Felicia is silent for a moment. “How nice is this luncheon?”
“Nice.”
“Then, no.”
A solution occurs to me. I can serve the luncheon with Felicia. “Black pants. White shirt,” I tell her. Then I read off the address. “I’ll see you at ten thirty.”
She doesn’t answer for a moment. “You’ll see me?”’
“I’m going to help out.”
“You must really like him.”
No comment is necessary. “Ten thirty. And, Felicia…”
“Yes?”
“Thank you.”
“My pleasure, Aunt Aggie.”
I hang up the phone and climb the stairs to Mrs. Russell’s studio. She’s a famous painter. Not Picasso famous. But famous.
“Is it ten already?” she asks.
“No.”
“Is there a problem?”
“Mac’s servers called in sick. I got my niece to fill in, but he needs two.”
“And you want to help?”
“Do you mind? The laundry is already started. I’ll switch loads before I leave.”
“Of course you can help Mac.” Mrs. Russell smiles and dips her brush into some yellow paint. “He seems like a nice man and he’s obviously crazy about you.”
This is when most women would say I’m crazy about him, too. I don’t. Admitting my feelings would be like tempting fate. I simply say, “Thank you.”
When I next see Mrs. Russell, I am dressed in black pants and a white shirt.
Mrs. Russell blinks and takes a canapé from the silver tray I’m holding. “I’ve never seen you in anything but a kaftan.”
I wear kaftans. They’re colorful. They’re comfortable. And they cover a multitude of sins. The pants feel odd. Like I’m playing dress up.
Holding a cocktail napkin near her mouth, Mrs. Russell takes a bite of the hors d’oeuvre and moans. “What is this?”
“Belgian endive filled with crab salad.”
“Mac has outdone himself.”
“Ellison, I simply must talk to you about—” the woman catches sight of my tray “—ooh, what are those?”
“Endive—” Mrs. Russell pronounces it on-deev “—filled with crab. They’re simply marvelous. Joyce is using a fabulous new caterer.”
The woman takes one, bites, and sighs.
The whole luncheon is like that. Felicia and I serve delicious food to women who never do more than pick at what’s on their plates. But today, they actually eat. Everyone raves about the food.
In the kitchen, Mac beams.
The ladies lunching even eat dessert.
Mrs. Petteway comes into the kitchen when her guests are gone. She’s so thin her head looks too big for her body. The elaborate swirls of honey blonde hair piled on top of her head don’t help. The woman looks like a well-coiffed stick figure.
“Thank you,” she says. “You did a wonderful job.” She pays Mac and gives both Felicia and me twenty-dollar tips.
We clean the kitchen, pack Mac’s truck with his equipment, and lock the back door behind us.
Mac follows me to my Bug. “Thanks, Aggie. I couldn’t have done it without you.” He leans down and kisses me. His lips are firm and soft. My heart skips a beat. Or five.
“You’re welcome.”
“I’ll call you later. We’ll make plans for Friday night.” He climbs into his truck and drives away.
Friday night? “What’s so special about Friday night?”
“Duh,” says my suddenly sassy niece. “It’s Valentine’s Day.”
Oh. Valentine’s Day.
“Thanks for thinking of me, Aunt Aggie,” says Felicia. “Between what Mac paid me and that tip, I’m set for the weekend.”
I hug my niece. “I should be thanking you.”
“He’s nice.” Felicia bats her eyes. “And handsome for an old guy. Mom will like him. She’s been worried about you since Uncle Al passed.”
I’m used to the dull ache that flares in my heart whenever I hear Al’s name. Today—probably because I’m worn out from serving the luncheon—the ache doesn’t seem quite so painful.
Mrs. Russell meets me at the kitchen door when I get home. Her hand is wrapped around a coffee mug and the skin at the corners of her eyes is tight. Her hair, which she wrapped into a French twist for the luncheon, is falling loose. Her lipstick is gone.
