I just nodded. I’ve never been comfortable with confrontations, especially with my ex.
“Then we’ll call the Hot Air King,” she continued.
“Won’t Matthew Oliver be a little busy burying Dizzie?” I reasoned.
“He’s an Oliver. Money means more to them than grief.” Bevin pulled off her smock and tossed it over the tall stool she sat on when she painted. “Let’s do it right now before you wimp out.”
* * *
Lucinda Maynard’s office décor reminded me of a 1930s cartoon. Black, gray, and white appeared to be her favorite color scheme—gray carpeting, a black desk, and white trim around the door and windows. On her gray walls hung lovely Ansel Adams lithographs, which were outrageously expensive and resplendent in—what else?—black, white, and gray. She even dressed in her preferred shades—a severely cut black suit with a light gray shirt and gray heels. Her blunt-cut hair was, of course, black. She wore black-framed glasses to match.
“Have a seat, ladies,” Lucinda said, motioning to the strange little ultra-modern sofa in front of her desk.
We sat down and Bevin took the lead. “Colleen needs her central air fixed and she’s absolutely broke. Neil was supposed to pay for it, but it never happened. What are we going to do for her?”
“We?” Lucinda asked. She used her index finger to push her glasses further up her hawk-like nose.
“We,” Bevin said firmly, secure in the knowledge that her previous divorces had paid for several of those lithographs up on the wall. Her current divorce from Franklin Thompson would most likely finance Lucinda’s next BMW—gray, naturally, with black interior. “Come on, Lucinda. This girl is wallowing in poverty while her husband gets an ocean view from his condo up in the clouds. She and the kids are wilting away inside her house—which generally hits a nice, comfy eighty-nine degrees by midday.”
“Okay. I get it. I can’t take the heat, either. Tell you what. Give me two days. Then call someone to come over and fix the air. I’ll get the money for you.”
“How?” I asked.
“I’ll put in a call to Neil’s lawyer. Neil’s responsible for this under the terms of your divorce. Good old Lucas Harmon will have to force Neil to part with some of his stash.”
“Again. How?” The only thing my ex-husband was better at than hiding his cash was holding on to it.
“I know Lucas.”
Big deal. Everyone in the county knew Neil’s lawyer. Lucas Harmon wasn’t as scary as Lucinda, but he was a scoundrel and was very successful. His clothes cost a small fortune. The guy always looked tan, even in the dead of winter. He lived, conveniently, in the same waterfront condo complex as Neil and his bimbo business partner, Theda Oates. It was a wealthy building. The Town Crier’s executive editor, Ken Rhodes, also lived there, though how a newspaper editor could afford such extravagant digs, I couldn’t say. Apparently the rich had their secrets, and the mysterious Ken Rhodes had more than his share of them.
3
It was too hot inside my house for coffee, but I made a pot anyway. The kids were still at school, poor things, in classrooms that I felt certain were nearly as sweltering as conditions were at home. Lucinda Maynard had assured me my air conditioner would be fixed, so at least we were due to get some relief.
“I guess you didn’t get your hair straightened after all,” my mother said, standing outside my patio door. She had come through the backyard shortcut that linked our two properties and slid the screen open.
“Obviously, Ma. I feel like Shirley Temple. I guess you heard about Dizzie.” I poured two cups of coffee and looked around for something to eat. There was fruit in a bowl on the kitchen table, but I wasn’t that desperate yet.
“Everyone heard about Dizzie. It’s a shame. She was awfully young. Screwy, but funny. I guess they’ll close down the salon now. Without Dizzie, it really isn’t worth going there. Kate said you tried CPR.”
“What little CPR I could remember. What else did Kate say?” I asked.
“Just that Dizzie died.”
“Did she mention the circumstances?”
My mother nodded and took a sip of coffee. “Your sister told me a little about it. She said Ron was interested in the pictures she took on her cell phone, particularly the water on the floor and on the chair next to the one you girls found Dizzie kneeling on.”
