Killer Cuts: A Dead-End Job Mystery (30 page)

M
iguel Angel came into the salon Monday morning,

drenched from a tropical downpour. He was so angry,

the water seemed to rise off him in a cloud of steam. He tracked damp footprints across the salon floor. Helen wiped them up with a mop.

“I can’t believe this,” he said.”Mrs. Morton wanted me at her house at eight o’clock this morning—all the way up in Palm Beach. I drove there in my Jeep, which has a leak in the driver’s window. I got there at eight, and her maid says she is asleep.Asleep! I am wet and she is asleep. The maid won’t wake her. I got up at six thirty to be at her house on time. That’s it! She is off my list. I will never go there again. Never. I have her credit card, and I will charge her for a missed appointment. She deserves it.”

Miguel Angel grew angrier as he talked, and his Cuban accent thickened. But Miguel didn’t yell when he was angry.The madder he got, the more he lowered his voice. His furious whispers carried over the other salon noise.

Blow-dryers roared. Clouds of hair spray hovered in the salon air. Helen, like an acolyte, bore glasses of water trimmed with lemon slices and artfully folded in napkins to two clients wrapped in salon robes. They were regulars from before King’s murder. Helen could hear them gossiping about a television reporter.

“Lydia is divorcing her husband,” said a skeletal brunette in her six ties with unnaturally tight facial skin. “She caught him in bed with a blonde.”

“How boring,” a buxom redhead said.”Can’t he think of an origi nal sin?”

“The blonde was a man,” the skeleton said.

“Well, Lydia is built like a boy,” the redhead said.

They giggled maliciously.

Other women lounged in the salon chairs, talking on their cell phones and reading glossy magazines. Their handbags and shoes were branded with logos.They were so rich they didn’t care if the pouring rain ruined their six-hundred-dollar shoes.

“You have just enough time to dry your hair before your ten o’clock appointment,” Ana Luisa said.The receptionist was not afraid to inter rupt Miguel Angel’s tirade.

That ominous white police van was still watching the salon, but some longtime customers were back, and tipping generously, for the first time since that dreadful video.There were still no celebrities.When it came to major names, the appointment book was empty as the Gobi desert.

But Helen saw the returning regulars as a hopeful sign.The celebri ties would be next, wouldn’t they? Maybe Miguel Angel’s salon would be saved if she and Phil could find King’s killer.

“Who is my appointment?” Miguel asked.

“Mrs. Rodriguez wants her roots done and her hair blown out.”

Miguel Angel made a face, but didn’t protest. He was in no position to object to anyone. But Helen didn’t like the woman.

Mrs. Rodriguez wore gold bracelets that jangled and clothes that clung to her gym-toned body. Salon gossip said her husband was un faithful. Mrs. Rodriguez behaved as if she were a queen and spent like an empress. Her only talent was shopping, but she condescended to Miguel Angel as if he were a peasant.

Mrs. Rodriguez was robed and waiting in the chair when Miguel returned. He’d changed into a fresh black shirt, and his dark hair was dried and styled.

“How do you want your hair?” he said.

“Not short,” she said, tossing her dark curls. “And not frizzy, ei ther.”

Mrs. Rodriguez would strut naked down Las Olas before she would admit she was in the throes of menopause, but she’d reached the age when her hair had lost its glossy, youthful thickness. Miguel Angel could give her young hair, for a price.

As he worked, she chattered about the things she’d bought. “I got my son an Alexander McQueen tie with little skulls to wear with his tux for the school dance.”

Helen tried to hide her surprise. Mrs. Rodriguez had bought a teen age boy a designer tie that cost more than two hundred dollars—and the kid would wear it maybe once.

“You must have the coolest kids in school,” Miguel Angel said.

“I want them to have everything I didn’t,” she said. “My family ruled Cuba for centuries before we came here in 1960.”

Helen was beginning to understand this was the Cuban version of “my family came over on the Mayflower”—a way of bragging. Mrs. Rodriguez was letting them know she was part of the Latino elite.

“You wouldn’t understand, since you came here so much later, Miguel Angel,” she said.”It was 1980, wasn’t it?”

A double slap, for those in the know. That was the year of the Mariel Boatlift, when more than 120,000 Cubans came to South Florida from the port of Mariel. Many of the older, often conservative immigrants looked down on the Mariel refugees, considering them criminals and homosexuals. Many right-wing Cubans did not tolerate gays.

Miguel Angel said nothing at the implied insult, but he held the blow-dryer a fraction closer to her head.

Mrs. Rodriguez yelped.”Ouch! Be careful, you fool! You burned me.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry. So very sorry,” Miguel Angel said. His voice was a soft, insincere coo.

Helen suspected Miguel Angel had burned the woman’s scalp on purpose. Helen didn’t know when the stylist came to the United States, and she’d be fired if she told Mrs. Rodriguez what she really thought: If Fulgencio Batista and his cronies did such a terrific job running Cuba, Castro would have never taken over the island.

