Rosemary Remembered - China Bayles 04

by Susan Wittig Albert

  "So? What happened?"

  He pocketed the lighter. "Rosie told him she was going to quit unless he documented what was bothering her. She wanted more money, too. She felt like she was taking a big risk if she stayed on the account. She thought the IRS might be looking at him, you see. If they tagged him, they'd come after her, too, and her other clients. That's how they keep tax accountants in line." He shook his head. "You've got to give it to Rosie. She would never let herself be blindsided. Not even by somebody she was sleeping with."

  I picked up on it, as he expected. "Did she often sleep with her clients?"

  He flexed his fingers, opening and closing his fist. "Far as I was concerned, what she did on the side was her business. She didn't tell me. She never told me anything. She was a very private person."

  I looked at Robbins, speculating about how much it would take to make this particular man turn violent. One lover, two, three? Another man's baby, when his wife had refused to have his?

  "How long ago was this business with Rhodes?" I asked.

  "Three years, maybe. She dropped the account when he wouldn't come clean. Sure enough, not two months later the Feds busted the guy. He pleaded, and got two years at the federal prison over by Bastrop. It made Rosie nervous. She was afraid Rhodes thought she'd turned him in. Whistle blowers get a cut, you know."

  "Did she turn him in?"

  "She may have. Who knows? I never checked her bank balance." He sat forward in his chair, earnest, candid. "Look. Rosie and I didn't get along, and I probably got mad and pushed her around a little too hard. But I didn't have anything to do with her death, and that's God's truth. You want to dig up some real dirt, go poke around that hotel, talk to the bookkeeper. Or flush Rhodes — he's probably out of prison by now. Either of them had more reason to want her dead than I did." The muscle in his jaw was knotted, and I had a sense of the control he was exerting over his feelings. Grief, was it, or anger, that he was trying to keep a lid on?

  "One more question," I said. "How well do you know Jeff Clark?"

  His lips thinned. "Clark? I don't know the man. Oh, I've seen him at Chamber meetings, and we worked the beer booth at the Pecan Festival last year. But that's the extent of it. I should buddy up to a guy who's screwing my ex-wife?"

  "You haven't visited him in his office?"

  He shook his head, then chuckled dryly. "I have been

  up at that hotel, though. Maybe that's what you're thinking of. I took the final papers to Rosie the day the divorce went through." That sour mouth again. "She couldn't be bothered to go to the hearing."

  And that was it. I thanked him, and we stepped out of the smoky office. From Julie, the girl in the off-the-shoulder white blouse, I learned that the bookkeeper who had the hots for Jeff Clark was named Carol Conn ally, and that she rented the apartment next door to Julie's mother. Julie had walked in on a conversation one evening between Connally and her mother. Connally was hysterical because Clark had thrown her over for Rosemary.

  "Really. You'd think somebody her age would be too old for things like that," Julie said, disapproving. She touched a zit on her pretty, dimpled chin.

  "Things like what?"

  "Oh, you know. Falling in love with the boss."

  "How old is Miss Connally?" I asked.

  Julie rearranged the ruffles on her blouse to expose a half inch more of tanned shoulder, seductively sliced by the pale shadow of a swimsuit strap. She slid a moony glance in the direction of Curtis Robbins, who was demonstrating the merit of a particular tennis racket to a pretty blond woman in the middle of the store.

  "Oh, all of thirty-five," she said.

  It was time I was going.

  Chapter Twelve

  To learn humility, one must weed the Thymes.

  Folk saying

  Now I had two reasons to make the half-hour trip to San Marcos: to check out Robbins's alibi and to look up a real estate broker named Howie Rhodes. I accomplished the first in less than thirty minutes by the simple expedient of knocking at 1413 Pecan, across the street from Robbins's sister's house. The door was opened by a tall woman wearing three-inch heels and a black and white vertically striped jumpsuit that drew the eye up and up and up—to the Biggest Hair I'd ever seen.

