Wash, Rinse, Die: Cozy Mystery (The Teasen & Pleasen Hair Salon Cozy Mystery Series Book 2)

by Constance Barker

  Happy that she’d made us use the wet wipes I held hands with Nellie on my right and Pete on my left as Selina began talking to the dead girl in a spooky voice. Since we still didn’t know her name, Selina was summoning the spirit of the “quirky girl from Delhi,” which was quite a mouthful.

  “Are you with us tonight?” she asked sounded hopeful. Then her eyes popped open. “I can feel her presence.”

  “See if you can get her to tell you her name,” Betina said. “Or at least a nickname.”

  But Selina had her own agenda. “What message do you have for us? Can you tell us why you were killed?”

  We all waited, half expecting Selina to shift into some other voice and say stuff, but she just started shaking violently. Pete and Betina were holding her hands but Betina let go of Selina’s hand and shook it. “Ow!” she said. “You were crushing my damn hand, darlin’.”

  Pete looked concerned as he watched Selina’s head loll to one side. Then she said, “whoosh,” or something and collapsed face down on the table. Her head rolled to the side and she rested her cheek on the table. Suddenly her eyes fluttered open. You know how they talk about the light in people’s eyes? Sometimes when someone gets knocked out we say their lights went out. Selina’s eyes just looked like no one was home, as if there hadn’t been any light in there for some time.

  “Do not think for a moment that that was because of my popcorn,” Nellie said. “It was all one batch.”

  “The girl wasn’t the intended victim,” Selina said. Actually she mumbled it into the tablecloth. I noticed she was drooling slightly. As performances went, if it was one, she was doing rather well.

  “Everyone knew that already,” Betina said. “What’s her name?”

  Selina lifted her head and looked at us wearily. “She didn’t say.” You could tell she was upset and I think it was because she wasn’t going to get much credit for the tiny morsel of pretty obvious information she’d unearthed. “She just wanted to make sure we knew that. So she confirmed our suspicion and left,” she said.

  “I’d think the spirit would kind of know what we knew already and what we don’t,” Nellie said. “I don’t suppose she casually mentioned any other details, like maybe who the killer was, or who was supposed to be killed. She could at least confirm that.”

  The truth was, as Betina had said, that none of us believed the unfortunate girl had been the target. Not for a moment. There were too many problems with that scenario, just as I’d told Dawn. And, if she wasn’t, either the killer messed up badly, or he or she didn’t care at all who got killed.

  That last prospect bothered me the most. It honestly sent a shiver down my spine because if it was true that meant someone was on the loose, someone who had access to the salon, who was killing clients without caring who they killed. The second was more personal — it suggested that the intent was killing people to hurt me — and my business. If that was the case, I’d have to have injured someone in some desperately terrible way. I sure couldn’t think of anyone I’d hurt like that or have any idea what I might’ve done.

  But then, as Dawn pointed out, the reasons didn’t have to make sense to anyone but the killer.

  We all stayed around Selina’s long enough to satisfy ourselves that Selina had recovered from her ordeal and wouldn’t be having more fits or whatever and was well back among the living. Then we all left.

  “What did you think?” Nellie asked.

  “I think that will be my last seance.”

  She shrugged. “It wasn’t bad for a night when you don’t feel like sitting around watching television. Which reminds me… I have more popcorn in my car. I brought some for Sarah.”

  “That was sweet of you.”

  “I figured I better bring it. Rudy and the boys will have devoured the rest by now.”

  “And ordered pizza.”

  She gave me a happy smile. “That would be great. Then I won’t have to cook.”

  I wasn’t sure how much of this effervescent version of my best friend I’d be able to stand. I had to count on my abiding faith that Rudy would do something disappointing and stupid to keep my own spirits up.

  · CHAPTER NINE

  That night Woodley called to tell me the forensics people hadn’t managed to do much more than carbon date Tina’s cookies. “They confirmed that they were made in this century.”

  “I’ll tell Pete. He likes surprises.”

  “At any rate, that means you can open tomorrow.”

  “Hurrah!” That was good because it was Saturday and Saturday is always a busy day. A lot of the older women insist on getting their hair done that day so they look good in church. Some of the younger ones are going out Saturday night.

  So for both of those groups, looking their best by Saturday evening is important.

  We wouldn’t be able do any hair coloring until the new supplies arrived, but otherwise things would get back to a semblance of normal rather quickly.

  I called everyone to share the good news and then slept well that night.

  The next morning Sarah went over to play with another friend who had a stay at home mom and I rallied my troops.

  This particular Saturday was an odd one. Possibly because of our being closed for two days and a bit, we had more of our men clients in. As I surveyed my somewhat tattered domain I was pleased to see the Bald Eagle getting his head wash from Betina. I doubt he was concerned about looking good in church.

  “The last jump was kind of sweet,” he said. “I thought I’d fall forever.”

  Those two always had fascinating conversations. Despite having nothing in common, Betina found him and his lifestyle intriguing. The idea that a seventy-two year old man amused himself by indulging in rather extreme sports like skydiving provided her with a glimpse into a life she could barely imagine. Whenever he got in her chair she started asking about his most recent adventures almost as avidly as the Monday crowd did about her weekends.

