Murder of a Beauty Shop Queen (7 page)

“No laws against trucks, though,” Rhodes said. He'd heard the complaints before. “Nobody remembered seeing anybody come and go at all?”

“That's right. Couple of 'em said they saw people walking along the street now and then, but they didn't know where they came from or who they were or where they went.”

“And they didn't see anybody parked at the Beauty Shack late yesterday afternoon?”

“If they did, they don't remember it. It wasn't anything unusual for a car or two to be in that lot.”

“That reminds me,” Rhodes said. “Excuse me for a second.”

He picked up his phone and called the towing service the county used and told the man who answered where to pick up Lynn's car.

“Just take it to the impound lot,” he said. “You know where it is.”

He hung up and turned back to Buddy. “Here's something for you.”

He handed him the list of customers and told Buddy what to do.

“If you run into any trouble, just call Hack,” Rhodes said.

“I can handle trouble,” Buddy said. He looked sheepish. “Long as it's not rats.”

“You won't have to worry about that,” Rhodes said.

Buddy shook his head. “I sure hope not. Once a year or so is about all I can take.”

*   *   *

Rhodes had saved Lonnie and Abby for himself. He was sure Sandra had had time to call them or visit them by now, so he left the jail and drove to Lonnie Wallace's house, which was in one of Clearview's newer residential neighborhoods, if “newer” meant twenty or so years old. There hadn't been a lot of building in Clearview lately.

Lonnie's house was the neatest on the block. The walks were edged; the grass was green, watered, and clipped. Rhodes thought about his own lawn, brown and shaggy, and felt a twinge of envy.

Lonnie's driveway looked as if it had been pressure-washed only days ago, the house trim had been painted within the last year, and the flower beds in front looked like something out of a gardening magazine. In fact, the whole place looked a little like a photograph.

Rhodes parked the county car at the curb and walked to the door, which was just as clean as everything else. He almost hated to touch the doorbell button and soil it, but he did.

Chimes rang in the house, and Lonnie came to the door. He was about thirty-five and had lived all his life in Clearview. In fact, he'd grown up only a couple of blocks from Rhodes's house. Rhodes knew his parents and had occasionally seen Lonnie around when he was a kid. He'd read articles about Lonnie in the newspaper when Lonnie was in high school, where he'd been a good student and had won some prizes at the local science fair.

Lonnie was tall and heavy, and he wore jeans cinched with a wide leather belt that sported a big silver buckle. With Lonnie, boots were still in style for manly footwear. His eyes were red, as if he'd been crying. The crying hadn't disturbed his hair, which was dark brown, thick, and werewolf perfect, combed with a clean white part on the left.

“Hello, Sheriff,” Lonnie said. “I guess I should have been expecting you. Come in.”

He opened the door, and Rhodes went inside. Lonnie led him down a short hall to the den. If the house itself was only about twenty years old, the den looked like something from a much earlier era. The 1950s, Rhodes guessed, though he didn't know a lot about furniture. A heavy sofa and matching chair were covered in green fabric with a geometric pattern woven in. Vases on a couple of end tables held cut flowers, and copies of
Newsweek
lay on the coffee table.

“Nice place,” Rhodes said.

“Thank you,” Lonnie said. “I decorated it myself. I bought everything secondhand, well, except for the flowers. Have a seat, Sheriff.”

Rhodes sat on the sofa, and Lonnie sat in the chair.

“You don't think I did it, do you?” Lonnie asked.

“I haven't formed an opinion yet,” Rhodes said. “You have a reason for asking it?”

“I just wondered,” Lonnie said. “I didn't, you know. Kill her, I mean. Lynn and I were the best of friends.” He took a tissue from the pocket of his Western-cut shirt and dabbed at his eyes. “We shared everything. I knew all her secrets, and she knew mine.”

“Then you're just the man I want to talk to,” Rhodes said. “Tell me her secrets.”

Lonnie looked at Rhodes with exaggerated surprise. “You can't mean that.”

“Sure I can.”

“Sheriff, Lynn trusted me, and I trusted her. We promised we'd never tell. Why, if some of the things she knew about me got out…” Lonnie looked at Rhodes. “I don't want to talk about that.”

