by Jean Flowers
“And you just happen to have a need today?”
I told her about Quinn’s birthday and handed her the card I’d chosen.
Liv shifted her short, stocky body to reach the scanner and ran the card, and then the lighthouse, under its red beam. “For your information, by the way, on the day that Daisy died I was in South Ashcot, checking on my mom. She lives alone and I needed to be sure she was okay in the storm. I also stopped in at her next-door neighbor’s, another widow, and helped with her shutters. I’m sure she, too, would be glad to vouch for my whereabouts.”
Uh-oh. Apparently, word had gotten out. I felt my law enforcement career slipping away before it started.
“Okay, I—” I stammered, catching my breath.
“If you want, I can call Molly over here right now and make it easier on you. You won’t have to cross the street to the salon. You can quiz her on that broken ankle. Oh, and did you plan to interrogate Pete in the hardware store also? I could ask him to come join us. Or is it just quilters whom you suspect of murder?”
“Liv, will you let me explain?”
“No need. It’s all pretty clear. You come back to town and feel like your big-city life entitles you to lord it over those of us who have stuck it out and tried to make something of this town. You think you’re smarter, so righteous. Doing us all a favor by coming back.”
“That’s not true, Liv. I wish—”
“Would you like your receipt in the bag?” she asked, cutting me off again, dropping my lighthouse and card in a bag. The thunk they made as they hit the counter told me she was finished with me. No room for discussion.
“Thank you. That will be fine,” I said.
I turned and walked out the door, red-faced, figuratively if not literally. Another bust. I hadn’t even gotten to the part where I’d ask simply if Liv had any insight into who might have been upset enough with Daisy to have killed her. The only tidbit I’d gotten was a reminder to look into Molly’s broken ankle. Unless Molly was ready for me, too.
I hurried to my car, parked behind the bank, now next to a beige sedan with a driver asleep at the wheel. It couldn’t be. But it was. Ross’s forehead touched the top of the shiny brown steering wheel, his breath coming out in soft snores.
For some reason, I decided to wake him. Maybe because I needed to put someone else through an embarrassing moment like the one I’d just had. Perverse, I admitted, and not my proudest moment. I touched Ross on the shoulder. He jumped, his elbow landing on the horn. A quick blast, in case anyone else in the vicinity was trying to catch a few z’s.
“Cassie. Wow. I guess I was asleep.”
“Ross, what are you doing here? Is there some reason you’ve been shadowing me?”
Ross rubbed his eyes, shook his head. All the motions I went through at six in the morning. “Sunni asked me to,” he blurted out.
I congratulated myself on choosing just the right moment to confront him, between sleep and wakefulness, catching him off guard. “She sent you to follow me around?”
He nodded, cleared his throat. “We heard about how stuff was stolen from your car and you didn’t tell us.”
“How did you hear about that?” As soon as I asked, I realized who had to have been the leak. The only one I’d told. “Cliff,” I said.
He shrugged and I took it as a yes. “So Sunni figured the first threatening note must have been stolen also, and that’s why you cancelled my pickup,” he said.
“That’s it? That calls for a police escort?”
“Plus, Cliff’s going to be leaving town for Florida and he was worried about you being here alone. You know, security guards, they like to think they’re police.”
Which meant that Cliff had also been following me around? Which meant that instead of an aide to this investigation, I’d been a burden on several people. And insulted the others.
“Thanks, Ross, but I don’t think I’m in any danger.”
“Still have to do my job.” He sat up straighter, scratched his head. “Say, Cassie, do me a favor?”
“Sure.”
“About the nodding off.”
“Don’t worry; I won’t tell your boss.”
Ross let out an appreciative sigh. “The chief doesn’t know this, but my captain-to-be in Springfield asked me to start a little early and take a couple of night shifts for him. I guess he’s running a couple of guys low.”
“That’s a pretty long commute.”
