Hide nor Hair (A Jersey Girl Cozy Mystery Book 2) (2 page)

“They’ll be grainy,” Ron told her. “But they’ll be better than nothing. Good thinking, Kate.”

Kate gave Ron her cell phone, then retrieved a tissue from one of the many compartments inside her stylish canvas bag and blotted tiny beads of perspiration from her brow in a ladylike fashion.

“You poor girl,” Ron said. “You’ve had a terrible morning, and you held up like a trouper.”

Yeah. Right. All Kate did was snap a couple of fuzzy pictures on her cell phone. No one cared that I was dripping wet and exhausted from trying to save poor Dizzie Oliver’s life.

I dug inside my own pocketbook and found my cell phone.

“Who are you calling?” my sister asked.

“The newspaper. I have to call Ken Rhodes. He’ll get in touch with the beat reporter to cover this.”

“Isn’t that a staff photographer pulling up?” Kate asked me.

Willy Rojas parked his dilapidated Jeep into a free space across from the salon. I knew he had probably heard about Dizzie’s untimely death over his police scanner and drove right over.

People stood about in groups and chatted, eager to see what all the commotion was about. Officer O’Reilly stood guard in front of Dizzie’s salon, well behind the bright yellow crime scene tape he had attached to the utility poles to block off the entrance. Margaret Allen, the local beat reporter, made her way through a small crowd that had gathered down the street. Her normally soft dark curls hung limp from the humidity. Willy must have alerted her. Clearly, she was annoyed at being out and about so early in the morning. I tossed my cell phone back in my pocketbook. Everyone who needed to be here from the paper had already arrived.

“What happened here?” she asked when she reached us.

It was the biggest question of the morning.

“We may have stumbled onto a crime scene,” I told the reporter.

“You tend to do that a lot,” Margaret said.

Margaret was exaggerating, of course. Dizzie’s body was only the second corpse I’d discovered all year. Then again, it was only September.

“Colleen and I came for an early appointment, and we found Dizzie dead in a sink filled with water,” Kate told her.

“So Dizzie, um …”

Kate thought for a moment. “French,” she told her. “Dizzie French.”

“She’s an Oliver,” I said. “Dizzie got married a few years ago. Her husband’s Matthew Oliver.”

“The Hot Air King?” Margaret asked, suddenly much more interested. She pulled a notebook from her huge shoulder bag and began to write.

Everyone in town knew Matthew Oliver’s cheesy, outrageous commercials. They featured him as the star, wearing a crown and blowing superimposed hot air through his mouth and nostrils, promising that the Hot Air King would take care of all of your heating and air conditioning needs. Matthew had founded the company a number of years ago, funded by his father, Derek, who was a successful plumber. The company was now something of a service empire, with Matthew as the self-crowned big boiler.

“HAK Heating and Cooling,” I told her.

“He has more money than God,” Margaret said. “That’s probably because he charges more than God. I had a problem with my furnace last winter, and he came out to the house. After forty-five minutes of tinkering and nine hundred bucks later, I still don’t know what was wrong with it or what he did to fix it. I wouldn’t be surprised if all he did was replace a screw.”

My backside was causing me all kinds of pain from sitting on the concrete. I stood up and pulled Kate to her feet. “We have to be getting home,” I said. “We’ve been here forever, and it’s too hot for death this morning. It’s too hot for anything.”

“You’re leaving?” Willy Rojas asked when he joined up with our little group. He was dressed in a retro Doors T-shirt, beige cargo shorts, and brown sandals that looked like something the hippies might have worn at Woodstock. His ever-reliable Nikon dangled from a sturdy strap that was a permanent fixture around his neck.

“You don’t need me to take pictures,” I told him.

“Aren’t you even curious? Don’t you want to wait for them to bring out the body?”

“I’ve already seen the body,” I said.

Willy laughed. His dark eyes held a glint of mischief. “You mean
you
found the body?”

“I’m getting awfully sick of corpse jokes,” I told him, tugging Kate’s arm to make her walk with me to the car.

“Then maybe you should try staying away from them,” he called after us.

2

Kate dropped me off at home, and I drove my mother’s car to the
Town Crier
offices. Though the red Nissan had technically been mine since my parents signed the title over to me, I still thought of it as my mother’s car. I had, quite by accident, driven my own car into Raritan Bay months before and had been borrowing the Sentra ever since. I arrived at the
Town Crier
building, a rambling, one-level structure, at ten thirty—a little late in the morning, considering the importance of the story.