At the time, I didn’t notice the water on the chair, but I remembered slipping on the wet floor. If Dizzie had hit her head and fell headfirst into the filled sink, some of the water could have splashed out onto the tiles. I tried to recall if Dizzie’s arms were wet, too. I was certain her arms were outside the sink—not that it mattered. She could have splashed her arms when her head hit the water.
“Mom, did Kate say if anything else was wet in the shop?”
“As a matter of fact, she said the cabinets were wet and there were big puddles beneath the sinks. She got a shot of the cabinets before you yanked Dizzie out of the water.”
I had a feeling the entire area where Dizzie drowned, not to mention Dizzie herself, was saturated. I thought that would probably be the result of Dizzie thrashing about—which meant Dizzie was most likely fighting off an assailant and did not have a stroke or an accident.
“I think she was killed, Mom,” I said.
“I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised,” my mother agreed.
Ordinarily, my mother’s comment would have been absurd. Tranquil Harbor wasn’t exactly the crime capital of the East Coast, yet lately things had gotten a little funky in our small New Jersey shore community. A murder wasn’t exactly out of the question.
“Well, expect someone else to get killed if Lucinda Maynard can’t get Neil to cough up the money to fix the air unit,” I said. “I can’t tell you what it’s like sleeping upstairs with hot air coming out of the vents.”
“Your dad and I can lend you the money to get it fixed,” my mother offered.
“Thanks anyway, but I already owe you for the car. I’m not taking another dime from you and Pop. Besides, I have the money. Neil’s supposed to be footing the bill for repairs for the next two years. It was part of the settlement.”
We heard the front door open and a loud thump from a heavy backpack hitting the floor. I knew it was Sara right away from the mad-at-the-world sigh she emitted.
“We’re in here,” I called to my sixteen-year-old daughter, the older of my two children.
Sara came into the kitchen and did what she generally did when she was hot and annoyed about it. My petite, blond-haired, blue-eyed daughter opened the freezer door and stuck her head inside.
“Don’t I get kiss?” my mother asked. “Not even a hello?”
Sara closed the door and leaned down to give her tiny grandmother a kiss on the top of her head. I didn’t expect a warm greeting, and I certainly didn’t get one. She had been rather sullen since her father moved out, and for some reason, I bore the brunt of her displeasure.
“Your hair’s still curly,” she said, patting her own pretty, mostly straight mane. “I thought you said you were getting it straightened.”
“Yeah, well …”
Bobby, my younger child, burst into the house, full of energy.
“Hi, Grandma! Hi, Mom! I’m starving!” He opened the refrigerator door and grabbed a bottle of water. “Are there any Twinkies left? Pretzels? Anything?”
“Twinkies are in the cabinet,” I told him. “Save one for me.”
“Okay.”
Sara pulled out her cell phone and went into the den. I knew the texting session was about to begin. Bobby unwrapped two Twinkies and gobbled them down—a child after my own heart. I hoped the snack would be enough to hold him until supper.
“Hey! Mom!” Sara called out, running back into the kitchen. “I just got this weird text from Jessie. Did you hear about Dizzie? Is that why your hair didn’t get done?”
I nodded.
“Oh my God! You found the body, didn’t you? You’re getting so cool! I can’t believe it!”
“Aunt Kate was with me,” I told her, not wanting claim the cool title all for myself. “We both found Dizzie. I’ll be keeping these curls for a while yet.”
Sara laughed and went back into the den with her phone to spread the word.
Bobby grabbed another Twinkie from the box. “I like your curls,” was his only comment before running upstairs to his bedroom. The kid was fast becoming my favorite child.
My mother turned to me. “Are you working tonight?”
“I have to write up the Dizzie thing, but I should be able to crank that out pretty fast if Kate can email me the pictures she took at the salon. I figure—oh, she can’t! She gave her phone to Ron Haver!”
“Give him a call. Meanwhile, let the kids eat over at my house tonight. I thought I’d grill some hot dogs and burgers …”
Hot dogs sounded wonderful. It was about the only thing my mother made that she didn’t saturate with garlic. “Save a couple for me, okay? Incinerate them, Mom. I like them burned to a crisp.”
