by Hillary Avis
Terry joined us in the waiting room, wiping his hand on a pink shop rag. He licked the corners of his mustache into his mouth as he addressed me. “Battery tests fine. I just tightened your connections. She’s running out front. You might want to give her fifteen, twenty minutes of driving to get her charged up.”
“Thanks, man.” Gary clapped him on the shoulder, dismissing him, and then turned to me, his eyes twinkling. “We’re all set.”
I opened my purse and dug for my wallet. “How much do I owe you?”
“Nothing.”
“I know you need to pay Terry for his time,” I protested, feeling a little guilty for not checking the connections myself. No matter how many things I learned to be more self-sufficient, there were always new ones.
“Nah.” He waved dismissively. “I don’t nickel and dime. When you have a real problem, I’ll give you a real solution, and then I’ll submit a real invoice, I promise.”
I grinned at him. “I’ll owe you a few dozen eggs, I promise.”
“That sounds egg-cellent to me.” Gary tossed his head back and laughed at his own joke. “Tell Tambra to give me a call and reschedule, will you?”
I nodded. My next stop was the sheriff’s office, where I hoped to be able to tell her in person—when Eli unlocked that cell door.
Chapter 5
I stomped my foot, frustration taking the form of tears that tightened my throat at I stared at Eli’s stupid, stubborn face. “That’s so unfair. You should be out there looking for the real killer. Tambra had no reason to hurt McKenzie. I can’t believe she’s being arrested because she drives an iPad.”
“An iPad?” Eli’s brows drew together quizzically.
“The Prius!” I wanted to scream at him to keep up. But for Tambra’s sake, I tried to keep the snark out of my voice. “You have nothing on her except that McKenzie was in the back of her car. And like I just told you, anyone could have put her body there. The iPad was broken, Eli.”
He sighed as he rubbed his chin, and I noticed the bags under his eyes were a little darker than usual. “It’s a little more than that, Leona. There’s more—more that you don’t know about.”
“Well then, tell me what I’m missing.” I crossed my arms and eyed him skeptically. “Because from my perspective it looks like you’re taking the easy way out so you don’t have to do any real policework.”
Eli blew his breath out in one burst. “It’s not even my case! The state police are running this one themselves. And they say Tambra had means, motive, and opportunity to kill McKenzie. It’s out of my hands.”
“It’s not out of your hands until Tambra is out of your hands,” I said stubbornly, with a glance at the door behind him that led to the holding cells where I knew Tambra was locked up, not as a material witness but now as the actual suspect in a murder case, probably crying her eyes out thinking about her boys. “I’m not leaving this office until she’s released. I’m staging a sit-in.” To prove my point, I plunked down in the middle of the floor and crossed my arms.
Eli held out his hand to me. “Get up, Leona. You and I both know you aren’t going to sit here all day.”
“I might. I have snacks.” I ignored his offer of help and held my purse open so he could see the stash of Fourth of July parade candy inside.
“You do, but your chickens don’t. They’re probably cooped up still so that means you’re itching to get home and let them out. I give you forty-five minutes, tops, before your butt gets sore and you change your mind about parking it in the middle of my waiting room.”
He knew me too well. Well, even old dogs could learn new tricks. I narrowed my eyes at him as I slowly and deliberately unwrapped a Tootsie Roll. “I might have, but now that you said it out loud, I’m staying.” I popped it into my mouth and chewed obnoxiously.
Eli put his hands on his hips, stared at me, shook his head, chuckled, shook his head again, and finally shrugged and joined me on the floor. I handed him a butterscotch hard candy and he sucked on it for a minute while we both stared at the door to the holding cells.
“When are they coming to get her?” I finally asked.
“Couple hours. She’ll have a bond hearing down in Roseburg.”
“And then she’ll get out?”
“Maybe. If she can raise the bail. But it’ll be high, if she gets bail at all. In a case like this, they might just hold her.”
“But they have nothing on her!” I protested. “Whatever happened to innocent until proven guilty?”
