Chapter 6: Cleanliness and Godliness
Marty told us in no uncertain terms she was in for the night. She vetoed the idea of getting up, combing through her attic for a game she last played at age eleven, and then getting dressed to rush it over to Mama’s.
Her voice sounded tinny—and cranky—over the speaker phone: “How about I find it tomorrow and drop it at the salon on my way to work. You’ll be there turning into Cleopatra for the costume party, won’t you?”
“Costume ball,” Mama corrected.
“Whatever.” Marty yawned.
Mama started to plead, “But it won’t take that long, honey...”
“I said no, Mama.” And with another huge yawn, she hung up.
“My stars and garters!” Mama harrumphed. “That girl used to be sweeter than Karo syrup. I think you and Maddie rubbed off some mean on her.”
I wasn’t about to go down that road. Maddie and I were actually proud of our little sister, who had finally begun to stand up for herself.
“Would you get me a little glass of wine, Mace?” Mama smoothed at her immaculate coiffure. “All these developments tonight are driving me to drink.”
That’s a car that can drive itself, frankly. Mama does enjoy her sweet pink wine. Grabbing one of Sal’s beers for myself, I poured her a hefty goblet.
She’d just taken her first swallow, releasing a satisfied sigh, when Teensy emitted a startled yip. Ceramic ducks in gingham collars shuddered on Mama’s kitchen shelves. The wine in her glass shook, like the scary T-Rex scene in Jurassic Park. A loud roar sounded from the hall.
“Look who I found, trying to wrestle this out of her trunk!” It was a booming voice, with a familiar Bronx accent.
Mama’s husband, all three-hundred-plus pounds of him, stomped into the kitchen carrying a huge cardboard box. Trailing Sal was a wisp of a woman about Mama’s age. The toll of a difficult life showed in her weathered face and gray-rooted hair.
“Ellie! What are you doing here?” Mama’s tone was warm, welcoming. “This is the cleaning genie I’ve been bragging on, Mace.”
We exchanged pleasantries. Sal lowered the big box to the floor. Ellie gestured toward it, her work-hardened hands chapped and raw.
“I wanted to drop off that vacuum I told you about, Rosalee. It’s mighty powerful, but it sure is heavy.”
Sal struck a muscle-man pose. Incongruous, considering his raspberry-colored get-up, complete with a pom-pom topped golf beret. “It’s a good thing I got home when I did.”
Unused to the attention being off her, Mama tapped her wine glass with a spoon. Announcement time. “My ghost is acting up, y’all.”
Sal looked pointedly at the goblet; but she’d only had one swallow. He glanced over Mama’s head at Ellie, who grinned and rolled her eyes. Clearly, Mama had tried out her ghost theory on them before seeing if it would fly with me.
“I saw that.” Mama shook her finger at Sal. “You two don’t have to believe me, but I’d prefer you don’t ridicule me.”
Ellie patted her shoulder. “Sal’s just having a little fun, Rosalee. The ghost seems real to you, and that’s what matters.” Her eyes searched mine. “Did you see anything, Mace?”
I thought of that prickle of fear and the flying picture. I didn’t want to mention my feelings to Ellie. I barely knew her. No sense in her starting out thinking I was as nutty as Mama.
“Nothing that can’t be explained without bringing in a ghost,” I said.
Mama crossed her arms over her chest and shot me a glare. “Well, I don’t think we can rule out anything.”
Sal, knowing his bride pretty well, kissed her cheek. “I agree. And right now, I’m not ruling out taking you for ice cream.”
Sunshine broke through the thunder clouds on Mama’s face. If war erupted between ice cream and wine, Mama might sympathize with wine, but she’d join the ice cream army. She slipped her glass into the refrigerator and disappeared to her bedroom to repaint her lips with Apricot Ice.
“Sal, honey, grab my purse off the couch, would you?” she yelled.
Dutifully, he did so, and stood waiting in the hall with her lime-sherbet-colored pocketbook tucked at his elbow. Ellie regarded him with a strange half-smile. Was it fondness? Longing? Or, maybe it was amusement at the clash of color and gender between his XXXL-size golf togs and Mama’s sherbet-hued pocketbook.
