You Can't Get Blood Out of Shag Carpet: A Study Club Cozy Murder Mystery (The Study Club Mysteries Book 1)

by Juliette Harper

  “Philpott’s a radical, pure and simple,” Mae Ella declared, her mouth set in a firm line. “He’s sitting right in the middle of LBJ country and doesn’t have the good manners to keep his mouth shut. He doesn’t support the boys in Vietnam. And, well, I hate to say this, but I hear he sympathizes with that Martin Luther King.”

  Wilma cleared her throat. “Now, Mae Ella, first off, Lyndon is a Democrat, too, and what’s happening to those kids down south isn’t right. There’s no call to be turning fire hoses and police dogs on people.”

  “Harumph,” Mae Ella snorted. “I didn’t say there was, but that doesn’t mean we’ve got to turn everything over to radicals and communists. Lyndon is the right kind of Democrat; he doesn’t like the Kennedys either.”

  “Oh, dear Lord,” Clara said, “please do not get her started on the communists and the Kennedys. Next thing you know, she’ll be ranting about that moron Joe McCarthy.”

  “You just don’t understand the global conspiracy to bring down the American way of life, Clara,” Mae Ella insisted. “You know perfectly well those Kennedy boys are just working for the Pope.”

  “For God’s sake, Mae Ella,” Sugar said, “the Pope doesn’t have anything to do with communism. For one thing, folks over in Russia don’t believe in God, and for another, there’s enough Catholics in Texas to make Boston look Baptist.”

  “My point,” Mae Ella said, “is that they’re all un-American.”

  “Well, the communists do live in Russia,” Wanda Jean offered helpfully. “And doesn’t the Pope live in Italy or someplace like that? And our Catholics are mainly from Mexico, so of course they’re all un-American.”

  The other four women at the table just looked at her for a silent moment, and then Clara said, a little too brightly, “Well, alright then. Let’s get back to Millard Philpott. For whatever reason, the man is just an odd duck. Did Hilton ever say anything about being in his house, Wanda Jean?”

  Wanda Jean thought for a moment and then said, “Hilton did mention that Millard reads some strange books.”

  “Like what?” Clara asked, her pen poised in mid-air.

  “Something called Rosemary’s Baby, about . . .” Wanda Jean lowered her voice and whispered, “devil worship. And then one called The Naked Ape.”

  “He’s reading something about nekkid animals?” Sugar asked, frowning. “Don’t you think it’d be stranger if he was reading something about monkeys running around in clothes?”

  “I read The Naked Ape,” Wilma said. “It’s about . . .” She stuttered to a stop and set her mouth again. “Never mind. It’s something you all don’t want to talk about.”

  Mae Ella fixed her with a suspicious glare. “It’s that evolution nonsense, isn’t it?” she demanded. “All that foolishness about man descending from the apes?”

  “Sister,” Clara interrupted, “you can believe whatever you want to, but I dare you to take a good look around at our next family reunion and tell me you don’t see some potential in that idea.”

  Mae Ella started to say something, but Clara held her hand up. “That’s enough. We’re not getting into politics or religion amongst ourselves. Every bit of it is just fighting words. Who else is on the list?”

  “The Baptist preacher,” Mae Ella said, “so we know that’s not a problem . . .”

  “Uh, well,” Wanda Jean stammered.

  “You are not planning on telling me anything bad about Brother Bob, are you?” Mae Ella said, skewering Wanda Jean with a furious and devoutly Baptist glare.

  “I wouldn’t say bad,” Wanda Jean hedged. “It’s just that Hilton caught Brother Bob and Mrs. Brother Bob . . . well . . . dancing.”

  A collective gasp went up around the table. Growing pot and supporting the Kennedys was one thing, but this latest was just too much. Sugar had to swallow twice before she said, “Hilton caught the Baptist preacher dancing? With music and everything?”

  “Ernest Tubb,” Wanda Jean said mournfully, “Walking the Floor Over You.”

  “The Baptist preacher was dancing to honky tonk music?” Mae Ella said, turning pale. “I just can’t accept this. Hilton must have been mistaken.”

  “It was in the privacy of their own home,” Wanda Jean offered.

  “Dancing to honky tonk music in the Baptist parsonage,” Mae Ella said. “I may need to lay down.”

