parked on both sides of the street.
I rolled up my window to block out the roar of the mowers racing back and forth across the beautifully manicured lawns like morbidly obese bumblebees. “How about that stripper, Kay Hausenfelter? She sounds like the most fun.”
“That’s some criteria for investigating a murder.”
“Nothing wrong with having a little fun,” I said. “And besides she gave you the best quotes.”
“She was talkative.”
The real reason I wanted to see Kay Hausenfelter first was because she was the only member of the Never Dulls whom Eric had finished researching for me. What he found was now stuffed in my brain, at the ready, in case Kay said something that didn’t jive with the facts.
Kay Hausenfelter was born on a farm in Oklahoma, 76 years ago, to Chester and Eleanor Pull. She was the last of seven children. The Pulls migrated to the fruit fields of California during the Dust Bowl years, to keep from starving. By the time she was seventeen, Kay was shedding her clothes in striptease establishments up and down the West Coast. She was billed as Klondike Kay, “Gorgeous Gold-Digger of the not-so-frigid North.” She’d take the stage covered head-to-toe in an Eskimo parka and knee-high mukluks. By the time she wiggled off the stage, she was down to a furry g-string and papier-mache pasties painted to look like gold nuggets. It was in Los Angeles that young Harold Hausenfelter caught her act, during the 33rd Annual Bakers amp; Confectioners Convention. Harold was the shy and impressionable scion of Hannawa bread-baking baron Gottfried Hausenfelter. Harold brought Kay home to Hannawa as his wife. What Gottfried must have thought of his son’s bride is anybody’s guess-albeit an easy guess.
Gabriella and I reached the Carmichael House. It was not a particularly handsome building. A ten-story cereal box with narrow, dangling balconies nobody in their right mind would go out on. Anyone over sixty could live there, if they could afford it, but from what I’d heard it was mostly filled with women whose husbands had done very well before they died. We parked in the visitors’ spaces on the side and followed the pachysandra-lined walk to the front. Gabriella buzzed Kay Hausenfelter’s unit.
Kay must have had her finger an inch off the intercom button. There was an instant “Halloooo!”
“This is Gabriella Nash, Mrs. Hausenfelter. From The Herald-Union. I was wondering how you’re getting along. After everything that’s happened.”
Kay’s Oklahoma twang wasn’t helped by the tinny speaker box. “Well, aren’t you a sweetheart. I’m just fine. You’ll come up for something, won’t you? A Diet Coca-Cola or something?”
“I’ve got a friend with me,” Gabriella informed her. “If that’s okay.”
“Man friend or woman friend?”
“Woman friend.”
“Oh, good. I won’t have to put on a better robe-oh hell, I’ll put on a better robe anyway.”
And so the tower’s impressive brass-covered door hummed and clicked and we went inside. We hadn’t taken two steps toward the elevator when the phone in the lobby rang. Gabriella was content to let it ring. I was not. I hurried to the end table it was on, picked it up. It was Kay Hausenfelter. “That you, Gabriella?”
“This is her friend, Maddy Sprowls.”
“Oh, good-I was hoping you girls could bring my mail up with you. The boxes are right there by the door.”
I told her we’d be happy to.
“The boxes are locked,” she said, “but there’s a skeleton key under the bullfighter.”
I scanned the lobby for the bullfighter. He turned out to be a foot-high ceramic statue on the table at the other end of the sofa. He was waving his red cape at a bowl of York peppermint patties. “I see him.”
“Oh, good-I know it’s not the safest thing, but with a building full of forgetful old farts, there’s a skeleton key someplace for everything.”
I got the key and opened her mailbox. Checked out the envelopes all the way to the fifth floor. Nothing but doctor bills and enticements for credit cards.
