Death Crashes the Party (14 page)

Chapter 19

I was relieved to hear the Feds had Bobo under surveillance. But it blew my mind that Ralph might somehow be involved. He's a key player at McKay's, with knowledge of and access to just about everything that goes on in the company. Larry Joe and Daddy Wayne trusted him implicitly. I didn't want to believe it was possible he had betrayed their trust and had put them and the company in danger.

Dave had too many pots boiling at the moment to keep an eye on all of them, so I decided it was up to me to stir this one. I needed to get the lowdown on Ralph But, who would know?

I couldn't very well talk to his mama. She probably wouldn't know anything about his dirty dealings, anyway. Then it hit me. I'd have to go to the gossip merchants. I didn't want to, but desperate times called for desperate measures. So I phoned the beauty salon to see if I could get an appointment for this afternoon. If there was any dirt to dish, Nell Tucker and her crew would have it by the spades full.

I needed a haircut, but a quick cut wouldn't give me much time to gather information. I decided to go all in and get a perm, as well. The receptionist told me they'd had a cancellation, so if I came straight over, Nell would be able to work me in for a perm and cut.

I walked through the front door of Dixie Dolls Hair Salon and was greeted by the pungent odor of perming and dye solutions and a fog of hair spray.

The raspy-voiced receptionist, Pat, greeted me without enthusiasm and advised me to take a seat. By my best guesstimate, Pat weighs over 350 pounds. I think she's short, although I've never actually seen her rise to a standing position from her padded bar stool, its edges overlapped by her hips and thighs.

Nell waved to me from her station, where she was putting the finishing touches on a ninety-year-old woman's coiffure, sealing it in a double layer of either varnish or hair spray. I wasn't sure which it was. I flipped through a dog-eared magazine of hairstyles. The date on the cover was 1985. This should have been a warning, but I was absentmindedly flipping through the magazine while I tried to figure out how to bring up Ralph's name in a casual way.

Nell's elderly client shuffled up to the desk to pay, and Nell hollered for me to come on back and take a seat. She flung a black plastic cape over me and fastened the Velcro strip noose tight around my neck. She inquired about my mama and Larry Joe's dad, and I asked about her husband and son. After we had covered all the pleasantries, including the weather, I took an opening.

“This is the first serious health issue we've had to deal with since my daddy died. Of course, he went quickly, collapsing on the golf course with a major heart attack. I'm hoping Larry Joe's dad takes care of himself and sticks around for a long while yet. Speaking of which, I didn't know until recently that Ralph Harvey's mother was pretty much homebound. Do you know what her condition is?”

As I had suspected, Nell knew all about Ralph's mother's first and second strokes, as well as how she would probably have to start dialysis soon.

Our conversation continued from the sink to the chair and back to the sink and back to the chair over the next hour and a half or so, as my hair got washed, rolled, permed, neutralized, trimmed, and styled. I should have been paying more attention to what Nell was doing when she started rolling up my hair on rollers as skinny as toothpicks.

The conversation got off track a few times as we chatted briefly with other customers as they came and went. But in a nutshell, I learned that Ralph had got cleaned out in his divorce. His ex-wife, Kay, had claimed he cheated on her and got abusive when he drank. But according to Nell, Kay had had some extramarital action of her own going on. Despite getting fleeced in the divorce, Ralph still helped take care of his ailing mother and had a daughter attending a private college.

“And yet he just bought a new fishing boat,” Nell said. “Paid cash for it, too, or at least that's what the guy at the boat dealership told my Billy while they were playing golf.”

Nell's opinion, and the general consensus in the beauty shop, was that Ralph was making money on the side by gambling, and most likely cheating at it. But I was more worried he was taking in extra cash by running drugs through my family's trucking company.

I tried to hide my alarm when Nell spun the chair around toward the mirror to give me a look at the finished product. My perm was fried. I looked as if I'd been electrocuted.

“Of course, it'll loosen up quite a bit after you wash it,” Nell said unconvincingly.

After I paid her for abusing my hair, I went straight home and washed my hair three times. It didn't loosen up one bit.

