Polished Off (9 page)

Althea didn’t respond and I turned to look at her. She looked uncharacteristically unsure of herself, pulling at a fraying thread on her cuff. “I don’t know if I can do that,” she said finally.

“Well, okay,” I said, puzzled. “Maybe you could talk—”

“It’s because of Kwasi.”

“Your boyfriend? You don’t think he’d like you hanging out with the protestors? They don’t seem violent or anything.”

“Of course he’s not violent,” she snapped.

“
He’s
not—” I stopped. Dr. Yarrow was Kwasi. Her boyfriend was the protestors’ ringleader. No wonder she’d gotten all stiff and huffy and run off immediately after the protestors invaded the pageant. I wondered if she’d known he’d be there. It didn’t seem like it. I couldn’t think what to say so I blurted the first thing that came to mind. Always a mistake. “I didn’t think he’d be so young.”

Her brown eyes darkened as she glared at me. “I’m too old for him, is that what you’re saying?”

“No,” I said. “I just didn’t know—” I stopped before I could say something else stupid. The age difference had startled me, although he was probably only six or eight years younger than Althea. A moment’s reflection told me my reaction was hypocritical; if he were older than Althea I wouldn’t have blinked an eye. “He seems very . . . committed to his cause,” I offered.

Althea’s glare faded. “He’s a passionate man,” she agreed. A slight smile played around her lips and I got the feeling she was referring to more than his political opinions. I knew perfectly well that being sixtyish and unmarried did not mean a woman was celibate in this day and age, but in all the years I’d known Althea, I’d never gotten the feeling she was looking for more than casual friendship from the men she occasionally went out with. Maybe there was more to Dr. Kwasi Yarrow than met the eye.

“It’s helpful that you know him,” I said. “You can just ask him if he or any of his students saw something suspicious.”

Althea twisted her mouth to the side. “I could do that, I suppose. Maybe I could even join them for a few hours. I’ve never had much use for beauty pageants. I could make a poster. How about ‘Beauty is only skin deep, but ugly is ugly to the bone’ ?”

“Sounds good,” I said, relieved that she didn’t seem so touchy now.

Althea gathered up her purse, intent on buying some poster board and markers before the salon’s first customer was due. On her way out, she bumped into Rachel coming through the door, munching on an apple. Althea congratulated the girl on her performance and bustled down the stairs to her aged Ford LTD, anklet tinkling.

“I’m here for my makeover,” Rachel said, spreading her arms like an actress embracing her public. She spoiled the effect by giggling. She sat at my station, pushing off with her foot to spin the chair a lot faster than the manufacturer ever intended.

“Just let me get Mom and Stella,” I said.

She nodded, arcing the apple core toward the trash can twelve feet away. When I returned with Stella and Mom, Rachel was sitting in the chair, smock around her neck.

“It’s weird to be a client,” she said as I shampooed her hair quickly and squeezed the water out with a towel.

“Okay, no looking until I’m done,” I said when she was back in my chair. I swiveled it so she faced away from the mirror.

“Just like on
What Not to Wear
,” she said. “You’re not going to make me look
too
mainstream, are you? I mean, like, I don’t want to be boring.”

“You could never be boring,” Mom reassured her.

I set to work, enduring a lot of “backseat styling” from Mom and Stella. I had thought about this style a lot last night and I cut quickly, leaving the hair longer at the front so the ends softened her lantern jaw and keeping it short in the back to display her swanlike neck. I gave her asymmetric bangs she could either brush across her forehead or gel for a spikier effect. I finished by working a wax through her hair that gave volume to the newly evened-off layers that framed her face, emphasizing her cheekbones and large eyes.

“Voilá,” I said, spinning the chair so she could view herself.

Mom and Stella applauded as Rachel turned her head from right to left to examine the cut. “It’s, like, really cool,” she said. “Not stodgy and dull.”

