“I use your Milky Moisture Mask after every shampoo.”
“It’s doing wonders for you,” I said. “Let’s go to the sink.”
As I washed her hair, she told me all about boyfriend number five. “Joe’s a computer programmer,” she said, shouting over the noise of my spray nozzle. “Did you know there are five hundred unfilled jobs for software engineers? They pay well too.”
I turned the taps off and squeezed the water out of her hair. “Lucky him. How does he like the commute to the big city?”
“Hates it. He’ll probably move closer to his job and we’ll break up.”
This was the story of Shirley’s life. She no sooner got a new boyfriend than something went wrong.
“Why don’t you take some courses at the community college and get a job like that?” I asked.
“I was never any good at math and any of the stuff you have to do to code.”
I sympathized. I could manipulate Quickbooks, but spending any more time in front of the computer would drive me berserk.
We went into the workroom and I began to trim Shirley’s hair when she pointed to the mail on the counter. “Have you had any mail go missing lately?”
“I don’t think so.”
“I have. I was waiting for a rebate check from Tire Planet and it never came. Neither did my new credit card. I’ve been to the post office to complain, but our local clerks don’t want to hear about it. They sent me to the national website.”
“Did you go there?”
“Yeah. That website is a jungle. It took me fifteen minutes to find the right page. I filled out the form with the details about my missing mail. For days afterwards I got emails and phone calls asking me to rate my satisfaction with the postal service, but no reply about my mail.”
Shirley’s voice was filled with indignation. I didn’t blame her. How could you rate a service satisfactory before you got any satisfaction? But that was the United States postal service for you.
We finished up and said goodbye. I opened my Client Notebook. After crossing out the last boyfriend’s name in Shirley’s entry, I wrote: Joe, computer programmer; missing mail—PO’d.
The front door opened with a bang and Katherine Putnam breezed in looking like a burning torch. She took her place in my workroom where I whipped out a red cape and flung it over her stubby body, then wheeled my color mixing table over to the chair.
“More auburn, less red?” I said.
“Yeah, I want to look subdued and corporate.”
“You’re going big time, eh?”
“Computer coding job. They’re hiring anybody who can breathe. I took coding in high school, and last time I checked, I’m still breathing.”
“Did you know there are five hundred unfilled computer software jobs in the big city?” I said, as if I had researched this fact all by myself.
“Yup. And they pay decent bucks,” said Katherine. “That’s why I want to look the image. Nose to the grindstone; meek as a mouse; speak the corporate speak. I want to look just as competent as any computer jockey from Gujarat.”
“I have some curry you can dab on your wrists, if you think that will help.”
“I’m not going to go that far.” She sniffed.
I hoped I hadn’t insulted her. Or the good people in the Indian state of Gujarat.
I was painting Katherine’s scalp with auburn formula when she pointed to my mail on the counter.
“Have you been getting all your mail, Tracy?”
“I think so.”
“The post office is ridiculous these days,” she said. “I ordered a credit card from Macy’s and it never arrived.”
“Is anything else missing?”
“Not that I know of. So much stuff comes in the mail—flyers, offers, checks for fifty thousand dollars.”
“I get those too—checks made out to The Citrus Salon for $58,000.00, negotiable immediately if I just sign up for a business loan at 25 percent.”
“Such a deal!”
“Like Publisher’s Clearinghouse—you’ve won a million dollars!”
“Do they think we’ll really fall for that?” she said.
“These offers go right in my circular file.” I kicked my wastebasket for emphasis. “How are you doing on your money-back deal from Candy Fiber?”
Katherine got scalded on a lose-weight-fast offer from our local dietary supplement maven.
“I caught up with Candy in the locker room at the fitness center,” Katherine said. “While she took a shower, I hid her clothes and told her I wouldn’t give them back until she coughed up the dough.”
I laughed. “So she’s still naked, then?”
“I’m afraid so.”
We giggled. I pictured Candy Fiber au naturel and it was not a bad sight. Unfortunately for Katherine, Candy would stop every motorist by crossing the street in any state.
I finished painting and settled a shower cap snugly over Katherine’s head. “Would you like to read a mystery story while you’re processing?” I asked. “I have Death in the Capitol and Pay Tax or Die for your reading pleasure.”
These stories took only half an hour to read—a perfect way to kill time while hair color set.
Katherine took Pay Tax or Die into my comfort room where she climbed up on my big massage chair and turned on the automatic back kneader. I filled up the pedicure tub with warm spearmint water and took her some jasmine tea.
I heard nothing from Katherine for the next 30 minutes and assumed she was absorbed in the machinations of an armchair detective/accountant who solved white collar crimes for her FBI lover. Theirs was a steamy affair.