  To appreciate Big Hair, you have to live in Texas, which is indisputably the Big Hair capital of the civilized world. This fact was documented not long ago by the Wall Street Journal, which reported that something like sixty percent of Dallas women over twenty-five refuse to have any truck with stylists who won't replicate the "Dallas-do." According to legend, this towering scaffold of hair was created when one strike-it-rich Dallas socialite wanted a special hairdo in honor of the oil rig on her ranch. There's also Lubbocks's Dairy-Queen-do—outrageously loose, poufy hair twisted around and around like the swirl of a custard cone; San Antonio's derring-do, hair that's been teased and tousled and moussed until it's reckless and rash and ready to rare up on its hind legs; and of course, the dazzling let's-all-do-it bouffant of our white-haired once and former Governor Ann Richards.

  Big Hair may trace its illustrious roots to Madame de Pompadour, or in more recent eras, to the smoothly backcombed pouf of the young Jacqueline Kennedy or the crowning glory of born-Texan Farrah Fawcett. But if you ask me, the greatest Big Hair of all is found on top of the women of rural Texas, who do it in garage and dining room beauty parlors with names like Hilda's Hair Hut or Rae Lee's Beauty Boudoir. They don't get their hair poufed and pedestaled to please their men. They do it to flip a ladylike bird to Vidal's latest Sassoon bobbsies and Diane Sawyer look-alikes, to assert with pride that they are who they are and that's that, thank you very much.

  The woman who answered the door had that look. She was already tall, maybe five Toot ten or eleven in her heels, and her height was further exaggerated by the vertical black stripes on her white jumpsuit — and her hennaed hair, which towered a foot and a half above her forehead like a Valkyrie's helmet. The total came to something more than seven feet, which for me amounts to a severe crick in the neck. 1 lowered my gaze to her brown eves, which were amused.

  She leaned against the door jamb. "Yeah? Whaddya want?"

  "I wonder," I said, and stopped. I tried again, but couldn't seem to find my voice.

  "Look, honey," she said in a kindly tone, "I know my hair is bigger'n a tumbleweed, that I'm a walkin', talkin' beehive, an' when anybody loses anything, the first place they're gonna look is in my hair." She straightened. "Does that about cover it?"

  I gave her do one more appreciative glance. "Actually,"

  I said, "I was thinking more along the lines of the Towering Inferno. With that color, I mean: red gold, copper highlights. Awesome."

  "I like that," she said, approving. "The Towering Inferno. I really, really like that." She stepped back, held the door open. "You wanna come in? I gotta go to work in a half hour, but you can tell DeAnne what you said. DeAnne's my cousin. She does it up for me." She glanced at my hair, which was straight as a string and damp with sweat, and compassion softened her mouth. "She'll be glad to do yours, too, honey. She ain't proud."

  DeAnne was substantial. She balanced the weight of her buttocks and breasts with a head of golden Big Hair that looked suspiciously like a Dolly Parton wig. In fact, looking closer, I could see a wisp of black hair escaping just forward of her ears, and her bleached eyebrows were dark at the roots. But fake hair or not, DeAnne's sense of humor was every bit as generous as her cousin's, whose name turned out to be Jonelle. I introduced myself, and we adjourned to the kitchen, where Jonelle turned off the sound on a small television that was tuned to a game show, and offered me a doughnut and Folger's instant in a mug that said "Don't Sweat the Small Stuff' on one side and "It's All Small Stuff' on the other.

  DeAnne took a refill on her coffee and gave my hair a long, pitying look. "You really oughta do something," she said, shaking her head. "That gray streak down the side don't look too bad now, but you're gonna get gray all over, and then where'11 you be? Old before yo
ur time, that's where." A chuckle bubbled up like champagne out of her ample chest. "Pretty thing like you, honey, you don't wanna get old."

  Jonelle gave my hair a critical look. "What color would you say it oughtta be, DeAnne?"

  DeAnne scrunched up her mouth and held her head on one side, considering. "I'd say chestnut. Deep chestnut with red gold highlights." She patted my hand. "Bet you've got a man that'll love you chestnut."

  Jonelle wasn't convinced. She reached out and fingered my hair in a kindly way, apparently not as sanguine about the solution as DeAnne. "Well, I'll tell you, DeAnne. If this hair was on my head, I'd go to Wilda's Wig Shoppe and get Wilda to fix me up until I grew it out another oh, ten, twelve inches."

  "You just may be right, sweetie." DeAnne, also examining my hair, was regretful. "There really ain't much to work with. Not yet, anyhoo. Gotta give it time."