  “Why did you take up skydiving?” she asked.

  “For the thrill. The ground seems to be so far away and it comes up at you so fast, but in between those times, you can actually spread your wings and soar.”

  “Aren’t you a little old for that kind of thing?”

  “I’m not sure what that means. How old do you have to be to be too old to put on the gear and get in the plane and jump out? I’m young enough to get a kick out of it.”

  “And now you are going to go deep sea diving?”

  “I might. I’m checking into the program I mentioned.”

  In the next chair Pete was giving Mel Krisller a shave along with some animated conversation that struck me as a little dangerous, given that he was waving a straight razor around. “I never heard that kind of music before,” Pete was saying. “It’s truly amazing.”

  “I can’t believe you’ve lived here your whole life in the south and not heard the blues before.”

  “I’ve heard rock blues, Stevie Ray Vaughn, that sort of thing, but this is what all that came from. It’s so vital.”

  Betina was listening. “You like it when Leander plays it.”

  “Especially.”

  “Is Leander back permanently?” I asked. “I thought he wanted to see if he could make it in New Orleans.”

  Pete nodded. “He didn’t like the Big Easy so much.”

  I saw that look in Pete’s face when he said that — the one Sarah had commented on at the Bacon Up. Her analysis was right. Pete was happy that Leander preferred to be here and that wasn’t entirely so that Pete would be able to hear the blues. I didn’t say anything though. Pete was liked and no one would say a word until he did.

  “I do declare,” Dolores Pettigrew said as she came in the salon. She had a ten o’clock appointment with Nellie. I glanced at the clock. It was ten fifteen, so she was right on time given that Dolores has been running fifteen minutes late for as long as anyone remembers. She is sixty years old and that’s a lot of remembering too. She’s been a widow for a long time, but Sanders
said he was best man at her wedding forty years ago and she was late for that.

  “What do you declare?” Nellie knew Dolores expected us to want to know.

  “Oh, Nellie, I declare that it is just awful how much this terrible thing, this heinous murder has affected everyone, just everyone. My niece Julia’s little boy has been going on and on about it. He can’t seem to stop talking about how the murder took place right in this salon, under our very noses. Julia is thinking about getting him to one of those trauma counselors.”

  Of course, Dolores was mostly upset because she hadn’t been in the salon at the time the murder happened. That meant she missed out on dozens of opportunities to recount the events of the day in minute detail to all. Sharing in the devastating after effects was one way of dealing herself back into the game. It had to be a painful experience for her, having missed out on a front row seat. She would be wondering if anything quite so momentous would ever happen in Knockemstiff again.

  “Well, kids are pretty resilient. I’m sure he’ll be right as rain in no time,” Nellie said. She knew the kinds of things to say to Dolores.

  “It’s more than a little bit frightening to think that someone could poison hair dye,” she muttered. “It could be something like that man who put poison in Tylenol right at the factory.” I wondered how long she’d been waiting to trot out that event to show how bad the world was getting. “That dye could’ve been poisoned right at the factory where it’s made.”

  “Someone poked it with a syringe,” I pointed out. “And it was just one vial.”

  “Well, a stock clerk at the factory could’ve done it easy,” she said. “And maybe he did it to that entire batch.”

  Just then a delivery truck pulled up outside. It was our replacement hair coloring. “Or…” Dolores said, looking at the truck meaningfully. When the poor man, whose name was Chuck, came in so I could sign for the boxes, he had to wonder why delivering a few boxes of hair coloring earned him so many cautious stares. He couldn’t know that his presence in the back room on a Friday before the murder elevated him to prime suspect in some minds. I chatted with him and offered him a donut. He grabbed it and made a hasty retreat.

  “Oh Nellie, that man was acting rather suspicious,” Dolores said as if she knew something.

  “He sure was,” Nellie agrees. “He usually has two donuts.”

  Without a client of my own, as the gossip bubbled and flowed around the salon my mind went over the various theories, permutations and possibilities. In the end it all came down to what kind of bolical we were looking for and if, as Sarah thought, there might be at least two. All the ideas we were bouncing around centered on the time of the killing and the way the appointments had been made, and been juggled.

  But did bolicals look at appointment books?

  It was hard to know.

  Mel came to the counter to pay for his shave and poked at the box Chuck had delivered. “Seems like people might be a bit leery of getting their hair colored for a time. I mean, that dye being poisoned and all.”

  We didn’t need him bringing that up. “Mel, how would you like it if we pointed out that dyes are used in car upholstery too?”

  “Not very much,” he said. “Although all my cars are pre-owned and almost none of them have had anyone die in them. We check that out.” Then he laughed at his joke. No one else did. Jokes can be dangerous that way.

  * * *

  Investigator James Woodley was working out of a small office at the police station while he was in town trying to piece together the pieces of our mystery. With things slow, I decided to drop in and see if he’d let slip any new information. I felt like I had a lot at stake in this investigation, seeing as the odds were in favor of me knowing both the killer and the intended victim.

