Murder on a Bad Hair Day

by Anne George

  Liliane smiled, the first happy look I had seen on her face. “Glynn and Lynn took off the day they graduated from high school. They’re models in New York. You see them sometimes doing those twin commercials. They had counseling, of course, just like Claire did, but the doctors think that having each other protected them some from their environment. Their emotional environment, anyway. They were very malnourished.”

  “And you took them in for Amos.”

  “I took them in for me, Mrs. Hollowell, and now I need to find Claire. Mercy’s death is just one more sorrow in her young lifetime.”

  “She said she was a widow.”

  Liliane nodded. “A terrible highway tragedy. She was devastated by his death.”

  Haley, I thought. Haley, you know.

  The rain against the skylight suddenly began to make a clicking sound. We both looked up. “Sleet,” I said.

  “Oh, Lord, let me get home while I still can.” Liliane Bedsole pushed herself up. Her black turtleneck sweater showed the curve of osteoporosis.

  “If I hear anything I’ll let you know,” I said, helping her on with her raincoat.

  “Claire must think a lot of you to come to you for help.”

  “I think I was just on her mind.”

  “I just wonder why she didn’t come to me,” Liliane said, pulling the hood over her orange hair.

  I wondered the same thing, but didn’t voice it. “Be careful,” I said. “Go straight home.”

  Liliane took the umbrella. “I’ve lived here all my life. I know how to handle ice.”

  I looked at the red coat and the smooth face. This was one feisty little lady. “Be careful, anyway,” I said.

  I closed the door and went to the kitchen to finish the cookies and to think about all Liliane had told me. She was right about skeletons in the closet. Our social mores had certainly changed. I thought about the two daughters named Elizabeth, one the abused drug addict, the other a Miss America living in Hollywood with a movie mogul. Two sisters named Elizabeth and both of them might just have lost their daughters.

  I stuck another batch of cookies into the oven and called Fred to tell him to bring home Chinese. Then I lit the fire and picked up my Hillerman book. I needed it. The Navajo Nation had never looked more inviting.

  Seven

  The sleet had turned back into rain by the time Fred got home. We ate our almond chicken and sweet-and-sour shrimp on cushions in front of the fire while I told him about Liliane’s visit.

  “And she thought the girl might try and get in touch with you?”

  “Yes.”

  “How could anybody just walk out of a hospital like that?”

  “Easily,” I said, thinking of Nurse Connie. “The problem is Claire didn’t have any clothes or money. How could she have gone anywhere?”

  Fred got up and brought us both a cup of coffee. “What’s Liliane Bedsole like?”

  “Nice. Frail. Very worried.”

  “Sounds like she has good reason.” He handed me a spoon and a package of Sweet’n Low. “Did Claire and her sisters inherit some of old Amos Bedsole’s money? There was plenty of it.”

  “I suppose so. Claire has that expensive condo and she looks like a million bucks.”

  “Well, honey, it’s not our problem, thank God,” Fred said. “But I know you can’t help worrying about the girl.”

  We were both silent, looking into the fire, when Fred suddenly said, “Damn!” and jumped so that he spilled part of his coffee.

  I looked up, startled, and saw Mrs. Santa standing in our den door with the lights on her chest flashing merrily.

  “Hey, y’all,” she said.

  “Mary Alice, for God’s sake, can’t you knock? We could have been doing anything in here.” Fred mopped the coffee with his napkin.

  “You wish.” Mary Alice threw her coat over a chair and came over to the fireplace. “That smells good,” she said, pointing to our plates. “What is it?”

  “Sweet-and-sour shrimp. Almond chicken.” I handed Fred my napkin.

  “You got any left?”

  “In the kitchen.”

  “I’m starving.” Mary Alice headed toward the food.

  Fred glared at me and I shrugged. “How’d you get in, anyway?” he called.

  “Through the back door. Which is better? The shrimp or chicken?”

  “Shrimp,” I said.

  “That woman’s got the nerve of a bad tooth,” Fred muttered.

  I shrugged again. After forty years of living with Fred and Mary Alice’s clashing, it takes a lot to get me upset.