Tired and depressed, I took two aspirin and had a nap. When I woke up, I hoped the whole perm thing would turn out to be just a bad dream. That worked until I looked in the mirror.

Still suffering from a cumulative sleep deficit, I heated a cup of leftover coffee in the microwave and stepped out onto the patio for a breath of fresh air and a hit of sunshine to warm me up.

The way Southerners cope with our sweltering summers is a bit of an enigma. When it's miserably hot outside, we keep it cold enough indoors to hang meat. If the temperature were to drop that low in the winter, we'd be cranking up the heat and pulling on sweaters.

An overnight rain and plentiful sunlight made it seem like the grass had grown an inch or two just since yesterday. And it was already a bit shabby before Larry Joe's dad went in the hospital. So I phoned Kenny Mitchell to see if his handyman skills extended to lawn care. He seemed happy to pick up a quick thirty bucks.

I tried for a few minutes to rearrange my hair into something approaching normal looking, to no avail. I accepted the ugly truth that I'd have to leave the house sometime before my perm grew out. I grabbed a straw hat out of the hall closet and pulled it down on my head as far as it would go. My voluminous hair made it spring back up, and it sat like a tiny clown hat on the top of my head. I tossed the hat onto the kitchen table and headed out to pick up Kenny.

I dropped Kenny off at the house and told him I'd be back to pick him up in an hour or so, but to call me if he finished up sooner or had any questions. After opening the garage so he could access the lawn equipment, I drove to the hospital to check on my father-in-law.

I tapped on the door as I entered his hospital room. My mother-in-law was sitting in the chair next to the bed. The head of the bed was raised, putting Daddy Wayne nearly in a sitting position. His coloring had definitely improved; his cheeks were starting to pink up. He even looked over and said hello as I walked in. I couldn't help but smile. What a difference a day can make!

I gave my father-in-law a peck on the cheek and walked around the bed to give Miss Betty a hug. My mother-in-law's eyes scanned my hair, but she was too polite to comment. Daddy Wayne, being a man, probably didn't even notice.

“Larry Joe has gone to the office for a while,” she said. “But he said he'd check in later and stay the night if Wayne needs him to.”

“I don't need anybody to stay the night,” he said, his hackles up. “I've got a bevy of nurses that come running if I push this button,” he added, pointing to the call button dangling by a cord from the bed rail. “Besides, the doc will probably let me go home tomorrow.”

“We'll see,” Miss Betty said doubtfully.

I shared her skepticism that the doctor would let him go home so soon. But it was really good to see Daddy Wayne full of spit and vinegar, like his old self.

My father-in-law was on the mend. I had an appointment with a new client. The Feds were on Bobo's trail. It was shaping up to be a pretty good day, except for the perm debacle, which I tried to put out of my mind.

I returned home and stepped into my formerly shabby backyard to find a finely manicured lawn. Kenny had not only cut the grass in a neat crisscross pattern, but had even edged along the walkway and patio.

Kenny finished sweeping up the walk and stowed the lawn equipment in the garage. As we walked to the car, I noticed his perspiration-streaked face. I cranked up the air-conditioning. On the way back to his apartment, I drove through one of the fast-food joints to order a couple of flavored slushy drinks.

“Kenny, do you prefer cherry or cola flavor?”

“Cherry, definitely.”

“Me too.”

While we slurped our frosty drinks in air-conditioned comfort, I gave Kenny a physical description of Ralph Harvey and asked if he remembered ever seeing him around the apartments with the Farrells or Ray or Bobo.

“Can't say as I do. But that don't mean much. I'd go days sometimes without catching sight of Duane or Darrell coming and going.”

As I drove along, both of us silent, I nearly sprained my brain trying to think of any pertinent questions about the Farrells I should ask Kenny while I had the opportunity. Finally, one popped into my head.

“Kenny, you mentioned before that you thought Darrell invited everyone in the apartments to that Fourth of July party as an excuse to get to know the girls who had moved in downstairs. Did he ever get together with one of them, or was there any particular girl you know of that he went with for a while?”

