Murder on a Bad Hair Day (6 page)

That ticked me off. I happen to love my Norman Rockwell plates.

“Well, she’s got to have a wallet somewhere,” Mary Alice continued. “There or at the gallery. I guess I better call that policewoman.”

“You do that. I’d like to know what you think of a painting over at Claire’s that seems totally at odds with the graffiti.”

“Listen, Mouse, you may not believe this, but I’ve gotten to be a damn good art critic.”

“I’ll look forward to your critique of the work on Claire’s wall,” I said.

After Sister hung up, I looked up the number and called the hospital. They did not have a patient named Claire Moon. Sorry. Of course they didn’t; I had forgotten Bo Mitchell’s orders. I called her at the police station, happened to catch her, and got the number. Claire was fine, still sleeping, Connie, the nurse, assured me. I put down the phone and thought about the room at Claire’s apartment with the frightening graffiti. And the stark whiteness of everything else. Poor little girl. Poor terrified little girl.

I dialed the Big, Bold, and Beautiful Shop, and Bonnie Blue answered. “I’m on my break,” she explained. “Pulled off my shoes, which was a bad mistake. Wait a minute.” I could hear her puffing and groaning. “No use,” she said in
a minute. “I’m going to have to work in my stocking feet. What can I do for you, Patricia Anne?”

“You called
me
.”

“Oh. Yeah. Actually I wanted to tell you two things. One is that we got in a great silk jacket, unlined, off-white, and decorated with beige shells. Loose and flowing. Just looks like Mary Alice, and we’ve got a 24W. Want me to put it back for you to see? For Christmas?”

“Sounds great.”

“And the second thing is they did an autopsy on Mercy. You know digitalis?”

“We’re having Christmas dinner there.”

“What? I’m talking about the medicine.”

“I know what digitalis is. It strengthens the heart. All Mary Alice’s husbands took it.”

“Well, so did Mercy. Not like a prescription; nothing was wrong with her heart. But she took a whole bunch last night, apparently, and that’s what killed her. Thurman called James and James called me. They’re already questioning Thurman.”

“They think somebody killed her?”

“I reckon.”

“Good Lord!”

“Bonnie Blue!” I heard someone calling.

“Got to go. I’ll put the jacket up for you. ’Bye.”

“’Bye. Thanks.” I hung up the phone and thought about what Bonnie Blue had just told me. Officer Mitchell had known all about Mercy when she came to the hospital and when she took me to see the wall at Claire’s apartment. Or knew there were suspicions about Mercy’s death.

I gathered up my plate, glass, and napkin and took them to the kitchen, where Claire’s Coke glass was still in the sink. Poor frightened girl, I thought, wishing there was someone I could talk to about what had happened. Someone who remembered Claire like I did. And at that moment I knew who the person was, someone who had known Claire very well.

I glanced at the clock and made another phone call.

“Robert Alexander High,” Lois Aderholt answered.

“Lois? It’s Patricia Anne. How are you?”

“Fine, Patricia Anne. All we need to do is live through one more week and we’ll be out for Christmas. How are you?”

“Fine. Lois, is Frances Zata there?”

“Probably. Let me ring her. Come see us, Patricia Anne.”

“I may be out there in a little while.”

“Good. See you soon.”

I could hear the phone ringing in Frances’s office and then Lois’s voice came back on. “I’m going to page her, Patricia Anne.”

“Thanks.” I listened to taped Christmas carols while I waited.

Robert Alexander High is where I taught the last twenty-five years of my career. It was built without windows and with few inside walls. This was to promote flexibility, which would lead to individuality within a community environment. Or something like that. Whatever the educational words were that year. Bright carpets, posters, and bookcases welcomed us in and were supposed to make us so happy we didn’t need to look outside, where, incidentally, there were beautiful woods and a small lake. Soft classical music was piped into the library, which was in the very center of the cocoon.

For some of us, it was perfect. We walked inside that brick rectangle and shed our cares at the door. For others, it was torment. I believe the phrase “buried alive” was bandied about. Teachers and students who felt this way were quickly and mercifully transferred.

Frances Zata was the guidance counselor who had been there from the beginning and who loved it as much as I did. When I decided to retire, she took me to lunch and tried to talk me out of it. “What will you do with your time?” she asked.

“Whatever I want to,” I replied.

“Frances Zata here.” In the background I could hear rattling as if silverware were being dropped into a drawer.

