A Hair Raising Blowout: Cozy Mystery (The Teasen & Pleasen Hair Salon Cozy Mystery Series Book 1)

by Constance Barker

  What would a good idea look like at the moment? Would I know one if I saw it?

  The only idea I could get going right now was that my feet were cold, so I went in the house and stood in the bath tub with hot water pouring in. I thought about Betina crouching in her tub for safety. That seemed like a good idea. I could just stay here for the rest of the day.

  By the time my feet warmed up, I was hungry. By the time I’d had some lunch, I was sure that I didn’t want to drive out to Connor’s. I wanted to talk to somebody. I put on a pair of boots.

  When I got to the salon, Nellie was almost done with her after-lunch client. I walked past her into the back room, saying, “When you’re done there, I have an inventory question for you.” I sat down at the little desk, wishing I’d got a cup of coffee on my way, but I didn’t want to chat with any of the people in the café area.

  I went through the mail that was in a little stack on the desk. What was taking Nellie so long? I’d been sitting there for two minutes already. I stood up and spent another minute straightening stacks of towels. Still standing, I went through the mail again. I found my letter opener and slit open each envelope. I threw away one item that looked like a bill but turned out to be junk mail. I stacked the bills back on the desk and sat down again.

  I was about to go out to find Nellie when she came in the door backwards, saying, “So not tonight. Bye.”

  “Nellie!” I said.

  She turned around. “Savannah!” she said. “Good news! Rudy called to say they got the license for the distillery. It’s all legal. We’re no longer felons! Well,” she revised, “not on as many counts. Rudy is going by the Tickfaw campground to get the boys this afternoon and bring them home.”

  Hanging on the edge of my own news, I must have looked dumbfounded at hearing Nellie’s news.

  “Isn’t that great?” she asked. She tilted her head, looking at me in some doubt. “Have you had your open mic beer early?”

  “Nellie, sorry. Good news. Great news!” I picked up the stack of bills and straightened it on the desk, laid them back down. “Yes.” I stood up.

  Nellie sat down. “What’s up?” she asked.

  I sat back down. “Phone,” I said, pulling the smart phone out of my purse. “Found Annie’s phone.”

  “Ah.” She tilted her head at me again, knowing there was more. “And?”

  “I turned it on and found one contact. I called that, and Connor answered.”

  “Connor was the only number she had entered in the phone.”

  “Right,” I said. “And when I spoke into the phone, I could hear my voice on the line sounding like a weird roboty voice, like a science fiction movie. You know?”

  “Dale had a toy that sounded like that when he talked into it. Drove me nuts. I finally held it underwater until it stopped working. Anyway, did you have a roboty chat with Connor?”

  “He thought it was Annie. He said, ‘It can’t be you. You’re dead.’ The phone went dead just after that.”

  “Let’s see,” Nellie said. “What do we make of this? Annie was calling Connor and disguising her voice?”

  “Yeah, so that would be just another piece of mischief. Except why only Connor?”

  “Nobody has mentioned getting calls from Annie, have they?” Nellie observed.

  “Nadine said that Annie threatened Old Man Feazel,” I remembered. “Threatened his dog. How did Annie deliver those threats? Hey,” I said. “Annie also poisoned Connor’s dog. He didn’t tell me anything about getting threats, but maybe Annie used the phone to threaten him using the robot voice. It’s scary.”

  “So he didn’t know who was threatening him. That was Annie’s usual way of working, wasn’t it? She tormented people and watched the results without giving herself away.”

  “When Connor told me about his dog, he knew it was Annie who poisoned him,” I said. “But that was after Annie was killed. So really the only news here is that Annie went to a lot of trouble to call Connor on the phone with a disguised voice.”

  “It’s not that hard to get a cell phone,” Nellie pointed out.

  “But surely it’s hard to hide the fact that you’ve got one,” I said. “Woodley didn’t know that Annie had a cell phone until I told him I’d seen her with one.”

