“But nothing was missing?”
“No. But this morning Pete told me that he lost his key last night. If someone took it or found it they could’ve gotten in without breaking anything.”
“And made some scratching noises and left?”
It sounded rather implausible hearing it from the Sheriff’s mouth, especially framed by the look of disbelief on his face. “I just thought I’d mention it.”
“And now you have.”
“Kind of a coincidence, isn’t it? Too much of one that Pete loses his key and later I hear someone in the salon.”
“A coincidence or something,” he said.
“And the next day a woman dies while having her hair colored.”
That got The Sheriff’s attention, somewhat. “You think it was murder then?”
“I don’t know about murder, but I’m pretty sure she didn’t have an allergic reaction to the shampoo or dye and it wasn’t a heart attack. Even the vet said it wasn’t.”
They both listened, and dismissed, my grand theory. I suppose it was too much to expect that they’d take anything but what I’d actually seen as real.
Next, our intrepid law enforcement officials interviewed Lucille Braxton, much to her obvious delight.
When Nellie finished her television interview, Lucille got her own moment of television fame while the authorities took Nellie aside and got her version of the events. She was getting into it. I could see her waving her hands as she got to the part about the girl sitting up and screaming. “I thought her head was exploding or something,” she said. “Wait until I tell Rudy.”
Then they started in on Pete and Betina. I heard Pete try to tell them about losing his key and telling me about it that morning. They asked Betina why she wore rubber gloves when she put the dye in the woman’s hair, and she laughed at them. “We always do. It’s chemicals you know. They can be caustic.”
“But you put that stuff on the customer’s scalp?”
She scowled at Tanner. “It can’t color their hair if I don’t put it on their heads.”
While Tanner had a go at trying to make Betina’s worldview comprehensible, the Sheriff’s people began bagging up all the chemicals from Betina’s station. That made a certain amount of sense, seeing as whatever killed the girl was probably right there. I was glad to see that they were wearing rubber gloves.
When they started putting the tools in bags, I put my foot down. “You aren’t taking those.”
“Evidence,” the deputy said.
“The girl wasn’t stabbed, dimwit! Or do you intend to take the front door as well, in case she was bludgeoned to death with it?”
“Evidence,” the deputy said as if he didn’t own any other words.
“Sheriff!” I called and when he came over I glared at him. “Rein in your dogs.”
He ambled over. “The coroner wants us to bag anything someone might’ve used to poison her,” he said.
I pointed at the mug of coffee in his hand. “She had two cups of that coffee.” The shocked look on his face was priceless. I don’t think she did drink any coffee, but I wanted to make a point. “But then most of us did. So we know it’s not that. Listen, I have no trouble with you doing your job but we need those tools for living customers. We still have a few of those, but we won’t if you bag up the whole salon.”
The Sheriff was trying to make an important decision and when he saw the look on my face he saw the error of his ways. He experienced a sudden change of heart. One thing about small places is that the rules of law can be bent favorably if you are polite, and common sense does prevail at times. Of course it helps that the Sheriff is an elected official and upsetting someone who is the owner of a hair salon and a major influencer of gossip, is just bad politics.
He turned to his deputy. “Leave the tools. I can’t see them poisoning her with a hair dryer.” He waved his hand over the assortment of colors. “Are there more?”
“In back,” I said. “Where the prowler was.”
“Where the scratching noises were.” They followed me into the back room and I showed them where we kept the dyes. At my firm insistence they took all of the tubes of dyes and tints but left the other chemicals. Somehow I didn’t think we’d be doing a lot of hair coloring jobs anytime soon.
Thankfully, the Sheriff and his teenage deputy finally decided they had done their duty and left with their bags of evidence.
“Our Sheriff doesn’t think it was murder,” Tanner said. He winked conspiratorially.
“He said that?”
“No but he called in Inspector Woodley,” Tanner told me. “He’s coming soon to take over the investigation. No Sheriff steps down from anything as high profile as a murder.”
“He might if he didn’t think he could solve it. Besides Knockemstiff is a long drive for the poor man to make every time he wants to talk to a witness.”
Tanner liked that. “Yeah. He doesn’t have a clue what really happened here.” I liked the way he managed to say that in way that implied that any fool would be able to see what really happened. I found that especially poignant since no one knew very much yet — we didn’t even know the name of the person who had died.
We stood at the door, watching the coroner from Paudy hold up the yellow crime tape so his guys could wheel a gurney with the body on it out the door to the hearse. They’d put the girl inside a black plastic body bag. I suppose that was partly to keep people from staring at the body. Not meaning any disrespect for police and coroner protocols, I couldn’t help but think of how that body was going to sweat inside that thing.
Chief Tanner was staring at me and I realized he was waiting for me to comment on his news about Woodley coming to town. “Investigator,” I said.
The coroner’s helpers slammed the doors to the hearse like they thought she might change her mind and jump out at them. That was about the only way the day was going to get more exciting, but that would require that her body was taken over by our resident aliens.
Tanner was staring at me blankly and I decided to explain. “Woodley is an investigator, not an inspector.”
Tanner shook his head. “Who cares?”
