Death of a Domestic Diva Read online

  Why on Earth would someone like Tyra Grimes want to come here?

  I’d gotten Paradise the attention it supposedly wanted. But now that it had it, the town didn’t really like the price of fame.

  So I slunk on back to my laundromat, kept on cleaning and washing, even cleaning up the stockroom.

  Truth be told, I was waiting.

  Tyra’s announcement felt like a big, fat, dark storm about to break wide open and suck up all of us—my customers, me, and everyone else in town—spinning us around until we were dizzy and confused before spitting us out back to Earth.

  I was waiting for the storm to hit. But there were no provisions to take in, no way to protect people I knew and loved. So I just waited, hoping I was wrong, hoping the storm wouldn’t come at all.

  But of course it would. It had to.

  Dedication

  To Gwenie, who likes to say,

  “you gotta laugh sometimes, ma.”

  Contents

  Why on Earth would someone like Tyra Grimes want to come here?

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Epilogue

  Paradise Advertiser-Gazette

  Want to be in the next Josie Toadfern Mystery Novel?

  About the Author

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Acknowledgments

  No book is ever created without the support of others, and I am particularly indebted to the following people. Any errors are mine alone.

  •Judy DaPolito—friend and writer, who read nearly every draft, provided great feedback, and kept telling me: “you can do this.”

  •Joe Niehaus—writer and Kettering Police Department Sergeant, who provided guidance on the nuts and bolts of police procedure.

  •Bittersweet Farms and its Executive Director, Charles R. Flowers, who so graciously hosted me on a visit to its residential program in northwest Ohio for persons with autism.

  •William M. Klykylo, M.D., Wright State University School of Medicine, Professor, Department of Psychiatry.

  •Authors and experts in stain removal whose web sites and books provided a wonderful education: Linda Cobb, Jean Cooper, Don Aslett, Heloise, and the Iowa State University Extension.

  •David, Katherine and Gwendolyn—the family team of my dreams—and of my daily life. Thank you.

  1

  Time moves differently in a laundromat.

  How differently depends on the person.

  For Becky Gettlehorn, who stood in the corner folding clothes for a family of seven, I suspected it moved slower. Sure, she had two of her little ones with her, but the older three were in school on this glorious April day in Paradise, Ohio. Four-year-old Haley was busily coloring under the folding table, while three-year-old Tommy was at the front of my laundromat getting his hair trimmed by my cousin Billy. Becky had a peaceful, almost dreamy look on her face, as if the rhythm of folding countless tiny T-shirts and towels and jeans and her husband’s Masonville State Prison guard uniforms and just the occasional blouse was somehow soothing—a welcome change from, say, fixing macaroni and cheese for seven in the tiny kitchen of the Gettlehorn bungalow on Elm Street.

  For my other Monday morning regular—the widow Beavy—time seemed to move frantically. Once upon a time, Mrs. Eugene Beavy had as many children as Becky, plus one, and I reckon that back then—when my laundromat was still owned by my aunt and uncle—she was a lot more like Becky. But time, besides moving differently in a laundromat, also has a way of taking its toll. Now, Mrs. Beavy had one load, maybe two, every week, but she always seemed overwhelmed by them, even though she did only her outer clothes, as she called them, at my laundromat. Once she confided to me that she did her undies at home in her kitchen sink, because, as she said, she didn’t want the whole damned town of Paradise gawking at her panties and bras and extra-support stockings. I’ve long ago given up on pointing out to her that the whole damned town of Paradise, even with its tiny population of 2,617, could not fit in my laundromat, and even if it could, its citizens would hardly be interested in observing Mrs. Beavy launder her undies.

  For me, laundromat time moves as normal time. I’m Josie Toadfern, owner of Toadfern’s Laundromat, the only laundromat in Paradise, Ohio. I’m a stain expert—self-taught and proud of it. Best stain expert in all of Mason County. Maybe in all of Ohio. Maybe even in all of the United States.

