The Brush Off (7 page)

I hadn’t been—at least, not consciously—until that moment. I felt the shock or grief or whatever that had been holding me numb for hours lift, and sounds and images filled in—Ricardo’s strange offer to run his salons the night before, his middle-of-the-night call for help, my bloody brush sticking out of his back, an arrogant cop’s suspicion—and for the first time I began to take his murder personally.

“Reyn,” Jolie warned, tipped off, no doubt, by the determined look in my eyes. Or perhaps I radiated determination. I hate to admit it, but one way or another, I’m as transparent as glass. This could be another reason I can’t lie for beans.

“It just bugs the hell out of me.” I forced the nonchalance into my tone. “He was a good friend.”

“So, go do the rosary, send flowers to the funeral home, but stay out of the investigation. It’ll be best for everybody if you just keep out of it.”

Them’s fighting words. My perverse personality doesn’t take to being told not to do something. It virtually guarantees that I will do that self-same thing.

After all, I reasoned as I smiled reassuringly to Jolie and spun her back around, Ricardo died before I could even up the favors.

I still owed him one.

D
ISTRACTED AS
I
WAS AFTER
J
OLIE LEFT, WELL
coiffed but still ominously hiding her teeth, I made it through a morning full of appointments with no major insights from my customers regarding Ricardo’s demise but no major disasters, either. Of course, one incident could’ve qualified had it not been for my quick-thinking nail technician. I had Mrs. Reinmeyer in my chair when Inez, a pal of mine who styles at Ricardo’s Huebner store, called, telling my receptionist that it was an emergency. It wasn’t, but it became one when Inez told me the gossip was that Ricardo swung both ways, was AC/DC, or liked to do the horizontal boogie with men and women, whatever you might call it.

My right hand—which was doing a touch-up with the clippers at Mrs. Reinmeyer’s nape—slipped north rather suddenly, leaving a distinctive track through her sprayed silver curls. Mrs. Reinmeyer gasped, the receiver slipped off my shoulder, crashing onto the floor just as Daisy Dawn Washington walked by. She took it all in in one glance and, being the quick thinker that she is, exclaimed, “Oh, Miz Reinmeyer” the thick syrup in her East Texas accent completely hid the put-on in her tone—“you
smart
thing, you. You’re getting one of those new tower styles.”

“Tower styles?” Mrs. Reinmeyer and I echoed together.

With a warning glance at me, Daisy Dawn continued, smiling in admiration at my eighty-year-old client. “Oh, yeah, didn’t Reyn tell you? They’re all the rage in L.A. right now. I saw at least four gals at the Oscars with them tower ’dos.”

“You did?” Mrs. Reinmeyer was brightening as she sneaked peeks in the mirrors, so I decided to play along, calculating the damage control I could manage on her style while making it look like I’d planned it that way. I swallowed my horrified apology and smiled reassuringly at Mrs. Reinmeyer.

Daisy Dawn nodded. “Sure, I swear Olympia Dukakis and Angela Lansbury had towers. Maybe Michelle Pfeiffer, too, although I can’t be sure about that; the camera moved too quick for me to tell.”

“Oh!” I heard Mrs. Reinmeyer’s pancake makeup crack as her mouth curled into an unfamiliar smile. Truth be told, it looked a little scary.

“A trendsetter in our midst,” Daisy Dawn whispered reverently, pausing a few seconds for effect. “Just imagine.”

“Well.” Mrs. Reinmeyer warmed to the praise, bless Daisy Dawn’s lying little soul. “I did tell Reyn I wanted something
different
and
daring
.”

She did no such thing. She’d stomped her scrawny purple-polyester-pantsuit-clad body across my expensively restored wood floor, complaining about her last cut and set as she had every single month she’d been my customer. Now, finally, she had something
real
to complain about, and she wasn’t doing it. Go figure. If I’d only known, I would’ve given her a mohawk years ago.

“Now, Reyn, finish up,” Mrs. Reinmeyer ordered with a twitch of her starched shoulders, having fully regained her superior attitude. “I can’t wait to see the girls at bridge drop their teeth when I walk in with a
tower
, especially Marge Kelley. She’s always so hoity-toity after her seasonal trips east to Bloomie’s.”

The irony of the image was too much for Daisy Dawn, who was biting down hard on her magenta- glossed lower lip. She patted Mrs. Reinmeyer’s liver-spotted hand with three-inch talons that were amazingly natural. I never could see how she managed to put nails on others with nails of her own that long. “Go get ’em, girlfriend.”

