Murder on a Bad Hair Day (19 page)

“Just a few clothes. These are Glynn’s.” Claire parked in a space marked “Owner” and we got out. It had only been a few days since I had been there, but Christmas decorations had sprung up on the tiny lawns like mushrooms. “I can’t believe it’s almost Christmas,” Claire said.

“Do you know about Mortal Combat?” I asked.

Claire turned and gave me a puzzled, almost frightened look.

“It’s a TV game,” I hastened to explain. “My ten-year-old grandson wants it for Christmas and I was worried about how violent it is.”

“Give him one of those things that projects the night sky on his ceiling. All you have to do is put in the date and where you are.”

“That’s a wonderful idea, Claire.” I meant it.

“My husband had one. He loved it.”

It was the first time I had heard her mention her husband, and it surprised me. She reached forward and put the key in the lock. “Well, here goes.” She stepped across the threshold.

The shock value was gone for me. The stuffing pouring
out of the sofa was just that. Cotton. Claire and I stopped and looked around.

“Can I help you do something?” I asked.

“Recommend a good upholsterer.” She stepped over to the sofa and ran her hand over one of the cuts. “Why on God’s earth would anybody do this?”

“I don’t know, Claire.” And I didn’t.

She came back to the door and ran her hand over the hole the knife had sliced in the door. “Damn,” she whispered. “Damn.”

“Are you all right?” I asked. “I can go upstairs and get you some things. Just tell me what you want.”

“I’m okay. I’m not going to pass out on you again, Mrs. Hollowell.”

She did seem to be okay. She backed away from the door and eyed the knife mark. She walked toward it again, stood by it, measuring it against her body. “There’s something wrong here,” she said.

I agreed that there was a lot wrong.

“No. Wait a minute.” Claire went up a couple of steps, turned, and came back to the door. She held out her hand as if she were reaching for the doorknob. She shook her head, turned, and went back up the steps.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“There’s something wrong,” she repeated, coming back down the steps and reaching for the door again.

“You want to clue me in?” I asked after Claire had repeated this action several times.

“The knife slice is wrong. Look at it.”

I went over to the door and looked at the cut. It was on the left side of the door, and when I stepped close to it, I realized a knife plunged at this angle would hit me in the chest. “Lord!” I said, shuddering.

“But look.” Claire went up the steps again. “Come up here, Mrs. Hollowell.”

I followed her, wondering what in the world she was doing.

“Okay,” she said. “Get two or three steps above me.”
She waited. “Now watch. I’m running down the steps and you’re chasing me with a knife.” She ran down the steps and lunged for the door, jerking it open. I stood on the steps and watched her.

She came back up the steps. “Now, this time you follow me and try to stab me.”

“This gives me the creeps,” I said.

“Please, Mrs. Hollowell. You’ll see what I mean.”

“What kind of knife was it? You remember?”

“A big one.”

I raised my arm up. “Okay. But this better prove something.”

“Just chase me and try to stab me. Okay? Here I go.” Claire dashed down the steps and opened the door. I was still on the steps when she turned around.

“Let’s try it again,” I said. It was amazing the effect the imaginary knife was having on me. I felt like Lady Macbeth.

“You want me to chase you?” she asked.

“No. I’ll do it. Come on back.”

Down the steps we went. Claire jerked open the door and I jammed my fist into it.

“Shit,” I said, waving my throbbing hand in the air.

“Where did you hit it?” Claire asked.

“On the door.”

“I meant where did you hit the door?”

“I don’t know. You got any ice?”

“In the refrigerator.” Claire stood back and studied the door again. “I know what. I’ll get a crayon. You can use that and we can tell exactly where you hit.”

“I may have a broken hand.” I looked to see if it was swelling. It was.

“I’ll get the crayon,” Claire said, darting toward the kitchen. She was beginning to remind me a lot of Mary Alice.

I was watching my hand puff up when Claire came back. “Okay, let’s do it again. And this time hit the door with the crayon, Mrs. Hollowell.”

“Run fast,” I said.

This time I was right behind her when she opened the door. The crayon broke, but I protected my injured hand.

Claire stuck her head inside. “Where’s the mark?”

“Right here. What are you trying to prove?”

“How far is the crayon mark from the knife slice?”

“A couple of feet to the right.”

“And angled because the door was opening against it.” Claire studied the red slash.

