Death in the Cards (27 page)

The bed was a jumble of sheets and pillows. Cherry, in a bright red lacy nightie, sat on the floor in the midst of chip bags and pop cans and the ice bucket, which was empty, open, and on its side. She was next to the minifridge, her head smack against its door just above the handle, as if she and the fridge had fused into a weird variation of Siamese twins. Then I realized that Cherry was sitting like that because a large shank of her hair was stuck inside the fridge. And that she was crying.

Cherry pointed at Max. “It was his idea! He wanted to use the Silly Putty! At first I said no, but then he described what we could do, and so I said, s-s-sure, and it was fun—k-k-kinda—but then the Silly Putty got in my hair . . .”

Max tried to sound calm even though his voice trembled. “Now, Josie, it's like this. I read in a book called
Advanced Sex Tricks
that you can enhance foreplay with Silly Putty by—”

I didn't hear the rest. I'd stuck my fingers in my ears and scrunched my eyes closed in a hear-no-evil, see-no-evil pose. It wasn't that I didn't want folks to have-no-fun. I just didn't want to hear about it. Long after Max was gone from Paradise, Cherry'd be running the Chat N Curl next to my laundromat, and we'd be hanging out with Sally, and squabbling, and there were just certain images, I was sure, that I didn't want randomly popping into my head. The one of Cherry fused to the minifridge and sobbing was bad enough.

I opened one eye, then the other. Max was still looking embarrassed, Cherry still sobbing by the minifridge. Both of them had their mouths shut, though, so I slowly removed my fingers from my ears.

I looked at Cherry. “You have Silly Putty in your hair. And you want my help in getting it out.”

Cherry half sobbed, half hiccupped. “I remembered that if you get Silly Putty on your clothes you put them in the freezer and then scrape off the putty, so I thought if I stuck my hair in the minifridge that would help, but it's not working—”

“I thought if she waited a little longer . . .” Max put in.

“Shut up,” Cherry and I told him in unison.

“Then I remembered you had some trick for Sally when Harry ground Silly Putty into his new jeans. She told me about it because she was so amazed but now I can't remember what it was, and oh, Josie, do you think it could work on hair?” she stopped in a fit of hiccups and sniffles.

“I take it that the Silly Putty is not just on the tips of your
hair?” If it were, Cherry could have just trimmed the ends and avoided this entire embarrassing scene.

“It is,” she said with as much dignity as she could muster, “embedded all the way to my scalp. In places.”

I really, really did not want to know how that had happened. But there was something else I did want to know.

Folks think having stain expertise just qualifies you for rescuing clothes or linens that would otherwise have to become cleaning rags. But truth be told, a little bit of stain expertise can go a long way in helping you solve puzzles and gathering information.

Sometimes, that expertise helps directly, as in my figuring out the pants and handkerchief Ginny had left me were stained with not just paint, but also old blood.

Sometimes, that expertise helps indirectly, as in the situation with Max and Cherry and the Silly Putty and the fact that I knew someone had visited Ginny's room, and Max had seen the visitor, but for some reason refused to say who the visitor was. Cherry wanted the Silly Putty out of her hair, Max wanted Cherry to stop being hysterical, and I wanted Max's information.

Time to barter.

“Well,” I said carefully, “I do in fact know how to remove Silly Putty from hair. But before I share that tidbit of knowledge—” I paused, and turned to glare at Max, “—first Max is going to tell me who he saw visiting Ginny's room earlier and what he heard.”

Max looked worried. “Now, Josie, now, really, I don't think it's that important—”

“For pity's sake, just tell her, Max!”

“And with Cherry here being your best friend and all, surely you're not going to just leave her with her hair stuck in the minifridge—”

I crossed my arms. “I still owe her payback for the time she
scared me to death at Ranger Girl camp by telling me she'd switched the shampoo with Nair hair-removal gel—right after I'd lathered up in the sink—”

“But I hadn't really made the switch!” Cherry wailed.

I glared at her. “I had to sleep on the floor all night as punishment for screaming so loudly that I scared the younger girls in the next cabin.”

“But, Josie—” Cherry pled. Then her eyes narrowed. “All of that was just payback for what you said about my finger back in junior high. Remember that? You still owe me for that.”

