Tressed to Kill (9 page)

[Sunday]

NO ATTACKS OR BREAK-INS MARRED OUR SLEEP, and Mom and I slept in, getting up barely in time to dress for church. I scrambled into my choir robe only minutes before the service started. I tried to lose myself in the rhythm of the service and our glorious anthem, but the night’s events kept intruding. I’m afraid I heard only snatches of the sermon as I tried to puzzle out who could have thrown the Molotov cocktail. The crime didn’t seem to fit anyone I knew. Simone was the only person I knew of who had a motive—she’d sworn to shut down Violetta’s—but I couldn’t visualize her siphoning gasoline into a bottle. Maybe she’d enlisted her brother’s help? No, judging by the argument I’d overheard at Fagin-Jones, I didn’t think Philip would give Simone fifty cents for a cup of coffee, never mind commit arson for her. Giving it up with a sigh, I concentrated on singing the final hymn.
I caught up with Mom and Althea shaking hands with Reverend Kitchens after the service. He stood, as he always did, under the spreading arms of the huge magnolia tree that arched over the walkway leading to the sanctuary. A gentle wind whisked through the magnolia’s shiny leaves and diffused their rich scent.
“Powerful sermon, Reverend,” Mom told the smiling man.
“It’s one of my favorite texts,” he said. Of medium height, he had shiny black skin and the gentlest brown eyes I’d ever seen. I’d never heard him raise his voice in anger, even when Terrence, his youngest of five sons, brought a guinea pig to church one Sunday and let it loose in the choir loft. The choir hit some notes that Sunday that no composer ever intended.
I nodded my head, although I couldn’t even have named the text the sermon was based on.
“Doralynn’s?” Althea asked, hugging each of us.
“Sure,” we agreed.
Mom filled Althea in on the night’s excitements as we strolled the five blocks to Doralynn’s Café and Bakery, home of the best biscuits in St. Elizabeth. And the stuffed waffles were to die for.
“I want you to move in with me, Vi,” Althea said when Mom finished. “Just until things calm down. What’s next? First, someone kills Constance and now someone’s heaving bombs at your house. What is this town coming to?”
“It wasn’t a bomb,” Mom soothed. “Just a pop bottle with some gasoline. The fire chief said it was probably kids.”
Hmmm. That wasn’t how I remembered it, but I kept quiet. I knew nothing Althea could say would persuade Mom to leave her home.
We reached Doralynn’s before Althea gave up. A St. Elizabeth’s fixture, Doralynn’s was hugely popular with tourists and residents alike. Lots of windows and comfortable décor in blue and white and yellow made it cheery even on the grayest day. This early in May it wasn’t too crowded; anyway, Ruthie Steinmetz, the owner (who thought “Doralynn’s” sounded more Southern than “Ruthie’s”), always saved us a table on Sunday no matter how busy it got. Although the tourists celebrated Doralynn’s as the quintessence of Southern cooking and hospitality, Ruthie was a self-described Jewish grandmother from Germany by way of New Jersey. She’d opened Doralynn’s over twenty years ago, and such was the power of suggestion and savvy marketing that many people believed the charming café on the river walk was a Southern institution. I didn’t know what they made of the cheese blintzes on the menu.
Stella and Rachel waved at us from a table as we entered. I didn’t see Vonda; she must’ve gotten stuck at home with her B&B customers.
“We waited for you to order,” Stella said as we seated ourselves.
On the words, a waitress sailed up, order pad in hand. I didn’t recognize her. Her name tag read “Amber.” She looked to be in her early twenties and had blond hair, a pretty face, and a bosom that gapped the buttons of her blue and white checked blouse. When she asked, “Are you ready to order?” with a New York accent, I figured she must be one of Ruthie’s grandkids, down for the summer break to earn some money and bake on the beach.
“Nah,” she said when I asked. “I’m not related. Ruthie’s been real nice to me, though, letting me wait tables here even when I told her I was looking for something temporary.”
“Just until college starts up again, huh?” Stella said. “I’ll have the banana-nut pancakes.”
Amber noted the order on her pad. She took the rest of our orders efficiently and returned with our iced teas in record time.
Stella reacted much as Althea had to Mom’s news. “Come stay with me, at least until you get the damage repaired,” she said. “You can have Jessie’s room. She can bunk with me.”
“All the damage is on the veranda,” Mom said, awkwardly cutting her waffle with her bandaged hands. “I’m going to call Fred Wilkerson when I get home—I’ll bet he can have it all fixed up by the end of the week.”
