Polished Off (15 page)

She had started to her feet and now took a few steps toward the garage. I caught up with her as Hank ducked under the three-quarters open overhead door and headed our way, something black draped over his arms. The other officer followed him.

“What’s that?” Stella asked, staring.

“Evidence,” Hank said tersely. He had his self-important look on as he marched past us.

A breeze twitched at a corner of the fabric and I recognized it. My heart thudded against my rib cage. I’d last seen the garment swishing around a corner in the Oglethorpe.

“It’s a cape,” I told Stella. “The murderer wore it when he left the theater.”

Stella gasped.

Hank pouted his lower lip, peeved with me for spoiling his game of “I’ve got a secret.” “You civilians wouldn’t understand,” he said. “But I’ll bet blood transfer from the murderer’s clothes to this cape will give us all we need to get this guy the needle.”

“I’ve never seen it before,” Stella said, looking from Hank to me. “It’s not mine or Darryl’s. What was it doing in our garage?”

“In the pickup bed,” Hank corrected smugly.

I wanted to belt him, but Agent Dillon spoke from behind me.

“Good work, Officer Parker. Put that in an evidence bag and log it properly. Officer—Kharitonoff, is it? Finish searching the garage.”

Officer Kharitonoff turned without a word and reentered the garage. Hank looked like he was going to resume his forensics lecture, thought better of it, and trudged toward the patrol car.

“Is that your husband’s truck, Mrs. Michaelson?” Dillon asked, nodding his head toward the red Chevy S-10 in the garage.

“Yes, but—”

“Was he driving it last night?”

Stella hesitated.

“We’ll find witnesses who saw him,” Dillon said.

“Yes, he was driving it. But—”

“Anyone could have put something into the bed of his truck,” I pointed out. “Just because the cape was in there doesn’t mean Darryl had anything to do with Audrey’s murder.”

“I’m sure the defense attorney will be very interested in your theories,” Dillon said, implying that he wasn’t. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Michaelson.” He walked back to his car and reached in for the radio.

I didn’t tell Stella, but I was pretty sure he was arranging for an arrest warrant and putting out the word to pick up Darryl Michaelson. I had to admit it didn’t look good. Sure, anyone could have put the cape in Darryl’s truck, but what would be the point?

“He didn’t do it, Grace,” Stella said, desperate to convince someone of her husband’s innocence. Maybe she was really trying to convince herself. “How stupid would it be to put the cape in the truck and leave it here if he killed Audrey?”

Darn stupid, I had to admit. Which didn’t mean he hadn’t done it. From some of the stories Hank told, and others I’d seen on the news, most criminals ended up in jail because they weren’t exactly rocket-scientist material. If Darryl had killed Audrey in a fit of passion, he could have stuffed the cape in the truck bed and been so frantic to get away that he forgot it when he got home and took off in the camper.

“Darryl!”

I thought Stella’s cry was a generalized shout of despair until she took off running toward the street. Turning, I saw her almost collide with a dented pickup capped by a camper. Brakes squealed and the driver’s-side door opened simultaneously. Darryl’s wiry figure jumped into the street. He gathered Stella into his arms.

“What do you think you’re doing, honey? I almost hit you.” Clad in grubby jeans and an equally grimy blue tee shirt with a picture of a buck’s head in a scope, Darryl had a couple days’ growth of reddish beard scruffing his jawline. Darker red hair had the outline of a ball cap pressed in at the temples. He looked exhausted but not nervous or scared, as you might expect a hunted fugitive to look when returning to home base.

“Where . . . been?” Stella gasped out between sobs.

“I’m sorry if I worried you,” he said, stroking her hair. “I was down to Osceola. I’d’ve called you when I started back, but my damn phone was out of juice. I left here so quick last night I forgot to take the charger. What’s all this?”

His only answer was more hiccupping sobs from Stella.

“What’s going on?” He looked at the police and at me, having given up on getting anything intelligible out of Stella.

Agent Dillon had emerged from his car when the truck pulled up. Now, he advanced on Darryl, handcuffs in hand. “Darryl Michaelson, you’re under arrest for the murder of Audrey Faye.”

