by Tegan Maher
The dress Anna Mae had told me about was breathtaking, and it would be perfect for her. There were a couple bridesmaid dresses I could see on mannequins inside the store that were gorgeous, too, and I found myself looking forward to playing dress-up with her.
One of the sort-of-joking conditions I’d put on being the maid of honor was having a say in my own dress. I’d seen too many nightmares, and even though Anna Mae had great taste, I didn’t want to leave it to chance that I’d end up wearing something that made me look like an extra from some antebellum-ball costume party. I was not a fan of hoop dresses and big hats with fat ribbons, though if it made her happy, I’d do it. Not without trying to nudge her in another direction first, though.
I smiled and continued up the sidewalk. Town was bustling. This was one of those days when I was grateful to live in a small town. Families were sitting outside the ice cream shop enjoying a cool treat. Friends enjoyed lunch under the shade of colorful umbrellas on the Grits and Grinders patio.
That made me smile because my place had been a sandwich shop when Erol had owned it. The new sandwich shop had originally provoked his protective tendencies, and he’d spent the entire first month Grits had opened constantly policing the kitchen and ranting. He’d been almost disappointed to find no serious infractions, and after another couple of weeks, he’d admitted the owner was a pro.
I’d breathed a sigh of relief because I could finally bring my lunch to the shop instead of secretly stuffing my face in the truck or at Raeann’s. I’d tried their Philly Cheesesteak the first week they’d opened and had been hooked but had not wanted to poke the bear by walking in with food from the enemy.
Before heading to the courthouse, I swung into the Clip N Curl. Especially considering Coralee had left early the night before, I knew she had to have been burning with curiosity. Also, she’d surely heard plenty of scuttlebutt and speculation, so I wanted to get her take before I headed to the courthouse. Might as well kill two birds with the same stone.
Two teenagers with rainbow hair nearly knocked me over as they spilled out the beauty salon’s front door. I got a quick vision of Coralee spilling that stuff and couldn’t imagine the mess it would have made. Shelby’d gone through a phase where she’d liked to put streaks in her hair, and that stuff had been impossible to get out of the sink. There was still a purple stain on the bathroom counter that wouldn’t come off no matter what I used.
“Phew,” I said, grinning as the door slammed shut behind me. The unique blend of the smells of acetone, hairspray, and salon-scented shampoos always made me feel both pretty and a little lightheaded.
“Hey, girl! I was hopin’ you were gonna stop in.” Coralee was sweeping up hair from around her chair while Belle, the former owner and resident ghost, hovered near the back wall, scowling.
“Hey, ladies,” I said, my attention on Belle. Her beehive was practically vibrating with outrage. “Belle, you doin’ okay? If you were alive, I’d be worried you were headin’ toward a coronary.”
Coralee scowled and flapped her hand toward her mentor. “Ignore her. Her knickers are in a wad because of my last two hairdos.”
Belle’s expression turned thunderous. “Those weren’t hairdos. They were atrocities. This is a beauty parlor, not a pet store. When those girls left here, they shoulda looked like beautiful young ladies, not tropical fish!”
Coralee rolled her eyes as she dumped the dustpan full of hair in the trash can. “They felt pretty, so I did my job. Whether or not a dusty old broad stuck in the sixties liked it don’t mean beans. Besides, it wasn’t even permanent. They’ll be back to blonde in a couple weeks.”
“Anyhoooo,” I said before blood was drawn. “I brought muffins!”
Coralee’s eyes lit. “Please say they’re cranberry orange!”
“They’re cranberry orange,” I replied, smiling as I handed her the bag.
Marge, the matronly woman who owned the local hardware store with her husband, waved from her spot under the dryer. She was a regular at the shop, and I was glad she was there. She saw a lot of folks and had a good handle on what was going on at any given time. I waved back as the dryer kicked off.
“Hey, Noelle!” she said, her peach-stained lips turning up into a smile. “Long time no see. How you been, sugar? You and Hunter set a date yet?”
