by Karen Pullen
“Did you see what he did to my hair? I paid a fortune for that. Look at it. It’s awful!” Juliette Irving is fixated on her ruined hairdo, all right. That trumps getting murdered.
The rich really are different.
At least she’s calmed enough to lower her voice. Turning my back to the cluster of cops hovering over her body, I quietly ask, “Do you know who murdered you, Mrs. Irving?”
“How could I know? Haven’t you seen the back of my head? The back? You think I have eyes in the back of my head?” She glares at me, hands on hips, her cover-up spread wide so it covers up nothing. I try to imagine going through eternity wearing only a pink thong bikini bottom. Actually, I try not to imagine that.
“If you could tell me what happened…?”
It’s the wrong question to ask. “Tell you what happened? Just look what was done to my hair! The color’s a disaster. And the cut…! Any idiot can see it. Are you an idiot?” Her glare spikes from outrage to flat-out fury. Not waiting for me to defend my IQ, she stalks toward her corpse—and flies into more hysterics over what the murderer has done to her hair.
Unfortunately for Charlie, not to mention my rep with the Greensboro PD, Juliette Irving doesn’t know who bashed her on the back of the head with the bust of Beethoven. Shame about that. I’ve seen a lot of Beethoven busts—when I’m not revealing murderers, I study composition at the excellent School of Music at UNC Greensboro here in town—and this bust seems one of the finer examples, once you get past the matted, copper-highlighted hair and bloody gore splattered down one side.
“Well?” Charles has the patience of a famished vampire mosquito as he edges up beside me. “Who did this to her?” he whispers out of the side of his mouth in his best Bogart style.
I shrug, not wanting to admit I haven’t the faintest idea. “Any fingerprints?”
“Several sets on the bust. We’re collecting elimination prints. Maid, housekeeper, husband. The victim too, of course. Too early to tell, but one set seems oddly placed for casual touches. We’ll know soon if it’s an unsub.”
Unsub. Love that cop talk. Unknown subject of course. I haven’t spent my life watching CSI and Law and Order for nothing. “Let me know if you get a match, okay?”
Charlie nods. With a slight inclination of my head, I indicate I’m heading outside. I’m hoping there’s a DP—that’s my own personal cop-on-a-case jargon for Deceased Person—hovering around out there who’ll have something useful to tell me.
Leaving the dear departed Juliette to continue her tantrum, I step outside and away from the front door, with Charlie following. The news vans are all over this, of course, but they’re kept a couple houses away by the yellow tape and a few officers who are standing so stiffly it’s like they’re practicing to become one of those royal guards who never crack a smile. I ignore the reporters peppering me with questions and cut around the side of the house to the back yard. Happily, this well-established mansion in Greensboro’s old-money district has lush landscaping, so once I duck behind a huge magnolia I’m out of sight. As soon as we have privacy, Charlie asks again, “So?”
“Don’t know.” I’m admiring the gorgeous swimming pool and stone-paved patio, not paying a lot of attention to him.
“What do you mean you don’t know?”
“I mean I don’t know. What am I? Wikipedia? Stay here.” Without listening to any further bluster, I stride over to the other side of the pool, where I see a DP loitering. Charlie knows better than to follow me when I’m on the scent. “Hi,” I greet the DP.
“You can see me?” This DP is a young kid, maybe eighteen, nineteen. He has the hollow-eyed skin-and-bone look of a long-time drug user. No need to wonder what caused his demise. He’s the poster boy of a druggie gone dead.
“Sure. What’s your name?”
“Blinky.” It’s a nickname of course, and suitable since he has a constant, exaggerated blink that’s impossible to miss.
“Nice to meet you, Blinky. You hang out here much?”
He shrugs. “Yeah. It’s nice.”
I nod. “Nice scenery.” From my admittedly brief view of Juliette Irving, her scenery would be extremely nice. And from her lack of tan lines, my guess is that the bottom half of that bikini was strictly reserved for more formal occasions than poolside lounging.
He giggles. “Yeah. Woulda liked to done something about that. Too late now.”
“Yeah. Death’s a bitch, isn’t it?”
