A Hair Raising Blowout: Cozy Mystery (The Teasen & Pleasen Hair Salon Cozy Mystery Series Book 1)

by Constance Barker

  “It was probably a zombie out looking for brains to eat,” said Nellie, “and finding the pickings pretty slim.”

  Betina would typically have replied with “Ha, ha,” or something similarly penetrating. She thought that she was a smart cookie. In fact, Betina had no self-esteem issues whatsoever.

  “Everyone knows that zombies walk with that stooped-over shuffle,” she said. “This man walked completely upright.”

  “Was there a bad smell in the air?” Pete asked. “Like rotten meat?”

  Betina paused in shampooing Mrs. Larson and tried to put her nose back at the scene. “No. It was mostly just damp smelling. Maybe a little moldy, but that’s a problem I have on that side of the cottage.” She resumed shampooing Mrs. Larson. “I need to take everything out of my bedroom and wipe the walls down with bleach. I’ve heard that that will cure mold and mildew problems.”

  “Was there an article in Nylon about that?” Pete asked.

  “Um, I don’t remember where I heard that mildew thing,” Betina said. “But I did see an article in Nylon about using bleach to customize jeans. You paint the bleach on the denim to make designs. Isn’t that clever?”

  “I’ve actually done that myself,” Nellie said, “although I’m unclear on the distinction between customizing and ruining.”

  “I can’t remember the last time I saw you in jeans, Betina,” Pete said. “Are you thinking of branching out with your wardrobe?”

  Betina seemed surprised by the question. “You think I’d look good in jeans?” She cocked her body sideways and put her hand on her hip like a runway model. She was wearing one of her skimpiest sun dresses despite the drizzle outside.

  “That’s a cute dress,” Pete said.

  “Thank you,” Betina said brightly. She was massaging conditioner into Mrs. Larson’s hair.

  “Do you have a date tonight with a hot, studly guy?” he asked.

  “She’s hoping Woodley will pay us a visit,” Nellie said.

  Pete looked disappointed. He didn’t find Woodley hot or studly.

  “If Investigator Woodley does visit,” Betina replied tartly, rinsing out the conditioner. “I’m going to ask him for some protection against prowlers, which are probably murderers. I’m terrified half to death.”

  “Did you call the police last night?” Mrs. Larson asked.

  “I did call the police,” Betina said. “You know it’s hard to call the police when you’re trying to stay really quiet. Those noises that come out of the phone when you press the buttons? They’re tipping off the murderer that you’re in there dialing the cops, and he’s going to make his move. I’m surprised I’m not dead.”

  “What happened with the police, Betina?” Mrs. Larson asked as she walked to Betina’s station with a towel around her head.

  “Well, I woke Digby up. I had to whisper to keep from alerting the murderer, and Digby kept saying ‘What? What?’ and I’m whispering ‘Digby, it’s me’ and he said, ‘Is this some kind of telemarketing thing,” and I said real loud, ‘Digby! I’m being stalked by a murderer.’ I thought then I was a goner. I took the phone into the bathroom and crouched in the tub. You know how they tell you to get in the tub because it’s safer?”

  “I remember when Eileen Brenner saved her life by getting in the tub during that hurricane,” Pete said. “Hurricane Bosco? Something like that. Her whole house was blown away, and there she was safe in the tub.”

  “You’d think the tub would fill up with rain during a hurricane,” Betina said.

  “Yeah, they should tell you to make sure the drain’s open,” Pete said.

  Lord have mercy!

  “Did Digby come?” Mrs. Larson asked.

  “He certainly did not want to,” Betina said. “I told him I was crouched in the tub, knowing that any moment the murderer was going to bust in and kill me, and Digby asks me if this prowler is one of the guys I’ve rejected wanting attention. I told him I would never date a guy who slouched around in the dark in a trench coat.”

  “I thought you said this guy was walking completely upright,” Nellie protested.

  “Well, he was slouched a little, all right?” Betina said. “He wasn’t lurking around with perfect posture or anything.”

  “So his posture was maybe halfway between a zombie and a date?” Pete asked.