I thought about calling Kate to get Ron’s number, but she no longer had her cell phone, and I was too lazy to look up her store number online. I had the perfect excuse to call Ken Rhodes.
“I’m not your personal phone book,” he said. He gave me the number and asked, “Anything else? List of local pizza delivery joints? Movie listings for this evening?”
That was exactly the kind of remark that made me think he found me to be nothing more than a necessary annoyance. I stuck my tongue out at the phone and then said in my most syrupy voice, “No, thank you, that will do for now. Thank you so much for your time.”
Little good the number did me, anyway. Ron refused to send the pictures, claiming they were evidence.
I would just have to rely on my memory of the morning’s events to flesh out my column. Unfortunately, even though I was convinced Dizzie’s death was a result of foul play, I couldn’t use even a small portion of my theory in my column. I concentrated on just the facts and would let my readers draw their own conclusions.
I wrote the entire article, saved it, printed it out, and then tried to send it to Ken Rhodes. As usual, I couldn’t locate the file to attach to the email. I cursed under my breath at my inept Windows 8 computer skills and shut down the computer. I would have to bring the hard copy up to the office in the morning.
With my work done for the day, I went through the backyard shortcut to my parents’ house to get my burnt dinner.
4
The medical examiner released Dizzie’s body three days later. As I expected, he determined that Dizzie Oliver had water in her lungs and had met her untimely death by drowning. She hadn’t struck her head and knocked herself unconscious, either. Dizzie did not have a heart attack, nor a stroke, nor an underlying illness or a medical reason that would cause her to accidently land face first in a sink that had been conveniently filled to the top with water.
I called Ron Haver at his office in New Brunswick to confirm what Margaret Allen had told me about the medical examiner’s report.
“So it’s definite. Dizzie was murdered,” I said. “I can use the word homicide in my column.”
“That’s the conclusion,” he muttered, sounding a little reluctant to share the information. “Am I being quoted here?”
I thought a little tact was in order to get more information in the future. “Is that okay with you, Ron? May I quote you for my next column?”
“On this,” he said firmly. “Only this.”
“I don’t speculate,” I said.
I heard a sarcastic laugh. “Yeah. Right. You don’t speculate. Just the facts.”
“Were there any marks around Dizzie’s neck?” I asked.
“Around her neck?”
I was tired of pussyfooting around it. “Did someone grab her by the neck and hold her under, or just her head, or what? Were there marks on her throat? The medical examiner must have a theory.”
“I guess he does,” Ron admitted. “Why don’t you call him?”
“Maybe I will,” I said, though we both knew I wouldn’t. The medical examiner didn’t know me from Adam, and I wasn’t writing for one of the big time papers, only the Town Crier, a much smaller blip in New Jersey journalism. I decided to take a different tactic. “By the way, my sister wants her phone back.”
“I’ve already returned your sister’s cell phone. If you’re thinking those pictures she snapped inside the salon are still on it, you’re in for a major disappointment. We’ve downloaded them and erased them from her phone.”
I let out a huge sigh of resignation. I could see I wouldn’t be getting anywhere with Ron Haver, so I politely thanked him and hung up. My next column would be due in a few days. I thought I could probably get plenty of mileage from the information I already had, but, as Ron pointed out, much of the story would be mere speculation.
With poor Dizzie’s body finally released for burial, I checked the websites of the four local funeral parlors for her wake. I learned it would take place in town the following day, Wednesday, at McGerrity’s Funeral Home. There would only be one day of viewing. I called Kate’s cell phone and begged her to come with me.
“I’m here with Mom and Dad,” she whispered. “I’ll come, of course, but …”
There was mumbling in the background. I checked the time. I hadn’t realized it was so late in the day. Kate stopped off at our parents’ house on the way home from work. That meant Ron Haver had stayed at his office later than usual, and that possibly something big was going on. I wondered if it was related to Dizzie Oliver.
“Kate?” I asked.
“Yeah,” she said. “I’m here. I’ll go with you tomorrow night. Ahhh, be prepared—Mom said she’s coming, too …”
* * *
I had adored my mother since I was a small child—but Stella Fleming could, at times, be somewhat overbearing. Most other times, she was a dictator. Her favorite saying was I told you so. Coming in for a close second was This isn’t a democracy, it’s a matriarchy!