“Yeah, over an hour, even in the middle of the night with no traffic, but I felt I had to do it. Good first impression, you know. I’ve leased an apartment there, starting the first of the month, but until then, I’m putting on the miles.” He let out an exhausted sigh, bordering on a groan. “I’m beat.”
Poor Ross. I promised I wouldn’t rat on him, as he’d put it. And he promised that though he had no intention of leaving me on my own, he wouldn’t intrude on my personal life. I figured, in an emergency, a sleeping Ross was better than no Ross at all.
I was left with the fact that even sleep-deprived, short-timer Ross was more use to the North Ashcot chief of police than I was.
* * *
In spite of Liv’s mockery, I decided to take my chances with Molly Boyd. Maybe Liv was only faking it when she implied that Molly (and the whole town) knew what I was about. I crossed the street and entered Molly’s salon.
My nostrils were accosted by chemicals. It had been a while since I’d visited, as anyone with a keen eye for coiffure could tell you, and I’d forgotten what goes into the simple act of covering one’s gray or trying a different color.
“Yeah, that’s what I said. Red, white, and blue,” I heard a young woman say to the beautician standing behind her.
“For the parade,” the beautician said. “Great idea. Let’s see what we can do.”
Molly was in the middle of a serious project, tending to a woman whom I might have recognized if her head hadn’t been covered with small pieces of foil and a host of hair clips, all nestled in foam. When Molly looked up and caught my eye, I expected to be ushered out without ceremony. Instead, I saw a smile, as if she were glad to see me. Could that be?
I stood in the center of the salon, surrounded by larger-than-life posters of the world’s most beautiful hair, accompanied by the faces of women of all ages, while Molly removed her black apron and called out for assistance.
“I’ll take it from here.” A woman much younger than Molly’s fifty-plus years stepped from behind a partition, part cloth, part plastic.
I hoped she was up to the major overhaul in process.
Molly thanked her and addressed me. “Cassie, come in back with me for a minute.”
I walked down a short hallway, passing noisy blow dryers, a row of sinks, and a washer and dryer set, both in operation. Behind the curtain was a small area that served as a break room. I noticed their coffee equipment was nothing like the high-end brewing system I’d enjoyed in Sunni’s office.
Molly pointed to an orange molded plastic chair, like the ones in front of the sinks that lined the hallway. “Have a seat.” I followed her direction while she lowered her wide body onto a green chair of the same style. “I’ve been wanting to talk to you, Cassie.”
Really? Was this a trap? Had Liv warned her and cooked up a way to trick me? Or worse? The break room had nothing more lethal than a few butter knives, but out there in the salon were enough instruments of torture for an army. I could be sprayed with a poisonous hair product or held down while my head was shaved with an efficient electric razor. I had a wild vision where all the women with black aprons were lined up for a curling-iron-burning contest with me as target.
“Cassie?” Molly repeated.
My hands clutched my purse under the table and I half stood to leave, the victim of my imagination. “I can see how busy you are,” I stammered, forgetting that I was the one who came into
her shop with a mission.
“No, no, don’t worry about it. Everything’s under control. I have my whole staff here on Saturdays. A bridal party is coming in later for an evening wedding, but we’re all ready for them. Six girls and six boys. Gosh, isn’t that a lot of attendants? We’re doing the boys, too. And I’ve known the bride since she was in grade school. Sure makes me feel old.”
Molly was even better at stalling than I was. I was sure she didn’t intend to have this catch-up session, but I was too anxious, wondering what was up, to mess with the peaceful conversation. I stayed silent, except for nuh-uhs (“Can you imagine such a huge wedding party?”) and uh-huhs (“Doesn’t time fly?”), until Molly took a big breath, expanding her bosom, and got to her agenda.
“Cassie, I know you’re helping Chief Smargon with the case. With Daisy’s case. And I want her killer found as much as anyone and I’ve been so afraid to approach the chief.”
Molly got up, still limping slightly, and poured herself a cup of coffee, holding it up in a silent offer to serve me a drink.
