As Mrs. Throckmorton Gaddis Lejeune left the salon with Robert Gaddis Lejeune’s six-year old hand clutched tightly in her skinny claw, I turned to Sarah. “I’m not going straight home tonight. Nellie and I…”
She waved her hand in dismissal. “I’ll be fine at home alone, Miz Jefferies. I have homework to do.”
“Not with mushrooms?”
“Arithmetic. More percentages, mostly. Later on there is a documentary on television about mummification that Mrs. Lacey wants us to discuss in class.”
“Like Mummy from the Crypt?” Betina asked, clapping her hands. “I loved that movie.”
“Like actual dead people in ancient Egypt,” Sarah said, “who don’t walk out of crypts because they are actually dead.”
I think the quality of the education at Mrs. Lacey’s school is erratic if not downright eccentric. I didn’t say that out loud either. I did tell Sarah, “When I close the salon, I’ll take you home and fix your dinner before I go out.”
She shook her seven-year-and-sixteen-point-six-percent-old head. “I’m not hungry now, Miz Jefferies. Please just bring me a bacon cheeseburger and fries,” she said.
“What makes you think…”
“Miz Jefferies,” she said, giving me her with-all-due-respect-duh look. “Where else would you and Miz Phlint go after work?”
“Fine.” I looked around the salon and saw nothing but the people who work in the salon standing around not working. That never gladdens my heart. Where had all the clients gone?
Meanwhile, unfazed by the toadstool invasion or the lack of gainful work, Nellie was still bright eyed. “Why don’t you go ahead and take Sarah home now?”
“I might as well. It’s beyond slow here.” I looked at Pete and Betina. “You two go on home. We have a busy morning scheduled.”
“And some of the customers might actually show up,” Nellie said.
***
While I took Sarah home. Nellie closed up the salon for me. She was cleaning out the coffee urn when I got back. We grabbed our purses, locked the front door and walked the short distance to the Bacon Up. It was early for dinner and Margie, the waitress, smiled as we slid into a booth. She was glad to have something to do.
“Why do I crave cheeseburgers?” I asked Nellie.
“I’m not sure why you do anything.”
“That makes two of us,” I said. “Okay, tell me this. Why do you want a cheeseburger?”
“My, isn’t someone in a philosophical mood today? I want one because it’s comfort food,” Nellie explained.
“With all the love and affection you’re getting lately, what do you need comforting about?”
“In my more reflective moments, I worry that all the loving attention from Rudy won’t last out the week.” She looked thoughtfully at the clock behind the counter of the diner. “Practically speaking, of course, if it lasts through another weekend I can die happy.”
“Is that why you aren’t going straight home? Are you afraid that you’ll get there and find the honeymoon is already over? Again?”
“We didn’t have a first honeymoon, not exactly. It’s tough to have a romantic time when you are seven months pregnant, even in Atlantic City. Besides, Rudy lost all our money the first hour we were there, so we skipped out on the room.”
Her face retreated to the non-euphoric-Nellie look that I knew and loved. But as my daddy used to tell me, “Don’t rain on somebody’s else’s parade, sugar, because guess what; we’re all marching in the same parade.” My honeymoon crack was a rainy one. Rudy had knocked her up in the cab of his pickup when they were both still in high school, and the marriage had barely preceded the blessed arrival of the oldest of their three boys.
“Stay focused on now,” I said, injecting a perky lilt into my voice. And I did it without gagging on it. Am I a good friend or what?
“You must be buying those big bags of fortune cookies from Marshé Grosri again.” That’s our local creole-inspired food market.
“Sarah likes them.” I tried. I gave Nellie my I-am-not-rationalizing look. The truth is that those cookies are addictive. They’re great TV snacks, and who cares if they have a fortune in them? But who can eat a fortune cookie and not read the fortune?
“You feed those to a seven year old?”
“Nellie Phlint, I’ve seen what you feed your boys.”
“They are mine to ruin,” she began.
