Hide nor Hair (A Jersey Girl Cozy Mystery Book 2) (23 page)

I passed the spiral staircase, the one that led to the room above where Trina’s artisans of beauty did makeup, waxing, and facials. I spotted the hairdresser just beyond, standing by one of the styling station’s swivel chairs.

The sound of a creak behind me made me stop. Before I could turn, arms wrapped around me—slender, yet powerful arms. Caught in a bear hug, I couldn’t break free. My helplessness infuriated me.

“Hello, my dear,” the woman whispered in my ear.

Sue Jeffries’s pursuit of a perfectly toned body had certainly paid off. A vise would have been less constricting. She was so much taller than me and so very strong, there was no way to break free. I promised myself I would get in shape, take up kickboxing, even resume jogging, regardless of how much I hated to sweat. If only I could get out of this, I swore a silent oath to transform myself into Wonder Woman.

“My friends are right outside,” I told the sisters. “They know I’m here. They know everything. They’ll be here any minute.”

“Right,” Trina laughed. She went to the door and engaged the deadbolt, then punched in the code for the alarm system. “The cavalry will come to save the day. Give it a rest, Colleen. We’re not that stupid.”

I decided to stall for time and did what I would normally do to avert danger. I started talking.

“Why Dizzie’s salon, Trina? Your salon is doing great. Did you really need another one? And Sue, do you really need another airport? Don’t you think the authorities might be getting a little suspicious of you after leaving a trail of dead husbands? Apparently, you
are
both that stupid.”

Sue dragged me along toward the shampoo sinks. I noticed the sink on the end had been filled to the top with water. I thought of poor Dizzie. Had she guessed the sisters’ plan when they came through the door she had left open for Kate and me on that hot September morning?

“They can’t prove anything,” Sue Jeffries said. “No fingerprints. Thank God for those latex gloves the stylists use. We had no unusual contact with the victims—just occasional working contact. There isn’t a shred of physical evidence anywhere to connect either of us to any of those murders. Who would suspect two killers? And nobody ever thinks women are capable of such things.”

I felt Trina’s hand close around my arm to guide the three of us over to the water-filled sink. Sue was right. Two women. Two beautiful, stylish women with their perfect clothes, tight bodies, magnificent hair, and enviable jewelry. They were prosperous and pampered, and no one in town had even suspected they were sisters.

I did my best to stall them. “Don’t you think it’s gonna look suspicious? Dizzie died this way. The cops will finger Trina for sure, you know!”

“My dear,” Sue whispered. “Did you think the police would find you here? Did you forget about Leona Barber? I’m a pilot. But we won’t make the same mistake twice. That mousy, stupid woman actually put up a fight and fell out of the plane. You won’t be able to struggle the way Leona did. You’re going to be dead long before we take you up. Then you’re getting dumped in the ocean. With a good, strong current and a little luck, they’ll never find you.”

I fought for time. “The tide will come in, Sue. My body will wash up and get caught in the pilings under the piers. They’ll know I didn’t drown in the ocean! There’ll be tap water in my lungs, not salt water! The medical examiner will make the connection! He’ll know, Sue!”

Sue loosened her bear hug and took hold of my right arm.

“Maybe. Maybe not,” Sue said. “And there’s still nothing to connect either of us with anyone’s murder.”

I felt the sisters’ free hands on the back of my head. Before I knew it, they forced me down and pushed my head beneath the water. I managed to take a deep breath and hold it before going under. The reality of my predicament made me open my mouth to scream, and some of my air escaped. I thrashed about. Rocked myself from side to side. Strained to stand against the strong, unyielding hands that were trying to drown me. I thought,
this is what Dizzie felt like! This is the helplessness, the hopelessness the stylist felt as her lungs filled with water.

From beneath the water, I heard faint, distant pounding. My only hope was that the cavalry had arrived.

22

Everything seemed to happen in slow motion, although I knew it could only have been a matter of mere seconds. There was muffled gunfire, sounding so far off from where I was below the water. Glass shattered. A shrill, eardrum-piercing whine emitted from the security system. Heavy shoes pounded across the hard tile floor. The hands holding my head down let go, and I drifted up in the water. Strong arms encircled my waist and hoisted me out of the sink.