  Jonelle favored her cousin with a fond smile and spoke to me. "That's not to say that DeAnne can't fix you up right now, however bad off you are. I always say, when it comes to hair, she is a real Michaelangellinni. So much talent, you wouldn't believe. Give her your hair, and she'll whip it into shape like she was makin' a piece of art." She patted her wiry helmet proudly. "And it stays put, let me tell you, even wnen it rains. Even when I walk in front of the fan at the cafeteria." She made a face, as if she didn't like thinking about the cafeteria. "Luby's, over on the freeway. I used to work at the lunch counter at Wool-worth's, until it closed last year."

  DeAnne nodded. "Well, I for one surely do miss it." She reached delicately for another doughnut. "Since Woolworth's closed, I can't find a bottle of Evening in Paris anywhere."

  "It isn't the same," Jonelle agreed sadly. "At Wool-worth's, I could wear whatever I wanted, but Luby's makes all us girls wear white polyester uniforms and ten-nies. They don't like it if we try to be different."

  I'd bet. But it was time to explain why I was there. I glanced over my shoulder and lowered my voice, as if to be sure we weren't overheard. "I'm investigating a murder case in Pecan Springs," I said, "and I need some information."

  Jonelle and DeAnne immediately forgot about Wool-worth's.

  "A murder case!" Jonelle breathed. "For real?"

  DeAnne was scornful. "That itty bitty town? You're puttin' us on. Nothin' ever happens over there."

  I raised my hand. "Swear to God," I pledged.

  "I got it!" Jonelle snapped her fingers. "The woman who got killed in that truck out in front of her house." She appealed to me. "Shot, wasn't she?"

  "Yes," I said.

  "Drug deal, probably," DeAnne said sagely. "People are crazy for drugs these days."

  Jonelle leaned forward, forehead furrowed, coppery eyebrows knitted together under her edifice of hennaed hair. Her voice was hushed. "Did Louise Daniels have anything to do with that murder?"

  DeAnne stared at her. "Louise? Why I just did her hair last Monday!" She frowned. "No, it was Tuesday. It was the day the lightning came in and blew all my circuits. We had to go to her house to dry and comb out. It took us near an hour with that dinky hand dryer of hers. Louise has got a lot of hair."

  I barged in as DeAnne paused for breath. "What makes you think Louise had anything to do with the murder, Jonelle?"

  "Because I saw a Pecan Springs police car over there towards the end of the week." Jonelle tapped her lips with the orange-enameled tip of a finger and frowned at the Adams Funeral Home calendar hung over the wall phone. "Friday, maybe it was." She seemed to be counting days, ticking them off in the air. "Yeah, it was Friday morning, because you did me that afternoon, DeAnne. I wondered at the time why the police car was there, but I never ran into Louise accidental-like to ask, and I'm not the type to push myself into somebody's house and ask why the police are hangin' around."

  DeAnne and Jonelle looked at me for an explanation of the police car.

  "The police were questioning Ms. Daniels about her brother, Curtis Robbins," I said. "It was his ex-wife who was killed. On the night of the Fourth of July."

  DeAnne's dark eyes grew big and round under her curly gold wig, and her eyebrows rose like the Golden Arches. "An alibi," she said, poking Jonelle's arm with a pointed burgandy fingernail. "They were asking her about his alibi, I'll bet. That's what they do on Murder, She Wrote. The cops always want to know somebody's alibi."

  Jonelle pulled her arm a safe distance away. "Well, if that's all they wanted, they could've come to me. I'd've given him an alibi."

  I looked at her. "You saw Curtis Robbins on the Fourth of July?"

  "I sure as shootin' did," Jonelle said sunnily. "Him and his truck. He runs the sporting goods store over in Pecan Springs, and when he comes to see Louise, he always drives this truck that says Miller's Gun and Sporting Goods on the side. Well, the night of the Fourth, that truck was parked in front of my house. All night. Well, until midnight, anyway," she amended.

  "You're sure of that?" I asked.

  She gave me a disdainful look. "Would I he? My boyfriend Freddy came over that night about seven, after his shift at Luby's. He's the cook there. He brought fried chicken and potato salad and banana cream pie so we could have ourselves a picnic out back and watch the fireworks when it got dark. Gladys and Ray came over from next door and brought watermelon, and we all took our folding chairs up to the roof of the garage and watched."

  "What about the truck?" I asked.

  "It was parked out in front of my house. That's why Freddy had to park in front of Mrs. Trower's."

