“If I can’t locate August over the weekend, I’ll ask him when he comes for his haircut on Monday.”
We knew from other people that August had not worked at the Grosri all week. August’s disappearance was troubling as well as suspicious.
“I hate to ask,” I said, “but she doesn’t own a rifle, does she?”
Betina made a face. “She might. When she was in high school, she used to go deer hunting with her uncle. I tried to get her to join me for boy-related activities. She’d rather spend time in the woods with her uncle and a bunch of dogs.” Betina rolled her eyes. “Just thinking of the ticks, uhh.”
I didn’t want to wonder out loud if August could possibly be capable of shooting Annie. Instead I said, “I wonder if he’s looking for August.” I gestured with my head in Woodley’s direction.
“I wonder if he knows where she is,” Betina said.
“If he does, he’s not likely to tell you.”
With a look of mock surprise, Betina said, “Why Savannah, whatever makes you think that he wouldn’t tell me anything I want to know?”
“Betina, dear, good luck to you with that one.”
***
The Knockemback Tavern was not crowded. We divided up around three tables facing the little “stage” area at one end of the room, where a stool and a microphone were waiting for whoever was brave enough to perform. In truth, it didn’t take a great deal of bravery. This was an easy audience.
I made sure I sat at a different table from Woodley. I was impressed with how reluctant Betina looked in taking a seat at his table – step one of her research effort.
Open mic night was a long-standing tradition in Knockemstiff. I guess that goes without saying, since nearly everything that happened in Knockemstiff was a long-standing tradition.
The format was that each performer paid $2 and got 7 minutes at the mic. At the end of all the performances, whoever was still in the tavern got to vote on the best act of the evening. The winner got $20. The “rule” was that the winner had to spend the money at some business in town in the next week. Nobody enforced the rule, and winners usually thought it was part of the fun to blow the money right away.
The first act consisted of three sisters, aged 12, 14 and 15, who sang a boy band tune about being unwilling for life to go on for anyone if they couldn’t be together. This choice was unfortunate in light of the murder that had just occurred, and I started to think it might be a long evening.
Next was a rapper, followed by a middle-aged guy with an accordion who sang a zydeco tune. He seemed to be singing a different song from the one he was playing on the accordion. That might be the way zydeco is supposed to sound. I don’t really know.
Then we had something new: the Bald Eagle had decided to try his hand at stand-up comedy. We all clapped and cheered for him and got ready to groan.
“Knockemstiff is pretty backward,” he began. He turned his head expectantly and waited. “I said, Knockemstiff is pretty backward.” This time he put his hand to his ear.
“How backward is it?” someone finally asked.
“Knockemstiff is so backward,” the Eagle said, “When airline pilots fly over the town, they don’t even bother looking at their instruments because they know they won’t be working.”
We were so confused by this that we couldn’t pretend to laugh, even though we were willing to pretend to laugh.
“See, the place is so backward, it’s like back in time so stuff doesn’t work?” A couple of people laughed at the idea that this was supposed to be funny. The rest of us groaned. The Eagle moved on.
“OK! Knockemstiff is so backward, we’ve never had decent cell phone coverage. We’ve heard about 3G or 4G technology, but forget that. People with cell phones in Knockemstiff are happy when they can say, “Gee, I got a connection!”
The audience rewarded him with a chorus of groans for that one. I applauded with the others and thought about the cell phone I’d seen Annie using. Where could it be?
The next performer was Sarah’s mother, Bee Jameson, in the red dress that Sarah had told me about, the one that had prompted Bee’s husband to wonder where she might be going in it. I’d been about as sure as he was that Bee was going someplace special in that dress, so it was nice to see that the special place was the open mic. Bee sang a couple of Broadway songs to music that she played from a boom box. The red dress was definitely the best thing about her act.
A couple of performers later we had a rare treat: a performer who was actually good. This was a 19-year-old named Leander, the son of former sharecroppers who now had their own farm near Knockemstiff. We saw him now and then at open mic.
