False Nails and Tall Tales (The Teasen and Pleasen Hair Salon Cozy Mystery Series Book 5)

by Constance Barker

  "That was slick," he whispered. "Consider Pete impressed."

  She gave him a big smile. "Why thank you, darling. A girl loves it when she can impress."

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  During a lull in the afternoon’s activities, we heard a siren. "What the heck is happening to our quiet little town?" Nellie asked. "We don’t usually hear sirens once a month, and certainly not two days in a row."

  “Only one way to find out," I said.

  Nellie laughed. “Be aggressively nosy!” Then she dashed to the front door and stepped outside to check it out. Naturally, Pete, Donna and I weren’t far behind. There wasn’t a lot to see. A police car, Chief Tanner’s car, was turning off Clifton and heading under the old Eucalyptus tree. Before it reached the next block it stopped. The siren shut down but the lights were still flashing.

  As we watched, Chief Tanner and James Woodley hopped out of the car and run up onto the porch of the old wood-frame white house. Ellen Hart was standing there, waving her hands frantically. "Hurry, hurry," she said.

  "That’s the Crane’s house," Pete said. "The place has been empty for months."

  "Since they moved to Baton Rouge," Nellie said. "Desmond Crane got himself a job with some big chemical company there. The house is for sale."

  "So what could be going on? There’s nothing in it. That moving truck that came last month took everything to their new place."

  "Well, it isn’t empty now," I said. "It filled up with police and they seem to be bringing something out."

  "More like someone," Nellie said.

  "We need to know who it is," Pete said. "Civic responsibility and all that."

  Nellie took my hand. "He’s right boss. So, given that the salon is empty at the moment, I suggest we embark on an expedition to discover what’s going on."

  It wasn’t more than 500 yards to the house and curiosity is a powerful force, so a few moments later we were standing by the sidewalk, along with some of the neighbors, as well as Abavian Keshian, the local leatherworker whose shop was only a few doors down from mine. He’d gotten there ahead of us.

  "It’s some girl," he said. "Seems to be hurt."

  "It’s Trinity," Pete said.

  He was right. Chief Tanner and James Woodley had put her tiny frame on the porch. They had her wrapped in blankets and were handling her as if was fragile and might break.

  "I can’t imagine what she was doing in there."

  I turned to see Ellen Hart. "You found her, right?"

  "I did. I have a potential buyer for the place and I went in to see if it needed a little sprucing up. I found a window had been pried open. I was afraid squirrels or raccoons would’ve messed up the place, but when I went in I found her in a corner, all clutching herself. She was unconscious. I was afraid she might be dead."

  "Did you check?"

  "I don’t know how. I keep meaning to take that first aid course that the fire department in Purdy offers but can’t seem to find the time."

  "You might want to get on that so you’ll be ready next time something like this happens," I said.

  "I don’t even know what happened this time," she said. She had a point.

  We could see Trinity moving bit, then Chief Tanner held her in a sitting position and was giving her something to drink. James Woodley watched for a moment, his hands on his hips, then came down the steps, walking toward us.

  Ellen was shaking her head. "Well, since I didn’t know what to do, I called the police. It looks like she’s okay, though."

  "Okay might be a strong word to use," James Woodley said. "She’s dehydrated and half starved."

  "Why?" Ellen asked. "The water was on."

  "Maybe we’ll find out when she can talk." He looked at me. "If this was a decently sized town I’d insist that she was taken to a hospital, but the police station will have to do." For once his dissatisfaction with Knockemstiff sounded sincere.

  "We have a first aid station there with a cot," Ellen said. "This town tries to be prepared to handle emergencies."

  "That will have to do," he said.

  "Except for forgetting to take the first-aid course," I said.

  "I’ll do that right away," she said indignantly. "Once burned and all that."

  We hung around until Chief Tanner and Woodley managed to get Trinity into the car and take her to the police station.

