“It was most likely random—kids playing pranks on Halloween,” Hank said with a wrapping-it-up air, returning his notebook to his pocket.
“Did you talk to Alonso Farber?” I asked.
“We know how to do our jobs, Grace,” Hank said huffily.
I took that to mean no and resolved to make sure Agent Dillon had the info on the pumpkin bomb. I couldn’t shake the suspicion that it had been meant as a warning to me, with Mrs. Jones an accidental victim.
I entered my empty apartment with relief, ready for a shower and an hour reading one of my favorite Georgette Heyer novels. I’d read all her Regency romances a half dozen times or more, but they were still the books I went to when I was stressed. My answering machine blinked at me and I listened to a message from Marty, feeling vaguely guilty about having been out with Glen, but it’s not like we were ever exclusive and the dinner with Glen hadn’t really been a date. The message only said, “I’m off to Phoenix and then Houston for my story. It’s heating up. Check my byline this week. I’ll catch up with you later.”
It made me sad. Not a word about missing me or about resc
heduling my trip to Washington. I reached for the phone but pulled back my hand. I wasn’t up to cheery enquiries about what he was working on when all the time I was worried that more than geographical distance separated us. Trailing to the bathroom, I remembered what Stella had said about all that goes unsaid in a relationship. Certainly with Hank I’d kept my innermost feelings to myself. Oh, we’d had it out about his affairs, but I’d never once told him how his screwing around made me feel little and worthless. Yes, it had hurt my feelings and finally dried up my love for him, but it was more than that.
I stepped into the shower and let the pounding spray wash away my unusual melancholy. I put it down to the aftereffects of Braden’s death—was it only this morning Dillon stopped by to tell me about it? Towel-drying my hair, I pulled on my UGA tee shirt and traipsed barefoot into my tiny kitchen. Glass of milk in hand, I headed for the orange and cream recliner, which didn’t match anything in the room but had cost me only fifteen dollars at a garage sale. I read Faro’s Daughter for a few minutes, but found that Ravenscar’s attitude toward Deb was depressing me instead of amusing me. My gaze fell on the box of documents from Rothmere.
I rooted through the box, looking for something with Clarissa’s handwriting. I found a slim packet of letters tied with a blue ribbon and slid one out. Bolder and slantier handwriting than Clarissa’s.
30 October 1831
My darling Clarissa,
Your most recent letter convinces me you are overwrought, my dear. I’m afraid the tragedy of your father’s untimely death has upset the balance of your mind. Your suspicions do you no more credit than they do your family. Let us be married at once, my love, so I can carry you off to my plantation and you can immerse yourself in household tasks that will distract your mind. You are too much alone at Rothmere, with no serious responsibilities to occupy you. Let us not wait out the year of your mourning, but be married quietly at once. We can discuss it further when I arrive on Saturday next.
Everlastingly yours,
Quentin