Tressed to Kill (4 page)

Wham. His words socked me back into the chair, and I took a moment to catch my breath. “That’s ridiculous,” I sputtered.
“Is it? Let’s review.” He held up his forefinger. “One. Your mother sabotages Mrs. DuBois’s hair—”
“My mother did no such thi—”
“—and Mrs. DuBois threatens to shut down Violetta’s, depriving you and your mother of your source of income. Don’t even try to tell me that didn’t happen because I’ve talked with several witnesses who described the scene to me. And I’ve seen the orange stripes in the victim’s hair.”
I wondered which of our “friends” and clients had been so quick to tell the police about yesterday’s run-in.
“Two.” He held up another finger. “Neither you nor your mother have an alibi for the time of Mrs. DuBois’s death.”
“We were at the town hall meeting.”
He shook his head. “Uh-uh. The meeting was over. You wandered off. Your mother met briefly with a group dedicated to preserving the downtown area, but they left twenty minutes before you called 911 to report finding a body. What happened in that twenty minutes, Miss Terhune? Did you do it together?”
His accusations battered me, and I wondered why he was so hostile. Was this just his interviewing technique? Did he hope to jolt a confession from me? Well, he could think again. I hadn’t been married to a cop for three years for nothing. I took a deep breath and kept my voice even. “You don’t really suspect me, Special Agent. You haven’t read me my rights.” I sat on my hands to keep them from trembling.
He kept his face impassive, but I caught a glimpse of something in his eyes. Surprise? Maybe even respect. “You’re strangely knowledgeable for a civilian. Have you been arrested before?”
I was onto his style, and the new attack didn’t faze me. “My ex was a police officer.”
“I know.”
Ah-ha. Here was the source of his hostility. Who knew what Hank had been saying about me? Whatever it was, I wasn’t going to degrade myself by trying to offer a defense.
I met his gaze levelly. “Maybe we should start over. Would you like to hear what happened last night?”
This time I caught a glimpse of a smile, quickly suppressed. “Please.”
“Let’s start with my alibi.” I told him about chatting with Judge Cathy Finnegan outside the restroom.
He made a note. “We’ll check with her.” The look he gave me said he thought I’d made the whole thing up.
Then I told him about the meeting and the conversation I overheard between Constance and Mr. Morestuf.
“Del Richardson,” he said, checking his notes. “I understand they had a heated exchange during the meeting.”
I nodded. “And he tried to intimidate her afterward.” I repeated his words, as close as I could remember them. “Constance accused him of threatening her, but he laughed it off. It sounded like a threat to me, though.”
“Could she really have put the brakes on the Morestuf going up?” Dillon asked.
I gave it some thought, cocking my head to one side. “Maybe. Constance is—was—a powerful woman with a lot of connections, not just in town but up to the governor. He’s her cousin-in-law.”
Special Agent Dillon looked dubious. “Cousin-
in-law
? That’s not a relative. Back in Wisconsin I knew my barber better than I knew any of my cousins, never mind their spouses.”
“I think you’ll find we here in the South take family a bit more seriously,” I said. It was my turn to smile. “Including the governor. He’s known to take an active interest in family matters. He and Constance were like this.” I twined two fingers together. “At least, that’s what Constance says. Said.”
“Great,” Dillon muttered under his breath.
I offered him a pseudo-sympathetic smile. “I’m sure it’s hard to detect with someone like the governor breathing over your shoulder.”
“So I’d better wrap this up quickly,” Dillon said. He raised one strong brow. “Can you think of anyone, besides yourself and your mother, of course, who would want to kill Constance DuBois?” An image of Vonda flashed into my head. She might have hated Constance and been enraged by how the vote went, but no way would she stab the woman. And Walter Highsmith, railing about his eviction and waving his sword, certainly had reason to hate Constance. “Wanting to and actually doing it are two different things,” I said. “Constance pissed off a lot of people in her day, Agent Dillon. Right up to yesterday, in fact. And her husband did, too, when he was alive. Their bank foreclosed on a lot of folks over the years. And I hear their son, Philip, is carrying on the family tradition.”