“So?”

“Mrs. Hollowell, I’m running. There’s a man or a big woman behind me with a knife. What looked like a butcher knife. I jerk open the door and he lunges. Does the knife hit on the left side of the door or even in the middle?”

“It could,” I said. “It would depend on how far he was from you.”

“But it would splinter. The door was being slammed back, remember. The cut would have angled just like the crayon did. Now look at that knife cut.”

I did. It looked deep, but it was straight with smooth edges.

“Someone stuck that knife straight in,” Claire said.

“I don’t understand,” I said.

“I don’t either.” Claire sat on the steps and studied the door. I sat down beside her, cradling the hurt hand in the other. “Did you hurt your hand?” she asked.

I nodded. “Banged it into the door.”

“I’ll get you some ice,” Claire said. She got up, still looking at the door. “You mind if we go through this one more time, though?” She picked the crayon up and held it out to me.

I shook my head. “This time you’re the killer.”

We got into position and I dashed down the steps, jerked the door open, and barreled right into Officer Bo Mitchell.
Bam
went the crayon against the door as Bo and I clutched each other, staggering, finally ending up in a sasanqua bush by the side of the stoop.

“Oh, God,” Claire said. “Are y’all all right?” She helped me up first since I was on top. Bo Mitchell was lying down
in the sasanqua on her back. White petals from the December-blooming shrub drifted onto her dark blue uniform.

“Y’all pull me out,” she said. “I’m stuck.”

Claire pulled and I pushed. Sasanquas, members of the camellia family, may look delicate, but they are dense bushes with strong limbs.

“What the hell!” Bo Mitchell said, coming to her feet.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “Are you all right?”

“I think so. I expect that bush has bought it, though.”

“I’m just glad that’s where you landed,” Claire said. “At least it cushioned you.”

“Some cushion.” Bo Mitchell looked at a long ugly scratch on her hand.

“Come on in. Let me put something on that,” Claire said.

“I’d like some ice,” I said. “For my hand.”

We trooped into the foyer and toward the kitchen.

“What kind of game are you playing?” Bo Mitchell asked.

Claire and I looked at each other. “We don’t think the knife mark in the door is right. The angle,” she said.

“You’re right,” Bo agreed. “We noticed that right off. You got any Bactine?”

“Neosporin.” Claire took the yellow tube from a drawer and handed it to Bo with a paper towel to wrap around her bleeding scratch. “Well, what do you think about it? The knife stab?”

Bo and I pulled out white ice-cream parlor chairs and sat at a glass-topped table.

“Somebody came at that door straight on,” Bo said. “Not while the door was opening.”

“That’s what I think, too,” Claire said. “What do you think it means?”

“Somebody was trying to kill the door?”

Claire brought me a dish towel and a bowl of ice. In the all-white kitchen, a huge asparagus fern was beginning to lose its needles because it hadn’t been misted. This room had escaped the vandalism. “Y’all want some Pepsi?” Claire asked. “Diet.”

“That would be nice,” I said. I plunged my hand gingerly into the ice. It made it hurt worse. “I think I’ve broken my hand,” I told Bo.

“Out in that bush? Couldn’t have.”

“I was hitting the door while Claire ran through it. I mis-judged.”

“I do that a lot.” Bo studied her scratch.

“Here you go.” Claire put glasses and napkins before us. Then she brought her own glass over and pulled out a chair.

She didn’t beat around the bush. “Somebody tried to kill the door?” She looked straight at Bo.

“You got a better answer?” Bo downed about half of her Pepsi in one gulp. “Umm. That hits the spot.”

“They were after me,” Claire said. “I saw the knife, a big one. I heard it hit the door.”

“It was a big one, all right. A butcher knife. We found it in that flower bush Mrs. Hollowell knocked me ass-over-end into.”

“You found the knife?” Claire’s voice was slightly shaky.

“Yep. You’re not fixing to faint on us again, are you?”

“No, I’m fine.”

“Well, drink some of that Pepsi. There’s something else I’ve got to say.”

Claire obediently drank. “What?” she asked.

“The only fingerprints on it were yours. It was the right knife, too. It’s easy to check cuts in wood.”

I looked at the two women and at the asparagus fern. “That plant’s in bad shape,” I said. “Where’s your mister?”

“Under the sink.” Claire took another drink of Pepsi. “You think I stabbed my own door?”

