by Sharon Short
Sometimes, that expertise helps directly, as in my figuring out the pants and handkerchief Ginny had left me were stained with not just paint, but also old blood.
Sometimes, that expertise helps indirectly, as in the situation with Max and Cherry and the Silly Putty and the fact that I knew someone had visited Ginny’s room, and Max had seen the visitor, but for some reason refused to say who the visitor was. Cherry wanted the Silly Putty out of her hair, Max wanted Cherry to stop being hysterical, and I wanted Max’s information.
Time to barter.
“Well,” I said carefully, “I do in fact know how to remove Silly Putty from hair. But before I share that tidbit of knowledge—” I paused, and turned to glare at Max, “—first Max is going to tell me who he saw visiting Ginny’s room earlier and what he heard.”
Max looked worried. “Now, Josie, now, really, I don’t think it’s that important—”
“For pity’s sake, just tell her, Max!”
“And with Cherry here being your best friend and all, surely you’re not going to just leave her with her hair stuck in the minifridge—”
I crossed my arms. “I still owe her payback for the time she scared me to death at Ranger Girl camp by telling me she’d switched the shampoo with Nair hair-removal gel—right after I’d lathered up in the sink—”
“But I hadn’t really made the switch!” Cherry wailed.
I glared at her. “I had to sleep on the floor all night as punishment for screaming so loudly that I scared the younger girls in the next cabin.”
“But, Josie—” Cherry pled. Then her eyes narrowed. “All of that was just payback for what you said about my finger back in junior high. Remember that? You still owe me for that.”
I blanched, remembering.
Only once did Aunt Clara ever turn her devil saying on me, when she got a call from my Junior High teacher, Mrs. Oglevee, that poor Cherry Feinster had been crying in history class because I’d teased her at lunch when she’d bragged that John Worthy had given her a ring, a diamond set in gold. The truth was she’d waved her hand over our plates of beef-a-roni, showing off. All the other girls oohed and ahhed, but I said it was a dumb glass-and-tin gumball-machine ring sure to make her finger turn a nasty green and fall off.
Sure enough, during the next period (history, Mrs. Oglevee’s class), Cherry’s finger turned green. But it stayed firmly attached as she pointed it accusingly at me.
When Aunt Clara confronted me with Mrs. Oglevee’s report, I defiantly said Cherry was uppity and had deserved the scare. Aunt Clara went into her bun-quivering stillness, let her eyes go icy blue as she gazed at me, and intoned her scary adage in the slow whisper she always used just for saying it.
Now, I looked at Cherry in dismay. “I can’t believe you’re still bringing that up after all these years.”
She pointed her finger—the same one that had turned green all those years ago—at me and hollered, “Just help me, Josie!”
Max had backed against the wall. He was staring at us with a terrified look on his face. I reckon he thought we were nuts. I didn’t care. I crossed my arms, pressed my lips together, and glared into space. After all, Aunt Clara was no longer around, God rest her soul, to guilt me out with her devil saying.
“For pity’s sake, just tell her whatever she wants to know!” Cherry screamed.
“All right, all right,” Max said. “I don’t know the name of whoever came to visit Ginny. But it was an older woman. Frumpy. Baggy kind of dress, hair twisted up on her head in a bun, no makeup. I assume the woman is from around here. She wasn’t one of the psychics.”
Max’s description, I thought, fit Missy Purcell.
“And they were arguing,” Max added. “The woman was shouting at Ginny to stay away from her family, to leave them alone, that they didn’t need any trouble from her. Ginny was trying to calm her down. They seemed to know each other. That’s it, Josie, that’s all I heard.”
“Could you identify the woman if you saw her again, or a picture of her?” I asked.
“Maybe. I—I was hurrying from my own room.”
I lifted my eyebrows. “Why the hurry?”
“I just wanted to get to the psychic fair, that’s all.”
“That’s all, huh? You know, you just gave a pretty straightforward description of what you saw. Doesn’t make you look bad at all. So why the reluctance to share?”
Cherry had stopped sniffling—though her hiccups continued—and she glared at Max suspiciously. “Yeah, why the reluctance?”
Max stared down at the floor.