  And on that fine spring day about four weeks ago—before trouble came to Paradise—I was using that expertise to finish up the last of Lewis Rothchild’s white dress shirts. By the clock that hangs on the wall behind my front counter, it was 1:45. Hazel Rothchild would be in at precisely 2:10 P.M. to pick up her husband’s shirts. She was always on time and always fussy about the shirts. Lewis was the third-generation owner of Rothchild’s Funeral Parlor. He was also heavy and sweated a lot, and I did what I could about his shirts (pretreating with a mix of equal parts water, cheap dishwashing soap, and ammonia usually worked). Still, Hazel always found something to complain about, saying that he had to look his best for his clients. And I always resisted pointing out that actually, he had to look his best for his clients’ families, his clients being, after all, dead. (A good businesswoman must know when to bite her tongue.)

  Hazel would command all my time once she arrived, so I decided to check on my other customers now. I trotted over to Mrs. Beavy, who was fiddling with the cap on her bottle of detergent.

  I peered at her clothes whirring around in the washer. “You’re on the spin cycle,” I said, gently taking the bottle of detergent from her. I put the detergent on the folding table and picked up the bottle of softener.

  “Oh. That means it’s time for the cream rinse, right?”

  “Fabric softener,” I corrected kindly, although I could understand her confusion, given that my ever-down-on-his-luck cousin Billy was demonstrating his Cut-N-Suck haircutting vacuum attachment by the big window that fronts my laundromat. His hope was that Paradisites would come in for his free demos, and then buy their very own six-payments-of-$5.95-per-month Cut-N-Suck hair-clipping vacuum attachment, which was supposed to allow the user to clip hair while the trimmings got sucked into the vacuum.

  “I’m not going to get hair in my blouses, am I?” Mrs. Beavy asked nervously, pointing toward Billy.

  “No, no, not at all,” I said, measuring fabric softener into the dispenser on top of the washer.

  “Because Cherry warned me I would, and I don’t want hairy blouses.” She added in a whisper, “Makes me glad I do my undies at home. Because I surely don’t want hairy panties.”

  I thumped the bottle of softener back down on the folding table. Mrs. Beavy jumped, and I immediately felt sorry. I smiled at her, glancing over at the TV, mounted on a rack just to the right of the entry door, positioned so that anyone in the laundromat could see it. “It’s about time for your favorite show. You want me to turn it on for you?”

  She smiled back at me, instantly soothed. Her favorite show was, of course, the Tyra Grimes Home Show. Everyone in America loved, or at least knew about, Tyra Grimes—a home decorating and lifestyle expert with a cable TV show filmed right in New York. She had books and videos, plus a company that made dishtowels and bath towels and sheets and other stuff for the home—all very stylish, of cour
se.

  On the way to the TV, I took a detour by Becky, chatted for a few seconds about how fast her kids were growing, and suggested she help herself to my supply shelf for a dab of plain glycerin to treat the mustard spot on Haley’s new sun dress. Then I went on over to my cousin Billy.

  “Mrs. Beavy is concerned about hairy panties,” I said, loudly, over the whir of his canister vacuum.

  Billy frowned at me as he shut off his vacuum. “Shush, Josie,” he said in a hush-hush voice. Then he patted little Tommy Gettlehorn on the head.

  “You look great, son!” he pronounced, switching to the booming voice he’d once used in the pulpit at the Second Reformed Church of the Holy Reformation—before he’d taken to drinking from depression over his wife running off with a quieter parishioner. Billy had lost his job after having been found one too many times with a bottle of wine in his desk in the office of a church that used sanctified grape juice at communion.

  “Doesn’t he look great, Josie?” Billy boomed.

  I resisted a knee-jerk “Amen!” (I am a demure Methodist) and said instead, “Yes. You look great, Tommy.” And in truth, his burr hair cut was nicer than I would have expected the Cut-N-Suck—or Billy—to be able to produce.

  Tommy looked up at us and smiled the best he could, given that he was frantically rubbing little hair bits away from his nose. He sneezed, wiped his nose on his shirt sleeve—another laundry item for his poor mama—then ran off, zipping around washers and dryers and folding tables, hollering, “Mama, mama, look at me! Josie says I look great!”

