The Trouble With Tulip

by Mindy Starns Clark

  “No, that’s the smell of whatever was in the bucket next to the body. It’s gone now.”

  “It still stinks.”

  “You should’ve been here an hour ago. It was almost unbearable.”

  Jo greeted the coroner and then stepped close to the body and looked down intently, careful to follow his directions not to touch anything.

  “Poor thing,” she said softly. “I’m sorry I never took the time to get to know her better.”

  “She obviously knew you,” the chief said. “According to Danny, your influence can be seen all over this house.”

  “That’s true,” Danny told her. “The thing that clued me in was a low-wattage lamp burning inside a wooden drawer. I knew it was familiar, and then I remembered you talked about that one in your column just a few weeks ago.”

  “A lamp in a drawer dries the humidity out of the wood and stops the drawer from sticking.”

  “I told you,” Danny said to the chief and the coroner. “All of this. This entire home is like a living tribute to Tips from Tulip.”

  “Well, not completely living,” the chief amended, looking down at Edna Pratt, whose toenails were indeed a freshly painted pearly pink.

  To Jo, the whole situation was quite surreal. Here she was on her wedding day, touring the home of a dead woman, a neighbor she barely knew, offering simple explanations for all of the seemingly inexplicable things this woman had done. From the rice-filled sock duct-taped around the woman’s neck (put in the microwave first, it would serve as a portable heating pad) to the shower caps under the plants (to catch the drips when she watered the plants), Jo had an explanation for everything. The only one that confused her was the ashtray on the back porch with the four unsmoked cigarettes. But then, as they walked to the living room again, she figured that out as well.

  “The cigarettes,” Jo said, pausing at the coffee table, where several white rings marred the dark wood surface. “If I had to take a guess, I would say she was burning the cigarettes to use right here.”

  The chief bent down to study the rings.

  “Why?”

  “To get rid of water rings on wood, you can sand them down a little and then make a paste of cigarette ashes and vegetable oil to rub into the wood. As long as it’s not too big of an area, it should nicely darken the wood so the rings don’t stand out as much.”

  “Incredible,” the chief said.

  “This was her sander,” Jo added, reaching for a heavy brick that was covered in felt and had a little steel wool taped to the bottom. “For an older woman who doesn’t have a lot of hand strength, the weight of the brick provides the force needed to sand the surface.”

  Jo looked up, realizing she had actually gathered an audience of cops, as they all listened, rapt, to her explanations.

  “What about the orange halves with salt in them?” someone asked.

  “For deodorizing the refrigerator.”

  “The noodles in the peach pie?” from another.

  “To let out steam so the crust doesn’t crack.”

  “The bubble wrap in the veggie drawers?”

  “To keep fruit from bruising.”

  “Enough, enough,” the chief said, waving his hands. “I’m the one asking the questions.”

  The cops grew quiet, though they continued to listen.

  “Miss Tulip,” the chief said, “you haven’t told us about the socks on her hands. Let me guess—she was moisturizing?”

  Jo put a finger to her lips, considering.

  “Either that or cleaning her miniblinds.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “To clean miniblinds,” Jo explained, walking between the body and the window, “you can put socks on your hands. You dip your right hand in a bucket of cleaning liquid and run it along each slat this way, then use your left hand to dry, running it along each slat that way. See? Wipe, dry, wipe, dry. You just work your way down the blinds.”

  The chief stepped closer to the window and eyed the blinds.

  “You’re right!” he exclaimed. “They’re clean about halfway down and then they’re all dusty.”

  “That explains the bucket,” the coroner said, rocking back on his heels and then standing. “It also explains her death. Good news, Chief. If I had to guess, I’d say this was definitely not a murder.” He peeled the rubber gloves from his hands.

  “It wasn’t?” the chief asked skeptically.

  “Don’t think so. My best guess as to what happened here is that Ms. Edna was doing some beautifying and housecleaning, passed out from the fumes in the bucket, and hit her head against the windowsill, probably about here.”

  He pointed to the bottom of the frame of the bay window, where there was a small dent and a few missing chips of paint. Though it did look like the obvious spot, Jo didn’t quite see how striking her head there would cause the woman to end up flipped around the other way.

  “Sadly,” the coroner added, “the accidental blow was fatal. I’ll still do an autopsy, but I feel certain the cause of death is an intracerebral hemmorhage secondary to trauma from a fall.”

  The chief was silent for a moment.

  “What was in the bucket that made her pass out?” the chief asked finally. “What kind of fumes?”

  “My guess is that the woman mixed together a couple of different housecleaning chemicals and they reacted with each other. It’s not unheard of, especially with someone like this who did things in a rather, uh, homemade fashion. What happened was that she probably mixed the wrong chemicals, the fumes got the best of her, she passed out, fell down, hit her head, and died. It’s sad, but it’s not murder.”

  “But if the fumes were so toxic,” Danny asked, “why didn’t all of us pass out when we got here?”

  “The worst of the fumes would have dissipated overnight,” Jo said softly. “Though the stench remained.” She considered again the positioning of the body in relation to the bump on the windowsill. “So how do you explain the direction she’s lying in?” she asked the coroner. “If she passed out and hit her head there, how did she end up here, like this?”

