Tressed to Kill (14 page)

Entering the next shop, I put aside my gruesome thoughts and concentrated on the interview. By one o’clock, I had conducted six interviews, and the results were predictable. Shop owners who dealt in goods that Morestuf didn’t carry, like Walter with his historical artifacts, and Ben Falstaff with his microbrew store, had no objection to the Morestuf going up. The sporting goods store owner, however, and the clothing retailers were vehemently against granting permission for the Morestuf’s construction. I sighed as I entered Animal Kingdom, the pet supply store and grooming salon that sent all its furry clients home with cardboard crowns, because “Your pet deserves to be a king.”
The odor of wet fur and sawdust smacked me in the face as I entered. The right side of the store had aisles stacked with aquarium filters, dog collars, and kitty litter. The back of the store held terrariums full of creepy-crawlies—tarantulas, snakes, and lizards—along with wire cages with kittens, bunnies, and a couple of rescue puppies. Parakeets twittered from a round cage in the middle. To my left, the grooming operation was behind a floor-to-ceiling glass wall through which I could see five tables and two deep tubs. Three of the tables were occupied. On one, a cocker spaniel lay patiently as a groomer teased burrs out of its coat. On the second, a Great Dane towered over the petite woman clipping his toenails. And on the third, a Yorkshire terrier quivered, looking like a drowned rat with its fur plastered to its thin body. The store’s owner, Amy Chiem, toweled it dry. She beckoned me in when I knocked on the glass.
“Hi, Grace,” she said. “Are you here to talk about the Morestuf moving in?” The Georgia accent coming from a woman who looked Vietnamese threw a lot of people. Truth was, Amy was born and bred in Georgia, although her folks had emigrated from Saigon in the ’70s.
“How did you know?” I pulled out my notebook.
She smiled. “Ben gave me a call after you stopped by Just Brew It. I don’t know if I can help you much. I’m not thrilled about a Morestuf—they’ll probably undersell me on pet food—but I think, in some ways, it’ll be good for the town.” She tossed her long black ponytail over her shoulder and picked up the terrier to dry its tummy. “Competition, capitalism . . . it can’t be all bad, right? I mean, I could use a cheaper pharmacy, and being able to buy a bathing suit that doesn’t cost as much as an AKC-registered pup can’t be all bad. I mean, Filomena’s has some cute stuff, but four hundred dollars for a bikini? Please.”
“I know what you mean. Of course, there’s always the Internet.”
She grimaced, crinkling the skin around her almond-shaped eyes. “I like to try stuff on before I buy it. Especially bathing suits.” She turned on a blow-dryer and began to fluff the Yorkie.
I moved closer to talk over the noise of the dryer, and the dog bared its teeth at me. “That wouldn’t be Peaches DuBois, would it?” I asked.
“Yep.” She used a wide-toothed comb to detangle the dog’s topknot and clipped a pink barrette in place. “She’s a nice dog, aren’t you, Peaches?” Amy cooed. The dog licked her chin with its tiny pink tongue.
“Hm. Well, thanks for this.” I waggled my notebook at her. “I appreciate your time.”
“No problem,” Amy said. “Let’s do happy hour one of these days after work.”
“Sounds good to me.” I turned and bumped into a man who had come through the door. “Sorry!” I said, as the man steadied me with his hands on my shoulders.
“Grace, isn’t it?” Greg Hutchinson, Simone’s fiancé, smiled down at me. In jeans and a white golf shirt, he looked much more approachable than he had at the funeral. His golden hair was damp at the ends, as if he had recently showered.
“Good memory.”
“I work on remembering names,” he said with an easy smile. “In my job, it’s essential.”
“Peaches will be ready in just a moment,” Amy put in.
“What do you do?” I asked.
“I’m a Realtor.”
“Oh.” I was surprised. For some reason, I’d thought he was a lawyer like Simone. “How did you meet Simone, then?”
“She hates it when I tell people, but we met at one of those speed-dating events.” He grinned, creasing his cheeks. “You know . . . where the women sit at tables and the men rotate every five minutes so you meet lots of potential dates in an hour. We hit it off from the start. In fact, we left before the event was over and had dinner near Central Park. The rest, as they say, is history.”
“But you’re not from New York, originally, are you?” I asked, hearing something in his voice. “You sound like you’ve got Southern roots.”
He laughed. “You’ve got a good ear. No, I grew up in New York, but my mom was a Southern gal, so I guess I picked up a bit of her accent.”
“So, will you and Simone go back to New York after you get married,” I asked, “or will you settle down here?”