“And let no one claim you’ve shirked your ruining responsibilities.”
“They are mine,” she repeated, “and I didn’t know any better back then.”
“Back then, meaning last Wednesday when they had that Chex mix for dinner?”
“Chex cereal is good for you,” she said, as Margie slid cheeseburger platters in front of us. “Says so right on the box. Of course, Chex doesn’t have fortunes inside, so they lack whatever nutritional value you get from little slips of paper.”
“We rarely eat the paper anyway,” I said. “Actually, she collects the fortunes — Sarah. She told me it’s for a school project. I was starting to wonder if Mrs. Lacey has them reading Nostradamus.”
Nellie held a french fry in the air and thought for a moment. “That name is familiar.” She ate the french fry and picked up her burger. “Doesn’t he write mysteries?”
“Sort of,” I said. Sometimes Nellie pretends not to know who people like that are to tease me.
“Getting back to cheeseburgers, bacon cheeseburgers, that is, I wanted to eat early because Rudy is taking me to the theater in Paudy tonight. He and the kids ordered pizza, and he’ll pick me up later.”
“The theater?”
“The picture show. They’re showing something in 3D. We’ve never been to one of those, and Rudy says this movie is not appropriate for younger audiences.” She lifted her eyebrows a couple of times.
“You’re leaving the boys home alone?”
“After they survived a week alone in the swamp well enough I’m okay leaving them at home.”
“Mmm,” I said. “The Tickfaw River swamp. You mean the swamp where Rudy told you he was camping with the boys? The swamp he was supposed to be in when we found him a hundred miles away on an airboat allegedly consorting with aliens?”
“That’s the swamp.”
“I guess that did come out okay. There were remarkably few injuries.”
She shrugged. “You can’t protect them from everything. I figure home is probably safer than the swamp, since we rarely have gators in the house. As long as they don’t leave the gas oven on or get into Rudy’s guns.”
“What’s the movie?”
“A surprise, Rudy said.”
“I’m surprised he’s taking you to the movies.”
“You’ve never liked Rudy, have you?”
I had always fought the urge to say less-than-appreciative things about the man. Almost always. “I like him well enough,” I said, reaching for a comment off the highest moral shelf I could sincerely reach. “And I trust him well enough. It’s just that I trust him mostly to act like a little kid.”
Nellie grinned around a bite of her cheeseburger. “Just like one,” she said, “or actually like a frisky teen. That’s when I like him best.”
I groaned. I could do with my own frisky teen or a more genteel male companion. Unfortunately, the pickings in Knockemstiff were slim. Or I was being too picky? It can be hard to tell.
***
It was getting dark when Rudy swooped into the Bacon Up, smiling, looking incredibly cleaned up, and swept Nellie off. I was sure he was up to something. I understood his relief at being legal in the moonshining biz and that he was finally making money that didn’t have to be kept under any table, but this was a radical change. He was practically being a nice guy — a decent human being. That gave me something to think about as I walked home, clutching Sarah’s burger and fries.
My route home from the Bacon Up took me past the salon. That would allow me to make sure nobody left any lights on or a door open. I was confident that Nellie
would take care of closing up, but it was second nature for me to make sure. And Nellie was a little distracted lately.
As I walked, I resolved to put a bunch of things on my back burner and then turn that burner to off. Those things included my suspicions about Rudy, a lot of unfounded concerns, speculative thoughts, and theories that had him in cahoots with aliens who had taken over Connor’s brain. If I had any sense, and a lot less curiosity, I’d leave them there.
I remembered that today was the day they emptied the dumpster, they being Leroy and Ellis who run the town dump. The boys always forget to close the lid on the dumpster after they empty it, which is a pain because when it rains (there is no if it rains in Louisiana) the dumpster fills with water. When enough rain comes down to soak up the residual garbage it makes an odoriferous soup reminiscent of science projects Mrs. Lacey had her students perform that made toadstools seem quite pleasant by comparison.
