Rosemary Remembered (17 page)

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
Nigh
tline.
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.

I pulled into an Exxon station and parked on the shady
side of the building, close to the pay phone. When I stepped out of the car, the dry, scorching air seemed to sear my flesh. It was almost too hot to breathe, and in spite of my dark sunglasses, the sun's laserlike glare, ricocheting off chrome and glass, was beginning to give me a headache. I dialed the shop first, and got Laurel.

"McQuaid called," she said. "He wanted to know if everything was all right with you and Brian." Her voice took on a slightly disapproving tone. "I said you'd just gone across the street."

After McQuaid's comment last night about taking my responsibility to Brian seriously, I hadn't wanted him to know I was playing hooky today — even if Brian was in good hands. But Laurel is a very straight-up person, without a devious bone in her body. She hates to lie.

"Did he leave a message?" I asked.

"He said he'd call back at three. He thinks he's onto something."

Onto something. Did that mean he'd caught up with Jeff? What would happen when he did?

"Have there been any other calls I need to know about?" I asked. "Matt Monroe, from the Springs? Chief Harris?"

"Nope, just McQuaid," Laurel said. "Things have been pretty slow in the store. I've been pulling weeds. Anyway, it's cooler outdoors."

"It's cooler outside than in? Isn't the air conditioner working?"

She made a disgusted noise. "It isn't. I hate to complain, but it's almost ninety in here. Customers come in and go right back out again."

"Call Harold," I said firmly. "Tell him he promised there wouldn't be a second time."

"I did. He sounded cranky, but he said he'd come over this afternoon." She hesitated. "Listen, China, maybe we ought to call my cousin Emily. She took over my uncle's air-conditioning shop over in Lockhart after he died. I know she'd be glad to come."

"Let's see what Harold's got to say for himself first," I replied, and we said good-bye.

I paused and assessed what I'd learned that morning. Not much, when you come right down to it. But sometimes investigative work requires you to pull out the truth bit by tedious bit, like plucking grass out of a thick bed of thyme. Robbins's alibi was definitely holding, although I couldn't rule out the possibility that he had paid somebody to do the job. I once defended a tiny, fragile-looking woman who had hired a large, ugly hit man to do in her co-heir to a sizable chunk of money. On the day of the murder, she was sunning herself in Bermuda. I couldn't accept Robbins's claim to innocence just because he was in San Marcos the night Rosemary was killed. Come to think of it, how many brothers did I know—particularly good-looking ones—who spent entire evenings with their sisters? And it did seem odd that Robbins had done so on the very night his ex-wife was killed. On the other hand, it's impossible to prove a case like that unless the hired killer is caught and implicates his employer.

I glanced at my watch. Nearly noon. Brian and I needed to be back in the shop at three, when McQuaid called. The thought of Brian reminded me that I'd better check on him, and I dialed Campus Security. Sheila had gone over to Data Processing, but Brian was there. He'd just come back from patrol duty with Officer Williams, he informed me importantly, and he couldn't talk now because he had to leave right away to help Officer Mar-ney rob the parking meters. I hung up with a chuckle.

Even if Jacoby could locate Brian, which I doubted, there was no way he was going to grab the boy away from Maximum Maxine. McQuaid could rest easy.

I flipped through the Yellow Pages, looking for the information I needed next. I found it, and went back to the bake-oven that was my car. I had rolled down the windows, but it was still hot enough to grill cheese on the front seat. I started the engine and flipped on the air-conditioning, which blasted me with hot air. Then I drove onto the street, made a rash left turn in front of a UPS truck, and pulled into the Taco Bell drive-thru. The total for my bean burrito and iced tea, including tax, came to one seventy-one. I pushed away the envious thought of McQuaid in Mexico City, no doubt dining on expense-account cabrito and flambeed plantains. This investigation, if that's what you want to call it, was on my nickel.

It took me ten minutes to find the address I was looking for, on Hopkins, close to Bugg Lane. The door sported a red sign that said Rhodes Real Estate — Helping You Find Your Place in the World in large white letters. By now, it was much too hot for slacks and much,
much
too hot for my linen jacket, which stuck to my sweaty back like Saran wrap in a microwave. But I left it on because the blouse underneath was wringing wet and I hadn't worn a bra. A minute later, I was glad, because stepping into the real estate office was like stepping into an igloo. I pulled the damp jacket against me, trying to accustom myself to what felt like a blast from the arctic but which probably wasn't more than a twenty-degree temperature drop.

There were three gray metal desks in the narrow room, two to my right, both empty, and one ten paces in front of me, opposite the door I'd just entered. This one was occupied by a woman in her mid-twenties who was simultaneously talking into a telephone, consulting a card file, and checking something in a thick multiple-listing book. She threw me an I'U-get-to-you-in-a-minute smile and motioned toward a turquoise vinyl-covered chair beside a small table littered with real estate brochures. Behind the chair was a four-foot-high green plastic barrel cactus in a terra-cotta pot. On the floor in front of the chair lay a dirty Navajo rug. On the wall beside it was a gold-framed print of an Indian woman weaving a basket. The cactus, the rug, and the print were the only decorative touches in the otherwise generic room. The windows wore white mini-blinds, the floor was scuffed green tile that hadn't been waxed in recent memory, and the dingy walls were papered with photographs of houses, commercial buildings, and ranch property.

Instead of taking the chair, I walked over to the wall nearest the desk and pretended a consuming interest in an immaculate wh brk 3-2-2 ranch w/lg frml dining, hdwd floors, WBFP, cvd patio, drapes, curtains, appliances, $77,500, MUST SEE!!!! While I contemplated the out-of-focus photograph of the wh brk ranch, I was listening to the woman, whose boy-cropped brown hair would have frustrated DeAnne no end. You can learn a lot by watching people when they're on the phone, even when you have no interest in the conversation itself.

The woman was young and pretty, with a wide forehead, thick lashes, and dark eyes. But her voice was high-pitched and harried, her mouth was pinched, and her dress—a khaki-colored shirtwaist with epaulets and a wide plastic belt —cast a sallow shadow on her face. She was explaining in a pseudo-apologetic tone, apparently to an agent from another real estate firm, that Howard had already put down a contract on eight-oh-eight Macomb and she was ninety-nine percent sure the owner had al-