Concern flares in my chest. “Did you find a body?” I ask. She does that a lot.
“No.” She shakes her head and more hair comes loose. “Joyce called.”
“Did we forget something?”
“She was taking off her pearls and noticed several ring boxes were missing.”
For an instant, my whole body just stops. My heart. My lungs. My brain. I clutch the kitchen counter. “You don’t think Mac—”
“No. I don’t.” She walks over to Mr. Coffee, pours a second cup of coffee, and brings it to me. “Truth is, those rings could have been gone for days. When a woman has multiple balls in the air, the last thing she does is inventory her jewelry.”
I feel marginally better.
“But I do think we’d better figure out who took them.”
“Was Mrs. Merriweather at the luncheon today?” Maybe we could blame the theft on the woman who couldn’t keep her hands off her friends’ belongings.
“She was not.” Mrs. Russell looks down at the floor. “And Tug swears she was never out of his sight at Sandra’s party.”
My stomach sinks. Two parties. Two thefts. One caterer.
“We’ll figure this out, Aggie.” She pats my shoulder. “I promise.”
My eyes flood with tears and I blink until they’re dry. “Thank you.” There’s a lump in my throat. A big one.
“So what should we do?” she asks.
The lump goes down in one swallow. “We need lists of all the ladies at the two parties then we’ll figure out who attended both.”
Mrs. Russell conjures up a legal pad and pen and hands them to me. “Will you write the names down? I think better when I pace.”
She paces. “At Sandra Clayton’s.” She bends and scratches behind the dog’s ears. “Merritt Merriweather, of course.” She stands and paces. “Billie Moffet, Marian Gilman, Margot Manning, Prudence Davies—” she twists that name into something ugly “—Carol Ritter, Joanna Arnold.” She stops and looks at me. “I’m trying to go around the room and remember who was talking to whom…Sarah Allen. She was telling me she recommended her hairdresser to Sandra.”
We need a list, a list with suspects, not a story about Sandra Clayton’s hair. I wait with the pen poised.
But Mrs. Russell has a faraway look in her eyes. “Sandra’s last hairdresser used too much bluing. The poor woman couldn’t leave her house for two weeks. Imagine if that happened to Mother.”
Mrs. Russell’s mother is frightening when she’s in a good mood. If someone turned her hair blue (it’s as white as the driven snow), she’d ruin them.
We both shudder.
“It’s not every hairdresser who can get bluing right.” Mrs. Russell paces over to Mr. Coffee and tops off her cup. “Sandra looked wonderful the night of her party.” She takes a sip then rattles off fifteen names in quick succession. It’s as if one taste of coffee has super-charged her brain. Maybe it has. “Please read them all back to me.”
I read the names back.
“I think that’s everybody. Now for Joyce’s party.” She lists off more names.
When she’s done we compare the two lists. Including Mrs. Russell, there are ten women who attended both parties.
“I can’t see a single one of these women as a master criminal.”
I bite my tongue. Whoever is stealing the jewels isn’t Professor Moriarty, they’re a sneak thief.
“With the exception of Prudence
, they’re the type of women who correct the check-out girl at the grocer when she gives them too much change—they’re honest as the day is long. I wonder—” she stares at the painting on the wall, but I get the sense she’s looking at something else “—if there have been any other burglaries?” She shifts her gaze to the phone. “I’ll call Libba.”
Libba is Mrs. Russell’s best friend. She’s what the magazines call a liberated woman. That is to say, she’s single, drinks a lot, and sleeps around. If a man did that, no one would bat an eye. Libba is not a man, so she has a reputation. She’s also funny, irreverent, and devoted to Mrs. Russell.
“Wouldn’t that real estate agent be better?” Mrs. Russell once told me that real estate agents know all the gossip. Apparently it’s a job requirement.
“Good thinking.” She picks up the phone and dials. “Jane, Ellison Russell calling.” She listens, then adds, “No, dear, I don’t want to sell the house.”