“Looks that way, doesn’t it?”

I got up and headed for the sink.

“And maybe I ripped up all my furniture?” Claire motioned toward the hall.

I filled the mister with water.

“Could be,” Bo said.

“But why on earth would I do that?”

Bo shrugged. “I thought maybe you could tell me. It
would be convenient, wouldn’t it, if we thought the same person who killed your cousin Mercy was after you, too.”

I started spraying the fern with my left hand. Damn, I hoped I didn’t have any broken bones.

“But that’s crazy!” Claire said.

“Sure is.”

I felt the soil around the plant. It needed watering as well as misting. I went to the cabinet, found a glass, filled it with water, and poured it over the plant.

“Am I going to need a lawyer?” Claire asked.

“Honey, everybody needs a good lawyer if they can find one.” Bo drank the rest of her Pepsi in one long swallow and pushed her chair back. “I’ve got to go catch the bad guys,” she said. “You gonna be here?”

“I’ll be out at Yvonne and James Butler’s.”

“You know the number?”

Claire gave it to her and Bo wrote it in a small notebook.

“Thanks. Now I’m just gonna let myself out. Okay?”

I followed Bo down the hall, though. “Are you saying Claire is a suspect in Mercy’s murder?” I asked.

“Mrs. Hollowell, I said what I said. You have a good day, now. I know a good orthopedic doctor you need one.”

“Thanks.”

When I got back to the kitchen, Claire was misting the asparagus fern. “Damn,” she said. “Damn.”

My feelings exactly.

I
sat down at the kitchen table and put my hand back in the bowl of ice. Pain shot up my arm. How the hell was I going to explain this to a doctor? Or to Fred? I could imagine the expression on his face when I told him I had been chasing Claire Moon with an imaginary knife and bashed my hand into a very solid door. His eyebrows would go up and his ears would flatten against his head like they do when he gets angry and amazed at the same time. Mary Alice calls it his pit bull look. She’s seen it a lot and admires it, even tries to copy it—without success, since she can’t wiggle her ears, which is the whole secret. Thank God. The two of them pit bulling at each other would not be good for the family’s nerves.

I watched Claire misting and watering the plant I had just misted and watered. She got the Dustbuster and vacuumed up the needles. Then she wiped the white counter, put Bo Mitchell’s glass in the dishwasher, and angled the venetian blind so the light was just right. In her black outfit, moving around the white kitchen, she was like a shadow someone had lost. I tried to remember in which children’s story someone was looking for his lost shadow.
Peter Pan
?

“The thing is,” she said, startling me, “I was the one who was alone at the gallery most of the afternoon before
Mercy was killed. I was the one with every opportunity to tamper with the hair spray. So let’s face it, if nobody tried to kill me, if I staged all this”—she waved her hand toward the rest of the house—“that makes me the A-number-one suspect. Right?” She came over and pulled out a chair and sat down. “Right?”

“Maybe,” I said. “Maybe not.” I took my hand from the ice for a moment and checked the swelling. “Seems to me if Bo Mitchell were really suspicious, she’d have taken you in for questioning. I think she was just trolling.”

“I think I ought to talk to a lawyer, though. What did you say your niece’s name is?”

“Debbie Nachman. She’s Mary Alice’s daughter. And it probably would be a good idea to call her. Or some other lawyer.”

Claire propped her elbows on the glass tabletop and cupped her chin in her palms. “I’m so tired,” she said.

She looked it. Bo Mitchell’s visit had brought back the lines between Claire’s eyes as well as the dark circles underneath.

“Let me help you get your things,” I offered. “And why don’t you let one of the twins drive you down to the Butlers’?”

Claire shook her head. “I’m all right.”

The phone rang and we both jumped. “The machine will get it,” Claire said.

“Are you there, Claire?” It was one of the twins’ voices. “If you are, please answer.”

Claire shrugged, got up, and went to the phone. “Hey, Glynnie,” she said.

I examined my swollen hand and listened to the one-sided conversation. No, she was not alone. Mrs. Hollowell was with her. And yes, she would have the rental car back soon, and sure, her car was fine, in the garage, and Glynnie was right. She hadn’t been thinking.

“I should have brought one of the twins with me,” she said, coming back to the table. “That way, I could have picked up my car. My mind was on a dozen other things.”

