“Not everyone sees it that way,” Pete said. We all looked at him, ready for his revelation. He posed dramatically, waiting until all eyes were on him – the way he does on the rare occasions he has a gem to share. “Dawn Devereaux called this morning. She asked me to reschedule her coloring for tomorrow.”
Nellie was impressed. “Wow.”
“I put it in the book after she called. She wants Nellie to do it at ten.” He raised his eyebrows. “The slot was empty. Is that okay?”
“Fine with me,” I said.
Nellie shook her head. “You’d think she’d be the one most likely to develop an aversion to getting her hair colored.”
I noticed that the bottom of my coffee cup was dry and went to the urn. “I talked to her the other day. She doesn’t think the death was an accident, but she says she doesn't think it has a thing to do with her either. Maybe this is a way to make her point that the affair with Burl has been over for some time.”
“Well,” Nellie said, “it wasn’t a chainsaw attack, so I can see how she might think that the killing being at the time we expected her might be about something else.”
Dolores Pettigrew thought that made no sense at all. “Oh, Nellie, if Dawn thought there was even a chance that the killer might have been after her, I’d think she’d hide out. If something like that happened to me, I'm sure I wouldn’t want to go anywhere at all. I’d stay in my room.”
“She sure isn’t doing that at all,” Betina said. “That girl is definitely out and about. Why, I saw her in Paudy just yesterday.”
“That's rather curious.” I saw everyone looking at me and realized I'd spoken out loud. “I was thinking that she normally stays in Knockemstiff while she deals with all her clients here, then heads off to Delhi. She’s still working on my books and she said that Mel's books turned out to be a headache for her. It seems odd that she'd be going all the way to Paudy when she told me she was swamped.”
Betina shrugged. “Please. What doesn't seem odd right now?”
“True.”
As we ramped up for the day, Nellie began carefully putting out her assortment of manicuring supplies and tools. She has a particular way of setting things so she can grab whatever tool she needs without looking. Most of us have that sort of thing for our stations. I like to know exactly where each kind of scissors are so that my hands can find them, and Nellie has a lot of specialized files and scrapers and then all the bottles of colors and moisturizers and all manner of things. She saw me watching. “Tina will be in later. She had me order these.” She held up a card with tiny cars on studs that she'd be putting in Tina's nails. “She thinks Mel will get excited by them.” Then she turned to stare at Betina. “You just teased us, Bet. No fair. We need details.”
“Details?”
“You said you were in Paudy, and...”
Betina scratched her nose. “Oh, right. Well the last time I was in Paudy I’d seen a great silk blouse at Mardell’s, you know that high-end second hand shop on first, the one with the stuffed poodle in the window....”
“Oh, Betina, what a shame. You must have terrible timing. They've been trying to sell that as long as I can remember,” Dolores said.
Betina made a face. “Well it's gone now.”
That surprised Dolores. “Oh Beinta, now who on earth would buy a stuffed poodle?”
Betina snorted. “No, the blouse. I took the bus all the way to Paudy and it was gone.”
Nellie raised a nail file. “Betina! Tell us about Dawn before I cut your heart out with my dull file.”
Betina shrugged. “Oh, yeah. I was on the bus coming into town and I saw her. She didn’t see me though.”
With the gossip turning inevitably toward Dawn I couldn’t help but glance at Hildegarde to see her reaction. For the moment she was pretending to ignore the conversation, or just pretending it had nothing to do with her.
“She’s got clients there,” Nellie said.
“I thought she was here half the time and in Delphi the rest,” Pete said.
Nellie was certain. “The last time I did her hair I remember her telling me that she has an account in Paudy.”
“Really?” Betina asked. “That might explain why she was there.” She checked the shampoo in the bottle by the mirror. “Still... that wouldn't tell us who the man was.”
Suddenly the room got still. Since no one else seemed willing to, I stopped biting my tongue and asked. “Man? What man?”
“The guy with her.”