Darryl’s eyes widened and his jaw sagged as Agent Dillon read him his rights. He moved his mouth but no sound came out. “Audrey’s dead?” he finally managed to gasp. “Oh my God.”

Stella reared back at his sorrowful tone. “Don’t you dare cry for her,” she said fiercely. “Don’t you dare.” She thumped a fist on his chest for emphasis.

An audience had gathered. Two women with babies in strollers, a yard-care guy with a fertilizer tank strapped to his back, a loose border collie, and miscellaneous neighbors crowded the sidewalk and spilled into the street. A man in a silver Mustang honked to goose a bicycler to keep pedaling.

“Mrs. Michaelson.” Dillon nudged her away from Darryl. “Grace—”

I responded to the request in his voice, even though I was mad that Darryl’s arrest was becoming a public spectacle. I grasped her wrist to stop her from following as one of the officers led Darryl to a squad car and urged him into the backseat. “Stella, let’s go call Simone.”

“Simone?” She sounded like the syllables didn’t make sense, like she’d never heard the name before. Her eyes followed the police car as it gave a whoop of its siren to clear a path and edged away from the curb.

“DuBois. She’s a lawyer, remember?”

Stella trailed me to my car, seeming oblivious to her neighbors gawking like we were filming an episode of
One Life to Live
. “Do you think—”

“No.” I answered before she could complete the question. Any doubts I’d had about Darryl’s guilt were resolved by the look of total incomprehension on his face when he heard Audrey was dead. No way was he putting it on. Tom Hanks wasn’t that good an actor.

I DRAGGED STELLA TO VIOLETTA’S. MOM WAS THE calmest, most sensible person I knew; if anyone could help Stella stay sane while the police carted her husband off to jail, it was Mom. Me, I’m an organizer. I would call Simone and find out about getting Darryl out on bail while Mom dealt with Stella.

“Jessie!” Stella gasped as we pulled up in front of the salon. She slewed in the seat to face me, her green eyes sunken. “I’ve got to get Jess. Someone will tell her her daddy’s been taken to prison. Oh!”

I didn’t think seeing Stella in this state would reassure her daughter. “Can you just call your mom?” I suggested. “Maybe she could take Jess some place for a few days.” Although Jess would have to know at some point—especially if Darryl went to trial—it might be better if she didn’t find out until Stella knew more about the situation and had her own emotions under control.

Stella raked her fingers through her already disordered hair. “Maybe. Mom was talking about visiting a friend of hers up Savannah way.”

“Good,” I said, thrusting my cell phone at her. “Call her.”

I went into the salon to give her some privacy and filled my mom in.

“We’ve got to help her,” she said immediately, her brows knitted. She found a pen and marker, scribbled “Closed for Family Emergency” on a half sheet of paper, and was taping it to the door when Stella came onto the veranda. She promptly burst into tears at sight of the sign.

“You’re family, dear,” Mom said, hugging her tightly, “and we take care of family. Come in and let me get you some tea.”

Tea. Mom’s go-to for any emotional emergency. I knew she thought things were really in a bad way when she added a tablespoon of honey as she did today. The coziest room in the house, the kitchen was where Mom and Althea originally started doing hair and facials for friends, back after their husbands died. Cheery yellow paint and a brick wall gave the kitchen a warm feeling. The appliances dated back to my childhood, as did the well-used copper pots hanging from a ceiling rack that reflected our faces in fun-house ways.

Stella took the mug in shaking hands and drank deeply. “Oh, Violetta,” she said. “How did things come to such a pass? One minute, my life is good—not perfect, but really good—and the next my husband tells me he’s sleeping with another woman and then he gets arrested for murder.”

“Being thrown in prison is just what he deserves for cheating on a good woman like you,” Althea said tartly, letting the screen door bang shut. She helped herself to tea and sat at the kitchen table. “You weren’t going to have this confab without me, were you? I was at Doralynn’s when I heard about Darryl having his ass hauled off to the pokey and I came right over.”

“He doesn’t really deserve to be in jail,” I said. “He didn’t kill Audrey.”