I blanched, remembering.

Only once did Aunt Clara ever turn her devil saying on me, when she got a call from my Junior High teacher, Mrs. Oglevee, that poor Cherry Feinster had been crying in history class because I'd teased her at lunch when she'd bragged that John Worthy had given her a ring, a diamond set in gold. The truth was she'd waved her hand over our plates of beef-a-roni, showing off. All the other girls oohed and ahhed, but I said it was a dumb glass-and-tin gumball-machine ring sure to make her finger turn a nasty green and fall off.

Sure enough, during the next period (history, Mrs. Oglevee's class), Cherry's finger turned green. But it stayed firmly attached as she pointed it accusingly at me.

When Aunt Clara confronted me with Mrs. Oglevee's report, I defiantly said Cherry was uppity and had deserved the scare. Aunt Clara went into her bun-quivering stillness, let her eyes go icy blue as she gazed at me, and intoned her scary adage in the slow whisper she always used just for saying it.

Now, I looked at Cherry in dismay. “I can't believe you're still bringing that up after all these years.”

She pointed her finger—the same one that had turned green all those years ago—at me and hollered, “Just help me, Josie!”

Max had backed against the wall. He was staring at us with a terrified look on his face. I reckon he thought we were nuts. I didn't care. I crossed my arms, pressed my lips together, and glared into space. After all, Aunt Clara was no longer around, God rest her soul, to guilt me out with her devil saying.

“For pity's sake, just tell her whatever she wants to know!” Cherry screamed.

“All right, all right,” Max said. “I don't know the name of whoever came to visit Ginny. But it was an older woman. Frumpy. Baggy kind of dress, hair twisted up on her head in a bun, no makeup. I assume the woman is from around here. She wasn't one of the psychics.”

Max's description, I thought, fit Missy Purcell.

“And they were arguing,” Max added. “The woman was shouting at Ginny to stay away from her family, to leave them alone, that they didn't need any trouble from her. Ginny was trying to calm her down. They seemed to know each other. That's it, Josie, that's all I heard.”

“Could you identify the woman if you saw her again, or a picture of her?” I asked.

“Maybe. I—I was hurrying from my own room.”

I lifted my eyebrows. “Why the hurry?”

“I just wanted to get to the psychic fair, that's all.”

“That's all, huh? You know, you just gave a pretty straightforward description of what you saw. Doesn't make you look bad at all. So why the reluctance to share?”

Cherry had stopped sniffling—though her hiccups continued—and she glared at Max suspiciously. “Yeah, why the reluctance?”

Max stared down at the floor.

“There's only one trick for getting out Silly Putty,” I said. “And I'm the only one who knows it.”

“Max!” shrieked Cherry.

“Okay, look, I was with Skylar, and both Ginny and the woman saw us coming out of the room, and I really don't want this to get back to Karen, because she's so overprotective that she'd probably claw my eyes out and—”

Cherry grabbed the ice bucket and threw it at him, yanking her own hair as she did so, which caused her to yelp. It was a good throw, though. Cherry beaned him right on the temple.

“You were with Skylar earlier?” Cherry shrieked.

I'd gone over to the phone and dialed up the Rhinegolds' private number. I glanced at the digital clock on the nightstand. 11:30
P.M
. Poor things. I hated to wake them up.

“Now, Cherry,” Max was saying.

“After we made our plans at Serpent Mound?” Cherry's voice went up a notch, to nails-on-chalkboard level. I winced and tried to focus on listening to the Rhinegolds' phone ring.

“Hello?” Greta answered the telephone, not sounding at all sleepy. Maybe a little out of breath. Hmmm. Was everyone in the world snuggling with someone tonight. . . except Owen and me?

“Hi, it's Josie,” I said.

“And you were more concerned about Skylar's mama finding out than about me finding out?” Cherry was yelling, wincing every third word as her hair tugged in the mini fridge.

“You okay, Josie?” Greta asked.

“I'm fine. I just wondered if you happened to have any rubbing alcohol handy.”

“You'd have to know Skylar's mama to understand,” Max said, ducking as the lid from the ice bucket whirled, discusfashion, at his head.

“You're a creep and a fraud, you know that? I've heard some of the others talking and they say you couldn't predict the weather with a tornado on the horizon!” Cherry shouted.

