A Parfait Murder (21 page)

“Finn leave?” Bree emerged from the back of the store, using her apron to dry her hands.

She’d been nervous around Finn ever since it came out that Alice was his daughter. I guess she’d been able to shove their one-night stand into a corner of her brain, pretend it had never happened, and she’d been able to laugh and joke and be normal around him. But she couldn’t ignore it anymore. Alice was a living, breathing reminder.

“Yeah, but he’ll be right back.”

She leaned back against the counter, lifting each leg in turn to flex her ankles. She insisted on wearing heels when she worked, and by the end of the day her calves were always aching.

“Are we okay?” she asked.

I wiped up a smear of butter pecan. “We’re okay.”

When she exhaled, I realized she’d been holding her breath.

“Dang, Bree, you and I have been through everything together. I’ve been there for every one of your marriages and every one of your divorces. You helped me take care of my mom, and held me when she died. You were there to kick me in the pants when my marriage to Wayne ended, kept me from slipping into a horrible wallow of self-pity. At this point, I don’t think there’s anything on God’s green earth you could do to break us apart.”

She nudged my leg with the toe of one strappy, high-heeled sandal. “What about you two?”

I didn’t have to ask who she meant. “I don’t know.”

“Tally, I couldn’t stand it if what I did came between you and Finn. You two, you were meant to be. For crying out loud, he came back after seventeen years. Seventeen years, and still you’ve got that magic between you. Don’t let that go.”

I looked at her then. Saw the pain and pleading in her face. “Honey, I just don’t know yet. But I’ll tell you this. If things don’t work out between me and Finn, it’s not on you. Not one little bit. It’s on him, for leaving Dalliance all those years ago. It’s on me, for pushing him away in the first place. But it’s not on you.”

A tear slipped down her cheek, and she pulled me close in a fierce hug.

“Ahem.”

Bree and I pulled apart when Finn cleared his throat.

He stood there, a few feet away, looking at as both. He knew we’d reached some sort of peace. And I could see the question in his eyes, whether that peace included him.

“Sorry to interrupt,” he said, “but you two are gonna want to hear this.” He held up a stapled packet of papers. “It’s quite a story.”

 

The Carberrys lived in the same moneyed neighborhood where Finn had grown up and to which he had returned to take care of his mother. Two-story brick houses squatted on generous squares of too-green lawn, each suburban fiefdom separated from the others by stands of bamboo and hedges of holly. The children in this neighborhood splashed away the summers in backyard pools, the primal scents of beef and charcoal adding a certain urgency to their late-evening games of capture-the-flag.

Mike Carberry opened the door to Finn’s knock. He was in his midforties, had been just a year behind my ex-husband, Wayne, in school. Mike had grown up a few blocks over, left Dalliance to earn a degree in kinesiology at Oklahoma State before returning home to find a job. He’d stumbled into a position at the
Dalliance News-Letter
, but ended up being a decent reporter. He didn’t have a particular gift with words, but folks in Dalliance trusted him. That trust opened doors, and access mattered more than eloquence in small-town journalism.

We’d caught him on a day off. He wore paint-stained cargo shorts, a Dalliance High Wild-Catters T-shirt, athletic socks, and a pair of orange molded-plastic clogs.

“Hey, guys,” he said. “Didn’t expect you two. Come on in.”

He held the door wide. As we passed him, he yawned hugely, opening his mouth wide enough that I could see the gold crowns on his molars. At the apex of the yawn, he reached back to grab a handful of his own mussed brown hair as though he were trying to hold his head on his shoulders.

“Sorry,” he muttered. “I was napping.”

I smiled. “I know the feeling. It’s been a crazy couple of days.”

“Ain’t that the truth? Can I get y’all something to drink?”

“No, thanks, Mike. Look, we were wondering if Eloise was at home. Maybe we could talk to you both for a few minutes.”

Something in Finn’s tone must have signaled that we hadn’t just stopped by to hang out. Mike stood up a little straighter, a little more alert.

“Sure. Eloise is out back, working in the garden.”