  “Any more soy sauce?” she called.

  “No,” Fred said.

  “Look in the door of the refrigerator.” I took a sip of my coffee. “This is good,” I told Fred.

  “Nobody keeps soy sauce in the refrigerator” came from the kitchen.

  “Patricia Anne does.”

  I drank my coffee and stretched my feet toward the fire.

  “Here we go.” Mary Alice pulled a kitchen chair between the cushions Fred and I were on and sat down. “Y’all can’t be comfortable down there,” she said.

  “We stay limber.” Fred reached over and touched his toes to prove the point. I tried to remember where the Ben-Gay was.

  “Where’s Santa?” I asked.

  “Poker night.” Mary Alice pointed her fork at her plate. “This is good.”

  “Glad you like it.” Fred got up agilely (where was that Ben-Gay?) and announced he was going to go and watch the ball game.

  “What ball game?” Sister asked.

  “The Braves and Montreal.”

  I sipped my coffee.

  “My, my,” Mary Alice said. “Baseball season starts earlier and earlier each year, doesn’t it?” She watched Fred disappear down the hall. “He’s so smart-ass, Patricia Anne. I don’t know how you put up with him. You didn’t get egg rolls, did you?”

  “We ate them.”

  “You ate a whole egg roll?”

  “Yep.”

  “Will wonders never cease. Have they found Claire?”

  “How did you know she was missing?”

  “I saw Bonnie Blue at the mall.”

  “I wonder how she knew.”

  “Thurman told James and he told Bonnie Blue.”

  “I wonder how Thurman knew.”

  “Who knows?”

  This was beginning to sound like an Abbott and Costello routine. I put my empty coffee cup on the hearth and told Mary Alice about my trip to the hospital and how Claire had either walked out or been abducted, that no one seemed to be very concerned. I also told her about Claire’s being Amos Bedsole’s granddaughter, Liliane Bedsole’s foster daughter, and that Liliane had come visiting this afternoon.

  “Great. Claire probably has hospital insurance then,” Sister said.

  “I’m sure she does. The question now seems to be whether she’s alive or not. You remember how she said ‘They got to Mercy?’ and then she fainted? Wasn’t that what she said?”

  “Exactly the words.”

  “And if somebody killed Mercy and Claire knows who it was, they could have gotten to her, too.”

  “But why?”

  “I don’t know.” I looked into the fire as if expecting an answer there.

  “I know something you don’t know,” Mary Alice said. “I know how Mercy was killed.”

  “Digitalis,” I said. “It gave her a heart attack.”

  “But I know how the murderer gave it to her. He deemosoed her.”

  “What?”

  Mary Alice handed me her empty plate. “Here.” I put it on the hearth beside my cup. “Deemosoed.”

  “What the hell is ‘deemosoed’ and can you make that shirt quit blinking? It’s making me dizzy.”

  “No. Just don’t look at it.” Mary Alice paused.

  “Well?”

  “There’s this stuff called DMSO, a clear liquid that when you rub it on the skin will carry stuff into your body. Mercy was deemosoed.”


  “I still don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Okay. Remember how Mercy’s hair was all messed up before we got there and she was off trying to fix it.”

  “Sure I remember.”

  “Well, when they did the autopsy, they found DMSO—dimethyl something—and they went looking for it at the gallery and found it in the hair spritzer bottle. Full of digitalis.”

  I was sitting straight up by now. “You mean the digitalis got into her body in the hair spray?”

  “Deemosoed.”

  “For God’s sake, Sister. I’m sure there’s not such a word!”

  “Well, there ought to be.”

  I thought about this for a minute. “The DMSO acts as a carrier through the skin for medicines?”

  Sister nodded yes.

  “And so when Mercy sprayed her hair and it touched her scalp, she was getting a dose of digitalis.”

  “That’s right. And it was in curling spritzer, so she probably scrunched it up with her hands and it got in there, too.”

  “That’s diabolical. Who told you this?”

  “Thurman told James and he told Bonnie Blue.”

  “Fred!” I hollered.

  “What?”

