“I suppose so.” Dolores didn’t sound convinced. “It is Hildy, though. Investigator Woodley and Digby made the arrest. They’ve charged her with manslaughter.”
“That means they don’t think she had a reason to kill the girl — it wasn’t on purpose.”
That puzzled Dolores. “Then why did they arrest her?”
“Because they think she killed the girl.”
I heard a voice in the background. “I don’t care,” Dolores said.
I didn't understand. “What? You don’t?”
Dolores came back. “That was my niece — she wanted to know which blouse she should wear to a job interview.”
“The checked silk one, if she’s wearing a plain skirt.”
“Wait a minute.” Then her voice was muffled. “Savannah says the checked silk looks good with a plain skirt.” Then she came back. “She agrees with you. Anyway, Hildegarde is in the jail being interrogated now. I wonder if I should make sure she has a lawyer.”
“Woodley would explain her rights to her. She won’t get railroaded. But I suppose that means she’ll miss her eleven o’clock with Nellie this morning. It could be awhile before she makes bail.”
“Can I have her slot?”
“Why not?”
Like I’ve said, the folk in Knockemstiff are pragmatic and an empty slot is sad to waste. Not that Dolores needed her hair or nails done again so soon, but she’d happily get another perm if it gave her a seat at the gossip table that morning. And the sneaky truth was I’d mentioned that I hoped Dolores would fill the void.
When she hung up, Sarah was ready to head to school. “We are going to try the mushroom experiment again,” she said.
“And risk them being eaten?”
“Mrs. Lacey says we have to because they are growing everywhere now and we can’t waste them.”
“You could feed them to the dinosaurs.”
She scowled. “You do know that the dinosaurs are extinct, and that extinct means that every single one is dead?”
“I do.”
“Except for Nessie, of course.”
“Nessie?”
“The Loch Ness monster. Mrs. Lacey says she is related to a plesiosaur – a product of convergent evolution, which explains why it can survive in such cold water.”
“She does?”
Sarah nodded. “Of course, Mrs. Lacey also thinks that Connor O’Sullivan was infected by the aliens.”
“And what does that suggest to you?”
“That adults think a lot of things that might not be true.”
That was an intelligent assessment. “We do. We most certainly do.”
Sarah scowled. “Is Miz Botowski a bolical?”
“I don’t think so. Not as far as I know.”
“Then why did they arrest her? Miz. Phlint said a bolical killed the girl. So unless Mrs. Botowski is a bolical…”
Nellie paused “I said that?”
I winked. “She heard you say it was a dyeabolical murder.”
Nellie grinned. “I shore did say that.”
I looked at Sarah. “I told you she was making a bad joke.”
“You also said you’d have to think about it and explain it later.”
“Well she was saying it was evil,” I explained. “But in a funny way.”
The seven-minus sixteen and some odd percent scowl deepened. “So Mis Phlint was just saying it was an evil but funny murder.”
“I guess so.”
“So are some murders not evil?”
Nellie put up a hand. “Let me do this one. We’ve drifted into the miasma of kid logic and that’s more my turf, Savannah. Sarah, honey, I was playing with words, sticking the idea that the dye killed the woman onto the word diabolical, which means ‘of the devil’ and thinking it was funny.”
“It seemed that way at the time,” Pete said.
Sarah took that in. “That’s why, when we tried to search for bolical on the library computer all we came up was ’bollocks’?”
“Probably.”
Sarah stared at Nellie. “A pun.”
“'Fraid so.”
Sarah considered all the options. “Think she’ll try the ‘aliens in my head’ defense?”
“I would,” Nellie said. “It’s all the rage.”
Finnegan barked. He was ready to go to school.
So was I. “Time for school,” I told her. Before we could move Fin shot out the door. Of course he probably just smelled something outside. It isn’t like dogs understand English. No, not at all. Or maybe he had an alien or a bolical in his head too.
* * *
That afternoon I decided to drop into the hardware store and see if Burl was there and how he was doing. I noticed the lime green Ford sitting outside the store. It had been there the last couple of days.
