Color Me Dead Page 9

  The woman went to the door and started corralling people, telling them they couldn’t leave until they’d talked to the police. The man was on his walkie talkie telling someone to send up some uniformed security guards.

  I nodded my head dumbly. It was surreal. I was still trying to come to grips with the idea that Victoria was dead.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  It seemed that an eternity passed while I sat in that chair, staring out, flanked by the hotel security people and staring at Victoria’s lifeless body. As the shock subsided and my brain began to function, my curiosity flickered to life.

  I could see the bloody scissors protruding from that corpse. It struck me that I’d never seen a pair like them before. I’m not an expert on scissors, but I’ve used, or at least seen, most brands and models, but these were new to me. The handle design borrowed from the Shark-Fin brand, but it was different. And from where I sat, I couldn’t make out the logo. Even if the security people were willing to let me get closer, I was as close to that body as I cared to be.

  I could see a stain on the handle of the scissors. I didn’t think it was blood. If the scissors had been sitting at a cutting station I would have been certain it was hair color. The colors we used dried that way, the way that smear did.

  Even as my mind went about automatically cataloging the things I saw, trying to piece together something that would pass for understanding, underneath that I felt an almost overwhelming sadness. Victoria had always been difficult and hard to like. She was, deliberately, a bitch who kept everyone at arm’s length. She helped people, but went to great lengths to make certain everyone knew she only did it because ultimately it was to her own advantage. She resisted the idea that she might do something for someone else.

  “Savannah!”

  I turned my head and saw James Woodley coming toward me. Two uniformed cops and another man in a suit were with him. A medical team with a gurney moved toward Victoria.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked.

  “She found the body,” a security woman said. James stared at her dumbly for a moment, then turned to me.

  I nodded. “James… she asked to meet me here. She said she needed to talk to me.”

  Woodley held up a hand, indicating I should stop talking. He nodded to the uniformed officers. “Start getting statements from the people in the hallway,” he said. He turned to the security people. “Thanks for rounding up potential witnesses. They’d be all over the convention center by now if you hadn’t.”

  The woman beamed with pleasure.

  “One man was taking photos with his cell phone,” I said. “He was about forty, thinning hair, cheap suit.”

  “Find that phone,” Woodley said. “Get all the phones.”

  “I think I know who she means,” the man in the suit said.

  “Okay. In fact, Barker, will you take over processing the scene while I talk to our witness?”

  “Sure, James,” the man said.

  “Please give a statement to the uniformed officers then you can go,” Woodley told the hotel security. He took my arm. “Let’s get you out of here. They thought keeping you here was part of preserving the scene. They meant well, but sheesh. Anyway, the room next door is empty.”

  I got up, feeling oddly weak, empty. It was reassuring that James Woodley was here, holding my arm.

  “Should I be concerned, Savannah?” he asked quietly as they went into the other room. “Are you somehow involved in this?”

  I gave him a weak smile. “She was someone I knew. Of course I’m involved. But the main thing is that there is a murderer loose in this hotel. You should be concerned about that.”

  “I am,” he said with great conviction.

  # # #

  “I should probably mention up front that an awful lot of people didn’t like Victoria,” I told him as soon as we sat down.

  “Victoria?”

  “The victim. That’s her name, was her name, however you do that. Victoria Russel.”

  “Why didn’t they like her?”

  “Mostly she wasn’t likable and made no attempt to be. She was rude and often offended people on purpose, but I never thought anyone would kill her for it.”

  “We’ll figure this out,” he said calmly. “If she did something more than upset people, we’ll find out. Right now I don’t want to hear what you think though. Tell me exactly what happened and what you saw. Start with how you know her.”

  I looked at James, taking in his steady, clear gaze. Even through his professional mask I saw that he cared about me. He was balancing being gentle with being a professional. He needed for me to tell him all the facts, the things I knew and had seen. Anything else would come later, including apologies, if necessary.

  “I can do that,” I said, once I was seated. The vision of her, the image of that dead body that used to be someone I knew, had started to fade and some of the horror and shock went with it. “I had an appointment to meet Victoria. Last night she said she needed to talk to me after breakfast and asked me to come up here. So that’s what I did.”

  “You opened the door and saw her body?”

  I smiled. “You know I wouldn’t have been able to see her from the doorway, not where she was lying. No, I came in to look for her. I didn’t see anyone at all. The room looked perfect. I thought I must have misunderstood or that she changed her mind, so I was going to leave when I noticed a chair was askew. The truth is that it bothered me and I walked around the table to straighten it.”

  “Really? The hotel has how many employees and you were compelled to straighten a chair?”

  “It’s who I am, James.”

  “So then you saw her.”

  “And then I froze. I think I screamed just like people in the stupid movies. I’m still shaking a little. It isn’t like I’d never seen a dead person before, James.”

  “Right. You had that woman die in the salon, from the poisoned hair dye.”

  “Hair coloring,” I said reflexively. “Yes.”

  “But this was a bloody killing, the brutal murder of someone you know… knew.”

