Polished Off (7 page)

THE BACKSTAGE AREA HAD EMPTIED OUT. NONE of the contestants lingered to hash over her performance or prep for the swimsuit contest the next day. A figure in a cape and hat—probably someone early for the
Phantom
rehearsal—disappeared around the corner at the far end of the hall. I could hear voices coming from the stage—Marv and his crew—but no chatter emanated from the Green Room or smaller dressing rooms. Stella’s door remained closed but no light seeped from under it. I knocked. Nothing.

“Stella?” I called. Still nothing. I tried the knob. Locked. I felt chilled all of a sudden. Why would Stella lock the door? Assuming it was one of those locks where you push in the button to engage the lock, I ducked into my room next door and pulled a wire hanger from the rack.

Not stopping to analyze the sense of urgency that was driving me, I untwisted the hanger and returned to Stella’s door. I poked one end of the stiff wire into the lock and maneuvered it, remembering the time Mom and I had used this trick to open the bathroom door when five-year-old Alice Rose locked herself in and refused to come out. The hanger jammed against part of the mechanism, then slipped. Darn. I wiggled it again, finally feeling it wedge in such a way I could twist it and pop the lock. Success! I turned the knob and the door swung open onto darkness.

The room smelled worse than it had, the musty scent overlaid with an odor that made me think there was a sewer backup. I wrinkled my nose, gagging. Light from the hall crept only halfway into the room, leaving the vanity and chair in near darkness. As my eyes adjusted to the dimness, I thought I could make out someone sitting in the chair. “Stella?” I whispered. No answer.

My fingers tingled like the blood had been cut off. I slid them up the wall beside me, seeking the light switch. Part of me knew what I would see when I flicked the light on, and I wasn’t ready to face it. My fingers hesitated on the switch plate.

“What are you doing?” said a gruff voice directly behind me.

I stifled a shriek and jumped. The overhead light flared on, illuminating the woman’s body in the chair, the reddish hair draping over the back, and the darker blood pooled on the floor and spattered across the wall and mirror.

FOR ONE SHATTERING MOMENT WHEN I GLIMPSED the red hair, I thought it was Stella. But a second glance told me it was Audrey Faye with a knifelike implement plunged into her neck.

“Oh my God,” Marv said behind me. “Aunt Nan told me about dry rot and warned me about mice in the dressing rooms, but she never mentioned anything like this.” He bolted from the room and I could hear him being sick in the hall.

I didn’t approach the body. There was nothing I could do for her and I knew the police would be pissed off if I intruded on the crime scene any more than I already had. I backed out of the room, careful not to touch anything, and found Marv leaning against the wall. He dabbed at his mouth with the hem of his tee shirt.

“Audrey Faye is dead,” I told him. I pulled out my cell phone. “We need to call the police.”

He nodded. “I’ll get a bucket and mop.”

Two patrol officers arrived just as Marv finished cleaning up. One of them, a woman about my age, with olive skin and dark hair, went into the room where Audrey’s body slumped on the chair. The other, as luck would have it, was my ex-husband, Hank Parker. With thirty officers on the St. Elizabeth Police Department you’d think the odds would favor me occasionally and a stranger would show up when I dialed 911. But no. He didn’t spot me immediately because I shifted half a step so Marv’s bulk hid me. Hank’s partner emerged after twenty seconds, conferred with Hank, and summoned help via her radio. Hank pulled out his notebook and lumbered toward us.

Two or three inches over six feet tall, Hank had the husky build of an offensive lineman, which is what he was in high school. In the twelve years since graduation, a small pot belly had added to his bulk, straining the buttons of his blue uniform shirt, and his brown hair had receded a bit from his forehead. He lived for the day he could shoot someone in the line of duty. So far, the best he’d managed was tasering a few gangbangers and assorted others when we lived in Atlanta.

I sneezed, drawing Hank’s attention.

“Grace! What are you doing here?” He elbowed Marv out of the way and gripped my upper arm, leaning forward to kiss my cheek.

I ducked the kiss and shook myself free.

“Now, Grace, don’t be like that. Can’t a man even kiss his wife?”

Marv looked at us curiously. Hank’s partner glared.

I kept a hold on my temper with difficulty. “I am not your wife. We are divorced. No relation legally or biologically. Get a girlfriend. Heaven knows, you had enough of them when we were married.” Grrr. Hank’s proprietary attitude was driving me crazy. I’d left Atlanta in part to get away from him, but he’d moved back to St. Elizabeth shortly after I did, ostensibly to care for his ailing mother who didn’t look too sick when we saw her on the tennis courts or chugging mai tais at The Roving Pirate.

The female officer—her name tag read A. Qualls—threw me a suspicious look tinged with jealousy. Little did she know she had nothing to worry about; if she wanted Hank, she was welcome to him. More than welcome.

“I’m working for the beauty pageant,” I said. “I found the body.” I wrapped my arms around myself to stop the shivers that came on suddenly.

“Not another one!” Hank exclaimed.

“It’s not like I go looking for them,” I defended myself.

“Another one?” Officer Qualls stepped closer to me, her hand resting near the handcuffs clipped to her utility belt.

More footsteps sounded on the stairs and the door pushed open to admit a man about six feet tall, with closecropped hair going gray at the temples. His flagpolestraight posture and air of command said “soldier” or “cop,” even though he wore civilian clothes, a navy blazer, and an off-white shirt that set off his tanned skin. He had a square jaw and a longish nose that had clearly been broken at least once. His steely eyes swept the small crowd clogging the hallway, lingering for a moment on me. His brows rose a fraction. My heartbeat sped up at the sight of him. Special Agent in Charge John Dillon of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. We’d met in May, when he investigated Constance DuBois’s death, and there’d been a few sparks once he decided neither Mom nor I had stabbed Constance. But he’d been gone most of the summer, assigned to some special investigation on the other side of the state, and I hadn’t seen him in two and a half months. How long had he been back? Maybe he’d returned weeks ago but hadn’t been interested enough to call me. I suppressed a tiny ping of disappointment.

