The Trouble with Tulip (4 page)

Quietly, Danny got out of his car and stood beside it. All the noise had drawn even more neighbors from their homes, and a small crowd was gathering on the street. In the midst of everything, he could see Jo climbing from the backseat of the police car, her thick blond hair curling in the early morning mist, looking upset and bewildered.

Father
, he prayed silently,
be with her right now. Please keep the problems of this home from overshadowing her special day
—
even if her special day is a really big mistake
.

Suddenly, it didn't matter to Danny if Jo would be angry or not. She needed a friend.

“Jo!” he called, quickly striding toward her.

“Danny!” Jo replied, her big green eyes near tears. “What's going on?”

Before he could reply, the chief finished his tirade at the deputy and turned his attention toward Jo.

“Miss Tulip? How do you do? I'm Chief Harvey Cooper.”

“Can someone please tell me what's happening?” Jo asked, turning from the chief to her friend. “Danny, are you okay?”

“I'm fine,” he replied. “I'm here as a photographer.”

“A photographer! But you're
my
photographer today.”

“It's okay. I'll be done in plenty of time.”

“Miss Tulip,” Chief Cooper said, “what you're about to see is pretty disturbing. But according to Danny, here, your, uh, area of expertise might shed a lot of light on what's going on.”

“My expertise?”

“Household hints,” Danny said. “Tips from Tulip, specifically.”

Jo's face always clearly mirrored her thoughts, and now was no exception. Danny watched as she went from confusion to suspicion to anger.

“Danny, what have you done? Is this some misguided attempt to stop my wedding?”

Danny shook his head.

“Jo, listen. A woman was found dead in there this morning. It was looking suspiciously like a homicide, but now they're not so sure. They need your help to figure out what happened.”

“Dead?” Jo asked, her eyes wide. “Who? Edna Pratt?”

“Yes,” the chief said. “Did you know her?”

“Only in passing,” Jo replied. “She was a friend of my grandmother's.”

“Well, the next-door neighbor came over this morning and found Mrs. Pratt dead on her floor, with all sorts of weird things on her body and in her house.”

“The police were trying to decide if she was crazy or if some psycho did all this,” Danny interjected. “I offered a third alternative. Tips from Tulip.”

Jo opened her mouth to speak, but before she could say a word, Danny continued.

“She's got tomato juice in her hair, Jo, some kind of cucumber-smelling paste smeared all over her face, and Styrofoam packing noodles between her toes.”

“Sounds like she was beautifying herself.”

“Beautifying herself?” Chief Cooper asked, leaning forward. “What do you mean?”

“The column has offered a lot of homemade facial treatments over the years, but if the stuff on her face smells like cucumber, it's probably cucumber and honey. Is it lumpy and greenish white?”

“Yes,” the chief said, getting excited. “Why was her head covered with tomato juice?”

“Tomato juice takes chlorine out of hair. Was she a swimmer?”

To Danny's surprise, the chief barked out a laugh and slapped his thigh.

“Yes!” the man cried. “She swam every day! That's why the neighbor came over. They drive together every morning to the Y.”

“Well, that's it, then,” Jo said. “The packing noodles were probably to keep her toes separated after a pedicure. Are her toenails freshly painted?”

“I didn't notice,” the chief replied. “Let's go see.”

Danny held Jo's elbow as they went inside. He was afraid the sight of the dead woman might be too traumatic for her, but she remained calm.

“Is that the smell of death?” she asked Danny as they crossed the threshold.

“No, that's the smell of whatever was in the bucket next to the body. It's gone now.”

“It still stinks.”

“You should've been here an hour ago. It was almost unbearable.”

Jo greeted the coroner and then stepped close to the body and looked down intently, careful to follow his directions not to touch anything.

“Poor thing,” she said softly. “I'm sorry I never took the time to get to know her better.”

“She obviously knew you,” the chief said. “According to Danny, your influence can be seen all over this house.”

“That's true,” Danny told her. “The thing that clued me in was a low-wattage lamp burning inside a wooden drawer. I knew it was familiar, and then I remembered you talked about that one in your column just a few weeks ago.”

“A lamp in a drawer dries the humidity out of the wood and stops the drawer from sticking.”

“I told you,” Danny said to the chief and the coroner. “All of this. This entire home is like a living tribute to Tips from Tulip.”

“Well, not completely living,” the chief amended, looking down at Edna Pratt, whose toenails were indeed a freshly painted pearly pink.

To Jo, the whole situation was quite surreal. Here she was on her wedding day, touring the home of a dead woman, a neighbor she barely knew, offering simple explanations for all of the seemingly inexplicable things this woman had done. From the rice-filled sock duct-taped around the woman's neck (put in the microwave first, it would serve as a portable heating pad) to the shower caps under the plants (to catch the drips when she watered the plants), Jo had an explanation for everything. The only one that confused her was the ashtray on the back porch with the four unsmoked cigarettes. But then, as they walked to the living room again, she figured that out as well.

“The cigarettes,” Jo said, pausing at the coffee table, where several white rings marred the dark wood surface. “If I had to take a guess, I would say she was burning the cigarettes to use right here.”

