Die Job (32 page)

A slight sound alerted me to someone’s presence. I froze, then recognized the familiar scent of soap, lime aftershave, and warm male. Relaxing, I breathed in deeply through my nose, trying not to be too obvious about it. I wondered if my sense of smell were more acute because it was so dark that I couldn’t see much.

“I thought I might find you here,” Dillon said. He stood close enough that I could feel the warmth of his body.

I could barely make out the distinctive line of his profile, and I felt rather than saw the strong expanse of shoulder and solid torso. “Just thinking,” I said.

“Sometimes solving a case doesn’t bring a whole lot of satisfaction.”

“No.” I didn’t want to talk about the present and the wreck of several teenage lives. “I think Cyril was poisoned,” I said, gesturing toward the painting.

“How do you figure?”

I told him about the letters and my deductions and the tests Stuart Varnet was going to run. “I don’t think Cyril was pushed. I think someone was poisoning him and he fell, weakened or dizzied by the poison. That would account for the vomit the maid observed.”

“That’s fascinating,” Dillon said with real interest.

“It is,” I agreed. “But even if we prove conclusively that he was poisoned, we still won’t know who killed him.”

“Who the hell is Annabelle?” The voice drifted up from the main hall. After a moment, I identified it as Bruce, the actor impersonating Cyril Rothmere’s ghost.

“The damn name keeps popping into my head, like a song I can’t get rid of. Is anyone here named Annabelle?” Bruce sounded peevish.

I looked at Dillon, wide-eyed. “Do you think—?”

“That the spirit of Cyril possessed that actor and fed him the name of his murderer?”

I twisted my mouth sideways. “It sounds silly when you put it like that, but—”

“Anything is possible.”

I felt his smile in the darkness.

“You’d better get going if you’re going to make it home while it’s calm.” His warm hand on my shoulder turned me toward the landing and he moved with me to the top of the stairs. As I started down, less tired than I’d been only minutes before, he called after me, “Hey.”

I looked back. His blue eyes glinted.

“I’m sorry about Friday night. Can I have a rain check?”

“Hurricane check.” I smiled. “You know where to find me.”

Reaching the bottom of the stairs, I almost bumped into Bruce, the actor. I stepped back as he muttered. “Annabelle, Annabelle, Annabelle. Jesus!”

THURSDAY DAWNED BRIGHT AND SUNNY, AND YOU’D’VE never known Horatio had come through except for the detritus in the yards and streets, people sweeping water out of their garages, a live electric line sparking and whipping in the street like an angry cobra, and the huge magnolia limb that had smashed through the veranda roof and into Violetta’s salon.

Mom and I surveyed the damage the next morning, me with a cream cheese–smeared bagel in one hand and Mom with a mug of coffee. Althea had gone home at first light to check on her bungalow after we listened to news updates that said no deaths had been reported during the storm and only minor flooding had occurred in low-lying areas near the river. Thank goodness! The wet grass was crisp and cool under my bare feet and the air smelled clean and fresh, all mugginess washed away. I knew it would return with a vengeance
as rain-wetted items mildewed and rotted, and the sun steamed water from drenched foliage, but I enjoyed the freshness now. A crinkly sound from overhead brought my gaze up, and I noted plastic grocery bags flapping in the uppermost limbs of the trees in our yard and the neighbors’ yards, pennants planted by Hurricane Horatio to claim the high ground.

Mom took a long swallow of coffee and sighed. “I suppose it could be worse.”

The large branch had crushed the veranda roof and smashed one of the two plate glass windows that fronted the salon, despite its plywood covering. Glass glittered in the strong morning light. My styling chair lay knocked on its side, and I was sure rain had damaged the heart-of-pine floorboards. Still, insurance would cover most of the repairs and no one was hurt. The house would be livable once Fred nailed wood over the gaping hole so people couldn’t come and go as they pleased. We’d spent the night upstairs—I’d dropped off much quicker than I thought I would—but I didn’t want Mom sleeping here again until the house was looter-proof.

The magnolia tree had a gaping wound where the limb had been, and the sight saddened me. As a child, I’d spent many a day tucked into the crook where the limb met the trunk.

“Think it’ll be okay?” I asked Mom, nodding at the tree.

She examined it, putting a hand against the blackened wood. That, plus the lingering odor of sulfur and campfire, convinced me lightning had severed the branch. “It’s like it’s been cauterized,” she said. “I think it’ll be fine. This is a tough old tree.” She patted it.

“Not as tough as you are, Mom.” I put an arm around her shoulders and squeezed.

She laughed. “Is that like calling me a tough old buzzard?”

“Not even close.” I crept up to the veranda steps, careful to avoid the glass that lay like a skim of sparkly wax on the veranda and sidewalk, and peered into the salon’s soggy interior. “I guess Violetta’s is out of business for a week or two.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that,” Mom said, joining me. “Maybe we can go back to cutting hair in the kitchen, like I did in the old days.”

