Chapter 16
Bogus Massage, Free Cuts, and Suspecting Caine
After yesterday’s fiasco at the jazz funeral, I let myself in early at Hair.Net. I like to have time to relax and center myself before my clients start arriving.
I love the small rituals of morning. First, I make coffee in the break room just the way I like it, dark with a touch of New Orleans French Market–style chicory, plenty of cream added, no sugar. While the coffee is brewing I select a stack of Christmas CDs to set the mood.
I love to collect coffee mugs, so the next part of my ritual is selecting exactly the right one for the day. Today’s mug features a Native American sacred white buffalo and the advice to listen to my inner voice.
I pride myself on doing that, but it’s always good to have a reminder. I settle behind my desk with my special mug of coffee and the newspaper while Elvis settles onto his pillow nearby.
An item in the police report section leaps out at me: Police foiled an attempted burglary at Nathan Briggs’ home at 613 Highland Circle. Nothing was reported stolen. The culprit fled and was not apprehended.
Was the so-called burglary a cover for a killer after the mall’s original Santa? Is Uncle Charlie still in danger?
I’m getting ready to call him when the phone on my desk rings.
“Abel Caine,” a deep voice says. “May I speak with Miss Jones?”
I’m so startled I almost drop the phone. One, that he’s finally calling. Two, that he sounds like a Southern gentleman instead of an ex-con.
“Speaking.”
Abel wants to come in for his free haircut and massage. Today, if possible.
I don’t have time to consult Lovie. Racking my brain to think of her catering schedule, I tell him, “Two o’clock.”
If my cousin can’t be here to do the massage, I’ll do it myself. After all, Darlene will be here to oversee my shop full of clients. Among them will be Mama, coming in to get her hair dyed red for Christmas. She changes hair color more often than some people change socks.
Thank goodness, her appointment is not until four. Abel Caine will be long gone by then.
If necessary, I can ask Jack to spend an hour or two at Hair.Net. He and Uncle Charlie are the only two people who can keep Mama in line. Besides, he’d be handy if Abel has more on his mind than a few freebies.
Lately, I’ve been seeing how Jack is handy for many things—running a hot tub, making Mayan chocolate, bringing in the Christmas tree. But I’m not going to dwell on that.
I’m also not going to dwell on the fact that he’s accessible because he’s still at my house. I’ll think about that someday when catching a killer has not just shot to the top of my to-do list.
As soon as I hang up after my chat with Abel, I call Lovie with the latest development. She lets forth a string of words that would measure way up there on the Richter scale.
“It can’t be that bad, Lovie.”
“I was going to be cooking casseroles for tonight’s city-wide preachers’ dinner.”
“That’s okay. I can handle this.”
“Forget it, Lone Ranger. All I need to keep a bunch of preachers happy is a long-winded blessing and plenty of fried chicken. I’ll be there.”
I’m relieved. No matter what kind of trouble Lovie and I get into, we’re always in it together.
The bell over my shop door tinkles, and I go up front to greet my first client, Roy Jessup from Mooreville Feed and Seed, who says he’s looking to change his style.
He’s either out to impress his fiancé or he’s broken up with her and is out to impress somebody new. But since he’s closemouthed and I don’t pry, it will remain his secret. Unless one of Mooreville’s gossips arrives to ferret the truth out of him.
My shop bell tinkles again, and in walks Mama.
“I thought I’d come early.”
If Roy weren’t sitting in my chair, I’d point out that seven hours before her appointment is not Mama being early. It’s Mama being nosey. She can sniff out my plans faster than I can make them, especially if they’re something I don’t want her to know. She ought to be a basset hound.
Still, there’s something reassuring about the thought of Mama swooping around in her gold caftan while an ex-con is loose in my shop. Especially if Abel Caine has murder on his mind.
“Just make yourself at home, Mama.” As if she needs an invitation.
She gets a stack of magazines, ensconces herself on my hot-pink loveseat as though it’s her personal throne, then proceeds to grill Roy about his love life.