With the click of Mama’s heels in the hall, the spell broke. Ellie’s expression returned to neutral. Sal hustled Mama out the door, waving goodbyes.
Chapter 7: Smokin’ Hot
I’d begged off going, even though I also prefer ice cream to alcohol. I was hoping Carlos could stop by Mama’s before I began the trek to my cottage, out by the county line. Solitary by nature, I’ve always loved living in the woods. But the thirty-mile round trip between my place and Carlos’s apartment was a roadblock to romance. As Mama tells anyone who’ll listen, my fiancé has asked, and I’ve stalled, on living together or setting a wedding date. Having Mama, a.k.a. “Oops, I’ll Just Try Again,” as my marital role model has been less than inspiring. Wrestling a gator scares me less than making that until-death-do-us-part walk down the aisle.
While I waited, I offered Ellie a drink and a chat at Mama’s kitchen table.
“You’re a fantastic housekeeper; everything looks great.” I waved at the spotless kitchen and beyond. “You’ve been such a help, now that Mama’s so busy with her aromatherapy sideline.”
She ducked her head, blushing at the compliment.
“How’d y’all connect?”
“Through Betty Taylor at the salon. I clean her house, too.”
Teensy ran barking to the front door, early warning of an imminent visitor. I hoped this wasn’t another manifestation of Mama’s ghost. Fortunately, the presence revealed by the porch light was human: tall, dark, and hauntingly handsome.
“Howdy,” I said, planting a kiss on Carlos’s lips.
“Hola.” He returned the greeting in Spanish; the kiss is a universal language.
If Ellie seemed a bit smitten with Sal, she swooned when she met my smokin’ hot beau. As they shook hands, her mouth actually hung open, giving us insight into a sad state of dental neglect. I felt a stab of sympathy. Despite the fact she worked so hard, everything about Ellie —from her cheap rubber-soled shoes to her missing teeth—screamed of scraping to get by.
Life was often unfair.
Ellie insisted on wiping down the kitchen table and washing up the few glasses we’d used. “It won’t take a minute, and then I’ll be on my way.”
She shooed us toward the living room. As we sat, I quickly caught Carlos up on recent happenings—Mama’s ghost, the Tyler family’s suspicions of foul play, and Lamar’s knife-wielding performance as the likeliest of suspects.
He thought things over, the detective gears turning behind his eyes. “It wouldn’t take much to check the vehicle for tampering. I’ll have a word with the sheriff if you want.”
I didn’t say I’d probably have better luck than Carlos would with the rural county sheriff. I knew him—a big-bellied, good ol’ boy who was none too fond of fancy outsiders from that wicked Sodom and Gomorrah to our south, Miami-Dade County.
“I’ll let you know what the family wants to do,” I said diplomatically.
We heard the side door slam, and then the sound of Ellie repeatedly trying to start her car. Just as Carlos got up to see if she needed help, the engine coughed, coming reluctantly to life.
“She seemed nice,” he said, to the sound of her jalopy pulling away.
“Of course you’d think so. She looked at you like she was starving to death and you were an all-you-can-eat buffet.”
Carlos chuckled, a deep sexy purr I’d come to love. “I’m used to that, mi amor. That’s the way all women look at me.”
“They’re attracted to your humility, no doubt. Legions of women, you say?”
“But only one I care about.” Already standing, he pulled me to my feet. With one finger, he t
raced a line from my lips, over my chin, and down my neck into the open collar of my t-shirt. I felt a shiver of desire.
I may be marriage-shy, but I’m not at all bashful about whatever else goes on between a man and a woman in love. I glanced at my watch. We probably had forty-five minutes before Mama and Sal returned from their ice cream date in town.
“Have I ever showed you the collection of belt buckles I won for rodeo? They’re in my old bedroom.”
“I would very much like to see those.” His voice was husky, his breath hot in my ear.
“Then stop talking and start walking.” I pressed my body to his, nudging him backward toward the bedroom door. “I can’t wait another minute to show you how well I ride.”
Chapter 8: Salon Gossip
At Hair Today, Dyed Tomorrow, Betty Taylor was holding forth on the Biblical view of Ouija boards. She’s against them. Apparently Jesus is, too. D’Vora, the shop’s teenaged beautician-trainee, argued Mama’s case.