“They do have something.” Eli lowered his voice even though we were the only ones in the room. “McKenzie keyed Tambra’s car last night. Before she was shot.”
I rolled my eyes. “Obviously. She couldn’t key it afterward. I don’t see what that has to do with Tambra, though.”
“You said it yourself—you said she didn’t have a motive to hurt McKenzie. But this means she did.”
I snorted. “Tambra wouldn’t kill someone over scratching up her Prius. That’s just crazy.”
“Think about it,” Eli said determinedly. “Why would McKenzie, who just won the pageant that Tambra organizes, key her car? They had some other bad blood. I’m not saying Tambra planned to kill her or anything, but obviously they had a confrontation in that parking lot during the fireworks, or else McKenzie wouldn’t have ended up dead in the back of her car.”
“She might have already been dead when Tambra got there. It could have been someone else.” I pulled my purse away as Eli reached for another piece of candy. “I want to talk to whoever is in charge of the investigation. They need to know about Tambra’s trunk latch. Even if you don’t believe me, they might.”
“I don’t disagree, actually.”
“You don’t?”
“No. Let’s make a report.” Eli stood and, dusting off his hands, helped me up, too. Then he retrieved a form from a file cabinet and sat down at his desk, patting it to indicate I should sit in the chair across from him.
That seemed too easy. “You’re just trying to get rid of me before your fancy state police buddies show up.”
His usual mischievous smile returned, and he winked at me. “I’d never try to get rid of you. You’re right—this is a relevant detail and one that they probably don’t know yet. Plus, you really should go let your chickens out.”
Motherclucker, he was right. I was itching to get back to the farm. And I was also itching to ask Ruth if she knew why in the world McKenzie would key Tambra’s car. I answered all Eli’s questions as quickly as I could and signed the report. After making him promise he’d submit it as soon as possible, I crossed the street to the Do or Dye, Ruth’s kooky, new-age home for both her businesses, the hair salon in front and her real estate business—AKA her laptop—tucked away in the back room.
The bell on the door jangled above my head, and I was hit with the sharp, unpleasant smell of perm solution. Usually, Tambra greeted me from her manicurist station, rows of nail polish arranged in a perfect rainbow gradient behind her. But today, my entrance was marked with a CRASH. Dylan stood in the middle of a growing, multicolored puddle that spread out around his feet where a rack of tiny bottles had fallen, his lower lip quivering.
“Don’t move!” Ruth screeched from across the room, where she was setting Irene Wertheimer’s hair in neat rows. I watched, frozen, as Ruth dropped the curler in her hand and dashed toward Dylan and the mess, leaving Irene grasping for the glasses on a chain around her neck so she could see what was going down on the other side of the salon.
“What happened?!” Ollie poked his head out from the back room, and a shock jolted through me. He looked like he had some kind of disease. Red and purple marks dotted his face.
“Nothing. Stay there!” Ruth commanded, leaning to swoop Dylan out of the center of the mess. She put him down a few feet away and then looked at me, her face panicked. “How in the world am I going to clean this up?”
I shrugged helplessly. “Only two options I can see. Get it up now while it’s still wet or
wait until it dries and paint the whole floor to match.”
“Irene’s got half her head in perm solution,” Ruth moaned. “Her hair’s going to fall out if I leave her in the chair.”
I heard Irene gasp, and I hoped the ninety-something-year-old woman wasn’t having heart palpitations. Just what we needed was another person keeling over around here.
“Don’t worry about it. I’ll take care of it,” I said, even though I had no idea how to clean up the oozing, chemical puddle that bristled with shards of glass like shark teeth. “Boys! Stay in the back room!”
Dylan and Ollie, who’d been creeping closer and closer to the colorful disaster, jumped back and scurried into the real estate office. Ruth shot me a grateful look and returned to Irene’s side, whisking the woman’s glasses out of her hands before she could witness the full extent of the chaos.
“No worries, Irene. I’ll take care of you,” Ruth said reassuringly, as she turned up the radio and briskly resumed her the set.
