A Dyeing Shame (23 page)

“Why would I have killed Tammy?” asked Dina, almost as if she wanted it explained, herself.

“I think,” said Myrtle slowly, “that you must have just been tired of being put down. That’s only natural, isn’t it? I was watching my soap opera—you watch
Tomorrow’s Promise
, don’t you?”

Dina nodded.

“Remember how Sally kept going for the wrong men? And they always pushed her around and were hateful to her?” asked Myrtle.

Dina said, “Then one day Sally snapped. And she killed Stone, who was the last man who was ugly to her.”

“Exactly!” said Myrtle, beaming at Dina. “It wasn’t that Stone was any worse than the others, but he was the final straw. I think Tammy must have been your final straw. She was your friend, but she changed and started being verbally abusive to you. It must have reminded you of your ex-husband—in all the wrong ways.”

“She got you set up at her shop and allowed you to be her roommate at the duplex in the other half of the Beauty Box. She knew how to push everyone’s buttons. Maybe she told you how worthless you were. Useless to everyone. You couldn’t understand how someone who had been so good to you could change so radically.”

Dina said impassively, “I hated the way she was talking to me. But it wasn’t just that. She said was going to marry Connor Walker and wouldn’t need me for a roommate anymore. After she got married, she planned on selling the Beauty Box. I’d be scrambling for a job and a place to stay again. By myself.”

“You were supposed to be dyeing Kat’s hair. But Tammy had really done a number on your self-esteem before she left with Connor. You weren’t confident enough to dye Kat’s hair. When Tammy came back home early, she’d been drinking and was in a very foul mood from being dumped by Connor. She needed someone to take it out on.”

Dina looked mesmerized by Myrtle’s story. Myrtle continued, “Tammy’s murder had all the hallmarks of a crime of passion—spontaneous and unplanned. But the scissors were brand new, and didn’t have any fingerprints on them. The police believed that the killer wore gloves and the crime was premeditated.”

Dina waited for Myrtle to give the explanation.

“But you’ve always been preoccupied and lately were even more absentminded than usual, since you had a lot on your mind. When you decided not to dye Kat’s hair, you still wore the latex gloves when Tammy returned a few minutes later from her date with Connor.”

Dina nodded again and Myrtle took a deep breath. “Tammy started in on you. She was scornful and bullying. You say that she threatened to turn you out of your home and close the shop where you worked. You were scared and upset and while her back was turned, you reached over and grabbed a pair of scissors and plunged them into Tammy’s back. The door to the basement was open; Tammy had a basket of towels she was about to take downstairs and throw in the washer. You pushed her down the stairs.”

Dina shivered. “There was blood everywhere.”

“You appeared to have gotten away with it,” Myrtle said quietly. “Then you discovered Tammy had left you money in her will.”

Dina said, “She was helping me again, like she had at the beginning before she started drinking again. It reminded me of the old Tammy, the way she used to be. And it really made me mourn her more. She wasn’t always a bad person.”

“You wanted to do something good with the money, didn’t you, to make up for what you’d done? You decided on a shelter for women like you who’d gone through the kinds of things that you had.”

Dina’s face changed when the subject of the shelter came up. Her face lit with fierce pride.

Myrtle went on, “For the first time in your life you were independent, doing something you enjoyed and believed in. You were determined not to be found out. And you thought someone knew about it.”

Dina said in a vacant voice, “Agnes Walker.”

Myrtle leaned heavily on her cane for support on the damp ground. “She must have told you something that day you dyed her hair bright blue. She asked you awkward questions about when you were at the Beauty Box the night of Tammy’s murder and what you’d seen. You thought she was asking them because she knew you’d done it. But she was actually asking them because she was trying to find out if you’d seen anything to implicate her son, Connor.”

“Connor? She never mentioned that she thought that I knew something about
Connor.
She acted like she knew something,” Dina’s voice rose to a shrill. “Other clients came in and interrupted us. I thought she knew! I thought she’d seen me leave the Beauty Box that night to get rid of the gloves. Stupid, stupid of her not to tell me she thought it was Connor!”

“So you went to go to see Agnes and confront her. You probably made an excuse to drop by and pick up some shelter donations. You must have sneaked around the back when you heard her getting some early yard work done in the backyard.”

Dina was quiet, so Myrtle continued. “Southern lady that she was, she went in the house and came out with lemonade and glasses. You started asking her questions about what she knew about the murder. Agnes must have gotten agitated, thinking you were angling that you knew something about Connor’s part in the murder.”

“I wasn’t sure what she saw. I thought maybe she knew something.” She held out her palms to Myrtle, “I couldn’t go to jail for killing Tammy. The shelter is still just getting set up. Things were finally going really great for me. I couldn’t let my life get messed up again right when everything was so wonderful.”

Myrtle fixed Dina with a stern stare “You thought Agnes knew you’d killed Tammy. Thought Agnes was going to tell the police. You slipped on her gardening gloves, picked up the shovel her yardman left out the day before, and hit her with it as hard as you could.”

“I had to stop her from telling everyone what she knew.” Dina’s lower lip quivered.

Myrtle said tiredly, “She didn’t even know anything.”

“But
you
knew,” said Dina quietly. She edged closer to Myrtle. “You even told the paper that you knew!”

“And now it’s time let the police know. Let’s go inside and call Red now. It’s over.”

Dina’s eyes held a wild expression. “No, Miss Myrtle. It can’t be over. Not with everything finally going my way. Not with the shelter. They
need
me there.” She took a couple of steps toward Myrtle with a deadly focus in her eyes and hands outstretched.

A
SUDDEN, PIERCING,
wailing alarm blared behind them from the house. Dina swung around to look and Myrtle took the opportunity to raise her cane as far over her head as she could reach and bring it crashing down on Dina.