I had been freelancing for the paper for nearly a year. Ken Rhodes, the executive editor, promised me a full-time position after my last big story. It had yet to come to fruition. I received a spanking new cell phone to replace the one I had drowned along with my car in the bay, a small raise per story, my own crime column, and nothing more.

“I heard you found a body,” said Meredith Mancini, the sweet-faced young Special Sections editor. She sat at her desk inside a tiny, claustrophobic cubicle.

“Kate and I both found it,” I told her. “Dizzie Oliver. Can you imagine?”

“Was it a robbery?” Meredith asked.

“I don’t know. Maybe. But who would want to kill Dizzie Oliver? I didn’t know her that well, but I can’t imagine anyone wanting her dead.”

Dizzie Oliver’s death seemed to be the only subject of interest in the newsroom. Most of us knew her, or at least the women did. There were only two salons in town, and Dizzie’s was the better of the two. She was in her early thirties, nice looking on the days she hadn’t been heavy-handed with her makeup, and had a very big mouth. She tended to ramble on and on about whatever the main topic of conversation happened to be on any given day. She could be coarse at times, and downright crass if the conversation warranted it. Clients tended to overlook Dizzie’s outrageous personality, just as they ignored her exotic taste in clothes and her penchant for in-your-face expensive jewelry—particularly her huge, hoop earrings and her preference for wearing at least ten bracelets on her left wrist every day. The most notable piece she wore was always on her right wrist, the 18-karat gold Paloma Picasso Calife bracelet that she had bought for herself at Tiffany’s. She never hesitated to tell anyone how much she paid for the shiny bauble—a mere eleven thousand dollars. That level of extravagance was just Dizzie being Dizzie. She never misrepresented herself. She was genuine, and she certainly knew hair.

“Could she have died from natural causes?” Meredith asked me.

“Beats me,” I admitted. “I mean, the police blocked off access to the salon with crime scene tape. We found Dizzie facedown in a sink filled with water. It could be a murder, though I suppose she could have had a heart attack or something and fell into the sink. She’d have to be pretty determined to commit suicide that way, don’t you think?”

“She seemed a little young for a heart attack,” Meredith said.

Margaret Allen came up the aisle and paused in front of Meredith’s cubicle. “Anything new?” Meredith asked her.

“Zilch,” Margaret said. “The police aren’t saying anything.” The beat reporter looked at me. “Any chance it was an accident?”

An accident?
It was something I hadn’t considered. “How could she accidentally submerge her head in a sink filled with water?”

Mark Dorn, the sports editor who occupied the cubicle next to Meredith’s, offered an interesting theory.

“Suppose she filled the sink for some purpose and accidentally slipped, hit her head, and fell in. She might have knocked herself out cold. If she was facedown, she would have breathed in water and drowned.”

I supposed it could happen. Still, that possibility didn’t feel right to me.

“Why would Dizzie fill the sink? Even if she had a heart attack or a stroke or whatever, why was the sink filled? And why would she be kneeling on a chair?”

“To reach something on a shelf or in a cabinet above the sink?” Meredith suggested.

“Kneeling on a chair won’t make you tall enough to reach something high up,” I told her. “Those chairs are low. They actually make you shorter if you kneel on them. It’s much easier to stand between the sinks to reach something up high.”

“If this chick didn’t have a heart attack, she was murdered,” Meredith said.

I looked over to Ken Rhodes’s office. The door was open, and from where I stood, I could see the executive editor leaning back in his chair, talking on the phone.

“I think I’ll go see the boss,” I said, leaving the crowded cubicle.

I could feel Margaret Allen’s glare. Though she was the beat reporter, my function at the paper, in addition to writing various freelance articles, was as a crime columnist. I knew Margaret and I would both be covering Dizzie Oliver’s death, but my account would be from a different perspective. I had the good—or bad—fortune to have discovered the body.

Ken Rhodes lifted an index finger to signal me to wait when I appeared in his doorway. I glanced at the clock over his door, pretending to be interested in the time and not the least bit in his phone conversation. He hung up before I could get the gist of the chat.