After a moment, his gaze moved past me and he said, “Who was first on the scene?” It took him less than a minute to take a report from Hank and Officer Qualls, prod them to put up crime scene tape, and assign Hank to keeping looky-loos from intruding. He disappeared into the room with Audrey’s body. The coroner, arriving a few minutes later, joined him. More police officers showed up and separated Marv and me by putting me in the dressing room I’d used earlier. A sixteen-year-old copy of
People
I found in the vanity drawer kept my mind off what the coroner and crime scene types must be doing next door.

Finally, after what seemed like hours but was only twenty-five minutes by my watch, Special Agent Dillon stepped into the room. He paused on the threshold and gazed at me where I sat at the vanity. His eyes lingered a moment on the length of leg bared by my denim skirt. His mouth was set in a firm line, but a hint of humor lit his navy eyes. “Miss Terhune. I suppose I should’ve expected to see you here.”

“I don’t know why you say that, Marsh.” I flipped a page of the magazine as if fascinated by the article about Pamela Anderson marrying Tommy Lee.

He sighed. I’d taken to calling him Marsh—short for Marshal Dillon—when we met during his investigation of Constance DuBois’s death. His name was John, but it seemed like a liberty to use his first name. I wasn’t sure why . . . I called everyone else I knew under fifty by their first names. And he couldn’t have been more than forty or forty-one.

“Maybe because you’re involved in every murder I’ve ever investigated in St. Elizabeth?”

I tossed aside the magazine and stood to shake the hand he held out. It was hard and callused and I remembered he had a horse and that he’d invited me to see it. An invitation he’d never followed up on. Not that I minded. Much.

“One,” I said defensively. “This makes two. And I’m not ‘involved.’ I just happened to find the body. Well, after I picked the lock with a hanger.” I resumed my seat.

“Exactly.” He didn’t quite smile, but a crease—not really a dimple—appeared in his cheek.

Damn. The almost-dimple made my pulse race in a way that was unnerving.

“I hope you’re not going to tell me that the victim got a bad perm or a fright-night dye job at your salon this time.”

I glared at him. He was referring to Constance DuBois, who was murdered only hours after threatening to close down Violetta’s because her highlights turned orange. Through no fault of my mom’s, I might add.

“Audrey wasn’t a client,” I said. I explained about Audrey hiring me and Stella.

He took out a notebook and a “let’s get down to business” look appeared on his face. “Tell me about finding Ms. Faye.”

I told him about coming back to look for Stella, about finding the door locked and using the hanger to open it.

“Who is Stella?” he asked. “And why were you concerned to the point where you picked the lock?” He flipped a page of his notebook.

I reminded him he’d met Stella at Mom’s salon. The why I was worried part was harder. “I don’t know,” I said. “She’d been acting depressed and she seemed upset to see her husband here. When she didn’t come back after intermission, well, we—Mom and Althea and I—were worried about her. I’d heard her and Darryl in there”—I nodded my head at the wall separating our rooms—“during the break and I thought she might be upset.”

He shot me a sharp look. “You’re sure you heard her and her husband?”

“Yes, I—” I stopped to think. I hadn’t really been able to distinguish words or voices. I’d just assumed it was Stella. I told Agent Dillon as much.

“So it could have been Ms. Faye in there with . . . who? A man? A woman?”

“I don’t know.”

“What about when you came back here after the show? Did you see anyone?”

I closed my eyes, mentally retracing my steps. “Marv and a couple of his workers were on the stage—I heard them. There was no one—wait!” My eyes flew open. “Someone was at the other end of the hall when I came up the steps. He—or she—turned the corner just as I got to the hall.”

“Description?”

“All I saw was a cape and a hat,” I admitted. “I thought it was an actor here for the
Phantom
rehearsal.”

“Midget sized? Shaquille O’Neal sized? Did he move like an octogenarian, an athlete, a kid? C’mon, Grace. You’re a natural observer. Give me more.”

His brusque tone undermined the compliment. I closed my eyes to visualize the figure at the end of the hall. “He was taller than me by at least a couple inches and moved like a young person, that is, he seemed vigorous.” Opening my eyes, I screwed up my face in apology. “That’s the best I can do.”

“Man, woman? Black, white?”

I shook my head.

“When did you last see Audrey Faye alive?”

“Just a few minutes before the talent show started. I asked her to help me find a scarf.”

“Did she have any enemies?”

I shrugged. “I didn’t know her well at all. I never met her before she showed up at Violetta’s today.” I told him about Simone DuBois recommending us and he made a note. “She argued with one of the contestants’ mothers today, though, and I suppose the protestors didn’t like her.” At his questioning look I filled him in on the spat with Mrs. Metzger and the existence of the anti-pageant protestors. “Oh, and she mentioned there’d been some mishaps, like the girl falling off the stage this afternoon.”

He flipped his notebook closed when I finished. “About Stella,” he said. “Does she have any history with Ms. Faye?”

His studied casualness put me on full alert. I sat up straighter. “Not that I know of,” I said. “I don’t think they’d ever met. Why?”

He paused as if debating whether or not to tell me. When he spoke, his voice was low and serious and his eyes watched for my reaction. “The murder weapon was a nail file.”