“So you’re suggesting someone offed her to get revenge for a foreclosure that might have happened years ago?” He arched his brows skeptically.
Put like that, it sounded pretty unlikely. I shrugged. “So what was your mother doing while you were eavesdropping on the victim?” He changed tack as easily as a sailboat in a brisk wind.
I folded my lips together to keep from blurting anything out. Truth was, I didn’t know what my mother had been doing and I didn’t know what she’d told him earlier. “She was meeting with the Save Our Downtown crew,” I said.
“After that,” he pushed.
“I don’t know,” I had to admit. “Probably reading through her notes, waiting for me to return from the ladies’ room.”
“But you don’t know that,” he said. “You weren’t with her.”
Before I was forced to concede his point, a rap on the door brought my head around. A young woman with frizzy, ginger-colored hair stood in the doorway, twisting the gumball-sized pink beads on her necklace. “Special Agent? There’s a phone call for you.”
“Take a message, Shasta,” he said impatiently.
Her brown eyes widened, and she shook her head. “It’s the governor.”

Chapter Four

BACK AT VIOLETTA’S A SIGN ON THE DOOR PROCLAIMED “Closed out of respect for the passing of Constance DuBois.” I wondered who had put it there; it sounded like Stella. Inside, Mom and I found Stella painting burgundy polish onto Althea’s nails. Stella looked up and smiled as the door closed, but the smile didn’t dim the worry in her green eyes. The forty-year-old mother of a tween daughter, she had a lot to worry about, including a husband who worked only sporadically and a home moving into foreclosure. She didn’t need the added aggravation of wondering whether her place of employment was going to be shut down. Rachel watched from her perch on the counter, crunching on an apple.
“Shouldn’t you be in school, young lady?” Mom asked the teen.
“Half day today.” She tossed her head to get her black bangs out of her eyes. “Teacher development or something. I heard you got arrested, Miss Violetta.” She took another bite of apple and looked at us expectantly.
“What?” The word came out too loud, and I lowered my voice. “Who told you that?”
She shrugged slim shoulders under a black tee shirt with the name of some band stenciled under a silver and white skull with vampire teeth. “I heard it at school. They said Miss Violetta killed that bi—that woman who threw a hissy in here yesterday. Did you?”
Her voice contained no fear or criticism, only curiosity. Youth. Or maybe just Rachel.
“Of course not,” Mom said. “You should know better than to listen to gossip.”
“Much less repeat it,” Althea said meaningfully. She spread the fingers of one hand to admire her nails.
“I didn’t think you had,” Rachel said, unrepentant. “Not when I heard she was stabbed, like, a dozen times. That didn’t sound like you.”
I wondered what form of murder Rachel thought
did
sound like Mom.
“Mrs. DuBois died of a single stab wound,” Mom said, tucking her purse behind the counter. “And she was not . . . interfered with. The special agent was kind enough to tell me that much. I’m sure it’s a comfort to her family to know that she died almost instantly.”
Hmph. Special Agent Dillon hadn’t told me squat all. Of course, our conversation had been interrupted by the governor’s call. I suppressed a laugh, remembering the look on his face as he picked up the phone and I left.
“Well, if you didn’t do it, who did?” Rachel asked the question on all our minds. She arced the apple core toward a trash can, and it swished in.
“Coulda been most anybody,” Althea said, “except Vi.”
“Oh, my goodness, it couldn’t have been any of us,” Stella said, screwing the top back on the nail polish bottle. “I can’t believe anybody did it on purpose, not anybody from St. Elizabeth.”
“It’s hard to stab someone through the heart in a parking lot by accident, Stel,” I pointed out.
“Maybe it was a robbery,” she suggested.
I didn’t remember seeing Constance’s purse near her body, so maybe it
had
been a robbery. But . . . “Why would a thief leave the car?” I asked. “That Jag must be worth a lot.”
“Maybe you scared him off before he could get the keys,” Stella said.
