Death of a Domestic Diva (2 page)

Billy shrugged, then whispered, “I had a little trouble with the attachment earlier. It's this doggoned old vacuum cleaner of mine. Not the Cut-N-Suck—that works great.”

“Look, get this cleaned up. I need to turn on the ceiling fans because it's starting to get hot, and the last thing I need is hair blowing around the place to prove Cherry right. You can use my vacuum cleaner from the storeroom—but only through the end of the week. After Friday, you need to find a different way to give demos. Maybe door to door.”

He nodded eagerly. “Yeah! I should have my car fixed by then. Thanks, Josie!”

He pulled me to him and gave me a big hug and kiss. I wiped my cheek off as soon as he released me. Billy's a wet kisser. “And lay off on demos for the next half hour,” I added. “The
Tyra Grimes Home Show
is coming on and my customers want to watch it.”

“Sure, Josie,” Billy said. “You're the greatest.” And he trotted off to the back room to get my vacuum cleaner.

The greatest? I wondered, looking at Billy's old canister vacuum. Or just a sucker? Besides letting him use my laundromat space to launch his new career as a Cut-N-Suck distributor, I'd been renting him the spare apartment next to mine on the second floor over my laundromat. In two months, I'd yet to collect any actual rent. Despite his zeal as a salesman, Cut-N-Suck sales were slow, Billy said.

I moved back to my counter, picked up the remote, pointed it at the TV, flicked it on, and found the right channel.

The background music to the
Tyra Grimes Home Show
cued—a soft, dreamy melody. Then there was Tyra Grimes herself, her smiling face filling the screen, beaming her enthusiasm for all things elegant and beautiful all over my laundromat.

And then time shifted again in my laundromat. It seemed to fold in on itself, then stop, as Mrs. Beavy and Becky and even her two little ones and I all stared up at Tyra. We were, like a lot of people across America, hooked on Tyra Grimes and her show. There was just something so seductive about the idea that your life would somehow get better, if only you could fluff your pillows just right, or maybe make cute window toppers out of old potato sacks, or whip up origami party favors to take to the next church carry-in. And Tyra Grimes—with her perky laugh, a self-sufficient competence that would make even a Marine wince, and her trademark signoff line—“Simply wonderful!”—sold that idea to us day after day, making the mundane minutes that marked our lives seem to stop, to give way to something more . . . well . . . simply wonderful.

Sometimes, I wish I could go back to that moment four weeks ago when the
Tyra Grimes Home Show
made life slow for a little while in my laundromat.

Maybe I'd do things differently. After all, some folks say it's because of me that trouble came to Paradise.

In the form of murder.

Two murders, to be exact.

But I think folks saying that everything that happened is all my fault is mighty unfair—not to mention ungrateful.

Because me—well, I was just trying to help.

Ten minutes later, time started moving again, because two things happened at once.

The Tyra Grimes Home Show went to a commercial break.

And the bell over my front door chimed.

I startled, breaking from my Tyra-inspired reverie (today's topic being napkin folds) and automatically launched into the usual speech I give Hazel Rothchild every week: “I pretreated Lewis's collars with an emulsion perfect for ring-around-the-collar . . .” (Said “emulsion” was cheap shampoo—but it's what really works, and a good business- woman knows her customers' preferences. Hazel would prefer to hear I use an emulsion.)

And then I stopped, for Hazel was not in my laundromat. Instead, in had trooped Lewis Rothchild, followed by Elroy Magruder and Cherry Feinster.

I retreated behind my counter.

Lewis was a portly man who always wore suspenders and a tie, no matter the occasion or the weather. He always carried hankies, too (which, thankfully, Hazel chose to handwash for him) and he pulled one out now to mop his brow.

Elroy joined Lewis at the counter, standing to his left. Elroy was a skinny, nervous man with eyes too big for his narrow little face and too waif-child sad for a man in his sixties. He stared up at Lewis now. Cherry stood to Lewis's right, but she didn't seem to be paying attention to any of us. She was staring pointedly at Billy's Cut-N-Suck. Her head was turned so that all I could see of her face was her pointy nose and half of her downturned red-lipsticked lips—and lots and lots of her frothy hair. Cherry's do—which is dyed to match her name and accounts for at least three inches of her five-foot-three stature—makes Dolly Parton look like a big hair wanna-be.

This unlikely trio made me nervous. I decided to get to the bottom of what was going on, one question at a time. I started with the most obvious.

“Lewis, where's Hazel?” I asked.

“She isn't feeling well—bronchitis,” he said shortly. He wiped his brow again, stuffing the hanky back into his pants pocket. “I'm having to run her errands for her.”

I was tempted to point out that actually, for once, he was running his errands for himself. But Elroy Magruder saved me from giving in to temptation. “Lewis, I can prove it,” he hollered. “This is serious! This calls for an emergency meeting of the Chamber of Commerce . . . a conference with the Mayor . . . letter writing. Something!”

Cherry looked away from the Cut-N-Suck and fixed me with a hard stare. “Elroy's right, Lewis. He showed me the map. Business here is bad enough what with people in town trying to get into areas they don't know anything about. People you think are your friends.”

“Look, Cherry,” I said, “it's not like you can get a perm or hair coloring out of a vacuum cleaner attachment. Plus competition is good for business, and—”

“Being dropped off the Official State Map of Ohio definitely is not good for business!” Elroy hollered.

I looked at him, stunned.

I have to take a little break to explain that we have very few points of pride here in Paradise. One is our name. My junior high history teacher, Mrs. Oglevee, may she rest in peace, drilled it into our heads how our founding fathers, Northwest Territory settlers in the late 1790s, took a little rest break in the very spot that would become Paradise. Three families got down from the wagons, sat under a big, shady oak, and had a nice picnic lunch—pickled beef tongue on rye, Mrs. Oglevee told me when I pressed for details, although I have my doubts. Then everyone took a look around on that perfect spring day—birds singing, trees leafing out, nice little breeze—and said, let's stay! And they called it Paradise.