Mike led the way through their tasteful house. With walls and floors covered in tones of coffee—from a rich mocha to a pale café au lait, furniture upholstered in traditional blues and dark greens, and absolutely no clutter, the house felt like a model home. I glanced at Mike’s rumpled clothes and wondered where his den was, the man cave where he was allowed to put his feet on the couch and eat in front of the TV.

As we passed through the great room at the back of the house, I noticed a family portrait hanging over the mantel: Mike’s thinning hair combed neatly over his bald spot, Dani with her natural, caramel locks in a glossy bob, the whole family wearing matching red sweaters and khaki pants.

In the picture, there was a look in Eloise’s eyes, a look that mingled triumph and challenge. As if sitting for that portrait was the equivalent of her planting her flag at the summit of Everest . . . and she was daring the world to try to knock her off.

We slipped from the cool dim of the house through the sliding door in the back and into a perfect suburban retreat. The motor for the pool filters hummed softly, and in the distance I could hear children playing a rambunctious game of Marco Polo.

Eloise knelt with her back to us, a blue latex pad protecting her knees from the pebbly aggregate of the pool’s patio. She wore a broad-brimmed straw hat, though she worked in the shade, yanking weeds from between hostas that were spaced with military precision, as though the plants were afraid to grow too close together. I looked around at the raised beds that circled the pool deck. All of the plants were spaced apart from each other, lonely soldiers guarding the perimeter of the Carberry compound.

“Eloise,” Mike called. “We have visitors.”

“What?” Eloise twisted around, raising the back of her wrist to her forehead and squinting at us from beneath the floppy brim of her hat. “Oh, Finn! And Tally? Good heavens, Mike. You should have told me we were expecting company.”

“Sorry, Eloise. We dropped by without calling.”

A flash of irritation tightened her features, but then she smiled as she struggled to her feet.

“Our house is always open,” she said. “What brings you by?”

“Maybe we should sit,” Mike suggested, ushering us to a round, umbrella-topped patio table.

Finn held out an iron-backed chair for me. Mike tried to do the same for Eloise, but she brushed his hand away and seated herself.

“What’s this all about?” Eloise bit out the question through teeth clenched in a hard smile.

“I, uh, heard that Dani is sick,” I said.

For a heartbeat, Eloise studied me with narrowed eyes. “Yes,” she said simply.

Finn cleared his throat. “Mike? You never said anything.”

Mike’s shoulders tensed, but he didn’t say anything.

“Karla Faye down at the Hair Apparent said Dani’s lost her hair to chemo,” I continued. “She’s wearing a wig now.”

“That’s right.”

“There’s a rumor going around that Kristen Ver Steeg was going to disqualify Dani from the pageant because of her wig. Which sounds pretty coldhearted.”

Eloise sniffed, as though the mere mention of Kristen had offended her sensibilities.

“That’s what Cookie told you the night before Kristen was murdered, right? That Kristen was going to kick Dani out of the competition?”

She looked over my shoulder, studying her own neat and soulless backyard. “So?”

“So, Cookie was wrong,” Finn said.

Eloise’s head snapped around. “What?”

“Cookie was wrong. Kristen didn’t call for that meeting of the pageant judges because she wanted to disqualify Dani, or any other contestant. She was planning to recuse herself from the competition.”

“I don’t . . . ,” Eloise stammered.

“It’s true,” I said. “At the ice cream competition the other day, Jackie Conway mentioned that Kristen had contacted her the day before she was murdered and asked Jackie to take over all her responsibilities at the fair, including the pageant. I didn’t understand then why, and I was too distracted to ask, but now I know it was because of you.”

“Me?” Eloise gasped.

“Well, you and Dani,” I amended.

Finn leaned forward. “We know about your lawsuit against Tucker Gentry and the One Word Bible Church.”

Mike piped up. “It wasn’t right, what that preacher did. He had no business interfering with how we raise our child, especially when it comes to something as important as our faith.”

“You’re right,” I said. “Tucker overstepped his bounds. But that doesn’t excuse what you did.”

The sliding glass door whooshed open and Dani bounded out onto the patio. “Mom? I want to go. . . Oh. Hey, Mr. Harper.” She glanced at me, puzzled.

“Hi, Dani,” Finn said. “You look like you’re feeling good.”