He started the way he always did. He sat down on the stool, started playing his incredibly beat up 12-string guitar, and said, “Delta blues,” as he played. Then he sang in a deep bass voice and stomped his feet from time to time. I think he was singing “rollin’ and tumblin’” but I don’t know anything about the blues. I really enjoyed his performances, though, so maybe I like the blues.
When Leander transitioned out of his first song straight into a second one about being a voodoo child, I heard Woodley bark a laugh. He was leaning forward slightly, listening enthusiastically to the music. I didn’t know why he’d laughed. What’s funny about a voodoo child? But it seemed to be an appreciative laugh. Leander glanced in Woodley’s direction with the slightest trace of a twinkle in his eye.
When the song was over, everyone applauded. Woodley jumped to his feet clapping his hands. This was not common practice at open mic, but we all took the cue and gave Leander a standing ovation. This was fun. Why had we never done this before? Somebody yelled “Encore!” We all repeated the call – another new experience for open mic.
Leander was accepting the applause without seeming particularly moved by it. “Thank y’all,” he said. He started playing again. “Here’s a classic delta blues that I just wrote.” He sang a rollicking blues number that everyone was enjoying until he got through the chorus:
Payday would be the first day of the week
We’d all have cars that were long and sleek
Women would wear the most beautiful jewels
If I was making up the rules
Every dog would have a musical bark
Nobody would ever get shot in the dark
I would never feel like a terrible fool
But I’m not making up the rules
We clapped uncertainly at the end of it. Woodley got up immediately and spoke to Leander. Could Woodley be “interviewing” Leander about the murder just because of the song?
Leander looked surprised. He turned back to the microphone and said, “Sorry, y’all, I didn’t know. Them’s the blues.”
Woodley said something else to Leander and handed him his card. The mic picked up what Woodley said this time, “Give me a call. I know a bar owner in New Orleans who’ll pay you to sing in a heartbeat.”
We had a several other people who sang and played guitar, none as good as Leander. Connor O’Sullivan also read one of his poems, as he did every week. He usually performed a poem rather than just read it, but this week he was a little subdued. I remembered how upset he was when he was working on the Paramabets’ window. He must still be upset. I suppose poets are like that, even if they’re also blacksmiths.
“Pace off for me two yards of land,” he read. “I’ll plow it and plant, and get by as best I can, even alone and so far from home as I am.”
OK, that actually went beyond subdued all the way to homesick. Before Connor left, I made an appointment with him to come look at the rack in the salon.
Leander won the $20.
Chapter 9
Nellie continued to stay at my house. “I might as well vacation at your house until my boys come home,” she said, as we left the tavern. “If they come home.”
“What I like about you, Nellie, is your unflagging optimism.”
“And did you notice I used the term ‘vacation’ in there? Talk about optimism.�
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“As part of your vacation package, we include garden watering and weed whacking over the weekend.”
“Wow,” she said. “I feel like I'm at the Hilton.”
The next morning dawned clear and bright. I walked out to my jungle and picked a couple of tomatoes that were perfectly ripe, picturing BLTs for lunch. I pulled a couple of major weeds, but it would take some dedicated work to make the jungle look like a garden again.
When I came back in the house with the tomatoes, Nellie was frying breakfast.
“You’re handy to have around,” I told her. “You can vacation here as long as you want.”
She didn’t look up. “As long as I want,” she said. “What a concept.”
She forked a couple of fat sausages onto plates for us and noticed the tomatoes I’d put on the counter. “What do you have there?”
“Vegetables from the jungle,” I said.
“Fruit.” She grabbed one of the tomatoes.
“Tomatoes are fruit?”
“That’s the rumor.” She quartered the tomato and plopped it into the frying pan.
“So we’re having fried fruit for breakfast?”
“Grilled to-MAH-toes, as my English grandmother would say.”
I’d never heard of Nellie having an English relation. “Where did this English grandmother come from?”