  “For God’s sake, Sister, get ahold of yourself,” Clara said. “You were raised Methodist. You didn’t get nearly so dyed-in-the-wool until you married Cletus. Who else is on the list?”

  “As much as I hate to admit it,” Wanda Jean said, “Hilton sprayed over at Leroy Taylor’s.”

  “God,” Wilma said. “Did Hilton ever see Leroy hit Lura Belle?”

  “No,” Wanda Jean said, “but Leroy fired Hilton last month.”

  Clara frowned. “What for?”

  “Leroy called Lura Bella something awful in front of Hilton and shoved her out of the way,” Wanda Jean said. “She fell down and Hilton helped her up and told Leroy he needed to learn how to treat his wife better.”

  “I bet that went over like the kerosene radio,” Mae Ella said.

  “What was worse is that I saw Lura Belle in the grocery store the next day and she had a black eye and a busted lip,” Wanda Jean said. “I asked her if she was okay, and she told me the handle of the sausage grinder flew up and hit her in the face.”

  “It’s always something like that,” Wilma said. “She comes in the office with broken ribs and cuts and tries to convince us how clumsy she is. Leroy is always with her and he won’t leave the room so Walter can talk to her in private.”

  “I’d sew that sorry SOB up in a sheet and take a baseball bat to him if he was mine,” Clara said darkly.

  “Lura Belle’s too scared,” Wilma said. “You can see it in her eyes. She flinches if Leroy even acts like he’s moving in her direction. He just laughs and says, ‘Just look at how rabbity my little woman is.’”

  “Hilton said we ought to try to help her,” Wanda Jean said. “I told him there wasn’t anything we could do, but he said he was gonna try to think of something anyway.”

  “Did he do anything?” Clara asked. “Did he try to talk to Leroy?”

  “Not that I know of,” Wanda Jean said, “but he was real upset about it.”

  “Okay,” Clara said, “that just leaves the Temples. You say that Hilton said they’re buying all kinds of stuff?”

  Wanda Jean nodded. “He said in just the last two months they’ve gotten one of those fancy new hi-fi stereos, a garbage compactor, one of those fancy bikes that doesn’t go anywhere, a color television, a bean bag chair made out of fake fur, and you all have seen those diamonds Bitsy has on her fingers.”

  “I have indeed,” Sugar said. “Flowers gave Bitsy a manicure last week and almost had to put on her sunglasses to cut the glare from those rocks. Where in the Sam Hill is Tinker Temple getting the money to pay for all that stuff? He’s not selling that many toilets.”

  “He might be,” Clara said. “We had to pay him to come out to the ranch and clean out the septic tank a few weeks ago, and Clint almost had a heart attack when he paid the bill. Tinker told him if he didn’t like the prices, he could hire somebody to drive up from Kerrville. It was all I could do to talk Clint out of going back to us having an outhouse.”

  “Nobody is disputing that Tinker’s prices are higher than a cat’s back,” Mae Ella said, “but that tight little peckerwood wouldn’t give two cents to his own mama if he could get out of it. What’s he doing spending all that money?”

  “Well,” Sugar said, “maybe I can get us an answer on that one. Bitsy has an appointment to get a permanent tomorrow. I can get more out of a woman over a bottle of permanent wave solution than a bartender with a fifth of tequila.”

  “Good,” Clara said, “you see what you kind find out from Bitsy. And I think I’ll talk to Mike Thornton about that problem I’m having with my tomatoes.”

  “What problem?” Mae Ella asked. “You br
ought me two bushels of the dern things on Monday. You could feed Coxey’s Army with this year’s crop.”

  “Sister,” Clara said, “you’re not going to make a very good detective if you can’t come up with stories to hide why you’re asking folks questions. You know I’m raising a bumper crop, but Mike doesn’t know it. I’m sure he’s got some highly scientific theory about blight or wilt or something he’s just dying to share, like organic farming techniques.”

  “What are you gonna do?” Mae Ella asked. “Come right out and ask him what kind of fertilizer he’s using on his marijuana plants?”

  “Well, now,” Clara said. “Don’t put it past me.”