“There’s no harm in it, Betty. Miss Rosalee is just seeking answers. It’s not like she’s denouncing our Lord to join up with the devil.”
Betty, shaping the bangs of the Chamber of Commerce president, pursed her lips. “I don’t want it getting out I’m holding ghost parties here.”
Everyone looked at the Ouija board, set up on a lavender table usually reserved for manicures. The salon was a study in shades of purple, Betty’s favorite color. As always, the shop smelled to me like fruit punch spiked with ammonia.
“Our lips are sealed,” said Mama, though if true, it would mark the first time in history.
When the chamber president chimed in that she’d once used the Ouija to try to reach her dear, departed poodle, Betty seemed to relent.
“You’re only going to ask about the crash, right? I don’t want any demons flying out of that board and into my salon.”
Mama told her not to worry. She’d been studying up on her herbs and aromatherapy. “I know how to cleanse a place of unwanted spirits. Besides, I’m only interested in one ghost: Bobby Tyler Sr.”
The salon chatter ceased for a moment, out of respect for the dead. The snip of Betty’s scissors and the gurgle of water in D’Vora’s shampoo bowl seemed thunderous in the silence.
Betty struck up the conversation again: “I hear that was some funeral.”
Mama and I agreed. When the chamber president vigorously nodded, Betty scolded: “Watch it, honey. These scissors could take out your eye.”
That led to a discussion of the knife-waving Lamar, my top suspect, and then to funeral no-show and still a candidate, Bobby’s meth-addict son.
Betty regarded Mama and me in the mirror: “Ellie said a family of five could eat for a year on what those folks spent on funeral flowers.”
Mama and I exchanged a look. “Ellie was there?” she asked. “I never saw her. Did you, Mace?”
I shook my head. “It was crowded, though.”
“I didn’t realize she knew Bobby.”
Betty’s scissors stilled. She turned to face Mama. “Of course she knew him, Rosalee. She went to high school with y’all.”
“She did not.”
“Did, too. She told me she was a freshman when you were seniors.”
“I never knew an Ellie Danvers.”
“Danvers is her married name.”
Mama looked at me, as if I could straighten out her confusion. I shrugged.
“She never said a word about high school, Betty. I thought she was from Las Vegas. She worked in housekeeping at a big hotel out there. Vandelay?”
“Nope, that was on Seinfeld. Mandalay something,” said Betty, trimming again. “Maybe she doesn’t like talking about high school. She didn’t have an easy time in Himmarshee, even though she was smart in school. Came from a dirt-poor, pure-trash family, moved around a lot. No friends to speak of. Said she had a big crush on Bobby Tyler.”
“Most girls did. He was gorgeous.” Mama smiled at the memory.
“Ellie thought he was beginning to like her, too, until you started going out with him. She said you were the most popular girl in school. The prettiest, too.”
Mama lowered her eyes becomingly. “That was a long time ago.”
“Don’t be modest, Mama.” Lord knows she’s repeatedly told my sisters and me the very same thing about high school. “You know what they say: It ain’t bragging if it’s fact.”
D’Vora, toweling her customer’s hair dry, said, “We gave Mrs. Danvers a make-over for the Halloween party.”
“Ball,” Mama amended.
“Whatever. Betty colored and styled her hair; I did her nails.” D’Vora shuddered. “My, those hands were a mess.”
“Must be all that housework,” said Mama. “Now I’m feeling guilty. I hope she didn’t say I was unkind in high school.”
Mama could be thoughtless at times; but I’d never once known her to be intentionally cruel.
“You said it yourself, Rosalee: High school was a long time ago.” Betty spun the chamber president around so she could hold a mirror to show the back of her ‘do.
“Fabulous!” The president beamed.
Chapter 9: Ouija or Won’t Ya?
“Let’s keep this Ouija business short.” Betty leveled her violet-colored comb at us. “This is a beauty parlor in the Bible Belt, not some wizard’s castle.”
Mama motioned me to the manicure table. “What do we do, Mace?”
The sum total of my Ouija knowledge harkened back to middle school. My sisters and I tried to use the board to summon our dead father. Marty believed we could talk to him to find out if he was happy. Maddie didn’t believe at all and thought we were headed straight to hell for dabbling in the occult. I was somewhere in the middle—willing to play along, while secretly hoping the exercise would disprove my skepticism.