  “Victoria Russel. The smart, sassy, and completely unlikeable Victoria Russel. She owns a salon in Baton Rouge. She was my mentor out of styling school.”

  “And do you know anyone who disliked her enough to kill her?”

  I laughed. “Unfortunately I can think of several people here at the conference who disliked her intensely. If she weren’t dead in the other room I wouldn’t think they hated her enough to kill her, but under the circumstances…”

  “Let’s make a list,” he said. “Names, relationship to her and whatever you know about the reasons they disliked her.”

  “Okay, but bear in mind that a lot of what I know is rumor and gossip. You are, after all, investigating a murder that took place at a convention of hair stylists.”

  He rubbed his face. “I suppose the other extreme would be worse,” he said.

  “The other extreme?”

  “A murder at a convention of deaf mutes.”

  That was too weird to contemplate. “Okay, let’s start with Dave the Dwarf.”

  He stared at me. “Really? Am I even allowed to write that down?”

  “I didn’t say this would be easy. He was angry with Victoria and I saw him going the other way down the hall when I was coming to the room.”

  As I talked I knew we had too many suspects and they all had easy access to the room. “I didn’t know it until yesterday, but it seems I was the closest thing Victoria had to a friend. I’m going to catch this murderer.”

  “That’s my job,” he said. “You are supposed to help Pete.”

  “Right. I’m going to help you catch this murderer.”

  “That’s better.”

  And so we went on with the list… Manus, Sylvia, Dave… and they were just the ones I knew about offhand.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Like a small town, gossip at a convention travels like wildfire in dry brush. The police weren’t s
aying anything and James and his partner were warning everyone they interviewed not to talk about the case.

  “Don’t tell anyone you are the one who found the body,” James had warned me. “They’ll be after you like jackals.”

  “I have to tell my crew,” I said.

  He stared at me for a minute—measuring my level of stubbornness on the matter. It must have been well over the threshold because he sighed and said, “Fine, but ask them to keep it to themselves, at least for a little bit.” Then he shrugged. “Too many people already know, so I suppose keeping that quiet is asking too much anyway.”

  And the rumor mill was aware and the hall was buzzing. Long before there was any official word from management, or any authorities, almost everyone had heard that there had been a murder. According to the rumors, various people had been killed, but the consensus had it right—that it was Victoria.

  By the time I got down to the lobby after making my statement, there were dozens of variations of the real story in circulation. When I walked into the lobby I learned two things: James was right about the secret not being safe, as too many people had been in the hallway; and he was right about the jackal behavior. I was swarmed with people asking me questions. Everyone seemed to think that because I’d found the body I’d have some other heavily guarded information to go with it, or some inside track on the investigation. I did have some insights, but I wasn’t going to share those.

  Fortunately one thing that they didn’t seem to know was that Investigator Woodley and I were friends. Otherwise I would have been trampled by “friends” wanting to know the real story. The way it was, with Nellie running guard—driving people away with flailing elbows—I was able to tell people a vanilla version of the truth. I told that them that yes, I’d found her. “I went into the meeting room and found her dead on the floor. No, there was no one else there. They didn’t tell me the cause of death, but she was in a pool of blood. The police were questioning everyone. I gave my statement and I don’t really know anything more than that.”

  That bland account, quite naturally, freed everyone to concoct their own theory and their own lurid details about what had happened in that room. Most followed a simple, standard recipe. You put your own ideas about what happened into a pot, stirred in whatever facts were available, and before it was fully baked, you passed it along as gospel.

  After a time Gloria came on the public address system saying “Testing one, two, three…” Then she announced that yes, there had, in fact, been a murder. “Victoria Russel, a beloved colleague of many of you was killed. The police are carrying out an investigation and we ask for your cooperation. If you know anything relevant to the case, please give your name and phone number to one of the police officers or hotel security and they will make arrangements to take your statement.”

  She clicked the microphone a few times, then announced we would have a moment of silence. It was a short pause before she spoke again. “We all know that Victoria would want nothing more than for the events to proceed as planned, so I encourage you all to resume the regularly scheduled activities.”

  “Not bad from someone who probably couldn’t pick Victoria out of a lineup,” Nellie said.

  “Her job is to keep things moving,” I said. “What choices does she have?”

  “So it’s all hail Victoria for sixty seconds and then will everyone please get back to the party?”

  “Something like that.”

  “That’s just sad.”

  “It is.”

  “And it makes me want to call home,” Nellie said.

  “Everything makes you want to call home,” I said. “But this one I understand. Go ahead. I’m going to call Sarah.”

  “Just to see that they are alright,” Nellie said. That was the reason. A death so close made you uncertain about all the things you took for granted.

  As I moved to find a relatively quiet place to stand and make my call I suddenly found myself missing Victoria. She’d helped me, been good to me—in her own way, of course, but I appreciated it. I wished more people appreciated her good qualities. Even though it was her own fault that they didn’t, I couldn’t help but feel bad for her.