  “You don’t really think that Mike Thornton would have killed Hilton over a few pot plants, do you?” Wilma asked. “I mean seriously, it’s not like that stuff hasn’t been around for years. My granddaddy was addicted to opium; that’s a lot worse than smoking a joint.”

  “It was laudanum with our granddaddy,” Clara said. “Claimed it eased his consumption. I’m not judging what somebody does to get through life, Wilma. And, no, I don’t think Mike is a murderer. But what if he’s selling that stuff to somebody else?”

  “You mean supplying a drug dealer?” Wilma asked. “Out here in the middle of nowhere?”

  “This is 1968,” Clara said. “Drugs are everywhere. Didn’t you see that report on ABC about LSD?”

  “That’s a whole lot different than marijuana, Clara,” Wilma said. “That kind of thing is going on back East with that Timothy Leary guy and out in San Francisco in Haight-Ashbury. Not in the middle of Texas.”

  “What difference does that make?” Mae Ella huffed. “It’s all those hippies and draft dodgers and flower people and such. If it weren’t for those awful beards, you couldn’t tell the boys from the girls. I’m telling you, this world is headed straight to hell in a handbasket.”

  “They’re just young kids who don’t want to go die in a war,” Wilma said. “I understand that, Mae Ella. I don’t agree with how they’re going about it, but this thing over there in Vietnam, it’s not like World War II or Korea.”

  “Wilma Schneider, are you trying to tell me . . .”

  Clara interrupted her sister. “Stop it, Mae Ella. Wilma’s seen things we haven’t. There’s no getting around the fact that Mike Thornton is doing something illegal and Hilton probably knew about it. If pot is all Mike’s got to hide, then he shouldn’t mind answering a few questions.”

  Chapter 6

  Sugar Watson ruled over the Style and Spray with an imperious manner in keeping with the beauty parlor’s status as a local institution. Every morning when she came to work, just the act of unlocking the glass front door and stepping into the building filled Sugar with a sense of pride and authority.

  She’d climbed through the ranks of the business the hard way, starting as a lowly shampoo girl just out of cosmetology school. Owning her own business was the realization of a cherished dream, and Sugar was mindful of her blessings and proud of the hard work it took to realize them.

  When she bought the salon from Dimple, her former boss, Sugar modernized the decor to include the flowing, curved reception desk that greeted her patrons just inside the door and to the left. From there, the ladies walked through the dryer area, liberally studded with potted plants — the plastic kind that could survive the hairspray fumes — and into the salon proper.

  Sugar’s own workstation sat by the front window. From its vantage point, she could keep an eye on the courthouse square while she worked, and simultaneously see the entire front room of the salon in the massive, gleaming mirror. The throne-like styling chair on its swivel base was surrounded with her meticulously arranged tools and supplies, while the shampoo basin on the right was reserved for her exclusive use.

  There were two other hairdressers in her employ, but their duties were relegated to the lesser clients and children, and the chores Sugar delegated, like rinsing out permanent wave solution and styling wigs. “You can always start over with a wig,” Sugar instructed her minions. “They’re not gonna get embarrassed by a bad comb job.”

  This morning, like every morning, Sugar’s first task was to flip on her signature orange Lava Lite, a fixture clearly visible from the street and a signal to the townspeople to indicate the salon was officially open for business. Some things just had to happen on Main Street every day; the milk truck had to come down the hill promptly at 5 o’clock; Victor Leuck had to have the sidewalk in front of the Ford Motor Company swept clean by 6 a.m.; and Sugar Watson had to turn on that lava lamp by 7 on the dot.

  In the amount of time that it took for the lamp’s oil to heat up and the orange blobs to begin transforming themselves, Sugar made a pot of coffee and settled down at the reception desk with a lit cigarette and a fresh crossword puzzle. She liked to come in at least an hour in advance of the first appointment to prepare herself to work her special brand of magic executed with a rat tail comb and a can of Aqua Net. Few people understood the mental discipline required to do good hair.

  Nobody could create more impressive bouffants than Sugar, and her skill with tints and permanent wave solution was the stuff of legends. From the older women with their mildly lavender, blued hair to young high school girls preparing for the prom, Sugar was the final arbiter of what constituted a proper hairdo in the community. It was a responsibility she took seriously. Not only did Sugar preside over carefully back-combed coiffures, she also sat at the center of a web of local intelligence gathering worthy of the CIA.

