False Nails and Tall Tales (The Teasen and Pleasen Hair Salon Cozy Mystery Series Book 5)

by Constance Barker

  "Joe?" I asked. "You mean Old Joe the moonshiner?"

  Dolores nodded. "Him and Rudy Phlint, plain as day."

  Nellie looked over and grinned. "Dolores, do you think I'm that easy?"

  "Easy?"

  "Do you think you can get me all upset with the shocking news that you saw my husband with one of his oldest friends?"

  Dolores managed to purse her lips in a disapproving way. It was her trick. "Nellie Phlint, you know that the old man's a moonshiner and they were buying corn syrup."

  "I know he's one of the best moonshiners Knockemstiff ever produced," Nellie said. "Maybe one of the best anywhere. You should hear him talk. What that man doesn't know about making whiskey, making mash or running a still is hardly worth knowing. And for your information, my Rudy, who is running a perfectly legal business, selling a legal product, often gets help and advice from Joe on ways to improve the process and the product. Heck, Dolores those two have known each other since Rudy was little."

  "Since back when Rudy's pa and Joe were running the largest bootleg shine operation in these parts," Dolores pointed out.

  Nellie wisely ignored her. "Those two might be getting ingredients so they can try out a new idea. We could use a new product to go with Bayou Shine." She looked at Dolores. "A legal brand of backwoods spirits." Bayou Shine was the Phlint family's brand for its artisanal whiskey, which had only fairly recently been licensed for limited production by the great State of Louisiana.

  "Just because a thing is legal doesn't mean it is moral, Nellie Phlint."

  Nellie snorted. "Just because you disapprove doesn’t make something immoral."

  "Well everyone knows that Joe still produces some illegal moonshine."

  Nellie scowled, wrinkling her face the same way she had when we were kids and something got her angry. Over the years I'd known her, she'd learned to control her mouth some, but that scowl was a dead giveaway that she wasn't pleased. "Dolores, moonshining is a tradition in these parts. It has been part of this country as long as there's been a country. I could practically make a case for running a still as a patriotic act. And Joe isn’t exactly a volume producer. These days he makes it for himself and friends."

  "Well…" Dolores said, clearly unable to think of a comeback. Then a thought occurred to her and she smiled. "Doctor Fimbus doesn't agree with you at all."

  "Doctor Fimbus?" I asked. "Do we have a new doctor in town?"

  Dolores seemed unhappy that I didn't know who she meant. "I'm taking about the new preacher. He's a doctor of theology."

  "Right," Pete said. "I read a letter he wrote to the paper when he first arrived. That man doesn’t like much of anything. From the tone of his letter that man is a doctor of disapproval."

  "He disapproves of sinful things. And sinful people." Delores spat the words out.

  The place got quiet and everyone was looking at Dolores. We all knew that she was deeply committed to a fundamentalist church, which made her uncomfortable with the fact that Pete was gay. She normally hid it and we all managed to forget it. Everyone who came in my salon knew that I expected them to leave any prejudices of that sort, or of most kinds, outside. I couldn't make the world a perfect place, but I tried to do my part to ensure that everyone was treated right when they were in my place.

  Her face grew red, realizing that we’d understood what she meant. I was glad it embarrassed her. She stood up. "Savannah Jeffries, I just remembered something I must do. I’ll call and reschedule my appointment."

  "That’s a good idea," I said.

  And she left.

  "What was she upset about?" Trinity asked, whisper quiet.

  "That we are all heathens," Pete said.

  "Oh." Then she closed her eyes again.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Rumors are a big part of the life in a salon, whether it’s in a big city or little town. The only real difference between the two is that small town rumors tend to be about people you actually know, not just someone you’ve heard of. I guess everything in a small town tends to be more personal and important. Although rumors can be negative and damaging, they are also informative. So when something major happens and you haven’t heard about it in advance, not even a whisper, it seems odd.

  The next morning Dolores came in. She gave Pete an overly enthusiastic hello and then sheepishly asked if she could wait to get her hair done. It was as close to an apology as she could manage, so of course I agreed. Seeing Dolores naturally made me think of gossip and as I prepared my station I remembered what else had been bothering me yesterday, and that I’d forgotten it totally. "Has anyone heard that we are getting cell phones in Knockemstiff?" I asked.