“A couple of days won’t hurt him.” Althea stuck her jaw out. “Maybe it’ll give him pause next time he thinks about unzipping his jeans anywhere but in his own bedroom. How do you know he didn’t kill Audrey?” She shot a sharp glance my way.

“He didn’t know she was dead,” I said. “I’m sure of it. When Agent Dillon arrested him for her murder, he was flabbergasted.”

“He did seem surprised,” Stella said, taking another sip of tea.

“Surprised he got caught,” Althea muttered.

Mom gave her a minatory stare.

“Okay, okay, I’m done. If y’all think he’s innocent, that’s good enough for me. Have you made any progress in figuring out who really did it, Grace?”

“Not really.” I filled them in on the note Jodi found and destroyed, on the bikini sabotage, and on Sam Barnes.

“Sounds to me like someone wants to stop the pageant,” Mom said, “and maybe went too far.”

“Could be,” I agreed. An ugly thought struck me. “Since killing Audrey didn’t get the pageant cancelled, you don’t think whoever it is will try anything worse, do you?”

An uneasy silence clouded the kitchen. “What would be worse than killing someone?” Stella asked.

I didn’t verbalize any of the ideas that popped into my head, superstitiously not wanting to give them more power. “Not knowing whether it’s someone with a grudge against Audrey personally or a thing for pageants makes it almost impossible to narrow down the suspects,” I said.

“First things first,” Mom said. “Oughtn’t you to call Simone? Then it seems to me a good idea for someone to touch base with Rachel and see what she thinks. She’s closer to that pageant than any of us.”

“Good thinking,” I said. I called Simone DuBois and explained the situation. She promised to get over to the jail to interview Darryl and see when they were having the arraignment. “She wants to talk to you, too,” I told Stella when I hung up. “At her office as soon as you can get there.”

Stella scrambled to her feet. “Oh! I don’t know how we’ll pay her,” she said, trying to smooth her hair with her hand. “And I left my car—”

“You’re not in that much of a hurry,” Mom said. “C’mon upstairs and tidy yourself up a bit. I’ll drive you to Simone’s and go with you to pick up your car and an overnight bag. You’re staying here tonight. With your mama and Jess off to Savannah, you shouldn’t be alone.”

Without giving Stella a chance to argue, she nudged her up the stairs that lay behind a door near the pantry. Mom followed, turning back to make shooing motions at me and Althea. “You two go do something to sort this mess out. The answers aren’t going to come marching up to you in my kitchen.”

 

 

ALTHEA DECIDED TO GO WITH MOM AND STELLA AND I called Rachel’s house only to have her mother tell me the girl was at the St. Elizabeth high school rehearsing a dance number for the pageant’s finale. Jodi Keen, Rachel’s mom said, had managed to borrow the high school’s stage until the police let the pageant back into the Oglethorpe. I thanked her and headed out, pulling into the high school parking lot just as the bells from the Catholic church across the street bonged the half hour. Four thirty. The day’s heat had sunk into the asphalt of the parking lot and radiated up in shimmering waves. My sandals stuck to the tarry surface and made
phlupp
noises with each step. I figured I knew how a hapless dino mired in a tar pit felt. The protestors, minus Althea, clustered around an ice cream truck parked at the curb across the street. They were too intent on scoring Push Ups and Drumsticks to notice me.

Two stories of sixties-era red brick, the high school had less character than a Lego project. Glass doors with a chain hanging off the metal handle opened onto halls of worn linoleum lined with metal lockers. I went in. Bracing air-conditioning scented with eau de high school—a mix of steamed broccoli from the cafeteria, sweaty gym clothes, lip gloss, and musty books—swept me back to my days as a St. Elizabeth Sabertooth. A fifteen-foot-tall version of the school’s mascot, painted by someone in the class of 1973, leered at me from the side wall. I assumed that the muralist had not gone on to a career as an artist. The sabertooth tiger was an orangey shade, spotted here and there with pale green where the paint had flaked off to show the color beneath. One of his fangs was longer than the other and his slightly cross-eyed expression was more reminiscent of a drugged kitten than a fierce predator. Which might explain our football team’s perennially dismal performance.