by Tracey Quinn
“A good tip?! You already charge twice as much as everyone else in the salon, and you want a bribe, too?!” This sleuthing was getting to be an expensive business!
“What can I say? I'm in high demand. My customers pay me a lot because of my training.”
“So you really trained in France?”
“Close. French Lick, Indiana, but it was a great school. I actually trained to be a barber, but that rotten Olivia wouldn't let me cut men's hair like they do in a lot of salons. She said that men weren't her target audience. The bitch sure targeted plenty of them in her personal life! I had to watch a bunch of Youtube videos to learn how to do women's hair so that I could keep my job!”
Great. I was having my hair styled by a man who honed his skills in between watching cat videos. Still, I was here for Jolene first and foremost. “I heard that Olivia chased her share of men,” I said, “and knowing Olivia, I'll bet a lot of those relationships ended badly. Did any of them ever come to the salon?”
“Oh sure, there were plenty of bad scenes,” Harry said as he started shampooing my hair. “It wasn't all boyfriends, either. I almost got punched by Tony Powell the contractor last week! Olivia hired Powell Construction to build out the new spa and after Tony had finished the work they got into some fight over the money. I don't know what it was all about, but Tony was mad as hell! He was shouting at the top of his lungs about how he was going to break Olivia's skull, and he'd burn the place down with her inside before he'd let her cheat him! My clients were all getting ready to leave so I went over and tried to calm him down, but then he swung his fist at me! He almost hit me too, but I guess he thought better of it and pulled back. I tell you, that was just about the last straw for me at this lousy salon!”
“Did you tell that to the police?” I asked, blinking as suds slopped into my eyes.
“I told them that I saw Jolene go up to Olivia's apartment right when she died and then hurry back down a few minutes later. What was the point of telling them anything else? If I had seen Tony going up to her apartment I would have told them about the fight, but otherwise it didn't matter.”
“So you were just sitting on the bench across the street from the salon smoking and happened to see all this?”
“That's right; well, except for the smoking part. I don't smoke. I just told the police that.”
“Why did you make that up? Had you been doing something else? Drinking peppermint schnapps, maybe?”
“No, it was nothing like that! I was out of schnapps that day anyway. The evil Millie's equally evil mother had an appointment right after lunch and I sure could have used it! What kind of a town has an ordinance that liquor stores have to close at noon?”
“The kind of town that has Sammy Brown of Sammy's Lounge on the City Council,” I replied. “But what were you doing that you couldn't tell the police about?”
“Oh, it's silly, I guess,” Harry said as he spilled some conditioner in my ear. “I was playing Candy Crush. I've gotten kind of obsessed with that game recently and I play it on my phone every lunch break. I was embarrassed to tell Sheriff Wilkerson about it, because he wouldn't understand. People think it's a kid's game, but really it's a game of strategy and skill that only grown-ups can truly appreciate.”
“Of course it is,” I said, blinking more suds out of my eyes. “But those games take a lot of concentration. Were you really paying attention to what was going on across the street?”
“Not completely, I guess, but I did see Jolene go up to Olivia's apartment. She wears a black smock instead of white like the other girls and she's got that auburn hair. Nobody else around here has hair like that. Besides, I like Jolene; I'd never lie about her to get her in trouble.”
Just then, I remembered something that Jolene had told me. “Maybe someone could have had the same hair,” I said. “Jolene told me that Olivia had a wig made from her hair.”
“That's true, but what difference does that make? Olivia could hardly disguise herself as Jolene and then run away after she killed herself.” Suddenly, Harry pushed the lever and I found myself sitting upright in the chair.
“Hey, Dani, who's that hot girl walking by the front window?” he asked. “The one with the purple hair; do you know her?”
I couldn't see who was walking by since the suds running down my forehead was stinging my eyes so that I couldn't open them, but I only knew one person with purple hair. “Her name is Suze Peters and she works at Molly's Yarns. Want to rinse my hair now?”