“That’s a thought,” I said doubtfully. Mom’s clientele had expanded in the years since she and Althea did cuts and facials in the kitchen, and I couldn’t see customers dangling their heads over the kitchen sink for a shampoo while others sat around the kitchen table.

Mom caught my expression and laughed. “Or maybe not. Finish that bagel, Grace Ann, and pick up a broom. We’ve got a lot of work to do today.”

She moved toward the house, but I walked to my car where it sat at the curb, liberally plastered with wet oak leaves but luckily undamaged. Looking for the tennies I was sure I’d tossed in, I patted a hand across the nappy carpet in the foot well. A piece of paper under the passenger seat crackled when my hand brushed it. Extracting it, I smoothed a wrinkle from the photocopied page. My gaze fell to the familiar handwriting.

Laying the page carefully on the seat, I hooked two fingers into my tennies and started toward the house, comforted by Clarissa’s happiness and her apparent recovery from her stomach problems. It had crossed my mind reading the earlier letters that Annabelle—if it was, indeed, Annabelle who poisoned her husband—was poisoning her own daughter because she was poking into her father’s death. If so, marrying Quentin quickly had probably saved Clarissa’s life. Killing a husband was one thing—by all accounts Cyril was no saint, not that his philandering justified murder—but poisoning a daughter! Lucy Mortimer might romanticize the Rothmeres, but Annabelle, at least, sounded like
a real piece of work to me. Lucy’s likely protest popped immediately into my mind: “But she was only a Rothmere
by marriage
.” I smiled.

A clump of black and white caught my eye, and I bent to pick up a water-logged stuffed penguin from the lawn where it had blown from who-knows-where. Feeling its heaviness in my hand, I thought about the time and energy it takes to build a house or a relationship and how swiftly a hurricane or an infidelity can turn it to rubble. Or how geographical distance or ongoing slights and abuse can erode a relationship more slowly, like termites chewing at a home’s foundation. But I believed almost anything could be rebuilt. Shoot, Georgians had rebuilt the entire state after Sherman razed it. And look how Cyril rebuilt Rothmere after it burned, how Braden had come back strong and compassionate after his bouts with depression (and would, hopefully, fully recover from his fall), how Mom and Althea had started Violetta’s after their husbands’ deaths.

Patching drywall and wood was the easiest form of rebuilding, I thought, padding around the side of the house to drag a trash can around front. Wounded souls and relationships, on the other hand . . .

My cell phone rang and an incautious step sent mud squishing coolly between my toes. I wiggled them. “Hello?”

“I’m in Atlanta and thought I’d drive down for the weekend,” Marty said, a smile in his voice. “I heard a rumor about a hurricane down there. Need any help with cleanup?”

“I don’t know.” I pretended to hesitate. “Know anyone with a carpentry background and strong muscles for hauling tree limbs out of salons?”

“That’s me. Hammer wielder and chainsaw operator extraordinaire. And I’m a good kisser, too.”

Sunlight warmed my face. “Come on down.”

Slipping the phone back in my pocket, I squeezed water out of the soggy penguin, letting it rinse the mud from between my toes. Clean felt good. I set the penguin on an unbroken section of veranda railing where he could supervise cleanup operations, and balanced on one foot at a time to lace up my shoes, sockless. Then I walked toward Mom, who was coming around the side of the house with a broom in one hand and a shovel in the other. Time to get to it.

1. Cleanse. Do not ever go to bed with your make-up on, girlfriend; it will age you beyond your years.

2. Moisturize. If you are over twelve years old, your skin needs moisture. Find a product made for your skin type—dry, oily, or combination—and use it daily.

3. Sunblock. Put it on in the morning before you ever leave the house. Slather it on your face, hands, neck, ears, arms—any exposed skin. If you’re young enough, it’ll help keep you from getting those ugly brown spots on your face and hands. Even if you baked yourself in your youth, before we knew what we know now about sun damage, using sunblock every day can help the skin repair itself.

4. Wear a hat.

5. Sleep. Yep. It may not come in a bottle with a fancy label, but eight hours of shut-eye does your skin more good than any ten products put together.

6. Use a night cream. While you’re sleeping (and away from the sun) is the best time to use a skincare product to repair lines, spots, general sagginess, and loss of youthful color and texture.

 7. See a dermatologist. Skin cancer (melanoma) can kill you. See a dermatologist annually if you’re over forty, have a family history of skin cancer, or got lots of sun exposure young.

 8. Did I mention sunblock?

 9. Drink. Water, that is. Hydration is key to a dewy complexion.

10. Don’t forget that Althea’s Organic Skincare Solutions has a product for every need!

For more about the Southern Beauty Shop Mysteries, visit
www.liladare.com
.