He turns out to be full of surprises. It turns out he’s “split the sheet with Trixie Moffett,” his words, and is “catting around,” a direct quote. Who would have thought Mooreville’s mild-mannered feed and seed guy was such a Romeo?
Around noon, black thunderclouds turn the shop gloomy, so I go around switching on all the lights. In spite of the impending storm, everybody who comes in for my beautifying touch is full of Christmas spirit and the latest gossip. By the time Lovie arrives, I’ve almost forgotten our appointment with a suspect.
“What are you doing here, Lovie?” Trust Mama.
“Same as you, Aunt Ruby Nell. Looking for trouble.”
I give Lovie a high five behind Mama’s back. It might be my last victory for a long time. Abel Caine has just walked through the door. Though I haven’t seen him since Katrina, I’d know that arrogant swagger and pock-marked face anywhere.
Abel Caine looks like disaster walking. His nose has a hump in the middle, probably where it was broken, and sits slightly off-center. His eyes are small and too close-set, and he has a haircut so ugly it would make less-talented hair stylists cringe.
Both Elvis and Darlene’s little Lhasa Apso William get their hackles up. If I were a dog, I’d have mine up, too.
I nod to Lovie, who whisks the pets off and shuts them up in my office. The last thing I need is Elvis picking a fight with a man who looks like he could break a dog in half with one hand and rip out his liver with the other.
Thank goodness, Lovie stays in the back. It won’t do for Abel to become suspicious of her even before she starts masquerading as somebody who knows her way around a male body for reasons that we will not talk about.
“I’ll want my massage first,” he says.
Mama’s eyebrows shoot up, and I escort him toward the back before she can open her mouth. Thank goodness, Lovie has turned the lights down low, lit candles, lined up the scented oils, and is waiting beside the rented massage table.
I think we’d pass for the real deal.
“I’m going to leave you in the capable hands of my masseuse,” I tell him. “Afterward, I’ll see you in my chair for your free haircut. Just give a yell if you need anything.”
He says, “Okay,” but I’m talking more to Lovie than to Abel Caine.
I’m reluctant to leave her alone and even more reluctant to face the music with Mama.
“Since when do you have a masseuse?” she says the minute I get back up front.
“Didn’t I tell you, Mama? Before I decided what all I’m going to do with the back room, I’m experimenting with a rented massage table.”
“No, you did not.”
“Well, I thought I did.”
“Carolina, if you’re implying I’m senile, you can just get off that high horse right now.”
Darlene is all ears. And so is Wanda Jenkins, who obviously came in for her manicure while I was in the back with Lovie and Abel. Before Mama and I started our argument, Wanda was holding forth on Mooreville’s semi-famous TV weatherman as if her husband was God’s gift to meteorology.
Now she says, “Oh, I like the idea of a massage table, Callie. That way I won’t have to drive all the way over to Tupelo.”
“I know somebody who does body art.” Darlene is dead serious.
“I can’t picture any of my clients wanting a tattoo.”
“Who’s the masseuse?” Mama says.
If I’m not careful, she’s going to blow this undercover operation before it even gets started. I turn my back squarely toward Darlene, who is now consulting today’s horoscopes, and Wanda, who is bound to want something different no matter what the stars say.
“Mama.” I speak so loud Mama drops her magazine. I bend over and get it off the floor, and when I hand it to her, I wink.
She’s nobody’s dummy. She winks back and announces in a tone that queens would do well to imitate, “You need to come with me to the kitchen and make me a snack. That pimento sandwich I had for lunch is long gone.”
Mama’s up to something. She knows her way around my beauty shop kitchen as well as I do. When she’s here, she fixes whatever she wants to eat, anytime she wants it.
I follow her into the kitchen, put my fingers over my lips, and close the door. There’s no sense taking chances that private information will fall on the wrong ears.
“You and Lovie are barking up the wrong tree with that Caine character.”
“Why do you say that, Mama?”
“Because Nelda Lou Perkins is the killer.”
