Lucy laughed. “I’m twenty-eight. I’m a little too old for you.”
Mario smiled. “Don’t shoot me for trying. You’re a beautiful woman, even with the cut and the soon to be bruised eye.”
“You’re very kind,” Lucy said. “Thank you for your help.”
“Did you see the person at all? Big, tall, someone you had a beef with? Anything that would help?”
Lucy shook her head. She knew damn well who’d attacked her, but she wasn’t about to involve the cops. “No. I just work in a beauty salon. I keep to myself, few friends and no enemies. Right, Vera?” Lucy shot her a look from the corner of her eye.
Looking down, Vera said, “That’s right, Officer.”
“What about someone you might have given a bad haircut?” Mario kept a straight face as much as possible. Then they all had a good laugh.
Mario obviously knew his interrogation wasn’t going anywhere, but he still handed Lucy his card. “You call me if you need anything.”
“I will, Officer, and thank you.”
Mario moved to the door. “Lucy, I mean anything. Call me.”
Vivien wasn’t a fan of the police, so once Mario left, she came running into the room. She patched up Lucy the best she could and called a doctor. He was a frequent Wednesday night customer. He liked Vivien and looked after her girls, checked them out weekly for any health problems. They’d work the bill out in trade. While they waited for the doctor, Vivien grilled Lucy on what had happened.
Lucy’s eye was swelling and turning an ugly blue. “I know who did this to me.”
Vivien was all ears. “Who?”
“I felt his skin,” Lucy said, then paused. “It was like the surface of the moon.”
It didn’t register with Vivien. Then Vera caught the drift and said, “Picklehead.”
Vivien stood in rage. “I’ll kill that son of a bitch.”
Lucy studied Vivien and shook her head. “No. I already promised him I’d take care of this myself.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
The following morning Lucy’s eye was still swollen, with a big purplish ring around the cut. Feeling well enough to start her morning routine, she made coffee and gave the salon a walkthrough before the first appointment time.
Vivien and Wanda followed their noses to the smell of freshly brewed coffee in the kitchen. They sat quietly sipping coffee and making eye contact with each other. They wanted to discuss the elephant in the room, but Lucy had no intention of rehashing last night’s events.
A knock on the door sounded. Lucy opened the door, expecting one of the beauticians. It wasn’t. “May I help you?” she asked the well-dressed middle-aged man who stood at the door, looking stylish, like a high-class salesman, sporting a suit, a tie, and a hat. Lucy smelled a cop.
“Good morning,” he said.
Before the man got out another word, Lucy blasted him. “I told that cop, Mario, I wasn’t filing a report. You can take your slick suit and shiny shoes out of here.”
He extended a card. “I’m Detective Henry Nelson. My friends call me Zack.”
“Like I said, Zack.” Lucy took the card. “No report.”
“I don’t know a Mario, or anything about a report,” he said, removing his hat. “I’m looking for Wanda and Lucinda Jones?”
Lucy’s stomach flipped. Not many people called her by her birth name. It sounded far too official coming from a cop. She rounded up her mother and returned to the front door where she’d left Detective Zack waiting.
Zack introduced himself to Wanda and asked if they could talk in private. Wanda invited him in, and Lucy joined them at the kitchen table. Wanda’s approach to dealing with the police was more inviting than Lucy’s. She learned what a cop was looking for before pelting him with attitude. A path Lucy never followed.
Lucy fixed herself a coffee, then took Zack’s order like a waitress and returned with a cup just like he asked, black and sweet.
“Mrs. Jones,” Zack said.
“Please call me Wanda.”
Zack pulled a pad out and read his notes. “You know Edgar Rawlings?”
Lucy knew the detective would know the answers to the first few questions. They always did. “Sure, that’s my husband. I never changed my name to his,” Wanda said.
Zack gave her an odd look. “Why is that?”
“Really, Detective? You came down here as the morality police? We were never legally married,” she said. “Been together thirty years.”
“When did you last see Edgar?”
Bingo, Lucy thought. That’s what he really wants to know. “Haven’t seen or heard from him since we left Tupelo.” Wanda looked at Lucy. “How long has it been?”
“Pushing seven months,” Lucy said.
Zack flipped some pages. “Has he called or sent you any money? You know, to help out?”
Wanda’s tone changed, her voice taking on an edge. “Mr. Zack, Detective, or whatever you would like to be called. Understand, when I said I haven’t seen or heard from my common-law husband, that covers all your questions. Are we clear? My husband never had money for all the years we were together. So he sure the hell ain’t sending me money now.”
From his jacket, Zack pulled out a picture of Edgar’s bloody body stretched out on the street. “He’s dead. Police killed him in a shootout. A bank robbery gone bad.”
Lucy studied the picture. A queasy feeling came over her, and she walked away but stayed within earshot. A lump rose in her throat. Edgar hadn’t been much of a father, but he was the only one she’d had.
“Edgar never was too smart. Always looking for a quick buck,” Wanda said. “So, what do you want from me?”
“Mrs. Jones that was not the first bank job your husband pulled. We believe he robbed a bank in Gulfport and another in Canton. He was hitting small-town banks. Maybe even one in Clarksdale, Mississippi, and that was a big score. The money stolen from those banks was never recovered.”
Zack filled Wanda in on how all the bank robberies were connected to Edgar and his last robbery in McComb, Mississippi, the one that ended in his death.
He also said that Edgar’s body had
