"I just wish people were more observant," Sgt. Tully huffed. "I mean, we have 4 witnesses who saw her run out of that house. And none of them can say more than 'I didn't notice much about her" or 'I'm not sure how old she was; she wasn't overly tall, she wasn't particularly fat or thin'. Or 'Sorry, officer, I didn't notice what she was wearing. But she was running, if that's any help'... And she was out there in broad daylight, when you'd expect people to see something."
"I know," the captain moaned. "Eye-witnesses can miss details, sometimes even remember something that wasn't there. But I'd agree; this is a particularly bad lot".
"I don't know how we're going to solve this one," the seargant sighed. "These folks can't even do a line-up. They just play guessing games; the last guy fingered Detective Blick as the perp. And there was the guy who fingered your wife ..."
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The cops had narrowed the list of suspects down to four women.
Debbie, the fourty year old secretary, greeted all the men with fluttering eyelashes and a broad painted smile. Her costumes glowed: Billowing satin sleeves cascading down to hot pink cuffs, a shiny scarlet miniskirt clinging to her sculpted hips; rings, set with huge colored glas nuggets, flashed on six fingers. Even at 3 AM, after hours of questioning in the barracks, her rouge was as red as a Valentine heart and her false eyelashes curled over startled, lavender hooded eyes. Even in snowstorms, she wore spiked heels and stiffly bleached hair that surged over her head in cotton candy swirls. When the detectives had first rung at her apartment on a Saturday morning, demanding her presence at the station, she'd stalled them for an hour while she rummaged for just the right brooch, a gold-plated flower studded with rhinestones, to glitter under her ruffle collar; she'd rattled through three jewelry boxes to find the cut glass teardrop earings.
"Oh Officer, "she tweeted in a breathy falsetto, "I wish I could remember what I did that day. Between dating George and cat-sitting for Floxie and keeping my manicure appointments and starting with yoga class, which everyone says is so good for you and keeps you young...well, it's hard to keep the hours straight and it *was* a weekend. Maybe it's in my little red book; I know the book's in here somewhere." Tully exhaled deeply and crossed his arms as tweezers, three combs, a nail file, cakes of azure, green and mauve eyeshadow in square plastic boxes, tiny bottles of anti-aging lotion, plastic screw jars containing rouge, and a dented tampon container clattered onto the table; tubes of lipstick rolled across the splintered wood towards him. The gold sequins covering her purse jingled as she emptied the contents.
"That's OK, you can look for the red book later," Tully grunted. Already, his nose tingled and his sinuses throbbed in the reek of her gardenia perfume; her flittering hands, like a flickering florescent light, started a thrumming restlessness in his chest.
On her third return from the powder room, where she tugged up her panty hose and flattened wrinkles out of her sweat-dampened skirt, her orange mouth pouted and she blinked back tears.
"I don't know why I can't go home," she blubbered. "Just because I don't remember where I was? Look at me! I can't even kill a mouse, do you think I could shoot someone? And why would I want to shoot him such a nice man?"
"Alright, alright, "Tully groaned. "But we may want to talk to you again." He sighed; some women, it seemed, took dingbat lessons at 3rd rate acting schools.
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Linsey, the second suspect, was known to her neighbors and friends as "The Purple Lady". A gallery clerk with some art school training, she'd cultivated the bohemian, hippy chick mystique. She wore vintage peasant blouses embroidered with lavender and lilac flowers, and tie-dyed violet skirts of coursely woven cotton that flowed to her ankles. Her glossy black hair, pulled off her warmly tanned angular face by a purple paisley bandana, hung in a thick braid down her muscular back. When the detectives knocked at her cottage door, she led them to a mauve kichen where fragrant lavender candles burned in purple stands and a large black dog snored on a plum and magenta throw-rug.
"What was I doing that day? I went mushroom hunting." She pointed to a row of large, floppy topped mushrooms on the counter-top. "Those, over there; sauces taste better when they're fresh.....The rest of the day? I was with Steve, read a little, listened to some music."
"Can Steve verify what hours he was with you?", Tully asked later, when Linsey had appeared for a second session of questioning at the station. That day, she wore a plum smock blouse, a long lavender patchwork skirt, and a bandana of solid purple.
"He could if he could speak,"Linsey quipped. "Remember the black lab under the table?"
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Cherise, the third, flaunted her foxfire hair - an unruly, fox-red mane that exploded around her head in flaming curls. Sometimes, she wove gold tinsel or strings or iridescent beads through the orange frizz; sometimes she scattered florescent yellow and metallic red bows throughout, in mockery of the excess. Sometimes, she added a wide brimmed scarlet hat or a black velvet beret embellished by a single peacock feather.
"My hair's my best feature, my only feature," she'd sometimes declare, "And when you're in my line of work, you've gotta flaunt what you've got and hide what you don't got. Take this jaw - sticks out like a witch's chin and a little cock-eyed. I can't have them staring at my chin, but the hair hides it fine, pulls their eyes right away from the sore spot. Add some glossy blouses, a lot of arm movement, and rings that burn like stars and...I might use my mouth but they don't see my mouth. And that's the point."
