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

by Constance Barker

  “With Mel?” He was getting a little red around the neck now.

  “The witness couldn’t say who the man was.”

  “How does this have something to do with the killing? The girl was killed before then.”

  “I’m not quite sure. That’s why I’m asking so many questions. It’s hard to know what fits in or how it does. So, you didn’t know Mel Krissler was in Paudy with Dawn Devereaux?”

  Burl gave Woodley a defiant stare. “No.”

  “Does it surprise you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Now tell me about the night before the murder.”

  “The night before?”

  “I understand that you were at the Knockemback Tavern.”

  “Maybe I was.”

  “The night that Leander was auditioning for a gig.”

  You could see his eyes flicker as he remembered. “Oh right. Pete was bugging everyone to drop in. He thought if the guy drew a crowd they’d hire his friend.”

  “Who else was there?”

  “Besides me and Hildy there was Pete, of course, and Mel and Tina. A few people from out of town were there too.”

  “You forgot Dawn,” I said.

  He gave me a blank stare. “Oh, was she there? I didn’t remember.”

  “Odd,” Woodley said. He was toying with a cookie jar that Mel kept on the counter, shaking it. It was filled with key chains. Burl put odds and ends of cheap things in there that people might buy on impulse. “She remembers you being there.”

  “Does she?”

  “She said you grabbed her arm and told her you wanted her back.”

  “Did she say that? Why would I do that? I was back with Hildy and Dawn was out of the picture.”

  “That’s kind of what I want to find out. Was she out of the picture? Or were you afraid she would be soon if you didn’t do something.”

  He looked nervous. “Do something? Like what?”

  I probably would have said something rather clever and incisive at that point, but even if I’d gotten it out, Dawn’s entrance would’ve upstaged it. She stormed in past us, pushing between Woodley and I to get in Burl’s face. “Are you really that bitter and petty, Burl Botowski? Are you that demented?”

  He sputtered a bit. You don’t often get to see people sputter. It’s only when action is necessary and the brain hesitates, creating a marvelous disconnect. “What did I do?”

  Clearly she’d been stewing over the things that had come up in our conversation earlier and decided to get her own answers. Well, the more the merrier, I suppose. Ganging up on Burl would unsettle him more. Now she glared at Burl and he seemed to wilt. “Besides trying to kill me? I have no idea what else you’ve done.”

  “I didn’t try to kill you!” I liked the unhinged desperation quality in his voice. “I wouldn’t do anything to hurt you.”

  She looked at Woodley. “I remembered some things after you left. First, I was telling you that Burl knew I was going to have my hair done red.”

  “You were?” Burl asked.

  She nodded at us. “Then I was thinking about Savannah’s comment, about men not remembering things about your hair. That’s when I remembered him saying something recently about how he was glad I was a blonde, so he obviously had forgotten that entirely.”

  Burl looked panicky. “Red? Why red?”

  “The other thing?” Woodley asked.

  “You mentioned Pete losing his keys at the tavern. I was focused on me at the time, but I do remember that after this creep grabbed my arm he got close to Pete for a while. Real close—physically. I was wondering about that, then forgot it.”

  Burl put up a hand. “Pete and I were talking about the blues. Leander was playing a Willie Brown tune and I couldn’t remember where it was recorded.”

  “Alan Lomax recorded him at Sadie Beck's Plantation on July 16, 1942,” Woodley said. “His only recordings.” I was impressed, but Dawn didn’t care. “Right. Whatever. Anyway Burl left shortly after that.”

  “Hildy wanted us to come home and fix dinner. She doesn’t like me to have more than a couple of beers on an empty stomach.”

  “Right. Thing is, after Burl left was when Pete discovered his keys were missing.” She stared at Burl. “I think Burl took them and went to his store, got the poison, then went to the salon.”

  “I went home with Hildy,” he said.

  Woodley scowled. “And she will be able to corroborate that?”

