Page 36 of Bone Echo

Dudley returned to the den and handed the coffee to Laura. Once again, he was amazed at her remarkable composure. Except for her enlarged pupils and the way she occasionally gulped, as if she couldn’t get enough air, she didn’t appear to be a woman with a bloody workshop in her garage and a bullet hole in her wall.

While Jack dug out the bullet, Dudley finished the questioning. Laura described the intruder as a male of average height wearing all black clothing and a ski mask over his face. She had heard no car either coming up her driveway or leaving.

Dudley crossed to the back door to study the landscape. Thick woods surrounded the back and the east sides of the house. Easy for anyone to park a block or so away then sneak in through the trees.

“Whoever killed Charlie is trying to kill me.”

He whirled at the sound of Laura’s voice. “Until we knew more, Charlie is missing, not dead.”

She ran at him, beat her fists on his chest. “DON’T LIE TO ME!”

Jack strode over, caught her gently around the waist, and pulled her off. “Mrs. Stephens, we’re going to file this report on your intruder. Under the circumstances, we will put a patrol car in front of your house to make sure no one is trying to harm you.”

“Okay.” She brushed her hair back with her fingers. “But if he comes back, I’ll shoot him.”

Dudley and Jack stepped outside to check the backyard for clues. Last night’s rain had been heavy, and they got lucky. There was the full imprint of a man’s shoe. Large. Approximately a size twelve. He had stepped into a patch of mud, probably when he ran. The bare patch had been left behind when Charlie dug up a diseased hydrangea bush the previous week. He’d told Dudley that Laura wanted all the hydrangeas to come out so she could plant tomatoes and bell peppers.

The impression they made, along with the bullet, would be sent to the lab for analysis. His hopes climbed. They might get a lucky break, and the perp would seek medical attention for his bullet wound. Even if the bullet had only grazed him and there was medical record to track down, the evidence combined with the name Enda Sue were puzzle pieces that would eventually lead him to find out what happened to his brother.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Curl Up and Dye Beauty Salon

Dudley turned the car in the direction of the salon where Laura worked.

“Do you think she was telling the truth?” Jack asked.

“I don’t know. The intruder was real, but was he a stranger to her or a cohort? She’s always been a sort of mystery to me. Charlie loved her, and that was always good enough. Until now.”

“We need to do a thorough check of her background.”

Jack was right. In spite of the overwhelming evidence, Dudley’s gut instinct, and his horrible nightmare, he still wasn’t ready to concede that his brother was gone forever.

He was relieved when the Curl Up and Dye shop came into view. It was incongruous in the midst of the smart-looking business section along Poplar: a small cottage painted a shocking pink with a sign out front topped by flashing orange neon in the shape of scissors so huge they looked as if they were ripping the sky into tattered bits of blue.

The shop smelled of nail polish remover and that peculiar stench Dudley knew to be permanent wave solution. Hisgrandmother, Junie Mae, had given herself home permanents ever since he could remember. The solution smelled like rotten eggs and kinked her red hair into little corkscrew curls all over her head.

The owner, a leggy, peroxide blond wearing too much lipstick and so much mascara her eyes looked as if spiders were trying to take over her face, sashayed toward Jack, smiling, her hips swaying. Women of all sizes, shapes, and ages flocked to Jack.

Dudley welcomed the blessed flash of comic relief.

The young woman stopped just short of him and posed with one hand propped on her hip. “What can I do for you, handsome?”

Saints preserve us.

“We’re here to ask a few questions.” Jack flashed his badge, and she stepped back so fast she almost came out her sling-back high heels. The shop was filled with women at the skinks, under the hair dryers, and in the swivel chairs where their hair was in various stages of repair. “Do you have a separate room where we can be discreet?”

His smile restored her, and she winked. “Janine’s the name. Follow me. There’s no tellin’what allwe can do in my private room.”

Dudley nearly laughed at the pleading look Jack sent his way. He nodded, then clumped along behind them like a boxcar full of coal following a sleek, smoking engine.

It turned out Janine had nothing but praise for Laura Stephens. She was full of sympathy for her plight. When she found out Dudley was her brother-in-law, she told him she was going to stop at Kentucky Fried Chicken after work to take Laura some supper and keep her company for a while.

He couldn’t imagine a more incongruous pair, plain, shy Laura and flamboyant Janine. Still, his conscience eased a bitknowing Charlie’s wife had someone to help her until they could find out what happened to him.

Janine sent her employees in, one at a time. It was a large shop, so they divided up, with Jack taking interviews in the larger room and Dudley taking them in the tiny storage room that felt claustrophobic.

The stories he heard stories were all much the same. Laura was a quiet, hardworking woman who had a seemingly perfect marriage. This was consistent with what he had believed since Charlie married her.

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