  He looked down at the dead woman for a moment, considering.

  “Good point,” he said. “If I had to guess, I’d say the blow wasn’t instantly fatal. She might have hit the ground and sat there for a few minutes, and then she fell back in the other direction. No way to know for sure. But I have no doubt it was an accident.”

  Jo was surprised he seemed so sure about it, especially because she knew it was murder.

  4

  Simon Foster was waiting at the bank when they unlocked the doors. In his wallet was a withdrawal slip for $400,000, the full amount that was in the account he had opened two days before with Edna Pratt. He didn’t know if he would get away with this or not, but he had to give it a try. After all of his hard work, it was worth a shot.

  Simon’s shiny black shoes clicked against the marble floor as he crossed to the row of tellers. Sizing them up, he went with the youngest, prettiest one—not because he thought he was youthful or good-looking enough to charm her, but because in his experience pretty girls were never quite as thorough as their plainer sisters. It was as if life came so much more easily to the beautiful that they didn’t bother with the small details.

  He slipped one hand into the pocket of his suit, glad he had worn the Armani he had bought last spring off his friend Vinny for fifty bucks. It was a well-known secret among certain circles that at the Shady Ridge Cemetery in West Palm Beach, Florida, some of the richer, more well-dressed corpses had actually been laid to rest in just their undies. Vinny had found a profitable side business stripping down bodies just before he buried them and then selling the fancy suits and shoes on the side. Some of the guys didn’t go for that, even if it was a bargain, but Simon had no qualms. What did a stiff need with Armani once he was in the ground, anyway?

  “May I help you?”

  Simon stepped forward and gave the pretty teller a practiced nod, slight and professional, communicating
efficiency.

  “Yes, I’d like to close out an account, please,” he said, pulling the slip from his wallet and sliding it to her across the narrow counter along with his driver’s license.

  She took the paper from him and looked at it.

  “For an amount this large, I’ll have to give you a bank check,” she said.

  “No problem.”

  But there was a problem. After entering the information on the computer and then consulting a manager, the teller gave Simon back the withdrawal slip and his license.

  “I’m sorry, sir, but this money isn’t available to you yet. The deposit just went in two days ago.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “The checks haven’t cleared. As soon as they clear, then you can withdraw the funds.”

  “How long will that take?”

  “Could be up to seven days. Why don’t you check back on Wednesday?”

  Wednesday. By then, he’d be a thousand miles away and the cops would be all over this thing. He might as well kiss the cash goodbye.

  So close and yet so far.

  “I, uh, I’m moving away,” he said. “Can I close out the account via long distance?”

  “Oh, sure,” she said, glancing past him to the line that was already forming in the queue. “We’ll just need a notarized letter telling us where to send the funds. Or, if you’d like, we can arrange that right now. Do you have your new address?”

  Simon hesitated.

  “Um, no. I’ll have to get back to you on that.”

  “Well, here,” she said, reaching into her drawer for a small card. Glancing at her computer screen, she jotted some numbers on the card. “This is our automated system. You can call it twenty-four hours a day and just enter your account number and this code. It’ll tell you if the money is available yet or not. Once it is, all we need is that notarized letter telling us where to send the bank check.”

  Simon thanked her and took the card. He walked out of the bank, his heart heavy and his wallet nearly empty. He would change into his travel clothes at the bus station, and then he needed to get out of town fast, before the police started looking for him. He supposed he had enough cash to get a ticket as far as Baltimore.

  From there, he’d just have to wing it.

  Jo presented her case for the chief as the others stood nearby, listening. In the first place, she explained, there was no way on earth that a cleaning aficionado like Edna Pratt would accidentally combine a lethal mix of household chemicals.

  Secondly, Jo continued, there was something important they needed to know about last night.

  “Something was going on here,” she said, “around midnight. A big argument.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I was out jogging in the neighborhood, and as I came past this house—”

  “You went jogging last night?” Danny interrupted. “Why didn’t you stop by? I would have gone with you.”

  Danny lived directly behind Jo in a house he had bought from his grandparents. A real night owl, he was always up late. Though he hated jogging, he would have gone along for Jo’s sake. He had certainly accompanied her plenty of times last winter, when her grandmother was dying and Jo got in the habit of walking or running almost every night.

  “Wait a minute!” said the chief. “Who jogs at midnight?”

  “I couldn’t sleep,” Jo explained. “I’m getting married today, remember?”

  The chief didn’t look convinced, but he gestured for her to continue.

  “Anyway,” she said, “I was jogging past this house when I heard people arguing. All the lights were on, but I couldn’t see in any of the windows.”

  “You tried to look in the windows?” the chief asked.

  “No, but you know how it is. I heard voices and glanced over here, but I couldn’t see who was fighting. Then something really weird happened.”

  She went on to describe how she made the block a second time, coming face-to-face with a speeding vehicle that screeched to a stop in front of her, unsettling her enough that she turned around and ran back home the other way.

  “They sat there so long, I just figured they were looking at a map or something,” Jo said. “But what do you want to bet it was the murderer trying to get away?”

