Aretha Moon and the Dead Hairdresser: Aretha Moon Book 2 (Aretha Moon Mysteries)

by Linda Ross

  “And she had no idea where Kara went?” I asked.

  Pastor Rick shifted uncomfortably. “I truly don’t think anyone knew in the beginning. Then when we heard that Jeffrey Connell had moved near Hannibal, we all kind of figured that’s where Kara was. The police had made an effort to find Kara, even though Gigi wasn’t pressing charges. But as time went on, I think they just figured it wasn’t worth the effort to bring her back here.”

  “So why do you think Rose moved close to Kara after what she did?” I asked.

  “Rose was always a gentle soul,” Pastor Rick said. “I think she just wanted to help her sister. From what I heard, she was always the one bailing her out of trouble when they were growing up.”

  “Was their home nearby?” Thelma asked.

  “It was off the county highway close to the Meramec River. Go south on the highway, then take the first turn. You’ll see a little yellow bungalow on the right. I think a cousin lives there now.”

  We thanked him and Gigi and headed out. There was a man standing just outside the church door, smoking. He was pacing, and his agitation was obvious when he pinched his cigarette between two fingers and flung it into the parking lot. He exhaled and glared at us as we walked past. I think we both decided that silence was the better option, and we kept walking to the car.

  “That must have been Eddie,” I said when we were both buckled up and pulling out of the lot.

  “Cheerful sort,” Thelma said.

  “He looks like he might hate Kara as much or more than Gigi does.”

  “Can you blame him?”

  “No. It seems that everyone who knew her hated her. Do you suppose he hated her enough to kill her?”

  “Well, she disfigured his wife.”

  We fell silent as we thought about that. Kara had smashed part of Gigi’s face, and whoever killed her had done the same thing to Kara’s entire face.

  “Let’s check out the house first, then go look at the bar.”

  The house was easy to find. The yellow stuck out against the relentless brown of the river and early winter. It sat on low ground that I’m sure was flooded every spring. I thought it must take a lot of patience to wait out the river every year, not to mention the cleanup afterwards. And then the mold and mosquitoes.

  The driveway was unpaved and mostly mud. We picked out way to the front door, which looked like it had weathered more than one flood. There was a large crack where it had warped at one of the hinges.

  Thelma knocked and we waited. We hadn’t seen a car, but from the porch we could see a small boat tied to a rickety dock near some trees. I was about to knock again when a man appeared from behind the trees and saw us. He stood for a moment, then headed toward us as if resigned. I had a feeling that not a lot of good news had been delivered to his door. He was thin and slightly stooped, and his shoulders curved in, making him look like an iced tea spoon.

  When he got close, we could see that he wasn’t as old as he appeared on first glance. His hair was a light brown and thinning. The eyes looking at us were curious but wary.

  “Yeah?” he said when he reached the porch.

  “Are you a cousin of Kara Koch?” I asked.

  “What about her? She back in jail?”

  “Actually, she’s dead,” Thelma said. “She was killed in Hannibal.”

  “No surprise there,” he said. “I figured someone would kill her sooner or later, although I would’ve bet she’d have killed someone else first.”

  Thelma introduced us and asked him his name.

  “Robert Reeves,” he said. “I ain’t seen Kara in years. Rose checked on me a few times, and then she said she was moving to be closer to Kara.” He shook his head. “I don’t know why. Kara never did nothing but use her.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “From the time they was kids, Kara used people. She’d get Rose to be her alibi when she got in trouble. She stole money from Rose from the time Rose got a part-time job in high school, and then when Rose married a guy with some money Kara leeched off them every time she could. Stole one of their credit cards and maxed it out. Stole their car one time.”

  “I understand that Kara spent some time in jail,” Thelma said.

  “Yeah, in Clayton. Stole money from her employer if I remember right. I guess she couldn’t get out of that one.”

  “Was she ever violent?” I asked.

  Robert snorted. “Honey, that girl was born with her fists swinging. She was always in trouble in school for hurting someone. Spent more time suspended than in class.”