The store was open and I found Burl puttering behind the counter. I didn’t want to seem as snoopy as I felt I was being. “Hello Burl, I heard the news about Hildegarde. Are you okay?”
“Fine,” he said.
I thought he was acting odd in that he seemed puzzled that I might think he wouldn’t be okay. “I’m sure this will get sorted out soon. I can’t believe Hildegarde tried to kill anyone, much less that girl.”
“You can’t?” He seemed surprised. “She came after me with a chainsaw.”
“That was rage. It’s hardly the same as cold-blooded murder.”
He sighed. “I suppose not, but if she grabbed a chainsaw in rage, she might think of poison too.” He tried to look sad. “Right now I don’t feel like I knew her at all.”
His sad look failed because his eyes had a sparkle. I couldn’t think of anything intelligent to add to the conversation but I wasn’t ready to give up yet, so I went for the standard hardware store gambit. “I came it to get a thingie… a whatchamacallit.”
“Which one? A thingie or a whatchamacallit?”
“A thingie. For a cabinet.” I was ad-libbing.
“That’s one of our more popular items. We stock a variety of thingies suitable for all occasions. Try the hardware bins. They are brim full of a variety of thingies.” So I walked up and down the aisles picking odd things up out of the hardware bins and trying to figure out what some of the things were for.
While I was at the back comparing hammers, actually, wondering why the huge differences in price among such similar items — I mean, a hammer is a hammer, right? — I heard someone come in the store and saw Dawn, heading up to the counter.
I heard Burl’s voice but not any words.
“Listen to me Burl. Nothing has changed. Nothing at all. It’s history.”
I heard him shush her almost as loudly as she was speaking. I decided to pop out and pretend I wasn’t eavesdropping. “Hello, Dawn.”
“Savannah. I was just telling Burl here that he better stop recommending Billy for odd plumbing jobs. He seemed to think that just because Billy is handy with a mop he can fix things too.”
“Billy the mushroom eater?”
Burl grinned with relief. “Cleaning the school is a part time job and he does handyman stuff around town too.”
I knew that, but had forgotten. “I have Nellie’s kids do odd jobs for me when I need young muscle.”
“He did a terrible job.” Dawn said. “As far as I’m concerned that man is history.”
I had to give her credit for working the keyword she thought I might’ve heard into a brand new story. “Well, I can’t help you with that.”
“Did you find your thingie?” Burl asked.
“I’m beginning to think it’s a whatchamacallit after all. I’ll have to pull it off and bring it in and show you the piece.”
“Good idea. That way we can identify the species and subspecies. If I don’t have it, we can order one. I have catalogs of thingies and whatchamacallits.” Then he smiled at Dawn and there was a plea in that smile. No question about it. “I’ll find someone else to do that job for you. I’ll call you later.”
“Don’t.” Her voice was
firm. “Don’t call again. I’ll find someone myself.” She nodded at me. “Maybe I should talk to Nellie and see if her kids are branching out and taking new clients.”
I thought that was a good idea, even if she really needed plumbing done. “She’d like that.”
Then, to dispel the awkward silence that descended, I left. I had a lot to digest, like the fact that she told Burl not to call her ‘again’ and the question of what she meant by nothing having changed. It was a personal meaning — for Hildegarde and Burl and everyone concerned about the murder, the arrest had changed a lot.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The next day, Saturday, was a big one in Knockemstiff. By noon, even the handful of people who weren’t actual gossips had heard that Hildegarde had been arrested as a person of interest in the death of Esther Evans.
While I cut Selina’s hair, Nadine sat under a dryer, letting the perm Pete gave her set and while she explained the inside story as she knew it. “The actual charge will depend on whether they think Mrs. Botowski intended to kill her, or anyone, or if it was an accident and she wanted to kill someone else.”
