Wash, Rinse, Die: Cozy Mystery (The Teasen & Pleasen Hair Salon Cozy Mystery Series Book 2)

by Constance Barker

  Nellie’s ears perked up. “Did Burl say anything?”

  She considered that. “To me?”

  “Yes.”

  “No.” She grinned. “Why would he? I’m just the wife.” It was a little scary that Tina thought that made sense. Then she remembered something. “I recall Mel saying that Burl insisted he take the car back and drive it for a time. If you saw them disagreeing, then maybe it's about that.. Mel said Burl told him he’d see for himself that it had a problem. Mel said he drove it all over creation and it was fine.”

  “I supposed if Burl thought the car was a lemon, he’d be angry.”

  “A lime,” Betina said. “Lemons are yellow.”

  Lime or lemon, that provided one possible explanation for the argument. If Burl bought a car that wasn’t living up to its billing he wouldn’t likely be calm about it. And if Mel had been urging Burl to buy the car that might explain why they’d been drinking together the week before, the day Pete had lost his keys.

  It didn’t help explain who was driving the lime green Ford that took Dawn to the Bright Motel in Paudy or even help me understand if that was important.

  * * *

  After lunch Selina came in for an appointment with Pete. She was looking cocky as she slipped into the chair. “Make it a bit lopsided,” she said. That got our attention, of course, as she intended.

  When Pete asked, “just how lopsided?” she’d blown him a kiss and said, “Use your imagination, sweetie.”

  I was beginning to worry that the mess I’d made of Lucille’s cut and the subsequent effect it had was going to start a local trend. I couldn’t see myself spending my days trying to outdo myself with bad haircuts. Pete didn’t mind at all though.

  “What if I shave one side and on the other do side-swept bangs. That will get attention,” he murmured happily.

  I stifled a groan. That might be a popular style in New York, but in Knockemstiff? Then again, Selina was all about being unconventional and what Pete was doing would get it. Besides, if she hated it, she could hide out for a while and then get a short-all-over cut.

  After a bit we all went back to our day jobs with Nellie brushing up Dolores’s manicure, Betina reading her magazine, and me sweeping the floor while waiting for my noon appointment.

  As Mrs. Ourso from the feed store came in to get her perm, Selina suddenly began thrashing in the chair. Pete jumped back. “What in the world?”

  Selina was shaking violently.

  “Another one?” Betina almost screamed as Selina seemed to be convulsing.

  “She might be having a fit,” Dolores said calmly. “That looks a lot like epilepsy to me. My sister’s brother-in-law has fits just like them.” Then she stopped. “Hmm. I wonder what you’d call your sister’s brother-in-law. Besides ‘lazy, good for nothing bum, that is?”

  Pete dropped his tools and was undoing the cape around Selina’s neck. I went over to help him get her out of the chair. Nellie started for the phone and then stopped. Who would you call in Knockemstiff? By the time the paramedics arrived for anything serious you’d have done better just to call the next of kin.

  We eased her out of the chair and onto the floor. Her eyes rolled around in her head. “I am the power spirit,” she moaned in a hoarse voice.

  I looked at her and straightened up. “She isn’t dying. Not yet. Unless I kill her.”

  She shut her eyes tight. “I see a time and place of terrible things,” she said in that same voice. “A vision of anger and revenge.”

  “Make it good,” Nellie said. “You can’t open with a fit like that and not have a great story.”

  “I see the Bald Eagle,” she said.

  “Our sky diver or the ones the government protects?” Nellie asked.

  “He argues with the slutty one called Dawn.”

  Pete shook his head. “Not likely. I’ve never seen him talk to Dawn — not since she slapped him when he pinched her ass.”

  That got Dolores’s attention. “Sanders did that to her?”

  “At the tavern. After she slapped him he was grinning ear to ear.”

  “She was ridiculing his act at open mic,” Selina went on, trying to keep the story of Sanders pinching Dawn from upstaging her story. “She tells him he is a feeble, desperate, and wretched old man trying to act young.”