I shook my head. The coffee smelled almost as bad as the chemicals in the next room. “Do you have information that will be useful in the investigation?”
“Not really. Well, maybe.” She took her seat again. The green chair creaked. “The fact is that Daisy and I had a bad fight that day. The day of the storm.” Molly pulled threads from a white towel that was stained with what I hoped was red hair dye and not anything more organic.
I thought back to our last quilting session on Tuesday night and the argument that had started when Liv insulted Andrea Harris’s taste in fabric. A pink hippopotamus came to mind. Andrea had countered by accusing Liv of having a motive to eliminate Daisy, her competitor in greeting card sales, and Liv had shot back with references to the public discord between Daisy and the Harrises’ farmers’ market proposal.
As far as I recalled, Molly had stayed neutral, serving up her special raspberry-bedecked cheesecake. She’d also come up with her first story about her broken ankle.
“Your broken ankle was from the fight with Daisy,” I said now. “Not from tripping over your Adirondack chair or your cat.” I felt more confident now that things were falling into place, although on a very small scale.
“I feel awful about those ankle stories.” She leaned over and ran her finger around the top of the blue brace that ended low on her calf, as if to loosen it. “I don’t know what got into me. I’m really not a liar. That’s what I wanted to tell the chief. Not about the ankle, but about that morning. Liv asked me to talk to Daisy, to try to get her to see Liv’s point of view, how it looked like Daisy was encroaching on her turf. Daisy and I were close, you know. She was almost like my daughter, and Liv’s my friend, too. I thought I could bring them together.”
“You were trying to be a good friend to both. So you went to Daisy’s shop . . .” I showed my palm, inviting more.
I got an enthusiastic nod from Molly and an eagerness to explain. “It was raining really hard, and the wind was out of control, as you must remember. But I didn’t want to put it off. I left my girls to close up shop and ran across the street. Daisy wasn’t out front or inside, and there were no customers, of course, so I checked out back. She was practically being blown away by the wind, she was so tiny. She was trying to move that heavy metal furniture she has out there and pull in the outside plants. I started to help her.”
“What time was that?”
She shrugged. “I know I hadn’t had lunch yet, but, you know, I don’t have a regular lunchtime. I think I went over a little before eleven, and I didn’t stay more than about twenty minutes.”
I’d seen Daisy taking in the displays from the front of the shop around noon, after Molly left. If I hadn’t been so self-conscious about being an interrogator, I would have dug out my notepad and taken notes. I tried to keep the time sequence straight in my head. Molly leaves; I drive by; the killer arrives and leaves; Tony finds Daisy’s body—all between about eleven thirty and one thirty.
Molly was breathing heavily, a worry to me. She’d stopped talking and stared into the space over my shoulder, which happened to be the direction of Daisy’s shop. She’d become more and more agitated, probably from finally sharing the details of what had to have been one of the worst moments of her life, and one she’d had to keep to herself.
“Let me get you some water,” I said, already on the way to the small refrigerator. I pulled out a bottle of water and opened it. When I touched her hand, intending to call her attention to the water, I released another flood of emotion.
“Then I brought up Liv and the card issue, trying to be all casual, and Daisy went ballistic. She yanked a chair from me, so hard that I fell over, and she didn’t even seem to care that I was hurt.” Molly shook her head. “I’d never seen her that way. I knew I’d better get out of there before something worse happened.” She gasped, realizing again that something much worse had happened.
I closed my eyes, as if to focus on the timeline taking shape in my head. Another data point came to me. “Did you report back to Liv after your fight with Daisy?”
“Oh, you bet. I gave her a call immediately. She wasn’t happy, and”—Molly squinted, and jerked her neck forward, scrutinizing me—“wait a minute, Cassie, you’re not thinking that Liv went over there and—”
I held up my hand, stopping her before she lost her breath again. “I’m trying to put things in order, Molly. It’s important to have a clear picture.”