We were all being quiet, letting Nadine enjoy her moment as queen of the gossip heap. For her part she was staring meaningfully at Dawn, who was lying on her back with the chair tilted back, her head in the wash basin, and Nellie rinsing shampoo out of her hair in preparation for coloring it.
Dawn laughed. “I can hear you looking at me, Nadine.”
“I never…”
“I know you think that the old bat was trying to kill me. You think I was still bothering with Burl Botowski and she had enough of it.”
Nellie straightened up, took off her gloves and reached for her coffee mug. “Or that Hildegarde might’ve thought that you and Burl were still doing it. Her suspicious don’t have to be true for her to act as if they were. Even if she’s dead wrong, sorry about that word, she still had motive because she thought she was right.”
“Bravo!” I said, clapping. “Someone besides me stayed up watching the Agatha Christie special last night.”
Nellie was ready for that one. “The Case of the Convoluted Alibi? It’s common sense that if she was jealous or worried that she’d lose Burl she’d have reason to kill you, Dawn. You knowing the truth doesn’t change anything.”
“So everyone at the station thinks she did it?” Betina asked.
Nadine snorted. “Of course they do. It’s pretty clear now that they found she was in possession of the murder weapon.”
“They did?”
She gave us a smug look. “A syringe with traces of poison in it. Investigator Woodley found it in her handbag when they arrested her. Of course she says she’s never seen it before, but you’d expect that, wouldn’t you?”
Dolores, who rather liked Mrs. Botowski, was upset. “Hildy's not a stupid person, you know. If she was the murderer, why would she keep that around? She’s had days to get rid of it.”
“It’s an awfully convenient discovery,” I agreed. “Almost too pat, seeing as she had to know she was a suspect.”
Nadine had an answer for that too. “Probably she intended to use it again. If she killed the wrong person, I mean.”
“Did they find more poison?”
Nadine coughed. “I don’t think so.”
“Even if they had, someone could’ve planted it,” Dolores protested.
“Nonsense,” Nadine assured her. “That would mean that whoever killed the girl had access to Hildegarde’s handbag.”
“I think the official term is poppycock, if that’s Investigator Woodley’s evaluation.”
Nellie tilted Dawn’s chair up, rubbing the woman’s head with a towel, then letting it drape over her head. “How about it, Dawn? Think we ought to wait a while before coloring your hair?”
“I think that some nosy people who work for the police should stop sharing confidential information,” she said. “I think we might wait until the facts are clear. Meantime, the police took all the dye that was on hand.” She looked over at me. “Had any more midnight visitors, Savannah?”
“No, and we did get the locks changed before the new dyes arrived, so I imagine it’s okay. Unless Carlos, the guy who drives the delivery truck is the killer, that is. Short of more extensive lab tests that’s all the assurance I can give you.”
“That’s good enough for me,” Dawn said. “Color away, Nellie Bell. Ignore all the poppycock and nonsense and color that hair.”
Nellie put on rubber gloves, then picked up the sealed dye packet, looking at it for telltale syringe holes, I suppose. She held it up to the light and shook it, then glanced at me. I got it and I didn’t think she was being overly cautious. No one wants to be a murder weapon.
I raised my coffee mug. “Onward and upward.”
Nellie made an awful face as she put the coloring on Dawn’s head and rubbed it in. As I watched I realized I was holding my breath. A quick glance around the room told me everyone was, except for Dolores who watched with her eager eyes. Having missed one murder she wasn’t about to take her eyes off a second potential victim. She was fond of saying that maybe lightning didn’t strike the same place often, but you didn’t want to hang around to see it if it did.
“Lightening frequently strikes the same place repeatedly,” Sarah told her the first time she heard her say that.
“It does? Well, never mind, the point is still the same.”
Small town folk don’t let facts get in the way of good old-fashioned homilies, even if they don’t really know what they mean, and right now Dolores was determined that if murder struck twice, she wasn’t going to miss a twitch.
But nothing happened. Eventually we all had to start breathing again. “How long did it take?” Dolores asked, not willing to give up a hope of a perfectly good fatality. Not that she had a thing against Dawn. It wasn’t personal.
