“Did you stop anywhere on the way home?”
“Yeah, I went by the tavern for a beer. Leander was playing a set so I stayed a while.”
“Was he?”
“Leander’s trying to get them to hire him for Saturday nights. Dawn, Burl, Mel, their wives and some other folks were there too. We listened for a while.”
“He’s good.”
“Yeah. The music, the blues, is kind of infectious. I’ve never listened to it much — acoustic blues or any roots music.” He rubbed his chin. “I put my key ring on the bar, right next to me. I thought all the keys were there, but before I left I realized that one was gone.”
“That’s odd.”
“It must’ve slipped off the ring.”
“Well thanks for letting me know.” I doubted it slipped off the ring. I’d seen his key ring and it seemed sturdy enough. I wondered even more if Pete’s lost key had anything to do with the noises I’d heard the night before. The timing was right. But I’d looked around again and saw nothing at all missing.
I’d have to change the locks. It made me grumpy that I’d have the trouble and expense of that, but there wasn’t anything I could realistically do about it. It was just an accident, and Pete was good to let me know right away.
About that time Angela Ladecky came in for her appointment with Pete, bringing her obligatory and delicious blueberry cupcakes. To be perfectly accurate, when she’s in health-conscious mode, she sometimes brings blueberry mini-muffins. The difference is that the muffins have no icing, but they’re smaller, so you can pop about a dozen in your mouth at one sitting unless you have a close friend nearby who’s willing to tell you you’ve had enough after you’ve popped in six.
None of us has ever known Angela to make anything but blueberry cupcakes or muffins. There is speculation that her idea of a six-course meal is six muffins per person with an extra dessert of a cupcake. In any case, we’re always delighted to see her because she even brings cupcakes on days when she isn’t getting her hair done.
“So, what’s the gossip?” Angela asked as Pete tucked the cape around her neck.
Betina answered for him. “Well, the very latest is that Pete is going with me to the dance in Stanleyville.”
Angela glanced at Pete’s reflection in the mirror, then at Betina, giving her a perplexed expression. “I thought Pete was gay.”
“He is gay,” Pete said, grinning down at her.
“We are going together, not going together,” Betina said by way of explanation. “We both are going there to meet guys.”
Angela thought that over. “Oh.”
“We haven’t really decided if Pete is going or not,” Pete said.
“Yes we have,” Betina said. “It’s decided.”
The look on Pete’s face told me he might still have other plans.
***
Nellie got back with the donuts, mostly chocolate, just ahead of Lucille Braxton. I’d botched Lucille’s A-line bob a few months back, when I was operating on two hours of sleep after helping the police sort out Annie’s murder. As it turned out her husband found the odd cut rather exciting. Now she did what she had taken to doing since that murderous day. She plopped down in my chair and said, “Do your worst.”
The first time she’d said that, I blushed from embarrassment at the damage I’d inflicted when I’d been sleepwalking. Then I found that she wasn’t being sarcastic. “The worse it turns out,” she explained, ‘the more it turns him on. So hack away. I want another wild night. Oops, I mean another wild cut.”
I guess the excitement in the bedroom offset being laughed at in the streets of Knockemstiff, and besides, the gossip mill being what it is, as soon as everyone knew why she had such odd cuts, they thought it might be the smartest thing they’d ever heard off. My only reservation was that is was hard to keep finding new and different ways to butcher the woman’s hair.
“We are keeping the completely shaved-bald option in reserve for now, right?”
“For when all else fails,” she agreed happily.
I had always thought that the avant-garde hair stylists were just showoffs with short attention spans. Doing Lucille Braxton’s hair a new way every few weeks was giving me a new respect for them.
As Lucille settled in, the girl who had wandered in the day before came through the door. “Hey, are you ready to do that wild coloring job we talked about now?”
