Aretha Moon and the Dead Hairdresser: Aretha Moon Book 2 (Aretha Moon Mysteries) by Linda Ross (reading books for 7 year olds .TXT) 📗

Rose shrugged.  “Kara liked to drink.”

We all climbed the four steps to the concrete porch, if you could call it that.  It was more of a small platform.  There was yellow tape across the door, but Rose peeled off one end and let it drop.  She maneuvered the key in the lock of the warped wooden door, and it opened with a slight squeak.  We were in a small living room with nothing but some cheap carpeting, a couch, an upholstered chair, a cheap coffee table and a TV.  The nicest thing in the room was the TV.  I’d say the furniture had seen better days, but it was the kind of stuff that ends up at the thrift store after less than a year of use.  It was probably only held together with cheap glue.  But the TV was an expensive one, a big flat screen on the wall.  And it was connected to some kind of sound bar system with big speakers.  It went with the furniture about as well as champagne goes with tacos.

“Nice TV,” I said, nudging Thelma.

Rose was surveying the room with her arms crossed.  “I wouldn’t mind taking that,” she said reflectively.

“We’d better not move anything around for now,” I said.  “The police have been here, but they wouldn’t take kindly to us helping ourselves to anything.”

We moved on through the living room to the kitchen, going counter clockwise through the house.

“How long did Kara live here?” I asked Rose.

“She said she rented it when she first came to Hannibal six years ago.  She saw an ad in the paper.  It’s owned by a farmer down the road.”

“Someone we need to talk to,” I said to Thelma.

Thelma had started opening drawers and cupboards in the kitchen, but there wasn’t much there.  A few glasses and bowls, a couple of plates and some cheap cutlery, again the kind you’d find at a thrift store.  “Doesn’t look like she did a lot of cooking,” she said, opening the refrigerator and standing back so I could see a pizza box, a tin of coffee and a quart of milk.  There was a six-pack of beer on the bottom shelf and a bottle of cheap wine, half drunk, in the door.

“What did she serve you when you came over?” I asked Rose.

Rose half-smiled.  “I brought food.”

Well, that figured.  There certainly wouldn’t be any chocolate chip cookies or roast ham coming out of the oven in this kitchen.  In fact, the stove was covered in dust.

We moved through a doorway at the side of the kitchen into a minuscule hallway that opened onto a tiny bathroom and, further on, the only bedroom.  Thelma and I started on the bathroom.  There was an old-fashioned medicine cabinet, but it was empty except for a bottle of aspirin and a travel-sized toothpaste.  That seemed odd.  There was one toothbrush in a holder on the sink, but it was about as fresh as the furniture in the living room.  Apparently Kara didn’t believe in replacing her toothbrush until all the bristles fell out.  A comb with a couple of short black hairs lay next to the toothbrush holder.  There was a single bar of soap in a dish on the sink but nothing in the little wire container hanging over the inside edge of the tub. The tub was one of those kind that’s popular now, a big white one with claw feet.  It had probably been installed when the house was built if the rust around the faucet was any indication.  An archaeologist would have had a field day, literally.  There were a couple of ratty purple towels on a rack by the tub, and a washcloth was draped over the tub.  It looked as though it had been used, but it was dry now.

“Quite the minimalist,” Thelma said quietly as we moved on to the bedroom.

I don’t know what I expected.  Maybe lurid photographs, blood stains on the sheets from former lovers she’d cut, possibly even a finger or two.  But the bedroom was as sterile as the bathroom.  A couple of women’s magazines on the nightstand beside a box of tissues.  I heard something rolling around when I pulled out the nightstand drawer, but it turned out to be a pen in the back.  There was a small flashlight in there too.

Even the curtains on the window were subdued, a pale gray that didn’t quite match the dark green bedspread.

“Just the basics here,” Thelma said from the closet.  I glanced over my shoulder and saw a neat row of clothes hanging there.  Three pairs of jeans with holes in them and several long-sleeved T-shirts.  There were two pairs of tennis shoes on the floor and some purses hanging on the back of the closet door.  In the corner there was a pair of knee-high leather boots that laced up.

“She wasn’t that much into clothes,” Rose said.  She sat down on the bed.  “She liked to be comfortable.”

Thelma began going through the purses, and I moved on to the dresser.

There were a few pairs of underwear in the top dresser drawer and a leather corset, the kind you see at the annual steampunk festival in Hannibal.  People come from all over for one weekend in the fall to dress up and stroll the streets in their steampunk finery.  One year there was even a steampunk wedding.

“Looks like she was into steampunk,” I called to Thelma.

“She did mention that,” Rose said.  “I think she may have met some people there, but she didn’t say any names.”

I checked the second drawer and heard Rose shift on the bed.  There were some more T-shirts.  The one on top was from a local artist, who did iron work.  There was a silhouette of a blacksmith at