  "She looked like she was in shock,"Nellie said. "I wonder if something terrible happened to her?"

  "She’s always been right on the edge," Pete said. "Seeing her, being around her, always made me feel anxious too."

  "I know what you mean," I said.

  I glanced back at the salon and saw Mrs. Toler parking her car out front. "There’s my two o’clock," I said. "I better get over there. I don’t want Mrs. Toler to think she drove over here and there’s no one around."

  "She’s diabetic," Pete said. He sounded concerned.

  "I know that."

  Suddenly Pete started toward the salon at a trot. "I think we left the donuts out and when it comes to sugar Mrs. Toler has less willpower than I do."

  That was a concern. We didn’t need another medical emergency, and we all headed back to the office. "Call me if I can help with anything," I called out to Woodley. "Let me know if we can do anything for Trinity."

  He nodded glumly and Chief Tanner put the car in gear and they pulled away.

  # # #

  The next day I was glad to see Leander come into the salon. He said a cheerful good morning and then went to have coffee with Pete. Sanders came in for an appointment with Donna, getting his head washed. Nellie was doing Dolores’ nails. Since her return to the fold she was an even more frequent visitor than she’s ever been.

  The phone rang. It was Woodley.

  “I’m trying to find out if Trinity knows anything helpful at all,” he said. “She’s mumbled about Joe, but she’s so knotted up, tense that she can’t put her thoughts together. Taking her to a shrink means a trip to New Orleans and a huge delay in getting the facts. We will see she gets some treatment, but Nadine mentioned that she responds well to a hair wash and head massages. Apparently they relax her like nothing else. Of course the chief doesn’t like it…”

  “That’s absolutely brilliant. I can’t agree more. It’s even okay to tell Nadine I said so. You bring Tiny Trinity over here and we will arrange it.”

  “What’s happening?” Pete asked.

  “Trinity is all freaked out. Nadine suggested they bring her over here for a hair wash and head massage.”

  “I can recommend the head wash,” Sanders said.

  Pete had a better idea. “Donna should do it,” he said.

  “Ooo,” Donna said, smiling. “I’d love to help if I can.”

  “I can wait,” Sanders said.

  “Why Donna instead of you?”

  “Well, I’d be glad to do it, but she and Donna quickly developed a rapport. And after going through whatever shock she went through I was thinking that a woman doing her hair might be even more reassuring.”

  “Let’s see what she says,” I said.

  Woodley and Digby brought the girl over and settled her in Pete’s chair. “Would you like for Donna to do your hair for you?” I asked.

  She nodded weakly, nervously. Again I thought of a startled faun.

  Donna talked to her about nothing as she got her tilted back and wet her hair and lathered it. We all gave them some room, with only Woodley in her space, standing silently, letting her adjust to his presence.

  As Donna began massaging her head Trinity visibly relaxed. She closed her eyes, sighed, and then almost smiled. After a moment she sighed. “It’s so hard to ever truly be alone in this town," Trinity said. "All the cars, the noise…" I had to remind myself that Trinity had never been anywhere bigger than Delhi. Even that was back when she was in high school.

  "So what did you do?" Woodley asked gently, prodding her forward.

  She opened her eyes, looking as if the question astonished her. "Why,
I did the same thing I always do when I need some peace so I can meditate… I went for a walk in the swamp."

  "The swamp?" It wasn’t my idea of a place of calmness. The insect factor alone kept me out of there most of the time.

  "It’s quiet. The sounds are natural."

  "So you decided to just walk?" Woodley asked. "No destination?"

  "At first. But then I had a question that I needed help answering. Most of the time I can answer my own questions. I get the answers wrong often but I learn from doing that. This time I wanted a little help.

  "So you went to see Joe."

  "He lives in that peace. When I need help I like his answers to my questions."

  "So he’s a smart guy?"

  She giggled. "Not really. He’s a peaceful, nice man. His answers can be wrong but they always sound good, and make me feel better. Once I asked him if I was wasting my life."