I eyed the mess. I needed gloves—that much was clear. I headed for the back room, where the boys were peeking around the doorway, unable to resist. Now that I was closer, I could see what was going on with Ollie’s face. Someone had doodled letters and numbers all over him with marker, and judging by the backward E’s, I had a good idea who.
“He wrote on me while I was asleep,” Ollie said, shrinking under my scrutiny. “It won’t wash off.”
“I used Sharpie,” Dylan said proudly.
“Good job,” I said absentmindedly, as I rummaged under the sink for gloves and cleaning supplies. “I mean—don’t write on your brother. That’s not nice.” The purple rubber gloves I located were thin and wouldn’t protect me from the glass, but at least they’d keep my hands from looking like I’d caught Ollie’s disease. I tore the flaps off a cardboard box, stole the trash can from under the sink, and with a roll of paper towels clamped under my arm, went to do battle on the broken bottles.
I swept up as much of the goo and glass I could with my cardboard pieces, depositing one globby scoop at a time into the trash. Then I used a cluckload of paper towels to wipe up the rest. I dampened another batch of paper towels at the hair-washing sink and used them to mop to the corners and under the manicure station. I’d dropped enough plates and cups in the kitchen over the years to know how the shards liked to fly into the unlikeliest places.
When I was satisfied that the glass was all safely in the garbage can, I turned back to the real problem—the swooping streaks of fingernail polish, now nearly dry, that still splashed across the tile floor. Water might not work, but polish remover would. The question was—would it damage the tile floor underneath?
I hoped that if I was gentle and followed it with yet another wet paper towel, the answer would be no. I tested one of Tambra’s fancy polish remover wipes on the floor in a spot where it wouldn’t show. It took off the polish lightning-fast. Just as quickly, I cleaned the area with water.
No apparent damage to the floor tile. I let out a sigh of relief and quickly finished cleaning the floor with the remover, though I used up most of Tambra’s stash. I hoped she wouldn’t mind—surely, she had more pressing things on her mind. I finally stood up, my lower back reminding me that my cheerleading days were long gone.
Ruth glanced over and her eyebrows shot up in surprise when she saw the clean floor. “Wow! I can’t believe you got all that up! Now if you could just do the same thing to Ollie’s face, we’ll be set.” As if on cue, a bumping, thumping cascade sounded from the back room, and Ruth’s shoulders sagged as she led Irene over to the hair dryers, handed her a Better Homes & Gardens, and set a timer.
In the back room, I found Ollie and Dylan scrambling to put dozens of bottles of hair dye back on the shelves, but of course they were hopelessly jumbling the types and shades of dye.
Ruth joined me at the door and groaned when she saw their clumsy attempts to set things right. “Here we go again.”
“Has it been this way all day?” I asked in disbelief.
“All. Day. It’s been one thing after another.”
“It was an accident!” Ollie protested. “We didn’t mean to do it.”
Dylan turned to face us, his big brown eyes welling with tears. “Are we in trouble? I want my m-m-mom.”
My own eyes stung with tears at his little stuttered plea, and I kneeled to wrap him in a hug. His little body slumped against me, grateful for the affection even if it didn’t come from his mother. “You’re not in trouble. Come on, we’ll fix it together.”
Ruth showed the boys how the bottles were color-coded and then, when the timer on Irene’s dryer dinged and she went back to finish the set, I led them in a sorting effort. By the time Ruth ushered Irene out the door and returned to the back room, Dylan and Ollie were able to proudly show her the rows of hair dye they’d properly arranged on the shelves.
Well, almost, anyway. Close enough.
She smiled at the two of them, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “Nice work. Now, please try not to break anything else until after lunchtime.”
I glanced at the clock—it was nearly noon. “I hate to say it, but it’s lunchtime now.”
Dylan rubbed his round little belly. “I’m feeling grumbles. Do you have grilled cheese?”
Ruth looked in the basket on top of the microwave in the corner. “I have Cuppa-Soup and Saltines.”
Dylan turned to his brother. “Do we like that, Ollie?”
Ollie made a face. “I don’t know. But it doesn’t sound good.”