  I didn’t like that thought much at all.

  “I was expecting you,” he said when I sat in the chair across the desk from him.

  I noticed that he had half a dozen ballpoint pens there — all with their ends chewed. I took a purple ballpoint out of my purse and pushed it across the desk to him. “You need a fresh snack and a nicer pen.”

  He picked it up and looked at it. “Teasen and Pleasen is our business,” they said on them.

  “The phone number is wrong,” he said. “This isn’t your number.”

  “No, but the name’s right and the pen writes, and it isn’t all chewed up like yours. It was an ill-fated attempt at promotion. The printer got the number wrong and so the idea was sort of dead from the start. Besides, Nellie said the pens looked like they came from a brothel.”

  “So brothels pass out pens?”

  “I’m sure I have no idea. Ask Nellie.”

  He put the pen in his pocket. “Well, thanks. I probably should get a computer,” he said.

  “Won’t the parish pay for one?”

  “Yes, but they confuse me.”

  “Can‘t find a way to gnaw on the keyboard,” I said with a smile. “And why were you expecting me?”

  “It’s been hours since you’ve had a chance to tell me how I’m missing all the important clues.”

  I pointed to the pen. “Investigator Woodley, it is clear that you need me in so many ways, and now I know you missed me.”

  “Missed you? No. But I did expect you. I knew you’d need your fix.”

  “Well, I do have information to trade.”

  “To trade? Is there a black market in clues now?”

  “There always has been. Don’t police have paid informers?”

  “Some do. On the parish budget I have to depend on the kindness of volunteers and good citizens motivated to do the right thing.”

  “Who come in to help so you can insult them and ignore the clarity of their insights and impugn the value of their evidence?”

  “Right. That’s how the system works.”

  “I was wondering if you’ve figured out who the victim was supposed to be yet.”

  He looked surprised. “Are you still working on your theory that it wasn’t the girl that was killed?”

  “It’s no longer just a theory?”

  “No?”

  “You wanted my report of all the clues from the seance, right? Well, the spirit of the dead girl has confirmed that the girl wasn’t the intended victim.”

  “I don’t suppose that while she was relaying this small tidbit she told you that her name was Esther?”

  “No. That didn’t seem to come up. We didn’t get her boyfriend’s name either. It was a rather limited bandwidth seance.”

  “Esther Evans. I can share that with you now that her next of kin have been notified.”

  I made a note of the name. “It doesn’t ring a bell but I was sure she was lying about being Calvin Coolidge.”

  “I have the boyfriend’s name too, but it turns out he was working in Dallas for two weeks and there is no way he could have done it. He didn’t even know she was here.”

  “Which only adds to the evidence supporting the idea that she was not the intended victim. No one I know thinks so. We can’t imagine how that would work out.”

  He shrugged. “You don’t have to be able to, unless you’re the killer, of course.”

  “And the killer wouldn’t have to imagine it.”

  “Good point.”

  “Dolores Pettigrew is working up to the conclusion that this was an industrial crime with some disgruntled and cowardly worker at the dye factory inserting poison into a random batch or two and we were just the unfortunate recipients. Another theory is that it was someone striking out, wanting to kill for some reason without caring who was killed.”

  Woodley waited to see how many more ideas I intended to toss out before he finally decided I was done. Then he folded his hands and stared at me. “Poppycock.”

  “Poppycock?”

  “It means foolish words or ideas.”

  “Which of the words are foolish?”

  “Some of them individually and all of them together. The thing is you know it too. You are just
tossing out every hair-brained idea your gossip posse came up with to see if I’ll take the bait and tell you what I think.”

  “Cynic!”

  “Cynic?”

  “That’s a person who believes that people are selfish and are only interested in helping themselves. I’m offering you ideas, being the good, and unappreciated, citizen.”

  He stared for a moment, then broke out laughing. “Fair enough. But I can’t trade theories with you, even if I know you aren’t selfish. Mine are government property, owned by the parish and not mine to share, especially when keeping them close to my vest will prevent the killer or killers, whoever they might be, from knowing where we are.”

  “I see.” I didn’t. Not really. “Poppycock back at ya. But that little justification makes me wonder what, exactly, you think the killer would do differently if they knew you were closing in on them?”

  “Run away?”

  “And admit guilt?”

  “They could go away for a made up reason.”

  “Then you think it is someone who lives here and not someone from Delhi?”

  “Damn. You weaseled that out of me.” His smile told me that he didn’t mind.

  “With a capital D.”

  “Don’t smile that way. Oneupmanship is an unbecoming trait.”

  That stopped me. In a rather backhanded way, James Woodley, Investigator, had just said something nice about me. So to be fair, I told him the rest of it. “I talked with Dawn.”

  “Dawn?”

  “A knockout blonde. The intended victim. She doesn’t think so, but I have reason to think she was.”

  “And why do you?”

  “Because this Esther Evans wasn’t the one originally scheduled to be in the chair getting yellow dye in her hair. As of the day before the murder Dawn was the only one getting it done.”