Kate and I picked up the matriarch in the Sentra. From the moment my mother stepped into the car, I knew we were in for an extraordinary night.
“I still don’t understand why you wanted to come,” I said when my mother climbed into the back seat.
“I’m going to pay my respects to the woman who saved my hair from at least a few coloring mishaps,” she sniffed.
That was true. I recalled one time, just before Dizzie French became Dizzie Oliver, when my mother had bleached her own hair a fetchingly light blond shade—only to have it turn completely green after she jumped into Old Lady Testino’s ancient in-ground, kidney-shaped swimming pool. The chlorine was to blame, due to Mrs. Testino’s paranoid diligence at keeping the water algae-free.
“You sure had plenty of those,” Kate agreed. “I can remember at least three separate times when your head looked like the Jolly Green Giant.”
“I guess she saved us all at one time or another,” I said. “But don’t you usually hate going to wakes and funerals?”
“I’m going to keep my eye on you,” my mother told me.
Kate laughed.
“What do you think I’m going to do?” I asked my mother.
“I don’t know, but I’m making sure that poor girl stays in her coffin the whole time you’re there!”
My mother was a mind reader, and ever since I was six years old, she had been especially attuned to mine. She knew what I wanted to do.
“I just want to take a peek at Dizzie to make sure she wasn’t strangled, is all!”
It’s not that I didn’t believe Ron Haver when he told me about the medical examiner’s conclusions. I just found it hard to believe someone could hold a head down in a sink to kill her. It seemed odd, like one of those strange stories about old people falling headfirst into toilets and drowning.
We arrived at McGerrity’s a short time after the 7:00 p.m. viewing began. The place was packed like an all-you-can-eat buffet. A neat sign on a tripod in the lobby direc
ted mourners to the correct room for the viewing.
“Dizzie Oliver,” my mother said, pointing to the largest room in the funeral home. She made a grab for Kate’s hand and led her, child-like, inside.
There were rows and rows of folding chairs that were mostly occupied. Up in front, the McGerrity’s staff had placed a beautifully upholstered settee facing the casket, presumably for the immediate family. I recognized Matthew Oliver right away from his cheesy cable TV commercials. Beside him sat an older couple—a tall, graying man who looked to be in his late fifties and a woman with dark hair who was the spitting image of Dizzie herself, had Dizzie been thirty years older and fifty pounds heavier. I assumed they were Mr. and Mrs. French, Dizzie’s parents. On Matthew’s right, Derek and Elaine Oliver sat in metal folding chairs—a plump, prosperous, bored-looking older couple. I remembered how Dizzie complained about her in-laws, Derek Oliver in particular, calling him the cheapest man on the planet. She often told her hair clients it was a trait the old man passed on to his son.
In a folding chair directly behind the immediate family was a stylish woman with a blond ponytail, dressed in a sleeveless black shift that showed off her long, toned arms. The few pieces of jewelry she wore were gold and expensive looking. She looked familiar, but I felt sure I had never met her. It was her features that struck me more than anything—high cheekbones, too-full lips that screamed of collagen injections, and wide blue eyes—like an aging starlet who wanted to be young forever. She appeared to be a tall woman—or if not tall, she had a number of inches on Matthew Oliver, at least. Her legs were crossed and her fit, muscular calves seemed to go on forever. The man seated next to her looked like a derelict by comparison. His five o’clock shadow had stretched beyond midnight, his hair looked scruffy, and his crinkled, casual clothes were so out of place for the wake, they seemed disrespectful. The man chatted with Matthew, while the woman stared straight ahead at the casket.
Floral sprays and arrangements took up nearly every inch of space around the casket. Inside the coffin, Dizzie looked resplendent in a sedate blue gown—a color so subtle that I knew for a fact it was a garment Dizzie would never have chosen for herself, had she been able to do so.
Hide nor Hair (A Jersey Girl Cozy Mystery Book 2) Page 3