“I don't think things ever heated up between him and Amy. She's the new neighbor he had his eyes on. But he was crazy about the girl that was living in that apartment before Amy and her roommate moved in.”

“What was her name?”

“Candy,” he said. “She was on again, off again with some guy named Brad. Whenever Brad was out, Darrell was in, you know.”

“Do you know why she moved out of her apartment?”

“Can't say for sure, but my guess is that Brad didn't want her so handy to Darrell. He was the jealous type big-time. I heard him yelling and banging on her door late one night, saying he knew she had some guy in there, and she'd better open up, or he'd break the door down. She told him to go away and sober up, but he kept at it. It finally got quiet, and I looked through the blinds to see if he was leaving. I didn't see him, so I figured she had let him in. Thing is, just a few seconds later I see Darrell coming from around the side of the building and sneaking up the stairs, real quiet like. He was carrying his shoes and didn't have a shirt on. I ciphered he had slipped out the back window at Candy's place before she let Brad in. Not too long after that, she moved out.”

“Do you have any idea where she works or where she lives now?”

“No, ma'am, but I know she really liked going to karaoke night at that little bar out on Bass Road, halfway between here and Hartville.”

“What does Candy look like?”

“Dark hair. Small waist. Big everything else,” he said.

“What about her boyfriend?”

“He looks like trouble.”

I thanked Kenny, then handed him his pay, including a fat tip, before he got out of the car.

“Anytime, Ms. Mac.”

I stopped at the grocery store to pick up a few necessities, like toilet paper, and decided to get the fixings for a nice supper. Larry Joe had been surviving on fast food and hospital cafeteria fare since his dad had been in the ICU. It would be nice to have a sit-down meal at home, just the two of us. It would be even nicer to have him back in our bed, since I felt certain his dad would flatly refuse to let anybody stay with him overnight at the hospital.

I quickly mixed together some mayonnaise, celery seed, cider vinegar, salt, pepper, and sugar in a mason jar, then shook it well and put it in the fridge to chill. Next, I dusted some fresh catfish fillets with seasoned cornmeal and a bit of flour, carefully laid each piece in a pan sizzling with melted shortening, and cooked them for three or four minutes on each side. With the fried catfish fillets draining on paper towels, I mixed a bag of shredded cabbage and carrots with the coleslaw dressing I'd prepared in the mason jar.

The aroma of fresh fried fish brought a broad smile to my husband's face as he walked into the kitchen, and this was followed by a big kiss on the lips for the cook. He stepped back, did a double take, and said, “Your hair looks kinda
big
. Did you do something different to it?”

“No,” I said in a tone that let him know I didn't want to talk about it. We'd been married long enough that he knew to let it go.

Larry Joe filled glasses with ice and tea, while I plated up our supper and retrieved a jar of sweet pickles and a squeeze bottle of tartar sauce from the refrigerator. We held hands as Larry Joe said a heartfelt thanks for our meal and his dad's improving health, before he stabbed a fork into his catfish.

After we'd topped off our meal with some fresh blackberries and whipped cream, we ambled into the den, turned on
Wheel of Fortune
, and flopped down on the sofa. I leaned back against Larry Joe's chest as he wrapped his arms around me and rested his chin on the top of my head, or more accurately, on top of four inches of spring-loaded hair.

“Thanks for the nice supper, hon. I don't think I could face another plate of that hospital slop.”

Larry Joe then told me that things seemed to be settling down at work, that everyone had been pulling together since his dad's heart attack. I wanted so much to warn him that Ralph Harvey might not be as trustworthy as we had thought. But I had promised Ted I wouldn't say anything. Besides, we really didn't know anything for certain, just gossip. There was no need to lay another burden on Larry Joe's broad shoulders, unless it became absolutely necessary, I reasoned.

“As nice as this is,” he said, giving me a peck on the cheek, “I better get down to the hospital. I don't plan to stay the night, unless it's the only way I can get Mama to go home. With the geezer laid up, we sure don't want Mama making herself sick.”