She listens some more.
“I will certainly keep that in mind.” The look on Mrs. Russell’s face tells me Jane hasn’t given up on listing the house. Tomorrow. “Say, have you heard anything about a string of burglaries?”
More listening. Even longer this time.
“Really? You don’t say?”
I’m dying to know what Jane is saying. Have there been more burglaries? I’m actually hoping for burglaries. Burglaries in houses where Mac hasn’t catered.
I wipe down the counters and Jane is still talking.
I sweep the kitchen floor and Jane is still talking.
I refold the tea towels hanging on the oven door, reposition Mr. Coffee’s pot, and straighten the paintings on the wall. Jane is still talking.
Mrs. Russell gives me a sympathetic look.
I give her one too. She’s the one doing the listening.
And then she smiles. The smile lights her face and she gives me a thumbs up.
“Really?” Hope makes me slightly breathless.
She can’t answer me. She’s listening.
“You don’t say?” Mrs. Russell points at her empty coffee cup and mouths please.
I refill the cup and bring it to her.
“So that’s three you know of?” she asks.
My heart sings.
“You’ve been so helpful.” Mrs. Russell makes circles in the air with her index finger. She’s trying to wrap things up, but getting the real estate agent off the phone isn’t easy. “I absolutely will. I promise. If I ever decide to sell, you’ll be the first to know.” She listens some more.
I bounce on the balls of my feet.
“Listen, the dog is getting into something—” the dog is sleeping on his bed “—I’ve got to run. Thank you. And we’ll definitely grab that dinner sometime soon.”
More listening. But at least I know the end is in sight.
“Oh dear.” Mrs. Russell sounds genuinely distressed. “Max just dragged something through the kitchen. I think it might be the neighbor’s cat. I’ve got to run. Bye.” She hangs up the phone. “Wow.”
The dog opens one eye as if to say that casting him as the villain is going to cost her.
“Three more burglaries. All the victims had jewelry stolen.”
“Let’s make a list of the victims,” I suggest. “Maybe they have something in common.”
“Good idea.”
I wait, my pen poised.
“Joyce Petteway, Sandra Clayton, Janet Martin, Elaine Darnaway, and Kaye Gravenreuth.”
“How do you spell that?”
“Graven plus r-e-u-t-h.”
I write down the name.
“Now, what do they all have in common?” She rubs her chin.
“Do they all belong to the same country club?” I ask.
Mrs. Russell frowns and closes her eyes. “No. Three different ones.” She taps her fist against her lips. “They all dress to the nines, all the time.”
“Do they shop in the same stores?”
“No. Sandra flies to New York to shop at St. John. Everything the woman owns is from there.”
“Saint who?”
She waves away my question. “It doesn’t matter.”
“What about the others?”
She shrugs. “They shop at the usual places—Swanson’s, Harzfelds’, Woolf’s.”
Those are only the usual places for women like Mrs. Russell. The rest of us shop at the mall. “What about bridge groups or tennis or golf?”
“Not that I can think of. The only thing—” a frown creases her forehead “—is their hair. They go to the same hairdresser. Rick at Salon B.”
“Could you go see him? Ask a few questions?”
She shakes her head. Emphatically. “I cannot step out on my hairdresser. Cannot. If he found out…” She bites her lower lip and closes her eyes. “You have to go.”
“Me?” We might as well send Mac. “I don’t look like the kind of woman who gets her hair done at Salon B.”
“But you could.” She puts down her coffee cup, tilts her head, and studies me. “You definitely could.” She picks up the phone. “Operator, would you please connect me with Salon B? No, I don’t have the exact address. It’s on the Country Club Plaza. Thank you.” A few seconds pass and she gives me an encouraging smile. “This is Agatha Delucci calling. I’ve been hearing the most wonderful things about your stylist, Rick. When is the first available appointment?”
She listens.
“A cancellation? For four o’clock this afternoon? I’ll take it. Thank you.”