“What in the world are you doing?”

“Hi, Patricia Anne. I’m in Pod 3 with a cardboard box
some service organization sent out crammed full of Just Say No pins. They’re so bad the kids just might wear them. Wait a minute.” I heard what sounded like tape being torn. “Okay, I’m back. How are you? Ready to come back?”

“Is a raise in the offing?”

“Smart-ass. That’ll be the day. I hope you’re calling about lunch Saturday.”

“That would be great. I’d like to see you sooner, though. This afternoon or in the morning.”

“Something wrong?”

“You remember Claire Needham?” I asked.

“Clarissey Mae? Sure, bless her heart. Why? She’s okay, isn’t she?”

“It’s a long story, and I need you to fill in some gaps for me.”

“Well, the juvenile court records are confidential. But a lot of the stuff was in the newspaper. Can you come in the morning?”

“Say when.”

“Nine?”

“Sure.”

Frances sighed. “She’s in trouble, isn’t she? That poor little girl. Those poor little children.”

My thoughts exactly.

Supper was interesting that night. Fred came bounding into the kitchen with a grin on his face, a bottle of sparkling apple juice, and a bouquet of daisies. Chances are he had been planning all day to pick up where we left off that morning.

“Haley will be here in a minute,” I said.

“How soon?”

“Soon.”

“Real soon?”

“Any minute.”

“Okay,” he conceded. He leaned down to kiss me, and I put the palm of my hand against his cheek, which was scratchy and familiar.

“Stay awake,” I said.

“No problem.” He patted me on the behind and disap
peared down the hall. “What kind of day did you have?” he called back.

“You wouldn’t believe. I’ll tell you when Haley gets here.”

I checked the lasagna, which was beginning to bubble, and cut up the salad. The kitchen was beginning to smell like the tangy aroma of cheese melting in tomato sauce. A thoroughly satisfying smell for a December night.

Haley agreed. “Smells wonderful,” she said, coming in and taking off her coat. She ran her hand through her dark red hair. “Wind’s picking up out there.” She gave me a hug and looked through the window of the oven. “Lord, that looks good.”

“Straight out of the freezer,” I said.

“I’m suitably impressed.” Haley went to the refrigerator, took a beer out, and popped it open.

Which reminded me. “Go look on the den wall,” I said.

It was a moment of serendipity. Haley got to the painting just as Fred came into the den behind her.

“Oh, my,” she said. “Oh, my. Is it a real Abraham, Mama? It is, isn’t it? Oh, my, look at that.” She reached over and touched the hair. “I can’t believe this. Where in the world did you get it? And what bank did you rob?”

I couldn’t have planned it this well. Fred came up beside Haley and looked at Abe Butler’s portrait with a puzzled look.

“Hey, Daddy.” Haley hugged him. “You got this for Mama for Christmas, didn’t you?”

“No,” Fred said. “It has a pop-top opener you hang it up with.”

“I know. Isn’t it wonderful?” Haley touched Abe’s hair again and laughed.

“Bonnie Blue gave it to me,” I said. “Did I tell you Abraham Butler’s her daddy? That’s his real hair.”

“No. This is unbelievable.”

“I think I’ll get a beer.” Fred headed toward the kitchen.

“There are some celery and carrot sticks in the refriger
ator,” I said. “Bring them back with you. And some napkins.”

“Look,” Haley said. “Look at his tiny teeth, the way they just stop. And the feet.”

“I like the cane.”

We heard the clunk as Fred put the sticks and dip on the coffee table. “Here,” he said, handing Haley and me both a paper towel. “Couldn’t find any napkins.”

Fred sat in his recliner and Haley and I sat on the sofa. The gas logs looked exactly like a real fire.

“This is nice,” Haley said, leaning back.

“How did the gunshot wound go?” I asked.

“He should be all right. What about your lady? What was her name?”

“Claire Moon.”

“That sounds like ‘Clair de Lune.’” Haley hummed a few bars. “Da
dah
da, dadada.”

“I don’t know. They put her in the psychiatric unit and they’re running tests.”

Fred, who had picked up the evening newspaper, put it down. “Who’s Claire Moon?”

“A former student of mine. I saw her at the gallery last night and she showed up here this morning sick.”

“What’s wrong with her?”