Dani’s face turned crimson beneath the bangs of her espresso-colored wig. She wore tiny denim shorts, a tight Texas Rangers ring tee, and flip-flops. Chipped turquoise polish coated her finger- and toenails. She was the picture of the all-American girl.

“I am, Mr. Harper. Thanks.” Her mouth tightened, and she slid a hard glare toward her mother.

“Dani’s been doing much better. It’s a miracle, really,” Eloise said, a tremor in her voice.

“Aw, come on, Eloise,” Finn said. “Let’s cut it out, okay? We know it’s not a miracle. We know Dani is perfectly fine. Always has been.”

“What?” Eloise gasped, drawing herself rigid with outrage. “How dare you come into our house and—”

“Mom! Enough. Jeez, they know, okay?”

Mike slumped in his chair, as if he wanted to slither under the table and just trickle away. Eloise looked back and forth, from me and Finn to her daughter.

The silence stretched out to uncomfortable lengths, while Eloise tried to figure out her next move. Finally, Dani made it for her.

With a sigh, she pulled off the wig and plucked off the skullcap she wore beneath it. She sighed again, this time in relief, as she ruffled her fingers through the short, purple hair she had liberated.

“That thing is so freakin’ hot,” she grumbled.

In an instant, she transformed from all-American girl to the goth girl I’d seen canoodling with young Matt the night of the karaoke contest. Matt was cheating on Dani with Dani, two sides of the very same girl.

The difference between Dani with the wig and Dani without was staggering. My brain understood what had happened, but my eyes were still trying to figure out how one girl could disappear and leave someone else in her place. Her hair changed, but more than that: the expression on her face, the angles of her body, everything. With the wig gone and her spiky purple locks crowning her head like aster petals, her face softened, and her stance lowered, as though her center of gravity had dropped a few inches. She looked simultaneously more relaxed and more primitive. Less Disney Pocahontas, more tribal shaman.

“You weren’t wearing the wig the night of the karaoke contest,” I said.

“Dani!” Eloise gasped. “I told you you weren’t to step foot outside this house without the wig.”

Dani shrugged. She’d been busted, but clearly she didn’t care. “You try living through this heat wave with two pounds of fake hair sitting on your head. I swear, you got the hottest, heaviest wig you could find just to spite me.”

“Well, now you’ve ruined everything,” Eloise said, even though Dani hadn’t been caught during her wigless excursion. “I hope you’re happy now.”

“I am. I told you this was stupid, Mom. We couldn’t keep pretending I was sick forever.”

“Show your mother some respect,” Mike said, but he was just going through the motions. He’d clearly checked out emotionally.

“She didn’t show me any respect,” Dani said. “She’d rather people think I have cancer than let them know who I really am.”

Eloise laughed. “Who you really are? Please. You’re seventeen. You don’t have a clue who you really are. And you’re certainly not some purple-haired punk.”

Dani pointed to her own head. “I
do
have purple hair, Mom. It’s just hair. Spiky and purple or long and brunette, it’s just hair. It’s not who I am. You’re the only one who thinks my hair matters.”

“I’m not the only one,” Eloise insisted. “The pageant—”

“I told you, I don’t even want to do that stupid pageant. Bunch of vain girls trotting around like their outsides are so important. That’s your thing, Mom, not mine. It matters to
you
. The only thing that matters to me is Matt.”

“Enough!” Eloise spat. “Go to your room.”

Dani shot her mother a “get real” look, but turned on her heel and slammed into the house. Whether she went to her room or straight out the front door and off into the unknown, I had no idea. But we were back to just the adults on the patio.

“How did you know?” Eloise asked.

“Kristen,” Finn said.

Kristen’s letter to the ethics board provided every horrible and absurd detail. Seems Dani’s passion for Matt, the über-Christian straight-edge musician, had prompted her to shave off half her hair and dye what was left a brilliant purple. In addition to being a general embarrassment for the prim and proper Eloise, the “artifice” would disqualify Dani from the Lantana Round-Up Rodeo Queen Pageant in which she was already entered.

Apparently Eloise came up with a solution. No one would even know her child had desecrated her hair. She simply got Dani a wig. But even the best wig would be sussed out by the pageant police . . . so she also concocted a story about Dani having cancer, losing her hair to chemo.