Sometimes you just had to set your jaw and drag gossip out of people, although usually only when it was like this, and the gossip herself didn't see that she had a juicy morsel. “What, exactly did you see, Betina?”
“Dawn and some man.”
“We got that part,” Pete said. “What man?”
“Like I said, I don't know. I didn't see him really, just his back.”
“Oh, Betina, you mean you didn't check?” Dolores asked.
“I was going by on the bus and I saw her getting out of a car and going into a room at the Bright Motel. I might not have noticed her at all, but that car was a terrible lime green color.”
“What kind of car?”
“I think it was a Ford.”
Another pause ensued, this time it was one of those required for you to properly digest a large, meaty piece of gossip.
“Are you sure?” Dolores asked. “A lime green Ford?”
“Ugly as sin, that car.”
Betina, our little Miss Oblivious, turned to Hildegarde. “Didn’t Burl buy an ugly Ford Fusion from Mel Krisller recently?”
Hildegarde Botowski was turning red. At first I held my breath, waiting for an explosion but it seemed she was just embarrassed. “Burl bought that thing last week. He took it back to Mel the other day. He wasn't happy with the way it ran.” She let out a dramatic sigh. “It definitely is one pig-ugly beast, but Mel gave him a good deal on it.”
I wanted the facts as straight as they could be. “Betina, you have no doubt that it was Dawn getting out and going into the motel?”
“Oh yes, I’m positive. She had on that hot pink dress that she likes, the one that shows off her hips really nice but has a little too much cleavage for a nice business look. It looked hideous next to that car.”
That clinched it in my mind—it had been Dawn. Betina might not know a Ford from a Sherman tank, but she knew lime green and she knew the wardrobe of every young woman in the area. When it came to color, makeup, and clothes she was a walking encyclopedia.
“So Dawn was in Paudy attending to her own affairs, so to speak,” Nellie said. The corners of her mouth twitched and I knew she was struggling to keep from laughing at her own joke and just barely managing that feat. No one else did but then they were all preoccupied with trying to decide if they thought the man Dawn was with had been Mel or Burl.
Dolores refilled her mug with coffee and stared at it for a minute. “It had to be Mel didn't it.”
I wasn’t sure if she said that because she thought it was true or because Hildegarde was her friend.
“That seems likely,” Nellie said. She was polishing her own nails.
“It couldn’t have been Burl. That’s for certain,” Hildegarde said firmly. She had her stern face on. “I haven’t given him a chance to even think about stepping out.”
I was glad Hildegarde was confident. I wasn’t quite so sure. I’m not sure anyone else was.
After Hildegarde left, heading to the Tuesday morning meeting of the quilting society, Betina smiled. “Well, there’s one way to find out who the guy was.”
“What’s that?”
She looked surprised. “Ask Dawn.”
From the mouths of naive interns…
* * *
“Are you going to pick Sarah up yourself today?” Nellie asked. “You could. Things are slow. In fact, it's so slow that you could take her straight home. I'll lock up.”
They were slow. Tina Krisller was back in Pete's chair and Betina was doing a cut for R
ashmi Paramabet who had wandered in to get a trim.
“Are you trying to get rid of me?”
She nodded in the direction of our little cafe. “Well, Rashmi brought in another batch of samosas, but there aren't that many left, and...”
“Got it. You'd be happy to get rid of the leftovers.”
“Something like that.”
“I wasn't going to go to school soon but I do intend to pick her up later on. She has an after-school event.”
“The finale of the grand mushroom project?”
“I think that’s officially over. Billy the janitor ruined that one and they moved on to something about dinosaurs. Something less edible.”
“They better not make the dinos look yummy. Billy could eat nails and not feel a thing. Probably has. Did you know he’s a distant cousin of Rudy’s?”
“No.”
“I didn’t either until I mentioned the mushroom episode at dinner. Rudy said that Billy eats anything he can put his hands on. And lots of it, yet he’s skinny as a rail.”
“Mushrooms probably aren’t a big source of calories.”
She ran her hands over her waist. “I wonder if there’s a mushroom diet.”