  "I sure hope Satan didn't take after him," DeAnne said darkly. "That Satan's a devil. Like it says in the Bible, waitin' to see who he can devour."

  Jonelle turned to me to explain. "Mrs. Trower's got this big black rottweiler. He's real bad to nip at folks' trousers, so Freddy was kinda upset at having to park there. A coupla months ago, Satan took the seat out of his best polyester."

  "How come Louise's brother didn't park in front of her house?" DeAnne wanted to know.

  "Because Louise's car was parked there," Jonelle said. "It's been so dry the last couple months that her driveway cracked all to pieces. The concrete man came out last Wednesday and poured her a new slab and told her not to drive on it for a while. She says she's not going to take any chances. She's not ever going to drive on that slab, ever again." She shook her head. "I wouldn't either, if I had to pay what she paid that concrete man. Wouldn't be worth it, to me. I'd just live with the cracks."

  "Maybe she thought she had to fix it," DeAnne said. "My sister-in-law's cousin Opal had bad cracks like that in her driveway and when she went to sell, the appraiser took off some ungodly amount of money, all on account of the driveway. Opal said if she'd of fixed it, she'd of got more for the house."

  "Well, I suppose," Jonelle said judiciously. "But if you

  ask me, there's a racket in there somewheres. Take Freddy, for instance. A couple years back, it hailed and the insurance man came out and told him to go ahead and get a new roof, and lo and behold, the roofer was the insurance man's brother-in-law. Course, it didn't bother Freddy too much, since the insurance company paid it."

  "But that's how come insurance costs so much," DeAnne objected. I cleared my throat, feeling that we were about to get mired in health care, and God knows how long it would take to get us extricated from that one.

  "How late was the Miller's truck parked in front of your house?" I asked Jonelle.

  Jonelle took a large green plastic earring out of an ashtray and delicately inserted the ear wire into the lobe of her left ear. "Well, we watched the fireworks, and after that we went in and watched part of Nightline. But it was about people dying in Africa, so we stopped watching and necked for a while on the sofa and then Freddy went home. When I went out on the porch to tell him goodbye, Louise's brother was getting in the truck to drive it away. A little after midnight, maybe."

  "How do you know it was Louise's brother?"

  "A real detective, ain't you?" Jonelle said. "No stern untoned, so to speak." She slapped her backside with a horsey
laugh, and DeAnne groaned. "Well, it was him, all right. Good-looking guy, dark-haired, fills out his jeans real nice. She introduced me to him once when he came over to fix her washing machine. You see, she'd tried to get the washing machine man to — "

  "Does he visit his sister often?" I interposed hurriedly.

  She gave the question some thought. "Well, no, now that you ask. Don't believe he does. Not evenings, anyway."

  DeAnne was examining a hangnail on her little finger.

  "Brothers don't, do they," she said, thoughtful. "Leastwise, mine doesn't. In fact, it's only on Thanksgiving and Christmas that he — "

  "I'm afraid I really have to be going." I pushed my coffee cup away. "Thanks for your help."

  DeAnne gave me a flamingo-pink plastic comb with "Hair by DeAnne" on one side and her phone number and address on the other. Jonelle accompanied me out onto the vine-shaded porch, dim and cool even though the midday temperature was well up into the nineties.

  "It's been real nice talking to you," she said earnestly. "Some people are scornful of it, you know. Like when people from the college come into the cafeteria. They think if you've got big hair, you're a bimbo. They make tacky remarks right out where a person can hear."

  "Maybe they're just jealous," I said. "Not everybody can have hair like yours."

  "That's true," Jonelle said proudly. She touched a hand to her Big Hair. "That's 'cause they don't have DeAnne to do it up for them."

  In my view, San Marcos isn't half as pretty as Pecan Springs, but you could probably find plenty of San Mar-cans who'd disagree. The town offers a river walk (you don't have to walk—you can also go tubing or canoeing), historical buildings, three golf courses, and an amusement park that features a spring-fed lake with glass-bottomed boats, mermaids, and Ralph the swimming pig, whose swine dive will knock your socks off. Some might be tempted to compare the old hotel behind the amusement park to The Springs Hotel, but I doubt that even Big Chuck, in his wildest dreams of Texas whoopee, would have imagined Ralph the swimming pig.