  "He said ‘no’?"

  "He said ‘yes.’"

  "That made you feel better?"

  "Well it did after he explained that I had every right to waste it if I wanted, and that even if I was trying to do something I thought was good and useful I might be wrong and I’d be wasting it anyway. So by just forgetting all that I’d be able to enjoy it more." She smiled. “He told me that I needed to learn to laugh at myself, and that he did it all the time. After that I felt good for a little while."

  "So when you got to Joe’s, what happened?"

  She turned pale. You could see her body stiffen. "The accident."

  "What accident?"

  “It was my fault.” She turned pale.

  Donna hushed her and stroked her forehead. “Shh. Just tell them what happened, Trinity.”

  She nodded.” We were talking. He was happy, real happy. Said someone was coming over for a fun project. I said I should leave but first he wanted to show me something. It had to do with the way he’d seen the light coming in one morning. His cabin has a small window up at the peak of the roof."

  "I saw that," Woodley said. "It’s old glass that’s colored with age. It has a crack in it."

  His ability to notice and remember details like that amazed me. I wondered if Woodley ever missed anything.

  "Joe had an idea for putting up some glass tubing right where the light came in. He thought it would twist the light even more. When it came to the light, Old Joe was like a little kid. It excited him. He wanted to rig the tubing so that he could be sitting in his chair watching, and reach up to pull a string and change it. ‘I’d be like God’s helper, taking his light and shaping it in new ways,’ he said. He was all excited. By then we’d both forgotten whatever question I’d gone there to ask him and weren’t thinking about anything but the angle of the glass tubes… how they needed to be to maybe break the light into colors."

  "Like a prism," Pete said, sounding breathless. He was totally drawn into this surreal story of the frail girl and old black moonshiner playing with light.

  "Just like that, but what Old Joe called an open prism."

  "What did he mean by that?" I asked.

  Leander laughed. "Old Joe liked it when you could expand something and still have it work, so you could see the internals. My guess is he thought that the coolness of a prism would be even grander if you could see inside, so he’d make one in parts."

  "Something like that," Trinity said. "So we played with it and after a time he figured out what he wanted to try. Of course we had to do it right then so it would be in place at dawn and he could watch it. He was saying I should stay there all night, so I could watch it with him in the morning. He started a little flame going on his gas stove. He showed me how to heat and bend the glass tubing. Mine were pretty awful but he made a lovely piece that he called a multirefracting thing."

  Woodley touched his lips. "A glass ball with tubes in it?"

  "Yes, that’s it. Anyway it was pretty elaborate by the time he got it right. He wanted to hang it and got out some thread. I was worried about him falling and he said I shouldn’t worry. He got out a rope and put it over the roof beam, and tied it off to the wall. Then he made a loop and hooked it over his shoulder. He said he’d stand on the chair, but having his arm in the loop of rope would keep him from falling."

  I could see her lips starting to tremble. "I didn’t think it was safe but he said not to worry.”

  "Joe always did things his way," Leander said.

  "So I kept quiet. I wanted to be there and see it work and I didn’t want him to get angry and send me home."

  "So he climbed on the chair?"

  "I was supposed to hand him his invention, the multirefracting thing once he got up there. So with me standing right beside him, he climbed up and stood on that chair. And it was wobbly. The thing I was holding had glass tubes sticking out at odd angles and I had to hold it at funny angles so I didn’t hit him with it and knock him off or break it. I was kind of afraid to move. Suddenly I heard this awful crack and then Joe shouted something. I looked up.” She stopped and swallowed. Donna was whispering in her ear. She nodded. “I’m okay. Anyway, somehow the rope had slipped off his shoulder and was around his neck. Then the chair collapsed completely." She stopped.

  "Then what happened?"