“Don’t know. But when Bo Peep Mitchell told her Mercy Armistead was dead, she collapsed. We had to call the paramedics and take her to the hospital in an ambulance.”

“Who’s Bo Peep Mitchell?” Haley asked. “Who’s Mercy Armistead?”

“I know who Mercy Armistead is,” Fred said. “She’s Thurman Beatty’s wife, and they’re questioning him about her murder. It’s here in the paper.”

“Who’s Thurman Beatty?” Haley asked.

“Wait a minute.” I held up my schoolteacher hand. “Just wait a minute.”

Fred and Haley both looked at me expectantly.

“I’ll start at the beginning.”

And I did, taking time out only to get the lasagna out of
the oven. I started with the showing of the Outsiders at the Mercy Armistead Gallery and seeing Claire Moon, who used to be Claire Needham, who at one time had been Clarissey Mae Needham from a very abusive family. I described both Claire and Mercy and how Mercy had been irked because, among other things, she was having a bad hair day. And James Butler and Thurman Beatty, and how pitiful Claire was when she turned up this morning. I segued into Bo Peep Mitchell and the ambulance ride and ended with a description of the graffiti on Claire’s wall and the fact that Mercy had died from digitalis poisoning.

“And that’s all,” I told the openmouthed Haley and Fred. “Now let’s eat supper.”

The phone rang just as we sat down at the table. I answered it.

“It’s Fox Glen,” Mary Alice said.

I
went out early the next morning to get the paper and was sitting at the kitchen table reading it when Fred came in.

“Anything new?” he asked, pouring a cup of coffee.

“About the Mercy Armistead murder? No. They let Thurman Beatty go after they questioned him.”

“That Thurman Beatty is the finest young man ever played football at Alabama. You know that, Patricia Anne. All-American. Should have had the Heisman. No way he’d be mixed up in anything like this.”

“Hmmm,” I said. I handed Fred the paper, poured each of us some cereal, and sliced half a banana into each bowl. Rain gusted against the windows. Woofer wouldn’t appreciate being dragged from his igloo for a walk this morning; I would let him sleep.

“Thank you for the daisies,” I said. In a blue vase in the middle of the table, they were a bright spot on a gloomy morning.

“Any time.” He grinned and turned the paper to the back page.

“I wonder why they call it ‘foul play’,” I said, looking at the headlines.

“What?”

“‘Foul play suspected in death of socialite,’” I read. “It’s foul all right. But playful?”

“It’s the baseball term.”

“But why would they use it for murder?”

Fred shrugged. “Says here her grandfather was the late Amos Bedsole, the Bedsole Steel guy. They used to buy a lot of my scrap metal. Old man Bedsole died, didn’t he?”

“The ‘late’ Amos Bedsole, Fred.” I crunched a spoonful of cereal. “You know, that’s something else doesn’t make sense. When you’re dead, why are you ‘late’? You can’t very well make it on time.”

Fred put the paper down and looked at me. “What are you planning to do today?”

“I’m going out to the school to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and by the hospital to take Claire Moon some gowns. Maybe some shopping. Why?”

“It would be a good day for you to read a book in front of the fire and take it easy.”

I nodded that it would. “Stay with me.”

“Can’t.” We looked at each other. Be safe. Be safe.

“You want some more coffee?” I asked.

The thermometer on the Central Bank Building read 45 degrees when I drove by on my way to Alexander High. The cold rain had turned into a heavy drizzle that seemed to coat everything like oil. I hoped it would be over before the temperature took its expected nosedive. We didn’t need any ice right before Christmas.

I turned into the parking lot and found a visitor’s space empty. Vice Principal Chesley Maddox, whom the kids called Chesty Maggot (but way, way behind his back), ran a tight ship in the parking lot. A scrawny little man, he had the Dirty Harry look down so pat that even while the students were laughing about him, they were shaking in their boots. “Come on,” he seemed to say. “Try parking in the teachers’ or visitors’ lot.” They never took him up on it.

Frances Zata was on the phone, but she motioned me to a seat. Her office was bright and cheerful—no windows, of course, but posters from Tivoli Gardens and the British Mu
seum and the famous “Earth Rise” livened the walls.

“Sorry,” she said when she hung up. “Come give me a hug. God, I miss you.”