Though Blinky looks startled at that profound philosophical observation, he doesn’t comment. “So how come you can see me? Nobody else does.”
My turn to shrug. “It’s what I do.” Things are friendly, so I figure it’s okay to ask him about what he knows. “Where were you when all the excitement happened? See anything?”
“Naw. I was back here, like always.”
I eye him. “How come you’re not comforting the newly departed Mrs. Irving?”
He shuffles his feet. “That lady is loud. Never heard such screeching. Just pissed off over her hair getting mussed.”
“Getting bonked over the head will do that to a hairstyle. Were you pretty familiar with her?”
A sly look creeps over his face and he snickers. “I guess. I like to come over here and watch.”
“Watch?”
“Her and her guy. They like—liked—to do it here, by the pool. Pretty good entertainment.”
I think about that. “I don’t suppose you mean her husband?”
“Dunno.” He blinks, scratches his nose. “What’s he look like?”
I dredge up a memory of Mr. Irving’s photograph from the paper—he got some civic award for something or another last week that made a big splash in the local news. “About sixty, gray hair, goatee—”
Blinky laughed. “Naw. She was humpin’ a younger guy. Maybe thirty, thirty-five. Black hair. Works out, I guess. Has muscles on him anyway.”
Aha! My finely tuned detective instincts scream at me. I’m onto a hot trail here. “You ever hear her call him by name? Even a first name?”
He snickers. “You mean other than Muffbuster?”
I can’t help the grin that escapes. “I mean like a real name.”
He scratches his nose again. “Hard to understand her—she was distracted if you know what I mean. And loud. Hurt my ears to listen to her, so I kinda stopped paying attention. But I think she used to call him something like Gary? Larry?”
I run through the possibilities: Barry, Cary, Harry, Jerry, Perry… Blinky settles on being “pretty sure” it was Gary. Last name? Blinky hasn’t a clue. I figure he wasn’t bothering much with the male participant in the trysts when he had the luscious Juliette in front of him wearing nothing more concealing than a slick of sunscreen.
I ask a few more questions, then thank Blinky—it’s always good to be polite to DPs since you never know when you’ll become one yourself. Then I head back over to Charlie. He’s impatient, waiting for me to pull a solution out of the sky. That’s what he expects—a miracle cure, like penicillin. Unfortunately, I never was good at science.
“Guess what?” I ask. “Mrs. Irving had a lover. Gary somebody. And their last tryst was…guess when…earlier today.”
Nothing warms the shiny badges of a homicide detective’s heart more than the prospect of adding a hot suspect to his list of possible perps. Charlie’s practically quivering as he runs through scenarios. “So…the husband, comes home, finds wifey doing the rumpty-humpty with her boy toy. Boy toy escapes, husband gets mad, wifey gets bonked.”
“But Charlie—”
He doesn’t wait for me to point out the flaws in that. “Or it could be the other way around. Boy toy is here, has an argument with wifey, they get mad, he bonks her with the bust, then high-tails it out of town.”
“But Charlie—”
He’s so obviously pleased to have narrowed down the suspects that he doesn’t wait for me to point out one gigantic hole in both his theories. Before I can say more, he trots away toward the front
of the house, hoping he’ll be the first to reveal the lover angle.
Don’t get me wrong. Charlie’s a good cop and a good detective. Statistics are on his side. Most murdered women are done in by their husbands, lovers, or exes. But he has forgotten one key thing in his eagerness.
Juliette doesn’t know who killed her. If it had been either husband or lover, I’d think even the hair-obsessed Juliette would have recognized something about her killer. Then again, maybe it’s worth trying to talk to her again. If she’s stopped being traumatized over her tresses, maybe she can tell me something more specific about her attacker.
I go back to the front of the mansion. Charlie has pulled a couple cops off to one side. His body language shows the same shivery eagerness of his favorite pointer when she catches scent of a bird. The criminalists are packing up and the medical examiner is preparing to wheel Juliette’s corpse to the van to take her to the morgue. Meantime, the DP version of Juliette is still haranguing everyone in sight about her hair. Sheesh. You’d think she’d be done with that topic.