I kept my mouth shut, but I wondered if her amazement meant she thought most of the cuts I did were boring. I tried to give customers what they wanted and sometimes that meant conservative or even out of date. I had to admit that my St. Elizabeth’s customers were not, overall, as daring as my Atlanta customers had been. At Vidal Sassoon, I’d counted models and young junior league types intent on one-upping each other among my clients and they’d kept me on my styling toes.

“It suits you,” Mom said. “Good work, Grace.”

“Now, let me at her,” Stella said, bumping me aside with her hip. “We’ve got to do something about those nails.”

Rachel held out her hands, wiggling fingers with short nails still showing traces of black polish. “I guess black is out?” she said.

“Definitely,” said Stella, taking one of the girl’s hands. “I’m thinking coral with your skin tone.”

The phone rang as Stella was finishing up the second coat of polish. Mom answered it. “It’s for you, Stella. The police.” She held the phone out.

Stella took it as gingerly as if it were a scorpion. Her end of the conversation was monosyllabic, and when she hung up, deep grooves bracketed her mouth. “They want to talk to me. Now.”

“I’ll drive you,” I offered with a glance at my watch. We were due at the theater by ten to prep the contestants for the swimsuit competition. It was only eight now. If Agent Dillon kept it reasonably brief, we could be back from Kingsland in time to beautify the girls.

“Is this about Miss Faye’s murder?” Rachel asked, still admiring her new ’do out of the corners of her eyes.

“How did you know about that, Rachel?” Mom asked.

The
St. Elizabeth Gazette
only came out once a week—on Thursdays—so news of the death hadn’t been publicized in the newspaper.

Rachel gave her the kind of “how can you be so out of it?” look that only a teenager could perfect. “A tweet from my friend Shannon whose mom works in a funeral home. And Tabitha’s blog. And an e-mail from Miss Keen this morning, saying the pageant would continue as scheduled. But we can’t use the theater today. Everything’s down at the yacht club.”

I hadn’t even stopped to think that the pageant might get cancelled.

“Goodness,” Mom said faintly. “What’s a tweet? I thought it was part of a stereo.”

Stella and I left Rachel explaining the intricacies of twenty-first-century communications to Mom.

My cell phone rang before I got off Mom’s veranda.

“How come I have to hear about you finding dead bodies secondhand?” Marty greeted me.

Martin Shears, political reporter for the
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
, was plugged into so many news sources, including the GBI and coroners’ offices around the state, that I didn’t even bother asking how he’d heard.

“It’s good to hear from you,” I said. Something in my voice made Stella smile and she continued to the car to give me some privacy. “I was going to call you later today. It’s been hectic.”

“Are you all right? Do you need me to come down there?”

His concern warmed me and I smiled into the phone. “I’m okay. It was gruesome, but I didn’t know the victim very well. I
want
you to come down, if that counts.”

He chuckled. “Maybe this weekend. I’ve got a new lead on the Lansky story—a developer who says he’ll talk on the record about kickbacks—and I’ve got to chase that down.”

Marty had a real bee in his bonnet about our governor, Beau Lansky, who had originally come from St. Elizabeth. We were convinced he was involved in the disappearance and murder of Althea’s husband William twenty-someodd years ago—whose body had only been found this last spring—but he was slippery and we hadn’t been able to prove it.

“You can come down and cover the ‘Beauty Pageant Murder,’ ”I said, investing the words with headline caps.

“Was Lansky sleeping with one of the contestants?”

“Not as far as I know.” I laughed.

“Then I probably can’t justify the trip. That would make a great angle, though,” he said.

I heard clicking in the background and knew he was typing on his keyboard. “Look, you’re probably on deadline so I’ll let you go. If you come down this weekend, I’ll get you a ticket to the pageant final.”

“And if you think of a way to give the story a political spin, let me know. I’ll drive right on down.”

“Deal,” I said.