“Sure, sure,” I felt the chair tip back again and water was sprayed into my ear. “I haven't seen her around here before, and I'm sure I'd remember. She must be new in town.”
Once I was sufficiently rinsed and dried, I sat up and looked at my hair in the mirror. I had never seen a bale of black straw before, but this was pretty close.
“What do we think might have happened here, Harry?” I asked.
“Hmm....I must have grabbed the hair thickener by mistake when I was reaching for the conditioner, and since you've already got thick hair.... Don't worry, it'll probably look just fine when you put it back into a pony tail. So what do you know about Suze? Is she seeing anyone?”
Seeing anyone? I was seeing red. “She's definitely available,” I muttered as I grabbed the brush and tried to do something with my massive mop of hair. And, yes, I did put it in a pony tail, and, no, it didn't look just fine. It looked like I had a thunder cloud brewing behind my head. I decided to put Harry at the top of my suspects list. A person who could murder hair like that was capable of anything.
A found a parking spot in front of Highes Home Improvement and gathered up the screws from the cup holder. From what Monsieur Rene had told me, I was convinced that he had seen someone disguised as Jolene go up to Olivia's apartment, not Jolene. That meant that whoever had murdered Olivia had to have known about the wig and her feud with Jolene (although the way gossip got around East Spoon Creek City, it would have been harder to find someone who didn't know about the feud). Chuck Bailey had definitely been in Olivia's apartment on many occasions, and blackmail gave him a great motive for murder.
When I opened the door of the hardware store I was greeted by a jingling bell and a round-faced teenage boy who I thought I recognized as one of Jimmy's friends. No sign of Chuck Bailey.
“Welcome to Highes Home Improvement, ma'am!” the boy said. “How can I help you?”
That was a good question. I hadn't thought about what I would do if Chuck wasn't here. “I was, er- is Chuck Bailey here? I wanted him to help me with an order,” I added.
“Sorry, ma'am, he's not in today. Can I help you?”
“No thanks, I'll just come back later. When do you expect him in?”
“I don't.”
“What?”
“I mean, he hasn't come in for a over a week, and from what I'm told he's not expected to come in anytime soon,” the boy said, shrugging. “Maybe he's sick or something.”
Sick of waiting for the sheriff to find out he had murdered Olivia, I thought as I left. Chuck Bailey had gone on the lam! When I got into the Firebird, I picked up my phone and called Bob.
“Chuck Bailey has skipped town,” I told him when he picked up.
“Good for him,” Bob said. “Maybe he'll send us a postcard.”
“That's a funny way to talk about a murderer!”
“And just who is Chuck Bailey supposed to have murdered?”
“Olivia Quinlan, of course! They were having an affair and when it ended Olivia started blackmailing Chuck! If she had told his wife, he would have lost his job as well as his family!”
Bob sighed. “You've got to stop listening to Needlework Club gossip at the diner,” he said.
“What's that supposed to mean?!” I demanded. The Jameson sisters were part of the Needlework Club, but they hadn't been at the Breezy Spoon when they told me about Chuck and Olivia, so I still felt that I had a right to act offended.
“It means that there's no evidence to connect Chuck Bailey to th
e murder of Olivia Quinlan. He can leave town or leave the western hemisphere if he wants to; he's not a suspect in any crime.”
Bob was right. There was nothing to connect Chuck to the murder other than some gossip about a relationship with Olivia. I wasn't able to think of a snarky zinger to throw back at Bob for his comment about the Needlework Club so I just said goodbye and hang up. If I wanted the police to investigate Chuck, I was going to need to give them something concrete.
Concrete! I remembered that the last time I filled up the Firebird's tank at McGarity's, the old crumbling sidewalk in front had been torn out and fresh concrete was being poured for a new one. There had been a sign planted by the curb that read “Another 5-star job by Powell Construction”.
According to Monsieur Rene, Tony Powell had threatened to kill Olivia at the salon. If Olivia had cheated him out of a lot of money, that would a pretty good motive for revenge, and unlike Chuck, Tony had shown that he had a violent temper. I turned onto the street and headed for the gas station.
