Aretha Moon and the Dead Hairdresser: Aretha Moon Book 2 (Aretha Moon Mysteries) Linda Ross (books for students to read TXT) 📖

I was headed, and I had to come up with something to tell him.  I’d planned on driving out past Stephanie Riley’s house to see if anyone was home, and I knew that wouldn’t make him happy.  So I told him I’d been going to Thelma’s house.

I didn’t even know if Thelma was home, but I thanked Jimmy and cheerfully waved good-bye, waiting until he was out of sight to ring Thelma’s doorbell.  Her apartment was on the second floor, but the entrance was off the front porch.  Someone in the bottom apartment was running a sweeper and having an argument with a spouse at the same time.  All I caught was, “And if you think I’m cooking Thanksgiving dinner for your parents you’re crazy!”  A chill went through me as I remembered that Dad and Momo were due in the next day.

The door opened, and Thelma gave me a sheepish grin.  “Sorry about last night,” she said.

“Well, you should be.”  I followed her inside and then up the stairs.

“I heard all the shouting inside,” Thelma said, “and there was Jimmy waiting for you.  I figured it was better if I made myself scarce.”

“So you didn’t see me get escorted out?”

“They threw you out?”

“Escorted me,” I said.  “There’s a difference.”

“Did you find out anything?”  She gestured to the round glass table in the little eating area off the kitchen, and I sat down.  “Want some hot tea?”  She saw my expression and said, “Sorry, no Diet Coke.”

“Tea’s fine.  And I found out that Kara nearly beat a guy to death with a crop.  He’s some car dealer near here, wants to get into politics, and he’s married.”

“So visiting a B and D party wouldn’t look good.”  Thelma put two mugs of water in the microwave.

“Definitely.  And Jimmy told me that someone broke into Kara’s shed the other night.  They don’t know what’s missing, if anything, because it was a mess in there.  Plus Jimmy wants me to go to Arnold, Missouri, to talk to people about Rose and Kara.  He doesn’t know that Rose already told us about the church.”

“Well, I’m up for a road trip if you are.”

“I’ll have a rental car,” I said.  “There was an accident this morning.”

“What happened?  Are you okay?”

“A little bump on the head.  Someone put a big rat in my car and I ran into a ditch.”

“A rat?  A live rat?”

“A big, live rat.”

We both just looked at each other as the implications hit us.  The microwave dinged, and Thelma got up and brought the cups to the table.  She set down a box of teabags and a couple of spoons.

“Do you think it had anything to do with the people we’ve been talking to lately?”

“I honestly don’t know.  I’ve been going over people in my head to see if I think one of them might have done something like that.”

“What about someone from that B and D party last night?”

“Well, David Henderson was probably mad enough at me.  I think the only other people who knew who I was were Leonard and the French maid.”

“What French maid?”

“A woman in a French maid’s outfit was like the hostess at the party.  Leonard from the police department was working off-duty as a bouncer.  I don’t see either of them putting a rat in my car.  Besides, I think someone did it while I was at the party.”

“So, who have we talked to lately?”

I ticked them off on my fingers.  “Ralph Pierce, who rented the house to Kara, and Derek Harper, the guy in the band.  The guy who makes iron art, Loren Haskell, and Jordan Kirsch, the kid who hooked up with Kara after she modeled for his art class.  Jordan seems the least likely of all of them.”

“And we still have a couple of ex-boyfriends on our list from Mr. Pierce.  One of them might have heard that you were asking around.”

“I don’t know,” I said.  “It seems to me almost everyone who knew Kara could be a suspect.”

“We need a fresh lead,” Thelma said.  “That trip to Arnold might be helpful.”

“In the meantime do you want to drive by Stephanie Riley’s house again to see if anyone’s home?”

“We might as well.”  We finished our tea, and Thelma got her coat.

There was a brisk wind blowing dried leaves across the road when we turned off Highway 79.  When we passed Kara’s house I tried to see the broken window on the shed, but it was too far back.  We drove slowly past Ralph Pierce’s house and the fields with their corn stubble.  Stephanie Riley’s house came into view, looking as deserted as before.

“What do you think?” I asked.

“The newspaper’s still there.  I don’t think anyone’s around.”

“Strange.”

“What do you want to do?” Thelma asked.

“Let’s park and walk the road.  Maybe we’ll see something.”

Boy, did that turn out to be an understatement.  Sometimes I wish I weren’t so persistent.

We parked in the drive right in front of the gate and got out.  We started by heading away from the direction of the highway and Mr. Pierce’s farm.  We walked slowly, Thelma on one side of the road and me on the other.  “What are we looking for?” Thelma asked.

“I don’t know.  I just have a feeling that if something happened it happened here.  I don’t think she went anywhere.”

“But there’s just one car in the garage.  Maybe she and her husband took a trip together in his car.”

“It just doesn’t feel right.  The bill in the mailbox and the newspaper.”

“If they were planning a trip, they’d stop the mail and paper.”

“But they’d bring the last delivery into the house before they left.”

“Maybe they left a day earlier than planned.”

I made a noncommittal noise, and we walked on.  We went