I could have offered to drive her car to the hotel, but all I wanted to do was get home.

“You got any aspirin?” I asked.

“Sure.” Claire reached into the cabinet and handed me a bottle. “You want some more Pepsi?”

I shook my head no and downed three aspirin while Claire sat back down.

“I really need to get home,” I said.

“I’ll go get my stuff.” But the declaration wasn’t followed by action. Instead, Claire leaned back and looked out of the window. “My husband was an artist, Mrs. Hollowell.”

I had missed Claire’s thought processes that had brought her to her husband, but it was part of her life I had wondered about, so I dipped my hand back into the ice and listened.

“He was a brilliant caricaturist. That’s how I met him. We both had summer jobs at Disney World. His was drawing caricatures and mine was parading and working the concessions. We ended up in California when he got a job as an animator for Disney Studios. We really thought we had it made.” Claire shrugged. “And then he died.”

“What happened?”

“Three teenagers shot him on the freeway. They said he cut in front of them.”

“My God!”

Claire turned and looked at me. “I had a total breakdown. If it hadn’t been for Thurman and Mercy, I don’t know what would have happened to me. They did everything, including making arrangements for me to be hospitalized for several months.”

I reached over and touched her arm. “I’m so sorry.”

“So am I, Mrs. Hollowell. And now Mercy’s dead, and it looks like I’ve slipped a couple of cogs again, from the looks of this house and my ending up in the hospital in shock. You think the police aren’t putting two and two together?”

“Not if they don’t add up to four. Claire, there are millions of people who have had help for emotional problems, just like there are millions who have been treated for ulcers. Both are painful and both treatable. Give the police a little credit.
They’re not going to charge you with a crime because you were once hospitalized for psychiatric treatment.”

Claire sighed. “You’re right. It’s just that things are finally getting to me. Like Mercy’s death.” She pushed her chair back. “I’ll go get my things.”

I took my hand from the ice, wrapped it in the dish towel, and followed her down the hall.

“This makes me sick,” she said, pointing to the ripped furniture. “Did he get to the bedrooms, too?”

“Yes. He sprayed paint on the walls up there.”

“That’s what he was doing when I came in, wasn’t it?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“And he heard me come in,” Claire continued. She paused at the bottom of the steps.

“I’ll come upstairs with you,” I said. “It’s not very pretty.”

In the master bedroom, the giant red “whore” above the bed was as shocking as it had been the first time I saw it. Part of the effect was caused by the fact that the paint had run, making it look as if it were written in blood that was still wet and dripping.

Claire clasped her hands to her mouth.

“Are you all right?” I asked.

Her answer was a dash to the bathroom.

I glanced around the room. “You will die” was written on a side wall in blue paint. It had been done in cursive with the “You” much larger than the other two words since, apparently, the painter realized he was going to run out of wall. The bottom loop of the “Y” was small and slanted toward the left. Some handwriting expert could do a lot with this, I thought. But surely Bo Mitchell and her cohorts had already thought of that.

The sounds coming from the bathroom didn’t give me any hope that Claire would be out momentarily. I wandered into the other bedroom, remembering that there had been even more graffiti in there than in the master bedroom. In this room, the painter hadn’t even bothered to write words. Slashes of red, blue, and green paint streaked across the wall,
crisscrossing, looping. And then the small pastoral painting that the vandal had included in all of this madness. I got down on my knees, pushed my bifocals toward the end of my nose, and studied it again.

The light was better this time, so I could make out more details. A redheaded woman sat in a field painting three pictures, all of them the same, a dark-haired woman lying down. Holding something?

I needed more light. I looked into Claire’s bedroom, but the bathroom door was still shut. Surely, though, there would be a flashlight in a kitchen drawer or in the garage.

There was. Claire’s “junk” drawer was exactly the same as mine, the small one to the right of the sink. I picked up a yellow flashlight and checked to see if it worked. It did. As I closed the drawer, though, I saw exactly what I needed, a small lighted magnifying glass, exactly like the one Fred had, lying on top of the telephone book. So Claire was soon going to need reading glasses. Or already did.

I took both the flashlight and magnifying glass back upstairs.

“Feeling better?” I asked Claire, who was standing in the middle of her bedroom.

“I guess so. Did they do the same thing to the other room?”

“Yes.”

“Dear Lord.” She noticed the flashlight. “What are you doing?”