“I don’t think it was kids,” Rachel announced through a mouthful of French toast. “The guys that do stuff like that, well, they’re more into tagging than burning stuff up. And the paint fumes have, like, fried their brain cells. I can’t see them coming up with the Molotov-cocktail idea. And if they had thought of it, they’d have made a bunch of ’em and thrown them at teachers’ houses and stuff.”
She had a point. As far as we knew, no other houses or businesses had been Molotov-cocktailed last night. Vandals and teens on a spree seemed to think more was better, whether they were knocking down mailboxes, egging houses, or graffitiing overpasses. Why was my mom the only victim?
I asked her that question as we walked home from the café.
“How would I know, Grace?” she asked. “No one understands the working of a teenage mind. Even you and Alice Rose were a puzzlement to me.”
“It didn’t seem like that to us,” I said, smiling. “Vonda swore you had ESP that time you showed up at her house just when she suggested we play spin the bottle with Trevor and Clay Spelkin.”
“And her daddy grounded her for a month for having boys over when they were out,” she said with a reminiscent smile.
“Well, I don’t think it was kids and I don’t think it was random,” I said as we reached her house. The smell of charred wood was much fainter. The hammock just off the right side of the veranda was untouched and looked inviting. Maybe this afternoon I’d get a book and laze in it for an hour. Absently, I opened the mailbox beside me, its metal painted purple to match the house.
“It’s Sunday,” Mom reminded me.
I ignored her and plucked a folded piece of paper out of the box. No stamp. My name was written on it in capital letters. With suddenly shaking fingers, I unfolded it.
“This is a warning. Stop asking questions. MYOB.” Not surprisingly, there was no signature.
“What’s wrong, Grace?”
I handed her the note.
Just as she gasped, “Oh, good Lord!” a car pulled up and Special Agent Dillon got out. Dressed in jeans, a red knit shirt with a horse logo and “Ashmire Arabians” embroidered over the pocket, and work boots, his clothing looked Sunday-morning relaxed, although his expression was still Monday-morning grim.
“Good morning, ladies,” he said. “First it’s murder, now it’s arson. Is there a felony in this town you’re
not
involved in?”
I thought there might actually be a trace of humor in his voice, but the note bothered me too much for me to respond in kind. As he reached us, I handed it to him.
He read it. “When did you get this?”
“Just now.” I gestured to the mailbox. “But I don’t know when it was left.”
Pulling a transparent baggie from his pocket, he slid the letter in, holding it by one corner. “Can I assume you both handled this,” he asked in a put-upon voice, “and messed up any fingerprints the perp might have left?”
“Excuse me for not expecting to find threats in my mom’s mailbox,” I snapped.
“Would you like to come in for some tea, Special Agent?” Mom asked.
“After I look around,” he said. “That would be nice. Thank you.”
Mom headed toward the house, taking the path around to the back door so she wouldn’t have to walk on the burned veranda. I stuck with Dillon.
“What are you looking for?” I asked.
“Any idea who left that note?” He put his hands in his pocket and climbed the veranda steps.
“Well, it sounds kind of like Del Richardson.” I explained about Richardson’s “free lesson.” “Maybe this is another lesson?”
“What about the MYOB for ‘mind your own business’?” he asked, scuffing at a charred spot with the toe of his shoe. Bending, he took out a pocket knife, scraped at the wood, and used the knife blade to tip a sample into another baggie.
I considered his question. “That sounds more like a woman,” I finally said. “Even a teenager. Simone? She’s determined to shut us down.”
“Wouldn’t Simone DuBois know you don’t live here?”
It took me a moment to catch his meaning. “You mean since the note was addressed to me but left in my mom’s mailbox?”
He nodded, then leaned to sniff at the siding where the fire had climbed up the side of the house.
“I don’t know. She hasn’t been back in St. Elizabeth too long. I used to live here . . . maybe she thinks I still do.” I gave it some more thought. “I hate this!”
He turned to face me, and his navy eyes fixed on mine. “It is hateful,” he agreed. “Murder’s about the most hateful thing there is. I’m not surprised it bothers you to be mixed up in this.”
His unexpected sympathy caught me off guard, and I sniffed back tears. “Ready for that tea?”
He followed me this time as I led the way to the side door. Before I could open it, he stopped me with a hand on my arm. The skin of his palm was work-toughened and warm against my arm. “By the way, Judge Finnegan called last night from Port-au-Prince. She verified your story.”
“Of course she did. Because it wasn’t a
story
.”
He ignored my snippy tone. “I’ll need a list of everyone you’ve talked about the murder with.”