  “What did Digby do?” Mrs. Larson insisted.

  “Digby said that if the prowler tried to come in the house, I should shoot him,” Betina said.

  “What?” said Mrs. Larson with alarm.

  “Yes!” Betina said. “I said, ‘Digby, you nimnal, how can I shoot him if I don’t have a gun?’ He said, ‘How could you not have a gun? You’re the only person in this town who doesn’t have a gun.’ I said to him, ‘I would run right over to Botowski’s and buy a gun, except it’s the middle of the night and there’s a murderer right outside my door.’”

  Betina shook her head with exasperation. “Honestly!” she said.

  “So did Digby come?” asked Mrs. Larson.

  “He said, ‘Stay right where you are. I’ll bring you a gun.’ I said, ‘Digby, how will I know it’s you and not the murderer?’ He said he would knock three times then pause then two times more. ‘OK,’ I said.”

  “He brought you a gun, really?” asked Mrs. Larson.

  “He did, a big gun, one of those shotguns with two barrels. He showed me how to pull the triggers. I said, ‘Digby, there’s only one murderer.’ He said that I might miss with the first barrel. I told him that if the murderer tried to come in my house, I would not miss.”

  Now Nellie was looking slightly alarmed. She had a lot of experience worrying about guns.

  “Did Digby show you how to work the safety?” she asked.

  “Safety?” Betina asked.

  “The little lever on the top of the barrel,” Nellie said.

  Betina had no knowledge of safety theory or practice. Nellie said she would show her how to use it at lunch time.

  Pete and Nellie made light of Betina’s fear of the prowler, but it wasn’t funny to me after the encounter with Connor the night before. I’d been reminded that a murderer was still on the loose, and it could be anyone. We still weren’t sure why Annie had been killed, so who might be next?

  No one joked when Dolores Pettigrew came in and told us with uncharacteristic brevity that she had seen a prowler in the middle of the night. Normally, Pete and Nellie would have had a lot of fun at Dolores’ expense over something like this, but Dolores was so seriously afraid, even they didn’t find it amusing.

  Dolores was close to tears. She told us that a man in a trench coat had walked back and forth outside her house for more than half an hour. At one point, he went to a shed in her side yard and tried to open the door. Dolores had been so afraid, she hadn’t called the police for fear of making any noise.

  When Betina heard all this, she exclaimed, “Dolores, you should get a shotgun. That’s what I did.”

  “I have a shotgun,” Dolores said. “Goodness me, I would have been twice as afraid if I wasn’t armed.”

  While everyone else talked about the murderer lurking in our midst, I distracted myself by thinking about Connor. It wasn't a comforting distraction. Why had he been so intent on getting me to understand August? Did he think I would help restore August’s reputation? If it came out that she was playing her “game” with Dr. Cason as well as Burl Botowski and Connor, the vast majority of people in Knockemstiff would be unwilling to think of her as anything but a slut. Denise Cason and Hildegard Botowski would be most unwilling of all.

  What about the flower child idea? By all reports, the 1960s hadn’t arrived in Knockemstiff by the end of the 1970s, so everybody gave up on the peace-and-love concept without ever knowing what it was about. I remember when my daddy would notice some act of intolerance or abuse of power, he would sometimes say that he’d be happy if Knockemstiff just made it out of the 19th century in his lifetime. I believe we did.

  These days, hardly anybody in Knock
emstiff had any interest in hating anybody else. That didn’t mean that the ‘60s had arrived. Where had August gotten this flower child idea?

  By the time our late lunch time rolled around, the whole salon was in an uproar about the prowler, the two people who had seen “him” were not entirely sure anymore that it couldn’t have been a woman, and I was expecting that they were about to accuse one another of being murderers. Despite the drizzle, I had to get out.

  I thought I’d go to the Bacon Up for a BLT, but when I got there, I saw Woodley in a booth by the window. I put my head down and kept walking. He rapped on the glass with a ring on his right hand as I went by. I couldn’t help but look, and he beckoned me in. Why couldn’t I have stayed in the salon?

