“Don’t settle for anything less than what you want.”
“I won’t, Mama.”
But she would. We all do.
Mary Alice stuck her head in the door. “What’s going on?” Well, maybe there are exceptions.
“I like your hair, Patricia Anne,” she informed me. “Who did it?”
“A woman named Bernice who owns the Curl Up and Dye. She did Millicent’s hair. Told me Millicent was having a fling with a bald man.”
“Who?” Sister came in the room and shut the door.
“Bernice didn’t know his name. just that he was bald or losing his hair. Millicent asked her about Rogaine.”
“Well, that narrows it down to about three-fourths of the
men in Destin. Ten thousand men, give or take a few.” Sister sat down beside me. “I wish I’d bought some of that Rogaine stock.”
“Baldheaded men have more testosterone,” Haley stated. She was at the dresser brushing blush along her jawline.
“Oh, I already knew that. Remember, Mouse, how Will Alec hardly had any hair? He was by far the sexiest of my husbands.”
“He was the youngest,” I said. I got back to my story. “Bernice says she has a ‘feeling’ that the baldheaded man is the murderer.”
“She wouldn’t make a very good juror, would she? Haley, don’t wear those white sandals with that dark dress.”
“I don’t have anything else except tennis shoes and flip-flops.”
“Well, as long as you know better.” Sister got up. “I’ve got to get ready for Berry.”
“Be careful. He’s losing his hair,” Haley cautioned.
“So are the two men in the living room.” Both of them giggled.
“Fools!” I said and stomped out.
Frances had gone out on the balcony and I soon discovered why.
“Deaf as a post in my left ear,” Fred was saying to Dr. Nachman. “Couldn’t hear it thunder. So I got some of that wax removal stuff at the Big B, but every time I put it in my ear, it gave me a coughing fit. I mean I coughed like I had the whooping cough. The kind that makes you gag stuff up.”
I went back to Haley’s room. “Better hurry. Your future’s at stake.” Then I joined Frances on the balcony.
“What time did Philip show up?” I asked.
“About five. Seems like this has been the longest day.”
I agreed. A lot had happened: the rainy funeral, the disastrous party at Jason’s, my hair debacle and the rescue at the Curl Up and Dye, as well as the appearance of Philip Nachman just to name a few.
“I wonder how Jason’s doing in that big pink house all by himself,” Frances said wistfully.
Which reminded me of Bernice’s feeling about the baldheaded man. I discovered in the retelling that it was becoming more and more farfetched.
But Frances disagreed, saying intuition should not be dispatched lightly. “My grandmother never would go to Kansas,” she said. “She always had a feeling that she would die in Kansas. Really believed it.”
“Why Kansas?”
“God knows. The farthest the woman ever got from Ramer, Alabama, was Montgomery.”
“Maybe she saw
The Wizard of Oz
.”
“Could be.” Frances was silent for a moment. “The thing about it, Patricia Anne, is that if she’d ever gone to Kansas, she really would have died. And not from fear, either. There are some things we just know are true.”
I thought about the moment on the bridge when I knew the killer was close to us, and I shivered.
“We’re gone,” Haley said, coming out on the balcony.
“You look beautiful,” Frances said. “Turn around and let me see that dress.”
Haley swirled and I noticed that Philip Nachman had come to the door and was smiling at her. The look on his face was that of a man deeply in love. Surely, I thought, they could work things out.
In a few minutes, Berry West knocked at the door.
“How’s Jason?” was the first thing Frances wanted to know as he came in.
“He seems okay. He and some lady have gone for a ride on his boat.”
“Oh.” There was no disguising the disappointment in Frances’s voice.
“I’m ready,” Sister said, sailing into the room.
“And you look very pretty,” Berry said admiringly.
Sister bought it. She smiled down at Berry as if she could eat him with a spoon. “You look mighty spiffy yourself.”
He looked baldheaded and Bernice’s theory of the baldheaded murderer popped right up.
“Sister,” I said, “why don’t y’all stay here. Berry, don’t you like to play poker? We could call Steak ’Em and have dinner delivered.”
“We’ve got reservations, Patricia Anne.” Berry looked at Sister. “Unless you’d rather, of course.”
