Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 44, No. 7 & 8, July/August 1999
The Taste of Black Lipstick
by Sherrard Gray
Lieutenant Dean March stared at Lacy DeBeck lying facedown on the rug in his library, a red stain spreading out from his chest. A few feet from DeBeck was a leather armchair and a small table with a half-finished glass of whisky and a magazine, Tennis. A second armchair with its own table and glass stood opposite the first chair. Dean’s chief, Bunk Cummins, was measuring the body’s position with a tape.
Dean left the body and went to a tall woman standing by a set of french doors that led onto a balcony. She had introduced herself as Trish Hazelton, a name that rang a faint bell in the back of his head. White-haired and straight-backed, she stared bleakly across the lawn toward a red clay tennis court. “Poor Tiffany,” she murmured.
“Tiffany?” said Dean.
“That’s my granddaughter. She’s supposed to meet me here any minute. She has Wednesdays off from her regular job at Brooks Drugs and was going to help me clean. When she sees this...” Mrs. Hazelton sighed. “Tiffany isn’t much for violence. Well, who is?”
“Someone was,” said Dean. “Was the house unlocked when you came to clean this morning?”
“Oh no. But I have a key. When Lacy didn’t answer my ring, I let myself in. Came upstairs and—” She stopped. “Why are you looking at me that way?”
“Sorry. I was thinking of something else.”
Hazelton? Didn’t a recent case involve that name? Something small but bizarre, even comical in a way, but he couldn’t place it. He’d ask Bunk when he got the chance.
Moments later the medical examiner and two plainclothes from the state crime lab showed up. Sketches were made, photographs taken, and the body rolled over. The M.E. confirmed death by a single bullet to the chest, and estimated time of death between eight P.M. and midnight the previous evening.
“No powder bums,” said the M.E., “so it wasn’t point-blank. The perp was probably sitting in this other chair.”
One of the lab technicians, a large man with bushy red hair, holding a magnifying glass, nodded. “Cosy scene, huh? The killer’s sitting in this chair having a drink and a smoke with DeBeck, chatting, maybe laughing, all of a sudden pulls out a gun and pow! I’ll tell you something else about the perp. He, she, was one careful dude. You can see where he wiped his prints off this glass and off the ashtray. We’ll take it all to the lab, though — glass, ashtray, cigarette butt.” With tweezers he picked up the lone butt, bent and long as if only one or two puffs had been taken, and placed it in a cellophane evidence bag. “And this book of matches from the Blue Note in Manhattan — hey, I’ve been there, great jazz club — and the magazine.” Bushy Head wiped a bead of sweat from his forehead and looked around. “Well well well.” He walked to a wall mirror between two bookcases. Leaning against a shelf beside the mirror was a black tennis racket and two golf clubs. “The guy wasn’t too vain, was he? A full-length mirror in his library?” He had started to reach for one of the clubs, a driver, when a female voice sounded on the stairs.
“Gran? Are you up there? What are those police cars doing—” A young woman in soiled bluejeans with a yellow bandana wrapped around her head stepped into the room. “Oh my God.”
Dean thought he had seen her around town, but that wasn’t why he was staring at her. He sensed Bunk watching him and looked away.
Mrs. Hazelton gave the newcomer a hug, patted her on the back, and turned toward Dean and Bunk. “This is my granddaughter, Tiffany.”
Something clicked inside Dean’s head. “Snoop Doggy Dogg,” he said.
Everyone looked at him. The lab people and the M.E. exchanged glances.
“A CD, right?” said Dean.
The granddaughter narrowed her dark eyes at him while Trish Hazelton blushed and then laughed.
“You remember.”
Tiffany might not have been much for violence, but she and her grandmother seemed fascinated by the crime scene. Tiffany at least stood off to one side, but Mrs. Hazelton got in the thick of things, peering over the M.E.’s shoulder, even getting on her hands and knees to look for clues. At last Bushy Head said pointedly, “Excuse me, ma’am, but are you working for the Elizabethville PD?”
After the lab people had left, and while the M.E. was overseeing the removal of the body, Dean went over to Tiffany. “I’m sorry you had to see this.”
“You’re not as sorry as I am.” They stood by the french doors, where she had gone to smoke. Next to the doors was a wet bar with a bottle of Wild Turkey on its counter. She put the ashes into her palm and then into her jeans pocket. “Messy habit, huh?”
Dean was taking in her dark eyes and high cheekbones, her curving neck. He remembered now that her grandmother’s shoplifting case had been handled by another officer, T. J. Davison.
“I’m down to one pack a day,” said Tiffany. “Gran’s working hard on me to quit. On us to quit. She’s down to something like ten butts a day.” She lowered her voice. “You don’t suspect her, do you?”
“Why do you ask that?”
“Just wondered. Her swiping that CD from Ames. That was for me, you know. It was my birthday, and she didn’t have any money and wanted to get me something.”
Dean raised a hand. “Listen,” he said, “I wasn’t the one who pressed charges. It was the store owner, said he wanted to make an example of your grandmother, and your grandmother agreed.” It was coming back to him now.
“As I recall, the judge sentenced her to fifteen hours of community service, and she said, ‘No, that’s not enough. Give me at least twenty.’ You know something?” Dean watched the granddaughter, late twenties, close to his twenty-eight, blow the smoke away from him. “I think your grandmother’s a class act.”
A smile edged across Tiffany’s face. “Too bad you’re a cop.”
“Why’s that?”
She used her hand again for an ashtray. “I dunno,” she said, shrugging.
“So who’ve we got for suspects?” said Bunk. “Guess we’ll have to start with the grandmother and granddaughter. They both knew DeBeck. And the girl at least smokes.”
For some reason Dean didn’t mention that granny also smoked. “Motive?”
They were standing on the gravel drive. The only other person around was T. J., who had showed up to watch the house, keep rubberneckers away. The press had come and gone, and Trish and Tiffany had also left.
Lacy DeBeck’s three story mansion was probably the largest, fanciest house in Efizabethville, a town of four thousand that had once been a major granite producer and was now creating milk, cheese, lumber, electronics, and contented retirees. Its wooded hills and green meadows provided the perfect setting for retired bond traders and pediatricians.
DeBeck was neither a trader nor a doctor, but he had money and lots of it.
The house was flanked by wide lawns dotted with statuary and surrounded by woods. At the back a maple and beech wood rose to Shincracker Hill, which had been a favorite picnic spot of Elizabethvilleans until DeBeck, who had bought it ten years ago with the house, put up No Trespassing signs. The only visible evidence of any neighbors was a gray roof a quarter mile away seen through a gap in the foliage.
“Motive?” echoed Bunk. “Maybe he left them something in his will, and they didn’t want to wait.”
“I doubt that,” said Dean as a green Caddy purred up the drive. “They just clean his house; they aren’t related to him.”
A broad-shouldered man with a headful of wavy gray hair climbed out of the Coupe de Ville. Dean recognized Rob Clampitt, a realtor with an office on Main Street. A year ago he had fined Clampitt ninety-eight dollars for failing to come to a complete stop at one of the town’s two red fights.