Amy tried to hand him Peaches before he could answer. The dog growled at him. “Doesn’t she have a leash?” Greg asked Amy, eyeing the dog with disfavor. “She hates me,” he admitted. “I think she’s jealous.”
“Don’t feel bad,” I said, “she growls at me, too.”
Amy snapped a sparkly blue leash to Peaches’s collar and put the dog on the linoleum. She immediately tugged toward the door, her toenails skittering on the slick floor.
“Anyway,” Greg said, jerking her back with a pop of the leash, “we haven’t decided. We both really like New York City, and my job is there, but Simone has a lot of business interests here now that her mom’s passed on. The Misty Sea Plantation, or something.”
“Sea Mist,” I said.
“Right. At any rate, we’ll be here until after the wedding.”
“When will that be?”
“As soon as possible,” he said, letting Peaches drag him toward the door. “I’m anxious for her to make an honest man out of me.” And with a smile and a wave, he followed Peaches out the door.
“Simone’s a lucky woman,” Amy observed from behind me. “That is one good-looking man. And he seems nice. Some girls have all the luck.”
Then, as we both remembered that Simone’s mother had been murdered a week ago, she reddened and said, “What was I thinking? I take it back.”
I didn’t have to reply because a woman walked in holding a large black-and-white cat at arm’s length so his back legs dangled. I understood almost immediately why she was carrying him that way, as the pungent stink of skunk permeated the air. Ew. “Catch you later, Amy,” I called, holding my breath and sidling around the woman to the door.
I RETURNED TO MOM’S FOR LUNCH AND FIXED MYSELF a sandwich in the kitchen without disturbing my mom and Althea, who seemed to each have a client, judging by the voices I could dimly hear drifting from the salon. That was good, at least. I sat at the kitchen table with my turkey, Swiss, and avocado sandwich, wondering if I could fake the rest of the interviews with downtown business owners, since I could predict who would say what based on the morning’s conversations. As I was reluctantly admitting I should at least go through the motions—maybe ask fewer questions?—a knock sounded on the door. I looked up to see Hank’s tall figure through the screen door. He was here for his NASCAR stuff, I knew. I hesitated before letting him in, tempted to call my mom. No, I was a big girl. I’d been married to the man for three years, for heaven’s sake; I could put up with his innuendos and off-color remarks without my mommy there to protect me.
I rose and held the door open. “Hi, Hank.”
He bent to kiss my cheek, but I stepped back. “Aw, Grace, don’t be so standoffish,” he complained.
“Let’s get your stuff so you can be on your way,” I said. “It’s up here.” I started up the stairs leading from the kitchen to the upstairs hall. Hank followed close behind. Too close. If he goosed me, I was going to kick him down the stairs and file an assault suit. But he kept his hands to himself. I stopped in front of the hall closet we used for out-of-season clothes, the vacuum cleaner, and other miscellany.
“It’s up there.” I pointed to the shelf stacked with light bulbs, vacuum bags, and nine-volt batteries for the smoke alarms. A large box with a winery logo on it took up much of the space. I’d had to use a step ladder to get it up there, and I stepped aside so Hank could wrestle it down.
He leaned into the closet and grabbed the box, grunting as he shifted it forward. “My autographed Jeff Gordon jacket better not be wrinkled,” he said. He lifted the box off the shelf and staggered, knocking some coats from their hangers.
“Careful,” I said, as he steadied himself. His knee bumped the upright vacuum, and it fell backward out of the closet, bringing more clothes with it. As I righted the vacuum, exasperated by Hank’s clumsiness, one final thing clanked down. Hank, holding the big box against his chest, couldn’t see over it. But I could see the item plain as day. At first, the shape made me think it was an umbrella, but then I recognized it. It was a sword. An evil length of steel that glinted in the light from the overhead bulb. Except where brownish stains streaked the patina from the tip to a point fourteen inches up its length. I felt dizzy.
Hank set the box on the rug and followed my gaze. It took him a couple of seconds. “That’s the sword that killed Constance DuBois,” he breathed.
I nodded mechanically, my brain spinning, not making sense out of the weapon lying in the hall.
“I found the murder weapon.” I could tell from his expression he was already thinking about promotions and congratulations. His excitement turned to consternation. I could see doubt forming on his face like cumulus clouds spoiling a calm day. “What’s it doing here, Grace?” Doubt gave way to suspicion. “I would never have believed it if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes.” He shook his head and pulled out his cell phone.
“Believed what?” I said impatiently.
“Violetta did it, after all. Your mama killed Constance DuBois.”