  “Sure.” His eyes flickered. “Oh wait. I forgot. Halfway home I remembered that I needed to get my inventory records to give to Dawn. Hildy walked on home from there to start dinner and then I came home later.”

  “How much later?” When Burl hesitated, Woodley gave a dramatic cough. “We have your wife in jail, Burl. What is she going to tell me when I walk in and ask her what time you got home that night?”

  “I don’t know.” His pupils grew wide. “I can’t remember exactly.”

  “Because you were preoccupied with the task in my salon.”

  “Setting things up to kill me,” Dawn said. Clearly the idea, now that it had taken root, had her full attention. “You wanted me dead. And you were going to make Nellie kill me. I trusted you. I didn’t believe it when they said someone was trying to kill me. Burl, I just had my hair dyed.”

  “I wasn’t trying to kill you!” he shouted. “I’d never hurt you.”

  I nodded and looked at Woodley. He smiled at Burl. “No. We don’t think you wanted to hurt Dawn.”

  “I believe that,” I said.

  He looked relieved. “Thank you.”

  “What?” Dawn was upset.

  Woodley turned to her. “He didn’t really want to kill you. No, he wanted to kill his wife. He thought you’d come back to him if she was gone.”

  “That’s stupid. She’d already had her hair done,” Dawn said. “She went in a day early and got her coloring and they were out together, so he would’ve known.”

  “Burl didn’t know that,” I said. “She didn’t tell him she’d gotten her days mixed up. Why would she?”

  “But he would notice that she’d had it done.”

  “I doubt it. She’s been getting her hair done regularly for years. And as you just realized, men don’t notice things like that. Unless she told him…”

  Dawn was nodding slowly. “We do all this stuff to make ourselves look good to men and they barely notice. You’re right.” Then she turned to Burl who was looking increasingly like a trapped animal. “You tried to kill your wife?” Dawn asked. Her voice was shrill.

  He was trembling. I couldn’t tell if it was rage or frustration, or if that distinction mattered. “You wouldn’t come back to me. She was watching me like a hawk and I was losing you to that sap Mel Krisller.”

  “Don’t be such an idiot. He’s a client and that’s it.”

  “You went to Paudy with him.”

  I smiled. I was sure he’d heard that rumor before Woodley and I came in.

  “To drop off forms for my client.”

  “You went to a motel with him. To our motel.”

  “The Bright Motel is my client. We got a discount there.”

  Burl’s face sagged. “Then you aren’t seeing someone else?”

  She smiled happily. “I am. Just not Mel.”

  “That’s something, I guess.”

  Dawn pulled herself together. “It’s a lot. But you weren’t trying to kill me?”

  “No.”

  She looked at Woodley. “In that case, I guess I’m done here.”

  As she turned and started out, Woodley grinned. “Thanks for your help. I’ll need a statement from you later.”

  “You’ve got my number.”

  * * *

  Burl came out from behind the counter shaking his head. “This is a misunderstanding. Why would I try to kill Hildy that way. I don’t know anything about hair dyes.”

  “You know that Hildegard has her hair dyed yellow,” I said.

  Woodley had his notebook handy.
“And you know a bit about poisons. You have to because you stock them here for pest control.”

  “But…” He was trying to find an angle. “You found her fingerprints on the syringe, not mine.”

  I chuckled. “That doesn’t mean squat, Burl. Women rummage for things in their handbags. You know that. She could easily have handled it while trying to find her credit card. If there is one woman on the jury she’ll make sure that gets tossed out.”

  He was taking it all in, sensing that the rope of logic was tightening around his neck. “But you said Dawn had that appointment.”

  “And the truth is that you almost killed her by mistake, Burl,” Woodley said. “That would have been rather ironic. As it is you killed an innocent girl. That’s manslaughter but because you were attempting to commit a murder, I think the prosecutor will be able to make it a murder charge and tack on attempted murder, Hildegarde’s, as well.”

  Burl glanced toward the front door. Then, moving faster than any of us expected, Burl put his hands on my shoulder and pushed hard, sending me stumbling into Woodley and knocking him back. As we recovered he darted out the door.