  “Aren't all old men like that?” Mrs. Ourso asked.

  “He has a syringe in his hand.”

  Nellie’s asymmetric smile spread. “The man does take insulin shots, you know. Is he shooting himself in the arm or his skinny ass?”

  “He is injecting a liquid into a tube of orange dye.”

  “Yellow,” Betina said helpfully. “Orange is a tint and we don’t have any of it anyway.”

  “In a tube of yellow dye,” Selina said. “Things are hazy in that room.”

  Mrs. Ourso was delighted to have arrived in the middle of this. “Then what, Selina?”

  Suddenly Selina opened her eyes wide, focusing them this time. “Where am I? What happened?” She tried to sit up, making a rather clumsy attempt.

  Pete and I reached down to help her up. “Why nothing happened at all, Selina,” I managed with a straight face. That was hard given the bald patches her little act had made Pete cut in her hair. “You passed out and we eased you down here to be comfy. What makes you think something happened?”

  “I had this vision… The power spirit was speaking through me.”

  “Really?” Betina seemed interested. “Is that a good or bad thing?”

  “I didn’t hear anything at all,” Nellie told her.

  “Me either,” Pete said, stifling a grin as he put the cape back over her.

  “You didn't hear anything?”

  “I was cutting your hair and you started thrashing around. I hope you did want that side shaved because when you started doing that the clippers took off a lot of hair.” He touched a spot. “It's going to be patchy.”

  Selina was looking from one person to the next, but everyone was enjoying the game too much to break down and tell her. Nellie gave her a smile. “We were worried about you, Selina.”

  Nellie took the cape off Dolores and she looked at her nails. “Very nice, dear. And Selina we were worried. Nellie was going to call the paramedics, but it seemed a shame to ruin their lunch.”

  Selina’s face was black as she got back in the chair. Sooner or later someone would tell her we all heard her. But not for a while. This was too delicious an opportunity to waste. And for now, she was going to have to just sit still and see what Pete could do to fix the mess her fit had made of her hair.

  “I could color the bald patches,” he said.

  “Like you did Milo?” Betina asked.

  “It will give you that unconventional look you want,” Pete said. “People will notice.”

  “Sell it, Pete,” I muttered under my breath.

  Selina finally smiled. “Some bright colors?”

  “We just got a new purple in stock.”

  “Sounds good.”

  What, I wondered, was happening to our sleepy little town?

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  When Nadine Hines burst into the salon at ten o’clock without an appointment it made me smile. I knew things were about to get more interesting. Nadine seldom comes in just to sit and talk so her arrival when she wasn't coming in to get her hair done meant that she had meaty news.

  I had Margie, from the Bacon Up, in my chair. “Give it a little zing,” she’d said. “My hair is as lifeless as my life.” I think having Laura around was depressing her.

  “I can't do much about the life, but I can fix the hair.” Even as I said it I thought that sounded depressing and I wish I'd kept my mouth shut. I knew Margie needed a good gossip jolt. That made Nadine’s unscheduled arrival a minor cause for celebration.

  Best of all, Nadine was about to burst – so eager to spill the news that she didn’t even pretend to be reluctant to share.

  “Dawn was arrested this morning.”

&nb
sp; Now there was a bombshell.

  “For double parking?” Nellie asked. Hoping, I guess, of course, she was right to ask. Just because Dawn was arrested that didn’t mean she’d been charged with murder or anything to do with the murder. People got arrested all the time. Well, not in Knockemstiff, but in other towns, big places like Delhi. With the murder the main topic of conversation these days, it was easy to jump to conclusions.

  In this case the conclusion we jumped to was also unfortunately accurate. Nadine was pleased to set the record straight. “For questioning regarding the murder.”

  “They think she killed the girl?”

  “Or are they thinking she intended to kill herself?” I had to ask.

  “For questioning.”

  “They arrested her?”