Chapter Fourteen

FULL OF SELF-IMPORTANCE, HANK PARKER ARRESTED my mother in the salon. All my efforts to stop him were in vain.
“How do you know I didn’t do it?” I asked in desperation after he’d called in his find.
He looked down at me. “You’re not stupid, Grace. Aggravating and too nosy for your own good, but not stupid.”
I guess finding credit card receipts from cheap motels in the laundry hamper and discovering his infidelity made me “nosy.”
“You wouldn’t hide the murder weapon in a closet and then invite a police officer to go through it.”
“I didn’t invite you—you insisted,” I said. “Maybe I forgot it was there.”
He shook his head and clomped down the main stairs that led to the original foyer where a door opened into the salon. Pulling handcuffs out of his jacket pocket, he marched in and announced, “Violetta Terhune, you’re under arrest for the murder of Constance DuBois.”
“Mom, a sword fell out of the closet upstairs. I think it’s the one that was used to stab Constance.”
My mother looked up from sweeping hair clippings near her station. The only client, Mrs. Toller, dropped her copy of
Soap Opera Digest
and looked from Hank to my mom, mouth agape. I was glad the salon wasn’t full of customers to witness my mom’s humiliation, but why, oh why, did Euphemia Toller have to be here? She spread gossip faster than a wildfire ate up dry hay fields.
Althea rolled her eyes and said, “Hank Parker, you always were one to put your mouth in gear before your brain was engaged. What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“Apprehending a murderer,” he said doggedly.
“You wouldn’t recognize a murderer if you tripped over him,” Althea said. “John Wayne Gacy could walk in the room right now and you’d probably invite him for a game of pool.”
“He’s dead,” I said.
“Doesn’t matter. The point is that Hank here is better suited to selling vacuums door-to-door than policing St. Elizabeth. He should’ve stayed in Atlanta where most of the folk are criminals anyway, so he couldn’t go far wrong arresting one of them.”
“Althea,” my mom broke in, laying a hand on her friend’s arm. “It’s okay. If Hank wants to arrest me, he can.”
“Thank you, Violetta,” Hank said. “If you’ll stick out your wrists please.” The handcuffs clinked as he held them up. “You have the right—”
“I don’t think you need those,” Mom said with a slight smile. “I promise to behave myself. Just let me wash up first.” She went to the sink and began to wash her hands. The scent of the lavender soap perfumed the air.
Hank looked torn. Clearly, department policy dictated that officers cuff their suspects. However, I suspected he couldn’t see himself wrestling my mother to the ground to get the cuffs on her.
“I’ll just be going now, Vi,” Mrs. Toller said breathlessly, struggling out of the smock. “My hair’s dry enough.”
In point of fact, it was dripping on her gingham blouse, outlining the bony shoulders beneath.
“I’ll finish you off,” Althea offered.
Her tone was rough enough to make me wonder if she intended the double meaning.
“No, no,” Mrs. Toller said, scuttling to the door. “I’ve got to be going.”
Sure she did. The sooner she left, the sooner she could spread the word of Mom’s arrest around St. Elizabeth.
“I want to see this sword,” Althea announced and strode toward the door. “Coming, Vi?”
“But you can’t—” Hank objected.
Mom followed Althea, and I followed Mom, leaving Hank to trudge up the stairs in our wake.
“At least don’t touch it,” he said when we reached the landing. His voice had gone from authoritative to resigned.
Mom and Althea stared at the blade lying in the hall. “I’ve never seen it before,” Althea announced, “and neither has Vi.”
“Actually,” Mom surprised us by saying, “I think I have. Walter showed me one just like it anyway, about ten days ago. I remember it because of the engraving there by the hilt.” She slid her glasses a little down her nose. “Doesn’t that say ‘Captain Louis Abercrombie’?”
Hank, Althea, and I squatted to read the tiny script. “I think so,” Althea said.
Heavy knocks thudded on the front door. Hank’s compadres. I hoped Special Agent Dillon was with them and that he’d listen to reason.
“Okay, Violetta, time to go,” Hank said. He escorted her down the stairs to the door, his hand encircling her upper arm. He pulled open the front door to allow a trio of uniformed officers, two forensics types, and Special Agent Dillon into the foyer. He was wearing a dark gray suit today, complete with red-striped tie. He scanned the foyer, and his gaze drifted up the stairs.
“If I’d known there was going to be a party, I’d have worn my party dress,” Althea said, giving the cops the evil eye as they crowded into the house.
“I had to speak at a Rotary Club luncheon,” Special Agent Dillon said, apparently taking her remark as a comment on his suit.