“There’s only one trick for getting out Silly Putty,” I said. “And I’m the only one who knows it.”
“Max!” shrieked Cherry.
“Okay, look, I was with Skylar, and both Ginny and the woman saw us coming out of the room, and I really don’t want this to get back to Karen, because she’s so overprotective that she’d probably claw my eyes out and—”
Cherry grabbed the ice bucket and threw it at him, yanking her own hair as she did so, which caused her to yelp. It was a good throw, though. Cherry beaned him right on the temple.
“You were with Skylar earlier?” Cherry shrieked.
I’d gone over to the phone and dialed up the Rhinegolds’ private number. I glanced at the digital clock on the nightstand. 11:30 P.M. Poor things. I hated to wake them up.
“Now, Cherry,” Max was saying.
“After we made our plans at Serpent Mound?” Cherry’s voice went up a notch, to nails-on-chalkboard level. I winced and tried to focus on listening to the Rhinegolds’ phone ring.
“Hello?” Greta answered the telephone, not sounding at all sleepy. Maybe a little out of breath. Hmmm. Was everyone in the world snuggling with someone tonight. . . except Owen and me?
“Hi, it’s Josie,” I said.
“And you were more concerned about Skylar’s mama finding out than about me finding out?” Cherry was yelling, wincing every third word as her hair tugged in the mini fridge.
“You okay, Josie?” Greta asked.
“I’m fine. I just wondered if you happened to have any rubbing alcohol handy.”
“You’d have to know Skylar’s mama to understand,” Max said, ducking as the lid from the ice bucket whirled, discusfashion, at his head.
“You’re a creep and a fraud, you know that? I’ve heard some of the others talking and they say you couldn’t predict the weather with a tornado on the horizon!” Cherry shouted.
“Now, Cherry, that truly hurts,” Max protested, looking, truly, hurt.
“I take it you’re not in your own room, needing this rubbing alcohol,” Greta said.
I sighed. “No. The room next door. Max Whitstone’s room. He has a . . . guest. . . who got Silly Putty in her hair, and—”
“I’ll find the rubbing alcohol,” Greta snapped, and I could just see her making the hear-no-evil, see-no-evil gestures.
21
Amazingly, rubbing alcohol really is the secret to getting Silly Putty out of clothes. Or hair.
Truth be told, though, I’d never tried it in hair before that night. I just hoped it would work.
I convinced Cherry to release herself from the minifridge and did my best not to gasp when I saw the bright green Silly Putty mashed into the right side of her hair, thoroughly entangled up to her scalp. Then I gave Cherry my room key and told her to gather up her things and to sit on my bed and leave my room door ajar.
I waited outside my door for Greta, who soon brought a bottle of rubbing alcohol from her own medicine cabinet.
Max had shut the door to his room. But after Greta handed the rubbing alcohol to me, she banged on his door. He answered and I paused—just for a moment—on the threshold to my room and heard Greta say something about “extra charges if Silly Putty was found ground into the sheets or carpet.”
She turned and marched off, ignoring Max as he stood in the door, calling, “it’s not my fault.”
He looked at me as Greta rounded the corner,
his expression pleading. “Tell Cherry I’m sorry and she can come back over here after you take care of the Silly Putty.”
I snorted. “Not likely,” I said.
Then I went into my room and had Cherry bend over the sink, while I alternated pouring rubbing alcohol onto the Silly Putty in her hair, and working it out as it turned crumbly and lost its stickiness. It’s harder to get Silly Putty out of hair than cloth, so every now and then I pulled a little too hard, and Cherry moaned and sniffled.
By and by I got all of the Silly Putty out of Cherry’s hair. While she took a shower, I straightened up the room, tossing out the crab Rangoon container and chip bags. My stomach hurt and I wished for antacid, but I wasn’t about to call poor Greta and Luke to have them raid their medicine cabinet on my behalf for yet a third time that night.
By the time Cherry finished showering, it was past midnight. I assumed she’d just spend the rest of the night with me and was all set to divvy up the bed covers, but she got dressed, grabbed her overnight bag, thanked me for helping her with her hair, and said she was going to Sally’s because there was no way she was going to sleep in a room next to that two-timing, no-good Max.