I choked so long and hard, it felt like I had coughed up a lung. I silently blessed my bossy mother for forcing me to give up smoking. I hadn’t drowned. I had held my breath just long enough to survive.

“Ken,” I whispered. “Ken, I’m alive!”

Ken Rhodes lifted me off my feet and carried me to a swivel chair at one of the styling stations. He grabbed a few towels and draped them across my shoulders then wrapped his arms around me, squeezing tightly. “Thank God,” he whispered. “Thank God you’re okay.”

I shivered, though I didn’t feel particularly chilled. The trembling was the result of my nerves kicking in.

The sisters stood side by side with their hands held high over their heads. Sue Jeffries, the bolder of the two, offered a plausible excuse to Ron Haver.

“I was just helping Trina give her a shampoo.”

“Of course you were,” Ron said, not fooled for a minute by the lie.

“You have nothing on me! Nothing at all,” she told him.

Trina Cranford, emboldened by her older sister, added her two cents’ worth. “You’re paying for that broken door.”

Officer O’Reilly entered the salon. He gave me a thumbs-up when he saw me, a gesture that told me all was okay, I’d be fine, he was here, and he’d take care of everything.

“Can someone cut off that alarm?” Ron yelled out.

O’Reilly reached out and ripped the keypad off the wall.

“What kind of door is that anyway?” Ken asked, directing his question at Trina. He’d released his grip on me, but still kept a hand pressed against my back. It was comforting, which was strange, but nice. I wasn’t used to being comforted.

“It gets dark down here at night. Sometimes the business owners have break-ins. I needed a strong door to ward off crime.”

O’Reilly laughed. “Yeah, you two need to ward off crime. Like there isn’t plenty of that happening
inside
the shop!”

“There’s been no crime committed here,” Sue Jeffries insisted.

“There’s an attempted murder in here and two murders that happened out there. We know all about you, Sue. One of the editors at the
Crier
sent me an interesting email with all kinds of information about your various husbands—well, dead husbands, I should say,” Ron told her.

“There isn’t a shred of proof for any of it,” Sue told him. “Not one iota. And there’s no way you can connect me or my sister to either of the murders here in Tranquil Harbor. You’re not on the right track, detective.” She lowered her hand and rested one on her slender hip. “You’re no more than guessing that we were involved.”

I got up off the chair and grabbed another towel to wrap around my dripping head. Then I walked up to Sue and took hold of her wrist. “Oh, really?”

Her jewelry slid on her wet arm, an amazing gold bracelet consisting of nine distinctive bangles that was worth a small fortune. It was the most expensive trinket I had ever seen in person.

“Leave me alone,” Sue said, trying to pull away from me.

I held on tight and fingered the shining bangle that was so prominent on Sue Jeffries’s wrist. “I believe this is an 18-karat gold Paloma Picasso Calife bangle from Tiffany’s,” I told her. “And unless you can produce an eleven thousand dollar receipt for it, my guess is this particular bracelet belonged to Dizzie Oliver.”

Ron Haver put Sue Jeffries in handcuffs. Officer O’Reilly ordered Trina to lower her arms and cuffed her wrists behind her back.

“You just couldn’t resist this, could you?” I told Sue.

“It looks so much better on me,” she replied.

Ron began his Miranda warning. “You have the right to remain silent …”

Outside the shop, another uniformed officer busily strung yellow crime scene tape around the entrance. The lights atop three squad cars flashed brightly, breaking the darkness on the boulevard. A truck from the public works department pulled up. Two workers jumped out and began to unload sheets of plywood from the bed to secure the front door of the salon. I stepped outside to get a breath of the crisp night air. A News 12 van passed me and pulled into an empty space halfway to the corner. Staff photographer Willy Rojas, who I had called earlier but hadn’t seen before entering the salon, snapped shot after shot of the goings-on from across the street.

Ken Rhodes came over and put an arm around me. “You did good, kid,” he said. “Really good.”

“I guess I should be writing this down. I don’t know what happened to my pocketbook.”

Ken tugged the strap, which had been dangling from my shoulder the entire time I was inside the salon. In all the commotion, I never even knew my purse was there. I unzipped the top and felt inside. My notebook was soaked.

I turned to Ken. “Where were you guys anyway? I told you to come in at five after eight. What happened?”