  She reached up and touched the bruise on her face. "I don’t know. He must’ve kicked me and knocked me out, because I woke up on the floor. Joe was hanging there, not moving. The room was a mess. I guess he’d kicked stuff over. I looked at him and it was horrible.” She looked terrified, seeing it all again. “It was my Daddy all over again and this time it was my fault."

  "Your fault how?" Woodley asked, just a second before I could.

  "I’m a jinx. Normal people don’t see other people hang themselves."

  "This was an accident!"

  "He still did it as sure as my Daddy did. And right in front of me."

  "What happened next?"

  “I went home. I must have shut it out of my memory. Then the other night I was walking by the Crane's old place and thought I saw lights, like Joe and I were trying to capture. So I went in and then everything came rushing back. I couldn't move so I just stayed there.”

  She shook her head. "The next thing I know, my next memory is of you and the Chief trying to get me to drink something. Even then, I didn’t even see you. Joe’s face, the way he looked after he died, that was all I could see."

  And there and then the mystery of Joe’s death was solved. And not one person in the room had anything clever or wise to say about that, or anything else. Not for a time. We listened to Trinity’s faint sobs, and Donna whispering, “It’s not your fault, honey,” and let the truth sink in.

  # # #

  As I walked Sarah to school I half expected her to tell me: “I told you so.” The truth was that she was sad to hear he’d hung himself by accident, and relieved to know that we didn’t have another killer running loose.

  In short, she felt exactly like most of us in town.

  From the school I went over to the police station where Woodley was making phone calls and waiting for information. I grinned. “I think you need your own office in town."

  "He’s here often enough," Nadine said, giving me a smile. I could tell she liked him. He never teased her about her officiousness and seemed to include her in things. That was close enough to true love for her.

  “I’m thinking Sarah needs one. She nailed this investigation,” Woodley said sidling up to me.

  “That again. The trappings of office would interfere with her search for the world’s best middle school. I’m not entirely sure of the criteria, but I imagine I’ll be told.”

  “They have great schools in New Orleans.”

  “If you think she isn’t well aware of many of the attractions of the city, think again.”

  “You two should come for a visit.”

  “Another good thought that has already been heard in our household.”

  He laughed. “Well then, I knew I liked that girl. She is exceptional. And so is her mother. And I’d lo
ve to chat but I’m about to leave."

  "Leaving town?" My pulse raced. I didn’t want him leaving yet.

  "No, just the office. I have to meet the Sheriff. We have a call to make and a good deed to do.”

  "The Sheriff? But you solved the death."

  "This is a totally different matter. During the investigation I was sending in information on people to a real police station so I could get background checks on them. Now it seems one of Knockemstiff’s citizens is not who he claims to be."

  "Only one?"

  "This one is a con man who arrived in town recently. His name is Charles Gregor, but you know him as Doctor Charles Fimbus."

  “Oh my. He has a past?”

  "Using this same alias, and variations, he has started a variety of low-level crusades against vice… gambling, liquor, almost everything. He and an accomplice create situations, collect money for the cause and then leave town with it."

  "That’s amazing. Not surprising, but amazing.”

  "He is a nasty piece of work, but he can project a certain holier-than-thou charisma that takes people in regularly. He’s really good at what he does. In some cases the people were so convinced that he was the savior of their community that even when they saw the evidence that he was pocketing the money, they refused to press charges. Fortunately, he got a little sloppy with his bookkeeping and now the IRS wants him as much as the bunko squad. So the Sheriff and I decided we’d put him on hold until those boys can show up with a warrant or two. Then they can fight over him. We’ll charge him with impersonating a church official until they get here."

  "And he has an accomplice?"

  “Happily we already have him in custody. He’s the new guy who was stirring up the vigilante movement."

  "Whew."

  "Nasty, like I said."

  "Before you rush off, do you have a minute for another matter related to Joe’s death?”

  "There’s more to talk about?"

  "It’s about Rudy, actually. He’d tell you himself but Nellie asked me to play go between."

  "What did he do?"

  "I’m afraid he took a couple of liberties.”