  Danny nodded enthusiastically, swept up in her tale.

  “They probably stopped coming forward so that the lights would be in your eyes and you couldn’t see the make and model of the car.”

  “Or the driver’s face,” Jo replied.

  “Or the license plate,” Danny added.

  “Enough!” Chief Cooper cried. “That’s all the speculation we need for now. Miss Tulip, I’m afraid you’re going to have to come down to the station and give a statement. This does complicate things a bit.”

  Jo glanced at her watch and swallowed hard.

  “Can we do it here, Chief?” she asked. “I’m supposed to be at the hairdresser’s in fifteen minutes. The wedding starts at two, and I’ve got every minute planned out between now and then.”

  The chief reluctantly agreed, taking Jo’s statement there at the scene, asking her questions and taking note of her answers, moving as quickly as he could step-by-step through her version of the events of last night. After a few minutes, Jo excused herself to call Marie, her maid of honor, to tell her to proceed with events as planned, minus one bride.

  “I’ll explain when I get there,” Jo said into the phone. “Just tell the hairdresser to do everyone else first.”

  When the police were finished with Jo, she had them bring her straight to the salon. Jo’s father had insisted on providing full limo service for the entire day, and, sure enough, there was a big white stretch limousine parked out in front of Hair’s What’s Happening.

  Jo walked into the salon braced for the rapid-fire questions that were bound to greet her. Sure enough, as soon as they all saw her, everyone started talking at once. Before she explained what happened, however, she wanted to make sure things were moving along as smoothly as possible. The hairdresser assured her all was well and that there was still plenty of time to get her hair and makeup done.

  “What about my mom?” Jo whispered to Marie, looking around the salon until she spotted the woman near the back, at the shampoo sink, eyes closed, head covered in lather. “Did she freak?”

  “A little,” Marie replied. “It all worked out, though. She just breathed some fire, ate a few maidens, and then went back into her cave.”

  Danny walked into his house, tossed his keys onto the table, and stepped over the basket of laundry waiting to be folded by the couch. He was exhausted, and it was only 9:30 in the morning.

  He was also starving, so after he stashed his camera equipment down the hall in the darkroom, he came back to the kitchen and started digging around in the refrigerator. He decided to cook bacon, scrambled eggs, and toast, though the frying pan needed washing first; it was still on the back of the stove, dirty from last night’s hamburgers.

  As he made room in the sink and scrubbed the pan, he looked out of the window across his backyard toward Jo’s house. He wondered if she had made it home in time to keep herself on schedule. He sure hoped so, as he had learned a long time ago that Jo Tulip did not like being thrown off her timetable.

  The fence that divided their backyards was merely for ornamentation, a low split rail that had been there so long they weren’t even sure which house it belonged to. All either one of them could remember was that one day twenty-some-odd years before, Danny had been outside with his grandmother hanging up the laundry and Jo had been outside with her grandmother weeding the garden. The two children had spotted each other through the fence, met at the middle, and become lifelong friends.

  Women came and went from Danny’s life with what even he had to admit was a steady frequency, but Jo was the one presence who remained throughout. Certainly, she was beautiful and smart and everything a man could want in a woman, but they had never even considered taking things to a romantic level, prob
ably because their friendship wasn’t worth risking. Over the years they’d had to defend their relationship as “just friends,” but the word “just” bothered him. They weren’t “just” friends. They were real friends. True friends. Best friends. Whatever they were, it was a lot more than just.

  In any event, Danny took great joy in knowing his favorite person in the world was only a short walk away. With the backs of their houses facing each other, they had a clear view of each other’s homes, and Danny would catch glimpses of Jo as she went from the house to the test kitchen or to set up elaborate experiments in her backyard. He worked from home sometimes too, and when he did they spent a lot of time waving to each other and eventually popping back and forth for coffee breaks.

  Danny wondered how Bradford felt about that—or if he even knew. Considering the warp speed at which Jo and Bradford had gone from introduction to engagement to marriage, he doubted they had had time to talk about much other than the flavor of the wedding cake. As far as Danny was concerned, Jo Tulip had scored the land speed record for the fastest dash between meeting someone and marrying them. Only six months ago she and Bradford had gone on their first date—and a blind date at that? Just because Jo’s parents knew Bradford and were the ones who arranged that first date didn’t mean Jo had to fall in love with the guy or accept his proposal or meet him at the altar in record time. It was too soon!

  With a heavy sigh, Danny stirred up a couple eggs in a bowl and dumped them in the frying pan. As the eggs heated, he balanced the bowl precariously atop the pile of dirty dishes in the sink. He thought he might try to get to them later, before it was time to put on the monkey suit and take part in this afternoon’s farce of a wedding. In the meantime, what he really wanted to do was meet Jo at the back fence and try one last time to talk her out of the big step she was making today.

  But not only did she not have time for that, he had promised her he would lay off. And so he would. Instead, he would spend the rest of the morning getting the crime scene photos processed and over to the police station. Though the coroner remained convinced that Edna Pratt’s death had been an accident, the chief seemed to be leaning more toward Jo’s opinion that it had been a murder. Either way, Danny needed to finish the job he had been hired to do.