  “Did she carry a knife then?” Thelma asked.

  “She probably got a knife before she could walk,” Robert said. “She loved cutting things, people mostly. I think it turned her on.” He narrowed his already half-closed eyes. “Cut me once. It was after she lost money in a poker game. I said something and next thing I knew she had the knife out. Left me a dandy scar on my leg before I got her off me.”

  “So how did you end up with the house?” I asked.

  “My Aunt Jen didn’t want to leave it to Kara, and she knew Rose didn’t need it. So it came to me. Not much of a thing to inherit, but it’s good enough for me. I like to fish, and it’s kind of peaceful here.”

  We didn’t have any more questions, so we thanked him and moved on.

  I was hungry, and I convinced Thelma that we needed to stop at Steak ‘n Shake. You can guess who got what. One of us had a double steakburger with cheese, fries and a chocolate milkshake, and the other had a grilled chicken salad.

  “I can hear your arteries screaming,” Thelma commented as I finished the milkshake.

  “And my stomach’s purring,” I said. “I think you carry this self-denial thing too far.”

  “At least I can sleep at night without enough heartburn to light a campfire.”

  She had a bit of a point there. Lately, I’d been waking up in the middle of the night with indigestion. But luckily there were fruit-flavored Tums for that.

  “So are we going to the bar next?” Thelma asked.

  I pulled a piece of paper with the name out of my purse. “The Lucky Seven Lounge. Sounds like something from a sit-com.”

  “You need a new purse,” Thelma said. “That hole is getting bigger.”

  “Yeah, you’re right. That little devil Stewart sure did a number on it.”

  We decided to make a quick stop at Walmart to pick up a new purse, and there was the Lucky Seven Lounge just up the street.

  Back in the car, I dumped everything from my old purse into the new one, and we drove to the Lucky Seven. It was the kind of place that lowered expectations. A couple of the neon letters in the sign were burned out, and the windows hadn’t been cleaned in such a long time that the dead flies were probably mummified by now. Despite the word Lucky in the name, the place screamed Loser.

  Inside was as dark as a bat cave, and it took a minute for our eyes to adjust. There was a long bar straight in front of us and a few tables in the center of the room. The wall space was taken up by slot machines, placed elbow to elbow and all calling out with little tinkling sounds. Like an ice cream truck for grown-ups.

  “Good thing we already ate,” I said to Thelma. “The food here is probably left over from Halloween.”

  “Come on,” Thelma said, heading for the bar. “Let’s get this over with.”

  The woman behind the bar had been watching us from the moment we walked in while she wiped down the bar, and I had a feeling she knew right away that we weren’t here to gamble. She looked to be about fifty, with bleached hair pulled back in a ponytail. Heavy on the makeup. Tight white blouse that displayed an ample bosom.

  “Can I help you?” she asked, setting down the rag.

  “We’re looking for some information,” Thelma said. “Did you by any chance know Kara Koch?”

  There was a slight hesitation. “Are you from the police?”

  “No,” Thelma said, “we’re writing a story about her. She’s been murdered.”

/>   “No kidding?”

  “It’s true,” I confirmed.

  “So somebody finally did it. Did they catch him?”

  “Not yet,” I said. “That’s part of the reason we’re here. We’re looking for some background to get an idea of who might want her dead.”

  The bartender laughed loudly. “You’ve got to be kidding. Who didn’t want her dead?”

  “So you knew her?”

  “Yeah, I knew her. She was a real piece of work. She was a waitress here for a while, and she tended bar now and then.”

  “I heard she had a thing going with one of the owners,” I said.

  The bartender gave a grim smile. “You might say that. She and Jeffrey Connell were hot and heavy for a while, until she got bored with him.”

  “So she dumped him?” Thelma asked.

  “You might say that. She carved her initials in his neck one night after he was pissing drunk. His wife found him later with blood all over the pillow and bed. She went with him to the hospital, and he told her someone had attacked him on the street, and he’d passed out after he got home. She believed him until the cuts healed and she read the initials. Then all hell broke loose.”