The thought gave me the heebie-jeebies. Had the murderer still been there when Mom and I started across the parking lot? Had he seen us? Mom’s eyes met mine, and I knew she was thinking the same thing.
“We don’t need to worry about it,” Mom said in her “the subject’s closed” voice. “It’s the police’s job to figure out what happened to Constance.”
“They already figured out
what
, Mom. Now they need to figure out
who
. And since they seem to think it might have been one of us, I think we’d be smart to do a little poking around.”
“I agree,” Stella said in a surprisingly firm voice. “It’s just horrid that people think you had something to do with it, Violetta.”
“Like, yeah,” said Rachel. “I vote we investigate. I can be Veronica Mars.”
“Who?” I asked.
“She’s this sixteen-year-old detective on the CW. She totally rocks. I was really bummed when the show got cancelled, but I’ve got a DVD set with all the episodes and I watch it, like, all the time.”
Mom shot me a “look what you’ve done now” look.
“I say definitely not.” Althea rose from the manicure chair to pace the width of the salon. “When you go poking around in old secrets, you don’t know what’s going to jump out.” She blew on her nails, avoiding everyone’s eyes.
“Old secrets? I don’t think we’ll have to go back further than a week or two to find someone with a grudge against Constance,” I said.
“Well, count me out,” Althea said. She marched toward the door and jerked it open, just as Simone DuBois raised her hand to knock.
Both Althea and Simone fell back a step, Althea still holding the door. Then, Althea said, “Losing your mama must be real hard on you, Simone. When are the services going to be?”
I noticed she wasn’t hypocritical enough to say she was sorry about Constance’s death.
Simone, dressed in head-to-toe black, including a little pillbox hat that screamed Jackie Kennedy, said, “Oh, come off it.” Her dark eyes looked sunken in her pale face. The night’s grieving had aged her. “None of you care that my mother is dead. In fact, I came over here to tell you that I know you murdered her”—she looked directly at Mom—“and I’m going to move heaven and earth to make sure you’re held responsible. You knew she was going to close down this . . .
salon
”—she said the word as if it were
bordello
—“and you killed her to keep it from happening. Well, you won’t get away with it, I can promise you that.”
“
Rowf
,” echoed the Yorkie, poking its head out of Simone’s tote.
From her spot under Stella’s table, Beauty swished her tail, not even bothering to open her eyes.
“Oh, shut up, Peaches,” Simone said. “Don’t think I can’t put you out of business. I’m not my mother’s daughter for nothing. When I’m through, you won’t have enough paying customers to buy kitty kibble.” She glared at Beauty as if it were all her fault.
My natural tendency to feel sorry for any woman who had lost her mom in such a horrible way was dissipating under the lash of Simone’s tongue. “Come on, Simone. You know my mom didn’t have anything to do with Constance’s death. It’s ridic—”
“Grace.” Mom stopped me and stepped forward, holding her hands out to the angry woman. Simone whipped her own hands behind her back, as if fearing contamination. Mom’s arms dropped to her sides. She smiled sadly. “I never wished Constance ill and I certainly didn’t harm her, Simone. We might have had our differences, but I respect how much she cared about St. Elizabeth. She worked hard to preserve—”
“I don’t need to hear about my mother from you, Violetta,” Simone said, tears trickling down her face. She plucked the Yorkie out of her tote and cuddled him to her cheek. He licked at the tears. “You might as well put up a ‘Closed’ sign now, because I’m going to see to it that you pay. I’m going to see this place closed and see
you
in jail.” She spun on her high heel, lost her balance, and tripped down two steps, catching herself before hitting the ground. Peaches yelped.
“My ankle!” Simone bent to rub her leg, no mean feat in a skirt tight enough to cut off circulation, and set Peaches down. She hobbled down the last two stairs, the dog frisking at her feet, and I thought I heard her mutter, “. . . sue them for . . .”
Althea, who had stood holding the door open throughout the exchange, said, “I’m out of here,” and bolted down the stairs.
“Althea, wait.” Mom caught the door before it banged shut and followed her friend, leaving the three of us to stare after them in astonishment.
“Well!” Stella said.