“Absolutely,” Betina said. “All set. I hope you've got some time to spend in the chair. After I shampoo you, we’ll need to do one color at a time.” That wasn’t strictly true, but Betina is still learning. My daddy taught me that it isn’t nice to play backseat driver. (He taught me this lesson by shouting “Don’t do that!” — a rare instance of him raising his voice and one of his more succinct lessons.) Anyway, Betina would do a better job if I didn’t upset her world view.
“I have all morning as it turns out,” the girl said.
So she got in the chair and Betina gave her a shampoo, then while the girl’s hair was wet, Betina put on rubber gloves and got out an orange concoction she’d mixed earlier. It was bright enough to satisfy OSHA requirements for highway-worker outfits.
“How’s that?” Betina asked the girl.
Everyone else in the salon peered over at the orange liquid as if it were radioactive. “Perfect,” the girl said.
No one in Knockemstiff would be caught dead in that color, but most of us could get along with that color being on someone else’s head. (Once when I made a face about my Aunt Odelia’s beehive hairdo, my daddy had told me, “You try to understand another person’s appearance by picturing it on yourself, but it doesn’t belong to you. Leave it out there on them, and you might be able to get along with it better.”)
Betina worked the dye into the girl’s hair. “We can streak it with the other colors you want afterward,” she promised. “It’s going be insanity in technicolor.”
The girl thought that was a good thing. “I’ll close my eyes and imagine it,” she said.
Then she got a tranquil new-age look on her face and seemed to drift off to sleep. That happens fairly often with our older clients, so we didn’t think much about it. Once Betina set the timer, we more or less forgot about her. I was busy shaving a strip of hair off the back of Lucille’s head and trying not to think about the fact that people would know I had done this.
But then the girl got our attention and she did it a way that was simple and effective.
She sat upright, screaming like a banshee.
Betina was munching a chocolate donut when the shrieks started, and she ran to the girl, who was wearing a wide-eyed, freaked out expression. I don’t know what Betina planned on doing when she got to her, but I grabbed a cup of coffee that had gotten cold. It was instinctive. Some dyes can be caustic, and I was afraid Betina had mixed it wrong. But as I was about to douse the girl’s head, I saw her tongue was swollen, and she was shaking violently.
Then she fell out of the chair.
“Don’t touch her head,” Nellie shouted as she grabbed the phone and dialed 911. Unfortunately, the nearest paramedics and ambulance are at the fire station in Paudy — forty three minutes away and our town doctor was in jail. Nadine Hines, who in addition to being Chief Tanner’s secretary, is also the emergency operator, put in a call to Paudy and sent over Melly Jackson, the town vet.
We tried to administer CPR to the girl, with me giving her mouth to mouth and Nellie doing the chest compression bit, but by the time Melly arrived, ten minutes later, we were pretty sure all that was happening was that she was getting cold.
“No pulse at all,” Melly confirmed. “I guess she’s dead.”
“You guess?”
She was kneeling by the girl and looked up at me. “I can’t declare death unless you can convince me she’s a horse.”
“We don’t dye horses!” Betina shouted in complete panic.
“You should. It’s all the rage with the rich people. Dogs and cats too.”
I patted Melly on the shoulder. “We don’t have any rich people in this town.”
“Just a dead customer,” Nellie said with a note of awe.
Just then Digby Hayes arrived, doing his best to look important. He stared at the dead girl. “Twenty years on the force and now I’m dealing with two killings in six months.”
“Two killings?” Surely he was jumping to this conclusion only because of the previous murder. “Maybe it was a heart attack.”
Digby pointed at the girl’s head. “Then the stuff that’s making her scalp bubble is supposed to do that?”
“Mercy!” Nellie said, sinking into a chair.
“What do we do now?” I asked Digby.
“Do you have any donuts?”
“Donuts?”
“Might as well have a donut while we wait for the paramedics. They’ll take her to the hospital, and the doctor will declare her dead.”
Pete was peering at the girl along with the rest of us but keeping his distance, as if whatever killed her was contagious. “So if they don’t come, she isn’t dead?”