As she left, I shook my head, not sure who to feel sorrier for, Sally or Cherry. (I had no sympathy for Max.) On the one hand, Sally was about to be awakened by a distraught Cherry. On the other, Sally wouldn’t hold back a bit in letting Cherry know how silly she thought she was for hooking up with Max in the first place.
I crawled into bed, this time with no doubt that I would fall asleep easily, even though my hands still reeked of rubbing alcohol, despite the fact I’d thoroughly washed them with freesia-scented soap. Sure enough, soon the smell of the rubbing alcohol faded as I drifted off to sleep . . . lovely sleep . . .
Sleep that was doomed because it wasn’t dreamless. I’d been drifting in gray nothingness for mere moments when Mrs. Oglevee sauntered into my sleep world.
I moaned, looking at her. She was playing with a cornhusk doll from hell. The doll had a red nub where its head and bonnet should have been. Mrs. Oglevee—who wore a mauve cornhusk apron that matched the doll’s—was talking to the gory-headed doll.
“It’s amazing,” Mrs. Oglevee was saying, “how frequently Josie can just plain miss the point. She was like that in school, too. Why, I recall one time, on an assignment about Ohio history, she—”
“If you have something to say, why don’t you share it with the whole class?” I asked sarcastically.
Mrs. Oglevee looked up from the doll, with a glare that withered my momentary bravado. “You’ve got your nose stuck in this murder and you’re too goofy to follow the main clue the victim herself gave you.” She turned the headless cornhusk doll to face me. Ugh, I thought. “Little Ginny here just finds that appalling,” Mrs. Oglevee added.
I was trying to think of some snappy comeback when a new head bubbled out of the top of the cornhusk doll. “Truly. I did give you very specific directions,” a little voice squeaked.
I gasped, then recovered my wits and realized that the new cornhusk doll face had a little “oh” of a mouth, but thankfully, it was perfectly still.
I glared at Mrs. Oglevee. “Nice trick with ventriloquism.”
She grinned at me. “Thanks. I’ve been taking classes.”
There were classes in . . . wherever? “Summer school?” I asked. I couldn’t resist.
“Don’t be impertinent,” Mrs. Oglevee snapped. “You’re the one who needs to go to summer school. Or maybe pick up the Cliffs Notes to Detecting for Dummies. I doubt you could handle the real book.”
Now, that was an uncalled for insult. Mrs. Oglevee knew perfectly well that I never used Cliffs Notes. I always read the whole book for all my assignments. I’d always loved reading.
“Look,” I said. “I’m worn out and I could use some peaceful sleep. I know the note you’re talking about—”
“Recitation! What does the note say?”
I sighed. She’d just nag me until I quoted the note back to her, word for word. “‘In case anything happens to me, know this: That there is a devil, there is no doubt. But is he trying to get in . . . or trying to get out? Mrs. O will help, If you start from the end, And go to the beginning, to find out.’
“And that’s exactly what I’ve done. Winnie traced Ginny’s background all the way back to when she was married to Dru Purcell—” I was a little disappointed that Mrs. Oglevee didn’t look shocked by this news. She’d been known to go to Dru’s tent revivals every August, pray and swoon and find Jesus all over again, and swear she’d be sweet and nice. That always lasted a few weeks, until the school year started.
But Mrs. Oglevee didn’t look stunned at all. I guess there really are no secrets from those in the hereafter.
I went on. “And I’ve run down every lead I can find, working back from what had to have happened at the corn maze, to her surprise at her tarot reading and whatever she saw in her own crystal ball, to what happened when she first arrived and—”
“Didn’t I teach you there’s more than one way to see things?”
She passed her hand over the cornhusk doll, and the doll turned into a Farmer Barbie, in cute little overalls and a cute little red bandanna, holding a cute little pitchfork. Another pass, and we were back to the cornhusk doll.
“Cute trick,” I said. “I guess you learned that in magic class in summer school. But what do these farm dolls have to do with starting at the end to get to the beginning?”
Mrs. Oglevee sighed and crushed the cornhusk doll, which turned to dust and fell away from her hand. “Fine. If that won’t get my point across, maybe this will.”