Ruth rubbed her forehead and took one of her famous cleansing breaths. Then another one, as apparently the first one hadn’t worked. “Can I talk to you for a minute?” she finally asked me.
I nodded, and with a quick reminder to the boys not to touch anything except the crayons and paper on the back table, joined her out in the salon.
She flicked a switch on the hair dryer hood, and it came to life, drowning out our conversation in a roar of white noise. “Real talk. When do you think Eli’s going to release Tambra?”
“That’s actually what I came to talk to you about. She’s been arrested—for real. They think she did it.”
Ruth’s jaw dropped open, but no words came out.
“Right? That’s what I said. Apparently, McKenzie keyed the Prius before...well, before she ended up in the trunk. That’s enough of a motive for the state police to pin it on Tambra.”
“I just—I can’t—” Ruth shook her head. “What? Why would McKenzie do such a thing? Tambra works her tail off for those girls.”
“McKenzie must have had a reason. I was hoping you knew something about it.”
Ruth’s eyes popped at me. “You know as well as I do that Tambra’s a kitten! If she caught McKenzie scratching her paint up, she’d deal with it. She wouldn’t murder her.”
“Even kittens have claws. I mean, she might defend herself if McKenzie attacked her first.”
Ruth grabbed the trash can where I’d scooped all the nail polish mess and held it in front of her like she was going to be sick. I gently gathered her curls and held them back in case she tossed her cookies.
“That would explain how McKenzie ended up in the back of that car,” Ruth said miserably, hugging the can to her chest despite the wafts of nail polish fumes billowing out of it that made my eyes water. That couldn’t be helping her nausea. “I’ve been trying to figure out how someone opened her trunk without the keys. Between googling about how to break into hatchbacks and herding the boys, I hardly slept.”
I gently pried the trash can out of her hands and moved it away from us. “Funny you should say that. I was talking with Gary Edison this morning, and it turns out that Tambra’s car was in the shop last week with a trunk-latch problem. The back of her car just randomly pops open. So anybody could have put McKenzie’s body in there. I told Eli, and he’s filing a report.”
Ruth looked up at me, hope in her eyes. “So there’s still a chance they’ll let her out?”
“Maybe
. Her bond hearing is this afternoon.”
Ruth sagged with relief. “Thank goodness. I can only take so much more of the boys.”
“They’re just being kids,” I said automatically, even though Andrea had never been like that. She was more of a foofy-tea-party-and-white-gloves kind of girl.
“I know, but I have clients booked all day. It’s a good thing Irene can’t see five feet in front of her—but most other people can, and they’re going to notice that my salon is capital-T trashed.”
She wasn’t wrong. The kids had pillaged the magazine rack and scattered the magazines around the salon. The wall of nail polish was destroyed, of course, and even the waiting area chairs were askew, with a cutting cape clipped between them to make a fort. They had even piled all the crystals, shells, and special stones from Ruth’s little good-vibes altar into the jar of sanitizing solution usually used for combs and brushes. As Ruth surveyed the shop, the corner of her right eye began to twitch, and I realized I had to do something.
“Can’t they go stay with their dad?” I’d never met Tambra’s ex, but I knew he was a local guy from Pear Grove.
Ruth shook her head. “He’s up in Alaska for salmon season. Works on the fishing boats. I’m not even sure how to reach him. I only have a number for a voicemail service.”
“What about other family? Grandparents, cousins?”
She shook her head again and sighed. “I’m pretty much all the ‘family’ Tambra’s got. It’s me or nobody, and that means it’s me.”
“I’ll take them for the rest of the day,” I said impulsively. Anything to get that defeated look off Ruth’s face.
She turned to me. “Oh, would you?”
A loud yelp and a scuffle sounded from the back room as I nodded, already regretting the offer. How was I going to wrangle those feral children for a whole afternoon? Yesterday, I’d been in charge of them for a couple hours with their mom right there, and I still managed to lose them. Maybe I could take them home, where at least I had a fence around my ten acres. “They can run off their energy out on the farm.”