Black and Blueberry Die (A Fresh-Baked Mystery Book 11) by Livia J. Washburn

days, folks don’t dress up for funerals like they once did.” He paused. “Of course, when you get to be my age, you start thinkin’ about makin’ sure you’ve got a nice suit for your own funeral. Although jeans would work just as good as far as I’m concerned.”
    “You’re not going to need that for a long time,” Phyllis told him.
    Sam’s shrug was an eloquent way of saying You never know.
    “How about you?” he asked.
    “What do I want to wear to my own funeral, you mean?”
    He laughed and shook his head.
    “Actually, I was askin’ if you found out anything there in the beauty shop.”
    “It’s not really a beauty shop. It’s a beauty salon. I’m surprised they don’t have ‘Spa’ in the name. But I didn’t find out much.”
    “Not much means you did come up with something .”
    “I have an appointment for a couple of weeks from now,” Phyllis said, “and they have my name and number in case there’s a cancellation between now and then. I talked to the receptionist, and I also met the woman who owns the place.”
    “I thought it belonged to a fella named Paul.”
    “Pauline. Paul is just for name purposes.” Phyllis went on to describe the conversation, then said, “I got the feeling that Roxanne wasn’t necessarily well-liked, but to be fair, I only talked to the two of them. There were half a dozen other women working there, and I have no idea yet how they felt about her. One thing did occur to me, though.”
    “What’s that?”
    Phyllis thought about the muscles in Aurora’s arms and how the young woman carried herself like an athlete. She said, “I’ve been assuming all along that a man killed Roxanne, I guess because she was beaten to death. It just never occurred to me that a woman could have done it. But I realize now I could be wrong about that. A woman might have been strong enough to have committed that murder.”
    “You got anybody in mind?”
    “It’s much too soon for that,” Phyllis replied with a shake of her head. “But I certainly think I’m going to have to find out more about how Roxanne got along with the people she worked with. I can think of someone who might be able to tell us, and we were going to have to talk to him anyway.”
    “We’re gonna go see Danny,” Sam said.
    Phyllis nodded and said, “That’s exactly what we’re going to do.”

Chapter 7

     
    Paying a visit to Danny Jackson in jail was going to take some arranging, and it was too late in the day to worry about that now, so Phyllis and Sam headed back to Weatherford. Along the way, Phyllis called Jimmy D’Angelo’s office, told him what they needed, and he declared that he would get right on it and let them know when he had something set up.
    “I never spent much time in beauty shops,” Sam mused as he drove. “Vicky wasn’t the sort who wanted me along. Anyway, I was at school most of the time. You know how there was almost always more to do than you had time for.”
    “I certainly do.”
    “Of course, I had to take her to have her hair done now and then after...well, after things got bad. She never stopped carin’ about how she looked no matter how rotten she felt.”
    Phyllis nodded. Sam’s wife Vicky had passed away several years earlier, after a lengthy struggle against cancer. He spoke of her occasionally, and Phyllis knew him well enough by now to know that her death was still painful for him, although he had come to grips with it. She felt the same way about Kenny, although he had been gone longer than Vicky had. Neither of them brought up their former spouses that often, but they didn’t try to avoid the subject, either. As with most things, it was just natural between them and nothing to be shied away from.
    “Whenever I did find myself in a beauty shop,” Sam went on, “it could be the ladies were a little more on guard since there was a man in their midst. I got the feelin’, though, that if I hadn’t been there, there wouldn’t have been many holds