STELLA SAT SILENTLY IN THE PASSENGER SEAT OF my Ford Fiesta as I headed out of St. Elizabeth on SR 42 toward Kingsland, a small town about twenty miles southwest. St. Elizabeth inhabits a point on Georgia’s southeast coast bounded by the Satilla River to the north and the Atlantic Ocean to the east, so you pretty much have to go west to get anywhere unless you go by boat. A couple miles out of town, I-95 connects us to Jacksonville, Florida, forty-five minutes south, and Savannah to the north. When I lived in Atlanta, I was only four hours from home, but it felt like another universe.

Stella still hadn’t said a word by the time I parked in the lot fronting the Georgia Bureau of Investigation Region Fourteen headquarters. Someone with a penchant for precision had clipped the hedges fronting the building into rigid rectangles. Narrow windows reminiscent of arrow slits scored the tan brick of the building. By the look Stella cast at the plain façade, you’d’ve thought she was entering the Bastille for an appointment with a guillotine. I gave her shoulders a squeeze. “It’ll be okay,” I told her. “Just a few questions and then we’re off to work our magic on the contestants. What kind of swimsuit do you think Rachel will have?”

“Black,” we said together. Stella gave a weak laugh and pushed open the door.

Special Agent Dillon didn’t keep us waiting. We hadn’t even sat down in one of the molded plastic chairs before the inner door opened and he motioned to Stella. “Thank you for coming in, Mrs. Michaelson,” he said. He looked approachable in an open-necked shirt and navy slacks. I wondered if his lack of jacket and tie was a conscious attempt to set Stella at ease.

“I’ll get a cup of coffee at the Perk-Up and meet you back here in half an hour,” I said, emphasizing the time so Agent Dillon would know we were on a schedule.

Stella grabbed my arm, her ring snagging on the loose knit of my moss-colored cotton sweater. “No! I want you with me.”

“I’d prefer to chat with you one-on-one,” Agent Dillon told her with a smile, giving me a “get lost” look.

“No.” Stella set her mouth in a mulish line. “This is hard for me. If Grace can’t sit in then I want a lawyer.”

“There’s no need to get a lawyer involved,” Agent Dillon said, his eyes narrowing.

From the look he gave me, I knew he thought I’d put Stella up to this. “I’ll stay if you want me to, Stella.”

Sighing, Agent Dillon held the door wider and escorted us both to his office. I’d been there once before, in May, when he first questioned me about Constance DuBois’s death. It looked the same, with the large window admitting lots of light and a trio of photos on one wall showing Dillon’s horse going over a series of jumps. Agent Dillon crossed to his desk and gestured at the two blue-padded chairs in front of it.

“I don’t want to hear a peep out of you,” he warned me as we sat. I settled into my chair, but Stella perched on the edge of hers like a finch ready to fly off at the first hint of danger. She clutched her purse on her lap, opening and closing the clasp.
Snick-snick.

Dillon pulled a Baggie from his desk drawer and slid it across the polished surface. “Do you recognize this?” he asked, watching Stella’s face.

Inside the bag was a nail file, six inches of rigid metal coming to a wicked point. Coated with diamond dust, it had a wooden handle stamped with the initials “SM.” Darryl had given it to Stella when she graduated from cosmetology school. He’d had it specially made, she said, still impressed with his thoughtfulness years later. I couldn’t count the number of times I’d heard her tell customers about the file as she used it to shape their nails. Even though she used a powered file for most of her nail work, she still finished customers’ nails with her special file.

“It’s my nail file,” she said. She reached for the Baggie but Dillon pulled it out of reach.

“We have to hang on to this, I’m afraid,” he said. “Can you tell me about your relationship with Audrey Faye?”

“I didn’t know her,” Stella said. “She hired Grace and me to do hair and nails for the girls in the pageant. I’d never met her before we arrived at the theater.”

I waited for her to mention Darryl’s relationship with Audrey, but she didn’t. I tensed, thinking she’d be better off coming clean. Dillon had a way of ferreting things out.