Donna, who was the owner of the more popular of the two cut and curl salons in town, arched her perfectly shaped brows. “Other than the fact that she was a shameless gossip, always digging for the latest dirt, not a lot.”
I leaned in so that I could hear Donna over the Pat Benatar classic blasting through the speakers mounted over the gleaming oak bar. “What kind of dirt?”
Her sapphire eyes sparkled. “Last time I saw her, all Naomi wanted to talk about was when Ian and I were going to get married.”
Ian Dearborn was the hunky veterinarian the two-time divorcée had been dating for the last three months. She had been crazy for Ian when we mooned over him back in high school, and Fozzie adored him, but I wasn’t anxious for one of my best friends to follow my mother’s lead and rush into another marriage.
Donna’s gaze followed two local regulars as they left the bar and disappeared into the adjoining eight-lane bowling alley. Since that was my cue to collect the tip they had left me and clean up behind them, I was about to excuse myself when I noticed her checking the time on her cell phone. “How late is he?”
“Ten minutes. Ian texted me about an emergency surgery that had him running late, but I thought he’d be here by now.”
Fine by me that he wasn’t, because I needed some alone time with her.
“Hold that thought,” I said, dashing to the other end of the bar.
After I had cleared away the dirty glasses and checked in with my other customers, I rejoined Donna. “Back to Naomi Easley. When was the last time you saw her?”
Donna cocked her head, looking at me the way Fozzie does when I ask him what I should make for dinner, only without the wagging tail. “Why are you so interested in Naomi all of a sudden?” She gasped. “Her death was an accident, wasn’t it?”
“Absolutely.” Probably.
I rested my elbows on the bar. “You did her hair fairly regularly, right?”
“Pretty much every week since I first opened Donatello’s.”
“Did you ever get the impression that she’d been drinking?”
Donna shook her head and a chunky length of blond hair spilled over her shoulder. “I only ever saw her during the afternoon—a little early for this stuff,” she said, taking a sip from her wineglass. “Why?”
“Just curious about something I’d heard.”
“Oh, about her being a bit of a wine connoisseur?”
All I knew about was one empty wine bottle, but I was more than willing to tell a little white lie if it kept Donna talking. “Something like that.”
“I saw what she jokingly referred to as her wine cellar. Probably no more than five bottles total, but every one of them had a story. All about the vineyard she and her friends visited and the wines they tasted. And then what they had for lunch.” Donna dabbed her eyes with her bar napkin. “I’m gonna miss those stories.”
I could sympathize with the loss of a favorite story-teller, but the only story I wanted to hear about involved that “wine cellar.”
Unfortunately, my bar waitress was signaling me to fill a drink order.
“Duty calls.” I looked back at Donna. “Don’t move.”
But instead of staying put, she slid off the stool and waved at Ian as he stepped around the waitress aiming darts at me from the end of the bar.
Darn it.
“Sorry I’m late,” Ian said, planting a kiss on Donna’s cheek after he gave me a perfunctory wave.
“It’s no big deal. Char kept me company.”
Yeah, and I wasn’t done with her yet.
“Shall we?” Ian guided Donna to an available table near the back wall while I tried to set a land speed record as a mixologist.
After filling that drink order, I grabbed a couple of laminated menus and made my way to their table.
Ian grinned at me when I handed him a menu. “Well, you certainly get around. Are you our waitress tonight, too?”
“Nope.” Libby, the fifty-something waitress Eddie recently hired, had yet to warm up to me, and I didn’t need her to think I was trying to ace her out of a tip. “Think of me like one of those substitute teachers we had in high school. I’m just taking drink orders and hoping that no one tries to play stump the newbie. Although I do have Eddie’s mixed-drink bible if you want something exotic.”
He glanced at the menu. “Whatever pale ale you have on tap works for me.”
“I’m good,” Donna said, clearly still on her best behavior since she rarely had more than one drink in front of a guy she wanted to impress.
