by Sharon Short
After it was over, I started to the door, wanting to go home. By now, I could hear the heavy rain and thunder, and I figured on just making a dash for it as soon as I got out the door. I’d be soaked and winded when I got home—but I could maybe comfort myself with a nice hot bath. And maybe some peanut butter on crackers.
But then someone grabbed my elbow. I turned around. Winnie, in a raincoat and scarf.
“Come on,” she whispered to me. “Hazel has spread the word that there’s a reception at their house for friends and family.”
Well, of course there was. No one dies in Paradise without the ladies’ salad, casserole, and dessert brigade mobilizing.
But there was one small problem.
“I’m not a relative, Winnie,” I said. “Or a friend.”
“She distinctly told me I was welcome to come,” Winnie said.
“That’s you, not me. Unless you want to tell me now what you called me about, I just want to get home before this storm gets any worse,” I said.
“You were on the Chamber of Commerce with Lewis,” Winnie said. “Plus, you found his body.”
I was about to argue that that would hardly improve my relationship with him—or his wife—but Winnie squeezed my elbow hard enough to make me wince. Then she poked a note at me. I took it with my free hand.
“Directions about when and where to meet me tomorrow morning,” Winnie whispered. She released my elbow, and I put the note in my wallet, in my purse. Then I started rubbing my elbow.
“Good girl,” she said. “Now, we’re going to the reception.”
“Why do I have to go there if you’re not going to tell me about what you learned until tomorrow?”
“Clues. We need to watch for clues.”
“At Lewis’s post-viewing reception?”
Winnie put a finger to her lips in a hushing gesture. “Yes. Just watch for anything out of the ordinary.”
“Winnie, Lewis’s death already is out of the ordinary.” I whispered this part, trying to be discreet.
“I mean anything odd, that you wouldn’t expect. Believe me, it’ll make sense when you know what I know. But I can’t tell you yet. It’ll ruin your objectivity. Mine’s already gone because of what I know, which is why you need to be there.”
With that, Winnie took firm hold of my elbow again, and out we went, into the storm. We ran together through the rain the two blocks down to the Rothchild home.
I truly admire lime Jell-O.
Of all the colors and flavors of Jell-O, lime is the best. It has such a springy, grassy, leafy color that is far greener and cheerier than any actual green you find in nature.
It also is the best at letting other items shine through—unlike grape, for example, which just makes everything dark. In this particular lime Jell-O salad’s case, little shreds of orange carrot, and mini-marshmallows, and tiny dots of pineapple were all perfectly preserved in a quivering lime Jell-O mold, which sat beautifully centered on a silver serving tray, in the midst of all the other casseroles and Jell-O salads and desserts, on a table set up for the occasion in the tiny front parlor of Hazel and Lewis’s home. But clearly, the lime Jell-O salad was the centerpiece—the crown jewel—of all the food offerings brought to Hazel in this time of grief.
Winnie had told me to watch for anything unusual, any clues. So far, this seemed like a pretty normal postviewing repast, except that Winnie herself—although leaving her raincoat and scarf in the hall closet—was going from person to person, talking in a very low voice. Other than that, I only noted that every time it thundered outside, the lime Jell-O quivered. And it was hard for folks to keep their voices low, as seemed only proper, because the rain was coming down so hard outside, we could hear its drumming on the roof even inside.
Out of curiosity, I slipped the note Winnie’d given me out of my wallet, and looked at it. She’d written down, “10 A.M., tomorrow, old Schmidt farm.”
The Schmidt farmhouse had burned down years back, and the Schmidts had rebuilt about a quarter mile down the road, but I knew where she meant.
“How are you?”
At the mouse-tiny sound of the voice, I shoved the note back into my purse, looked up guiltily. Vivian was right by me, hunched down in the same black dress she’d been wearing at Stillwater Farms. I wondered if she’d been wearing it ever since Lewis’s death. She was calm, but her eyes were red-rimmed. I wondered again, about her—and her sister’s—connection to Lewis. Whatever it was, she looked miserable. I felt sorry for her.
