“Are you a patient of Luke Nelson’s?” I ask as gently as I can.
She turns and looks at me with a startled expression, like a deer caught in headlights. Then a montage of emotions flit across her face: surprise, curiosity, and then relief. “Yes, I am,” she says finally, sighing. “I’m not crazy or anything. It’s just that . . . well . . . this . . .” She waves her hand around the scarred side of her face and I nod sympathetically. “And then to top it off, my mother was just diagnosed with breast cancer, which means I’m at risk, too.”
“Oh, crap, Jackie. I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
“No reason you should since you don’t work at the hospital anymore, but between trying to hold down the fort here and at home, worrying about Mom’s health, and dealing with my dad . . . well . . . it does stress me out at times.”
“That’s perfectly understandable. It’s nothing to be ashamed about.”
She casts a wary look at me. “You won’t tell anyone, will you? I don’t want anyone to know I’m seeing a shrink. People jump to conclusions. I don’t want everyone in town knowing about my personal life. You know how it is.”
Boy, do I.
“No one knows I’ve been going to Dr. Nelson, not even my family.”
“And I won’t tell them,” I assure her. “But I would like to ask you a couple of questions, just between us.”
Her shoulders sag in resignation. “Go ahead.”
“Did you see Dr. Nelson on Friday at all?”
She thinks for a minute, then nods. “I had an appointment with him at two o’clock.”
I breathe a sigh of relief when I realize that her appointment is outside the time frame needed to verify Nelson’s alibi, which means I have no need to share the information with anyone else. So I move on to my next inquiry.
“What do you think of him? Is he helping you?”
For a moment her face takes on an almost beatific expression. Then she shrugs. “I guess so.”
“What does he do for you?”
“We just talk mostly,” she says, her cheeks flushing pink. “He’s a very good listener and that seems to help me.” She looks down at her hands and starts picking at a cuticle. “Why so many questions about him?’ she asks.
I can see how uncomfortable she is with the topic and figure it’s either because she’s still worried that I will share her information with others, or that too much rumor and speculation will chase Luke Nelson away. Patients do tend to develop strong attachments to their shrinks. Sensing that I’ve pushed her as far as I can, I say, “I’m trying to get a feel for all the people in Shannon’s life, that’s all. And I promise that what you’ve told me will stay between us. I’m sorry I had to pry.”
“It’s okay. I understand.”
I turn to leave but she calls me back. “There is one other thing I forgot to mention earlier. It might not be important but . . .”
I look back at her, waiting expectantly.
“I had a really bad day a couple of weeks ago and I called Dr. Nelson in a panic. It was late in the evening but he was kind enough to agree to meet me in his office for an emergency session.” She flashes me a wan smile. “Since it was so late, he walked me out to my car when we were done and, just as I was getting ready to leave, this woman showed up. I got the impression he wasn’t very happy to see her.”
“How so?”
“Well, she approached us and said, ‘I see you’re up to your old tricks, Luke.’ At that point he practically shoved me into my car and made a hasty retreat for his own. But the woman followed him and the two of them began yelling at one another. I started my car up but rolled down my window and dawdled a bit before driving away because I was curious. I heard the woman tell Dr. Nelson he’d be sorry he screwed with her and that she would make him pay. She was totally in his face and tried to block him from getting into his car. But he shoved her aside, got in, and drove away.”
“I don’t suppose you know who the woman was?”
Jackie shakes her head. “No, I’ve never seen her before. But I did see her get into a little cherry-red convertible sports car of some type and it had a vanity plate on it.”
I raise my eyebrows in question.
“It was an easy one to remember,” Jackie adds with a smile, “because the lady was rather well-endowed and her license plate read HOT 44D.”
Chapter 21
A
fter borrowing Dairy Air’s phone to make a quick call, I drag Bjorn away from the ice cream display and ask him to drive me across town. He stares at me, blinks hard several times, and asks, “Who are you again?”
It seems his daughter’s suspicions about possible senility might be on target.
“I’m Mattie, remember? The nurse? I emptied your bag for you?” I say, gesturing toward his leg.