It was almost four o'clock when I reached McGarity's and I saw that the concrete truck was gone, so I was afraid I was too late to catch Tony Powell. However, when I pulled into the lot I saw two men taking sod out of the back of a pickup truck and laying it down by the sidewalk. Another man was standing by the truck with a hose in his hand, and his face looked a lot like the face on the Powell Construction sign by the curb.
I pulled in at one of the pumps and as the tank was filling I strolled over to where the men were working. “You do good work,” I said. “That looks a world better than the old sidewalk.”
“Why, thank you,” Tony Powell said, smiling broadly at me. “Good work is the only kind of work that Powell Construction does.”
“You put in the new spa at Olivia Quinlan's beauty salon too, right? That was quite a big job.”
The smile vanished from Tony's face as quickly as it had appeared. “Yeah, it sure was,” he growled. “But we did a great job there, too.”
“I heard from a friend that Olivia didn't think so,” I said. “He said that she was refusing to pay you.”
“That had nothing to do with the quality of our work!” Tony snapped. “That bitch stiffed me out of the final payment because she said we didn't have the permits when we started the job, and she wasn't going to pay for illegal work! What a bunch of garbage! I had every permit that I needed for that job, but on the first day of the job my pregnant wife thought she was going into labor and I had to rush home to take her to the hospital! I forgot I had the permits with me in the truck, so they weren't posted when the job started! It's no big deal, but that snake Olivia Quinlan waited until we had finished all the work then said she had video of my crew working without the permits posted, so she didn't have to pay!”
“That's pretty underhanded. Sounds like you had good reason to be angry.”
“Sure I was angry! I had to go into my savings to pay my crew and I can't even sue her without getting in trouble as long as she's got that video squirreled away somewhere!”
“My friend said you threatened to kill her.”
Tony's eyes narrowed. “Your friend's got a big mouth!” he snarled. “So I got a little mad and said some things I maybe shouldn't have said; that doesn't mean anything!”
“And yet someone did kill Olivia Quinlan,” I said. “Where were you on the afternoon when she was killed?”
“What are you, a cop?!” Tony shot back. His face was red with anger and he loomed over me, the hose in his hand dribbling water on my shoes. “I heard the sheriff arrested somebody for that! What are you trying to pull?!”
“The sheriff arrested the wrong person,” I replied. “I'm trying to prove that.”
“Oh yeah? And you figure to do that by pinning it on me, huh?!”
“No but-”
“Well you can just forget that!” He was shouting now. “I was out in Kettletown at the obstetrician with my wife all day! We're having a baby, okay? Call the doctor if you want to check up on me; call anybody you want, but do it somewhere else! I got work to do!!”
He turned his back to me and stalked back to the sidewalk and I went back to my car. Tony Powell certainly had a motive to kill and a bad temper that might lead him to do it, but he also had an alibi. I would still call the doctor and find out when Tony had arrived and left, but I had a feeling it wouldn't get me anywhere. I drove back home with no leads and soggy shoes.
When I got home Mark was not there and I remembered that he was on shift at the firehouse tonight. I sat down at the kitchen table to think; so far my attempts to get Jolene out of jail had not gotten very far. I had established that Chuck Bailey and Tony Powell had good reasons to want Olivia dead, but I had nothing solid that would tie either one to the murder. There were probably others, too; if Olivia was blackmailing Chuck and extorting Tony and Jolene, she was surely doing the same to other people as well. Too bad I didn't have a shred of evidence of any of my theories that I could take to the sheriff.
Suddenly a realization hit me: I wasn't the only one who needed evidence! Olivia couldn't have blackmailed anyone on her word alone; she would need evidence to hold over their heads. Tony had mentioned that she had a video of his crew working without permits hidden somewhere, but why hadn't the sheriff or his crime scene investigators found anything when they searched Olivia's apartment? Bob had told me himself that there was no evidence that connected Chuck Bailey to Olivia.