You’re trying to be. And apparently succeeding, because Ian could hardly take his eyes off the blond beauty sitting across from him.
“I’ll be back in a flash.” Stepping behind Ian, I motioned for Donna to follow me.
“What’s up?” she asked, joining me seconds later at the bar as I reached for a glass.
“Nothing. I’m just short-handed, so if you don’t mind delivering this to Ian …”
“Oh, is that all. I thought you wanted something.”
She knew me too well. “Actually, there is one thing. I was wondering when you had the opportunity to see Naomi Easley’s wine cellar.”
“Hon, it was hardly a wine cellar. Just a rack on her kitchen counter.”
And not at all what I cared about. “When were you over at her place?”
Donna cocked her head at me again. “I was going every other Sunday for the last few months. Ever since I started doing Althea Flanders’ hair.”
The name sounded vaguely familiar, but I didn’t understand the connection to Naomi. “Wine-tasting buddy?”
“Maybe once upon a time. Between all the little strokes and the fall she took at her husband’s funeral, it’s been easier for me to go to her. I give her sister Mavis a trim if she wants one, and then go across the street to take care of Naomi. At least, that was my routine until last month.”
I set the glass of golden-yellow ale in front of her. “Do you remember which Sunday you last saw her?”
Donna’s long lashes fluttered as a tear rolled down her flawless, peachy cheek. “Kind of hard to forget, considering it was the day she died.”
Whoa.
I handed her another napkin. “But while you were there she seemed okay?”
“She complained about her knees, but that was normal,” Donna said, drying her eyes.
Maybe so, but what happened later sure wasn’t. “Thanks. You should probably get back.” I looked past her at the annoyed bleached blonde standing at Ian’s table. “I think my waitress is ready to take Ian’s order.”
Donna straightened the pumpkin spice V-neck sweater hugging her curves. “How do I look?”
“Beautifully seasonal.” One of the guys sitting near the taps signaled for a refill, so I shooed her away. “Go have fun.”
Donna waved at someone near the door. “You too,” she said, smiling back at me as my favorite detective rounded the bar.
Filling a glass, I felt my mood lighten when Steve claimed the seat that Donna had just vacated. “Did you just get here?” I asked.
He pointed at the glass in my hand. “Pour me one of those, and no. I saw that huddle you were in with Donna and thought you might need a minute, so I went to the other side to say hi to Eddie.”
More like yell at Eddie, since the bowling alley side of this converted brick warehouse played the same classic rock as the tavern, only it was cranked up a couple decibels to accompany tonight’s atomic bowling event for the teens not going to Homecoming.
Steve was glancing back in Donna’s direction when I delivered his beer. “So is there trouble in paradise?” he asked.
“Huh?”
“With those two. Or is it girl stuff that I’m not supposed to know?”
Given the fact that he considered the subject of Naomi Easley’s death to be closed, I was okay with taking the out he had just given me. “It’s nothing you want to hear about.” And I wasn’t about to tell him
.
* * *
“Earth to Charmaine,” my grandmother called out to me a few minutes after we left the church parking lot the next morning.
I glanced over at the woman giving me the look from the passenger seat. “Sorry, what?”
“I knew you weren’t listening.”
“I was just thinking about something else.” Because I couldn’t understand why a woman who had just had her hair done would want to risk unfurling all those curls by soaking in a bath. “What were you saying?”
“I said if you and Stevie didn’t have plans for later, I could pop a roast in the oven for dinner.”
While I was certain that Steve would be up for joining my grandmother for a meal, since he’d been called to the scene of a burglary late last night, I couldn’t be sure when he’d be up for me to ask. “Sounds good to me. But Steve was up really late and—”
“Are you sure I want to hear this?” Gram asked, making reference to the “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy that had governed all discussion of my love life ever since I moved back home to Port Merritt.
“It was police business that had nothing to do with me.”