“Cool,” Mrs. Reinmeyer answered, trying out the word the kids had resurrected from the sixties—one that she’d certainly only ever used to describe temperature. Daisy Dawn didn’t let her silent laughter loose until she was down the hall, well out of Mrs. Reinmeyer’s line of sight. Her dark Rastafarian braids shook, clicking the beads at the ends together merrily.

I owed her one.

If I wasn’t careful, I was going to owe everyone in San Antonio favors. For some reason, that thought brought to mind Lieutenant Jackson Scythe. I wasn’t
ever
going to owe him a favor, as he’d have to apologize for his arrogance first, and I doubted
that
would ever happen unless he was under the influence of some mind-altering drug. Or in a haze of lust brought on by the company of a naked woman.

And I wouldn’t be that naked woman unless he apologized first.

The-chicken-or-the-egg dilemma. Probably the undoing of most potential relationships.

Quickly, before she regained her senses, I trimmed the hair on the right side of Mrs. Reinmeyer’s head to match the left. And, to be perfectly honest, it left her with a style that would be more at home on a
Star Trek
set than on an old western, so maybe it was more chic than I knew.

Still grinning (a scary sight even without her scalp showing), she paid cash, shed her plastic smock, and left humming a turn-of-the-century tune. It’s not what you’re thinking—not turn of
last
century like Enrique Caruso, but turn of this one, Butthole Surfers. I’m telling you I meant what I said to Scythe at Ricardo’s. Changing your hair can change your life. I just hoped I hadn’t accidentally changed Mrs. Reinmeyer into an eighty-year-old headbanger.

Suddenly remembering the abandoned Inez, I scooped up the phone. A mechanical voice told me to hang up the phone and try again. I did, but the receptionist read a message Inez had given her which—because of the obscenities—I can’t repeat here, no matter how much useful Spanish it might teach you. Suffice it to say that Inez considered my priorities skewed, and if I wanted to put my client’s welfare over her gossip, I wasn’t worth talking to anymore.

So I was left with a stunning piece of unsubstantiated gossip that may or may not have been true and may or may not have had something to do with Ricardo’s murder but most certainly was something I had to investigate.

It was just after noon, and I was a henna away from lunch, when my first opportunity to clarify Ricardo’s sexual proclivities walked through the door. Sherlyn Rocca, Transformations’ current receptionist, called down the hall for me in her nerve-grinding New Jawzee accent (I’m not prejudiced against Yankees, understand, but she did put more mouth into her words than I did). Now, I have a state-of-the-art telephone system, being of the mind that communication is one of the bedrocks of the beauty business. People on a quest for self-improvement have no patience for busy signals or dense stylists who don’t strive to have
she listened and strove to please
carved on their headstones. I did my utmost to fulfill that motto (Mrs. Reinmeyer notwithstanding), while paying for the best technology to take care of the former. Or that was the theory, anyway. The weak link in my communication system was the human element, and until the techno-nerds of the world come up with an affordable robot receptionist, I’m sure this will be my cross to bear.

Oh, I can feel my good Catholic friend begging for forgiveness at my blasphemy.
Forgive me, Trudy.

Anyhow, Transformations has seen ten receptionists in two years, at an average rate of a new one every two months. Now, that’s a lot of time wasted in hiring and training, not to mention the mass of dreaded W-2s every January. I’m not a bad boss, and I pay a little more than the going rate, including a discount on salon services, so there’s no excuse beyond the obvious.

My luck sucks.

This was my first thought as Sherlyn, a relative veteran at two months, three weeks, four days, and counting, flounced down the hall, if one can flounce wearing lavender iridescent high-heeled tennis shoes that weigh at least thirty pounds each. Honestly, Sherlyn’s talented that way, so she pulled it off. It’s in other areas she got shorted when God was passing out abilities, brains and common sense being the first two that come to mind.

There I went, a second blasphemy in as many minutes. Maybe I’d set a world record before the day was over, and then no one could say I was a total failure.

“Miz Marten Sawyer.” Sherlyn paused to glance at herself in my mirror, running her pinkie nail, which sported a hand-painted nude on fire-engine red, along the edge of her lower lip to fix a renegade bit of purple lip liner. It was meant to match her shoes, I suppose. She smiled at her reflection and rebent a piece of her platinum spiked hair. “There you are.”