“Of course not.” She gave me her have-you-lost-your-mind look and stepped out into the hall. “Hold that elevator!” she screeched to someone.
And they were gone.
“What was that about?” Frances asked.
“He’s baldheaded. I told you about Bernice’s dream.”
Frances gave me her version of have-you-lost-your-mind.
“Well, you said to trust your intuition.”
“True. But Berry was in Birmingham when Millicent was killed and besides we’ve already got the motive, Blue Bay, and neither Mary Alice nor Berry has any connection with that.”
“Just Jason, Eddie, and Fairchild. And Laura.”
“And it absolutely could not have been Jason.”
By this time we were back in the living room on the sofa. “Frances,” I asked, “have you considered cutting down on your estrogen?”
A
fter such a busy day, we welcomed a quiet evening. And that was what we had. After Mary Alice left with Berry to go dancing, Frances and I went to Delchamps and picked up salad and sandwich stuff. Fred went next door to see if Fairchild wanted to join us and reported back that Fairchild was surrounded by women who seemed to be hand-feeding him all sorts of delicacies including smoked oysters that had looked delicious. But didn’t Fairchild have high blood pressure?
“Not as high as it’s going to be,” I said.
“When I’m widowed, I want to be living down here,” Fred declared. He caught the olive I hand-fed him through the air. “Ahhh, olives!”
We ate, played Scrabble, watched the ten o’clock news. There was no Tarzan yell from the Berliners’ balcony to announce turtles coming in, no phone calls. By eleven we were in bed.
“I really do like your hair,” Fred said, snuggling against me. “But I liked it red, too. After the initial shock.”
“You wouldn’t even look at me!”
“When?”
I put my hands flat against his chest. “When you were walking down the beach. I waved at you and you turned your back.”
“There was a man too far out on a float. That’s what I was looking at. I was wondering if the lifeguard saw him.”
Damn! I could have stayed redheaded.
“Honey?” Fred whispered. “You got a shower cap or something? That stuff on your hair’s potent.”
I shoved him. “Then just get on your side.”
Fred went to sleep, but I didn’t. I finally got up, slipped on some shorts and went to the balcony. Several people were sitting on the stile, including Fairchild. I could hear the low murmur of their voices; in the shallow water beyond them, flounder fishermen walked with lanterns. It was so peaceful, so serene. The last place in the world for violence, I told Sister when she joined me.
“Tell that to the flounders,” she said.
“True. How come you’re home early?”
“Berry wasn’t feeling well. Stomach bug. How come you’re still up?”
“Couldn’t sleep. Couldn’t get Millicent and Emily off my mind. It has occurred to you, hasn’t it, that the killer is probably right in this building, someone we know fairly well?”
“You off on your baldheaded theory again?”
“No, I’m trying to be logical. I don’t want anybody else to get hurt.”
“That’s the police’s job.”
“I haven’t seen Cagney and Lacey wandering around on the beach.”
Mary Alice shook her head. “Maybe they’re doing a lot that we don’t know about.”
I thought about this for a moment. “Nah. Major Bissell’s been at the writers’ conference and running after Haley all week.”
“True.” Mary Alice leaned forward and looked at the group on the stile. “I hate that Fairchild’s still way up on their list. Bless his heart. We should have gotten him cleared by now.”
We sat for a moment in silence before I asked Sister if she thought the police had checked Eddie Stamps’s boat.
“Well, surely they did, wouldn’t you think? And Jason Marley’s, too. They’re not Cagney and Lacey, but they’re perfectly adequate. They found out where the threatening phone call came from right off the bat, didn’t they?”
“You think Laura really got one?”
“She had no reason to lie about it.”
“She would have if she made the call.”
“But it was a man’s voice. Besides, why would Laura call me?”
“To get you to leave.”
“Why would she want me to leave?”
“She knows you’re in danger.”
“Good Lord, Mouse. That hair dye’s seeped into your brain. Incidentally, your hair looks great,” Sister said.
“Thanks.” We were both quiet for a moment, thinking.
“I found out Jack Berliner wasn’t the boyfriend,” Sister added.
“How did you do that?”
“A trip to the third floor to see the Packard sisters while you were at the beauty parlor.”