“I’m okay,” I said. “How about you?”
She just shook her head. “I’ll have to be okay,” she said miserably. “For Verbenia’s sake. She’s all I live for now—”
Vivian stopped, looking to the parlor’s entryway, as we all did, as Hazel came in. She gave a general greeting—with a weak smile and a wave—and encouraged us to help ourselves to the food. I was the third person in line.
I’d just gotten near the lime Jell-O, when I heard the front door open. Someone came in. I heard exclamations from the people nearest the front entry.
Then I heard Tyra Grimes’s voice. “Oh hello, excuse me—what? Oh certainly, I’ll give you an autograph. But quickly, darling. I’m here to offer my condolences to the poor widow.”
My knees suddenly went as quivery as the lime Jell-O.
Then Tyra swept into the parlor, stood face to face with Hazel, who stared at Tyra as if she were looking at the devil himself. Tyra—doffed in a navy slicker with matching hat—smiled amiably, though. She didn’t seem to notice how much she was dripping onto the hardwood floors.
“My dear Hazel,” Tyra started. “I just had to offer my condolences.” She glanced around the room. “What a lovely buffet—although some black bunting on the table would have added a somber yet decorative effect, don’t you think? Anyway, I just had to tell you how sweet Lewis was, how gentlemanly, to stop and check on me when he saw me along the road that dreadful evening. Why, if we’d have known what would happen—”
“Get out of my house,” Hazel said, her teeth so tight that the words barely gritted out. Suddenly, the whole parlor was quiet—except for the sound of the steadily pelting rain outside. “You are not welcome here. You haven’t been welcome here since—since—years ago—when—”
She stopped herself, glancing around, suddenly seeming to realize she couldn’t finish saying what she had to say with all these people in her home. I wanted to look away—whatever she and Tyra had to say to each other needed to be said in private. But, like everyone else, I stared at Tyra and Hazel. What Hazel had said suggested that both she and Lewis already knew Tyra, and that they hadn’t been real glad of the acquaintance.
Tyra looked confused. “Why, Hazel, I’m not sure what you mean. I’ve only just met you and Lewis since coming here to your quaint little town—which, of course, I only did thanks to dear Josie Toadfern. Do you know her?”
Hazel’s eyes flicked to me, took me in.
Everyone else looked at me, too.
Uh oh.
Then Hazel looked back at Tyra. “Get out of here. You are not welcome here. Lewis—Lewis was right to not want you here—Lewis—Lewis . . .” She started sobbing.
Tyra put a hand briefly on her shoulder. “My dear, I can see that you’re just too upset to appreciate my condolences. That’s okay—by tomorrow morning, I’ll have made my announcement, and I’m sure you’ll feel differently then.”
Hazel moaned. No one moved toward her. No one had ever seen her as anything other than the stony-faced, quiet wife of Lewis, and so seeing her like this, no one was sure what to do.
“Get out of here,” Hazel said, her voice a thin, tense whisper. “Get out of here before I kill you.”
There were gasps around the room, but Tyra laughed. “Oh, my poor dear, you’re so upset you don’t know what you’re saying.”
“Get out!” The voice—firm, strong, commanding—was Vivian’s. She’d made her way through the crowd and now, incredibly, her arm was around Hazel�
�s shoulder.
Tyra was finally quiet. All of us were quiet. It had even stopped raining, all of a sudden.
Tyra gave a grand sweeping gesture. “I must be running along anyway—I’m having dinner with some members of the press. Tiresome, really, but I must go freshen up.”
Then she turned and left.
Slowly, everyone else started talking, quietly, with extreme politeness—“Ooh, look, Margaret brought her cheese puffs . . .” and “did you see the lovely spray of flowers the Mayor sent?”—and it seemed the strange scene was over.
But, no, not quite.
For suddenly Hazel was in front of me.
And the room went quiet again.