“Now, Cherry, that truly hurts,” Max protested, looking, truly, hurt.

“I take it you're not in your own room, needing this rubbing alcohol,” Greta said.

I sighed. “No. The room next door. Max Whitstone's room. He has a . . . guest. . . who got Silly Putty in her hair, and—”

“I'll find the rubbing alcohol,” Greta snapped, and I could just see her making the hear-no-evil, see-no-evil gestures.

21

Amazingly, rubbing alcohol really is the secret to getting Silly Putty out of clothes. Or hair.

Truth be told, though, I'd never tried it in hair before that night. I just hoped it would work.

I convinced Cherry to release herself from the minifridge and did my best not to gasp when I saw the bright green Silly Putty mashed into the right side of her hair, thoroughly entangled up to her scalp. Then I gave Cherry my room key and told her to gather up her things and to sit on my bed and leave my room door ajar.

I waited outside my door for Greta, who soon brought a bottle of rubbing alcohol from her own medicine cabinet.

Max had shut the door to his room. But after Greta handed the rubbing alcohol to me, she banged on his door. He answered and I paused—just for a moment—on the threshold to my room and heard Greta say something about “extra charges if Silly Putty was found ground into the sheets or carpet.”

She turned and marched off, ignoring Max as he stood in the door, calling, “it's not my fault.”

He looked at me as Greta rounded the corner, his expression pleading. “Tell Cherry I'm sorry and she can come back over here after you take care of the Silly Putty.”

I snorted. “Not likely,” I said.

Then I went into my room and had Cherry bend over the sink, while I alternated pouring rubbing alcohol onto the Silly Putty in her hair, and working it out as it turned crumbly and lost its stickiness. It's harder to get Silly Putty out of hair than cloth, so every now and then I pulled a little too hard, and Cherry moaned and sniffled.

By and by I got all of the Silly Putty out of Cherry's hair. While she took a shower, I straightened up the room, tossing out the crab Rangoon container and chip bags. My stomach hurt and I wished for antacid, but I wasn't about to call poor Greta and Luke to have them raid their medicine cabinet on my behalf for yet a third time that night.

By the time Cherry finished showering, it was past midnight. I assumed she'd just spend the rest of the night with me and was all set to divvy up the bed covers, but she got dressed, grabbed her overnight bag, thanked me for helping her with her hair, and said she was going to Sally's because there was no way she was going to sleep in a room next to that two-timing, no-good Max.

As she left, I shook my head, not sure who to feel sorrier for, Sally or Cherry. (I had no sympathy for Max.) On the one hand, Sally was about to be awakened by a distraught Cherry. On the other, Sally wouldn't hold back a bit in letting Cherry know how silly she thought she was for hooking up with Max in the first place.

I crawled into bed, this time with no doubt that I would fall asleep easily, even though my hands still reeked of rubbing alcohol, despite the fact I'd thoroughly washed them with freesia-scented soap. Sure enough, soon the smell of the rubbing alcohol faded as I drifted off to sleep . . . lovely sleep . . .

Sleep that was doomed because it wasn't dreamless. I'd been drifting in gray nothingness for mere moments when Mrs. Oglevee sauntered into my sleep world.

I moaned, looking at her. She was playing with a cornhusk doll from hell. The doll had a red nub where its head and bonnet should have been. Mrs. Oglevee—who wore a mauve cornhusk apron that matched the doll's—was talking to the gory-headed doll.

“It's amazing,” Mrs. Oglevee was saying, “how frequently Josie can just plain miss the point. She was like that in school, too. Why, I recall one time, on an assignment about Ohio history, she—”

“If you have something to say, why don't you share it with the whole class?” I asked sarcastically.

Mrs. Oglevee looked up from the doll, with a glare that withered my momentary bravado. “You've got your nose stuck in this murder and you're too goofy to follow the main clue the victim herself gave you.” She turned the headless cornhusk doll to face me. Ugh, I thought. “Little Ginny here just finds that appalling,” Mrs. Oglevee added.

I was trying to think of some snappy comeback when a new head bubbled out of the top of the cornhusk doll. “Truly. I did give you very specific directions,” a little voice squeaked.