Tully could see the point, now that she'd spoken so much about it; the jaw skewed slightly to the left and a thin white scar dimpled her right cheek, possibly the result of a car accident or a bad fall.
"What was I doing that day? Well, I had a show that night, so I spent part of the day rehearsing in the living room. Then I went shopping at the Salvation Army. In my work, unless you hit it big, you have to know how to find bargains if you're going to look glamorous. And these thrift stores have great bargains - silk blouses that some rich lady's thrown away after wearing them twice, for only 2 bucks. I spend twenty dollars and come out with a queen's wardrobe, enough sparkle and satin to keep me sizzling on stage for months.....How long was I at the Salvation Army? Your guess is as good as mine! When I feel a soft suede vest molding around my body and sniff that sweet leather smell, when I'm twirling in front of a mirror in silver pants, I don't even think about clocks. I'm into rhythm and rhyme and blazing lights, and time's the last thing on my mind".
"Well, did anyone at the Goodwill recognize you?"
"Salvation Army. How should I know? No one said hello, so I guess 'no'. You know, you should see my act sometime, down at Stage Left in Danbury. With your job, seeing all those dead bodies all the time, you could use a little entertainment, something funnier than the news. You look tired, like the job's been sucking the blood right out of your veins."
Tully nodded. Even his teenage daughter, who usually just noticed her own face, had commented on the grayness of his complexion, the throbbing blood vessels in his hollowed temples, the deepening creases around his mouth.
"Maybe," he muttered. Maybe, once he knew he wasn't going to be seduced by a singing killer.
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Nora, the fourth, padded noiselessly down the barrack corridor in her flats and rapped on Tully's door, exactly on time for her appointment. As before, her limp brown hair drooped around her doughy face before curling tentatively in a pageboy; when she extended her hand, Tully noticed that the nails had been cut pragmatically short, and that her nearly colorless lips twitched upwards in a fleeting thin smile.
"Keyboard callouses," she droned, noticing Tully's downward glance. "From typing so much at the computer. And I need my nails short for the same reason."
"Logical." Tully nodded, trying to keep his gaze from wandering to the coffee pot or the people passing his door. This woman's monotone, and putty face with its immobile stubby nose and pebble-gray eyes, had nearly lulled him to sleep during their first meeting. Already, her voice buzzed in his ears.
"Where was I?", she mumbled. "At home, with my computer. I had to change the hexadecimal color coding on a client's web site; he needed more contrast between the backround and the print - you know, user friendliness. Then I had to upload Spam Killer to the site -"
"Ur", Tully cleared his throat. "Was anyone with you while you were doing all this? A goldfish watching you? A cat or a boyfriend by your side?"
Nora rubbed her palm over the knit pants clinging to her flabby thighs, then inserted the pasty hand in a sagging sweater pocket. Tully had seen ten pairs of such pants, all tan with stretch waists, during his home visit; his nose had tingled and throbbed in the camphor stench which saturated that closet, the rug strewn with faded cardigans and yellowed underpants, the quilt dusted with crumbs and ashes, the three plastic alarm clocks crusted with grime. After poking his shoe into the matted dust beneath the kitchen cabinets, he'd declined a drink of water.
"No, I was alone with my computer all day," she muttered.
Tully grunted. The computer, covered nightly with plastic to keep out the dust, was her beloved; in its shiny vinyl casing, with keyboard scrubbed free of smudges, it sat enshrined atop her only desk.
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Tully leaned across his desk, digging one elbow into a stack of papers. One was a twittering dodo-bird, all tweating and puffed up plumes. That Linsey could be a character out of Mother Goose - the purple lady in the purple cottage by the purple enchanted woods under a purple dusk sky, a character whom his daughter might dream about and whom Disney might turn into a profitable legend.
"Cherise puts on a show in my office, " he said to the captain. "The magic magenta Missus teaches me about mushrooms. But none of them has an alibi, and none of our witnesses has much memory."
"Some real characters," the captain agreed. "You rounded up some first class eccentrics. But that Nora - reliable, cooperative, precise, respected in her field but, I'm emarrassed to say this, I can barely remember what she looked like."
Tully stared at the captain, a frown slowly creasing his brow.
"Say that again."
"Uh", the captain muttered, "Uh, I can't even remember what Nora looks like"
Tully continued to stare.
"I think that's it!", he exclaimed.
"What?"
"If you were walking down the street, would you notice a woman clad head to toe in bright purple? Even if you were getting pawed by your kid?"
"I'd have to be blind not to see," the captain asserted.
"And what about a 40 year old Barbie wanna-be, trying to run in spike heels?"
"I'd be laughing at that one. No, I couldn't miss her".
The captain jerked his head, then stared directly into Tully's eyes. "And an orange mane with bright beads in it - that's an attention getter too," he exclaimed. "Which makes the murderer -"
"Nora," Tully finished. "The other three women worked hard on their appearance, wanted to stand out and succeeded. Nora's the only one who dresses, brushes her hair and cleans her face in five minutes. She's the only one who wears bargain basement stretch pants like those worn to the grocery store by hundreds of housewives."
Tully rose and exhaled loudly.
"The other three," he declared, "Have been alibied by their vanity"