  “Come here a minute. It’s important.”

  He came to the door. “What?”

  “Have you ever heard of something called DMSO?”

  “D’moso? No. What is it?”

  “It’s what killed Mercy Armistead,” Mary Alice said. “It carries stuff through the skin.”

  “In her case digitalis,” I added.

  “I never heard of it,” Fred said, and disappeared down the hall again.

  “Could I make such a thing up?” Mary Alice yelled at him.

  “Yes,” he yelled back.

  “Smart-ass,” Sister muttered. “Hand me those plates, Mouse. I’m going to get some coffee.”

  “I’m going to call Haley,” I said. “See if she’s ever heard of it.”

  “I’m going to get some cookies, too. You need some help getting up?”

  “No.” I hopped up and felt muscles twanging like violin chords. Maybe the Ben-Gay was in the nightstand drawer. I limped to the phone and punched Haley’s number.

  “Hello?” she answered.

  “Haley, have you ever heard of something called DMSO?”

  “Don’t think so, Mama. Let me call you back in a minute, though. I’ve got somebody on the other line.”

  I hung up and looked at the phone. “Does that hurt your feelings just a little bit?” I asked Mary Alice, who had come back into the den with a handful of cookies. “You know, when your children put you on hold or say they’re busy and will call you back?”

  “Of course not. Why should it?”

  “I don’t know. It just does.”

  “Takes more than that to hurt my feelings.” Mary Alice handed me a cookie. “These are good.” She turned on a lamp and sat down on the sofa. “So Claire is Mercy’s cousin.”

  “Half cousin.”

  “How could you be a half cousin?”

  “Well, they had different grandmothers.”

  “Still cousins.”

  Sister popped a whole cookie into her mouth. “Bet it didn’t sit well with only child Miss America Betty Bedsole to find out she had three half nieces. Her picture’s on the front page of tonight’s paper, incidentally.”

  “Don’t talk with your mouth full. Besides, if you can’t be a half cousin, how can you be a half niece?” Fortunately, the phone rang at that moment.

  “Mama? I’m sorry. That was Jed Reuse I was talking to. I’m going to the policemen’s Christmas ball with him.”

  I covered the phone with my hand. “She’s going to the policemen’s ball with Jed Reuse,” I told Sister.

  “Whoop-de-do. Reckon policemen have big balls?”

  “Mama?”

  “I’m here, darling. So is your aunt Sister. She wants to know how big policemen’s balls are.”

  “I’m surprised she doesn’t know.”

  I relayed this to Mary Alice, who laughed.

  “What we need to know,” I told Haley, “is if you’ve heard of a substance called DMSO. Dimethyl something, Aunt Sister says.”

  “I can look it up. I’ve got a couple of pharmacology textbooks still around here somewhere. Why do you need to know?”

  “Thurman Beatty told James Butler, who told Bonnie Blue, who told Mary Alice that they think that was the way Mercy Armistead was killed.”

  “I thought it was digoxin. Digitalis.”

  “This is the way they got it into her. This DMSO absorbs stuff through the skin.”

  “Wow. Let me see what I can find. I’ll call you back in a few minutes.”

  “She’s going to look it up,” I told Sister.

  We both propped our feet on the coffee table and took a section of the evening paper to read.

  “Here’s Betty Bedsole’s picture,” Sister said, showing me the front page. “She’s still beautiful, isn’t she?” The picture looked as if the photographer had called her name and snapped her as she turned. Beside her, holding her arm, was Ross Perry, the art critic who had stood out at the gallery opening in his bright red jacket. “It says her husband was too ill to come with her.”

  I took the paper and read the accompanying article. Mercy’s funeral would be the next day at three o’clock at St. Paul’s with burial in Elmwood. I shivered. “You know,” I told Sister, “the only time I ever saw Mercy Armistead I snapped at her. And she was dying when I did it. Probably the reason she was acting like she was, the digitalis taking effect.”

  “Don’t feel too guilty about it,” Sister said. “Mercy pissed everybody off all the time. Digitalis or no digitalis.”