Mama could be right. Nelda’s secret photo album of Uncle Charlie, her dislike of her son-in-law, and her ease with a lethal weapon point strongly in that direction. Still, we have no hard evidence.
“Do you know something I don’t, Mama?”
“I know plenty you don’t, but you never bother to ask my advice. You’re bullheaded, just like Michael.”
Michael Valentine was my daddy and the love of my mother’s life. He died when I was just a little girl, and no man will ever hold a candle to him in my book or Mama’s. Of course, we don’t include Uncle Charlie in the comparison. He and Daddy were brothers, both beloved for their own reasons.
“Well, I’m asking now, Mama. What do you know about this case that I don’t?” I open the refrigerator door and find a pack of Twinkies, one for Mama and one for me. Lunch was rushed and all this stress is making me hungry.
“I heard everything Charlie told the cops.”
“When was this?”
“After he got out of the hospital. They came to his apartment to talk to him.”
“And you eavesdropped?”
“Naturally.”
“You go, Mama.” I give her a high five.
“Get this. Nelda Lou hated Ruldolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer’s guts.”
“Steve Boone? Why?”
“It’s a long story with no substance, and it goes all the way back to when her husband had an account with Tupelo Hardware. She’s a grudge holder. Always has been, always will be. And get this, her husband was an electrical engineer.”
“She could have picked up a few pointers. She could be a Miss Sweet Potato who knows how to hotwire Santa’s throne.”
“Furthermore, a while back she called Charlie to come over for Thanksgiving dinner and has been calling him ever since. He said no, of course.”
“The jilted lover.”
“They were never lovers.”
“How do you know, Mama? Uncle Charlie’s a good-looking man and Aunt Minrose has been dead a long time.”
“Flitter.”
If I laugh, Mama will probably cut me off her Christmas card list. I hold in my mirth and store it away for when Lovie and I can compare notes on today’s doings.
“I’ll have to say I’m impressed with your eavesdropping skills, not to mention your powers of deduction.”
“You just earned yourself a bigger Christmas gift, Callie.”
It seems Nelda Lou had reasons to hate every one of the men killed in Santa’s Court, as well as the one who didn’t die.
“Mama, if she did kill her ex-son-in-law and the man she claimed did her husband wrong at the hardware store, she could still be after Uncle Charlie.”
“I’ve already thought of that. Now that Santa’s Court is closed, Fayrene and I have come up with a plan to lure her out into the open.”
“Do I even want to know?”
“We’re going to have an open house at Gas, Grits, and Guts for the séance room.”
“I can just hear what the Baptists will have to say about your séance room. And a few Methodist won’t be too happy with it, either. Nobody will come to that open house except Episcopalians.”
“For Pete’s sake, I wonder why I didn’t think of that.”
“It’s a good plan, Mama. It just needs a little refining, that’s all. If you call it a Christmas open house at Gas, Grits, and Guts, and then invite all the suspects plus anybody who had anything to do with the charity event at the mall, it just might work.”
“It could have been anybody in that crowd.”
“We’ll all put our heads together and try to come up with a list. Tonight at Uncle Charlie’s?”
“No. Lovie’s.”
“You didn’t discuss your plan with Uncle Charlie?”
“Do you tell him everything you’re going to do?”
“Of course not.”
“What he doesn’t know won’t kill him.”
“Let’s hope not, Mama.”
About that time, all the lights go out in Hair.Net and somebody screams.
What if Mama’s wrong about Nelda Lou and the killer is right here in my beauty shop?
Elvis’ Opinion # 14 on Body Building, Fake Massages, and Dog Heroes
If my human mom thinks I’m going to stay shut up in her office with the likes of that silly-looking dog of Darlene’s, she’s barking up the wrong tree. William promptly goes over and tries to mark his territory by hoisting his leg on Callie’s desk. What Ann Margret ever saw in him, I don’t know.
I prance my iconic self over, look down my famous nose at the Lhasa Apso who thinks he’s the Dalai Lama, and snarl. He changes his tune in a hurry. Listen, if he knew how silly he looks with that little sawed-off leg hoisted in the air, he’d squat to pee. Dogs without real legs ought to know better than to show off. Especially in front of the King.