Frances is my age, sixty, but she doesn’t look it. She is what my grandmother called a “handsome” woman. She found her style, a very elegant one, early, and it has done well by her. Her dark blond hair is pulled back into a chignon which she varies sometimes with a French braid. She wears simple silk blouses, straight or A-line skirts, usually in beige or black, and low-heeled pumps. Her earrings are either pearls or gold loops. And only I know that several years ago she had a face-lift because she was mad about a younger man. One of those sex slave things Mary Alice talks about. The affair didn’t work out, but the face-lift did. Frances looks great.

“You want some coffee?” she asked after we had inquired about each other’s families. Frances has one son, a lawyer, a friend of my Alan.

I shook my head no.

She leaned back and took a manila envelope from a bookcase. “Here’s the stuff about Claire Needham,” she said. “I had to go to court for her, you know, so there’s some extra stuff in there. Nothing privileged. That would be down at Juvenile Court.” She handed me the files. “What’s the matter with her, Patricia Anne?”

“She’s in Memorial Hospital in the psych unit.” I started telling Frances that I had not seen Claire for years until I went to the opening of Mercy Armistead’s art gallery. She stopped me.

“The woman who was killed?”

I nodded.

“Whose mother was Betty Bedsole, the Miss Alabama?”

“According to Mary Alice. How do the two of you keep up with these things?”

“Whoa. Wait just a minute.” Frances scooted around the desk and grabbed the file I had just opened. “Wait a minute, wait a minute,” she said, flipping pages.

“What?”

“Ah ha! I knew it. I was looking through these just before you came in and that name sounded familiar. Look here, Patricia Anne.” Frances stuck a page right in front of my face. I took it away from her and held it so my eyes would focus. “Right there.” She pointed.

I saw the typed name of Liliane Bedsole first. Then I looked to the left. “Guardian.”

“I don’t understand,” I said.

Frances sat on the edge of the desk, took the form back, and looked at it again. “I’m sorry. Get on with your story. The name just struck me.”

“Liliane Bedsole was Claire’s guardian? She’s Mercy’s aunt. Great-aunt.”

Frances nodded. “I thought there might be some connection. According to the records, Liliane Bedsole read about the abuse case in the paper and was so upset about it, she petitioned the court for all three of them. Those little girls finally had some luck.”

“I thought there was a brother.”

Frances shook her head. “Claire and twin girls five years younger. Precious children. Can’t remember their names.”

“They’re all precious,” I murmured.

“They looked like something out of a concentration camp. The twins did. Claire had fared some better nutrition-wise. Probably because they sent her to school and she got lunch. The twins had never gone to school when Youth Services finally took them over.”

“But Claire was sexually abused by her father.”

“Yes.” Frances slid from the desk and went around to sit in her chair. “You sit there in court, Patricia Anne, and you see these people who don’t look like monsters and then you see what they’ve done to their children and it shakes you to the core.”

“Where are they now? The parents.”

“Both dead, I understand. The father got in a fight in jail and a fellow inmate killed him. The mother died of a drug overdose.”

“And Liliane Bedsole took the children.”

Frances leaned back and toyed with a pencil on her desk. “It took guts. Children aren’t as resilient as we would like to think.”

“Let me tell you about Claire,” I said, “what’s happened to her now.” I went back to the meeting at the gallery, mentioning that Liliane Bedsole had been there. I told her how beautiful Claire looked, thin, but elegant. I told her how Claire had shown up on my steps claiming someone had tried to kill her, which had apparently been true, and that I had no idea why she had turned to me unless it was because she had seen me the night before.

“Security,” Frances said.

I shrugged.

“Hey, it’s true. Teachers underestimate their roles in their students’ lives.”

“Maybe.” I continued the story, including Claire’s collapse and the trip Bo Peep Mitchell and I had taken to Claire’s apartment.

Frances was sitting forward now. As I described the pictures, her eyes got wider and wider.

“Good Lord!” she exclaimed as I finished with the knife slit in the door.

“What do you think it means?” I asked.

“I think it means she’s in the right place in the psych unit. I hope they’re doing a good job of watching her.”

“I wonder where her sisters are.”

“God knows. And probably Liliane Bedsole. They were sent to private school, I understand, when they were strong enough.”

Frances had to go to a parent conference in the principal’s office, so she left me with the file. “Let me know what happens, Patricia Anne. And lunch Saturday. Okay?”

“How about the Blue Moon Tea Room at Rosedale Mall?”

“Fine. You don’t want to go somewhere closer?”