Digby considered that. “I suppose not. Not legally.”
“So if we sent her back to Delhi this way, maybe left her in the park, then once they find her and take her to their hospital and have her pronounced dead, then legally she’d have died there?”
That one had Digby stumped. “I think we are overlooking something, some little thing in the law. But I don’t know.”
He looked at the girl again. “From Delhi?”
“She wanted me to decorate her head. Make her look like a Mardis Gras float with her new hair colors.”
“Guess she won’t make it to Mardis Gras,” Digby said.
· CHAPTER FOUR
It took a while to find Chief Tanner and convince him that there really had been a suspicious death at Teasen and Pleasen. At first he thought Digby was drunk. Once he finally showed up at the salon, our chief had himself quite a time, making a really big thing out of reclassifying the chaos of my salon into an official crime scene. “I can’t call it a murder scene until we know for certain that she was murdered,” he said.
He was sad about that and I couldn’t really blame him. He’d missed wallowing in the spotlight the last time. When Annie was killed it was outside under a tree, and while it attracted a lot of attention, with people driving by to see the spot (even though it looked exactly as it had before she was killed, minus the yellow crime scene tape) it didn’t provide the right sort of backdrop for him to be able to play the role he’d always seen himself in -- as our champion of justice.
This time was different and he intended to play it for all it was worth. He had to call the parish Sheriff to take over in the investigation, but until he arrived Tanner could stand around in his uniform drinking coffee in the middle of a hubbub of activity. He was surrounded by emergency vehicles and, to the uninitiated, would appear to be in charge. It was his moment of fame, and if he’d been able to say it was definitely a murder scene it would have been perfect. Unfortunately there was the pesky possibility that it was an accidental death of some sort.
With things in massive turmoil, I’d called the school and asked Mrs. Lacey to get Mrs. Lejeune to take Sarah straight home. That call took half an hour, since I had to explain the whole story. Finnegan found all the excitement a bit unsettling, and was finding it difficult to resist the temptation to bark every time someone moved. He knew something was wrong and would have been happy to bite someone if he thought it would help. Nellie came to the rescue. “I’d be happy to walk Finnegan home,” she said.
I gave her my house key. “Fantastic. He is going to be underfoot here. Would you take my key and hang around until Sarah gets home? I have no idea how long I’ll be tied up here.”
Tanner started to say something, but Nellie preempted him. “I’ll be back,” she said. “I have to make sure Sarah and Finnegan are safely tucked away at home.” She grinned. “Trust me, copper, I won’t make a run for it.”
Tanner nodded and I got the impression that Nellie was relieved to escape for a time.
It wasn’t just Chief Tanner who got caught up in the madness of the events, either. It seemed that everyone who could find a way to be a part of things was queued up to do it. Whether they were a witness or a friend of one, everyone wanted to establish a personal connection to such a momentous time in Knockemstiff. So, at one time or another most of the population managed to find one excuse or another to walk by and stare, maybe ask a question or two.
Even our mayor, Ellen Hart, made an appearance. She came by to make a high-profile visit to the scene, letting herself be seen assuring Chief Tanner that she had every confidence in his ability to solve the crime (even though everyone knew she thought he was incompetent) and then commenting to the crowd on how the fabric of life in Knockemstiff was under threat, undoubtedly from foreign elements. Then, almost offhandedly, she asked Pete to make an appointment for her on the following Wednesday. “I’m shooting a television ad,” she told him. “I’ll need to look extra sharp.”
Pete looked her over giving her his professional eyeballing. That sounds weird, but he has a way of looking at a woman that tells you he is measuring your face, imagining it with various cuts and colors, and generally making a very professional assessment. That’s one thing that makes him popular. “We can sharpen you up, Madam Mayor. But will this be an ad for you as mayor or for Ellen Hart of Hart Realty? That makes a difference in the best look.”
The real estate thing is her day job, what she does when she isn’t being mayor, which is most of the time. Mayors don’t get paid in small towns.