“Looking at something in here. You want to see it?”

“No, thanks. I just want to get out of here.” She opened a drawer and took out some lingerie. “This won’t take a minute.”

“You need me, call.” I went into the other room and knelt down to the picture again. Somehow I knew this was important. The slashes of paint and even the words had taken only a few minutes, but this small painting had taken time. And some skill. I turned on the flashlight and propped it against a small wicker table so it would shine directly on
the picture. Then I turned on the magnifying glass.

It could only be Mercy who sat in the field painting the three canvases. She was turned toward the farthest left of the three paintings so her face was shown in profile. On each canvas she had painted Claire or one of the twins. The paintings were identical, though. Lying on a bier, a black-haired woman dressed in a white gown clasped a white flower in her hand. Were the women dead? I held the magnifying glass closer, but there were no features on the faces.

I studied the picture, thinking it had to mean something. But what? Was the silver beneath the figures Mercy was painting water? Were they on a river? And was that a castle in the background? The Mercy figure was dressed in a long, flowing blue robe, very royal.

Okay. I backed up and started over again. It was a picture of Mercy painting three pictures which seemed to be of Claire and the twins. Now, why would someone who had come in to tear the place up take the time to do this?

Okay again. It was a message. Mercy wanted the Needham girls dead. But Mercy, supposedly, was already dead, or dying, when this was painted. Wrong message. Or maybe Mercy had come out before the gallery opening and done this. It was possible but didn’t make much sense.

“I’m ready,” Claire called from the hall. “I’ll wait for you outside. I’ve got to get some fresh air.”

“I’m coming.” I reached into my purse, found an envelope, and did a crude sketch of the painting on the back of it. Very crude. I also scribbled a few notes such as “white flower” so I wouldn’t forget.

Claire was sitting on the steps when I came out. “What did you find in there?” she asked.

I told her about the picture and showed her my sketch. “It’s lost a lot in the translation,” I said. “Don’t you want to come look at it?”

She shivered. “I’ve seen more than enough. Lots more.”

“You’re right. You need to get some rest. The police will work on this.”

“I just hope they leave me alone. I don’t have a thing to tell them.” She locked the door and we started toward the car. “How’s your hand?”

“The aspirin’s making it feel better. I don’t think anything’s broken.”

“Well, thank goodness for that.” She tossed an overnight bag into the backseat.

“Claire?” I asked as she started the car. “When Officer Mitchell told us Mercy was dead, you said, ‘They finally got to Mercy.’ You remember that?”

“No, but I have a good idea what I was talking about. There are several people in Alabama who have made a very good living dealing in Outsider art. They buy it for nothing and take it to New York or Chicago. I know Mercy got several threatening calls. They were scared the artists would find out how much their work is really worth.”

“Threatening?”

“Not enough to scare Mercy. She just told them to go to hell. It probably didn’t amount to anything.”

“Probably not.” We rode along in silence for a few minutes. “Do you still have some of your husband’s work?” I asked.

“I have a lot of it. Someday he’ll have a showing at a gallery.”

“What was his name?” I asked.

“Fred. His name was Fred.”

“Fred,” I said. “His name was Fred.” Bonnie Blue, Frances Zata, Mary Alice, and I had just finished a wonderful chicken-and-tortellini salad, a take-out from Vincent’s Market, I thought, until Mary Alice gave the credit to Henry Lamont, her semi-son-in-law, donor to the UAB sperm bank and therefore possible father of her granddaughters, and soon to be graduate of the Jefferson State Junior College School of Culinary Arts.

“And just shot in cold blood driving down the interstate.” Frances shook her head. “I swear, that child’s had more than her share.”

Mary Alice got up, took the dinner plates, and brought in some tiny, flaky tarts and four small plates. “Raspberry,” she said. “Help yourself. Now, who wants regular and who wants decaf?”

“Decaf,” we chorused.

Bonnie Blue groaned as she bit into a tart. “Oh, my. These are so good they could make my feet stop hurting. Henry do these, too?”

“He did it all.”

“You tell Debbie I said marry that boy tomorrow if not sooner.” Bonnie Blue reached for another tart.

Sister’s house looked beautiful. We were eating at a small table she had set up in the den, if you can call such a huge room a den. Through French doors that opened onto a terrace overlooking the whole city, we could see two lighted Christmas trees.