  "We aren’t getting service…. it’s already here," Lucille Braxton said, reaching into her purse and pulling out a smart phone.

  "Didn’t you see the new store?" Pete asked.

  "What new store?"

  "Over by the courthouse," he said. "The place that was a flower shop for few months."

  "And then a rib place," Lucille Braxton said.

  "I’d forgotten about that," Pete said. "And at some point it was a book store."

  "I remember it now," I assured him.

  "They’ve renovated it and now it is a cell phone shop."

  "I hadn’t heard. And that’s the point. Why hasn’t anyone been talking about it."

  "Because no one knew anything until it was finished, and by then it wasn’t gossip anymore," Dolores said firmly.

  I stared at her, thinking she was right. "But no one is talking about their phones until I ask."

  Pete nodded. "I just happened to walk by the store myself. I picked up some fliers they had about the various kinds of service available. So I assumed everyone knew but me."

  "Why Pete, that store is where I ran into Freddie Anders. He bought himself a really fancy smart phone and told me all about Sanders," Dolores Pettigrew said.

  "What about Sanders?" Suddenly here was the tip of another rumor I hadn’t heard. I could smell it coming. Dolores didn’t just toss out information that didn’t have a juicy rumor to go with it.

  "He, Freddie Anders, told me that Sanders has been spending a lot of time at his place… lots of time."

  That set off alarm bells and not just for me.

  "Sanders is hanging out at Freddie’s gator farm these days?" Nellie asked. "He didn’t say a word when he was in here the other day. What’s that all about?"

  Dolores smiled, happy to have scored an exclusive. "He’s taking classes. It seems that he’s decided to learn to wrestle alligators."

  "Skydiving wasn’t dangerous enough for him?" Pete asked. "Now he’s going to fight wild animals?"

  Nellie shrugged. "Come to think of it, when he was in last week he casually said something about changing hobbies. I thought he meant that he was going to take up painting or something."

  "We are talking about the Bald Eagle here, folks. He likes the thrill. Maybe once you got the hang of falling out of an airplane without dying it starts to lose its sense of excitement or urgency or something."

  "I could see that," Lucille Braxton said as Pete paused from trimming her A-line bob.

  "You can?" Nellie asked. "Watching the ground rush up at you at an incredibly high rate of speed and wondering if your parachute is going to open gets boring after a time?"

  "I would think it would," she said firmly. "Why to this day I can remember when I first learned to drive a car. It seemed wild and scary. Just taking your eyes off the road long enough to check your speed was terrifying. I was sure I was going to hit something every time I drove somewhere… there was so much going on that could go wrong."

  "Well, you did hit an awful lot of things," Dolores said. "You totally wrecked Selina Ferrara’s front gate when you drove your mother’s Chevy into it."

  "There is a learning curve, Dolores," I said. "Most people have a little trouble at first."

  She grinned. "Savannah Jeffries, Lucille has been driving for twenty years and I’m talking about her accident of just
a few months ago."

  "Oh."

  "The gas pedal stuck," Lucille said defensively.

  "At least you convinced Deputy Digby Hayes that’s what happened," Dolores snorted. "Of course when he’s around a pretty face, he sees what he’s told to see."

  "Digby is a nice man." Lucille blushed, pleased at being referred to as pretty, even by Dolores. "What I’m saying is that new things often seem frightening for a time and then you get used to them. Even if they are still a little intimidating, there isn’t that frightening aspect."

  Nellie shook her head. "Sanders took up skydiving after his wife died and it really did seem to help him get through it. Maybe something about getting close to death."

  "Or maybe he just likes falling out the sky," Pete said.

  Nellie grinned. "That was a few years back now. So maybe it can get dull, or at least routine. Makes me wonder how long it takes, how many jumps you have to make before you lose the feeling you are going to go splat?"

  "Go try it and see," I suggested. "Make a scientific test."