  “So he left town?” I asked.

  “It was about the time Kara got in trouble for hitting some girl in a church. Kara took off, and Jeffrey couldn’t get over her. He managed to find out where she went, and he moved to be close to her.”

  So Kara had taken off first and Jeffrey followed. I guess the gossip mill at the church couldn’t get everything right.

  “It doesn’t sound as though she would have been flattered,” Thelma said.

  The woman shrugged. “I don’t know what happened then. I heard a rumor she’d beaten him up, but it was just a rumor. You never knew what she was going to do.”

  “Did she ever cause any trouble when she worked here?” I asked.

  “Plenty. She stole money from the register and tips from the other servers. But the men loved her. At least until she started cutting them.”

  “Well, thank you for your time,” Thelma said.

  “You never wish anyone dead,” the woman said, “but with her. . . Well, I don’t think anyone’s in mourning.”

  “Good grief,” I said when we were back in the car. “Do you think we’re ever going to run out of suspects?”

  Thelma sighed. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard of anyone as universally hated as Kara. So sad.”

  “So scary,” I said. “I’m just glad we didn’t have to deal with her when she was alive.”

  “I think we should just concentrate on the suspects in Hannibal or the immediate area,” Thelma said. “Not that I’m keen on interviewing any of them after the threats we got.”

  “Maybe we don’t have to talk to them. Maybe we can just nose around where they live and work.”

  “Yeah, Jimmy would love that,” Thelma said dryly.

  “Jimmy doesn’t have to know. Come on, let’s get a snack before we head back to Hannibal.”

  We stopped at a store so I could get eggs, and I picked up another box of Little Debbies, this one chocolate cupcakes. One can never have too many cupcakes.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  It was close to four by the time we got to Hannibal, but we went to the office to check in.

  We stopped at Lorenzo’s office just long enough to tell him we were back. It was Monday after all, and I can hold my breath for only so long. We quickly closed the door and headed to our respective desks. And we both stopped in our tracks. Standing at the counter halfway between my desk and Thelma’s was Rose. She looked stunning as always in a hot pink silk tunic top over white pants. The braided belt hung loosely at her waist.

  “Oh, hi,” she said brightly. “I know this is a surprise, but I was going crazy just sitting at home and doing nothing. I had to keep busy.”

  “So you got a job here?” Thelma asked.

  Rose nodded. “I can type and file, so Lorenzo hired me to work in the morgue.”

  I just bet he did. The morgue is newspaper talk for a library of clippings, or, in larger and wealthier papers, computer files. Rose had the current issue of The Spyglass spread out in front of her, and she was cutting out stories.

  “I thought maybe I could help you with your story too. I mean, nobody knew Kara as well as I did.”

  “That’s an idea,” I said, although I wasn’t keen on any more help with the story. I supposed it wouldn’t hurt to talk to her though. “First thing tomorrow,” I said. “I need to get some notes typed up on the computer.”

  “I could do it for you,” she offered.

  “That’s very nice, but I can manage.” And Thelma and I moved off to her desk to pool our notes.

  “Well, she might actually be some help,” Thelma said in an undertone.

  “I don’t know. She’s probably going to be really emotional about it.”

  “We’ll see how it goes.”

  We left it at that and started on our notes. I could see Marybeth and JoAnn working at their desks, throwing covert glances at Rose. I could see why. Rose with her high-end clothes and gorgeous hair looked out of place in the office. If there was one thing The Spyglass wasn’t, it was classy. And how the hell did Rose get her hair that shiny? There wasn’t enough coconut oil in the South Pacific to make my hair look like that.

  “I think we need to talk to Serena Roosevelt,” I said.

  “The owner?”

  I nodded. “We need to figure out what was going on there. I sensed some undercurrent. Kara was into something that caused the fight between her and Stephanie Riley. I think Serena might know more than she’s told the police.”

  “We can go talk to her tomorrow. Also any other clients who might know something.”

