The Alibi

I read a lot of mysteries. This will not surprise you. Thirty years of listening to a town’s secrets will either turn you toward mystery novels or true crime, and I chose the one with recipes in the back.

So when Barb — mid-fifties, highlights, chronic under-tipper of her sister-in-law but that’s a different volume — leaned forward in my chair one afternoon and said, very casually, “Say, Jayne. If anyone asked, would you remember what time my appointment ended last Tuesday?” — I want you to understand what happened in my brain.

Everything. Everything happened in my brain.

Because I know that question. I have READ that question. That question is on page one hundred and forty of every paperback on my nightstand, and it is asked by exactly one kind of character, and that character did it.

“Last Tuesday,” I said, with what I hoped was tremendous calm.

“Mm,” said Barb, examining her nails. “Roundabout four-thirty, wasn’t it? Maybe five?”

Her appointment had ended at four. I remembered because she’d been my last color of the day. And now she was sitting in my chair, nudging the timeline. Padding it. Building herself a little extra Tuesday.

I finished her foils in a state of the highest alert I have ever achieved in a salon. Every true crime episode I’d ever half-listened to came back to me at once. I ran the whole board while the color processed: What happens Tuesday afternoons? What was Barb wearing last week? Had she seemed agitated? She’d asked for extra time under the dryer — WHY, Barb? What were you drying?

By the rinse I had her tried and convicted. By the blowout I was mentally rehearsing my testimony and deciding what I’d wear to the courthouse. Something navy. Respectful, but authoritative.

I couldn’t take it. As I was pulling the cape off, I broke.

“Barb,” I said. “What happened last Tuesday.”

She looked at me. She looked around — both ways, the full sweep — then leaned in.

“Donna’s Tupperware party,” she whispered. “I told her I couldn’t come because my hair appointment ran long. If she asks you, it ran LONG, Jayne. Long.”

I stood there holding the cape.

A Tupperware party. I had constructed an entire episode of Dateline, and the woman was dodging a Tupperware party. I had picked out my courthouse outfit.

“Barb,” I said. “You had me thinking —” and then I stopped, because there is no dignified end to that sentence.

“Thinking what?”

“Nothing. Your appointment ran long. Very long. Terrible traffic in here.”

She patted my arm on the way out. “You’re a good egg, Jayne.”

I want it noted that I have now technically been an accessory. If Donna is reading this: names have been changed, details have been shifted, and that appointment ran until at least five o’clock. I’d swear to it.

I have thought about the navy outfit more than once since. There’s still time. This is that kind of town.