She considered the question, looking thoughtful, as if the question hadn’t already occurred to her, as if she hadn’t already decided exactly what she had in mind. “I need it to have a professional businesswoman look. And I think I’ll do ads for both. As long as I’m paying for a camera crew and all, I might as well do one of each.”
The folk in Knockemstiff tend toward pragmatic outlooks and intentions.
Pete nodded, tilting his head as he checked out her profile. It was all good theater, but Pete has a certain talent for it. “When you come in you should have Nellie do your makeup too,” he said. “She has a way of bringing out the strength in your jaw line.” Pete is good at doing that sort of thing, making sure clients remember we do more than cut hair.
“Strength?” Ellen wasn’t sure that was the look she wanted.”
“Absolutely. A mayor and a realtor both need to be strong individuals.”
“That won’t make me seem mannish?”
“Her professional touch will let you show that you have a very feminine inner strength.”
“Perfect,” she said.
I was happy that she didn’t realize that what Pete meant was that Nellie could disguise the fact that Ellen tended to be a bit horse faced. He was smart to mention the makeup anyway, because when Ellen does her own makeup she can be heavy handed. Now, for instance, she looked as if her makeup artist worked for the coroner — not meaning any offense to the coroner. Nellie knew how to make the woman look alive, not just sort of lifelike, and we were sure she wanted more than just the town’s zombie vote.
Pleased with her showing and her plans, Ellen went back to one of her offices.
The Sheriff finally arrived with a couple of young deputies who started taking pictures of every square inch of the salon, especially of the corpse, while the Sheriff chatted, over coffee and donuts, with Tanner.
As I looked around I saw that we even had a television reporter and his camerawoman on the scene. “We came over from Paudy when we heard the news on the police scanner,” he told me.
So our crime wave was going big time. Unfortunately for Mayor Ellen, she had already left and the reporter and the girl brandishing the camera at people were desperate to corner people for on-camera interviews about the tragedy that was rocking our tiny community.
When Nellie got back she graciously and rapidly agreed to talk to them about
the events. I note that during her brief personal explanation of the events she managed to mention Bayou Shine, her family’s brand of moonshine, three times. She also pointed out that the victim had come all the way from Delhi, which showed that people all over the state were drawn to Teasen and Pleasen to get their hair and nails done. She even casually waved her hand so the audience could see the way she had beaded her own acrylic nails.
The salon seldom had so many people milling about. If we were unprepared for a sudden death, we were equally unprepared for all the people it attracted. We ran out of coffee and snacks early. I had Pete make a fresh urn before heading off to Marshé Grosri for more donuts. Our normal batch, even supplemented by the blueberry cupcakes, had lasted about two minutes once Digby and Tanner arrived, and they were by no means the only extra consumers we had.
While Nellie hogged the limelight, I told and retold the story of what happened to Chief Tanner, the Sheriff, and then both of them together. They weren’t pleased to find that the only name we had for the girl was Calvin Coolidge and didn’t even believe me until I showed them the appointment book. Beyond that the only thing I could tell them that wasn’t rather obvious was about the noises I heard in the salon the night before.
“You went inside?” the Sheriff asked.
“Of course. I wanted to see who or what was making those noises.”
“Alone?”
“I was the only one here besides whoever was inside making the noises.”
“Did you see anyone?” Tanner asked.
“No. I would’ve called Digby, gotten him out of bed, if I’d seen anyone.”
“So it wasn’t but scratching noises then,” Tanner said. He didn’t seem all that interested.
“Made by something or someone.”
“But you said that when you went in you didn’t see anyone.”
“I thought that if someone was there I’d see them. I wasn’t searching the place. I looked around to see if there was any damage, or things missing… I didn’t look around thoroughly.” I didn’t mention I hadn’t wanted to turn on the light and had been groping in the dark.
Wash, Rinse, Die: Cozy Mystery (The Teasen & Pleasen Hair Salon Cozy Mystery Series Book 2) Page 4