The Case of the Flashing Fashion Queen

had been planning this event for weeks. It meant a lot to him. We’d gone over the menu a half dozen times. We had the ice sculpture ordered; the Cornish hens set to be flown in. And all of a sudden, I get this call canceling from a woman claiming to be Jennifer Weatherby.”

“And so you scrapped everything? Just like that?”

“Of course not! I called Mr. Weatherby’s office, he was tied up in meetings. So I called Mrs. Weatherby back. I wanted to tell her that she’d still have to pay the bill. I mean, after all, we’d gone to a lot of expense and trouble for this event.”

“And what did Jennifer say when you called her?”

Kenny ran a hand through his hair. “She assured me the job was still on. Assured me that it wasn’t her who’d called. And she … she also told me she knew damn well who’d called to cancel, pretending to be her. She was really, really angry.”

“Do you remember the date, Mr. Kent?”

“Of course. It was the 30th of May. I remember precisely because that’s the day I did inventory.”

I held the journal up for everyone to see the date. “It was a week before Jennifer was killed. And I’m betting ‘J’ who cancelled the caterer killed her.”

“That ‘J’ was for Jeremy. Not Jennifer.” Ned spoke slowly, disbelievingly. “You killed my wife.”

“Ned,” he said. “You … you have to understand. As your lawyer, I have to protect you. As your friend, I have a duty to not let you make such a big mistake as renewing your vows to that … that—”

“She was my wife!”

Detective Head was getting antsy. “Canceling a caterer is hardly evidence of murder, Dodd,” he said. “I suspect you have more.”

I caught it as he said it — the subtle nod to two of his uniformed officers to advance in Jeremy’s direction. Not so subtly, they did.

“Oh, do I ever have more. You see, someone tipped me off that the murderer was Jeremy Poole.”

“Do tell, who was that Ms. Dodd?” Jeremy was trying to act cool — trying to remain calm. He failed miserably. “A little birdie?”

“Well as a matter of fact, you told me Jeremy. You tipped me off.” I was smiling now. Okay, it was more like I was smirking in an I’m-so-smart kind of way. I held up the newspaper — the one that Mrs. P had provided the morning I went to break into the Weatherby house, the one with that horrible picture of me splashed all over the front page. “I have here proof positive that it was Jeremy Poole that killed Jennifer and set me up. The interview he gave to the reporter. The one where he so gleefully trashed me.”

“I read the interview,” Detective Head said. “I read it a few times. There’s nothing in there pointing to Poole as the murderer.”

I looked at him as if he were an idiot. Mostly because I enjoyed looking at him as if he were an idiot. But also for the dramatics of the thing. “Wrong again, Detective. Jeremy Poole is a pretty smooth talker. Pretty good with the lawyer-ese. I’ll give him that. But there’s one word — one particular word that gives him away. He used it in this newspaper interview and he used in when he posed as Jennifer in my office.”

“What would that be, Dodd?”

“The f word.”

“Oh for f—” Detective Head stopped mid rant as he glanced toward the judge. “I don’t think Jeremy Head is the only man to use that f word, Dix Dodd. If that’s all you’re going on, you’re pretty much f’d yourself.”

I shook my head. “That’s not the f word I’m referencing.”

“Tell him, Dix,” Dylan said.

“Floozy,” I blurted. It took every bit of restraint I had to bite down on an inappropriate laugh. “Jeremy used the word floozy when he was in my office posing as Jennifer Weatherby. And he used the word floozy again in the newspaper interview. Nobody uses the word ‘floozy’ anymore. Certainly not that much.”

“So you have a coincidence, Dodd,” Dickhead informed. “Nothing more.”

“I do have more.”

“I … I have to go to the bathroom,” Jeremy said. Judging by how pale he now was, I believed him. He stood, wavered sideways, stood straight.

“Oh no you don’t, Poole,” Dickhead said. “I’m not falling for that one again.”

An officer grabbed Jeremy by the arm and sat him down again.

“It was you who came into my office that day, wasn’t it, Jeremy? You threw me off there for a while, dressed as a woman. You were very clever. But I should have known you were a man all along. No woman carries that many different tubes of lipstick. Nor that many different brands of tampons in her purse.” I turned to Dickhead. “Do they, Detective? You were married, you know all about these things, don’t you?”

His eyes narrowed. “Just keep going, Dixie.”

I did. As if reading my mind, Dylan handed me the picture — the one with Jeremy and Ned coming out of the tennis court. The one where he was bent scratching his left leg under the white tube sock. “See this, Jeremy?”

Getting paler by the moment — so pale now I could see the stubble of beard on his white cheeks — he looked at the picture and nodded.

“This proves that you were posing as Jennifer.”

“I hardly see—”

I smiled. “You shaved your legs before you put on that purple dress and came into my office. You had to have just shaved your legs for them to be this smooth. And for them to be this glaringly white, you’d have to have not shaved them before, or at least not in a hell of a long time.”

“How … how would you possibly know that?”

“I just do, okay!”

Jeremy Poole crossed the legs under discussion and set his hands over his knees. “This is craziness. You’ve proven nothing here.”

Judge Stephanopoulos spoke up. “Well, maybe I can prove something here, Mr. Poole.”

All eyes turned to the judge as, shoulders back, she strode into the center of room. “I have here a restraining order, Mr. Poole. One taken out against Ms. Dodd advising her to stay away from the Weatherby house and Weatherby Industries. Ms. Dodd was kind enough to provide it to me this morning.”

Ned shot a look to Luanne, she shot one back at him. It was obvious that neither of them knew about this.

I didn’t think it was possible, but Jeremy turned even whiter. I imagine those legs of his would have the potential to blind now if exposed to the light of day.

“And, Mr. Poole,” the judge continued. “What most strikes my attention is the signature on this restraining order.” Judge Stephanopoulos stood before him now, towering over him as he sat cowering in the chair. She snapped the restraining order open under his nose. “You spelled my name wrong.”

“Oh shit.”

“And I would wager, Jeremy,” I said, “that when we manage to get a search warrant for the car and residence of a certain sweet little old lady—”

“I don’t know any sweet little old ladies,” he said.

He had me there.

“Okay, then if we manage to get a search warrant for the car of one cranky old woman with a broken ankle, a yappy dog and a sharp tongue, a.k.a. your aunt, we’ll find evidence you’ve been a very bad boy.”

Now it was Rochelle’s turn to jump into action. “I just happen to have a search warrant right here, Dix. Typed up and everything.” She turned to the Judge. “Your Honor?”

She pulled a pen from her purse. With a flare of pen to paper, Judge Stephanopoulos signed the order, and handed it to Detective Head.

“McGrath, Barnable.” Two officers stood straight. “Get yourselves over to Mrs. Levana Fyffe’s place.”

“Er, what are we looking for, Detective?” Barnable asked.

I answered; Dickhead let me. “Check the car for fibers and fingerprints. And oh, check the house for some flashing fashion.”

“Huh?”

“A purple dress that Jeremy here might have worn when he dressed up as Jennifer. Wide glasses. Fake