The Silver Anniversary Murder Read Online Free PDF

Jack and you’ll have it tonight. And we’ll use it in our canvass.”
    “I’d like to try the nail establishments in the area. You said she’d had a fresh manicure when she died.”
    “Right. And I hear tell that women confide in their hairdressers and manicurists, so maybe the victim let something slip.”
    If the victim was Holly Mitchell, I thought that was a long shot. These were careful people, but perhaps the desire to confide had overcome Holly’s caution while she watched her nails redden. It was worth a try.
    Jack came home with a couple of sketches, one of the face and one of the whole person. I laid them side by side on top of the
Times
in my lap and studied them. There were handwritten notes, too, that the eyes were brown, the height about five-four, the weight one hundred twenty to one hundred twenty-five. This was an estimate, as a fair amount of decomposition had occurred in the time the body had been secluded near the creek.
    “Looks like you’re drawing a blank,” Jack said, putting down his sections of the
Times
.
    “I don’t think I’ve ever seen her before.” I noticed the artist had drawn the full-length sketch with a skirt. She looked like a woman ready to go to work. All that was missing was her handbag and perhaps a fashionable briefcase.
    “See what the nail places have to say.”
    “What if she worked in New York and had her nails done on her lunch hour?”
    “Always possible. Then that’s just bad luck. Let’s not anticipate it.”
    He was right, but I was disappointed. Something in me had been sure I would recognize the woman, but she was a stranger to me, a stranger who was dead of mysterious causes, none of them a gunshot wound.
    “You look troubled.”
    “I am. I wonder if this woman was even the one I talked to on the phone. I wonder if the sound I heard was a gunshot. I really wonder what this is all about.”
    Jack got up and went to the kitchen to get seconds of coffee. “Keep digging. Between the two of you, you’ll come up with something.”

4
    My theory was that a woman trying to keep her identity a secret would not go to the nearest manicurist or hairdresser—or bank, for that matter. She would be in danger of having a neighbor walk in, recognize her, and want to chat. After I noted all the nail places in Oakwood and surrounding towns, I drew a map and plotted them, deciding to leave the nearest for last. I had a feeling the police would work in reverse, and if I was lucky, I would come up with something before they did.
    On Saturday morning I left father and son to do their weekend thing together and set out to visit nail shops. The first one on the list was several miles from the apartment building where the fictitious Mitchells had lived. I explained my mission to the receptionist, a young woman with nails that were long and multicolored. I would have been afraid to shake hands with her.
    She didn’t recognize the face in the sketch but generously invited me to talk to the five manicurists, all of whom were hard at work. One after the other, they shook their heads. I took the opportunity to ask their clients as well, on the chance that one of them had seen Holly in another location or, better still, had known her personally. No luck.
    This wasn’t the first time I had made these kinds of inquiries, and I knew better than to feel defeated so early. I crossed off the name of the establishment and drove to the second on the list. The names themselves were inventive. Several called themselves some kind of spa. The one I was headed for was called Shimmer.
    Shimmer it might, but no one there recognized Holly either.
    Number three was Nails R Art. The mirrored front window prevented a view inside but an oval section in the door was transparent glass, facilitating safe entries and exits.
    Inside, it was bustling. The receptionist wore a smock with women’s hands painted on it, each set of nails done differently. Her own, by contrast, were covered with a colorless