She hangs up the phone. “We’d better get going.”
“Going?”
“Shopping.” She has me in the car before I can think of a single reason why this is a terrible idea.
The next thing I know, I’m sitting at an Estée Lauder counter and a woman with soft hands is smoothing some expensive-smelling cream into my face.
Her name tag reads Cynthia.
“You have lovely skin,” Cynthia lies. “This cream is extra rich and moisturizing.” That might be true. My face does feel—plumper.
She swivels the stool so I can’t see myself in the mirror and pulls out her tools—brushes and eyelash curlers, foundation and blush, lipstick and mascara.
When she finally lets me see my face, I’m transformed. Maybelline never wrought changes like this.
Next Mrs. Russell leads me to the better sportswear department. Does that mean there’s a worse sportswear department? I’m tempted to ask, but Mrs. Russell takes shopping seriously. She wouldn’t appreciate my humor. She hands me the shopping bag filled with makeup and pulls clothing off the racks. Clothing she hands to a well-dressed woman who says, “I’ll start a room, Mrs. Russell.”
“Thank you, Esme.” Of course Mrs. Russell knows the sales associate’s name. Swanson’s is like her second home.
I try on blouses and sweaters and a poncho.
Mrs. Russell spots the poncho and asks, “How did that get in your dressing room?”
I shrug, the picture of innocence.
I try on slacks and skirts and dresses.
I come out of the dressing room wearing a wrap dress that makes me look like a sausage. “I don’t see what’s wrong with a kaftan and clogs.”
“Do you want to help Mac or not?” There’s a bit of her mother in Mrs. Russell.
“Of course I do, but I can’t afford this stuff.” There’s a sweater in the dressing room that costs almost a hundred dollars.
“I can.”
“But—”
“No buts. You are part of the family. Grace and I would be lost without you.”
“But—”
“Aggie—” her voice has a you’re-testing-my-patience quality “—if you’re going to get any information out of Rick, you need to look the part.”
She’s right.
“I guess all I can say is thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
My black pants and white shirt have been replaced by camel slacks and a forest green V-neck sweater in the softest cashmere I’ve ever touched. Even my feet are different. They’re squeezed into Italian loafers. And my purse, the hand-tooled leather one with the smiley faces? It’s stuffed into a shopping bag, replaced by a buttery leather saddlebag with gold hardware.
Mrs. Russell takes the diamond solitaire from around her neck and hands it to me. “Wear this.” Then she drops me off at the salon with a billfold full of twenties.
I hobble inside and tell the pretty young receptionist my name.
Rick comes out to meet me, a smile on his face. The smile freezes when he sees my hair. My hair is curly—couch-spring curly. My hair is red—Little Orphan Annie red. And my hair is completely untamable. No one has ever been able to do a thing with it.
Rick leads me to a chair. “So, what are we doing today?”
“A trim.”
He picks up a lock of hair and tsks. “I think we can do better than that. Let’s get you shampooed.”
I follow a girl to a bowl and she washes and conditions my hair.
Rick drapes me in a cape, turns me away from the mirror, and cuts.
And cuts.
“Are you new to Kansas City?” he asks.
“No.” It’s easier not to lie.
“What brings you to the salon?”
“My last hairdresser and I parted ways.” Lie number one. My sister cuts my hair.
Ricks cuts some more.
“That’s a pretty necklace you’re wearing.”
“A gift from my late husband.” Lie number two. The only diamond Al ever gave me was in my engagement ring and we sold that when we needed money for his cancer treatments.
“Do you live alone?”
“I do.” Not exactly a lie. I don’t spend every night at the Russells’. Often, on weekends, I spend the night with my sister and her family.
“No pets to keep you company? You strike me as a woman who loves animals.”
“No.” Not exactly a lie. Max is Mrs. Russell’s dog.
“Are you in the neighborhood?” He jerks his head toward Sunset Hills.
Diamond Girl Page 2