  He was standing by the booth when I came in. “Please join me,” he said, gesturing. “I’ve been meaning to talk to you.”

  I took off my raincoat and hung it on the coat rack. Margie, the waitress, jerked her thumb toward Woodley and gave me a throat slitting gesture with a questioning look. I reluctantly shook my head, no.

  “I don’t think I can tell you any more than I have,” I said to him as I sat down.

  He looked at me with mild amusement, as though he was surprised to hear that I thought he would believe that I had told him everything. “Let me just ask you,” he said, “if you know where August Anderson is.”

  “I don’t,” I said. “You mean, you don’t know where she is?”

  Margie set a cup in front of me and poured coffee into it.

  “Your powers of deduction are spot on,” he said. “Let me tell you why I want to know. What if she has also been murdered?”

  “No!” Margie and I said simultaneously.

  Woodley glared at her. She raised the caffeinated and decaffeinated pots in a gesture of “sorry” and went back to the kitchen.

  “Why do you think that?” I asked.

  “I haven’t been able to find anyone who’s seen her since Monday of last week. I haven’t found any trace of her. She’s vanished.”

  “So she’s either murdered or a murderer who’s gotten away,” I concluded.

  He shrugged.

  “Did you find her deer rifle when you searched her house?” I asked.

  “How did you know...?” he started. “Ah. Got me. I did search her house, and I did not find the rifle, because...”

  He looked at me expectantly over his bacon and eggs.

  “It was in a ditch, where some kids found it,” I concluded.

  “Bingo,” he said. “Forensics says it’s 90% certain that the bullet that killed Annie was fired from that rifle. We traced the rifle back to a gun shop in Stanleyville. They sold it to an Ellis Anderson eight years ago.”

  “August’s uncle,” I said. “She used to go hunting with him.”

  “OK, thank you,” he said. “Saved us a bit of work.”

  Marge set a BLT in front of me and retreated. I launched into it, thankful that Margie knew what I needed and that one good thing was happening to me today. Hello, bacon.

  “I should probably talk to Chief Tanner about this,” I said after chewing for a while. “A couple of people have mentioned in the salon that they saw a prowler last night. They’re afraid that it might be the murderer.”

  “Did they give a description?” he asked.

  “Doesn’t sound like August,” I said. “Betina says the prowler was a man who was slouching slightly. Therefore not a zombie.”

  He looked puzzled. “Zombies don’t slouch?”

  “Zombies do slouch,” I explained. “A lot. Also shuffle.” I chewed another bite of BLT. “Aren’t you people on top of the zombie thing?”

  “Some nights I feel like I know a lot about zombies,” he said.

  That’s when I noticed the trench coat he was wearing. “Betina and the other woman said the prowler was wearing a trench coat.”

  “Ah,” he said. “Definitely was a zombie. Zombie named Woodley.”

  “They were seriously afraid,” I said. “Didn’t sleep. Officer Digby brought Betina a double-barrel shotgun so she could protect herself.”

  “You’re kidding,” he said.

  “Don’t go near her house again, that’s my advice.”

  “I don’t even know where she lives,” he said. “But I’ll go around to the salon and apologize for frightening her. Maybe she’ll give the shotgun back to officer Digby?”

  “The horse is out of the barn there,” I said. “Nellie is giving Betina a quick course on firearm safety right about now. Maybe that will help. The only real solution will be you catching the murderer.”

  But he wasn’t listening because he’d spotted the Bald Eagle passing by. He rapped on the window with his ring, and the Eagle came in. He and I exchanged heys. Woodley asked if he’d join us. “I’ve been meaning to ask you something,” Woodley said.

  The Eagle sat down, and Margie poured him a cup of coffee.

  I looked at my watch and said I needed to get back to the salon. The Eagle looked at the second half of my BLT and said that I was welcome to stay and finish my sandwich since I knew everything about him anyway.

  “Does she know that you were having sex with August Anderson?” Woodley asked.

  Sanders’ smile evaporated. “I...” he said. It was the first time I’d ever seen him caught flat footed.