  "No thanks, friend. How about I throw you out of a plane and you can give me reports? You can rank the scariness of each jump on a scale of one to ten."

  "Maybe wrestling alligators is a step back from the edge, the way he sees it," Pete said. "Now that I compare the idea of falling out of the sky toward the earth with facing off an alligator…"

  "I’d think that would depend, at least to some extent, on the size of the alligator," Lucille said. "The babies are kind of cute."

  "Maybe it matters more why a person is doing something than what they are doing." I turned and saw Sanders standing in the doorway, grinning. "And while I have to say I am honored to be today’s subject of discussion, you are all way off base."

  "Well, the man of the hour," Nellie said. "We just heard the news, about your new hobby. So of course we have to ask the big question: Why in the world do you want to wrestle alligators?"

  He leaned in the doorway grinning, enjoying the moment, then headed for the coffee pot. "First of all, I never found skydiving scary. Exhilarating, and fun… a lot of fun, but it isn’t really frightening. I don’t think about going splat, as Nellie so eloquently puts it. Trouble is, it is expensive and you don’t get credit for it."

  "Credit?" I stared at him. "We all think you are nuts, isn’t that credit enough?"

  He chuckled. "Not nearly." He poured his coffee and sat down.

  "You mean no one sees you do it?" Nellie asked.

  "Something like that. Who watches skydiving? People are interested if you tell them you like to jump out of an airplane, but after that first one, it’s no big deal."

  "Why Sanders Bloomington, that sky falling thing is just as dangerous and foolish every blessed time you do it," Dolores said.

  "Exactly, Dolores," he said. "You folks are right about it getting a little routine after a time. If you aren’t getting the same thrill, if your senses don’t know you are going to the limit why keep doing it?"

  No one said a word. There wasn’t much you could say. Finally Pete rubbed his chin. "Okay. But…"

  "Look I spent thirty five years working as an accountant. It was solid, respectable work. Believe it or not, it has its own excitements. I was happily, joyfully married and I had a good, no a great life. When Theresa, my wife died, everything seemed empty. I’d already been retired for ten years by then. We’d made lots of plans for what we were going to do. We were going to see Europe. We were going to charter a sailboat and sail the Greek islands. Adventurous things." He shook his head. "Never did any of it. We got lazy. We fixed the house up a bit, tended the garden and life went on… until hers, very suddenly, didn’t go on any more. Once I got my bearings again, I could see that planning things was a way of putting them off. Right then I decided no more putting things off. Either do them, or decide not to do them."

  "Makes sense," Nellie said. "Deciding not to fall out of an airplane? I can do that."

  "But I’d always wanted to try sky diving. I can’t say why. Anyway, one morning I got in my car, drove to the air park and signed up for a class. They said I was too old. I told them to stuff it. It took a couple of months getting medical certificates and waivers from the insurance company, but finally they let me take the course. I had myself a good time."

  "So? What’s changed?"

  "My perspective. When Betina set off on her new path, just trying to see what would happen, what she could make of her life, I realized I’d gotten into another rut. I was doing the skydiving regularly, but the idea had just been to do it. There were things left to do. Things I’d dreamed about since I was little."

  "Like wrestling alligators?" I asked.

  He grinned again, this time beaming broadly. "You better believe it."

  "Why Sanders Bloomington, what on earth would make you even think of that as something you wanted to do?" Dolores asked.

  He laughed. "Television did it. Ever since I saw Tarzan do it in the movies, I thought it was the greatest thing in the world. It represented a challenge, a risk, yet not as dangerous as say, wrestling a lion." He shook his head. "He wrestled those too, but the claws that lions have… those are really something. Ever see them up close?"

  "No, and not planning on it either," Nellie said. "I specialize in human nails."

  "Although you did paint Finn’s nails once," Lucille said.

  "That’s right," Pete said. "You made them purple and gold."

  "That was for a joke and it was at halloween," Nellie snapped. "I meant I don’t do animals normally."

  "Nellie and normally are not ideas that fit together easily," Pete said.

  "I’ll bet she does Django’s nails," Lucille said. "She just doesn’t want to admit it."