He nods, but still looks confused. It doesn’t exactly warm the cockles of my heart knowing that I have a half-blind, slightly confused, incontinent old man for a chauffeur. So I offer Bjorn a deal.
“Tell you what. How about if I drive the cab for a while and you ride along? It’s going to be dark in a couple of hours and I have a few other places I need to go.”
Bjorn considers my proposition for a second or two, then counters with, “Okay, but will you empty my bag again?”
“You betcha.” It’s a no-brainer. Either I empty the bag or risk the explosion of urine all over the cab.
We climb into the van with me behind the wheel and I drive us to the Keller Funeral Home. As I pull up out front, Bjorn looks at the building and then gives me a questioning stare.
“Is there something you’re not telling me?” he says. “I know I’m old but I think I’m in pretty good shape.”
“Relax,” I reassure him. “I’m just here to get my hair done.”
He looks back at the building, then at me and mutters, “And they think
I’m
senile.”
I laugh. “I know it looks odd but there’s a woman named Barbara who works here as a beautician and she is quite talented, with both the living and the dead.”
We get out and head inside. I steer Bjorn toward the main office because in order to get to Barbara, who works her magic down in the basement, we will have to get past a locked door. An elderly woman who looks a little too close to casket-ready is sitting behind a desk in the office. She starts to get up from her chair to greet us but then recognizes me and plops back down. This is a good thing because the first time I came here I had to watch her negotiate the distance from her chair to mine and feared I’d be doing CPR before she reached me. Her name is displayed on a metal bar on her desk: Irene Keller.
“I’m guessing you’re here to see Barbara again,” she says to me.
I nod. “Yes, I just spoke with her on the phone.”
She gives me a quick once-over, clucks her tongue several times, and shakes her head, though I’m not sure if the shaking is a tremor or a judgment. “You know, a little basic maintenance goes a long way,” she chastises. “Barbara is very talented but if you don’t do your part, you’re just wasting her time.”
“It’s been a rough couple of days,” I explain. “I haven’t had the time to tend to myself the way I should.”
She rolls her eyes at me. “I don’t understand you young folks these days. You need to find the time. If you don’t care how you look, why should anyone else? I mean, seriously, even at my age I manage to find the time to work at my appearance.” She waves a hand around in front of her face. “Do you think this look is easy to maintain?”
Yikes! I’m not sure a monster special-effects expert could duplicate her look. Her skin has more wrinkles than a shar-pei, and her white hair has a faint green tint to it and is so sparse I can count the individual follicles in her scalp. Her eyebrows are drawn on and the rest of her make-up is boldly colored, a garish contrast to her translucent skin and pale coloring. And her lipstick is drawn on so far outside the normal lines of her lips that it looks like a three-year-old did it.
Bjorn apparently thinks it all looks fine because he says, “You are a beautiful woman. How is it I’ve never met you before?” Obviously his cataract surgery wasn’t as successful as I’d thought.
Irene shifts her attention from me to Bjorn and does another quick once-over. I notice that her eyes stall briefly and widen when her gaze nears his crotch. There is a noticeable bulge there, thanks to Bjorn’s catheter, but Irene has no way of knowing that’s what it is. She shifts her gaze to his face and smiles. “I’m Irene Keller,” she says. “I own this place and I’m a widow.”
“Bjorn Adamson,” Bjorn says with a sideways nod of his head. There is a definite twinkle in his eye. “I drive a cab and I’m a widower.”
Nothing like getting the preliminaries out of the way, though I guess when you get into Bjorn and Irene’s age group, time is a valuable commodity.
“Barbara is expecting you. She’s just finishing up with another customer,” Irene says to me, never taking her eyes off Bjorn. “The door is unlocked.”
“Is the other customer dead or alive?” I ask.
“Alive,” Irene says, still maintaining eye contact with Bjorn.
I look over at Bjorn. “Do you want to wait up here or come with me?”
“I think I’ll wait up here. That is if Irene doesn’t mind.”
“Of course not,” Irene says, smiling broadly and revealing a mouthful of yellowed, lipstick-stained teeth.
“Do you have anything to eat?” Bjorn asks.
“I have some cookies.”
“I love cookies.”