I didn’t elaborate about another piece of the picture that had fallen into place. I thought back to Liv’s appearance as my last customer before Ben and I closed up on the morning of the storm. It had been before noon and, now I knew, after Molly called her and gave her the bad news about Daisy’s aggressive behavior.
Even Ben had noticed the foul mood Liv was in at the time. I hoped Molly couldn’t see the image taking shape in my mind, of Liv finishing her post office errand and storming over to confront Daisy.
One of Molly’s employees came to the doorway, but left immediately. I guessed it was clear that a private meeting was going on. Molly and I sat in silence for a minute or so. I hated to bring her back to my reason for being there, but I knew I had to. “Is that it?” I asked, trying to keep my tone neutral.
“You don’t believe me. And now you think Liv killed Daisy.”
I’d failed again. “That’s not it,” I assured her. “I’m just asking if there’s anything more that you remember. Is there some reason why you didn’t talk to the chief immediately, once you knew she was dead? If nothing else, your story would have helped pinpoint a time when Daisy was alive.”
Molly strained to recapture her powers of reason. “I would have called her, but I was hurting, in more ways than one, kinda shocked at Daisy’s reaction. Then Tony stepped up right away with his information and I felt I had nothing to add.”
I was stuck. I knew it would do no good to emphasize, again, that any tidbit could have been helpful.
Molly’s eyes teared up. “I haven’t been able to get the whole thing out of my mind. I console myself with the idea that Tony saw her not long after I left, so she couldn’t have suffered very long. Someone just rushed in there and . . .”
I didn’t like the image, either. We lapsed back into our inert state, staring past each other, the buzz of beauticians and clients in the next room incongruously cheerful.
“Are you going to tell the chief?” Molly asked in a hoarse whisper.
“It would be better if you told her yourself.”
“Do you think she’ll hit me with an obstruction of justice charge?”
“I don’t know, Molly. But I know it’s the right thing for you to do.”
She nodded. “You’re right.” A loud sigh followed.
“Can we talk about one more thing?” I asked.
She screwed up her face, curious but wary. “I guess s
o.”
“I saw that there was a gathering in here last night.”
“So?”
“Anything I should know about?”
Wrong question. Molly bristled. “It’s not my place to say, really.”
“Because Reggie Harris was in charge?”
Molly leaned on the table and hoisted herself up. “I think I should get back to work,” she said, limping away.
* * *
Though I smiled at everyone who caught my eye on my way out, I felt drained of energy. I couldn’t help thinking that the result of my alleged helping with an investigation might be that I’d end up with no friends. Which was exactly my status when I first came back to town a year ago. Everyone I’d known in high school was on a path that didn’t include me. I’d worked hard to be accepted and now I was headed back to square one. I passed a row of black sinks and I considered signing up for a complete redo of my untamed locks—its main appeal was that I’d be able to hide for a while under one of the sleek plastic drying hoods.
As I walked to my car, my purse rang. The old-fashioned ring tone signaled a text from Quinn. I leaned against the bank building and read it.
Home for Skype later?
Yes!!! I wrote, disregarding my old English teacher’s firm direction never to use more than one exclamation point. “These are extraordinary times,” I would have told her now.
17
Molly Boyd was out of my hands. She’d apparently taken a blood oath, like everyone else at the meeting in her salon. I hoped I’d at least convinced her to report to Sunni. If so, then I’d made one small contribution to the Daisy Harmon case file.
I still had items on my list to complete. Sunni had asked me to talk to the quilters and that was what I’d do. But not before I downed a good cup of coffee. I crossed Main Street and entered Mahican’s coffee shop. I used my sweater to stake a claim to a chair at the back, away from a baseball game on TV, then placed my usual order at the counter.
On the way back to the place I’d saved, I saw that a woman had taken a seat at my table, opposite my sweater. No problem. Customers often doubled up when the café was busy.