“Oh. You seemed so dreamy-eyed about whatever you were thinking about, I just assumed … Well, that you’d had a …” She cleared her throat. “You know, a satisfying evening.”
Good grief.
I needed to change the subject, and pronto. “Actually, I was thinking about Donna.”
“Donna!” Gram slumped back in her seat as I rounded the corner where her two-story Victorian sat like a grand dame looking out over her less stately neighbors. “I wouldn’t have guessed that in a million years. Not with that faraway look on your face. What’s going on with her?”
Nothing that Gram didn’t already know, since Donna dating one of the most eligible bachelors in town was well-circulated gossip circuit news. “It’s not so much what’s going on now as it is what happened on the day that Naomi Easley passed away,” I said, pulling into Gram’s carport.
When I killed the engine and reached behind me for my tote bag, Gram pressed her hand to my arm. “Not so fast. What do you mean ‘what happened’?”
“It’s probably nothing.”
She scowled. “Doesn’t sound like nothing. So start talking.”
Since I wanted to give Steve another hour of sleep before heading across the street to ask him about dinner, and possibly get a brunch date out of him, I was in no hurry to leave. Plus, I knew there was a full pot of coffee waiting inside.
“Over coffee,” I said.
She flung off her seatbelt. “Now you’re talkin’.”
Twenty minutes and half a pot later, Gram’s scowl had made a comeback. “That seems awfully strange.”
“I know! Ever since Donna told me about doing Mrs. Easley’s hair that day, I haven’t been able to make sense of her being discovered in that bathtub.”
“Of course, it’s all anyone wanted to talk about at the funeral, but even then her being found that way struck me as highly unlikely.”
“It certainly isn’t what I would do if I’d just paid someone to curl my hair.”
Gram shook her head. “Sweetie, I’m not talking about her hair. I know for a fact that Naomi was concerned about the big step into her tub. At the last garden club meeting Florence even suggested that she should get a walk-in. Less fall risk and she could get therapy jets for her achy joints.”
“You think that she let that big step stop her? I know Mrs. Easley wasn’t very tall, but she seemed pretty agile for a woman her age.”
Gram aimed her scowl at me. “I happen to be the same age.”
I stifled a sigh. “I wasn’t trying to imply that everything has to fall apart once you hit eighty. I just meant that she seemed to be perfectly capable of climbing into a bathtub.”
“Maybe so, but after falling at her house a couple years back and breaking her collarbone, Naomi made it sound like she wanted to minimize all chances of history repeating itself.”
And that safety-minded woman ends up drowning in her bathtub? “Then this really doesn’t make sense.”
Chapter Four
“OH, I ALMOST forgot to tell you about the interesting phone call I got a couple of hours ago,” my grandmother called out from the living room while Steve and I finished with the dinner dishes.
Steve handed me a plate to dry. “Any idea what she’s talking about?”
“Not a clue.” But it had better not have anything to do with any of her recently departed friends.
I returned the plate to its home in the cupboard and went in through the dining room to hear about this mystery phone call. “This isn’t about …” I lowered my voice. “Mrs. Easley’s death, is it? Because now definitely isn’t the time.”
Leaning back in her recliner, Gram shook her head. “Honey, nobody’s talking about that but you.”
Oh.
She brightened while she stroked Myron, the fat orange tabby purring on her lap. “I heard from your mom.”
So had I when I received a text from Marietta earlier in the afternoon. “I assume she told you about some interview she did with a Today show producer.”
“Yes, she expects that it will run tomorrow or Tuesday, so we’re all supposed to record the show so we don’t miss it.”
Smiling contentedly, Gram handed me the remote control to her cable box. “If you wouldn’t mind.”
I didn’t, but since she typically didn’t need my help recording any of her favorite late-night shows, I felt a private conversation coming on. “Do you need a refresher course on how to set the recorder?”