The chief bent down to study the rings.

“Why?”

“To get rid of water rings on wood, you can sand them down a little and then make a paste of cigarette ashes and vegetable oil to rub into the wood. As long as it's not too big of an area, it should nicely darken the wood so the rings don't stand out as much.”

“Incredible,” the chief said.

“This was her sander,” Jo added, reaching for a heavy brick that was covered in felt and had a little steel wool taped to the bottom. “For an older woman who doesn't have a lot of hand strength, the weight of the brick provides the force needed to sand the surface.”

Jo looked up, realizing she had actually gathered an audience of cops, as they all listened, rapt, to her explanations.

“What about the orange halves with salt in them?” someone asked.

“For deodorizing the refrigerator.”

“The noodles in the peach pie?” from another.

“To let out steam so the crust doesn't crack.”

“The bubble wrap in the veggie drawers?”

“To keep fruit from bruising.”

“Enough, enough,” the chief said, waving his hands. “I'm the one asking the questions.”

The cops grew quiet, though they continued to listen.

“Miss Tulip,” the chief said, “you haven't told us about the socks on her hands. Let me guess—she was moisturizing?”

Jo put a finger to her lips, considering.

“Either that or cleaning her miniblinds.”

“Excuse me?”

“To clean miniblinds,” Jo explained, walking between the body and the window, “you can put socks on your hands. You dip your right hand in a bucket of cleaning liquid and run it along each slat this way, then use your left hand to dry, running it along each slat that way. See? Wipe, dry, wipe, dry. You just work your way down the blinds.”

The chief stepped closer to the window and eyed the blinds.

“You're right!” he exclaimed. “They're clean about halfway down and then they're all dusty.”

“That explains the bucket,” the coroner said, rocking back on his heels and then standing. “It also explains her death. Good news, Chief. If I had to guess, I'd say this was definitely not a murder.” He peeled the rubber gloves from his hands.

“It wasn't?” the chief asked skeptically.

“Don't think so. My best guess as to what happened here is that Ms. Edna was doing some beautifying and housecleaning, passed out from the fumes in the bucket, and hit her head against the windowsill, probably about here.”

He pointed to the bottom of the frame of the bay window, where there was a small dent and a few missing chips of paint. Though it did look like the obvious spot, Jo didn't quite see how striking her head there would cause the woman to end up flipped around the other way.

“Sadly,” the coroner added, “the accidental blow was fatal. I'll still do an autopsy, but I feel certain the cause of death is an intracerebral hemmorhage secondary to trauma from a fall.”

The chief was silent for a moment.

“What was in the bucket that made her pass out?” the chief asked finally. “What kind of fumes?”

“My guess is that the woman mixed together a couple of different housecleaning chemicals and they reacted with each other. It's not unheard of, especially with someone like this who did things in a rather, uh, homemade fashion. What happened was that she probably mixed the wrong chemicals, the fumes got the best of her, she passed out, fell down, hit her head, and died. It's sad, but it's not murder.”

“But if the fumes were so toxic,” Danny asked, “why didn't all of us pass out when we got here?”

“The worst of the fumes would have dissipated overnight,” Jo said softly. “Though the stench remained.” She considered again the positioning of the body in relation to the bump on the windowsill. “So how do you explain the direction she's lying in?” she asked the coroner. “If she passed out and hit her head there, how did she end up here, like this?”

He looked down at the dead woman for a moment, considering.

“Good point,” he said. “If I had to guess, I'd say the blow wasn't instantly fatal. She might have hit the ground and sat there for a few minutes, and then she fell back in the other direction. No way to know for sure. But I have no doubt it was an accident.”

Jo was surprised he seemed so sure about it, especially because she knew it was murder.

4

S
imon Foster was waiting at the bank when they unlocked the doors. In his wallet was a withdrawal slip for $400,000, the full amount that was in the account he had opened two days before with Edna Pratt. He didn't know if he would get away with this or not, but he had to give it a try. After all of his hard work, it was worth a shot.

Simon's shiny black shoes clicked against the marble floor as he crossed to the row of tellers. Sizing them up, he went with the youngest, prettiest one—not because he thought he was youthful or good-looking enough to charm her, but because in his experience pretty girls were never quite as thorough as their plainer sisters. It was as if life came so much more easily to the beautiful that they didn't bother with the small details.

He slipped one hand into the pocket of his suit, glad he had worn the Armani he had bought last spring off his friend Vinny for fifty bucks. It was a well-known secret among certain circles that at the Shady Ridge Cemetery in West Palm Beach, Florida, some of the richer, more well-dressed corpses had actually been laid to rest in just their undies. Vinny had found a profitable side business stripping down bodies just before he buried them and then selling the fancy suits and shoes on the side. Some of the guys didn't go for that, even if it was a bargain, but Simon had no qualms. What did a stiff need with Armani once he was in the ground, anyway?

“May I help you?”

Simon stepped forward and gave the pretty teller a practiced nod, slight and professional, communicating efficiency.