Dina
looked
like she was unconscious, but Myrtle had watched too many horror movies to just assume she wasn’t going to rise up again and come after her. On the other hand, there actually was real smoke coming out of her kitchen window from the eggs she’d left on the stove. That Red had installed those smoke detectors he was fixated on. Bless him.

She had never been more relieved to see Miles’ bespectacled face. He came rushing through her back gate clutching Elaine’s abominable painting and looking back and forth from the figure on the ground to the smoke coming out of the kitchen.

“Call Red and make sure Dina doesn’t get up off the ground, Miles. I’m going to put this fire out if it isn’t too far gone already!” She turned toward the house, paused for a split second, turned quickly back to Miles, then rushed off again as fast as her old legs, hips, and knees could carry her.

Luckily, the smoke alarm that Red had surreptitiously installed in Myrtle’s kitchen was extremely sensitive. And loud. She’d put out the fire with the handy kitchen fire extinguisher he’d so thoughtfully provided for her.

The other exciting moment came when a sergeant with the state police hauled a handcuffed Dina out of Myrtle’s backyard. Detective Lieutenant Perkins joined her on the sofa. He opened his mouth, then closed it again and shook his head. “I’m not sure what to say, Mrs. Clover. On the one hand, you helped us apprehend the murderer, but on the other you interfered in police business and very nearly got yourself killed.”

Myrtle ignored the last part. “Is this where I explain all my deductions and show you how clever I’ve been?”

Red walked into the room. He had obviously regained his composure. “Clever nothing, Mama. You meddled in our investigation and stumbled into discovering the murderer’s identity. Shoot, you almost became a victim, yourself. That would have just added a lot more work for us at the station. I can’t believe you put that story in the paper to lure Dina.”

Miles cleared his throat, “Actually, Red, Myrtle hadn’t planned for the story to run today. It was going to run tomorrow and I was going to tape Dina trying to attack your mother.”

Red stared at Miles as if he’d lost complete use of his mind.

Myrtle drew herself up on the sofa. “Besides, I most certainly didn’t
stumble
into anything. I put two and two together. I made deductions.”

“And how exactly,” asked Perkins, smoothly interrupting Red who was starting to fuss again, “did you make these deductions?”

Myrtle beamed. “Well, the motive really came to me when I was watching
Tomorrow’s Promise
.” Perkins suppressed a groan. Red didn’t bother suppressing his.

After Myrtle finished
retelling her story, Red and Perkins looked thoughtfully at each other.

“I’m guessing that Dina used Agnes Walker’s gardening gloves to keep from leaving prints on the shovel. We’ll take a look through Dina’s things and see if we can find the gloves there,” said Perkins. “Although it’s fairly incidental, considering that she confessed to us while we were still giving her the Miranda Rights.”

Red’s expression was baffled. “I never would have pegged Dina Peters for a killer. She’s always been a little odd, but such an anxious, timid thing. And now her independence is gone for good. She sure went about
that
the wrong way.” Myrtle was unable to get rid of the smug smile stretching across her face. “Your deductions may have been right on the nose, Mama, but you’ve done some pretty stupid stuff. Being nosy, questioning suspects in a murder investigation. Putting a story in the
Bradley Bugle
. I hope you realize how close you came to meeting your Maker.”

Myrtle said calmly, “I think Dina ought to realize how close
she
came to meeting
hers
. After all, she’s the one who ended up unconscious on the ground.”

“But it was my smoke detector that created enough of a distraction for you to be able to crack her over the head with your cane.”

“But it was
my scrambled eggs
that caused the smoke detector to go off to begin with.”

Red rolled his eyes. “Like that was part of a master plan! For you, burning something is just called ‘mealtime.’ It’s an everyday occurrence.”

Myrtle gave him a stony look. “You know,” she said, “I haven’t put my gnomes out for a while. They get kind of cramped in that shed, you know. I think it might be time for a good airing out.”

“All I’m doing, Mama, is questioning your judgment. And I think that’s a reasonable thing to be assessing right now. It seems to me like you’re making a lot of errors in judgment.”

“And it seems to me like my gnomes need to revisit my front yard.” Myrtle stood up from the sofa.

Perkins and Miles both started speaking at once, probably worried that the gnomes’ appearance was going to coincide with their current visit and that they may somehow become enlisted. This sudden surge of conversation was interrupted as the front door burst open and Elaine rushed in with Jack in tow.

“Myrtle!” she said, running over to give her a tight hug. “I can’t believe it!
Dina
? I never would have picked Dina for a killer. And you brought her down on your own?”

“And nearly brought the house down with her,” said Red morosely. At Elaine’s confused look, Red said, “Mama set her house on fire by leaving a skillet of eggs on the stove.”

Elaine covered her mouth with her hands. “Did you have a lot of damage?”

Myrtle sat back down on the sofa and folded her hands together. “I was able to put the fire out before it destroyed anything. Anything,
except—
,” Myrtle spread her hands out wordlessly, looking sadly at Elaine. “Oh, Elaine. Tragically, your painting was destroyed by the spray of the extinguisher foam.” Unfortunately, it really hadn’t been because the kitchen extinguisher was full of a dry material like baking soda. Myrtle had had to run it under the kitchen sink a bit for good measure.

“It was—in the kitchen?” Elaine looked a little startled by this revelation. Miles made an oddly strangled sound, which he quickly covered up by emphatically blowing his nose in a handkerchief.

“Only so I could enjoy it while I cooked,” explained Myrtle smoothly. “After all, cooking is such a chore for me that I need something to distract me.”

Elaine sat down next to Myrtle and gave her another hug. “Don’t worry a bit about it. The important thing is that you’re okay! A murderous manicurist didn’t kill you in your yard and your house didn’t burn down.”