Death of a Domestic Diva (9 page)

I grabbed Billy's arm, but he shook me off. So I grabbed him by the chest hairs and yanked, but he barely flinched. He started shouting, crazy loud, “Tyra Grimes is evil!”

Chief Worthy was moving fast and glaring at Billy—and I knew if Billy didn't shut up, he'd end up in jail. I also knew Billy wouldn't shut up. So I did the only thing I could.

I jerked Billy's cross-effigy of Tyra Grimes away from him, and whacked him over the head with it. Billy went down with a moan, into a heap between Tyra and myself.

The grotesque Halloween mask went flying off the top of the cross, and landed right on Tyra's head. The crowd went quiet.

Chief Worthy had made his way over to us, and now looked at Tyra with grave concern. “Are you all right, ma'am?”

“I am fine,” Tyra said, putting a little space between each word. She plucked the monster mask off the top of her head, mussing her usually perfect hair.

“Would you mind returning this to your cousin,” she said, holding the mask out to me.

I took it. “I'm sorry for the ruckus Billy's caused . . .”

Tyra held up her hand to silence me—a gesture which, I'm sorry to report, worked perfectly. “We have much to do before this evening's gathering,” Tyra said. “Assuming, of course, your apartment is still available.”

Tell her to go, a voice inside urged. Billy's figured out the truth about Tyra, I could hear Lewis saying. She's evil, I could hear Billy shouting . . .

“Assuming,” Tyra added, “that you still wish to have your expertise—and your charming town—featured on my show.”

The crowd gave a gasp, all at once.

Now, here's the thing I'll always wonder. If I'd told her no, I didn't want to be on her show anymore, would she have gone away? Would the murders that soon followed have been avoided? Maybe not. Maybe we Paradisites were just bit players, and Paradise just a backdrop, for a drama fated to be played out somehow, somewhere, with or without us. Or maybe I just want to see it that way to make myself feel better about what came later.

In any case, at that moment, all I really knew was that the fate of Paradise suddenly seemed to rest with me . . . that the best chance for the recognition our town needed lay with Tyra . . . and that she—and the people of my town—were waiting for my answer.

I smiled at her. “Of course you're welcome to have your party at my apartment.”

She lifted an eyebrow—just the left one—wanting to hear the rest of the words.

“And of course I—we—want to be on your show.”

She smiled. The crowd around me sighed in relief. She gestured at Paige and they headed toward my laundromat, Chief Worthy trotting along behind them, hollering at the people who followed them to back off and give them room. The rest of the crowd wandered off. Billy started stirring.

An old, half-rusted white pickup truck pulled up behind Tyra and Paige's SUV. A dark-haired woman was driving the truck, and she blared the horn. At that, Billy stirred some more, then stood up unsteadily.

“Billy—are you okay? I'm sorry I whopped you, but—”

He rubbed his head. “I'm fine. I'll have a hell of a headache soon, but I'm fine.”

“Billy, what's going on? What is all this about?”

He glared at me. “You wouldn't believe me if I told you.”

The truck horn blared again. Billy grabbed the Tyra T-shirted cross from me, tottered unevenly off to the pickup, tossed the cross into the back, then clambered in the passenger side. The truck took off, muffler rumbling loudly.

Why, I thought, did Billy hate Tyra so? He'd never even met her until the confrontation a moment ago. And while he'd never been a devotee of her show, he'd never minded when it was on in my laundromat.

My laundromat. . . I felt a protective surge toward my business and started toward my laundromat. A line of people trailed out the door. I trotted over, glanced in the window, and saw that Tyra was in there, signing autographs. At least Chief Worthy was making everyone stay in a nice line. No one was doing laundry. Suddenly, I felt a strong need to get away somewhere where I could think.

I walked over to my tiny laundromat parking lot, jumped into my old Chevy, tossed Billy's mask into the passenger seat, pulled up the passenger side floor mat, and got my spare key. I fired up my car and pulled out, taking the only main road out of town.

Once I got out a little ways out of town, two things occurred to me.

One was that no one had commented on my hair. I mean, I know everyone was upset about Billy and excited about Tyra, but my hair was such a dramatic change, I couldn't help but be disappointed that someone hadn't noticed.