  “He should have found out about it by looking at the bills and whatnot they took out of her house,” Nellie said.

  “Exactly,” I said. “And Annie was using the phone behind the far end of my garden, which she could only get to down that muddy nameless lane that runs by my house. That’s half a mile from her house. She had to really want to get to that spot, and from the looks of the ground there, she’d stood there a lot.”

  “All just for Connor?” Nellie said.

  “What’s so special about Connor?” I wondered.

  “August,” Nellie said.

  “So!” I said, excited by a sudden thought. I grabbed one of the bills on the desk and found a pen. “What if we draw a line between Connor and August?” I drew a line on the back of the envelope.

  “We have to draw the line somewhere,” she said.

  I put a C at one end and an A at the other and wrote “Waycross” on the line.

  “Ah, the line is a road.”

  “Why didn’t we think of this before? Anybody going between Connor’s and August’s would use Waycross Road, not Tennessee Street.” I drew another line roughly parallel to Waycross Road and put Ten. on it for Tennessee Street.

  “Since the lane by your house connects between Tennessee and Waycross, interior designers might call it a unifying element,” she said.

  “You’ve been watching that channel again.”

  “With the boys away, I’ve had time on my hands. Can’t watch cartoons with Dale all evening.” She looked at her watch and stood up. “Speaking of which, I’ve got one more head to color, and then I need to see what kind of food I can rustle up.”

  “Your boys will be starved.” I didn’t want to keep her, but one more part of the puzzle was pressing on me. “I just wonder,” I said, standing up, “about Annie being killed on Tennessee Street. Does that mean it has nothing to do with the comings and goings of Connor and Annie? Or does it mean the ‘unifying element’ is involved?”

  “Since we know Annie was sometimes standing halfway along the ‘unifying element’? If that lane was paved, you could get to Connor’s in a jiffy and ask him if he can explain it.”

  I opened the door and we filed out of the back room. “I need to give the cell phone to Woodley. Maybe they’ll find other info on there.”

  ***

  But I was relieved to see that Woodley was not attending open mic this week. I had told him that our delta blues guy, Leander, never came two weeks in a row, which was mostly true. Close enough: it turned out to be true this week.

  Something about the phone made me sure that Connor had killed Annie, even though I couldn’t put my finger on why, and being sure that Connor was a murderer made me feel terrible. I didn’t want to think that Connor could possibly be a murderer. I certainly didn’t want to be sure Connor was a murderer. And I was reluctant to let Woodley find out anything about Connor.

  Connor’s thing with August still stung, and yet I could not let go of my fondness for him. Which made me feel stupid. Especially if he was a murderer.

  At the Knockemback Tavern, Betina said it didn’t look like her date was going to show and asked if she could sit at the table with my friend Alicia and me. It took me a second to realize that Betina meant her “date” Woodley and another second to realize that calling Woodley her date was a joke even to Betina. By the time I said Betina was welcome to sit with Alicia and me, my hesitation had said, “No,” and it took a while to sort this out.

  Misunderstandings like this make me crazy, even if they’re funny in the end. The three of us had fun talking trash about Woodley.

  Whenever we had kids performing at open mic, they got to go first so they could get home by their bedtime. We hadn’t had many kids th
e previous week because most parents had not wanted to be out with their kids two days after the murder. In retrospect, it was surprising that so many adults had come out that night. Or maybe it wasn’t so surprising. People wanted to be with people.

  The first act this week was five brothers and sisters who acted out the story of Brier Rabbit and the tar baby, which was originally a Louisiana folk tale before that fellow from Georgia, Joel Chandler Harris, got hold of it. The youngest sibling was wrapped in black fabric to play the tar baby. This was not a speaking role, of course, but the other siblings were energized with a sense of dramatic theater and punched the tar baby pretty hard, resulting in a cry of “owww” each time.

  Betina, Alicia and I tried hard not to laugh. Three punches into the play the mother stage-whispered that the older siblings had better take it easy on the youngest if they knew what was good for them.