She plucked a small, boxy case out of thin air—a makeup case, just like my Aunt Clara’s, just like the one Lenny had described Ginny as having in her rental trunk. I gasped. I’d forgotten about that case, which seemed to have disappeared. At least, the Rhinegolds didn’t recall seeing it when the police were examining Ginny’s room and it wasn’t in the trunk of her rental car . . .
BAM!
The crashing sound broke through my thoughts and suddenly I was awake, looking around the motel room. No Mrs. Oglevee.
Had the sound come from inside my dream or from the real world? For a second I was disoriented—but just for a second—until I realized the motel room’s window had been shattered. A breeze and a gentle wind blew in through the broken windowpanes.
And on the floor lay Ginny’s old hard-side suitcase.
I didn’t open the suitcase myself. I immediately called 911 from the phone on the nightstand and told them a suitcase had been thrown through my window at the Red Horse Motel.
I explained that it was a suitcase I recognized, one that had in fact been stolen from my laundromat earlier in the day—well, the previous day, since it was now nearing one in the morning on Sunday—but my explanation didn’t seem to
calm the dispatcher, who had a distinct and rising note of alarm in her voice as she told me to not touch the suitcase.
Which I didn’t, but fifteen minutes later, I was in the passenger seat of a Mason County Sheriff cruiser, where at least I was warm while I waited for a deputy sheriff to come ask me questions. The warmth inside the cruiser made me feel guilty, though, as I stared out at all the other Red Horse Motel guests who were gathered at the far end of the motel parking lot, sleepy-eyed and grumbling and shivering in the October wind, which had gotten stiffer in the wee hours of the morning.
Thanks to the suitcase, we’d been evacuated. It could contain, an emergency worker told us, a bomb. These days, anything like a suitcase or backpack or sack was considered a possible threat. It didn’t matter that there was no reason for anyone to bomb the Red Horse Motel in Paradise, Ohio. Or that I kept trying to explain to someone—anyone—that the suitcase had been Ginny’s, that she’d left it for me, that it had been stolen from my laundromat, that I was more than pretty sure it was meant as some kind of warning to me.
Despite these facts, the situation warranted serious atten
tion, Deputy Rankle had told me as he escorted me to his cruiser. You just never know, these days, he added darkly.
I wished I’d just opened the damned suitcase myself. Then I’d have known it hadn’t been turned into a bomb. A HazMat team from the sheriff’s department wouldn’t be examining the suitcase. All the Red Horse Motel guests would still be sound asleep and the poor Rhinegolds wouldn’t be worried that the motel—which represented their lives as well as their livelihood—was about to blow up.
Unless, of course, the suitcase really had been turned into some sort of bomb. Could someone have wanted me to stop asking questions about Ginny so badly that he—or she—would have made a bomb to silence me? Making such a thing wouldn’t be that hard, after all, with fertilizer and other items for crude bomb-making someone could find on a farm.
Still, someone creating a home-made bomb to silence me seemed unbelievable. But then, the whole weekend had turned into one crisis after another.
The driver’s side opened and Deputy Rankle got in the cruiser. He was a lanky man who looked like the almost-as-handsome brother of Mr. Azure Eyes. He said the HazMat team would know what we were dealing with in a while. Meanwhile, Deputy Rankle had questions. Had I touched or moved anything?
No, I told him, other than to tiptoe around the glass to get to my jacket, which was on the chair by the window. I’d had to shake some glass off the jacket, but then put it on as I left. (As panicked as the suitcase-through-the-window was making me, it was October in Ohio. Plus I didn’t relish the idea of being interviewed while in just my Tweety Bird/kitten print PJ ensemble. I didn’t tell Deputy Rankle that, though.) And of course I’d touched the door while leaving the motel room.
Had I heard anything? he also wanted to know.
Just the glass shattering, which woke me up. I didn’t tell him about Mrs. Oglevee, either.
I wasn’t going to tell him much more than that. After all, I’d already talked to the Paradise Police Department several times about everything—well, most everything—I’d learned about Ginny and the events surrounding her murder.