The second was that this was the very road I'd taken out of town a few weeks ago, but then, I'd left calmly, with my letter to Tyra Grimes in the seat next to me. I'd made the next to impossible happen—Tyra Grimes had come to my town. But now I barely recognized the town or its people.

I drove for a while, trying to sort out my thoughts and feelings—until I saw up ahead the old, rusty white pickup. The one driven by the mysterious woman and carrying my cousin Billy.

So I decided to trail them. They must not have noticed me because they didn't speed up. Instead, they slowed down and turned left onto an abandoned lane, now overgrown with shrubbery and wild blackberry bushes.

I knew where that lane led. The old orphanage. Mason County Children's Home. Why in the world would they go there? I intended to find out.

A dirt road leads off the lane to storage and work barns. They'd been off limits, but I'd snuck out to them anyway. They'd been good places to hide and think and read and sometimes cry.

I pulled down the dirt road and parked my Chevy out of view. Then I took a path I knew that led up to the top of a hill. From there I could look down on the Home.

I'd lived at the Mason County Children's Home for six months, when I was nine, after my mama ran off. None of the Toadferns—my mama's people—could afford another mouth to feed. None of the Foersthoefels—my papa's people—wanted a Toadfern child to tend to. The Foersthoefels always hated the Toadferns, called them white trash. The Toadferns always hated the Foersthoefels, called them uppity. There I was, abandoned by both families, until finally Horace and Clara Foersthoefel took me in, and turned out to be good people.

I got to the hill top in time to see Billy and the mystery woman get out of the white truck, which was parked by the two-story main building. I watched them climb through a break in the wire fence, now half pulled down by overgrown shrubs and small trees. They disappeared into a door in the back of the building.

I watched, never taking my eyes off that door. Memories started welling up in my mind, but I pushed them back down for now. Now was not the time for dwelling on personal stuff. I wanted to know why Billy hated Tyra Grimes. He could be overzealous and stubborn, but he always had a reason—and if he wasn't going to tell me why he had decided to protest Tyra, I was going to have to find out some other way.

So, I watched and waited and finally Billy and the dark-haired woman came out of the back door, carrying boxes, which they put into the back of the pickup, then drove off.

I counted to one thousand. Since they hadn't come back in that time, I reckoned they wouldn't for a while. I walked down the hill and climbed over the fence—ripping my bathrobe—then worked my way through the grass and shrubs to the back door.

There was a new lock on the door. And the windows were boarded up from the outside. So I went back to my Chevy, got the tire iron out of the trunk, returned to the building, and pried off one of the boards from the window.

The windows had been boarded up from the inside too. But one of those boards had swung loose, so I could peek through.

And that peek revealed a whole lot.

A lot more boxes like the ones Billy and the mystery woman had been carrying out. New cardboard boxes. Probably twenty of them. And out of the corner of one was sticking the top of a Tyra Grimes T-shirt.

I drove around for quite a while after I left the Home, my head spinning with questions like, why did Billy—along with other unlikely candidates such as Lewis and Vivian—hate Tyra? Where had all those T-shirts come from, and who was the dark-haired woman and how had he gotten involved with her? Would Owen and Winnie and Paradise ever return to their normal states that I hadn't—until now—realized I so adored? Would Owen like my new hairdo—or even notice it?

Mostly, I have to admit, I didn't really want to face whatever madness was going on in Paradise.

Finally, though, my gas tank was running low, it was nearly seven o'clock (according to my dashboard clock), and I was hungry. I didn't relish the idea of running out of gas and walking back into town in my bathrobe—now filthy and ripped beyond repair—even if my hair was lovely.

So I drove back to Paradise, hoping I could finally change into some real clothes and maybe grab a bite over at Sandy's, hoping things had quieted down a little.

They'd quieted down too much. My laundromat's tiny parking lot was full, so was the lot for Sandy's Restaurant across the street, and so were the curb parking spaces. I had to park all the way up by the Paradise Theatre (closed for renovations for the past two years). But there wasn't another soul in sight. The shops were all closed. Someone had even locked up my laundromat. The only place that was open was Sandy's Restaurant. Sandy herself leaned in the doorframe, smoking a cigarette. She gave me a wave as I hurried back to my laundromat.