She said, “You brought Tyra Grimes to town. Lewis told me he warned you that blood would flow if she came—but you got her to come here anyway. Now Lewis is dead. And you come here. Disrespectfully wearing a cap with his killer’s name on it.”
But I’d colored in the tow truck, Elroy’s name, all that . . . and then I realized I must have grabbed a regular black marker, instead of a permanent laundry marker, and the rain must have washed away my efforts to disguise my cap.
I opened my mouth, about to explain and apologize, but I never got the chance to speak.
You see, Hazel yanked my cap off. She grabbed the plate with the lovely lime Jell-O mold and dumped it on my head. Then she stuck my cap back on my head.
With that, she left her parlor and ran up the stairs.
I don’t remember getting back to my apartment.
I must have walked home, let myself in, and sat down on the kitchen floor.
Because that’s the next thing I remember—hearing a loud bang from Billy’s old apartment, and suddenly realizing I was sitting in the middle of my kitchen floor. My cap was on the floor next to me. I had lime Jell-O on my head, and clothes, and I was holding a dishtowel, which also had some lime Jell-O on it. My face was lime Jell-O-free, though, so I figure I’d gotten the towel to wipe the Jell-O out of my face.
Looking back, I think what happened was, I was just so stunned by what had happened at Lewis’s house, I had walked home on auto-pilot, my mind trying to sort through everything. Kind of like you might drive somewhere you’re used to going, but you’ve got things on your mind, so you find yourself at the destination, and don’t remember driving there at all.
So later, when I had to talk to Chief Worthy, I couldn’t really tell him how long I’d been home. Or if I’d relocked the outside door when I came in, or if it’d been unlocked the whole time I was gone, or what. All I could say was that I heard a loud bang in Billy’s old apartment.
And that I figured that Tyra had finally come back from wherever she’d been.
And that I must have left the lime Jell-O on my head because finally—finally—my head was no longer itching. The lime Jell-O had cured that problem.
And that I never would have bothered going over to check on her except suddenly, just a few seconds after the loud bang that definitely came from inside the spare apartment, there was the sound of a warning siren going off.
The siren that sounds for a tornado.
We had to get somewhere safe, and that meant down to the laundromat. I figured we only had a few minutes to get down there, into my storeroom, where we’d be a lot safer than in our second story apartments.
So, I ran out of my apartment. A gust of wind knocked me against the wall. The exterior door was open.
I fell to the floor, crawled to Tyra’s door. “Tyra, open up! We’ve got to get downstairs!”
She couldn’t hear my voice, of course, not over the terrible roar of the storm. So I pounded on her door. It swung open.
I crawled in, started to holler Tyra’s name again, but my voice choked on itself.
There, on the floor before me, was Tyra—head bashed and a long strip of cloth, cut from one of her own red Tyra Grimes T-shirts, tied tightly around her neck.
14
I was in the worst fix of my life: in a second-story apartment with America’s favorite home decorating star. Who’d been hit over the head and strangled to death with the cut up pieces of her own designer T-shirt. While a tornado raged outside. And lime Jell-O dripped from my head.
I didn’t know what to do.
I wanted to go down to the laundromat, where I’d be safe.
But if I left Tyra’s body here, and it got squished by, say, the roof falling in, then the most important evidence in her murder (her corpse) would be destroyed.
And if I tried to take her with me, I’d have to drag her down the stairs—not a possibility I relished—which would surely also be disturbing the most important evidence in her murder. . .
As I was trying to decide what to do, a huge tree limb speared the family room window. Wind and rain and bits of glass came gusting in. The end table’s lamp went up like a kite, flying by its cord, then crashed back down.
Now it was too dangerous to take the outside stairs to the laundromat, even if I wouldn’t have had to drag Tyra’s corpse along. So I did the only thing that popped into my lime-Jell-O-covered head.
I grabbed Tyra from behind, under the arms, tried not to gag at the sight of her head bouncing on my knees, and drug her to the closet in the bedroom. I propped Tyra in one corner. I shut the closet door and settled into the other corner.
Then I closed my eyes and prayed.