One time some kids who drove over from Paudy out of boredom dumped old Mrs. Johanas into it. She’s our street person. She pushes her shopping cart around town collecting all sorts of things she feels are far too valuable to be thrown out. These kids dumped her in the dumpster, along with her shopping cart of goodies. The sides were too high for her to climb out, and even if she had been able to climb out, she wouldn’t have been willing to leave her cart behind. So when Pete took out the garbage the next morning he found her there. She apparently finds plenty to eat in her life on the street because it took three of us to hoist her out. Then Pete had to climb back in and hand out her things.
I decided to go close the dumpster.
I circled around from the front door of the salon on Clifton Street to the alley that runs behind the salon. Passing the back door of the salon, I heard an odd rustling sound. At first I thought it was a cat, or maybe Mrs. Johanas, scratching around in cardboard boxes, but I realized the sounds were coming from inside — inside my salon.
Damn, or as Sarah Jameson would say these days, “Darn with a capital D.” She says that because I put my foot down at her using her Daddy’s favorite word. At any rate, now that I’d poked my nose into things, I’d found something that needed investigating, and interrupting a hard-working burglar at his trade isn’t my idea of a good time. If I could get to a phone I could call the police, but I’d probably get Deputy Digby Hayes who would reassure me that it was nothing and promise to come by in the morning and show me he was right.
As much as I dislike confronting working burglars, I like being robbed even less.
A smart woman is supposed to be prepared. I’ve read the articles. Hey, I work in a salon and we have old issues of Cosmo and all those magazines that have survived the digital age, and I know I should be carrying pepper spray, a whistle, a light of some kind, and probably an AK-47, although I think that was in an ad for the NRA, not one of the actual articles. I didn’t have any of that stuff with me. I usually carry a flashlight, but Sarah had borrowed it without really saying why.
As I said, I should have all that stuff, but when you know everyone in town, even after there’s been a murder, it’s kind of hard to take the idea of encountering life-threatening situations as seriously as you should. Besides, given a fight-or-flight opportunity, most people in Knockemstiff would vote for flight, hands down. That makes robbers easier to handle.
But who knew who or what was in there? Maybe it was the aliens, back for another victim.
Moving slowly, as if that would help in some way, I examined the back door and windows. Nothing seemed out of place, and certainly nothing was broken. I saw no jimmied windows, no shattered window panes. The front door had been fine too. That meant what I heard was something I thought I’d heard — not real. I liked the idea of the things that scare me not being real. The other alternative was that it was an animal. Maybe one of the opossums that are everywhere at night had gotten in an air duct. We’d gotten one in the attic of the house the week before, which was when Sarah informed me that the name opossum came from Virginia Algonquian (Powhatan) language. That was fascinating, but we still had to hire an exterminator to get rid of it.
So it might be nothing and it might be a harmless animal. Regardless, I knew that if I walked away, went home now without finding out what it was, I’d never be able to get to sleep.
With a long sigh to release as much stupidity as possible, I got out my keys and opened the back door.
Just inside the door we kept a fire extinguisher. I might not have pepper spray but the chemicals that thing sprayed out sure wouldn’t make a person feel good. I knew how to use it too. Chief Tanner had the Fire Department from Paudy come to town once a year and he more or less insisted that every business owner take a mini fire-fighting course. I think other than knowing you had to shake up your extinguishers every six months so they wouldn’t clog, the only thing we learned that was useful is that it would take the Paudy Fire Department around 43 minutes to get to Knockemstiff in case of an emergency.
Having been forced to take the classes did mean I knew how to use the extinguisher. With it in my hand, a rather comforting object, I poked and probed around in the dark. I could’ve turned on a light, but I’d convinced myself that I knew my way around the salon better than any burglar, so moving in the dark gave me an advantage. Assuming there was a burglar.
Of course, knowing where things are in the light isn’t exactly the same as knowing where they are in the dark, and I managed to bark my shins painfully several times before I decided that my search had been sufficiently thorough.