The hallway was a tribute to blandness: beige walls, even beiger carpeting, sleepy landscapes in ugly gold frames. The building’s rulebook did, apparently, allow residents to express their individuality by decorating their identical beige doors. Most bore wreaths of fake flowers. A few had those atrociously cute wooden cutouts you find at church craft fairs-a bunny in overalls watering smiling carrots, a mama duck holding an umbrella over her babies, a WELCOME SIGN spelled out in tiny blue hearts. Kay Hausenfelter’s door sported a cutout of a buxom woman in an itsy-bitsy-yellow-polka-dot bikini.
After loudly smooching our cheeks, Kay sat us in that bright red loveseat Gabriella mentioned in her story. “I guess the first order of business is to get something cold in our paws,” Kay said, swaying her behind toward the kitchen. “What’ll it be, ladies?”
Gabriella and I both chose those Diet Cokes she’d mentioned on the speaker. Kay’s tumbler had something tan in it. She sat across from us in a white armchair. From the happy relief in her eyes as she studied me, I could tell she approved of my drabness. “That’s a pretty robe,” I said.
“Thanks. But I wasn’t exactly going for pretty.” Which was putting it mildly. It was as pink as the insulation in my attic. The fuzzy hem almost reached her knees and the loose, low-cut top showed more of her ampleness than anyone needed to see. What she was or wasn’t wearing under that robe was anybody’s guess. Her hair was much too long for a woman of her age and it was much too blond. And she should have spent more time touching up her roots and less time on her toenails. But having said all that, she was a naturally beautiful woman with good skin and bright green eyes.
Having read Gabriella’s story, I was prepared for the red loveseat. I was not prepared for the art on the walls: black-and-white photographs of a much younger Kay Hausenfelter wearing almost nothing, publicity shots from her years in burlesque. Above the mantle hung a huge portrait of her, totally nude, hugging a bundle of baguettes, a very personal memento from her years as the wife of local bread mogul Harold Hausenfelter, I figured.
Kay pointed at the portrait. “I was a fine looking broad, wasn’t I? The artist didn’t have to exaggerate a damn thing.”
I didn’t know what to say. So I said the silliest thing I’d ever said to anyone. “I still buy Hausenfelter’s bread.”
Kay threw her arms open and sang like Ethel Merman. “If it ain’t Hausenfelter’s, it just ain’t bread!”
Everybody in Hannawa of a certain age knows that line. It’s the tagline from the Hausenfelter’s Bread Song. When Kay married Harold, Hausenfelter’s was the city’s number three bread brand, behind Yodel’s and Swann’s Golden Crust. Soon after Kay wrote that jingle, and sang it in radio and television commercials, Hausenfelter’s was no. 1, Yodel’s a distant no. 2, and Swann’s Golden Crust out of business. “Boy,” I said, “didn’t that little ditty ruffle a few feathers.”
Kay’s eyes sparkled. “It sure did, didn’t it?”
The ruffled feathers, of course, belonged to the librarians and teachers who didn’t appreciate a business using that evil non-word ain’t in their jingle, not only once but twice. Old Gottfried, however, stuck by his daughter- in-law and her jingle. “We ain’t changing it,” he told The Herald-Union. And that was that. The company is still using it today.
I looked for a way to get the conversation back on track. “I can tell that you’re a woman of few pretensions. And frankly so am I.”
Kay was startled. “Don’t tell me you got a naked picture, too?”
“Heaven’s to Betsy, no,” I said, “but I do prefer to get right to the skinny. And the truth is, I’m not tagging along with Gabriella today. She’s tagging along with me. I’m here about Violeta Bell.”
Kay shifted her eyes between Gabriella and me while she jiggled the ice cubes in her tumbler. “So you’re doing another story on us old broads? One that won’t be so fun?”
“No story,” I assured her. “Not by us anyway.” I’d just told her how open and truthful I liked to be, but already I found myself obfuscating like a congressman. “The idea for Gabriella’s story came from me,” I said. “And I guess I’m feeling a little responsible. A little guilty even.”
“Unless you helped Eddie pull the trigger, I wouldn’t worry about feeling either of those things,” Kay said. Then she laughed. “You didn’t, did you?”
Gabriella answered for me, with exactly what I was preparing to say. “The question is whether Eddie pulled