As I leave the office and head for the basement door, I hear Irene ask Bjorn if he’s done any preplanning for his funeral. He says he has not, but would love to hear what she has to suggest. Foreplay for eighty-year-olds.
I head downstairs and enter the main prep room. There is an elderly female corpse stretched out on one of the tables and for a minute I think Irene must have been confused. But then I hear voices in a room off to the side and head that way.
Barbara sees me and waves me into the room. A tall blond woman is standing beside her looking picture-perfect and utterly radiant in a tight-fitting pencil skirt, tailored blouse, and peep-toe pumps. As I take in the sleek hair, the deftly applied makeup and the long-legged, stylish grace, something about her strikes a familiar chord. A second later it hits me.
“Chris!”
“Hey, girlfriend,” Chris greets back. “Good to see you again.” Chris, despite the feminine good looks, is actually a transvestite. I met him a few weeks ago at a trendy bar outside of town while investigating the Karen Owenby case. I found myself then feeling much as I do now—envious as hell and amazed that a man can look that good as a woman, not to mention that much better than me.
“I took your advice and met with your stylist here,” Chris says. “You were right. Her talents are magical.”
Barbara smiles at me and says, “Thanks for the referral.”
“My pleasure.”
“Oh, the pleasure is all mine,” Chris says, admiring himself in a mirror hanging on the wall. “And the ambience here is so . . . so . . . delicious.”
That’s not how I would describe it, but hey . . . different strokes and all that.
“And it’s like a two-for-one deal,” Chris goes on. “Barbara helped me pick out all my funeral accessories, everything from the coffin and satin pillow down to the music and flowers.” He pauses and sighs delicately. “I’m going to be a knockout as a corpse.” He walks over to a counter, picks up a large ring-binder notebook, and starts flipping through it. I see several color head-shots of women on the pages. Chris settles on one—an adorable Audrey Hepburn–style cut—and hands me the book.
“I’m considering trying this one next time,” he says. “What do you think?”
“I think it will look stunning on you,” I tell him honestly, noticing as I do that the eyes on the model in the picture are closed. I flip through a couple more pages and realize that all of the models are corpses—fine-looking corpses, mind you, but dead nonetheless. I make a mental note not to use the word
permanent
around Barbara because I’m not sure it means the same thing here that it does in other salons.
With one last wistful glance in the mirror, Chris picks up his purse, bids us both good-bye, and sashays out of the room.
Barbara turns her attention to me and takes a moment to survey my hair and make-up. “Looks like you ran into some trouble,” she says.
“You have no idea,” I say, rolling my eyes. “First I fell into a pile of decomp goo and then I had to ride back from the scene on the flatbed of a truck. Today I wrecked my car and managed to get cottage cheese, strawberry jelly, and blood in my hair. Oh, and I have a couple of stitches up here.” I touch the area and wince, surprised at how tender it is. The lidocaine used to numb the area has worn off. “I’m a mess, Barbara. Can you help?”
“Lie down,” she says, gesturing toward an empty stretcher. “Let me see what I can do.”
Though it took some coaxing to get me to lie on a stretcher for dead people the first time I came here, I eventually got past my heebie-jeebies. I’m glad I did, because Barbara is truly a miracle worker. Just shy of an hour after my arrival I arise from my stretcher like a two-bit actor in a Bela Lugosi movie. My hair has been shampooed, conditioned, trimmed and blown dry. My face has been washed, treated with some kind of herbal stuff, and adorned with make-up. I feel renewed, refreshed, and attractive again.
After thanking Barbara, I write her a check and say good-bye, then venture upstairs to look for Bjorn. I find him and Irene in one of the sitting rooms, holding hands. Judging from the red smear on Bjorn’s cheek and the further spread of Irene’s lipstick, I’m guessing they were doing more than hand-holding. Pretty fast moves, if you ask me, but then there is that age thing.
I manage to tear Bjorn away from Irene, but not before hearing that they have a date planned for two nights hence to play bingo at the senior center.
I slip behind the wheel of Bjorn’s van and as soon as he’s seated inside I say, “Looks like you two hit it off, eh?”
He smiles and gazes off into the distance. “A gentleman never kisses and tells,” he says. Then he looks over at me and his smile fades. “Who are you again?”