Death of a Domestic Diva (10 page)

“Look, those people out there are the most practical people I know. Tyra has them out there shelling nuts for seasonal mulch! Seasonal mulch! Why, every Paradisite I know has been drilled since birth on understanding the sin of throwing away perfectly good food. Every Christmas party at Sunday School, we had to eat Miss Mulhern's fruitcake—which always smelled of mothballs—because, for God's sake, children were starving elsewhere, and somehow we were convinced that if we didn't eat our mothbally fruitcake we would make them starve even more. And now, your boss has people I've known all my life casting aside perfectly good pecans and walnuts so the shells can be seasonal mulch! She's turning this town upside down and I'm not even sure what she's doing here!”

Paige was not moved by my passionate concern over the mental condition of my fellow Paradisites. “She is here,” she said flatly, “because you asked to be on her show.”

I sighed. “Yes. But I didn't expect her to show up without warning and turn the whole town upside down.”

“What did you expect?”

“Maybe a phone call or letter that she was coming. Some discussion about the show. She's been here twenty-four hours and hasn't brought the show up once. Where's the film crew? When are we doing the show? When do we talk about that?”

Paige shrugged. “I've booked rooms at the Red Horse for the crew, which will be here in a few days. Meanwhile, Tyra has other things to take care of, so you'll have to be patient.”

“What could she possibly need to take care of here in Ohio? Does this have anything to do with Tyra's red designer T-shirts?”

Paige stared at me. Something told me not to bring up the T-shirts I'd seen at the old orphanage. “I mean—Billy, my cousin, had one. And I've seen some others . . . around town.” No need either, I thought, to tell her about Verbenia's T-shirt.

“I don't know what you're talking about,” she said. I didn't believe her. “But I do need to talk to you about Tyra's quarters.”

I frowned. “My friends Winnie and Owen said they were cleaning up Billy's apartment—”

Paige shook her head impatiently. “It's clean enough. Your friend showed it to us earlier. But Tyra told me later that the decorating is, well, frankly, too banal. I'll have to do something about it before Tyra can stay there tonight.”

“If she was able to sleep on my couch last night, then—”

Paige looked at her watch. “I don't have time for this. Now, if you'll just give me a spare key to the apartment. I don't want to bother your friend—”

“It's no trouble.” That was Winnie. We hadn't noticed that she was in the doorway. She stepped into my bedroom and held out a key to Paige. Her chin quivered. “Here's Billy's spare key.”

Paige stared at her a moment, taking in the hurt look on Winnie's face. Then she shrugged, grabbed the key from Winnie, and stepped out of my bedroom, shutting the door behind her.

Winnie collapsed on my bed, pulling my great-grandmother Toadfern's quilt over her. “Banal,” Winnie moaned. “I got everything in the Tyra Grimes line at Big Sam's Warehouse! Yellow and blue window toppers, and kitchen and bath towels, and tablecloth, and bedspread, and pillows . . .”

I sighed. “Where's Owen?” I asked.

“He went home after we finished Billy's apartment. He didn't want to stay for the party, for some reason . . .”

I grinned at that. I was going to go see Owen. Sooner or later, Winnie'd stop crying and go home. Hopefully, eventually everyone else would, too.

I went out to the living room. Tyra's groupies were still gathered around her. “Now,” she was saying, “for a festive touch at the holidays, you can thoroughly clean your pecan and walnut shell mulch, then spray paint it silver or gold . . .”

No one noticed me go to the door. And no one, but me, seemed to think the real nuts in my apartment weren't the pecans and walnuts.

Owen's house is a little two-bedroom box with a row of four garages, added on by the previous owner (who collected cars), growing out of one side, as if the house had sprung an appendage and was reaching for something.

An odd little house—but it is out in the country, on an acre filled with maple and oak and sycamore trees, which was what Owen loved about it. This time of year, the trees had just started leafing out.

When Owen answered the door, his long, blond hair was loosed from his ponytail, and his eyelids were droopy. He had on the Tweety Bird slippers (a match for mine) that I'd gotten him for his birthday and a blessedly plain green T-shirt and jeans. Anyone else would think he'd been sleeping.