  The second act was Bee and Sarah doing their Broadway numbers to musical accompaniment on a boom box. Bee was wearing her new red dress, and Sarah had on a red dress, too. Sarah danced back and forth, holding her hands out so that everyone could admire her beautiful scarlet nails.

  After that we moved on to the usual folk guitarists and accordion players. The three of us at our table sang along (badly) and clapped with one of the zydeco guys.

  And then there was Connor. He began by reading a poem that he didn’t write, which was unusual. Connor said, “This is ‘The Song of Wandering Aengus’ by William Butler Yeats, who was an Irishman and a wanderer like myself.” Then he read in his thick Irish accent:

  I went out to the hazel wood,

  Because a fire was in my head,

  And cut and peeled a hazel wand,

  And hooked a berry to a thread;

  And when white moths were on the wing,

  And moth-like stars were flickering out,

  I dropped the berry in a stream

  And caught a little silver trout.

  When I had laid it on the floor

  I went to blow the fire a-flame,

  But something rustled on the floor,

  And someone called me by my name:

  It had become a glimmering girl

  With apple blossom in her hair

  Who called me by my name and ran

  And faded through the brightening air.

  Though I am old with wandering

  Through hollow and hilly lands,

  I will find out where she has gone,

  And kiss her lips and take her hands;

  And walk among long dappled grass,

  And pluck till time and times are done,

  The silver apples of the moon,

  The golden apples of the sun.

  I tend to be more literal than I should be, but it seemed to me that Connor must see August as the glimmering girl. Connor seemed entranced by August. Was that the same as obsessed? And as the poem suggested, did he not know where August was? I had suspected that he knew where she was all along, that she might even be hiding at his house, that he might be hiding a murderer.

  I was so busy thinking, I missed the beginning of his next poem. It took me a while to realize that it was about Finnegan.

  So I open my portfolio, and pages of doggerel skew out

  With their slurry of little black marks that prompt the eye to wonder what they could be about.

  Finnegan would rather I roll up these pages

  And throw them like a stick that carries more than meaning, more than ideas for the ages.

  What is the value of a life lived here?

  Of a moment in time? A week or a year?

  Whatever the worth my friend Finnegan may fit,

  If you threaten his life, I’ll kill you to save it.

  He has no interest in my meanings and sentences.

  There’s only this moment, and love, and its consequences.

  The audience in the tavern applauded politely, as they usually did. Connor was well liked, and everyone enjoyed his Irish delivery, but I don’t think many people followed his meaning. I wasn’t sure I often did.

  In this case, I knew that Finnegan was his dog. How many people knew that? Like a lot of people in this part of the country, Connor took his hound wherever he went, but he usually called the dog Fin. And with his Irish accent, I wondered if anyone else in the tavern understood what he had just said. I wondered if I understood what he had just said.

  Betina was applauding, and then she noticed that I wasn’t. “Did you not like that one?” she asked me.

  “It was fine,” I said mechanically. I told her I had to go to the little room. I tipped our little round table as I stood up, and Alicia steadied it.

  “Did you have a second beer when I wasn’t looking?” she asked.

  “I’ve had enough,” I told her. I walked outside and looked around. Connor was gone. The only other person out there was Dolores Pettigrew, once again shouting into her cell phone.

  I’d walked over from the salon, so I started walking back that way. Light rain was coming down steadily. I didn’t notice until my hair was wet and cold, and then I remembered I was carrying an umbrella and put it up.

  When I got to my car, I put my hand on the door handle and felt the cool, wet metal. I let my hand drop and stood there thinking about how confusing everything was. Thoughts seemed to be zinging around my brain as if they had a life of their own, and none of the thoughts got along with any of the other thoughts.