I quietly walk up to her. “Mrs. Irving? Juliette? Could I ask you a question?”
“You again! How come you’re talking to me, anyway? None of these other cretin-cops will.”
Hmmm. “Cretin”—that’s not the kind of word your average trophy wife will use. My assessment of Juliette Irving elevates. “No, ma’am. I’m the only one who can see or hear you.”
She still looks mad enough to haunt me for eternity, but with a little more talk I calm her down and convince her to answer a few questions.
“I was just seeing a friend out—” she pauses to look at me to see if I am buying her euphemism.
“You mean your lover? Gary?”
“How do you know about him? Did that scumbag husband of mine tell you?”
“No, ma’am. As far as I know, Mr. Irving doesn’t know about your…friend.” True enough. I haven’t had the pleasure of meeting her husband yet, so I have no reason to believe he knows about her activities. I always try to be truthful with DPs. They’re easier to deal with if they trust me. She looks skeptical, but I guide her back to the main question. It’s like herding a rabid rabbit. “So you were seeing Gary out—can you tell me his last name?”
She hesitates, but after I point out that under the circumstances, she’s not likely to get served with divorce papers, she admits he’s Gary Frankenship. I can’t keep back a whistle. The Reverend Frankenship is the minister of the very popular Apocalyptic Mission Church. The church membership has surged since Frankenship took over, even in this area where competition for tithe money is fierce and there are more churches per acre than coffee shops. Gradually, I get her to tell me what happened.
She and her lover Gary are indulging in a tryst back by the pool. She’s given the servants the afternoon off. Today, however, her joy-jumping with the Reverend Gary isn’t going all that well. She’s too upset about the butchery done to her hair. That part starts another rant about her plans to sue the hairdresser and spread the word all over town that he’s an incompetent hack. She even told the ungrateful little snip exactly that yesterday when he refused to give her a refund.
Again, I have to steer her back on the main track. What happened earlier today?
After a bit more bluster, she explains that she tells Gary her husband might be catching on about her extracurricular activities. He’s threatening to cut off her allowance, maybe even kick her out. That’s okay with her. She wants to get a divorce and marry Gary. She has a yen to be a minister’s wife…she could help him “minister” to the congregation. I gather by then, she’s ministering pretty good to Gary. She starts to tell me some of her special dick-tricks to persuade men to do what she wants, until I pull her back onto the subject.
“And what did Gary say to that idea?” I ask.
Her face crumples. “He yelled at me! Said he can’t afford to marry me, has no intention of marrying me, and wouldn’t marry a scarlet Jezebel ever. That’s when I bit his dick.”
Ouch. That had to hurt.
I ask her how Gary reacted to that.
“He was pretty mad,” she admits. “There was a little, uh, name-calling.”
“Nothing more physical?” Maybe lover-boy got mad and bonked her.
“Nah. Gary wouldn’t lay a hand on a woman.” She slants a sly glance my way. “Not in anger, anyway.”
“Uh-huh. So what happened next?”
“I pulled on my bikini and my jacket and showed him out.”
Just as I thought. Juliette isn’t used to wearing much of anything around that pool. No wonder Blinky likes to hang out here. One thing makes me curious, though. “Why bother with dressing up just to show him out?”
She shrugs. “I like to be a bit more formal when I go to the front door. This is the South, you know.”
Right. Formal. Wide open jacket revealing every inch of her boobs, and a bottom that covers nothing of her butt.
“Besides,” she adds with another sly glance, “I wanted Gary to see exactly what he was passing up. He’s a very, uh, visual, kind of guy. And he loves the look of my butt in that pink thong. It’s his favorite. So I did a few butt-twitches on the way to the front door. Just as a reminder, you know?”
“But he did leave?”
That sly smirk switches to a bad-tempered frown. “Yes,” she says sourly. “I slammed the door behind him.”
“I see.” So I can push the not-so-holy Gary to the bottom of my suspect list. “What happened next?”
Now she looks puzzled. “I had just turned away, walking toward the stairs, when I heard the door open again. I thought it was Gary coming back, so I made sure the jacket gave him a good look at my butt. He really is an ass man, you know. He just loves—”
“And was it Gary?” I interrupt. This is definitely too much information. And I’m never going to attend Apocalyptic Mission Church.