I was definitely asking Mom what that was all about as soon as she came back. For now, though, I pretended nothing was wrong. Filling Stella and Rachel in on my interview with Special Agent Dillon, I also told them about overhearing Del Richardson, the Morestuf VP, and Constance after the town hall meeting.
“Well, he must have done it,” Stella said with relief. “He’s not even from around here.”
I didn’t share Stella’s belief in the virtue of all St. Elizabeth’s citizens, but I let it go. “Well, he certainly had a good motive,” I said. “When Constance decided to do something, it got done. Look at how she got the town to vote for restoring the Rothmere home. And she told him flat out that she was going to make sure he didn’t get permission to build a Morestuf.”
“What about that guy she was arguing with on the veranda? They were really going at it,” Rachel said. “It looked like he was going to hit her.”
“You saw them?”
“Yeah, I went out to call Bethany about practice, remember? I don’t think they saw me, though, because I was, like, on the side of the house.”
And she’d taken good care not to draw their attention, I was sure. Not that I cared. The mystery man—the angry and potentially violent mystery man—might be a good suspect for the police to look into. The more the merrier. “Who was it?”
Rachel twiddled with the cauldron-shaped earring that dangled halfway to her shoulder. “I never saw him before. They were talking about business stuff, I think. About the Sea Mist Plantation and foreclosures and statues of limitations.”
“Statutes,” I said, thinking hard. The Sea Mist Plantation was a swanky golf resort with private homes and an upscale shopping center that Philip DuBois and some partners had developed in the early 1980s. I couldn’t believe it was in danger of foreclosure. Why, they were hosting a prestigious pro-am golf tournament next week; it always brought in boatloads of tourists and buckets of money.
“There’s Philip, too,” Stella said into the silence.
“Her son?”
Stella nodded. “They’ve been having huge fights about the bank. I heard it from my friend Janelle, the head teller. Something about loans. He says the bank can make more profit if they loosen up on their loan policies, and she refused. I don’t really understand it, but I know Constance threatened to have the board fire him as president.”
“She’d fire her own son?”
“Yeah, he was really worried about it,” Rachel said.
Stella and I stared at her. How did a seventeen-year-old know anything about banking?
She grinned at our expressions, showing a mouthful of braces. “His son Trey is in my biology class. He said his dad interviewed with a bank in New York City. Trey, like, really doesn’t want to move to New York. Or anywhere. Especially not with senior year coming up. He’s on the basketball team, you know, and he’s pretty sure he can get a scholarship to UGA.”
I couldn’t care less about Philip the Third’s sports aspirations, but it was interesting to hear that Philip Junior took his mother’s threats seriously enough to look for another job. “Why don’t you see what else Janelle knows about the situation, Stella? See if she can give you details. I’ll track down Mr. Morestuf and try to find out what he was up to after the meeting.”
“How will you get him to meet with you?” Stella asked.
“I don’t know. Maybe I’ll tell him I’m representing the SODS and want to see if we can come to a compromise. Or, better yet, I’ll tell him that committee Mom made me volunteer for at the town hall meeting—about a Morestuf’s impact on the environment and economy—needs some data from him.”
“That’s good,” she said, carefully aligning her polish bottles so the labels faced front.
“And I’ll get onto Trey and see what he knows,” Rachel put in.
“No,” Stella and I said simultaneously. We looked at each other, and I nodded for Stella, the mother of a young daughter, to continue. “This is adult stuff, Rachel,” she said gently. “If Mr. DuBois is involved in anything . . . iffy, we wouldn’t want him hearing from Trey that you were asking strange questions. It might make things . . . awkward for you.”
Rachel swung her legs and pushed off from the counter. She landed with a thud. “Give me some credit. Like, he’ll never know what I’m getting at.”
“But—” Stella tried again.
Rachel slung her heavy backpack over her shoulders. “Besides, I have as much right to help Miss Violetta as you do.” The level look she gave us was strangely grown-up, despite the braces and goth garb. Without waiting for an answer, she opened the door and slipped through, closing it softly behind her.