  "I do not do Django's nails. That’s silly."

  "And heaven forbid that Nellie Phlint ever do anything silly," I said.

  "Armadillos are diggers. They dig in the dirt all the time. Can’t stop him for digging up the yard. So doing Django’s nails would be a complete waste of time and polish."

  Still taken with his train of thought, Sanders wasn’t ready for a change of subject. Not yet. "Of course alligators do have claws and they could hurt you with them, but they aren’t as agile with them as lions. At least that’s how I figure it. Anyway, Freddie says watching out for the claws is the least of my worries."

  "What’s the main one?" Pete asked.

  "Getting hit with the tail and breaking my neck or being drowned. Gators like to stuff their prey under rocks and leave them to rot for a time."

  That didn’t sound good to me. "Cheery options, both of them."

  "Aren’t you a little old for that sort of thing?" Everyone turned and stared at Dolores who seemed to suddenly realize how that had sounded. She had the grace to blush. "I just meant that it seems like the sort of thing someone starts learning when they are young."

  We all knew that wasn’t at all what she meant, but we were willing to give her credit for backpedalling.

  "And young is something I’m not," Sanders said, laughing to show he wasn’t hurt by her jibe. "It isn’t all that complicated. There’s some tricks to it, getting the mouth and tail tied up right, but you know, a fella I met at a rodeo one time, a champion that year, explained all that goes on with roping a calf. From what I can tell alligator wrestling is a lot simpler, and you don’t have to learn to ride a horse first."

  "There’s that," Lucille said. "A person can get hurt riding a horse."

  "And that’s why Freddie Anders is giving me lessons. I’m learning to do it properly."

  "Doesn’t mean you won’t get hurt," I said.

  Sanders sighed. "If I could guarantee I wouldn’t get hurt, it wouldn’t be worth doing."

  "Just because Betina wants to be a model?" Dolores asked.

  Sanders looked at her in disbelief. "No, Dolores. Her taking that gamble just reminded me of something important, is all."

  "Oh," she said. Then she brightened. "At least now, if you get hurt we can use a ce
ll phone to call for an ambulance."

  Sanders looked surprised. "Knockemstiff has cell phone coverage now?"

  "For a couple of weeks now," Pete said.

  "Good news, I guess," Sanders said.

  I shook my head. "Why didn’t we know sooner? What’s happened. Is there some sort of problem with the rumor mill in Knockemstiff?" Nellie was grinning at me about something or other and I couldn’t help shake the feeling that most of what seemed wrong or off kilter was probably inside my own head.

  "It weren’t a nail."

  I turned around and stared at the man in the doorway. He was wearing coveralls and a satisfied grin. It took a second but I managed to get my brain back in the present. "Oh, Hugo. What are you talking about?"

  "Danilo said he figured it were a nail what flattened your tire. Weren’t though. Were a piece of glass."

  "Good to know."

  "Glass get in there like that… it’s harder to find, but not such a hard fix." He dropped the keys on the counter by the register. "She’s out front for you, ready to go."

  "Great."

  "You want Cindy to send you a bill?"

  His expression told me that doing that wasn’t his first choice. "If you prefer I can pay you now."

  He smiled broadly. "Now me and the Knockemback Tavern might both appreciate that a great deal. Then there’s no need to disturb the bookkeeper or make extra work. I can skip you paying the tax."

  I knew that his bookkeeper, Cindy, was also his wife. While I really didn’t want to keep secrets from her, in this little town we often paid cash on delivery for services and it would obviously make Hugo happy. I went to the register to get his money and he beamed his approval of my business decision.

  "It’s a nice thing doing business in a small town, ain’t it?"

  "It is," I agreed. I meant it heartily. Unfortunately, the realization of how much I enjoyed it stirred up the turmoil inside me… made me feel even a bit more unsettled. Hugo wasn’t the fastest worker in the world, but he was reliable and a friendly face. In the city a repair like that wouldn’t be a personal encounter.

  The good and bad aspects of life here in my small town and that in the city seemed to insist on offsetting each other with disgusting regularity. When they did that, how was a person supposed to make a decision?