Once I show that Lhasa Apso who’s boss, I put my front paws on the office door and proceed to “Shake, Rattle, and Roll.” The latch pops open, I sneak out, and push the door shut behind me. I don’t intend to share my freedom with a lesser dog. Especially one who’s been courting the mother of my puppies behind my back.
The crazy, self-styled Dalai Lama sets up a howl. Fortunately, my human mom is too busy arguing with Ruby Nell to notice.
Taking a kingly stance, I sniff to find out what’s cooking. Smells like “T-R-O-U-B-L-E” to me. And it’s coming from the direction of Lovie and the ex-con.
I head that way, and fortunately, the door to the so-called massage room is not fully closed. All it takes is a little nudge to open it a crack and prance right in. The lights are low, and it takes a while to get the lay of the land.
There’s a pile of men’s clothes on a chair, a big hulk on the table that I take to be the ex-con, and Lovie, in black toreador pants and a tight green sweater that shows more peaks than Mount Rushmore.
A woman after my own heart. If you’ve got it, flaunt it, I say.
She sees me and grins. Lovie and I have a pact. I don’t tattle on her and she doesn’t tattle on me.
I lay my handsome self down near the Himalayan salt lamp Callie installed just for this occasion. It’s putting out so many negative ions, I feel like I’m lying on a beach. Which was smart thinking on Callie’s part. With all that sea-breeze-like tranquillity, who’s going to notice that the masseuse doesn’t have a clue what she’s doing?
“Man, that feels good,” Abel Caine says.
“I’m so glad you like it.”
Lovie grins at me and then slathers enough oil on his big, ugly, hairy body to enter him in a greased pig contest. Smart girl. What she lacks in skill, she’s making up in the externals. Too much scented oil. Music that will put you to sleep if you’re not careful. Soft lights. And this beachy lamp that’s got me so relaxed I’m already yawning.
“My, what muscles.” Lovie sounds like a character in a fairy tale. And I guess this is a fairy tale of sorts. Two of the nicest amateur sleuths I know trying to catch a killer. “You must work out.”
“Six days a week. It’s my religion.”
“Does that give you time for friends?”
Lovie’s trying to find out if killing is also this man’s religion. I sniff the air for clues. I could tell her a thing or two, but she’s too busy trying to find out what Caine knows about the Santa murders to consult a smart dog.
“I keep to myself,” he says.
“A man who entertains himself has to be very resourceful.”
“I guess you could call it that.” His laugh is as big and ugly as his body.
When Lovie lifts the sheet so he can turn onto his back, I find out more about him than I ever wanted to know. She’s discreetly hidden behind the sheet, but I’m on the open side. And let me tell you, Abel Caine without his clothes on is not a sight you’d want to encounter in the dark. With his over-pumped muscles, he looks like a cartoon figure of a superhero.
And when I say cartoon figure, I’m not kidding. You know how Disney and Pixar draw those heroes? Neutered. No embarrassing body parts that would get their movies rated X.
If I was so underendowed, even I might go on a rampage against Santa Claus. Fortunately, I have Ann Margret to attest to my many charms.
Lovie upends the oil bottle onto him. If she’s not careful, he’s going to slide right off the table.
But when she starts up with her questions again, he sidesteps as smoothly as a man dancing the tango. She’s going to learn nothing from this man. I could have told her and Callie.
While they’re playing cat and mouse with an ex-con, the real killer’s out there planning another move.
That’s not to say they’re in no danger. This man is nobody’s fool, and his aura has turned nasty. It wouldn’t take much to push him to violence.
It’s not happening under my vigilant eye. If I can keep said eyes open.
I’m nodding off when all bedlam breaks loose. The lights go out, the hulk rises from the table, somebody screams, and Callie bursts through the door, hollering for Lovie.
This situation calls for a real hero. Elvis the Incredible to the rescue!