Rhodes had a pretty good idea what Lonnie was thinking, but he wasn't sure how delicate he had to be in discussing it. He decided that the direct approach might be best.

“Lonnie, I'm pretty sure I know what you mean. It's no big deal.”

Lonnie clutched his tissue. “What's no big deal?”

“Everybody in town knows you're gay.”

Lonnie nearly jumped off his chair. “Who told you that? It's not true. It's malicious gossip. It's slanderous. It's vicious and mean. It's unconscionable.”

Rhodes had to admire the man's vocabulary.

“Lonnie,” he said. “It's okay. Nobody cares.”

Lonnie dabbed at his eyes. “It's because I'm a hairdresser, isn't it. People think a man who's a hairdresser must be gay, like I'm some big cliché out of a bad fifties movie. I should've been a damn truck driver!”

“It's not because you're a hairdresser,” Rhodes told him. “It's not because of anything.”

“Yes, it is. It's because I'm not married. That's it, isn't it. Just because I'm thirty-five and not married, then I must be gay. People can be so mean.”

“Nobody's being mean,” Rhodes said. “Nobody cares. You're just you.”

“Lynn told you, didn't she.” She promised she wouldn't, but she did. That bitch. I ought to—”

The sudden flash of rage surprised Rhodes, and for the first time he wondered if Lonnie might indeed be a suspect.

Lonnie stopped short. “I shouldn't be talking like that. Lynn would never tell anybody. I'm really sorry I said that. I didn't mean it. I'd never do anything to Lynn. You got me all worked up by saying I was gay. I take it all back.”

It was too late for that, but Rhodes nodded in what he hoped was sympathetic agreement. “So you told Lynn?”

“We shared things,” Lonnie said without specifying. “She had problems, too, you know.”

“She did?”

Lonnie got up and went out of the room. When he came back he had a box of tissues. He put it on the coffee table, pulled one out, and dabbed his eyes.

“You know Lynn had problems, Sheriff. Men. She thought I could understand, and I could. So we talked.”

“Now we're back to the secrets,” Rhodes said.

“Are you going to keep mine?”

“Lonnie, it's not a secret. Believe me.”

“I thought it was. I tried to be like everybody else. I thought I had to.”

“Well, you don't.”

“My parents,” Lonnie said.

“They probably know, too,” Rhodes said. “You might want to talk to them about it.”

Lonnie didn't look eager to do that. He said, “Maybe you could talk to them and find out. They're your neighbors.”

“And they're your parents. You're the one to talk to them. They'll be glad you've confided in them.”

“I doubt it.”

“Only one way to find out,” Rhodes said.

“Do you think they know about…”

Lonnie stopped and looked at Rhodes. Rhodes waited.

“… about Jeff?” Lonnie finished after a long pause.

Jeff Tyler owned the building near downtown that had once been the biggest and best hardware store in Blacklin County and probably in the entire area surrounding it. Walmart had come into town, and before too long the hardware store had closed. Rhodes remembered the time some years previously when Elijah Ward, the original owner of the hardware store, had chained himself to the exit doors at Walmart, telling the customers that they could get in but they couldn't get out. Things hadn't ended well for Ward, but that hadn't been Walmart's fault. Not entirely, anyway.

Tyler had bought the old building, done a lot of work on it, and opened an antique store there, selling his own items and things he held on consignment. He wasn't getting rich, by any means, and Rhodes wondered how he managed to stay in business.

Come to think of it, the hardware store was only a couple of blocks from the Beauty Shack. Easy walking distance. It was something to check on later.

“Maybe some people know about Jeff,” Rhodes said.

“We've been very discreet,” Lonnie said. “We never see each other anywhere around here. I don't even cut his hair. Lynn did.”

“Nobody cares about that, Lonnie. You and Jeff could go have a burger at the Dairy Queen tonight, and nobody would notice.”

Lonnie didn't seem convinced, and Rhodes gave up. “Just tell me about Lynn. Secrets don't matter anymore, and some things aren't as secret as we think they are. Sometimes lots of people know already.”

“Obviously,” Lonnie said. “That doesn't make it any more palatable.”

“But there it is,” Rhodes said. “So tell me what you know.”