I wasn’t sure whether she meant me or her lock of hair or perhaps that bit of errant lipstick. I didn’t ask, having learned through experience that asking would elicit an explanation I did not need, or particularly want, to hear. I also refrained from asking why she hadn’t paged me instead of flouncing but chalked it up to another waste of breath. I watched the client in my chair work to keep her mouth from dropping open as she took in Sherlyn’s mile- long legs and the orange bandanna tied around her hips that was supposed to serve as a skirt. I suppose the shock could have come from the clashing kaleidoscope of color Sherlyn refracted from head to foot, but more likely, my client was about to go into cardiac arrest over the obvious fact that Sherlyn wasn’t wearing any underwear, unless it was amazingly one-sided. It was my fault, surely, as I did not think to include undergarments in the dress code I outlined when she was hired. Sometimes I give people in general way too much credit.

“Miz Marten Sawyer,” Sherlyn repeated, insisting on using my middle and last names instead of just my first, despite my clarifications to the contrary. I wasn’t sure whether she was really that formal or whether the four extra syllables were just another excuse to listen to her own voice, as she was its biggest, perhaps only, fan. Cats copulating came to mind when Sherlyn opened her mouth.

“There’s a woman out front who says she wants to be worked in, but it looked to me like you’re full for the day, so I told her to take a hike.”

Both the client in the chair and I cringed. Praying this was a figure of speech and not a direct quote, I willed control into my voice. “What did this lady need done?”

“Hey, I didn’t say lady, cuz that woman out there sureazhell ain’t no lady.” Mercifully, Sherlyn pulled up at the horrified look on my face, but not without a pout. “Anyhows, she wouldn’t tell the lowlife help what she wants, she gotta talk to you.”

“I don’t have the time for anything today,” I confirmed as Sherlyn’s pout was replaced with a smug smile. “Did you offer her another day or time?”

“The only thing I was offering her was a knuckle sandwich.” I opened my mouth to intercede, but she’d soldiered on. “But then she starts some lame story about being desperate cuz her hairstylist got killed, or some such crap. Like I’m gonna believe that. Right! I mean, the dog ate my homework is a helluva lot better sob story, and it’s like
so
not happening!”

Pushing past Sherlyn, who’d found an ear in my henna client (I’d have to remember to give the poor woman a discount) and was continuing with her critique of acceptable excuses, I rushed to the reception area. A tall, wide, yet flat-bodied woman with heavy, straight black hair blunt-cut just above her last rib stood eerily still, her eyes focused on the center of what Trudy calls my Indian-from-India rug (I think
Oriental
covers the style in general, but Trudy went shopping with me when I bought it and wants people to know it’s a real homemade import with hand-tied tassels and all). My visitor was dressed in what uncharitably could be called rags, but on closer inspection was a collection of vibrant silk scarves sewn together into a tiered dress that was very likely bought from the window of a hip (and pricey) boutique in Alamo Heights. Neckwear had graduated from accessories to stand-alone apparel without my knowledge. Or approval. Imagine that. Mr. Blackwell, where are you when we need you?

“I’m Reyn Sawyer,” I said, perhaps a little too forcefully as I hurried up, hand out. “Can I help you?”

She looked up quickly, her black curtain of hair falling back to reveal a lovely, ageless face, her skin glowing and unwrinkled, either proof of youth or belying decades. I’ve always wondered why Asian women never look anywhere near their age. The children look like ultra-wise miniature adults, and the adults look twenty when they’re sixty. I’ve never been able to figure out if they are blessed with more inner peace than I am or just better skin.

Probably both.

Her only mistake seemed to be in wearing more makeup than she needed. Midnight-blue kohl lined her eyes, a complementary powder shadow covered her surgically created double eyelids, sculpting blush highlighted her already well-defined cheekbones, and subtle rose-colored gloss emphasized her perfectly outlined bow-shaped lips. Even overdone, she was lovely.

Taking my hand with an enviable grace, she squeezed lightly, then let it drop, leaving me with the hope some of her self-possession had rubbed off on me. She appeared to be the epitome of the psycho-babble term
centered.

“I am Bettina Huyn. I understand you have no time for me today,” she said, her voice completely unaccented and thus unique, especially in San Antonio, where East meets West meets North meets South. Hardly anyone here has the same accent, but we all have accents. Fleetingly, I wondered if she was an actress, having had her speech sanitized by a voice coach.

She seemed a perfect lady to me; what would’ve made Sherlyn think otherwise?