“Good thinking.” The Packard sisters, rumored because of their ability to collect information as being retired from
the CIA, are also known as the Gulf Towers equivalent of the Internet. “What did they say?”
“All the permanent residents had to vote to let the Berliners in because of Sophie. They wanted to move here because Jack’s brother and his family are here. They have a townhouse on the bay. Anyway, the ladies said Jack and Tammy charmed everyone at the New Year’s Eve party. Enough to bend the rules for them.”
“He and Millicent still looked pretty chummy.”
“Nope. He’s madly in love with his wife. The Packard sisters say so.”
“That’s one baldheaded fellow we can scratch off then.”
“Maybe. And Berry says Jason Marley’s one of the most respected developers in Florida and that he’s totally shaken about the deaths.”
“Which doesn’t mean he’s not the murderer. Frances says he’s not because he lives in a pink house. That’s crazy. And we’re convinced Fairchild couldn’t be the murderer because he’s so nice. Get real, Sister. Remember what Daddy said at his and Mama’s fiftieth anniversary when somebody asked him for the secret of their long marriage?”
Mary Alice giggled. “He said the secret was to not keep a gun in the house. But he was teasing.”
“Sure he was. He was also stating a universal truth. People usually kill in moments of passion.”
“Not Fairchild. He’s too nice.”
The only thing I had to hit her with was a piece of orange peeling.
A match flared against the dark seawall, went out. Another was lit and flickered against a cigarette. The third one was the charm and also told me who was sitting there.
“Come with me a minute,” I told Sister. “I think there’s a certain little girl down there who can tell us some things.”
The seawall is five feet tall, but on the Gulf side sand has pushed up against it forming a dune and making it easy to climb. We went over the stile, spoke to everyone, and headed out as if we were taking a walk. Then we cut back, climbed the dune as quietly as we could and leaned over the smoker.
“Hi, Sophie,” I said.
“Shit!” The rattled child choked. “What are you doing here?” she asked when she finished coughing.
“Just want to ask you something.”
“What about?”
“Millicent’s turtle earring.”
“Millicent gave it to me. I’ve already told the policeman.”
“When she went to buy the tomato juice at seven o’clock in the morning?”
“I don’t know what time it was.”
“She stopped by your apartment and gave you one earring. Lord, Sophie, you ought to be able to make up a better story than that.”
Sister chimed in. “Or you could tell the truth. Like maybe you found it somewhere.”
“I didn’t find it,” Sophie said. “It was given to me. I swear.”
I suddenly remembered the way Sophie had walked down the Stampses’ pier and a light went on. “Eddie Stamps gave it to you, didn’t he?”
“No, Mr. Stamps didn’t give me the earring.” But there was enough hesitation to tell me I had hit upon the truth.
“And when your daddy gave it back to Fairchild, you wanted to see if you could find the other one.”
There was silence from the figure below us.
“Where did Mr. Stamps find the earring, Sophie?” I asked gently.
The child-woman stubbed her cigarette out and sighed. “I don’t know. Maybe on his boat. I thought the other one
might be there, but I looked all over this afternoon and it wasn’t.” She stood up and faced us. “Please don’t get Mr. Stamps in trouble. He’s such a nice old man.”
“Yes, he is, Sophie,” I agreed. “But somebody isn’t. You have to tell the police everything you know so nothing else happens.” I sounded patronizing even to myself. So Sophie’s reaction didn’t surprise me.
“All he did was give me the earring because he knew that Millicent and I did turtle watches together.”
“Then tell your parents. They’ll take care of it.”
“Shit! Leave me alone!” The child turned and fled toward the building.
“Think she’ll do it?” Sister asked.
“Of course not.”
The two of us slid down the dune.
“Well, damn, Mouse, I’m impressed. How did you know it was Eddie?”
“Part something I saw: part guess. Wait a minute.” I stopped and pulled off my sandals. The sand was cool and damp. “I don’t think he’s the murderer, though. Don’t ask me why. Just a feeling.”
“I beg your pardon, little sister, but isn’t that what you were just fussing at me about?”
True. I tried to get my tail out of the crack. “You just can’t let your feelings blind you.”