  “Right. I’ve just got to make one call, and then I’m headed home.” I dialed Joan Larkin and asked if she’d heard anything about Stewart now that the issue with the story about his disappearance was out. She hadn’t, and she was depressed.

  “I see his little rawhide treats sitting on the counter, and I can hardly stand it.”

  I told her not to worry, that he would turn up, but I wondered. There probably weren’t enough rawhide treats in the world to keep that dog from chewing through anything that got in his way. The fact that no one had seen him was worrisome. And there hadn’t been any demand for money to return him.

  I thought about Stewart all the way home, but I didn’t have any ideas about where he was.

  Eileen had just pulled into the drive in front of me, and she waved frantically when she saw me. Great. This looked like a headache in the making.

  I let Nancy out to potty, then walked over to her house in time to see Dad stomp inside as Momo glided behind him, her chin up. I knew that look. She wanted something and she hadn’t gotten it. Now we would all pay.

  “What happened?” I asked Eileen.

  “I’m not sure.” She stared after them helplessly. “We stopped at the store to get some pumpkin because Momo wants pumpkin pie, and I was out. Then Dad started saying he doesn’t like dumplings, and he and Momo got into an argument with her insisting he does like dumplings. And he said dumplings are for Christmas, not Thanksgiving. And then we figured out that he thought we’d said dumplings instead of pumpkin, so Momo tried to make him go to the walk-in clinic in the store to get his hearing checked. And things went downhill from there.”

  “Oh, boy,” I said.

  Inside, I had Eileen sit down with a glass of wine, and I got out the cold cuts, bread and chips for an easy supper. Desi and Tiffany were staying with a friend, which they’d been doing more often since Momo arrived. I think the daily critiques about their wardrobes and haircuts were wearing thin.

  When I left, Dad and Momo were watching Wheel of Fortune, and Dad was shouting, “Buy a vowel!” while Momo was wondering if Vanna White was related to Betty White. Or maybe that nice White family that used to live just outside of Hannibal. Oh, boy.

  Jimmy was getting out of his car when I g
ot back to my house. And he had Chinese carry-out.

  “Have I mentioned that I love you?” I asked, inhaling deeply.

  “You’re only after my egg rolls.”

  “And your crab Rangoon.”

  We gorged on Chinese food. I ate four crab Rangoons and a full order of sweet and sour chicken with rice.

  “What’s your fortune cookie say?” Jimmy asked when we had put the leftovers in the fridge and Nancy was licking the last of the fried rice from her bowl.

  I sat back down at the kitchen table and opened my cookie. “You will meet a tall dark stranger,” I said without reading it.

  “No, come on.”

  “Okay, okay.” I pulled out the paper and read. “Life is only the menu.”

  “What does that mean?” Jimmy asked.

  “I guess it means you have to choose what you want. Or more likely it means that life will be out of whatever it is you want to order. Happens all the time. You want fries and they just shut down the fryer for the night. Okay, what does yours say?”

  Jimmy pulled out his paper. “Look straight ahead to see what’s in front of you.”

  “Kind of obvious.”

  “Maybe it means we should look straight ahead at the clues for Kara’s murder and stop taking detours. So how did it go in Arnold?”

  I got up and got Jimmy another beer and me a Diet Coke.

  “I really don’t know,” I said. “Lot of information, but I don’t know if any of it is important. In the church, she hit a woman with a paper weight and ruined her face. Then she took off. Jeffrey Connell left about the same time, possibly to look for her. Oh, by the way, she carved her initials on his neck.”

  “Really?”

  I nodded. “Not the kind of gesture his wife appreciated. Let’s see.” I pulled my notes from my pocket and looked at them. “Her cousin inherited the childhood home. The cousin says Kara was always taking advantage of Rose. Oh, that reminds me. Guess who turned up at work today.”

  Jimmy shook his head.

  “Rose. She got a job at The Spyglass. Says she’s tired of sitting home not doing anything and wants to help.”

  “Not a good idea,” Jimmy said. “She’s liable to be a target too. We just don’t know why Kara was killed.”