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

I started and found myself blushing.

“You’re planning how to get yourself in the middle of this investigation, aren’t you?”  He stopped the car in front of my house and turned to face me.

“Of course I am,” I said.  I’d rather admit to that than to my fantasies.

“Don’t do it, Aretha.  I mean it.  This one’s going to be nasty.”

“What do you mean?”

“You didn’t get a good look at Kara’s body, did you?”

“Not really.  Enough to know that someone beat her face in.”

“Not just her face.”  He waited a moment for that to sink in and said, “Her face is gone, Aretha.  And her arms and upper torso look like a side of beef.  Someone hated her so much that they beat her to a bloody pulp.”

“Any idea who?”

“Not at the moment.  But whoever did this is not someone you want to mess with.  It would take a pretty sick person to do this to a woman.”

I offered Jimmy a Twinkie and a beer if he wanted to come in, but he had to get back to the station.  My car was in the drive, so I knew that Tiffany and Desi had made it home safely.  As Jimmy pulled away, I sighed and headed for my house.  Nancy, my poodle, was waiting, along with the puddle of pee she’d left.  I cleaned that up, took her outside, then fed her.  I stuffed down half a box of Oreos myself.

Even the Oreos didn’t settle my racing mind.  So I turned to Little Debbie.  A couple of cupcakes later the sugar rush was starting to focus me.

I figured I’d go see my sister Eileen and fill her in.  The girls had probably already scared her half to death with their tale of the dead body.  I cracked open a Diet Coke first, then, fortified, went to face my sister.

CHAPTER THREE

Eileen is prone to migraines and a certain self-righteousness, probably because she’s a perfectionist at heart.  And also because our mother was killed in an unsolved hit and run when I was fourteen and Eileen was four.  As a result, I developed a smart mouth that often gets me in trouble, and Eileen got headaches.

Today’s headache looked like a killer.  Eileen was sitting at her kitchen table with her head resting on one hand.  Her eyes were glazed.   Tiffany and Desi were apparently upstairs from the faint bass notes throbbing through the ceiling.  This was puzzling, since I thought they would be talking nonstop about the murder.  But maybe they were on their phones.

I looked at Eileen, but she stared at the table.  “Eileen?” I asked tentatively.  I was starting to worry that she was in the middle of some kind of breakdown.

“I have to get a bigger turkey,” she said in a monotone.

“What now?  Why do you need to get a bigger turkey?”  This was beginning to look more and more like a breakdown.

“They’re coming for Thanksgiving.”

“Who’s coming for Thanksgiving?”

She lifted her head and met my eyes, and I sat down weakly at the table.  I swear the Theme from Jaws started playing in my head.  “Dad and Momo?” I whispered.

Eileen nodded.  “Dad called a half hour ago.”

“Oh, shit, Eileen.  There’s not enough Valium in the world to survive Momo.”

Momo was what we called our father’s sister, a woman in her upper seventies who was the self-appointed dictator of everything in life.  The Joseph Stalin of aunts.  Her name is Maureen, but when I was little I couldn’t get that out and ended up calling her Momo.  Dad is in his seventies and has lost a lot of hearing, which is probably why he hasn’t shot Momo by now.  He’s blithely oblivious to what she says.

“She put my Barbie doll in the washer because I’d spilled some catsup on her,” Eileen said mournfully.  “Do you know what a washing machine does to a Barbie doll?  It’s not pretty.”

I shuddered, remembering those years when Momo moved in with us after Mom died.

“She made me eat waffles for breakfast,” Eileen complained.  “Waffles!  With bacon in them!  And then all that syrup.  Can you imagine how many calories are in one of her waffles?”

“You have to admit they were good though,” I said.

Eileen gave me a hard look.  “Don’t go sticking up for her.”

I held up my hands.  “Not me.  She came to stay with us after you were born and insisted on braiding my hair into pigtails every morning.  I was ten, for God’s sake!  Pigtails!  And she pulled them so tight that I couldn’t even blink.  I was the only ten-year-old who went to school looking like she’d just had a face lift.”

Eileen giggled, and when I glared at her she said, “I’ve seen the photos.”

“You know she’s going to preside over all the cooking for Thanksgiving,” I said.

Eileen groaned.  “She’ll insist on supervising everything the whole time she’s here.  Oh, God.  I’ll gain ten pounds.  You know how she likes to use butter and cream.”

“You won’t gain anything,” I assured her.  “You never eat enough to gain weight.”  As opposed to me, who eats as though it’s a contest to gain the most weight.

“We’ll have to sneak out to the Fat Blasters meeting,” Eileen said.  “Momo hates diets of any kind.”

“So there’s an upside to her visit,” I said.  I can’t say I’m that fond of going to Fat Blasters, a small and somewhat dedicated diet group.  Each meeting is predictable.  Eileen is generally praised for staying within her goal range, and I usually put on at least a few ounces.  It’s no fun, but we go out to eat after the meeting, and I like that.

“I wonder if we could leave her at the bingo