“How long did what take?” Nellie asked.
“For the dye to kill her.”
“A while,” Betina said.
“Oh.” Dolores managed to put a mix of disappointment and relief into that one word elegantly.
“She killed once by remote control,” Nadine said. “She might have some sort of backup plan.” There was no point in letting Dawn get too smug, I suppose.
“Hildegarde?” Dolores asked
“Who else?”
That did seem to be the question. I thought it was time I had another talk with Investigator Woodley.
* * *
“I’m not convinced either,” Woodley said when I asked him about Hildegarde’s arrest.
“Then why arrest her?”
“The evidence is there, and we needed to act on it. It’s only my opinion that she’s innocent – the facts suggest otherwise. Besides this way I can keep her here while I sort things out.”
“So you don’t think she wanted to kill Dawn?”
“I have no idea if she wanted to kill anyone.” He shook his head. “Even if she did, the whole thing is just too complicated. Why bother? There are too many ways she could do it and make it look like an accident.”
“It might be good if you don’t mention that publicly,” I told him. “We don’t need Knockemstiff becoming the murder capital of Louisiana.”
“No we don’t. But I’m not even thinking of ways that most people don’t know. And why would she so deliberately involve herself?”
“How did she do that?”
“By forcing the change of appointments — going in a day early. The woman gets her hair done regularly. From what you’ve told me, she could’ve just looked over your shoulder when she made an appointment and seen when Dawn Devereaux was scheduled next and set it up by that.” He spun the pen in his fingers. I noted it was the one I’d given him. He hadn’t chewed it up yet. “Part of the craziness surrounding this is that the murder was done so incompetently.”
I was delighted to hear that Woodley wasn’t ready to lock Hildegarde up and throw away the key. “Well, I need to go get Sarah. She’ll want to know why y
ou think Mrs. Botowski is a bolical, and I’m happy I can tell her that you don’t really.”
“A bolical?”
“An evil creature that kills people. When they use hair dye, apparently they are called dyeabolicals.”
He had the decency to groan.
“The idea gives the situation a certain clarity.”
“How do you mean?”
“The entire thing is, in your words, crazy. Because we didn’t know Esther Evans, it’s easy to think of this in a frivolous way. Sarah is focused on the evil part, and she’s right. I hope keeping Hildegarde locked up helps in finding the evil that is responsible.”
“I think it will.”
“It’s just so weird that even though you have a suspect, we can’t even be certain about who the victim was supposed to be.”
Woodley sighed. “I’ve got some ideas.” Then he gave me a conspiratorial look. “I’m sure you have a few of your own.”
I nodded. “I might have one that simplifies the scenarios.”
“Let me stew over what I’ve got, verify a few things.” He drew in a breath. “After that, Savannah, maybe we can talk.”
I gave him a smile. “I’d like that, James Woodley. I’d like it a lot.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Betina looked around the salon, taking note of who was there before saying, “Mel Krisller sure is spending a lot of time at the Bacon Up lately.”
“It’s more Laura than bacon,” Pete said, grinning. “She is a magnet for some of the guys.”
Angela Ladecky who was in my chair getting her hair cut thought the very same thing. “And him married! Margie said that a lot of the men just look for an excuse to hang around her. She complained to Claude. Problem is, he loves it because sales are up even though there haven’t been a lot of customers.”
Pete laughed. “Margie is upset because she gets stuck doing all the cleanup while Laura is dealing with customers and getting tips.”
“I think Pete is right. Mel is especially stuck on her,” Betina said.
The truth was, Betina was jealous. With August gone, Betina had been our reigning beauty queen among full time residents. With the pretty Laura O'Finnegan arriving, who was a novelty as well as an attractive competitor for the attentions of the men, she had to feel a little like last-year’s news.
Wash, Rinse, Die: Cozy Mystery (The Teasen & Pleasen Hair Salon Cozy Mystery Series Book 2) Page 13