Lonnie was reluctant at first, but after he got started, the stories came out. There was just one problem, and it was a big one.

Lonnie didn't know any names. Lynn had confided in him, all right, but she hadn't used the names of any of the men she'd told him about. Or any of the women. Lonnie suspected that he knew who some of those were, however, because they had their hair done at the Beauty Shack. Still, he wasn't sure.

“Now if you wanted me to tell you if Mrs. Weeks was a natural redhead or if Mrs. Tongate had any gray in her hair, I could do that,” Lonnie said. “I can't tell you for certain who was jealous of Lynn or who she was having affairs with, though. I could guess, but I just refuse to do that. I don't want to cast suspicion on somebody who's innocent.”

“Just tell me about the ones who might want to kill her,” Rhodes said.

“Oh, nobody would want to do that.” Lonnie had forgotten his grief for the moment, and the tissues stayed unused in their box. He must have forgotten his sudden outburst, too. “The men all loved her and wanted to marry her. They didn't want to kill her. She just toyed with them, you know? She led them on and had a good time, but she never intended to settle down.”

“Some of them must have been married already,” Rhodes said.

“Well, yes, they were, and their wives came to the shop, and a lot of them went to Lynn. She might have played the field, but she could cut hair better than anybody in town. Even me.” Lonnie looked thoughtful. “There were an awful lot of men, now that I think about it. I didn't really think of Lynn as being … promiscuous, but she was. I didn't think of her as being a user, either, but she was that, too.”

He got that thoughtful look again but seemed to have nothing more to say.

“Not a very nice person, then,” Rhodes said.

“I guess not,” Lonnie said, “but we all liked her anyway. She was pretty and funny. She could get away with a lot.”

“Somebody didn't like her,” Rhodes said. He was sure there was something Lonnie wasn't telling him. “Somebody killed her. I really need something specific, Lonnie. Anything you can remember might help.”

“Well, I hate to say it.”

“Go ahead. Nobody will know where I heard it.”

“That's not it. I just feel bad about it. He couldn't be guilty.”

“Maybe he could,” Rhodes said. “You need to tell me who it is we're talking about.”

“Oh, all right,” Lonnie said. “I guess there's only one man in town who has a red Pontiac Solstice convertible. You know who I mean. He's a county commissioner.”

“Mikey Burns,” Rhodes said.

“He's the one,” Lonnie said.

Chapter 7

One of Rhodes's problems was that when he was working on a case, he often forgot to eat lunch. Even so, he never seemed to lose any weight. It didn't seem fair, somehow.

This time, however, he was going to have to eat something. He didn't feel like facing a county commissioner and talking about murder, not on an empty stomach. So he went by the Dairy Queen drive-through and ordered a cheeseburger and a Dr Pepper. He figured that would have all the food groups covered.

He sat in the parking lot to eat, and while he savored the cheeseburger, he tried to imagine what might have happened in the Beauty Shack the previous afternoon.

The scissors on the floor might indicate that Lynn had tried to defend herself. Or she might even have been the aggressor. What if she'd snatched up the scissors and tried to attack someone, someone who then grabbed the hair dryer as a means of defense? It might not be murder at all.

It might have happened the other way, however. Lynn might have grabbed the scissors when someone came after her with the dryer.

It was better not to get too interested in reconstructing things, though, not at this stage of the case. Believing you knew what happened could lead to blind spots in your thinking.

Speaking of thinking, Rhodes wondered if Mikey Burns had been doing any of that when he had parked his little red car in front of Lynn Ashton's house.

Lonnie had gone to the housing addition one spring afternoon to visit a retired history teacher named Nora Fischer, who was very much a stay-at-home. She was eighty years old and lived in the first house that had been built in the addition. While she no longer drove, she was quite able to take care of herself and her small house. She also liked to have visitors, and Lonnie, who'd been in her class when he was in junior high, went by to see her now and then because he enjoyed hearing her stories.

“We talk about the old days,” Lonnie had told Rhodes, “when Clearview was still alive. She says people used to fill the streets of downtown on Saturday nights. All the farmers came to town, and the stores stayed open late for them. It's kind of sad that there aren't any farmers around anymore.”