Sister sniffed. “You and your feelings. I remember the day Jimmy Carter got elected President I called you and said ‘Let’s go to Plains so we can be there for the big celebration.’ And you said no, you had a feeling Gerald Ford was going to get it. And I let you talk me out of going to what must have been an incredible party.”
“I wonder what an incredible party is like in Plains, Georgia?”
“Fun. All sorts of things happening. I’ll bet that night they blew car horns, shot off guns, beat on frying pans.”
“And to think we missed it.”
“I know you’re being sarcastic,” Mary Alice said.
When we came to the stile, Fairchild was sitting there alone. “Sit with me a few minutes,” he invited us. Mary Alice took him up on it, but I rinsed the sand from my feet, went upstairs, slipped my nightgown back on and crawled into bed. I didn’t think I would sleep, but I did. I crashed. About five o’clock, though, I awoke and began to think about the murders, to go over all that had happened. And suddenly, I was sure I knew who the muderer was. Only one piece of the puzzle remained. At six o’clock, I was knocking on Fairchild’s door.
Dr. Nachman, Haley informed us, was taking us all to the Sandestin Hilton for brunch before they headed back to Birmingham.
“How did last night go?” I poured her a cup of coffee. I had already had a couple of cups with Fairchild and Major Bissell, but I took another.
“Fine.”
I pride myself on being able to read my daughter’s moods, but I had no idea what was going on. She seemed happy, but not excited. Or maybe my mind was too much on other matters.
“What your mama wants to know is if Nephew proposed,” Mary Alice stated bluntly.
“Not exactly.” Haley smiled and turned toward her room. “I’ve got to get my stuff together.”
“Don’t forget the cappucino machine,” Sister called. And as soon as the door was closed, “How can you not exactly propose?”
“I have no idea, but I’m not going to worry about it.” Liar, liar!
The front door opened and Fred came in, his flip-flops in his hand. “Already hot out there. Laura Stamps caught me as I came into the lobby. Had me help her put some stuff in her car.”
“She hasn’t left yet, has she?” I asked.
“I don’t know. She said if we wanted to look at her apartment, she’s leaving the key with Fairchild.” He took the coffee I held out to him. “Why would we want to look at her apartment?”
“We might buy it.”
He grinned at me. “Okay, Miss Money-bags.”
“Well, you are going through with the Metal Fab merger, aren’t you?”
“I am, but I think we better hold up on Florida condos. Are there any sweetrolls?”
I put one in the microwave for him. When it dinged, I jumped.
“You okay, honey?” he asked.
“Fine.” But I wasn’t. I wanted the phone to ring; I wanted Major Bissell to tell me if I was right or wrong. I was probably wrong. I hoped I was wrong.
“You were out early this morning.”
“Walking on the beach.” Okay, Major, so I’m keeping quiet like you asked.
“Don’t eat much, Fred,” Mary Alice said. “Nephew’s taking us to brunch.”
He turned toward me. “Our future son-in-law?”
“Your guess is as good as mine.”
“Too old.”
“But an ENT.”
“True.” Fred balanced his sweetroll across his coffee cup, gave me a pat on the behind, and went into the living room to turn on “Sunday Morning.”
Mary Alice poured a generous amount of milk into her coffee. “I wonder if the police know that Laura’s leaving.”
“Don’t know,” I said truthfully.
“Y’all look serious.” Frances came into the kitchen, her hair wet from a shower.
“We found out last night that Eddie Stamps gave Sophie the turtle earring,” Mary Alice said.
“How did you find out?”
“Sophie told us. Patricia Anne got it out of her.”
I jumped to Eddie’s defense. “Which may simply mean that Eddie found the earring somewhere.”
“Patricia Anne has a feeling.” Sister moved so Frances could get to the refrigerator. “But the police sure need to know if he found it on his boat. For all we know, Millicent was leaving earrings as clues.”
Frances backed out of the refrigerator with a carton of orange juice. “I read a story like that one time. The woman left licorice jelly beans. They knew it was her because she was the only one who liked them. Traced them right to the murderer.” Frances poured a glass of juice and closed the carton. “Maybe the jelly beans lead to Laura. Have you thought about that?”