Death Comes to Dogwood Manor. Sandra Bretting
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fascinator someone had knocked to the ground. I gingerly picked it up and fluffed the smashed hat before I returned it to its spot on a display table that looked surprisingly bare. “What happened to all the other stuff that normally goes here?”
“It’s a funny story.” Somehow, she did not look amused. “And I heard about what happened to you this morning. Everyone’s talking about it.”
No doubt. “Okay, but first things first. What’s been going on around here?”
I gingerly approached the cash register, wary of the changes in both my store and my assistant. While Beatrice normally wore wonderful costume jewelry made with enormous rhinestones, today her ears and neck were bare. The gemstones usually matched her apparel—a man’s dress shirt, which she tucked into a pencil skirt, for a fun, funky vibe—but now her shirt billowed over the skirt haphazardly.
“I’m almost afraid to ask,” I said. A mound of sparkly jewelry greeted me when I reached the counter. “Let me guess…you got stuck holding a baby this morning, and it didn’t go well.”
“Bingo.” She swept out from behind the counter and wearily plopped onto a bar stool. “We had a second-time bride come in. With her whole gang.” She began to rub her bare earlobe, the skin raw and red. “The little tyke yanked off my jewelry, but his mom didn’t even notice.”
“And he took the hat stands off the table, too?” While it sounded far-fetched, stranger things had happened in our store.
“Oh, no. His sister took those. Did you know those things make excellent weapons? She pretended one was a sword, and then the little angel wouldn’t give it back.” Her voice dripped sarcasm. “She even got me in the legs…more than once. Look.” She pointed to a hole in her tights.
“Ouch. Don’t worry. I’ll pay for those. And what’s that spot on your skirt?”
“Jelly. Blackberry, of course. The darkest kind they make.”
I moved to a stool next to hers. “Take it to the dry cleaners and charge it to the studio. Now…what happened to our eleven o’clock appointment?”
“She called and said she had an emergency, so she had to reschedule. Something about a problem with her wedding chapel.”
“Oh, no.” My hand stalled. No doubt the bride had planned to use Dogwood Manor for her nuptials, and now she’d had to reschedule. There was no telling how many people Mr. Solomon’s death had affected. Or how many of our clients, although that seemed a bit selfish, given the circumstances.
“I’ll bet you dollars to donuts she booked the wedding chapel at Dogwood Manor,” I said, “and now she has to scramble to find a new place. So, did you hear that I was the one who found Mr. Solomon’s body this morning?”
“That’s right!” Her eyes widened. “And here I am babbling on and on about me and my morning. What happened?”
Although barely thirty minutes had passed, no doubt half of the population of Bleu Bayou knew by now, and the other half would find out by lunchtime. News traveled fast in Bleu Bayou, or, as we liked to say, it traveled at the speed of boredom.
“Mr. Solomon was lying in a back bedroom,” I said. “I thought it was a pile of dirty laundry at first.”
“Shut up!” Tired or not, Beatrice found the energy to slap her hand over her mouth the minute she said that. “I’m sorry…I’ve gotta stop using that expression.”
“It’s okay. I understand why you’d be surprised.”
“Stuff like this keeps happening to you. I mean…what are the odds you’d be the one to find another body?”
“Tell me about it. My friend, the detective, came over right away. He’s going to handle the investigation.”
“Wow. Do they know what happened?”
“No, not yet. Everyone thinks it might be a heart attack. But the guy also had a real talent for making enemies.”
“I know all about that, remember? He and my uncle weren’t exactly friends. In fact, they bickered like an old married couple. I never could tell whether they really hated each other or they just loved to fight.”
I shrugged. “Guess your uncle doesn’t have to worry about him anymore.”
“That’s true. But what was it like to find the body?”
“Well, like I said, I didn’t know it was a body at first.” Truth be told, the glass finial had captured my attention, not the person lying under it. All that changed when I realized the bauble was resting on someone’s back. “But I saw Mr. Solomon earlier today, and he didn’t look well.”
“What do you mean?”
“He had a skin rash and he’d gone completely bald.” I suddenly realized why Beatrice would want to know. “Wait a minute. Didn’t you want to become a pharmacist when you went to LSU?”
While she’d planned to enroll in the pharmacy program at the University of Louisiana at Monroe after her undergraduate studies, Beatrice changed her mind when she realized how much memorization it’d involve. She made the right choice to give up on the pharmacy program, given her quirky personality, but she still was a whiz at medicines and such.
“Let me tell you about his symptoms,” I said. “The rash was purple with red bumps. And he didn’t have one strand of hair left. He was completely bald.”
I could almost hear her mind working. After a moment, she leaned back. “Sounds like a metalloid poisoning.”
She must’ve noticed my blank expression, because she spoke again. “You have your heavy metals, like mercury or lead, and radioactive ones, like radium. Sometimes they build up in the immune system until your body begins to shut down.”
“But would that cause a skin rash? It even showed up on the back of his hand.” I’d noticed it when he took the pen from Erika Daniels in the library.
“It could cause the rash to spread. We’d call it a sign of the poisoning. A symptom would be something only he could feel…like sleepiness or confusion.”
“I noticed the rash right away.” His scalp had seemed bruised when I’d spied him under the ladder. And, although he’d always been skinny, the shoulders of his dress shirt sagged midway to his elbow.
“Well, you’ll have to see what the coroner says, but it sounds like he had signs of acute metalloid poisoning.” Her diagnosis complete, Beatrice squinted. “Now, the real question is…who would do something like that?”
“I don’t know.” Although, to be honest, the image of Cole Truitt immediately came to mind. “One construction worker told me the crew members had been taking bets on when the old man would have a heart attack.”
“Ouch. That seems a little cold.”
“Exactly. And Mr. Solomon barked at everyone this morning. There’s no telling how many people he’s ticked off along the way.”
People like Shep Truitt, as a matter of fact, who had nothing good to say about the man. And if the foreman would confide in me, a total stranger, who knew how much he really hated his boss? Ditto for Erika Daniels. While she didn’t complain about him, she’d seemed ready to clobber him when he’d criticized her in the library.
“Bottom line is, half the people in Bleu Bayou probably wanted him gone,” I said. “And the other half would help them do it.”
CHAPTER 5
“Which brings us back to our eleven o’clock appointment.” Beatrice glanced at a Timex on her wrist, the only accessory she still wore. “I could always call the bride back and find out whether she can come in later today.”
“That’d be great. It’ll give me some time to visit Lance at the police station. Do you mind cleaning up the studio a little while