Many Batista supporters left the island when Castro came into power in 1959.They took their ill-gotten gains in suitcases—if they hadn’t al ready stashed fortunes in foreign banks.They had a rich cushion when they landed in the United States, but they weren’t above playing the “poor immigrant” routine when it served their purpose.

After Mrs. Rodriguez hobbled out on her Jimmy Choos, Miguel Angel spent ten minutes mumbling to himself in the prep room.Then he fixed a Cuban coffee with enough caffeine to power IBM headquar ters and went back to work.

Miguel Angel spent the afternoon spinning hair like straw into sen suous gold.

Connie, his two o’clock customer, confided that her husband was having an affair with his office assistant. George had just told her he wanted a divorce, and Connie ran to her hairstylist for comfort and a makeover.

She looked like a portrait on a candy box. Her hair was curly blond and her makeup was perfect. She moved in a welter of ruffles, ribbons and lace, and wore a big-brimmed white hat to shade her delicate com plexion. Connie reached into her little pink purse and pulled out the only lace handkerchief Helen had ever seen used by a woman under thirty.

“He took me by surprise,” Connie said.”Until George told me our marriage was over, I thought we were happy. I feel like such a fool.” She twisted the handkerchief, then blotted her wide blue eyes. Helen didn’t see any tears.

“Then you deserve some fun,” Miguel Angel said. “I will give you a new hairstyle so that he will regret wanting another woman. Has he cut off your credit cards?”

“Not yet,” she said.

“Then I advise you to buy some new clothes as soon as you leave, before it’s too late. Zola Keller on Las Olas has a fabulous sale. I will call Zola and tell her to take good care of you.”

A conversation between a woman and her stylist was as intimate as talking to a confessor, Helen decided. Except hairdressers passed judg ment on your style, not your sins.

Connie clip-clopped out of the shop in her pink high heels on her way to a new husband-funded wardrobe.After she left, Helen said,”Did you know George was cheating on her?”

“Everyone did, except Connie. She will find another man soon. He’ll be just as bad as this one, but she will believe she is happy—for a while.”

At four o’clock, the shop was quiet. The roaring blow-dryers and hissing cans of hair spray were silent. “You might as well go home,” Miguel Angel told Helen.”If you sweep the floor one more time, I will go crazy.”

Helen left. She arrived at the Coronado slightly sick from the walk in the heat. She saw Josh and Jason tanning themselves by the pool and went over to say hello. “I hear you have a special discount for older people,” Helen said.

“Yep,” Josh said. Jason took a big gulp of beer.

“And you want to help my friend Elsie,” she said.

Jason belched loudly. “Gotta go,” Josh said. “Later.” The sullen pair left their beer bottles by the pool. Helen thought they were slippery, and it had nothing to do with their Coppertone. How could Margery like them?

Helen unlocked her door, fed Thumbs and gave him an ear scratch. Then she changed out of her work clothes into shorts, fixed herself a cold drink and knocked on Phil’s door. He met her, carrying a cup of coffee. Once again, Helen was struck by her lover’s cool good looks. She kissed him and said, “Mm.You’re wearing my favorite blue shirt. How many days before you’re mine?”

“If you’re counting today, four and a half,” he said. “I’ve spent the day working for you. First, I checked out your latest anonymous letter and found nothing useful—no fingerprints. The letters were cut from a newspaper, but I don’t know which one, and stuck on with ordinary Elmer’s Glue.The letter was postmarked Dover, Delaware.”

“I don’t know anyone in Delaware,” Helen said.”The other one was from someplace in Maryland.”

“I did find out a little information on your ex-coworker, Phoebe. She was a runaway who had connections with the sex industry before she went to beauty school and hired on with Miguel Angel.”

“What kind of connections?” Helen asked.

“Looks like a little prostitution, some drugs, maybe some porn or nude modeling.”

“Where did she run away from?” Helen asked.

“Granite City, Illinois,” Phil said.”I’ve never heard of it. Is it a min ing town?”

“No, Granite City was named for kitchenware,” Helen said.”Gran iteware is enameled metal that looked like granite, like those old turkeyroasting pans.”

“My mom had one,” Phil said.

“Everyone’s mom did,” Helen said.”Granite City is right across the Mississippi River from my hometown, St. Louis. It has steel mills, and parts of town can look pretty depressing. Granite City has some beauti ful old homes, but many people still think it’s a good place to be from. When I was in high school, there was a T-shirt that said, My girlfriend wanted me to kiss her some place dirty, so I took her to Granite City.”

“Bet the city loved that,” Phil said.

“Phoebe sounds like a dead end,” Helen said. “Maybe we should investigate the groom. How did King Oden get in the strip club busi ness? Where did he get the money?”

“I’ll check that out, but you realize I may have to look at a lot of women in skimpy outfits?” Phil asked.

“You can make the sacrifice for me,” Helen said, and kissed him again.