  “Idiot,” Woodley cursed and I wondered if he meant me or Burl, then he was out the door in pursuit with me right behind him.

  Burl had jumped into his car and was behind the wheel trying to start it. The car wasn’t cooperating and rather than sparking to life made some pitiful groaning noises. As we came out to the car he looked at us and stopped trying, slumping there. Woodley walked over to the driver’s door and opened it. Burl looked at him with an expression of deep sadness. Whether he was sad because he didn’t get away, or because his plan had gone so wrong, I didn’t think we’d ever know. I doubted he felt any remorse.

  Woodley took his arm and pulled Burl out of the car. “Damn that lemon,” he said. His body was limp. All the fight had gone out of him.

  “I think I’ll have to give Mel Krisller a mention in the arrest report. He deserves credit for an assist.” He looked at me. “I should get Digby over here to take custody of the prisoner. He’d enjoy that.”

  “I’ll use the store phone to call him,” I said.

  “Tell him to have Nadine Hines start the paperwork to drop the charges against Mrs. Botowski then get over here. You should probably remind him to bring his handcuffs so he doesn’t have to make two trips.”

  “Good thinking.”

  “Then can I take you to lunch?”

  The question surprised and pleased me. “Why yes. That would be lovely.” I went to make the call with my thoughts on something besides the murder for a change. Burl had confessed, well he’d admitted what he’d done, and the pieces of my puzzle fit together.

  Investigator Woodley, his thoughts about me, the possibility that I might like him… those were pieces of another puzzle altogether and I wasn’t sure I had them all.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  “Oh, Pete, I knew that awful Burl Botowski was the killer all along,” Dolores Pettigrew said. “That man didn’t fool me for a minute.”

  Pete chuckled. He loved the gossip in full swing. “That was a nice touch, him sending the note to the police. He’d botched killing Hildegarde so why not see if he couldn’t get them to convict her of the murder and get her out of his way.”

  “What note?” Dolores asked.

  “The one suggesting a motive for Hildegarde being the killer,” I said. “You must’ve missed that tidbit, Dolores.” I saw that hurt her feelings. “I’ll admit you had it right while Burl really had me fooled,” I said. Someone had to and I doubted anyone else would.

  Dolores clucked at my naivete. “Oh, Savannah, you could see it in his eyes, plain as day.”

  “I had a vision last night,” Selina said. “It was early and the big harvest moon had just come up over the big elm in the yard—“

  ‘That rotten, diseased old elm?” Nellie asked. “I thought you were going to get that thing cut down before it hurt someone?”

  “I got an estimate to have that done, Nellie. I just can’t afford to do it right now. You have to admit it can be pretty and there I was looking at the sky and the full harvest moon—”

  “That wasn’t the harvest moon,” Pete said. “That’s a common mistake, referring to a full moon as the harvest moon.”

  “But this is harvest season,” Nellie said.

  Pete nodded. “Some places. But the harvest moon, also called the corn moon, usually comes in September and rises right about sunset. For three days farmers are able to work into the night and get crops in before the rains came.”

  “Really?”

  He nodded. “This being October, last night you would have seen the hunting or blood moon. I agree it was beautiful though. I had my telescope out. I was showing it to Leander.”

  I smiled at the way Pete was slowly getting comfortable with us knowing that he and Leander were spending a lot of quality time together.

  Betina sighed. “Pete that is so sweet.” She’d admitted to me that with even Pete finding a serious love, she’d been thinking more about finding her own Mister Right lately. Playing the field was starting to lose its allure.

  “Whatever it was called, the moon was bright,” Selina said. “As it illuminated my yard, casting mysterious shadows, I had a vision. I fell to the ground in a swoon.”

  “You had another of your fits?” Dolores asked. “You should get yourself to a doctor in Paudy.”

  “I think it was a vision of the yard with that elm cut down,” Nellie said. “Those branches are going to fall on someone. Did you see who?”