“Not yet,” I said, shaking my head. “Let’s get Anna Mae married off first, then we’ll see where I’m at on that.”
“Oh, of course, of course,” she said, flapping her hand. “No pressure. I mean, you still have a few good years of childbearin’ left. No rush if you don’t want a big brood.”
I took a deep breath and blew it out through my nose. The thing with the women in a Southern beauty shop was that they’d mastered the art of weaponizing honey-coated words. Marge was a good person who didn’t mean any harm, but she was as stuck in the past as Belle was.
“I’ll keep that in mind,” I said, taking a seat in Coralee’s chair. “Have you heard anything about Barbie that might help Hunter?” I asked.
“Now that you mention it,” she said, leaning the broom up against the wall, “I might have. It seems Miranda wasn’t the only run-in Barbie had that day.”
“Do tell,” I said, leaning forward so that my elbows rested on my knees.
After grabbing a Diet Coke from the mini-fridge, Coralee took a seat at Alyse’s nail table and unwrapped her muffin. “Nope. Seems she and her boyfriend had a tussle at her office Friday. Janey Carter went down to pay her rent and said he stormed out of there lookin’ like he was gonna spit nails. Slammed the door and everything.”
I arched a brow. “No kiddin’. Did she hear what they were fightin’ about?”
Coralee held up a finger because her mouth was full, so Marge chimed in.
“Nope, but I suspect it might have somethin’ to do with money. He came into the store to pick up some supplies Friday and wasn’t too tickled about it. He bought stuff to fix a hot water heater but grumbled about the thing needin’ replaced rather than fixed. Said he didn’t like cobblin’ it together instead of just installin’ a new one.”
“What was the cost difference?” I asked.
“Oh, hundreds of dollars,” she said, her eyes wide as she nodded. “A heating element is twenty bucks or so, but a new hot water heater’ll cost you at least four hundred bucks. More, usually, especially after installation.”
“Did he say anything else? Was that all he bought?” I asked.
“Yeah,” she replied. “Well, he bought a ticket book. Business must be good because he just bought one a couple weeks ago. The element was the only part, though.”
I nodded. “That sounds about like what I’ve been hearing. Sounds to me like she didn’t like comin’ off any more money than she had to and that you really had to be the squeaky wheel to get the grease.”
“That’s odd, too,” Coralee said. “I know the family who owns one of those complexes, and they’re good people. Before they moved away and put it into her hands, they were great about keepin’ ’em up. I lived there for a while before I bought my house and never had a problem if somethin’ broke.”
Coralee got up to check Marge’s hair and tucked her back under the dryer.
“What about you?” Belle said, floating closer. “You were there last night. Did you notice anything? Did anybody look suspicious? Did Miranda look guilty?”
I debated telling them about the brunette hair but decided that might not be something Hunter wanted out for public consumption. Info like that wasn’t something you handed over to these two. “No to everything. There wasn’t anything there other than the rock she was killed with and the contents of her purse but it didn’t look like it had been pilfered. Just knocked out when she dropped it. Some receipts, peach nail polish, and some makeup. Miranda just looked freaked out.”
Coralee popped the last bite of muffin in her mouth and brushed off her hands. “Personally, I don’t see her doin’ it. She’s not the type. She mighta punched her a good o
ne, but she’s got her kids to worry about. No way would she have done anything to put them in jeopardy.”
Belle nodded in agreement. “Plus, she’s just not trashy like that. Who knocks somebody in the head? It’s just not decent.”
I smiled. “No, I have to agree that murder’s bad for your reputation.”
She scowled at me. “You know perfectly well what I meant. Good folks don’t just go around killin’ people.”
There was no arguing with that logic.
Coralee reached around me to get the bowls of hair dye sitting on the counter by her station. When she turned, the broom fell, and she tripped, sending the bowls flying as she pushed out her hands to catch herself on the second barber chair. A stream of curses followed as the bowls crashed to the ground sending blue hair dye splattering across her white tile floor.
My stomach dropped as déjà vu hit me. It was exactly the scene I’d imagined when I’d passed the girls on their way out.