“Well, I was starting to turn and then…that’s it. My head felt like it exploded. It’s all I remember.”
And thus a new DP is made.
I ponder all she has told me as I drive away from the mansion. Charlie’s two theories could both fit. Lover leaves the house in a rage, changes his mind, walks back inside, grabs Ludwig and just like that—his problem lover isn’t a problem anymore. Or, husband is home early enough to see virtually naked wife showing another man out the front door. He’s enraged, opens the door, grabs the bust, and again Juliette is the newest member of the DP community.
Somehow, though, neither of those scenarios is quite right. I don’t see the super-controlled Mr. Irving as the type to indulge in rage. As for the Reverend Gary, well, he too seems unlikely to resort to an assault with a deadly Beethoven. I think the husband would be more likely to coldly hire a hit, and Reverend Gary more likely to arrange an accident, like getting her drunk and drowning her in the pool, something like that. The Beethoven bust thing—it just doesn’t seem like either one’s style.
I’ll have to talk to Charlie soon, but first I want to follow one other clue I winkled out of Juliette’s story.
An hour later, by begging and pleading, I get an appointment with Juliette’s stylist. Henri most likely grew up in the Montagnes d’Arête Bleues region, based on the traces of hillbilly that creep into his fake French accent. I want a new hairstyle, I tell him. My shoulder-length light brown hair needs a makeover, and I want only the best, no matter what the cost. I explain that I spotted Juliette Irving’s gorgeous new hairstyle last night at Underground, Greensboro’s most exclusive eatery, and I immediately recognized the work of an artiste. I’m so impressed that I can confidently place my hair in his talented hands. He has carte blanche to do whatever he thinks best.
After a suitable period of lamenting the talentless hacks who (as he claims) have all but destroyed my hair, Henri agrees to take on my “dee-fi-ceel” case. While he’s sectioning and dabbing my hair, he starts a rant about Juliette. After discreetly discovering that I’m not a personal friend of hers, just an admirer of her h
air, he goes into a long diatribe about how “eempos-see-blay” customers can be and how they have no appreciation of his skills.
While we’re waiting for the chemicals to do their thing, I’m installed in a comfortable chair in a quiet corner of the salon and handed a glass of chardonnay. Too bad I don’t much like chards—too oaky for my taste. But it gives me a chance to observe everyone in the salon. I’m interested in how they all interact. Henri is a sensitive soul in many ways. He seems deeply hurt by the altercation he had with Juliette. I’m just thinking about this when I realize a DP has settled beside me. A quick glance around shows me no one is in hearing distance if I speak softly.
“Hi,” I say. The DP is a middle-aged woman with tears running down her cheeks. “Is anything wrong?”
She pointed in the general direction of the salon where Henri and his staff were bustling around with clients. “That’s wrong.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“I had my hair done here a few months ago. Can’t you tell?”
I study her more carefully. She does look freshly coifed. But there’s something off about the style…no, the color. It’s much too orange for this lady’s delicate fair skin. “It’s a nice style…” A lie. I should never lie to a DP.
“No, it’s not.” She turns her head so I can see the area just behind her left ear. Sure enough, there’s another bashed-in spot that reminds me a lot of Juliette’s bonked head.
“What happened?”
“I shouldn’t have complained,” she says. “I could have just gone to another stylist somewhere else and it could have been fixed. Now…it’ll never be fixed. And I ruined my daughter’s wedding day!”
A little coaxing and a few more half-coherent sobs, and I start to remember her story. Mrs. Chichioni had come here to get her hair done for the ceremony. The style was OK, but the color was too orange, not at all the golden blonde she had requested. She’d complained and refused to pay Henri. Later that evening…she’s in the DP set with nary a clue as to how she got there. The cops, if I remember rightly, thought the son-in-law might have done it. Or her husband. But no evidence supports either theory. Last I heard, the case still lingers in the “Unsolved” folder and shows every sign of staying there. Now Mrs. Chichioni wails to me that her daughter’s wedding day memories are forever destroyed by the tragedy.