“England,” she said. She pulled the toast out of the toaster.
“Could you be more specific?” I asked.
“Blackpool, England.”
“There’s a town called Blackpool?” I wondered. “But I mean, specifically, I never heard about you having an English anything in your background. I’m learning so much about your family lately.”
“Yeah, my husband’s grandfather is a swamp rat, and my grandmother Kirby was probably the English equivalent, although I might have jumped to that conclusion after hearing the name ‘Blackpool.’ Any town named that in Louisiana would be a swamp.”
“Any town in Louisiana is a swamp,” I said, sitting down at the table. “Never mind the name.”
“Well, if we had one town that wasn’t a swamp, we’d name it Parched, but that’s what the English would name their swamp, if they had one. On the other hand, they’ll name a nice little seaside resort town Blackpool and think it’s sweet. Of course, I didn’t know that when I was a kid.”
She put the plates on the table. “You know how you grow up hearing stories that adults tell each other, and you can tell that you’re not supposed to know what they’re saying and shouldn’t ask? Many of those stories in my family were about the Kirbys.”
She sat down, and we started in on breakfast.
“I didn’t know grandma Kirby very well,” Nellie said, “but the two or three times we went to visit her over on the other side of Paudy, she fried tomatoes for breakfast. I thought that made a first-class breakfast.”
“Mmm,” I agreed. “That does go nicely with Claude’s homemade sausage. You are handy indeed. As I say: vacation as long as you want.”
She looked at me as she chewed. After a moment she asked, “Can I sit here and eat breakfast as long as I want?”
“So long as you want to eat for another,” looking at my watch, “46 minutes.”
She took another bite and chewed thoughtfully. “I’m trying to get my head around the as-long-as-I-want thing,” she said.
“Maybe you need to think of vacation a little more broadly,” I suggested, spreading my arms out to indicate what I meant by “broadly.”
“Like broadly enough to include work, and weeding the garden, and other things that I don’t want to do?”
“You don’t want to work, really?” I asked.
“Sure, yes, of course. I like work, Savannah. Just not when I feel like sitting here eating breakfast,” she explained. “For as long as I want.”
“You could call in sick,” I said.
“Another new concept!” she said. “You’re winding me up this morning, Savannah. I can’t remember if I’ve ever called in sick.”
“You’ve stayed home when one of your boys was sick. Or all of them.”
“That’s calling in when somebody else is sick. I can’t remember ever staying home because I was sick.”
“I tell you what,” I said standing up from the table. “Why don’t you sit here for as long as you want.” I got a portable phone off the kitchen counter and set it next to her plate. “Give me a few minutes to get to the salon and then call in sick.”
“You’re mean.”
“I’m not trying to be mean. I’m serious. Take the day off.”
“Savannah, there’s no need to be so literal. I don’t want to actually sit here all day. I want to feel like I could sit here all day if I wanted to, like if I was the richest woman on earth.” She stood up and put the phone back. “Who is the richest woman on earth?”
“No idea,” I said. “You could buy a lottery ticket.” I pulled bacon out of the fridge and dropped several strips in the frying pan.
“Even Rudy doesn’t buy lottery tickets anymore. He says he has just as good a chance of winning if he keeps his money in his pocket. Not that he has money in his pocket.”
By the time the bacon was crisp, we had the bread laid out with tomato slices and lettuce. I wrapped the BLTs and put them in a paper sack. “Let’s go see if Betina learned anything from cozying up to Woodley.”
We walked out to the driveway and I insisted on driving. “You sit in the back seat and pretend you’re the richest woman on earth,” I suggested. And she did.
“To the salon, Jefferies.” She called out from the back seat.
I drove straight up Tennessee Street to town, past the crime scene. The sawhorses had been moved off the road, and traffic was back to its usual trickle. Everybody in town had driven past the scene 20 or 30 times, and that many looks at nothing were sufficient even for people who lived in Knockemstiff.