“Probably, but it might be simpler to stop eating the pastries from our cafe.”
Nellie gave me a shocked look. “And have life as we know it end?”
She had a point. “You'd need to get mushrooms that tasted like chocolate and looked like donuts.”
“This school thing goes on for about an hour after the salon closes, but if you really don't mind locking up, I'll take Fin for a walk.”
At the sound of his name, Fin got out of the dog bed by the door and stretched. Obviously the idea appealed to him. After all, the town was lousy with squirrels that needed serious barking at. Then he could reasonably expect that we’d pick up Sarah and he’d have someone with some real energy to play with.
“I can do that,” Nellie said happily.
So, with Fin at my heels I took a route that went by the courthouse. When we reached the park in front of it Fin ran ahead. The park has lots trees and grass and not a lot of businesses. Fin darted from tree to tree and back again, burning up energy like nobody’s business while I wander. There is a leash law in the town but it’s not enforced. I doubt most people are aware there is one. Fin doesn’t tend to bother people or other dogs and I carry plastic bags for the inevitable doggie doo events.
As we came out of the park, turning to walk under the big elms along Gofer Rd, I saw Burl Botowski standing on the sidewalk, across the street from us talking to Mel Krisller. They were standing sideways to me with Burl slapping his hand on the hood of the car Betina had seen in Paudy. I had to agree that it was the ugliest lime green Ford Fusion anyone had ever seen. Well, perhaps Betina and Hildegarde had seen that same one. I told myself that there couldn't be two of them. The world couldn't be that unkind.
I couldn’t see their faces clearly but it was easy to see that Burl was upset about something. He was finger-wagging at a rather tranquil, unperturbed Mel, who was slowly waving his hand around in a calming, although dismissive gesture.
“Don’t try to pull that on me,” Burl was saying as Fin and I crossed to their side of the street.
“It’s none of your business, Burl,” Mel said. “None at all. You should just calm yourself down.”
Finnegan ran up and sniffed Mel’s pants leg. It startled him, then he squatted down to pet the dog, rubbing his ears. “Hello, dog. Then he looked up at me. “Oh, hey Savannah.”
“Afternoon, Mel, Burl.”
Burl turned toward me trying not to look flustered. He had more to say, but didn't want to say it in front of me. “Oh, hello, Savannah,” he said, sounding all sweet. He pointed at Finnegan who was melting into the ear rub Mel was giving him. “Isn’t that Connor’s dog? Or wasn’t it?”
That surprised me. When you work at gossip central it always comes as a surprise when you run into someone who isn’t up to speed on all the trivia. “I guess Finnegan is my dog now. He sure thinks so.”
“Finnegan,” Mel said. “Oh, Finnegan.” Then he laughed awkwardly. “Like the new waitress.”
“That was Sarah's thought too. I took note that he tried to make it seem that he was surprised he'd remembered her last name. He looked at Fin as if he might learn something. “Nice dog.” He sounded unsure, as if he was just trying to make casual conversation, trying to change the topic and he couldn’t think of anything better to say.
I helped him out. “Finnegan and I are just out for a walk. We’re getting some exercise while we wait for Sarah’s after school project to finish.”
“The toadstool art thing?” Mel asked. “Mrs. Lejeune wasn’t thrilled about that.”
“Mushrooms,” I said, “but Billy the janitor ate them, so they are doing something else now.”
“I heard about Billy…” Burl said, “eating the mushrooms that the kids were using for a project. What was he thinking?”
“That they looked good, I guess. I hope Mrs. Lacey will stick to more obviously inedible art materials from now on.”
“Billy is a little slow,” Burl said.
“We’re all a bit slow on the uptake in some areas,” Mel said pointedly to Burl. “We don’t always see the way things really are and mushrooms lying around look like a snack even if they might be poisonous.”
I smiled to myself. Mel wanted to say something to Burl but didn’t want me to get it. Maybe he thought Burl was a bit slow. Maybe he thought I was.
“Any new news on the investigation?” Burl asked.