What I think is that they all got lost. I can't really explain how you get lost off what had to be one of the only trails going through Ohio at the time, with twelve horses and three wagons and ten kids whining, “Are we there yet?” but I think my theory makes more sense than taking a rest break in a forest about thirty miles south from the only settlement at the time (Masonville). Then I think they decided to make the best of a tough situation, and told the whiny kids and each other that they'd found Paradise, their new home, and everyone decided to believe it, since they happened to hit southern Ohio when the weather is absolutely perfect for three whole weeks.

What they didn't know at the time, of course, is that the perfect three weeks in spring are followed by tornado season. Then a dry spell. Then snowstorms. Then floods, from the melting snow. Then the perfect three weeks again. After a year like that, I think everyone was just too tired to move on—or to rename the little settlement of Paradise.

When I put forth my theory to Mrs. Oglevee, though, she made me stay after school and write one hundred times on the blackboard, “I am proud to be a Paradisite,” all the while explaining how I should appreciate the fine name of our town—point of pride one.

Our only other bragging point is that ever since its incorporation back in 1810, Paradise has been on the official map of the State of Ohio.

So now, I stared at Elroy Magruder in dismay. “Did you just say we're no longer on the map?”

“It's true,” Cherry said. “Elroy showed me. But he can't get Lewis to take him seriously.”

“For pity's sake, what difference does it make?” Lewis hollered. “Josie, just give me my shirts.”

I folded my arms. “Not until Elroy gets a chance to tell us what's going on.”

Lewis sighed heavily, wiping his brow again. “Fine, fine. Go on, Elroy.”

Elroy straightened himself up the best he could, given his lifelong habit of slumping his shoulders. “I got a new set of maps today, to put on display at my station.” Elroy owns the only gas station and towing service in Paradise. In this town, with the exception of antique shops (of which we have six), we have just one business of every kind. Small towns are great for monopolies.

“I unfolded one to put up—you know, in case someone comes in asking directions. And that's when I saw it. No more Paradise in Ohio.” With that, Elroy pulled a map from his hip pocket. Then he opened it out on my counter. “Look,” he whispered, pointing to the general area of Mason County, in south central Ohio.

We looked. Truth be told, there's not much to look at in that part of a map of Ohio. Columbus is to the north, Cincinnati to the west, the Ohio River to the south, and the Appalachian foothills to the east. We aren't bisected by any major highways, so we're just a quiet region of rolling hills, cornfields, and the occasional horse farm.

But we looked to southern Ohio. Then we peered at Mason County. And then we—Cherry and I—gasped as we realized that Elroy was right—Paradise, where it should have been just southwest of the county seat of Masonville, wasn't on the map. Where our little dot had been for nearly 160 years . . . there was nothing. Just a tiny circle bearing the number 26—the state route that cuts through our town.

I looked back up at Lewis. He looked bored. “Fine,” he said, “Paradise is not on the map. It's not like we dropped off the face of the earth. Or even of Ohio.”

“Look, Lewis, it's fine for you not to care. It's not like there's much of a tourist trade in funerals,” I said. “But Elroy, Cherry and I, the antique shops, Sandy's Restaurant—we all rely on some of our business coming from people who are visiting over at Licking Creek Lake.” The nearby lake is called that on account of there used to be just Licking Creek, until it got dammed up to make a lake for a state park years ago. People go swimming and camping there. We're the nearest town to Licking Creek Lake. “So how are people supposed to find us if we're not on the map?” I asked.

“She's got a point,” Cherry said, apparently forgetting for the moment that she was mad about the Cut-N-Suck. “Any ideas what we can do?”

“We should have an emergency meeting of the Chamber of Commerce! I'm going to personally launch a letter writing campaign—” Elroy started.

“To who? You think our state rep is really going to care? Why don't you leave well enough alone?” Lewis said. “Probably if we'd gotten that mall development, we wouldn't have to worry about silly things like this.”

Cherry and I moaned. We knew his comment would rile poor Elroy. And that meant we'd have to hear—again—the story of how, twenty years ago, when some businessmen had come to town to consider buying up land to build a fancy antique mall and turn us into the Antique Capital of the Midwest, it wasn't really Elroy's fault that the project got canceled before it ever really got started. It was a story that might have been forgotten, except that Lewis took every chance to taunt Elroy about how he'd made the businessmen sick and caused Paradise to lose its shot at a bigtime mall. Since Lewis owned most of that still undeveloped land—inherited from his father—he'd probably never let Elroy forget it.

“The tuna salad was fresh that day,” Elroy started now, in this mournful singsong voice. He'd gone over this story so many times, always using the same words. He could have set it to music and called it “The Ballad of the Tainted Tuna.”

The short version is that the businessmen, who were staying out at the Red Horse Motel (yes, the only motel in Paradise), decided to come in to town for lunch at Sandy's Restaurant, but Sandy's was closed that day on account of it being Sandy's birthday, for which she always closes, although she's open for Thanksgiving and Christmas. So they went down the street to Elroy's Filling Station and picked up a passel of tuna salad sandwiches and Big Fizz colas. Two days later, the businessmen left town—and the rumor that went around was that they'd been laid up sick from food poisoning before they left.

Poor Elroy Magruder. He'd become such a sad sack that even his wife had left him. Who knows how life would have turned out for the Magruders (or for Paradise) if Elroy hadn't fed those businessmen tainted tuna salad.

Now, I knew Elroy'd keep going on and we'd never get to figure out what to do about not being on the Ohio map, so I said, “Look, Elroy, maybe it wasn't the tuna salad.”