“It’s worth the drive,” I said. “I guarantee it.”

After she left, I opened the files and began to read. According to her teachers, Claire had been quiet and obedient,
accident-prone (I could imagine the bruises that had prompted this notation), with a tendency to daydream and sleep in class. The target of much bullying, she had been urged by one teacher to “stand up for herself and hit back.” Several mentioned poor hygienic practices (translation: she needed a bath and clean clothes) and parent conferences that parents failed to show up for.

It was a perfect portrait of an abused or at least a neglected child. And Frances had said teachers were children’s security? Tears came to my eyes, and I brushed them away.

I already knew from looking at the yearbook that Claire had not been involved in any extracurricular programs except the Art Club. Her grades improved after Liliane Bedsole was listed as her guardian, though, and on her ACT, she had scored a respectable 23.

I put the file on Frances’s desk and locked the door behind me as I left. I wasn’t sure what I’d been looking for, maybe just some understanding of the frightened girl who had come to me for refuge. And I wasn’t sure what I’d found, except more questions. The connection to the Bedsole family brought up a big one. Wasn’t it logical that whoever killed Mercy Armistead had also tried to kill Claire? And that brought up the biggest question of all. If so, why?

I waved good-bye to the ladies in the office and wished them a happy holiday.

“We miss you,” they said together.

“And I miss you.” It was true. I still wasn’t a hundred percent sure that retiring at sixty had been a good idea.

The rain had settled in for the day, but it didn’t seem to have turned any colder. I parked in the hospital parking deck and crossed the street through a glassed-in crossover. Below me an ambulance hurtled up the hill to the emergency room. Lord!

The psychiatric unit was as sunny and bright as it had been the day before, which ruled out natural sunlight as the source of light in their atrium. I started toward the nurses’ station to see if Connie was on duty and to identify myself if she wasn’t so I could get a permit to visit.

“Claire’s gone,” a voice said behind me. I turned and saw Connie, who was carrying a tray of medications. “Mrs. Hollowell, right?”

I nodded yes. “What do you mean she’s gone?”

“Left. Took off sometime during the night.”

“By herself?”

“Unless somebody was with her.” I looked at Connie to see if she was serious. She was.

“I brought her some nightgowns,” I said, holding up a plastic Penney’s bag.

“You want me to keep them?”

“They’re for Claire.”

“I didn’t mean
me
keep them. I meant until she gets back.”

“She’s coming back?”

“Probably.”

It was beginning to dawn on me that Nurse Connie was due for a transfer out of the psych ward. “Listen,” I said, “tell me what happened.”

“She was gone this morning when they took her her breakfast. That’s all I know.”

I was suddenly very anxious. “Did you call the police?”

“Oh, sure. Bo Peep’s been here.”

“What did she have to say about it?”

“She said, ‘Well, hell, Connie. So much for the bug in the rug.’ She said to tell you when you showed up to call her.”

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

I tried to remember if Connie had been this spacey the day before. There were a lot of medicines on that tray. Maybe she had been dipping into the Dalmane.

Officer Mitchell wasn’t in, the woman said when I called. She would take my name (for a split second I thought she was going to say “and pray for me”) and have her call me back. I gave her my home phone number. From the phone I was using in the main lobby, I could see how dreary the weather was. People hurried across the parking lot to the
doors and then tried to figure out what to do with wet umbrellas. And Claire was out there somewhere, I thought. Confused and sick, with no coat or shoes. Damn, damn! I kicked the wall below the phone. For you, you imbeciles who let this happen! All I succeeded in doing was scuffing my shoe and hurting my toe.

My mood matched the weather by now. I had used the last of my quarters on the phone call, so I limped into the gift shop to buy some mints to get quarters for the parking deck. There was a change machine near the door, but a man was beating on the side of it, which didn’t bode well. And on the door of the gift shop was a hand-printed sign that said
NO CHANGE WITHOUT PURCHASE
. Tacky, tacky!

I dropped three quarters into the meter at the exit of the parking deck and the barrier arm began to rise slowly. I scooted through as soon as I thought it was high enough. I have a fear, which I was crazy enough to confess to Mary Alice, that the arm is going to come down,
clunk
, right in the middle of my car as I’m driving through. And did she reassure me that would never happen? No. She swore she heard of someone who had been decapitated by one of those arms. She was probably lying, but I’m always relieved when I get through safely.