“I’m outta here,” Betina said, watching Tanner’s face to see if he’d try to stop her. He didn’t. The woman might of died in Betina’s chair, but no one had any inkling of a thought that Betina had killed her, unless it was by accident.
“Woodley cares,” I reminded Tanner. “He’s always correcting everyone about that.”
“He’ll be here soon. He can remind me all by himself.”
“Good.” I was talking about Woodley getting there and taking over. Not that I thought James Woodley was a brilliant investigator or anything, but I liked him in an on and off sort of way, and he was certainly a giant step up the detective food chain from our local law enforcement. I was sure he could find out what happened. With my help, of course. Unfortunately, he was stubborn and didn’t always like to listen to the sweet voice of reason—mine. He needed some work in that department in his movement toward perfection.
“You have to close up now,” Tanner said.
“The place is a mess,” I said. “We need to clean it up.”
Tanner doesn’t often get a chance to exert his will and he was enjoying himself. “Not until Woodley has a chance to check out the crime scene and gives his okay. You have to stay closed and don’t touch anything.”
“Your people have already messed up the place beyond recognition and taken away anything you think might be evidence.”
“We have a protocol and he wants the crime scene preserved.”
I waved my hand at the mess. “This is a strange way to do anything like preservation.”
“I’ll be in my car outside. Don’t take things out of the salon other than personal things. Then lock the door on your way out.”
The truth was that the mess would keep, but it seemed like a shame, a gross injustice to have to be closed now, just when the curiosity factor would’ve meant we would
be packed with clients. I dismissed that as a selfish and mercenary thought. Besides the reopening would be a big event.
“This is upsetting,” I told Tanner. “All of it.”
“The good news is that we should have the toxicology report by tomorrow. The Sheriff has sent it to New Orleans with instructions to expedite the testing.”
I wondered, silently, how long Tanner had been waiting to use that word. “Why is that good news?”
That flustered him for a moment. “Because then we’ll know what actually killed the girl. We might even know who she is by then. We’ve contacted the police in Delhi and sent them her picture.”
Everyone inside the salon had pretty much filtered out, and the crowd outside, including the intrepid journalists, drifted away. It was time for us to leave too. Pete unplugged the coffee pot and picked up the boxes the donuts had been in. “I’d better put these in the dumpster or we will have roaches all over the place by morning,” he said.
“Don’t blame me if you get arrested for tampering with the evidence,” I said.
He just grinned. “I’ll take the risk, sister.” He gave a reasonable Bogart sound to the words.
As he ran to the dumpster, Nellie and I gathered our things and ducked out under the crime scene tape. As promised, Tanner was sitting in his car, satisfying himself that we were behaving and closing up.
I was locking the front door when I saw a strange look on Nellie’s face. I figured that the reality of what had happened was finally sinking in and I was concerned that she might be going into shock. After all, the woman had died in Betina’s chair, right next to her. Without knowing what had happened, she could think about the possibility that it could have been her customer just as easily.
Pete was just coming back as Tanner drove off. “I guess I got away with it,” he said.
I took Nellie’s arm and looked into her eyes. “Nellie, are you okay?”
Nellie looked at me calmly for a moment and nodded before spitting out what was bothering her. “It has to be said, that’s all.”
“What has to be said?”
She looked away. “We know this was a case of death by hair coloring. Possibly the first.”
“Most likely.”
“Think about it — the woman was poisoned with hair dye.”
“I’ve thought about it a lot and I can’t imagine it was anything else. Why?”
She paused, then let the other shoe drop. “Then you’ll have to agree with me. We all witnessed a murder most dyeabolical.”
Pete’s anguished groan was probably the only appropriate response and probably more tasteful than my choked off laugh.
Neither of those reactions diminished Nellie’s pleasure in the least, however. And what sent a chill through me was the knowledge that a phrase like that was destined to become legendary — it would pop up every time someone mentioned the murder.
Unfortunately, that would be often for quite some time.
· CHAPTER FIVE
The next day, Thursday, Chief Tanner called and told me that we all needed to tell our stories again. “Not to me this time, thank goodness.”
“Then?”
“Investigator, not Inspector, James Woodley arrived last night. He needs to see the murder scene first, so he has requested that you go to your salon at the normal time and meet him there.”
“And tell him my story?”
“He asked if you’d call the employees and clients and ask them to keep themselves handy for talking to him during the day.” Tanner chuckled. “I guess the Investigator doesn’t think you all told us the truth.”
“We probably didn’t.”
I didn’t see that making calls to witnesses was my job, but it gave me an excuse to check up on everyone and see if they were okay. Mostly they were eager to find out what was going on. “Let’s all meet,” Nellie said. “We can have coffee and make up stories to tell people.”
Naturally a meeting of that kind could only take place at the Bacon Up. It had enough space and plenty of coffee. I had a feeling we’d need lots of black coffee.
It promised to be a long day, so I put out food and water for Fin and made sure that back gate was shut — I’d put in a dog door so he could go in the yard when he liked. Fortunately he never seemed inclined to leave the yard, which is nice because the fence isn’t all that high. The sight of his food so early in the day thrilled him until he realized it meant he’d be left alone at home. He doesn’t like being left out of things and he was still protesting when we left. Me walking Sarah to school all by myself was unacceptable.