  Nadine went for coffee. “They had to. Investigator Woodley had me call several times to ask her to come in but she never did. She just ignored my calls. Finally he sent Digby to bring her in.” She put up a hand. “Before you ask for more details, I don’t know any.” I could see it pained her to admit that but she did have her own ideas that she was happy to share. “My theory is that they want to know what she was doing alone in the back room the day before the murder. Maybe she knows the girl from Delhi.”

  “Esther,” I said, taking the foil off the cookies that Pete had picked up on his way in that morning and offering Nadine one. “So you think that when she was alone in the back room she injected the poison in the hair dye?”

  “It could be. She usually spends time in the back room alone doing your books.”

  “That’s true.”

  “So she might’ve brought the syringe with poison with her.”

  Nellie laughed. “Might’ve isn’t usually grounds for arresting someone.”

  Nadine shrugged. “We won’t know her motive for a while, but that means she had the opportunity.”

  I didn’t see how that made any sense. And she took advantage of it to put poison in the dye that was supposed to be used on her the next day?”

  Nadine slumped. “That seems odd.”

  Nellie came over to get a cookie before they all disappeared. “Tina did say that it was strange times.”

  “The irises tell all,” Pete said.

  Nadine tried to pretend the repartee didn’t confuse her. Suddenly she brightened. “Maybe she cancelled her appointment because she knew the dye was poisoned.”

  “Because she poisoned it just before her appointment?” Pete shook his head. “That doesn't seem right.”

  But Nadine was on a roll. “She could’ve thought that if it looked like she was the intended victim, that would make it seem impossible that she was the killer.”

  “A ruse that obviously didn’t work.”

  “She wasn’t counting on our clever police force.” Being able to say that seemed to make Nadine’s day.

  Pete went over to the table and stared at the cookies for a moment before taking a breath and walking back to his station. “I doubt anyone in town counts on our clever police force.”

  “They are so underrated,” Nadine said. I gave Pete a conspiratorial grin.

  Nellie picked up one of Betina’s magazines and flipped through it. “I can’t imagine Dawn murdering that girl.” She sighed. “But then I can't imagine anyone I know murdering anyone, not really. But someone killed her.”

  * * *

  By the next morning the entire town knew that Dawn Devereaux had been arrested. They also knew she'd been talked to, and released.

  In the absence of real information, rumors were a penny a bushel. Various versions of events had her dragged off in handcuffs and put in an ambulance and taken to the psycho ward. Another claimed she’d fired a gun at officer Digby when he showed up at her doorstep. Another claimed that Digby and Tanner, our version of a SWAT team, had broken down her door.

  The wildest, most obviously false stories, were naturally the ones that had the strongest legs. They were the most fun. But real gossips prefer more believable storylines.

  So, when Dawn sashayed into the salon at eleven with some potato and spinach pakoras she’d picked up at the Parambets’ shop, everyone was eager to hear the real story, even at the risk of destroying some rather creative rumors. True to form, rather than seeing the entire thing as a public humiliation, Dawn seemed to enjoy the notoriety.

  “Why didn’t you just go in and talk to the police?” Dolores asked as Dawn calmly passed around the bag of India’s flavorful answer to fritters.

  She looked amused. “I didn’t think I had a thing to tell them. I had no interest in wasting my time – I have to finish the books for my clients so I can go to Delhi next week.” She grinned. “It took about an hour after Digby took me in for them to come to the same conclusion and send me home.”

  “It was your duty to go in and talk to them.” Dolores was sure about that.

  “That wouldn’t have been nice, Dolores. Digby was so thrilled to be able to walk me out my front door, make me get in the back of his police car and take me to jail. How often does he have a chance like that? Would it have been right to cheat him out of that?”

  I thought she was right. “I'm sure it was the highlight of his day.”

  Dawn nodded. “And ultimately, just as I expected, I was just part of their catch and release program.”

  “Did you tell them anything?” Nellie asked that meant did you tell them anything that we wanted to know?