  “I didn’t have a fit, I was taken with a vision and not about the damn elm tree. My power spirit came to me and told me that Burl was the killer.”

  Nellie was putting some chrysanthemums in a vase, tapping on them to make them sit upright. “What a waste of an otherworldly experience.”

  Selina almost sputtered. “A waste?”

  “Yeah. If this spirit thing of yours knew the score all along, why did it wait until the police had the crime solved before it spoke up? It could’ve saved everyone a lot of time and anguish.”

  “Nice flowers,” I said. “From Rudy?” They were nice and brightened up the salon but I was really hoping to change the subject.

  She grinned. “I don’t kiss and tell.”

  Pete liked that. “Maybe she has a secret admirer.”

  Nellie laughed. “Someone around here does. To be honest, with all the trouble people in town have with extracurricular romance I’m glad I know these are from Rudy.”

  I could see that. Romance in Knockemstiff seemed not to run smoothly all the time. Still, Betina wasn’t the only one feeling that a little serious romance wouldn’t be amiss.

  Selina wasn’t done. “The spirits don’t like to interfere in human affairs.”

  Betina looked up from coloring Dawn’s hair. Dawn had decided to go crazy and go for some Balayage highlighting. “They sure don’t seem to mind second guessing us after the fact though.”

  “You are insensitive people,” Selina said. “The spirits don’t think or work the way we do.”

  “I hear that.”

  We all turned to see Investigator Woodley standing in the door. “Welcome,” I said. “Since the crime is solved are you finally going to let us fix your hair?”

  “I like my hair the way it is,” he said, running his hand over his hair. I think he wanted to protect it.

  Pete found that funny. “You would.”

  “I came to say goodbye. I’m heading back to New Orleans with my prisoner.”

  “Are you taking Digby along?” I asked.

  Woodley snorted. “Why would I do that?”

  “To ride shotgun?”

  “I think the prisoner has enough problems as things are. His lawyers might claim that we tortured him if he had to listen to Digby all the way from here to New Orleans.”

  “But you’ll be alone with a murderer.”

  Woodley grinned. “Savannah Jefferies are you worried about me?” I
almost blushed. He shook his head. “That really makes my day.” I wondered how he meant that. “Well, given that the murderer is Burl Botowski, I don’t think Digby’s company is necessary. We will be fine, Burl and me.”

  “And I.” Sarah walked in with Fin at her heels. They were becoming inseparable. “You should say, ‘Burl and I,’ although I’d have to say, ‘Mr. Botowski and I,’ even if he is a murderer.”

  “She’s correct, Investigator Woodley.”

  Woodley bowed to Sarah. “I appreciate you correcting my imperfect use of the language, young lady. I would only disagree enough to say that under the circumstances either you or I would be permitted to say, ‘the perp and I.’”

  “The perp?” Then her face lit up. “Is that the police jargon for the perpetrator?”

  “Right you are.”

  She looked at me. “Can that be used in scrabble?”

  “Only if we agree that I can use salon jargon.”

  I left Sarah mulling over the pros and cons of such a bargain and walked Woodley out to his car. “Rushing back to New Orleans now?”

  “Not rushing, but I do need to get ‘the perp’ Butowski off Tanner’s hands and get on the road.”

  “She forgot to mention it but Sarah wanted to extend her thanks for capturing an alliterative bolical. She considered that above and beyond the call of duty.”

  “I’m aware of our bolical hunt, but alliterative?”

  “Burl Botowski the Bolical.”

  His laugh was genuine. “I see.”

  “Will we see you again?” I asked meaning ‘will I see you again?’ I hoped he got that part.

  “Possibly.”

  “I mean, is there a chance you would come back to visit without the town having to provide another villain to knock off another of its own before you come back?”

  “Well, I hear Leander is working up a new set for his new Saturday night gig at the Knockemback Tavern. I might be persuaded to swing by for that sometime.”

  I liked the sound of that. I liked the way he looked at me when he said it even more. “Let me know if you do. Maybe we can have a picnic on Sunday.”