“Not much. There are lots of theories. Most people don’t think that poor Delhi girl was the intended victim.”
Mel stood up and after unsuccessfully attempting to convince Burl to take a turn petting the dog, Fin began roaming in search of squirrels. “Not the victim? So who was?”
“Dolores thinks it was a random killing.”
Mel found that funny. “In Knockemstiff it’s hard for anything to be random — not enough people.”
“My thought exactly. So I guess we have to wait and see what the police turn up.” I watched Fin starting to take longer swings in the direction of the school. I pointed at him. “Apparently it’s time for me to get walking again. See you two later.”
They watched me go and I wondered how long it would be before their discussion got back on topic – even more, I wondered what the topic was. They might have a disagreement about the quality of the ugly lime-green car, but that wasn't the issue between them. More likely it was women.
CHAPTER TWELVE
“What strange times these are?” When Tina Krisller said it, her voice rose at the end, making it a question, as if she needed someone to confirm her suspicions.
Nellie decided to help her out. “The irises lasted a long time this year.”
“Really?” Tina asked. “They are usually long gone by the fall aren’t they?”
Sybyl, who sells flowers at the farmer’s market during the summer, settled that one. “You are probably seeing reblooming or remontant iris, like the St. Petersburg.”
“I am?” Tina sounded pleased as if she got points for seeing one.
Sybyl knew her flowers. “It’s a tall bearded hybrid with violet-tinged white standards and falls. They’re getting real popular. Instead of just blooming for three weeks once or twice a year they bloom in the spring and summer and then again in the fall.”
Sybyl was waiting her turn for Betina to do her hair. Betina had convinced her to try the Bayalage technique, but first she had to finish getting the Widah Jenkins, Pete's landlady, prepped to go under the dryer with her perm.
Nellie handed Sybyl a mug of coffee. “So the flowers blooming now isn’t so strange.”
Sybyl looked in her cup. “No. The blooms are the new normal. You out of creamer?”
“Sorry.” She took the cup back and returned to coffee central. “You don’t come in often enough for me to remember that you don't take it straight.”
<
br /> “If this Barrage thing works as well as Betina thinks it will, you’ll see a lot more of me.”
“Good,” I said.
“Not Barrage. Bayalage,” Betina said. “Think of a large bay. Bay - a - lage.”
I laughed. “That doesn’t sound right for a hair coloring technique. A shampoo maybe.” Even if it was popular among the kind of people who were featured in the magazines, I thought the name was as least as odd as the irises.
Nellie laughed. “What does sound right for a hair coloring? Once you get past ‘cut, wash, rinse, shampoo,’ the rest of the names are more marketing terms than descriptive.”
“Except for the ‘mohawk’ of course.” I had to mention that one.
“Right. And ‘page boy’.”
“I don’t want a mohawk,” Sybyl said. “Just those cool streaks like in the picture.”
“Highlights,” Betina muttered under her breath. “Not streaks.”
“Whatever.”
Get used to it, I thought.
Pete was cutting the hair of a man who’d walked in and told us he was in town for business. The man stared at everyone looking uncomfortable. I think he wished he was in an old school barbershop talking sports or maybe he was still waiting for someone to ask what sort of business he had in town. The irises were getting all the attention.
In my chair, Tina had gotten over thinking things were strange. I clipped a strand that was insisting on curling up and poking into her ear. “Tina, are Mel and Burl angry with each other about something?”
She brightened. “Not that I know of. Should they be?”
“I don't know. When I was walking the dog yesterday I saw the two of them them talking and it didn’t look at all friendly.”
She grimaced. “Well, I know Mel sold Burl a car,” she said.
Betina was all over that. “Isn’t that a good thing?”
“Mel says that people often get upset after they buy a used car. Sometimes they think that it should be just like a new car.” Then she grinned. “He says I shouldn’t worry about what they say.”
Wash, Rinse, Die: Cozy Mystery (The Teasen & Pleasen Hair Salon Cozy Mystery Series Book 2) Page 11