  I reached across the table then and slapped Woodley hard on the shoulder.

  “Hey!” he thundered. “You’ve just struck an officer of the law.”

  “I’m going to strike him a lot harder if he doesn’t apologize to Sanders this instant,” I hissed.

  He blinked a couple of times, fast. He turned to the Eagle and said, “I am sorry, Mr. Bloomington. I used the situation unfairly. I regret my actions.”

  The Eagle stood up to go.

  “Sanders, even if this got out — which it won’t,” I said quietly, with a sharp look at Woodley. “No one would think badly of you.”

  “Me?” he said with dismay. “It’s not about me. What will people think of poor August for mixing it up with the Bald Eagle?” He stormed out of the diner.

  “How dare you trick him like that,” I said to Woodley.

  “I apologized!” he said.

  “Yeah, you regret your actions all right.”

  “OK, OK, that part was not perfectly on the level,” he admitted. “What do you want? Do I play nice and let a killer go around loose?”

  “You’re playing dirty, and the killer is still going around loose,” I pointed out. I stood up.

  “I’ve had enough BLT,” I said. “Come with me back to the salon, and you can apologize to Betina for ruining her night’s sleep.”

  I put my coat on and turned up the collar. “You can pay,” I told him. “And leave a big tip.”

  When we were out on the sidewalk, I asked him how he'd figured out that the Eagle was having a thing with August.

  “What do you think I do all day?” he asked.

  “Sleep?” I guessed.

  “Savannah,” he said, picking up a paper cup off the sidewalk. “Here I am awake, gathering important information.” He tossed the cup in a trash bin.

  “I regret my comment,” I said, looking him over. “It does look like you got up at the crack of noon.”

  “Approximately,” he said.

  “By the way, why were you lurking around last night?”

  “I wasn’t lurking,” he said. “Couldn’t sleep. Helps me think if I walk. But the main reason is that I enjoy it. I have the town to myself. It’s a pretty town. Somehow your little downtown survived when other little towns in Louisiana practically went to ruin.”

  He was right. Knockemstiff was something special. I loved this town. Would it continue to be lovable if everybody suspected everybody else of being a murderer?

  Chapter 17

  By Thursday morning, the drizzle had stopped. The sun rose through a few clouds in the east, and the day looked beautiful, a little cooler than our usual at this time of year. I wished I could walk t
o the salon.

  I was like Woodley in that walking helped me think. I hadn’t been doing much walking, so I felt as though I had a thousand unsorted letters from myself waiting to be opened and organized.

  On any normal day before the murder, I would have had enough thinking to fill my day. What do you do when you’ve got all that thinking plus a murder’s worth of thinking that needs doing? One thing you do is let normal things slide, so I was behind on paperwork at the salon — unopened mail, literally.

  I went in early so I’d have the place to myself for a while. It gave me a chance to catch up on paperwork as well as sort through what had happened the previous day.

  As I unlocked the front door of the salon, I felt as though a lot had happened, but only two facts seemed important: the rifle in the ditch belonged to August, and that rifle had killed Annie. I closed the front door behind me.

  Oh, and August was missing. That might be the most important fact of all. Everything was pointing to August being the murderer.

  And yet, as I walked over to the café area to make coffee, I was unable to believe that August could be a murderer. My disbelief was based on having known August her whole life, even if I didn’t believe the flower-child story.

  On the other hand, I’d also known Annie for most of her life, and I never knew the “real” Annie.

  I filled the coffee pot at the hair-washing station. Did I know the real August? Obviously I hadn’t really known her either. Having intimate relationships with four different men who were at least twice her age did not fit any portrait I would have drawn of that young woman. While the coffee perked, I wandered around the salon, straightening things, throwing things away.

  Woodley wasn’t swayed by knowing August. He must think she’s the murderer. Yet he pointed out a second theory: that August could be another victim. I’d thought at the time he was trying to motivate me to tell him whatever I knew of August.

  Did he think I knew where August was and that I was protecting her? If I did know where she was, I would know that she hadn’t been murdered. That would leave theory one: she was the murderer.