“You can drop the act and come in,” he called out.

Ken had the uncanny ability to see right through me—just one of his many annoying attributes. Others included his God complex and his incredible good looks. The fact that he was in his forties and, at least in my opinion, middle-aged, didn’t matter in the least. I was teetering right on the edge of falling for the guy, and it wasn’t because I was newly single and looking for revenge for my ex-husband’s infidelity. Ken Rhodes intrigued me—his gruffness, his style, and, though I hated myself for admitting it, his money, too.

At times I thought the attraction was mutual—the looks he gave me sent shivers through my body, and he had a habit of turning up when I was in a pinch. But then he’d abruptly turn stoic and silent on me, and I would decide the feelings were only one-sided. I always felt like a naïve schoolgirl in his presence, which never failed to irritate me. I usually dealt with him by going on the defensive.

I took a seat in front of his neat, all-things-in-order desk. “What act?” I asked.

“Making believe you were checking out the time and not listening in to see who I was talking to on the phone.”

“Why should I care who you were talking to?” I tried to sound nonchalant about the whole thing and leaned back in the chair in an effort to look relaxed. When I crossed my legs, one of my green flip-flops flew off my foot and hit his desk with a dull thud. Somehow, I never managed to be anything but my klutziest self in Ken’s presence.

He smiled. “Did you want something?”

“I’d like a decent job,” I began as I tried to gracefully lean forward and retrieve my wayward footgear. “Then maybe I’d like a life, straight hair, a jackpot-winning Powerball ticket …”

“The job part is coming, Colleen. You’ll just have to figure out the rest for yourself.”

“I was working on the straight hair thing this morning. It didn’t happen.”

“I can see that,” he said.

I self-consciously ran my fingers through my curls. “I have a column ready, but I’ll probably have to go with the obvious and write about Dizzie Oliver’s death first.”

“What’s the other column about?”

“Those fake PBA donation calls,” I told him.

For the past few weeks, Tranquil Harbor residents had been receiving phone solicitations from the local Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association. As it turned out, the local PBA never called contributors. They always mailed out donation requests to cut down on fraud.

“Go with the hairdresser story,” he said. “We can always run the PBA one next week.”

“How would you like me to proceed with Dizzie’s death?”

Ken and I had at least one thing in common. We were both cynical, and our musings on things like dead bodies tended to follow the same pattern. “Could it have been an accident? Was she murdered? Did she have any enemies?” he asked.

“Dizzie was outgoing in her own way,” I told him. “She also had a big mouth. Not that she was malicious; she just gave her opinion without reservation. At times she could be a little obnoxious. I doubt she had enemies, though I understand Trina Cranford wasn’t exactly lovey-dovey with her.”

“Who’s that?”

“She owns the other hair salon on Bay Boulevard—Trina’s Tresses.”

“Never heard of it,” Ken said. “Never saw it either.”

“You’re a guy. You wouldn’t have noticed the place if it bit you in the butt. Besides, her shop is five blocks down from where you live. It’s not like the place stares you in the face every time you step outside your building.”

“Why didn’t this Trina person like Dizzie Oliver?” he asked.

“Because as crass as Dizzie is, or rather was, she knew hair. Trina Cranford only knows how to charge a fortune, and her stylists aren’t very handy with a pair of scissors. They also overbook and pretend they’re a cutting-edge salon, so to speak, but they stink. I wouldn’t go there.”

“But you will, my dear. Make an appointment at Trina’s Tresses to get your curls uncurled, or whatever it is they do to get that desired Morticia Addams look.”

“You mean straightened?” I guessed.

“Yeah, straightened.”

“No way,” I protested. “They’re awful, and I heard they charge an arm and a leg. The only reason I made the appointment with Dizzie to get my hair done was because Kate was treating me. She won’t if I go to Trina’s, and I’m not made of money, you know.”

“Make the appointment and ask specifically for the Cranford woman. The paper will foot the bill. Tell her you’re doing a story on hair straightening and ask questions. Lead the conversation around to Dizzie Oliver. See if you think she hated Dizzie enough to drown her.”

Even with the paper paying for the pricey procedure, I didn’t like the idea of Trina Cranford messing with my curls. I knew Dizzie wouldn’t have let me walk out the door unless I looked picture-perfect. “What if Trina ruins my hair?” I asked.