  “Don’t talk about her like that, Mary Alice. She was young and beautiful and now she’s dead.”

  “Probably because she pissed everybody off so bad.”

  I handed the paper back to her. “Read,” I said.

  “Well, it’s true. You should have seen her at the museum meetings. That guy in the paper? That Ross Perry? She threw a can of diet Dr Pepper at him once. Mostly empty, but none of us could believe it.”

  “My Lord! What did he do?”

  “Threw it back. The word bitch may have been mentioned.”

  “Heavens!”

  “Yep. It’s not going to be the same at the committee meetings without Mercy. I heard she and Thurman were having trouble, too.”

  “You’re just a font of information, aren’t you? Where did you hear that?” I held up my hand before she could answer. “Never mind. I know. Thurman told James, who told Bonnie Blue, who told you.”

  “How did you know?”

  I tapped the newspaper. “Read!”

  Mary Alice stood up. “I’m going to get some more cookies.”

  The phone rang. “I’ve got it,” Haley said when I answered. “It’s dimethyl sulfoxide and Aunt Sister is right. It’ll transport just about anything right through the skin. It would have worked with the digitalis. Take a few hours, maybe up to six unless she was drinking. Depending on how much they got in her, of course.”

  “It would work,” I told Mary Alice.

  “I told you it would.” She sat down with another handful of cookies.

  “But you would have to be a doctor or a pharmacist to have access to it, wouldn’t you? That should make it easier to trace the person who did it.”

  “It’s not even a prescription drug,” Haley said. “It’s used a lot on horses with swollen knees. They rub it right on and apparently it acts as an antiinflammatory by itself, or they can add other medicines and it absorbs them right in. There’s all kinds of warnings here about wearing rubber gloves so you don’t get a dose of the medicine you’re trying to give the animal. Principally for veterinary use, it says.”

  “Would you have to get it from a vet?”

  “Not if it’s not a prescription. You could get it at any farm supply store, I’ll bet. Wait a minute. Let me make sure
.”

  I could hear her murmuring, “Clear liquid or cream, extreme caution, transdermal route.”

  “She’s reading about it,” I told Mary Alice.

  “Nope, Mama, no restrictions on it. This book is about five years old but anybody could buy it then. Probably still can. God, that’s wild. And that’s how Mercy was killed?”

  “That’s what Aunt Sister says.”

  “It’s true,” Mary Alice said, not even knowing what I was talking about.

  “Mercy know any vets?”

  “Mercy know any vets?” I asked Mary Alice.

  “James Butler.”

  “What? Bonnie Blue’s James is a vet?”

  “Sure. What did you think he did?”

  “I don’t know. I thought he lived at home with his daddy and Bonnie Blue. Maybe worked in insurance.”

  “Don’t be silly, Mouse. James Butler owns the new twenty-four-hour animal clinic out in Indian Trails.”

  “Pet Haven?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Haley?” I said into the phone. “Did you hear all that?”

  “I heard ‘James Butler.’ Who’s he?”

  “Bonnie Blue Butler’s brother. Abe’s son. And a damn vet.”

  “Got a house out in Shelby County looks like a country club,” Mary Alice said.

  “Got a house out in Shelby County looks like a country club,” I repeated to Haley.

  “Wife and a bunch of kids.”

  “Wife and a bunch of kids.”

  Mary Alice reached over and took the phone away from me. “Thank you, Haley, darling. Your mama made fruit drop cookies today. Come by and get some tomorrow.” She nodded. “He’s watching the Braves play Montreal.” She smiled. “Yes, dear, I know. Night-night, now.”

  While Mary Alice was talking, sleet had begun clicking against the skylights again. I turned on the outside light and saw that the thermometer on the deck read 33.

  “It’s sleeting,” I announced.

  “Hmmm. What did Haley have to say about the DMSO?”

  “It’s used mainly by vets. On horses, but on other animals, too. It’s an antiinflammatory. But the main thing is that you can get medicine right to the spot where you want it. Transdermally.”

  “And you don’t need a prescription.”

  “Apparently anybody can buy it, but vets would be the ones most familiar with it.”