But I knew better. He'd been reading, probably bouncing among at least three books.

He blinked at me a second, then said, “Josie!” He sounded surprised, but happy. Then his eyes went wide. “Josie! Your hair! It's—it's beautiful!”

Half an hour later, I was settled in the living room. Every wall has bookshelves up to the ceiling, overflowing with books. Plus books stacked on the floor. And on the shabby gray-brown couch, the striped red chair and the checked blue chair. And on the coffee table. The mismatched shabbiness of the furnishings would be Tyra Grimes's worst nightmare. I loved it. Owen had to move a stack of books from the couch so there'd be room for both of us. Still, we sat cozied up, which I didn't mind a bit.

Owen made me a sandwich and bowl of soup and as I ate, I told Owen everything—about the boxes of red Tyra Grimes T-shirts I'd seen at the old orphanage, and about how right now half the town was cracking nuts to make seasonal mulch as if this was perfectly sane, and about how Winnie was feeling over Tyra's assessment of her decorating efforts in Billy's apartment.

“Everyone's caught up in the fact that a celebrity is in town,” Owen said. “I got caught up in it too. With the cappuccino machine. And all that.” He paused. “Um, did I mention you look really great, with your hair and all?”

“About five times,” I said, grinning—but then my grin quickly turned to a frown. “I guess I did it because I also got caught up in the nuttiness about Tyra being here. But now . . .”

“The only one who isn't caught up in all this is Billy,” Owen said. “He talked to me before the crowd started going nuts about his cross with the Tyra T-shirt. I saw him when I was leaving to go teach. He told me that he'd learned that the T-shirts that are popping up around town—they're illegal.”

“Stolen?” I asked.

“Probably that, too. But Billy said they were made illegally. “I got the feeling he knew something very specific—but I couldn't get anything more out of him. He started marching up and down, hollering about Tyra, and then the crowd just grew.”

Owen put his hand over mine. “Then I saw you—but you didn't see me. After class, I came home to think. I'm worried that Billy's mixed up in something that'll get him in trouble.”

I was too. Before going home, I'd drive out to the Red Horse Motel and see if Billy was still there. But for the moment, I didn't want to leave Owen and his room full of books. He started telling me again how great my hair looked and then we started smooching—just nice, gentle, smooching.

Still, when he suggested that—what with Tyra and all—I should stay with him, I said no, because as much fun as smooching was, I wasn't ready for spending the night. But we smooched some more. After a while, Owen walked me out to my car.

As I pulled away, I thought I saw movement by the fourth garage over. Probably just a deer, I told myself, and headed over to the Red Horse Motel.

I was tired, so I took Licking Creek Lake Road, a short cut to the Red Horse from Owen's. It goes right by the Rothchild wooded land once considered for the antique mall development.

And right by that stretch of land, I saw two vehicles parked alongside the road. I recognized them both, one being Elroy's (because he has the only tow truck in town) and the other being Lewis's (because he has the only newer black Cadillac in town).

I pulled up behind Lewis's Cadillac. It's real dark in southern Ohio countryside at night, so I got my flashlight out of my glove compartment, turned on the flashlight and then shut off my car's engine and my headlights. Then I got out of my car.

The tow truck and Caddy were both empty. There was nothing weird in either of them—just chip bags and soda cans in Elroy's tow truck. The tan leather interior of the Caddy was spotless.

I checked all around the Caddy—no flat tires, no skid marks—plus the tow truck was not hooked up to the Caddy, so my first guess—that something had happened to Lewis and Elroy was out here to tow him—didn't seem likely.

So I went back up to the tow truck itself. Maybe, in a weird role reversal, Elroy had needed help and Lewis had stopped to help him. But there were no signs of that, either.

Maybe, I thought, Lewis and Elroy had come out here to meet and talk—but that didn't seem right, either. They weren't exactly friends.

On the other hand, it was hard to imagine they'd both ended up here by coincidence. And they were the only two Paradise business owners missing from Tyra's “soirée” at my apartment.

Then, I heard singing. I tensed, thinking of Tyra and her show tunes. But it was a man, off key, warbling “Amazing Grace.”