“That’s lots of people,” I said, wondering if I could remember everyone. There were the ladies from the shop, various people at the viewing, Del Richardson, a few shop owners from the square, and some customers . . .
“Well, chances are one of them did this”—he nodded his head back toward the veranda—“so make sure you don’t leave anybody out.”

Chapter Nine

[Monday]

MOM’S FAVORITE HANDYMAN, FRED WILKERSON, came over Sunday afternoon and replaced the damaged boards on the veranda. The new boards looked like raw scars when I arrived for work on Monday morning, and I stared at them, deploring how they stood out against the weathered wood. He had also power-washed the siding; I thought it would look fine when he got it repainted the pale purple my mom chose ten years ago. Deliberately tromping on one of the new boards to break it in, I pushed through the salon door. Mom must be upstairs because the salon was empty, still dim with the blinds closed. Good. I wanted to phone a lawyer friend and see what I could find out about the contents of Constance’s will before customers started arriving.
I had just picked up the phone when the door opened. “Miss Violetta?” a man’s voice called. I whirled, dropping the phone. It bounced off my foot.
“Walter! You startled me.”
Walter Highsmith stood just inside the door, dressed in his usual uniform. I swear, if he got a paper cut, his blood would be Confederate gray. His salt-and-pepper mustache was waxed and curled to perfection.
His full lips sagged into a pout when he recognized me. “Good morning, Miss Grace. I was looking for your mother. I hope she’s all right after the incident Saturday night. It’s disgraceful what the youth of today get up to. In my day, teenagers weren’t allowed to roam loose at night, drinking and vandalizing and consorting.”
How did Walter define “consorting”? I wondered.
“Young men and women were expected to dress modestly and wouldn’t have been caught dead in the indecent garments kids wear today, to be respectful of their elders, and not speak unless spoken to. Why, when I—”
I cut into his pontificating. “You’ll have to settle for me,” I said. “Want some coffee? I was about to make some.” Not true, but I realized I hadn’t chatted with Walter since Constance’s death, and he had argued with her mere hours before she died.
He accepted my offer, and I scooped Althea’s Kona blend into the pot behind the register and added water. Walter sat in one of the chintz chairs in the waiting room, fussily smoothing his uniform pants where they creased across his thigh. As the scent of coffee permeated the air, I leaned across the counter on my forearms. “So, have you found a new home for Confederate Artefacts?”
A prim smile appeared on his face. “It is no longer necessary for me to find new premises.”
“Really?”
“When Constance DuBois passed on so tragically and unexpectedly—”
“Was murdered, you mean.” I had little patience for his euphemisms. He was surprisingly squeamish in his word choice for a man whose idea of fun was reenacting bloody Civil War battles.
“—I contacted the woman who was going to supplant me. The Yankee.” He stroked his goatee. “She has decided not to open her scrapbooking store in St. Elizabeth now that Constance is not here to drum up business for her. I believe she’s looking at Charleston instead.” His face wore the satisfied look of a cat who has successfully filched a pork chop off the dinner table without being noticed.
“How fortuitous.” Ye gods, he was infecting me with his speech patterns. “I mean, what a break for you.”
“Indeed.” He accepted the mug of coffee I passed him and blew on it.
“You know the police have talked to my mom about the murder. They think that she killed Constance because Constance threatened to shut down Violetta’s.”
“That is patently ridiculous,” Walter said, shifting on the chair. If the cops had talked to him, too, he didn’t own up to it. “Your mother would never think of taking such offensive action. It wouldn’t be womanly.” His concept of women appeared to have quit evolving about the time Scarlett O’Hara was saving Tara.
“You do know women can vote now?”
He looked at me blankly.
I sighed, trying to decide if his chauvinism was charming or exasperating. “So you don’t think a woman could have killed Constance?”
“Not with a blade,” he said. He puffed his chubby cheeks and let the air out explosively. “If she’d been poisoned, now . . .”
I didn’t know where Walter got his rose-colored glasses, but I wanted a pair. The Atlanta newspaper carried daily reports of women offing their family members, friends, coworkers, and assorted strangers with knives, blunt objects, guns, cars, knitting needles, scissors, and pencils. I was pretty sure Constance’s manner of death didn’t rule out either gender. I dragged the conversation back to my original point. “So you’re going to stay where you are? The new owner is going to renew your lease?”
“Why, as to that, I haven’t had any discussions with the new owner. That’s probably not proper until after the will has been probated. But I’m sure she’ll extend my lease. And I’m hoping she’ll let me do some remodeling—knock out a wall to expand my display space. Mrs. DuBois never let me so much as change the paint color.” He set his mug gently on the glass-topped end table and pushed himself to his feet. Looking over my shoulder, he pouted again, presumably because my mother hadn’t appeared yet. “Please tell Miss Violetta I stopped by. I was planning to invite her to dine with me this evening at The Crab Trap, so if you’d give her the message and have her ring me?”