  Billy gave a little-boy grin, an expression at odds with his beefy, square-jawed face, his short, stocky build, and his new haircut—a black burr as thick as a bush, on account of his first Cut-N-Suck demo having been on himself. The style made him look like an escapee of some kind.

  Billy leaned toward me and whispered, “I think Becky Gettlehorn is really interested in buying a Cut-N-Suck.”

  I frowned at Billy and whispered back, “Even at $5.95 a month, she can’t afford it.”

  “But it comes with free electric tweezers—and a rotary-action nose-hair trimmer!”

  I folded my arms. “Billy.”

  He sighed. “Demos and sales have really fallen off ever since last week when you-know-who started her little protest. She’s at it again.” He jerked a thumb at my front window.

  I have, for advertising purposes, painted on my front windowpane a much-larger-than-life toad atop a lily pad with a cartoon-like bubble coming out of its mouth with the words, “Toadfern’s Laundromat. Always a leap ahead of dirt!” (A good businesswoman must know when to use marketing.)

  To see what Billy meant, I had to kneel down and gaze out below the bottom fringe of the lily pad. I then saw short stubby legs in stiletto heels trekking back and forth in front of my window. The legs belonged to Cherry Feinster, owner of Cherry’s Chat and Curl, the only hair salon in Paradise, which happens to be next door to my laundromat. I stood up again.

  Besides attending to customers, Cherry had been marching with a sign protesting Billy’s demos. I’d complained to the chief of the Paradise Police, John Worthy, but he’d said that even though I was correct, ours was a free-market economy; Cherry also had her right to free speech. So long as she didn’t physically stop anyone from coming into my laundromat, there wasn’t much I could do about her protest—other than threatening to stop doing the towels from her shop . . . but I needed the business.

  “Mrs. Beavy says Cherry’s telling people they’ll get hair in their laundry if they come in here, Billy,” I whispered. “And I think she may be right.” I stared pointedly down at the burst of telltale little black Gettlehorn hair clippings on my floor, a sight that did not please me. I keep my laundromat spotless. People do not like to wash their undies—or other garments—in a grimy laundry.

  Billy shrugged, then whispered, “I had a little trouble with the attachment earlier. It’s this doggoned old vacuum cleaner of mine. Not the Cut-N-Suck—that works great.”

  “Look, get this cleaned up. I need to turn on the ceiling fans because it’s starting to get hot, and the last thing I need is hair blowing around the place to prove Cherry right. You can use my vacuum cleaner from the storeroom—but only through the end of the week. After Friday, you need to find a different way to give demos. Maybe door to door.”

  He nodded eagerly. “Yeah! I should have my car fixed by then. Thanks, Josie!”

  He pulled me to him and gave me a big hug and kiss. I wiped my cheek off as soon as he released me. Billy’s a wet kisser. “And lay off on demos for the next half hour,” I added. “The Tyra Grimes Home Show is coming on and my customers want to watch it.”

  “Sure, Josie,” Billy said. “You’re the greatest.” And he trotted off to the back room to get my vacuum cleaner.

  The greatest? I wondered, looking at Billy’s old canister vacuum. Or just a sucker? Besides letting him use my laundromat space to launch his new career as a Cut-N-Suck distributor, I’d been renting him the spare apartment next to mine on the second floor over my laundromat. In two months, I’d yet to collect any actual rent. Despite his zeal as a salesman, Cut-N-Suck sales were slow, Billy said.

  I moved back to my counter, picked up the remote, pointed it at the TV, flicked it on, and found the right channel.

  The background music to the Tyra Grimes Home Show cued—a soft, dreamy melody. Then there was Tyra Grimes herself, her smiling face filling the screen, beaming her enthusiasm for all things elegant and beautiful all over my laundromat.

  And then time shifted again in my laundromat. It seemed to fold in on itself, then stop, as Mrs. Beavy and Becky and even her two little ones and I all stared up at Tyra. We were, like a lot of people across America, hooked on Tyra Grimes and her show. There was just something so seductive about the idea that your life would somehow get better, if only you could fluff your pillows just right, or maybe make cute window toppers out of old potato sacks, or whip up origami party favors to take to the next church carry-in. And Tyra Grimes—with her perky laugh, a self-sufficient competence that would make even a Marine wince, and her trademark signoff line—“Simply wonderful!”—sold that idea to us day after day, making the mundane minutes that marked our lives seem to stop, to give way to something more . . . well . . . simply wonderful.