“The murder weapon is upstairs,” Hank said, pointing. At a nod from Special Agent Dillon, the woman holding a camera and a short man with a kit disappeared up the stairs. “And I’ve detained the suspect.” He nudged Mom forward.
“Good afternoon, Special Agent Dillon,” she said with a wry smile.
“Hello, Mrs. Terhune. Miss Terhune,” he nodded at me. “Let me go inspect this sword, and then we’ll talk.”
“Should I take her down to the station?” Hank asked.
“I was thinking the kitchen,” Dillon said. “I could use a cup of coffee. Thanks for your quick notification, Officer Parker, but since you’re off duty, we’ll let you go now. You can write up your report when you come in this evening. Good work.”
The emotions flitting across Hank’s face told me he was torn between gratification at the praise and resentment of his dismissal. After a long moment, he released Mom’s arm and started back up the stairs, muttering something about getting his box. Special Agent Dillon followed him. Mom, Althea, and I drifted into the kitchen.
“Well, it doesn’t look like that detective is going to haul you off to the poky,” Althea said. “Thank God he’s got a bit of common sense. Unlike that Hank Parker.” She shot a look at me.
I held up my hands. “Hey, don’t blame me. I divorced him, remember?”
“But only after you married him,” she said. “Why you were so set on tying yourself to that—”
“Althea, that’s ancient history,” Mom broke in, setting mugs on the counter.
The words “ancient history” reminded me: “Althea, do you remember Carl Rowan’s wife’s name?”
“Martha. No, Martina,” she said. “I only met her a handful of times. She seemed like a timid little thing, without the gumption God gave a mealy bug. Why?”
“That reporter I told you about wants to try and track her down, see if she knows anything from back when Carl and William disappeared.”
“Were murdered, you mean,” Althea said.
At that moment, Dillon stepped from the stairs into the kitchen, followed by the technician with the kit. “I’m going to have to ask you all to get fingerprinted,” he said, accepting a cup of coffee from Mom, “strictly for elimination purposes.”
“Are there prints on the sword?” I asked.
After a moment’s hesitation, he nodded. “Allen can get your prints right now.”
The technician, a slight, fortyish man with a pug nose and reddish hair said, “Who’s first?”
I raised my hand and crossed to where he was laying out an ink pad and cards on the kitchen table. I let him press my fingers into the pad and tried to let my hand go limp, as directed, while he rolled each finger on the card and then pressed all four fingers down together. He filled out some information at the top of the card, and then it was Althea’s turn. Finally, Mom stepped forward.
“So, tell me what happened,” Special Agent Dillon instructed me.
I summed it up as concisely as I could. “When Hank bumped the vacuum cleaner over, the sword fell out,” I finished. “I’d never seen it before and had no idea it was there.”
“What made you think it was the murder weapon?”
I gave him a look. “Bloodstained sword? You do the math.”
He accepted my sarcasm without comment. “Did you touch it?”
I shook my head.
“Did anyone else touch it? Think.”
“Not that I saw. We all went up to look at it, but no one touched it.”
“Any idea how it got in your closet?”
I’d been giving that a lot of thought and I did have an idea. “I think the intruder put it there. He or she didn’t break in to steal something. He broke in to plant the sword.”
I could tell by the way he received the idea that he’d already thought of it, but he didn’t say anything. Allen called him over, and they looked at the fingerprint cards together under a small microscope, comparing them with another card Allen pulled from his kit.
“You’re sure?” Special Agent Dillon asked softly.
“Yes, sir,” Allen replied. “Twenty-one points sure.”
Special Agent Dillon looked up, and his gaze went from me to my mom. He sighed heavily. “Mrs. Terhune,” he said, “your fingerprints are on the murder weapon. I’m going to have to ask you to come down to the station. You might want to call a lawyer.”
Mom paled but nodded her head.
Althea shook her head, disgusted. “And just when I was thinking you had some sense. You’re as dumb as that box-of-rocks Hank Parker.”
“I’ve got no choice,” he said.
I gave my mom a hug. “I’ll call a lawyer and meet you down there,” I said. “We’ll get this straightened out in no time.”
“Of course we will,” she said. Her voice was calm, but she clung to me for a moment. “Let Stella and Rachel know we’ll be closed this afternoon, won’t you?”
“Sure,” I assured her, trying to will back tears of anger and fear. “Don’t worry about anything.”