“Sure,” I said. I walked around the counter to meet him at the door, forcing myself not to grab his arm so he couldn’t escape before he told me. “But you know who inherits your building? You said ‘she’?”
He raised his brows. “Of course. It’s Miss Althea. Althea Jenkins.”
I TACKLED MOM ABOUT IT THE MINUTE SHE ENTERED the salon. Her color was better than yesterday and she looked well rested. Her gray and white hair spiked up in a gentle halo around her head. I hated to disturb her serenity, but I had to know. “Mom, Walter Highsmith was here looking for you. He said Althea inherits the building he’s in, that Constance DuBois willed it to her.”
Her forehead wrinkled. “He must be mistaken.”
“So you didn’t know about it?” Relief trickled through me, and I drew in a long breath. I hadn’t realized how tense I was.
“Why would Constance do that?” Mom asked, although it seemed like she was talking more to herself than to me. She pinched a dead leaf from one of the violets in the window.
Unease gripped me again. I remembered Althea’s absence from the town hall meeting, her hatred of Constance. I didn’t know the details of her financial situation, but I was pretty sure the building was worth at least half a million, and that would constitute motive in anyone’s eyes. Special Agent Dillon’s navy blue eyes came to mind.
“I don’t know, Grace. And it’s not our business. If it’s true, Althea will tell us in her own good time.” She sounded calm, but worry clouded her face.
“I’m going to ask her as soon as she gets here.” I crossed to my station and began laying out my scissors and combs.
“You are not,” Mom said sternly. “You will respect her privacy. Besides, she won’t be here this morning.”
“Why not?”
She pinched another leaf off the violet, not meeting my gaze as she said, “She had an appointment. With a lawyer,” she added reluctantly.
“And you think it’s about this inheritance,” I said.
“I’m not thinking about it at all because it’s none of my business.”
“Mom, you and Althea are like sisters, closer than most sisters. She’s been your best friend for decades. Of course it’s your business.”
“Even friends are allowed their privacy, Grace. Especially friends.” She opened the wooden blinds, and sunlight flooded the salon.
From where I stood, I could see one of the new planks on the veranda. “Althea didn’t do that,” I muttered. Appalled at the direction my thoughts had taken, I glanced at my mother, hoping she hadn’t heard. No such luck.
Her eyes snapped with fury, and red mottled her neck. “Don’t you even think it, Grace Ann Terhune,” she said. “Don’t think it. Althea Jenkins is not capable of that.”
“I know,” I said, holding up a placating hand. “I didn’t really.” Didn’t really think that Althea could have stabbed Constance DuBois and then lobbed a Molotov cocktail at my mom’s house. No way. It was just one of those thoughts that flit through your head before you can censor them. Even if I’d thought Althea might, in a moment of anger, kill Constance, I knew with one hundred percent certainty that she would never have put my mom at risk by trying to burn the salon. Besides, I remembered, Althea knew darn well I didn’t live here. If she’d been trying to scare me away from investigating, she’d have left the note at my apartment.
“I’m sorry, Mom,” I said as the first customer of the day came through the door.
“Hmph,” she said. Turning away, she busied herself dusting blinds that didn’t need dusting.
I greeted my client, hoping Mom’s indignation would fade as the day wore on.
THE SALON WAS BUSY ENOUGH ALL DAY TO KEEP ME from brooding, and I was looking forward to a quiet evening working in Mrs. Jones’s garden, when the phone rang and Stella picked it up.
“It’s for you, Grace,” Stella called.
I took the receiver disinterestedly but perked up when the voice on the other end identified herself as being from the mayor’s office. She spoke her name so quickly I wasn’t sure if she was Tina or Dina.
“You volunteered to be on the committee to assess the impact of a Morestuf on the local economy and environment, correct?” Tina-Dina asked.
“I suppose so,” I admitted. I’m not sure raising one’s hand while being poked in the ribs by one’s mother should count as “volunteering.”
“Great! The first meeting is this evening, in the conference room down from Mayor Faricy’s office. Six o’clock sharp.”
There went my relaxing evening. “I’ll be there.”