Elroy came crashing out of the woods. At first, I had the shocking thought that always-somber-and-sober Elroy was drunk.

“Elroy,” I hollered. “Over here, by your tow truck.” He was now skipping up and down in the middle of the road.

He stopped. “Who's there?” he called out in a singsong voice.

I trotted over to him, calling, “Elroy, it's Josie. What are you doing out here?” Then I stopped shy of him when my flashlight picked out the handgun tucked in his waistband.

“Josie,” he said slowly, as if trying to remember who I was. Then, all at once, he brightened. “Josie! This—this is a miracle! This is a sign! That you would show up, right now—”

“Elroy,” I said, eyeing the gun nervously, “What are you talking about?”

“You said there might be some reason other than the tuna sandwiches, why the businessmen went away and didn't ever buy this land for the antique mall. So, I came out to look, and sure enough, you were right! There was something! It wasn't my tuna sandwiches at all!”

I sighed. “Elroy, let's get you home—”

Elroy giggled. “It was the mushrooms! Mushrooms, Josie!”

He ran off into the woods. I was, I realized, expected to follow him. So, I did.

I stumbled along after Elroy, keeping my flashlight trained on his back so I didn't lose him, while he hollered, “they must've eaten the mushrooms . . . ooh, watch out for that big white rabbit!” Elroy dodged to the left, then to the right. “. . . They were too mad to come back, maybe . . . or something . . . but it's as good a reason as the tuna . . . ooh, another big white rabbit!”

I groaned, realizing that Elroy had taken me seriously when I carelessly threw out the idea that something at this site might have been why the businessmen left. He actually found rare spring mushrooms and figured that mushrooms had made them sick, not his tuna, then tested the theory by eating the mushrooms. God only knew how many he'd eaten, but obviously they were poisonous and making him hallucinate—or else I was blind to the wild huge white rabbits of southern Ohio.

Elroy had gotten ahead of me, out of sight. I needed to catch up with him, get him up to the hospital in Masonville. I could find out later about why Lewis's caddy was here too and about Billy at the Red Horse.

I caught up with Elroy, all right. He stopped and I ran right into him. As we fell, I feared his gun would go off when we hit ground. But either the gun was unloaded, or we got lucky, because the only sounds as we landed were the thuds of Elroy hitting the ground, then me, landing on his back.

Elroy grunted, with me still on his back, and I pushed a bit of brush out of my face. I looked around with my flashlight—we had landed in a tiny clearing, which sure enough had mushrooms. Hundreds of tiny white ones, all over the place. And there was something else, too, in the clearing.

Two bodies—one was Lewis Rothchild, and he'd been shot in the chest. He was slumped against a tree. And lying on the ground, maybe 20 feet from him, was Tyra Grimes, not moving.

Elroy groaned. “They weren't here before. . . just the mushrooms . . .”

And with that, he passed out, right underneath me.

6

Now, it's times like those—not that I often find myself late at night in the woods surrounded by poisonous mushrooms and three bodies—that I really wish I had a cell phone.

But I just had a flashlight. I scrambled up off of Elroy, turned my light on him. His face was an unhealthy, pasty, shiny white, sweat beaded up all over his forehead. He was quivering, his breathing ragged and raspy.

Then I went over to Tyra. Except for a nasty lump on her forehead, she looked, well. . . artful. Like an actress playing the part of someone who's passed out. Unlike Elroy's, her breathing was smooth and even. She had a nice rosy color to her cheeks and her auburn locks were spread delicately on the ground, fanned out around her head. Even the way her arms and legs were spread out was prettily posed.

And then there was Lewis. His chest was a gaping open wound. There was no doubt—he was dead. I thought worriedly of the gun Elroy had. I've seen dead people before, but always fixed up, in caskets, laid out at Lewis's funeral home. This was the first time I'd seen death in its natural state, not all prettied up, and what surprised me was, it didn't seem horrible. No awful expression of fear was frozen on Lewis's face. But it didn't seem peaceful either—no beatific expression. Lewis just looked—dead. Empty. It wasn't like looking at Lewis at all.

The whole thing—checking the three bodies, checking the area—took me maybe a minute, give or take. I was out of ideas about what to do.