A plan began to form in my head and I reached for my phone and started dialing Jimmy's number. You could argue that it wasn't a good plan if it started with a phone call to Jimmy, but I'd tell you to mind your own business.
Chapter 7
At about 10:30 that night I was standing next to the bench where Monsieur Rene had been sitting when he saw the fake Jolene go up to Olivia's apartment. Charlene and Jimmy were sitting on it now.
“Now remember what we planned,” I whispered. “I'm going up to Olivia's apartment to see if I can find any evidence that might help Jolene. No one should be around this late on a Wednesday night, plus the streetlights are out. All you have to do is keep a look-out. If anyone goes by you two can just pretend you're making out and no one will pay any attention to you. If you see anyone go down the alley toward the stairs to Olivia's apartment, just call me on your cell phone to alert me.”
“What if Cooter comes by and replaces the batteries in the street lights?” asked Jimmy.
“Cooter barely works in the daytime; do you really think he'd come all the way over here at this time of night to actually do work?” I asked. “Don't worry, this won't take long; maybe 10 or 15 minutes at most.”
About the battery operated street lights: the City Council voted to put in solar-powered street lights on the main street last year. They collected bids for the solar battery systems, and Al Sholes Emporium had the lowest bid. When the street light systems arrived however, it turned out that they were operated by D batteries, not solar panels. The council was pretty mad, but Al said it all a miscommunication, and he did what he said he would do.
Each streetlight took a lot, and I do mean a lot of D batteries, the kind you use in your flashlight at home. Needless to say, they had to put the battery replacement cost out to bid. Al Sholes had the lowest bid. So every week Cooter James is paid to put in new Sholes Battery Wizard batteries. Everyone refers to them as Sholes Bat Wiz. Sometimes they last as long as a week. Still, I was pretty confident Cooter wouldn't be here tonight. He was too upset about Jolene.
I slipped slowly up the stairs trying to ignore the creaking and hoping there wouldn't be anyone around who could hear it to. When I reached the landing at the top, I started to take out the key that Charlene had given me when I noticed that Olivia's keys were still in the lock. I figured they were hers because there was a silver letter O dangling down from the key ring. Had the sheriff's investigators forgotten and left them in the lock after searching the apartment? Maybe now that they had made an arrest they didn't need the keys anymore. Whatever the case
, I was glad to see them because if the sheriff found out later that someone had been in the apartment, he wouldn't be able to connect it to Charlene or to me by Jolene's spare key.
I softly pushed the door open and stepped into the dark apartment. Once inside I stopped and fished my little flashlight out of my pocket. Even though no one was likely to be around at this hour, I didn't want to risk turning on the lights. Suddenly I heard sounds of movement in the room, and before I could even turn on my light a shadowy figure rushed past me, slamming into my shoulder and knocking me to the ground. As I started to get up I reached out to grab the figure, but an elbow jabbed me in the eye and threw me back down with stars popping in my head. Then the person was gone and I could hear the creaking of the steps as they ran down them to the alley. I got to my feet and stumbled after him. Him? I assumed the person was a man because they seemed pretty strong, but I hadn't gotten a good look at whoever it was. When I reached the top of the stairs, they alley was empty. I was kicking myself for not being able to stop them long enough to identify them, but just then I remembered that I had two witnesses right out in the street! I hurried down the steps and across the street to Charlene and Jimmy. They were making out, and I mean making out big time.
“Break it up, you two! Did you recognize who that was that just ran past you?” I panted.
“Ran past us?” asked Charlene as she began adjusting her pony tail.
“Nobody came by here,” Jimmy shrugged.
“Listen, someone just ran right past you not one minute ago! You must have seen him; he couldn't have been more than six feet away from you! How could you not have seen him?”
“Well, you told us that if anyone went by we should pretend to be making out,” Jimmy said.
“Do you mean to tell me that you started making out so fast when he passed you that you couldn't even see the guy? How could that be?”
“Oh no, we started making out early so it would look realistic,” Charlene explained.