  And so a life I’d shared a part of, a small part, ended, as Eliot said: “Not with a bang but a whimper.”

  Or in this case, with a memorial moment of silence over a hotel PA system.

  I didn’t think it was the ending or send off she envisioned for herself.

  # # #

  I hadn’t seen Pete around since the murder and I was concerned that the news might have him even more anxious and worried. Betina pointed toward Manus’s booth and I could see him talking with Manus. “He wanted to talk to Manus about something before the contest,” she said. “I think he feels sorry for the man.”

  So did I. “Has the news upset Pete?”

  She shook her head. “A little, but he didn’t know her. I think he’s more concerned about you. She was someone you were close to for a while.”

  I was fascinated how everyone was of the opinion that Victoria and I were friends. “We weren’t really. She’s the kind of person that my daddy used to say ‘doesn’t have any friends, just some people she doesn’t hate as much as others.’ I was one she never actively hated.”

  “How sad,” Betina said.

  “Very.”

  “That poor, poor dear Victoria,” Sylvia said in a thin, desperate voice. She’d spotted me and came waltzing over, drying her tears. “You know that she meant so much to me. What a horrible time this must have been for you.”

  I looked at her in shock. “You know we weren’t really close. You know that she didn’t let anyone get close.”

  “Ah but she always talked about you, what a good friend you were.”

  I rolled my eyes, making Betina grin. Sylvia probably had more reason to think I was Victoria’s pal than most. I was gone, and Victoria would use me as an example of what she should be. “You surprise me, Sylvia. From what I’ve heard, you two hated each other.”

  Looking past her, I noticed a man I didn’t know standing by her station. He seemed more honestly upset than Sylvia. He wasn’t crying, but he was under stress.

  She wiped at tears running down her face. “I know she and I fought, but that was about business. Outside of that we were like sisters that don’t get along. We loved each other, but fought over things that really don’t matter in the long run.”

  “Outside of business you were friends?”

  “We didn’t always get along perfectly, but yes.”

  “So you fought over things like the hairstyle you copied?” Nellie asked.

  Sylvia turned on her. “What a cruel thing to even suggest, especially now. I’ll have you know that the style I’ll be introducing today was one I’ve been developing for a long time. Victoria got it in her head that because I was working for her when I came up with the idea that it was hers.”

  “And didn’t you two fight over who owned the salon a few years back?” I asked.

  “She’d promised me a share in her salon if I worked for her for a time for peasant wages.”

  “But it wasn’t in writing.”

  “No it wasn’t. I don’t deny we had disagreements. She was a very ungenerous person at times, and tried to hold onto things she had no right to.”

  I noticed that she glanced back toward her station as she said that. “I read about some lawsuit over that a while back,” Nellie said.

  “Yes, I sued her, but I lost because I couldn’t prove she’d promised me a share. But they did make her give me back pay for the whole time, so she wasn’t thrilled about that.”

  There was a strange look in her eyes. It wasn’t grief, not exactly. It wasn’t stress or shock either. Maybe it was some complex cocktail of emotions. I could imagine that their relationship wasn’t simple. Sylvia wasn’t as easy going as I’d been when I worked for Victoria. I saw her as my mentor. That was the way Victoria liked it. She was the star and you were her apprentice. Letting her have
her way was fine for the two years I’d worked for her. She was talented and I learned so many things about the business as well as styling that school never even touched on.

  When it had come time to move on, Victoria was ready to bring in another apprentice. Apparently Sylvia saw that relationship differently. It was easy to imagine her expecting to be a sort of junior partner, or even thinking that’s what I’d been. The relationship would be good at first, with Victoria being supportive, and even nurturing. Eventually something would come up where Victoria would want to assert herself. And Sylvia didn’t seem the type to let Victoria hold center stage by herself. I couldn’t help but wonder what the final blow had been that split them apart, but it had wounded them both and left them scrambling to dominate each other even after all this time.

  “That weepy face is the saddest bull crap I’ve seen in ages,” Nellie said as Sylvia walked away.

  “You don’t think she’s sincere?” Betina asked.

  Nellie took the girl’s arm. “Think about all that anger she was showing, and suddenly Victoria is a departed saint. No, I don’t buy it for a second.”

  “Why would she fake such despair? It’s ruining her makeup.”

  “Mascara is cheap,” Nellie said. “It could be something as simple as thinking that playing the role of Victoria’s best friend will get her attention and sympathy.”

  “Or something else?” Pete asked.

  “Who knows?” Nellie said. “I just know devious when I see it. After all, I have three kids. Nobody can lie more honest than a kid who thinks he’s about to be grounded.”

  “Shakespeare comes to mind,” Pete said.

  Nellie nodded. “Exactly, Pete. She is protesting her grief far too much.”

  “I saw you having a conversation with Manus,” I said, fishing.

  He grinned. “I tried out his scissors and they are great. I wanted to thank him for them and to let him know I was going to use them in the contest. He was thrilled. Apparently his presentation wasn’t well attended and he was feeling depressed. Victoria’s explosion sure didn’t help him any.”