We never proved or disproved anything, though. Maddie yelled at Marty for deliberately moving the device that spells out messages. Marty dissolved into denials and tears. And, as usual, I ended up mediating between the two of them.
“It’s really simple, Mama,” I said now. “Just place your fingers lightly on this little doo-hickey—it’s called a planchette—and ask your questions. Supposedly, the spirit moves it around to show the answers, or spells them, using this alphabet.” I pointed to letters on the board.
Betty said a quick prayer, seeking proactive forgiveness for our sins.
“Can I sit at the table, too?” asked D’Vora. “I want to find out if I should stay with Darryl.”
Betty snapped a plum-colored towel at her. “Girl, you don’t need to ask a spirit. I’ll tell you right now that redneck’s not worth a bucket of warm spit.”
“He got rid of three of his Rottweilers,” D’Vora said defensively.
“And replaced them with weasels,” said Betty.
“Ferrets!”
“Is there a difference?”
I knew I’d better reign in D’Vora and her boss, or it’d be arguing and eighth grade all over again. “C’mon and sit down, y’all. Mama, ask your first question,”
She suddenly seemed uncertain. “Do I need to whisper, Mace? Should we be in the dark?”
“Just act normal.” As if there was anything normal about my devoutly Christian mother seeking to commune with a ghost at a manicure table.
“Okay... uhm, this is Question No. 1: Is my ghost here?”
Nothing happened for a couple of moments. A loud pickup truck revved past outside. Betty turned down the volume a notch on country radio. D’Vora concentrated so hard, I thought she’d stare holes through the Ouija board.
Suddenly, the planchette seemed to float up to the upper corner of the board. It pointed to the word printed there, YES.
“You’re moving it, Mama!’ I heard the accusing tone in my voice.
“I am not,” she whispered. “Question No. 2: What’s your name?”
More slowly now, the pointer moved over the alphabet. It stopped at the B, moved on to the O, back to the B. We recited the letters a
s BOBBY was spelled out.
Betty grabbed her purse from a cabinet, and hurried to the door. “I’m going for coffee. This is making me as nervous as a short-tailed cow in fly season. D’Vora, I want those towels in the back room folded. And I want y’all to pack up that mess on the manicure table by the time I get back.”
As Betty stalked out, I asked the third question, “Did someone tamper with your car?”
“YES,” the pointer indicated, and then started spelling: M...U...R...D...E...R.
“D’Vora,” I warned. “Are you pranking us?”
“I swear to you, I’m not.”
I knew I wasn’t pushing the planchette. But I’d read that highly suggestible people sometimes moved it unconsciously. I’d put both Mama and D’Vora in the suggestible column. Still, I wanted to ask a last question, just in case there was something to this.
“Do you know who did it?”
I half-expected to read “LAMAR,” but the pointer moved to NO.
Out the front window, I spotted Betty waiting to cross the street with a paper bag and a take-out cup. I looked down again, as the pointer spelled out D...A...N...G...E...R.
The door opened, bells jingling. Outside, lightning flashed. Thunder cracked. The radio went dead. The salon lights flickered, and then went off. A moment later, the power surged on, and so did the lights. The pointer rested at the bottom of the Ouija board, directly over the word GOODBYE.
D’Vora flew to the back room for the towels she forgot; Mama and I quickly began packing the board we’d promised to put away. Betty stepped inside, wiping rain splatter from her shoulders. “Getting nasty outside. Is it safe in here?”
“Of course,” said Mama, sliding the board back in its box.
D’Vora exited the back room, sloppily folded towels in her arms. “You know, it’s not so much the housework,” she said.
Mama sent me a puzzled look. I shrugged at her. Betty, annoyed, said, “Context, D’Vora, context.”
“Remember before, we were talking about Mrs. Danvers’s nasty-looking hands? The cleaning chemicals don’t help, but her nails are torn up worse from working on her old car. She says her hands are the only thing between that jalopy and the junkyard.”
Happy Homicides 4: Fall Into Crime: Includes Happy Homicides 3: Summertime Crimes Page 56