“Not when I have you to do it for me. And as long as we’re discussing this new movie of your mother’s, I wanted to ask how you felt about throwing her a little welcome-home celebration next Sunday.”
I finished setting the recording for both telecasts and handed back the remote. “Since Barry’s flying down Friday to do the red carpet premiere thing with her, they might not want to party as soon as they get home.”
“Your mother not wanting to be made a fuss over?” Gram scoffed. “Please.”
Okay, she had a point. “But after all the Hollywood hoopla, Barry might want life to get back to normal as soon as possible.” Judging by the impression he’d given me yesterday, I was sure of it.
“Then he shouldn’t have married an actress.”
For Marietta’s sake I hoped he wasn’t thinking the same thing.
* * *
After Gram’s front door closed behind us and I gave Steve the lowdown about her celebration idea, he turned to me with the identical measure of disdain as when I had invited him to Rox’s baby shower. “A party.”
“We all know this movie is a big deal to my mom, so Gram wants us to show our support.”
“I might be working that night,” he muttered as we crossed the street to his house.
“I haven’t told you what night yet.”
“You really think that matters?”
Nope, but I wanted the man I loved by my side. “Gram was talking about having a barbecue if the weather’s nice.”
Steve grunted.
“She was hoping you’d do the flesh-searing honors.”
“After basking in a week of public glory, your mother is going to be—”
“Insufferable. I know. She was well on her way before she left to go on her publicity tour, so I completely understand.” I followed Steve to his front step and wrapped my arms around his neck. “But I’ll make it worth your while to say yes.”
“Yeah? What kind of bribe do you have in mind?”
“Hmmm.” I pulled him close, soaking in the warmth radiating from his solid chest. “Do this little favor for me, and I’ll let you come over and use my new elliptical machine anytime you want.”
Steve’s dark eyes gleamed with carnal intent. “I already come over anytime I want.”
“But now you can get a workout in.”
; “I can think of another way to get a workout in,” he said, pulling me onto the hardwood of his entryway when he opened the door. “If you’re up for getting a little exercise.”
“I am if you are.” Just as Steve was about to lower his lips to mine, I pressed my palms against his pecs. “Assuming, of course, that you’re up for a little celebration with my mother.”
Taking my hand, he marched me down the hall to his bedroom.
That would be a yes.
* * *
The next morning, after dragging my weary butt up the chipped marble steps of the late nineteenth-century courthouse, I had an unexpected sight upon entering the county prosecutor’s third-floor office.
Patsy Faraday, the legal assistant typically stationed outside Frankie’s office like a gatekeeper, was nowhere to be seen. Her computer monitor wasn’t on, nor was there a scrap of paper on her tidy desk. Considering that it was 8:03 and Patsy, the human time clock, wasn’t around to give me any grief about my lack of punctuality, this was a nice way to ease into a Monday.
Making it even better, Frankie was waving me into her office.
After an exchange of morning pleasantries, my boss solved the mystery of the empty desk. “Patsy had a miserable weekend because of a toothache, so she’s at the dentist’s this morning. I assume you have plenty to keep you busy?”
“Yes, ma’am.” I had already been enlisted to assist the deputy criminal prosecutor with the narcotics trafficking case coming to trial next month. That would guarantee me many hours of prep busywork, but it didn’t mean that I couldn’t take on another assignment of particular interest. “Unless there’s something that I can do in Patsy’s absence. Any pending cases that need some follow-up? Maybe some details that need to be chased down?”
Leaning back in her desk chair, Frankie shook her head, the puckers surrounding her raspberry-painted lips betraying her reluctance to allow me to stick so much as a pinkie into Patsy’s territory. “No, I don’t believe so.”
Dang.
Since I had cracked the door open to the pending case that kept rattling around in my brain, I figured that I might as well step through with both my size eights. “Speaking of pending cases, one of Naomi Easley’s neighbors approached me over the weekend to express his concern about the way she died.”
Crazy, Stupid, Dead Page 2