“Nothing happened,” he said. “We were at that door at exactly 8:05.”

“You weren’t! I checked my watch. I was only supposed to be there for three minutes before you guys came in. You were late!”

Ken reached down and lifted my arm. “Your watch says eight-twenty.” He checked his Rolex. “You’re ten minutes fast!”

Thanks, Mom!
I thought.
Thanks so much for almost getting me killed
. An expensive watch for Christmas—at the time, I had hoped my mother hadn’t taken out a second mortgage to purchase it. I should have known it was one of those really great deals that fell off a truck.

“I guess we should have synchronized our watches,” I said. “I’ll need a new one, not that it matters. What I really need now is a pen and some paper.”

“You can write up the story when we get to the office,” Ken told me.

“The office is closed.”

“I can open it up. I can do anything I want. I’m the executive editor, remember?”

I gave him my most enticing smile. I remembered.

23

I sat at Meredith’s desk inside her small cubicle, my fingers frantically dancing across the keyboard. I couldn’t type as fast as the thoughts were coming. Every now and then, I paused to make a note on a writing pad to remind me of a point that would come later in the story.

Meredith Mancini rushed in, all flustered and breathless. Her face looked haggard, like she hadn’t slept in a week.

“Are you okay?” she asked. She took Mark Doran’s chair from the next cubicle and rolled it into her own cubicle to join me. “Do you need help? Want me to take notes?”

I held up my hand to stop her. I was in the middle of a thought and needed to get it onto the screen before it flew out of my head.

“Are you done yet?” Ken called out from his office.

“Ten more minutes,” I shot back. I pulled the confiscated towels from Trina’s Tresses tighter around my shoulders to fight off the chill.

“Good. I’m starving. How does that Food For Thought place sound?”

I shook my head. “Not there,” I told him. “It’s too close to Trina’s.”

I had just finished the story and started to run the spell check when Meredith leaned in close. “There’s something I need to show you before we leave for the night.”

I glanced at her face. She looked even more weary than I had originally thought. “Are you sick, Meredith? You look worse than I feel.”

“I told you I was up half the night doing research on the internet.”

“You’re a doll for doing it,” I said. “I even mentioned your remarkable web prowess in the story.”

“Yeah, well, there’s something I didn’t get the chance to tell you. Here.” She pulled some folded papers from her pocket and slipped them onto my lap. “Don’t let the big guy see them.”

I rolled back my chair and unfolded the papers.

“Oh, dear God,” I whispered.

One was a clipping from the
Trenton Times
. The story was an account of the murder of publishing heiress Nadine Rhodes.

The main focus of the police investigation was Kenneth Rhodes.

The other clip was from the
Philadelphia Inquirer
with the banner:
GRAND JURY FAILS TO INDICT
.

Ken stuck his head out of his office. “For Christ’s sake, Colleen! Is that story done yet or what?”

I quickly folded the papers and shoved them inside Meredith’s top desk drawer. “Yes, it’s done. Give me a second, and I’ll send it to you.”

“Better let Meredith do that for you,” he said. “I know how you send files. I’d rather get it
before
my clothes go out of style!”

I got up and went into his office. “She’s sending it over right now. Read it fast, and let’s get out of here. I really could use a drink. Do you think The Press Box is still open?”

“Yeah, it’s still open,” Ken told me from behind his desk. “Ask Meredith if she wants to come along.”

“Will do. And by the way, I think I deserve a full-time position and a hefty raise after this. Not only did I work relentlessly on this story, I was the only one in town who knew Dizzie’s bracelet would figure prominently in her murder.”

“Ron Haver was curious about the bracelet too,” Ken told me. “That’s why he kept threatening to arrest you if you mentioned it in your column.”

“If I hadn’t told him about it in the first place, he wouldn’t have known that bracelet even existed.”

“You’re right,” he agreed. “He didn’t know. Nobody knew. Except for you, of course.”

I thought about a discussion I’d had with Bevin Thompson a few short weeks ago. “So, do I get the job, or do I have to switch sides and go over to the competition?”

“After I saved your life, you’re giving me an ultimatum?”

“Consider it both a threat and a promise,” I told him confidently. “Thanks for saving my life—but I’ll walk. I’m not kidding.”