  I walked down Clifton Street, past Mr. Keshian’s shop, past Botowski Hardware. Someone was at the bank’s ATM across the street. What did they need cash for at this time of night? I went around the corner and stood under the awning of an antique store, looking in the window at a rusty sled, barely visible in the faint light from another shop. How had that sled come to Knockemstiff? I turned around and wondered how all of these buildings had come to be here, each built by a person who was trying to get something out of life, make money, probably raise a family, leave something to their children. Had they been happy with it all when they were done?

  I walked back around the corner and up Clifton Street. When I got near the salon where my car was parked, I saw the familiar dark figure near the salon door. He must have seen me walking this way from the tavern. What did I say to him?

  “Tell me you didn’t do it,” I called to him. “Tell me you didn’t.”

  “I didn’t do it,” he said, only he didn’t say it with an Irish accent. It was Woodley.

  “Uhh!” I said. I didn’t know whether to be relieved it wasn’t Connor or peeved it was Woodley, except that I was definitely peeved it was Woodley.

  “Nice to see you, too,” he said. “By ‘it,’ you mean murder Annie Simmerson?”

  “Something like that,” I said in a feeble effort at running the other way.

  “Let’s see, what’s like murdering Annie Simmerson? Murdering August Anderson?”

  “That’s not funny, really,” I objected. “Especially if you’re saying that August has been murdered.”

  “Wish I knew.”

  If he had been wanting to find out if I knew, I guess I’d told him I didn’t.

  “Investigator Woodley, before you ask, let me tell you that I don’t know who killed anybody. I have suspicions that I won’t tell you about, if you can live with that.”

  “I learned long ago to ignore amateur theories,” he said to my huge annoyance. He was trying to offend me.

  “We amateurs only get in the way, I’m sure.” I walked over to my car. “Have you been following me?”

  “No, no, I was out walking and saw you go down the street. I figured you’d end up back here at your car, and I’d say hello.”

  After you’d frightened me by lurking here, I thought. I promised myself I’d install an outside light and opened my car door.

  “Oh, I almost forgot,” I said. “I have something for you that I found earlier today. I’m sure it’s nothing.” I walked over and handed him Annie’s cell phone. “I found it at the spot I told you about, where I sa
w Annie using a cell phone? For some reason, your professional law enforcement people missed it.”

  Then I got in my little amateur car and drove away.

  Chapter 19

  Friday, end of the week: I was usually glad to see the weekend, but as this Friday morning dawned murky and still raining, I had an uneasy feeling about what I needed to do. Like any sensible person, I put it off as long as I could.

  My first idea had been to drive over to Connor’s first thing and get it over with. I’d demand to know whether he’d killed Annie. He’d answer yes or no. Then he’d kill me. Or he wouldn’t.

  Although I felt uneasy about this confrontation, I didn’t feel afraid because Connor didn’t seem like a murderous person. And yet I was going to ask him if he had murdered someone.

  I’d never asked a person whether they’d murdered someone before. There was probably a technique to it that the professionals used. Maybe the best approach was to get the person chatting about other things that had nothing to do with murder — Lousy weather we’re having, The price of sorghum is down this week, Did you hear that Bee Jameson is running off to New Orleans? — and then pause offhandedly and say, Oh, by the by, did you kill that awful woman?

  Sitting at my kitchen table eating a bowl of cereal, sipping at a cup of coffee, milk, no sugar, I pictured myself having this conversation with the murderer. I decided to go into the salon to make sure everything was good for the day there. I had a 9:30 and then nothing after that until almost noon. I’d drive out to Connor’s then. I could go down Waycross Road, see what everything looked like from that angle.

  As I parked in front of the salon, I thought about Woodley and the phone. Would he call the Zero contact in the phone and frighten Connor again? And would Woodley be able to tell that I’d done that yesterday? Woodley might want to talk to me about that. Whatever. While he was at it, he could thank me for finding the phone.

  As I unlocked the salon door, a little blonde six-and-a-half-year-old person appeared at my elbow. “Good morning, Miz Jefferies,” she said.