“Great!” Tina-Dina said again, and hung up before I could ask who else was on the committee. Hopefully, there’d be enough people that I wouldn’t actually have to do anything. Not that I’m opposed to civic service, but I was more interested in clearing my mother’s name, and Althea’s if necessary, than analyzing statistics about Morestuf. Still, I knew Simone DuBois would be at the meeting, so maybe I could pump her, discreetly, for more details about her mother’s will. My mom might not want me to ask Althea about it, but there was more than one way to skin a possum.
I HADN’T BEEN TO THE TOWN HALL SINCE THE MURDER and I couldn’t help but look over at the spot where we’d found Constance’s body. It was just an empty corner of the parking lot. A clutch of kids was tossing a foam football around in Carver Square, loosely supervised by a couple of women chatting on the bench where Mom and I had sat. As I watched, the ball sailed out of the park, landing about where we had found Constance. I winced.
Inside the town hall, the air-conditioning chilled my skin, damp from my walk. I shivered and hunted for the conference room. A copy machine thumped in one office as I passed and music drifted softly from another, proof that our city employees were earning their pay by staying late. The door to the conference room stood open and I walked in at 5:59 to find Simone DuBois seated at the table, facing a thin woman who hugged a stack of papers to her chest. Tina-Dina, perhaps?
“You must be Grace,” the woman said, smiling. She had small white teeth, freckles, and light brown hair slightly darker than mine that did nothing to brighten her pale complexion.
Did my hair look that mousy? Maybe I should try some highlights like Mom kept suggesting.
“I’m Tina Sabol, the mayor’s aide. He wanted me to thank you for agreeing to help St. Elizabeth make this important decision.”
“Happy to help out,” I said, seating myself across from Simone, who wore another black suit, this one with a short jacket and a ruffled white blouse. Was the black for mourning, or did she not own any colored clothes? I was betting on the latter. Maybe New Yorkers are all so busy rushing from place to place, talking at light speed, that they don’t have time to coordinate outfits in the morning and rely on black because it’s easy. I’d spent a week there at a hair color seminar, and it took me a month to slow myself back to a Southern pace. “Where’s everybody else?”
“We’re waiting for one more—oh, hi, Lucy,” Tina said as Lucy Mortimer, a client of mine and the curator of the Rothmere mansion and museum scuttled in. Of average height, she carried a few extra pounds around her waist. In her mid-fifties, she wore a navy shirtwaist dress and tortoiseshell glasses. Between Simone’s black and Lucy’s navy, I felt like a macaw at a crow convention in the lemon-colored cropped pants and striped camp shirt I’d bought at Filomena’s.
“Sorry I’m late,” she murmured. “But with the new exhibit . . .”
“Not a problem,” Tina assured her. “I was telling the others how pleased Mayor Faricy is that you all are going to examine this information from Morestuf”—she placed a two-inch-thick packet in front of each of us—“and figure out if one of their stores would be a boon for St. Elizabeth.”
A “boon”? She sounded like one of the mayor’s stump speeches. “Shouldn’t we also look at data that isn’t supplied by Morestuf?” I asked, flipping through the pages in front of me.
“Whatever you think necessary,” Tina agreed. “Let me know if you need anything. Oh, and the mayor would appreciate it if you could have a presentation ready for the next town hall meeting, a week from today.” With another smile, she disappeared.
“Next week?” Simone muttered, glaring at the packet. “Maybe next month.”
Lucy looked at the papers with dismay, then glanced at her watch bracelet’s small face. “I really don’t have time for this. When I volunteered—”
“You were trying to impress my mother and persuade her to withdraw her recommendation from the Rothmere board of directors,” Simone said coldly.
“Oh, no,” Lucy said. “I was just . . . that is, I hoped . . .”
“What recommendation?” I asked when Lucy floundered to a halt. Good manners, of course, dictated that I politely pretend I hadn’t heard Simone’s comment. But curiosity, and the hope that I’d learn something that might help clear Mom’s name, won out.
Simone said, “Some items disappeared from the Rothmere collection recently, valuable historical items. Jewelry that belonged to Amelia Rothmere, the sword Reginald Rothmere used during the War of Northern Aggression, some silver pieces. Mother held Lucy responsible.”
Lucy fluttered with dismay. “I didn’t steal—”
Simone waved an impatient hand. “I didn’t say you stole anything. I said mother held you responsible because you were in charge. It happened on your watch.”
“You were going to lose your job?” I studied Lucy closely. She had been the Rothmere’s curator for as long as I could remember. My second-grade class had gone on a field trip to the Rothmere, and a younger Lucy, with a brand-new PhD in history and a dress the clone of today’s—or maybe it was the same dress—had guided us around, breathing life into the formal portraits of the Rothmere family as she skillfully wove their personalities into a tapestry of the Civil War and life on a Southern plantation.