Sarah was quiet. She’d gone to bed early the night before too. “What’s up?” I asked.
“People being killed… you see that stuff on television, but this girl died right here — she was in Teasen and Pleasen having her hair done and she just… ended.”
“People believe all sorts of things about what happens when someone dies, but from our perspective, yes, she just ended.”
“That requires some thought.”
“It does.” I was pleased that she did seem more thoughtful than depressed or upset. Sooner or later Sarah would had to confront some of the uglier parts of life. I could have hoped it would be later, when she was older, but with help and support she’d deal with the cards she was dealt. She was good that way. Not talking about it would be the worst thing I could do. Sarah didn’t like it when people pretended things didn’t happen when she knew better.
Woodley was waiting for me outside the salon. I found him waiting, hunched over against the window with his hands shielding his face as he peered through it. I saw a large envelope tucked under his arm.
“I’m here. There’s no one in there to see,” I said.
He turned and gave me what passes for a smile with big city people. “Good morning. I thought I saw something or someone moving in there. A trick of the light, I suppose.”
“It damn well better be. If it isn’t that means we accidentally locked someone inside yesterday.”
“How is everyone?” he asked as I unlocked the door. I held it and let him go in first. “How are they reacting?”
That surprised me. “Nice of you to ask. Everyone is pretty torn up by what happened but they are getting through it.”
“No one is acting unusual?”
I gave him a withering look, realizing that his question had nothing to do with concern for our welfare. “Other than everyone taking turns admitting to the murder, nothing odd at all. Oh and Nellie was planning a party. Why do you ask?”
I’d forgotten that he was immune to sarcasm. He didn’t flinch. “I ask you because you notice things — you are aware of people and how they take things. That can be a great help.”
I wondered if he was trying to compliment me. “Mostly when I notice things related to a case it seems you don’t want to hear about them or believe them.”
He shrugged and we went in. I turned on the lights and he let out a long, exasperated sigh. “I see my colleagues have done their usual thorough and overzealous job. What a mess.”
“Now there is something we can agree on. They didn’t seem to have much of a method to their madness. It was all I could do to keep them from impounding the light fixtures as evidence.”
“They rely on the old slash and burn approach. Still…” He opened his envelope. It was filled with 8x10 photos that the deputies had taken the day before. He held them up. I saw one that showed the dead girl lying on the floor in front of Betina’s chair and my stomach knotted up. When the real body had been there I’d done my best not to look too closely at it but now as Woodley pointed to Betina’s chair my mind conjured up a picture far more vivid than the one in his picture.
“Who put her on the ground?”
“She fell out of the chair.”
“It’s reclined.”
“She sat up and then fell over. We did CPR.”
He nodded and looked at Betina’s station. “This chair?”
“Yes. That’s the one.”
/> “And where are the dyes kept.”
I pointed at the back room. I have a tiny office and storeroom back there.
“How do the dyes get from the back room out here?”
“We bring them out.”
“I mean, do you keep a stock out here that you replenish?”
“No. They are all kept in back. If someone knows they have a client coming in for coloring it's easy enough to go get the colors she will need just before they arrive. For a walk-in you just go get them when you need them.”
“Colors? You’d use more than one?”
“Sometimes. If we don’t have exactly the right shade you mix them for the client. Or, in this girl’s case, she wanted several colors.”
“And this girl had an appointment?”
“Yes and no. She came in one day and made an appointment for the next. While she was here she decided to get her hair wildly tinted. Lots of crazy colors.”
He scowled. “Do you often do jobs like that?”
“Not in this town. Betina was excited about the opportunity and was messing with the colors before she came in.”
“Did anyone else touch the colors or hang around her station?”
“Not that I noticed. There wouldn’t be a reason for them to.”
He nodded. “I’ll need some time in here. Alone.”
I handed him the key. “Enjoy the ambiance. Alone. Please turn off the lights when you leave or I’ll send the parish the electric bill. Don’t forget to lock up. Have fun.”
“You’ll be at home?”
I shook my head. “Our world has been turned topsy turvy, Investigator Woodley. No one wants to be home. I asked everyone to gather at the Bacon Up. Tanner said you wanted to talk to all of us.”
“Not together. I don’t even want you all discussing things before I speak to you individually. People have a tendency to blur their stories.”
“If that’s what you wanted you needed to be here when it happened, Woodley. We’ve talked about nothing else since it happened. No one is willing to sit home alone while you make the rounds and you can’t gag them. And with the salon shut until you let us open no one has anything else to do. So you aren’t going to prevent us from talking to each other. And we need to talk through this. People are upset because some think there was a tragic accident and others suspect foul play. The only decent thing, and that’s a backhanded blessing, is that we didn’t know the girl. It’s a shock and a tragedy, but not quite so personal as if we knew her.”
Wash, Rinse, Die: Cozy Mystery (The Teasen & Pleasen Hair Salon Cozy Mystery Series Book 2) Page 5