Belle’s eyebrows pulled down in concern. “You okay, sweetie? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
I was so shaken that I didn’t even note the irony in her statement.
“Yeah,” I said, dazed. “I gotta go talk to Hunter.”
I stumbled toward the door.
“Hey, don’t forget your stuff,” Coralee said, motioning toward my tea and the bag of pastries.
“Thanks,” I mumbled, picking them up and turning back toward the door. The sky was gray, and the air was thick with the scent of ozone, but I didn’t even notice when fat raindrops splatted on my arms. It looked like the first vision hadn’t been the one-off I’d been hoping for.
Chapter 12
By the time I reached Hunter’s office, I’d managed to pull myself together. It was just another surprise in a long list of weird things that had happened to me in the past couple years, but it was an unpleasant one. I’d just managed to get control of the telepathy, and now it seemed I was going to have to start all over. Was it even possible to block out visions?
On the one hand, I supposed it could come in handy, but on the other, I really didn’t want to know what was going to happen before it did. It raised all sorts of questions in my mind. Were my visions set in stone, or could I change them if I managed them well enough? Spilling hair dye wasn’t such a big deal even though it was a mess to clean up, but I’d also foreseen the murder. Could I have stopped it?
I shook my head because nothing good would come from falling down that rabbit hole.
“Noelle!” Peggy Sue, Hunter’s secretary and the woman who pretty much ran the day-to-day government of the county exclaimed when I pushed through the doors of the sheriff’s office. “How are you, sugar?”
Her bright blue eyes clouded with concern. “You’re pale. Have you eaten today?”
I nodded, trying to muster a smile. “Yeah, I’m just tired, I suppose.”
She nodded with sympathy. “Yeah, Hunter said you were there last night and saw the whole thing. How you holdin’ up?”
I lifted a shoulder. “Okay, I suppose. It was a shock, but I’ll feel better when we figure out who killed her.”
She waddled around her desk and scooped me into a motherly hug. “You poor thing. Nobody aught to see a dead body outside of a funeral home, and you’ve seen several.”
I gave her a squeeze back, then remembered the pastries we were squishing between us.
“I could have done without it for sure,” I said, extricating myself from her arms and pulling the turnovers from the bag. “Here, Hunter said you were working for a few hours today, so I brought you your favorite. I know I haven’t been here in a while, so I tossed in an extra.”
Her round face beamed with pleasure. “You didn’t have to, but I’m glad you did. I had to get some tax paperwork done and needed to do it without the distraction of people comin’ and goin’. I was just about to leave, but I’ll take ’em home and have ‘em for dessert, assumin’ I can wait that long. Your man’s in the back.”
“Thank you,” I said, smiling. Her upbeat attitude was contagious, and I found myself feeling better. “Have a good evening and enjoy the pastries.”
“Bet on it!” she said, winking at me as I squeezed around her desk. Hunter’s office was at the end of the hall, and his door was wide open. He was on the phone, so I tapped on the doorframe. He looked up, then smiled and held up his finger.
I took a seat in the chair across from him and plopped the bag of bear claws on his desk. Even after three years, they were still his favorite. While he talked, I thought about that. We’d been together that long and had managed to iron out most of the little things that could cause strife in a relationship. He’d even given me space to adjust to all the changes that had taken place all at once. That alone was enough to convince me he was a keeper. Everybody was right; it was time to set a date to make it official.
He finished his call and reached for the bag. “Please tell me there are bear claws in there.”
“There are bear claws in there,” I said, smiling. I reached behind me to pull a bottle of water from his mini-fridge. “Anything new?”
He nodded and pulled a pastry from the bag. “Actually, there is. I have a woman who went to Barbie Lee’s office to submit a repair order for the third time about the same problem. Apparently, she hasn’t had hot water in over a week.”
“I heard about her. Or at least I heard somebody was having problems with their water heater. Marge said Frank was in the store the other day to buy a heating element but was irritated because he said the whole tank needed to be replaced.”