I swallowed, hard. Oh Lord. Tyra's soiree. What was going on in my apartment now?

I rushed up the exterior metal stairs and jerked open the door—and saw where all the Paradisites had gone.

People were crammed in my hallway. Some of them stood in the doorway to my apartment, craning to see in. Some of them held cups and little plates and murmured things like “Have you tried the salmon canapés? They're simply delicious.”

Paradise is not a salmon canapé kind of town. It's the kind of town where people buy canned salmon and mix it (flesh and skin and all) with bread crumbs and mustard, and make deep-fried salmon patties, serving them with tartar sauce.

So if Paradisites were murmuring delicately about salmon canapés, then Tyra, I thought, had hypnotized everyone. Or maybe zombified them. I groaned as I pushed my way through the crowd to get into my apartment, beset by unpretty images of the night of the living Paradisites roaming southern Ohio . . .

Tyra, by herself, sat on my couch. Everyone else—except Mayor Cornelia, who was in my easy chair—sat on the floor, gathered around Tyra's feet. Teachers. Preachers. Shopkeepers. Even Winnie and Cherry, cross-legged at Tyra's feet. No one noticed me. They all stared raptly at Tyra.

Every last person was equipped with a bowl and a nutcracker and walnuts and pecans.

“Most people,” Tyra was saying, “don't consider the aesthetic value of seasonal mulch.”

Seasonal mulch? I thought, distractedly, as I looked around my apartment. I was disappointed not to see the one person I really wanted to see—Owen. Lewis and Elroy were the only other prominent Paradisites besides Owen who weren't here.

“Walnut and pecan shells make the best fall mulch,” Tyra continued.

“But this is the springtime,” Purdy Whitlock (the Baptist pastor's wife) said.

Tyra favored her with a patronizing glance, as if she were a dear but rather slow child. “One needs to think six months out—always. It takes time to crack enough walnut and pecan shells to create autumn mulch to replace the shredded cypress you'll use in the spring and summer. That's why we're starting now.”

There was a collective “ah” of understanding.

“And what will we do with the walnuts and pecans themselves?” Mayor Cornelia piped up.

Tyra looked horrified. “Why, we throw them away. Pecan or walnut pies are just not seasonal for spring and these nuts certainly won't keep until the fall.”

Another collective “ah.”

I shook my head. This was just too much. I had to change my clothes and go find Owen, Billy, someone, to help me figure out what I should do. Or at least, find someone who still made sense to me.

I went to my bedroom. I checked the closet, even under the bed, and was finally satisfied that at least my bedroom was still private . . . except that on the end of the bed, I found my quilt, neatly restitched with the orange thread, and a note—written in fancy calligraphy: “Josie dear, Please do reconsider the white thread. Simply wonderful!—Tyra.”

I indulged in extreme eye rolling at that while I shut my door and pressed the button lock. Then I went into the tiny bathroom off my bedroom, changed into jeans and a T-shirt, and attended to grooming basics: teeth brushing, face washing, and dotting on lip gloss and mascara, the only makeup I bother with.

When I stepped out of my bathroom, I found a visitor sitting primly on the edge of my bed, waiting for me.

She was a tall, slender black woman, with wire-rimmed glasses and close-cropped hair, wearing a burgundy pantsuit. She was the woman who'd been with Tyra in the crowd earlier.

“Ms. Toadfern, I'm sorry to intrude, but I really must speak with you about Ms. Grimes's quarters—”

“How did you get in here? I know I locked the door . . .”

She looked at me blandly. “Hmmm. You must be mistaken, Ms. Toadfern.”

And you must be lying, I thought. Somehow, she's picked my bedroom door lock. My heart was pounding at that realization, but I said evenly, “Just call me Josie. And you are?”

“I'm Paige Morrissey, Ms. Grimes's assistant. Pleased to meet you.” Her voice was brisk and efficient.

“Great,” I said. “Then you can tell me when Tyra plans to wrap up her soirée and get these people out of my apartment.”

“You said you didn't mind if Tyra used your apartment. Have we harmed anything? If so, we can repay you—”