  “Just my name and serial number. It all came down to nothing but them wanting to know if I knew one Esther Evans, of Delhi, LA. I didn’t, don’t, and now, won’t. They already knew that anyway. They hadn’t been able to, as Investigator Woodley put it, ‘establish a connection between us.’ All the rest of their questions were asking me to tell them other things they already knew, like that I was in the back room the day before the murder. I had to explain that I never carry my syringes of poison with me when I go out. They could get damaged.”

  I admired the way she was milking the single question. I decided to give her another question to work with. “Did you learn anything from them?”

  “Just that Investigator Woodley has nice, soft eyes.”

  That surprised me. “Are we talking about James Woodley?”

  Betina looked up from her magazine and frowned. “His eyes don’t matter. He’ll be going back to New Orleans soon enough.”

  Dawn took a bite out of a pakora, then noticed the look of abject sorrow on Fin’s face. “Did I ignore you, puppy?” She tossed the fritter fragment to him and he caught it with one graceful snap, then swallowed it whole without even getting up. When he saw her hand was empty he wagged his tail. “What’s him leaving later got to do with anything now?”

  Betina almost blushed. Talking about someone else’s love life is different than talking about her own, although I would’ve thought it was harder to talk about your own love life than other people's and Betina had it the other way round.“Well, if you were thinking about his eyes…”

  “You were thinking about his eyes the last time he was here, Betina,” I said.

  “That didn’t work out.”

  Dawn put the bag next to the coffee urn and picked up a mug. She stared at it for a minute. “I was thinking that I saw a sparkle in those eyes that might mean he was up for a little fun, Betina. I didn’t want him to run off with me.”

  Dolores choked a little. She desperately wanted to say something, but her sort of gossip ran to innuendo and subtle implication. Saying something outright wasn’t kosher in her book. But Betina and Dawn spoke the same language. Betina shrugged. “Oh. If that’s all.”

  I had mixed feelings about Woodley. When I wasn’t upset by his dismissive attitude toward my ideas about police work, well I had to admit there was an attraction. Of course, my love life wasn’t exactly as robust as Betina’s. As a matter of fact, it was nonexistent. I wasn’t attracted to the way Betina ran her love life, but I was somewhat envious that she had one. And recently, Betina didn’t seem as enthusiastic about trea
ting dating as something like a hunting expedition, with herself in the role of the wily Betina beating the bushes for male creatures to bag. She seemed down. I wondered what had triggered that. Sooner or later we’d find out.

  “So they didn’t let any information slip?” I asked Dawn.

  “To be honest, I didn’t pay that much attention. If they did say anything about the case, I wasn’t really interested, although Woodley did try to convince me that you were right when you came over playing cookie monster.”

  “About what?”

  “That I was the one that the killer was after. I told him the same thing I told you — there’s no reason they'd do that.” She rolled her eyes. “Not that I don’t have men after me, if you know what I mean, but most want me alive.”

  With Dawn enjoying her moments of fame, I felt we were getting further from the heart of the case.

  I went over the facts. I was sure it had to be whoever took Pete’s key. They'd come into the salon that night, before the key would be missed, and poisoned a hair color used by a small number of people. It was someone who knew who was scheduled for an appointment to get her hair colored the next morning.

  But that would mean Dawn was the intended victim and I agreed with her—that didn't make sense.

  * * *

  The next rumor to scorch the otherwise calm air of Knockemstiff was more significant. I heard about it just after we'd opened. The phone rang and without preamble, the speaker said: “They just arrested Hildegarde for the murder.”

  I was getting this breaking news direct from Dolores Pettigrew, who got it direct from Nadine who heard it from Digby. Straight from the gossip's mouth. I wasn’t sure what sort of priorities Dolores set for the order in which she disseminated any breaking news, but I knew she put me near the top of her ‘call in case of emergency gossip’ list.

  “Let me put you on the speaker phone,” I said. I repeated the headline and the others clustered around.

  “They put Hildy in handcuffs like a criminal.”

  I acted surprised although I thought that made sense. “Really?”

  “Please,” Betina said. “They think she is a criminal.”