“Yeah, that’s not the first time I’ve heard that today, and not just about water heaters. It seems like she did the bare minimum it took to get by. The lawn guys flung a rock through a downstairs window, and instead of replacing it, she put cardboard over it. Somebody else’s oven has been broken for a month, and then there’s Miranda.”
“I wonder if it’s the owners or if she was just lazy.” I took a long drink from my tea.
“It’s not the owner,” he said around a mouthful of bear claw. “I talked to him this morning, and he said he’s been spending more on repairs than ever. He admitted to getting a certified letter from the tenant with the broken window. He’s threatening to sue if the window isn’t fixed. The problem is, when he went through his receipts, he had a repair order showing he’d paid over four-hundred dollars for a new window and installation.”
“Did Frank do it?” I asked, already knowing the answer.
He nodded. “Or more accurately, Frank billed for it.”
I scrunched my brow, thinking about Marge’s words. “I don’t know about all that. I think Barbie Lee billed for it. Marge said Frank bought a ticket book when he was in the store. It stood out to her because he just bought one a couple weeks ago.”
He digested that for a minute. “You think she swiped his ticket book and was writing up her own repairs.”
I nodded. “I think it’s a possibility. It would also explain why they were fighting Friday. According to Coralee, Janey Carter went to pay her rent and saw him storming out of Barbie Lee’s office.”
He sighed. “This keeps getting worse instead of better. It seems like it would be easier to eliminate people who didn’t want to kill her instead of tracking down people who did.”
“Yeah, she was a real peach for sure. Oh, and did you get my text earlier? The one about her assistant?”
“No,” he said, frowning and pulling out his phone. He huffed out a breath. “It’s dead. I forgot to charge it when I got home last night. What’s this about her assistant? I have a name, but I didn’t know there was a problem with her.”
“No problem that I know about. I just didn’t know if you knew she existed or not. A customer at Brew told me they were peas and carrots. Both snobs, and he said he’d seen them out socially.”
“I was just on my way to see her,” he replied. “Wanna go? I could use your BS meter.”
One of my original gifts was that I had almost a
sixth sense for when people were lying. It hadn’t been magnified much like my other abilities had, but it had been solid to begin with.”
I smiled. “At your service, Sheriff.”
He pushed up from his chair and stuck out his elbow. “It would be my pleasure, Ms. Flynn.”
Chapter 13
Noreen lived right outside the city limits, so it only took a few minutes to get to her place, but by the time we did, the rain had stopped. Hunter hadn’t called ahead because he didn’t want to give her time to come up with her story, so we just had to hope she was home. We lucked out, and she was.
Hunter pulled up alongside a late-model Lexus and shut off the motor, then we proceeded up the porch of the small ranch house, and Hunter knocked.
“Yes?” a blonde woman dressed to the nines said through the screen door, her expression inquisitive.
“Noreen Hinkle?” Hunter asked, pulling out his badge even though he was in uniform. “I’m Sheriff Woods, and I have a few questions I’d like to ask.”
She nodded and stepped out onto the porch. “I wondered when you’d be around.”
“I assume, then, that you know Barbie Lee Phillips was murdered last night.”
“I do. I heard about it this morning when I went to the grocery store.” Her chin quivered. “It’s terrible. Who’d do such a thing?”
“That’s what we’re trying to find out,” he replied.
“Whatever I can do to help, but I’m afraid I don’t know much.”
“I understand you were her assistant?” he asked.
One side of her mouth quirked up and irritation flitted across her face. “Yeah. Her assistant. She was making me a partner, though I suppose that’s out the window.”
“You were friends, right?” I asked when my internal lie detector ticked up.
“Yeah, I was her best friend.” Her chin quivered again, and she fanned her face with a manicured hand. This woman didn’t do any heavy lifting for sure, which seemed to fit right in with Barbie Lee. “We got manicures together yesterday because we were planning to go to Fancy’s together. I got a migraine, though, and canceled because it was a bad one. Maybe if I’d been there, she’d still be alive.”