  Sometimes, I wish I could go back to that moment four weeks ago when the Tyra Grimes Home Show made life slow for a little while in my laundromat.

  Maybe I’d do things differently. After all, some folks say it’s because of me that trouble came to Paradise.

  In the form of murder.

  Two murders, to be exact.

  But I think folks saying that everything that happened is all my fault is mighty unfair—not to mention ungrateful.

  Because me—well, I was just trying to help.

  Ten minutes later, time started moving again, because two things happened at once.

  The Tyra Grimes Home Show went to a commercial break.

  And the bell over my front door chimed.

  I startled, breaking from my Tyra-inspired reverie (today’s topic being napkin folds) and automatically launched into the usual speech I give Hazel Rothchild every week: “I pretreated Lewis’s collars with an emulsion perfect for ring-around-the-collar . . .” (Said “emulsion” was cheap shampoo—but it’s what really works, and a good business- woman knows her customers’ preferences. Hazel would prefer to hear I use an emulsion.)

  And then I stopped, for Hazel was not in my laundromat. Instead, in had trooped Lewis Rothchild, followed by Elroy Magruder and Cherry Feinster.

  I retreated behind my counter.

  Lewis was a portly man who always wore suspenders and a tie, no matter the occasion or the weather. He always carried hankies, too (which, thankfully, Hazel chose to handwash for him) and he pulled one out now to mop his brow.

  Elroy joined Lewis at the counter, standing to his left. Elroy was a skinny, nervous man with eyes too big for his narrow little face and too wai
f-child sad for a man in his sixties. He stared up at Lewis now. Cherry stood to Lewis’s right, but she didn’t seem to be paying attention to any of us. She was staring pointedly at Billy’s Cut-N-Suck. Her head was turned so that all I could see of her face was her pointy nose and half of her downturned red-lipsticked lips—and lots and lots of her frothy hair. Cherry’s do—which is dyed to match her name and accounts for at least three inches of her five-foot-three stature—makes Dolly Parton look like a big hair wanna-be.

  This unlikely trio made me nervous. I decided to get to the bottom of what was going on, one question at a time. I started with the most obvious.

  “Lewis, where’s Hazel?” I asked.

  “She isn’t feeling well—bronchitis,” he said shortly. He wiped his brow again, stuffing the hanky back into his pants pocket. “I’m having to run her errands for her.”

  I was tempted to point out that actually, for once, he was running his errands for himself. But Elroy Magruder saved me from giving in to temptation. “Lewis, I can prove it,” he hollered. “This is serious! This calls for an emergency meeting of the Chamber of Commerce . . . a conference with the Mayor . . . letter writing. Something!”

  Cherry looked away from the Cut-N-Suck and fixed me with a hard stare. “Elroy’s right, Lewis. He showed me the map. Business here is bad enough what with people in town trying to get into areas they don’t know anything about. People you think are your friends.”

  “Look, Cherry,” I said, “it’s not like you can get a perm or hair coloring out of a vacuum cleaner attachment. Plus competition is good for business, and—”

  “Being dropped off the Official State Map of Ohio definitely is not good for business!” Elroy hollered.

  I looked at him, stunned.

  I have to take a little break to explain that we have very few points of pride here in Paradise. One is our name. My junior high history teacher, Mrs. Oglevee, may she rest in peace, drilled it into our heads how our founding fathers, Northwest Territory settlers in the late 1790s, took a little rest break in the very spot that would become Paradise. Three families got down from the wagons, sat under a big, shady oak, and had a nice picnic lunch—pickled beef tongue on rye, Mrs. Oglevee told me when I pressed for details, although I have my doubts. Then everyone took a look around on that perfect spring day—birds singing, trees leafing out, nice little breeze—and said, let’s stay! And they called it Paradise.