  This morning she would be perming Bitsy Temple and hopefully gleaning information about the unprecedented level of recent luxury acquisitions in the Temple household. Nobody disputed that plumbing was a lucrative business, but the idea of the parsimonious Tinker Temple parting with that much cash was suspicious. Had Hilton Milton seen something at the Temples’ that could have gotten him killed?

  Sugar chewed on the end of her pencil as she read the next puzzle clue. “W.C. Fields persona.”

  After a moment’s thought, she carefully wrote d-r-u-n-k-a-r-d in the appropriate boxes. The “k” allowed her to figure out j-u-n-k-y-a-r-d, which she also penciled in place with neat letters. When Sugar’s manicurist, Flowers Wilkes, came through the front door surrounded by a cloud of cigarette smoke, Sugar was contemplating “use of irregular tactics to prevent the adoption of a measure.”

  Although Sugar herself smoked unfiltered Camels, which were plenty strong, Flowers was a purist who had been nursing a love affair for Lucky Strikes since World War II. Consequently, she had both a smoker’s cough and a voice like 40 grit sandpaper, which was appropriate since she routinely used her equally abrasive tongue to grind away the slightest hint of hogwash anyone tried to feed her.

  “Morning, Flowers,” Sugar said. “What’s a ten-letter word for an irregular tactic. . .”

  “Filibuster,” Flowers rasped. “And good morning to you, too.”

  “You worked today’s puzzle already,” Sugar said crossly. “How long did it take you?”

  “Fifteen minutes,” Flowers said. “You get drunkard already for W.C. Fields?”

  “Yes,” Sugar said, “and don’t tell me anymore. You’ll ruin it.”

  “I used to love W.C. Fields,” Flowers said, taking a long draw on her Lucky. “And that Mae West? Lord have mercy, that gal has assets.”

  “You’re in a good mood this morning,” Sugar said, counting squares and finishing the word s-a-l-a-c-i-o-u-s.

  “I’ve got a book full of appointments,” Flowers said, taking out her trays of nail polish and setting up her table. “The prospect of making money always puts me in a good mood.”

  “Me, too,” Sugar said. “I’m starting with Bitsy Temple in half an hour. She’s coming in for a perm.”

  “I’m doing her nails after you’re done with her,” Flowers said, emptying her ashtray and using a Kleenex to clean out the residue. “She’ll be here all morning.”

  “Have you noticed those diamonds she’s wearing?” Sugar
asked casually.

  “Who can miss those rocks?” Flowers asked with a snort. “She won’t take her rings off to get a manicure, but then she has a conniption fit worrying I’m gonna get polish on the dang things.”

  “Didn’t she just start wearing those big rings recently?” Sugar asked.

  Flowers stopped examining the state of her Emory boards and fixed Sugar with a pointed stare. “What’s all this sudden interest in Bitsy Temple?”

  For a minute Sugar thought about dodging the question, but in the ten years she’d known Flowers Wilkes, she’d never been able to get anything past the older woman.

  Flowers, who had been doing nails since 1938, had quietly mentored Sugar when she began working at the salon, grooming her to get in good with Dimple. “One of these days, she’s gonna want to sell this place,” Flowers told the young Sugar Watson, “and you’re going to be the one to buy it.”

  When Sugar, wide-eyed at the prospect, had asked why Flowers wanted to help her, the sage manicurist took a drag on her Lucky and said, “Because I am particular about who I work for, and you won’t give me any trouble, will you?”

  Sugar, seeing the wisdom of the alliance, sealed the deal with an earnest “no ma’am” and a beautiful friendship was born. Flowers could read people like a book, a talent that served Sugar well on more than one occasion. The confidences shared at Flowers’ manicure table were sacred within the confines of the shop, but nothing escaped her attention and she withheld nothing from Sugar, a favor Sugar could hardly neglect to return – even at the risk of incurring the wrath of her fellow Study Club officers.

  She briefly related the events of the previous day to Flowers, describing what transpired at the Study Club executive session quickly, but leaving out none of the important details. Flowers listened without comment, periodically igniting the glowing ember of her cigarette with contemplative inhalations of nicotine.