Besides, Sarah’s dinner was getting cold.
I went out and locked the door behind me, not at all sure that I’d accomplished anything beyond terrifying myself.
It wasn’t until I got home that I remembered I hadn’t closed the lid on the dumpster. The way things were going, despite the clear skies, I felt like when morning came I’d arrive at the salon and have to fish a half-drowned Mrs. Johanas out of the dumpster. That wasn’t how I wanted to start my day.
· CHAPTER THREE
“Dawn won’t be in for her appointment,” Betina told me. “She just called. Apparently if we don’t reschedule her appointment we will have to take responsibility for spreading the black plague around town.”
Dawn definitely had demonstrated a flair for the dramatic. Or the melodramatic, depending on where one draws that line. Given the wide swings of imagination of the town gossips, the line demarcating the melodramatic must be pretty far out there though. Halfway to Paudy, no doubt. Of course any message relayed by Betina would gain its own spin. I think the game of telephone must’ve been invented here.
“I hope you assured her that life as we know it would go on without her presence.”
Betina curled her lip. “I said, ‘fine,’ and let it go at that.” Even though Dawn hadn’t been responsible for Annie’s little smear-August-as-a-slut campaign, Betina held a grudge against Dawn because Annie had used photographs of her, with August’s face pasted on.
“I assume you told Nellie?”
“Who rejoiced and immediately headed out to buy some donuts from the Gorsri.”
“Ah, the balm for all injuries, perceived and real.”
Betina looked confused. “No. No balm. Just donuts. I told her to get more with chocolate. They always go first. And no one eats the stupid ones with sprinkles.”
“I do,” Pete protested, coming over to make the discussion more intimate.
Betina looked at him and patted his flat stomach. Pete was in good shape. “And you eat one every, what? Once a quarter?”
“Sometimes twice.” He looked defensive. “I like them, but they make my belly big.”
“Since you look so fine, since you’ve exerted so much willpower to ensure you look good, you need to follow through.”
“Follow through on what?”
“Go with me to Studlyville on Saturday.”
“Go with you?”
“There’s a dance at the hotel. Think about it. All those hunks who work in the refinery are g
oing to be there. Your Mister Right might be at that dance. You aren’t going to meet a nice guy sitting home watching television.”
“I don’t just stay home.”
“Where do you go? I never see you out. You never talk about going out.”
“But if I go with you…”
“You’ll be seen. We don’t have to hang out together. I intend to find a guy who appreciates a woman to hang out with.” She laughed. “Maybe more than one.”
Pete blushed. “I don’t know.”
She patted his cheek. “Think about it.”
She was teasing him a little, but I thought Betina was right. Admittedly, she isn’t the brightest bulb, and there are a lot of areas where her knowledge is limited to what was published in the gossip rags, but when it came to socializing, dating, Betina was an expert. “Listen to her,” I said. “You’ve got a friend here who is trying to help you out.”
“I’m already out,” he said. Then he grinned, pleased with himself for making a joke.
Betina laughed. “That’s not exactly enough. You have to advertise. You need to let someone who isn’t a client of the salon know about the void in your love life that needs filled.”
“Betina’s plan has merit,” I added. “Worst case is you meet a few people, dance, have a few drinks…”
“No, if I go with you the worst case is I embarrass myself and get a DWI ticket on the way home.”
“We are going,” Betina said, settling the manner, then she turned and went to get coffee.
Pete came over by me, looking nervous.
“What is it?” I asked him.
He shifted on his feet. “I have to confess something.”
“You don’t want to go to the dance?”
“No. I don’t want to, but...” He summoned his nerve. I let him take the time to get his nerve from wherever it is nerve goes away to. “I lost my key to the salon.”
“When?”
“Yesterday. I’m sure I had the when I came into the salon in the morning, but later I realized it wasn’t there.”
Wash, Rinse, Die: Cozy Mystery (The Teasen & Pleasen Hair Salon Cozy Mystery Series Book 2) Page 3