I DASHED OVER TO CONFEDERATE ARTEFACTS, HOPING Walter Highsmith could give the police an innocent explanation for Mom’s prints on the sword. When he heard my story, he closed up shop immediately and accompanied me to the GBI regional headquarters in Kingsland. Walter identified the sword Dillon showed him as the one he’d sold to Constance DuBois and even produced his copy of the receipt. He also corroborated Mom’s story that he’d shown it to her soon after he acquired it, and told the police he’d handed it to her.
“I always wear gloves when handling my stock,” he said, “but I didn’t give Violetta a pair when I suggested she check the balance. You can always identify a fine weapon by how well it’s balanced,” he added, slipping into pontificating mode. When the investigators—Special Agent Dillon was called out for a phone call—wearied of his Civil War Swords 101 lecture in which the words “presentation blade,” “etching pattern,” and “Ames Foot” jumbled together unintelligibly, they escorted us to the door with the clichéd admonition not to leave town. It was awful that Mom was the number one suspect, but at least she’d been allowed to leave GBI headquarters.
“I’m so sorry, Violetta,” Walter said, stroking his goatee. “I got you into this when I shared that sword with you. It’s all my fault.”
“I’d say it’s the killer’s fault,” I said.
My mom hushed me and thanked Walter for coming to the station. The three of us drove home in silence after that. I was shaken by Mom’s arrest and I knew she must have been more scared, even though Walter’s evidence had gotten her released quickly.
“Do you want me to stay?” I asked after we dropped Walter off and walked back into her house.
“All’s well that ends well,” she said, making shooing motions. “I’m fine, Grace,” she added when I looked skeptical.
I still had time for a couple more interviews before meeting Lucy Mortimer for my private tour at the Rothmere mansion. I reminded Mom of the committee meeting.
“Good,” she said. “Althea and I were going to catch the new Hugh Jackman movie. Don’t wait up if I’m not home when you get back.”
I COLLECTED MY NOTES, CALLED MRS. JONES TO check on the water situation (still no running H
₂
O), and conducted a couple more hurried interviews before hitting the road for Rothmere mansion.
The former plantation occupied a prime bit of real estate perched on a slight rise overlooking the Satilla River, three miles west of St. Elizabeth. Fields of alfalfa and cotton and a grove of pecan trees eddied out from the home like ripples on a lake. When Phineas Rothmere willed the property to St. Elizabeth in the 1950s, the city sold the arable land, putting the money in a trust to fund the mansion’s upkeep, and kept only fifty acres, the house, and a few out-buildings, including the original slave quarters, a chapel, and a threshing barn. The house itself stood in parklike surroundings of emerald lawn and English gardens. From grade-school field trips, I remembered the architecture was called Greek revival, which apparently means simple lines, columns, and gallons of white paint.
I parked in the lot to the left of the house and approached the front door. Visitor hours had ended at four thirty, half an hour ago, so the round foyer echoed with quiet as I pushed open the front door. The hush had an almost physical quality. The heart-of-pine-floored foyer, with its aqua-painted walls and woven-to-order rug, was bigger than my entire apartment. Being a slave-owning landholder in the nineteenth century had its advantages. As I was wondering who the woman was simpering from a portrait across the room, Lucy Mortimer slipped in.
“There you are,” she said. Today’s outfit consisted of a white blouse tucked into a brown and white skirt with a pattern so teensy I couldn’t make out what it was. Her low-heeled shoes rated higher on the comfort scale than the stylish scale. She had corralled her mousy hair into a bun, but wisps had escaped and hung limply against her cheeks. Her eyes shone with anticipation behind the tortoiseshell glasses. “I wasn’t sure that you would make it, what with your mother being in jail and all. Not that I blame her one bit. That Constance DuBois was asking for it.”
“My mother was not jailed and she did not kill Constance,” I bit out. “Where did you hear that?”
Lucy took a step back at my tone. “Euphemia Toller is a docent here.” She fluttered her hands as if waving away unpleasantness. “Well, I’m glad to hear that she was mistaken. I’ve been looking forward to this all day.”
I felt churlish that my excitement level was so much lower than hers, so I tried to fake enthusiasm for the next hour as she dragged me through every room of the mansion, filling my head with facts about generations of Rothmeres.
“I saved the best for last,” she said, pushing open double doors that led to the ballroom. “It’s already decorated for the fund-raising ball Friday night.” Yards of yellow silk draped from the ceiling, creating a tentlike effect. Masses of flowers—forsythia, roses, lilies, and many I couldn’t identify—climbed temporary trellises and bloomed in pots and urns and stands along the walls. The scent was overpowering, and I sneezed. “Too bad they didn’t have Zyrtec in Reginald and Amelia’s day,” I said, making a mental note to take a double dose before the ball.