Pete saw us as I was parking the car and figured immediately why Nellie was in the back seat. He opened the car door for her and stood ramrod straight as she got out. “Good morning, Ms. Phlint,” he said.
“Morning, Dawson. Be a dear, won’t you, and brew me a cappuccino?”
“Right away, Ms. Phlint. Would you like caviar with that?”
“Fish roe? Don’t be disgusting, Dawson.”
“No, Ma’am.”
“Perhaps a Ding Dong or a Moon Pie would suffice.”
“Yes, Ma’am.”
“Good morning, Pete,” I said.
“Howdy, Savannah,” he said.
Betina came in at the same time as our first couple of clients, so we didn’t get to hear privately what she had learned from Woodley. I wasn’t sure what was safe to ask in front of other people, so I went with a social line of questioning.
“Did you and Investigator Woodley enjoy open mic?”
“We did as a matter of fact.”
Betina was coloring Margie’s hair — Margie, the waitress at the Bacon Up, who had seen how happy I’d been to get Woodley away from me. Margie’s head jerked slightly in surprise at the news that Betina had ended up with Woodley for the evening. Betina barely noticed.
“Easy there, Margie,” she said. “You know, he’s a much more sophisticated man than he seems at first. I learned so much.”
Did she mean she found out something about August?
“He listens to jazz, mostly, but he has a deep appreciation for the delta blues, the tradition and everything. Anyway, he thought Leander was extraordinary. That’s the word he used, ‘extraordinary.’ We all knew that Leander was good, but who knew that he was extraordinary?”
Betina continued rattling on about the blues, and Leander’s vocal technique, his guitar playing, his grunting and foot stomping. It was highly authentic, according to Woodley. We were all impressed with how much Betina had learned about the blues — way more than any of the rest of us wanted to know.
When she wound down after a while, Margie asked if she had taken a liking to Woodley.<
br />
“Well,” she said, as though this was the first time she had considered whether she liked Woodley, “he’s got to get rid of that sport coat. But I guess he has a lean kind of look that works with a rumpled jacket, even though that’s not really my thing.”
She went on talking about Woodley’s looks, his hair, and his intense way of looking at you. Pete was looking baffled by this charmed appraisal of the murder investigator who was twice her age. I think we were all looking like that.
Then Betina said, “He can be a little rough.”
Pete’s eyebrows rocketed up.
“I guess you could say at the end of the night I played good cop, and he played bad cop,” she concluded.
“Oooo,” Margie said in a pained way.
“Am I getting chemicals in your eyes, Margie?” Betina asked, looking around at Margie’s face.
“I’m fine, hon,” Margie said. “Just got a little cramp in my groin.”
A couple of people cleared their throats. Did Betina have any idea what good cop/bad cop could be about? When she said that Woodley could be rough, did she mean rough around the edges? Or something else?
After a moment, Nellie asked if Betina had learned anything about the investigation.
“Oh, yes,” she said. “We talked about that. He told me they’re discovering a lot about the case, mainly about the people involved.”
“Which people?” Nellie asked.
“He said the obvious ones. I asked, ‘like August?’ And he said, yes, she was obviously involved, and they are following up several leads. And he was very interested in everything I had to say about August. He really pays attention when you say something.”
“He was interested in what you had to say about August?” Nellie asked, slightly confused.
“Yes, Nellie,” Betina said. “I know you don’t think I know a lot, but I might know more than you think. I remember a lot about people that’s useful to an investigator.”
Did she remember that she was talking to Woodley so she could find out what he knew about August?
“I told Investigator Woodley about how August and I double dated, and how August just wasn’t interested in boys, so far as I could see. He said that some women were impatient with boys. I agreed with that, for sure. He asked about what August had done in high school, what her activities were, her interests, movies she liked, specific actors even, all kinds of things.”
A Hair Raising Blowout: Cozy Mystery (The Teasen & Pleasen Hair Salon Cozy Mystery Series Book 1) Page 7