When it got quiet again, I opened my eyes.
I looked over at Tyra.
She was still there. I could just make her out from the tiny bit of light that slid in under the closet door.
I knew she would still be there, of course, but my fervent prayer that I’d survive the tornado had lapsed into a desperate hope that somehow, maybe due to lime-Jell-O-hair-tornado-shock-syndrome, I had only imagined Tyra being murdered.
But there she was. Real as ever. Dead as ever.
I looked away from Tyra and counted to one hundred. It was still quiet outside of the closet. But to be sure, I counted backward to one. Still quiet outside. The tornado was over.
I opened the closet door, crawled out. Then I stood up and looked around. The bedroom was fine. I went out into the family room—a different story there. The big tree limb—half of it inside, half of it outside—was jammed through the window at an angle. Wind and rain had gusted through, knocking over end tables, tossing papers and magazines around. But the roof was still on. The walls were still in place.
I ran over, then, to my apartment. Everything was okay. It seemed the only tornado damage was the tree limb spearing the spare apartment’s window. I wanted to go downstairs—check on my laundromat—but I figured I’d better call for help as soon as possible, so I picked up my phone—and of course there was no dial tone. Phone lines were down. I could go back to Billy’s old apartment, find Tyra’s cell phone. But I just couldn’t bring myself to go back near Tyra’s corpse.
So I ran outside, down the stairs, around to the front of my building, thinking I’d get help at Sandy’s Restaurant.
Across the street, at Sandy’s Restaurant, people were starting to come out, looking around, warily, as if the tornado might suddenly pop out again from around a corner and holler “ha!” before sucking them all up. The big pole that held up the Sandy’s Restaurant sign had bent over and crashed into the corner of the roof. A few wires were freed from the pole and were sparking, like those little sparklers kids like to use on the Fourth of July. There was enough light from the sign—and the sparks—that I could make out some of the faces.
One of them was Chief John Worthy.
So I ran across the street, circling clear of the Sandy’s Restaurant sign, and went up to Chief Worthy, who was telling the already quiet crowd to stay calm.
I tugged on his sleeve.
He whirled around, saw me, and sighed. “What is it, Josie? Can’t you see we have a situation here?”
“Is anyone hurt?”
“No, but I have to maintain crowd control, get everyone out of the restaurant before mass panic sets in.”
I watched everyone filing out quietly. The only one who might need help getting under control was Sandy, who stood outside her restaurant, pointing up at the sign, and sobbing. She was entitled, considering. Everyone else seemed to be getting out of the restaurant just fine, on their own.
So I said, “Chief Worthy, you need to come with me. I’ve got a, uh, major problem at my spare apartment—”
“Can’t it wait?”
“No.”
He whipped out a notepad. “Give me a quick description—”
I stood on tiptoe and whispered, “Tyra Grimes is in my spare apartment. Dead. And not from the tornado.”
Chief John Worthy was none too pleased with me for moving Tyra’s body, even after I explained about the tree coming in through the window.
But he took my statement, while other officers—from Paradise as well as from the county sheriff’s department—took pictures and notes and finally removed Tyra from the closet.
He was also none too pleased that I couldn’t really remember if I’d left the side door locked or not.
He only lifted his eyebrows when he asked what had happened to my hair, and I told him.
One of the paramedics was real nice and checked me for shock. She told me that the tornado had touched down only briefly in a field outside of town, so Paradise had gotten off lucky. No one had been seriously hurt, although a few cars and buildings had been damaged.
Finally, when everyone—including Chief Worthy and Tyra—was gone, I went downstairs to see how my laundromat had fared. It was dark by now, so it was hard to be sure, but the biggest damage I had (besides the tree limb through the window upstairs) was that the big flowerpots on either side of my laundromat door had been knocked over and broken.
The electricity over at Sandy’s Restaurant must have been turned off, because the broken sign had stopped buzzing and sparking.
Without the glow of Sandy’s sign, Main Street in Paradise was dark and quiet and eerie.