The timer on my cell phone dinged.
“Hold on, hold on,” said Katherine. “They’re making love in the judges’ chambers at the Supreme Court.” Katherine’s face was flushed and she was squirming in her seat.
I backed away politely and fiddled with the control knobs on my sprayer. When the water was the perfect temperature, I took another peek. Katherine was sitting back looking slightly spent.
“Time to rinse you out,” I said and she followed me to the sink.
After Katherine left, I consulted my Client Notebook, wrote the change in color formula next to her name and added, ‘missing mail.’ I noticed that Katherine’s home address was on the same street as Shirley’s.
After lunch, Mrs. Oscar, owner of a gas station on Main Street, bent my ear about out-of-town punks while I marceled her hair.
“They’re just driving through,” she said, “and they use my trash cans as their personal dumping spot. I’ve had to increase our refuse collection to twice a week because these people don’t seem to have their own garbage cans.”
“It isn’t the occasional candy wrapper or McDonald’s bag?”
“We’re talking household goods. Paint thinner, acetone, drain cleaner, starter fluid. I pay for trash collection and I’m tired of these bulky items being thrown in my convenience bins.”
It was not my place to tell Mrs. Oscar about the ways of the world. Our town’s Main Street was a major highway that the town forefathers, in their lack of wisdom, refused to re-route thirty years ago when there was plenty of open land. Instead we have every Tom, Dick and Harry driving through Main Street on their way to Somewhere Else and leaving their trash behind.
“It’s a shame we can’t have a highway bypass,” I said.
“Highway bypass? Don’t talk to me about a highway bypass.” Mrs. Oscar had turned on her Intimidating Voice. “I told Martha Farquhar we needed a highway bypass way back in the eighties. Do you think she listened to me? Neither did any of those other old geezers on the city council. No, ma’am.”
Mrs. Oscar slammed her hand on the arm of my salon chair. I jumped so high my curling iron yanked her hair. “Ow!” she said.
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Oscar.”
“It makes me so damn mad. We have all the traffic going through town now, including those tankers from the oil fields on the reservation, and no way to stop ’em.”
“Aren’t you making more money from all the commercial traffic?”
“Yes, we are,” she said, sounding a bit mollified. “But there’s a limit.”
I was reminded of my father who could be penny wise and pound foolish. Mrs. Oscar made it sound like she wanted to stop all traffic on Main Street just to avoid the extra expense of trash collection. I was glad my salon was on the road to the wealthy part of town. No one went to Main Street—it was too congested.
A month later, Katherine returned for a color change.
“Did you get the job?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said.
“Is it everything you want it to be?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Then why do you want the red back?”
“Because everyone else has green, purple, shaved, or striped hair. I look too ordinary.”
And you look great!
I was mixing the red color formula when she said, “My identity got stolen.”
“Oh no!” I started painting her roots
“It’s been such a hassle. I got a bill from Macy’s for more than a thousand dollars. You remember—my Macy’s card never arrived. Then more credit card bills came, but I never applied for them, and utility bills for an apartment in New Jersey. Someone got ahold of my personal information and I don’t know how.”
I channeled my inner Picasso as I painted her brown head.
“All my accounts are on hold,” she said. “I can’t apply for any kind of credit for seven months. And it’s not my fault.”
My mind wandered to Shirley Jones. I wondered how she was faring.
“These identity thieves—they steal your information and sell it,” she said with such vehemence that her head shook and my color application threatened to look like a real Picasso.
“I’d like to think my identity is now the property of a young mother with three children who desperately need new clothes at Macy’s. Or perhaps it could be a crippled grandmother who wouldn’t have enough money to pay for her winter heat if it weren’t for me. But I know that’s not true.”
“Who do you think has your identity?”
“This guy from Gujarat at work says there are people who sit at computers and troll all day with botnets for people’s personal information—their account numbers, socials, passwords, names, addresses, dates of birth. It’s like going into the forest and harvesting trees.”
I pictured some kind of sweatshop with guys from coding central fiendishly felling.
“He’s dreamy,” she said.
“Who’s dreamy?”
“The guy from Gujarat. His name’s Deepak.” There was a faraway look in Katherine’s eyes. “He likes red hair.”
I saw then there was more involved here than keeping up with the green-tinted. “Do I detect a little romance?”
“He’s smart, and kind, and the same height as me,” she said. “Did you know the state of Gujarat is called the Jewel of India and is where Mahatma Gandhi marched to the sea?”
“Can’t say that I do.”
“It has an industrial economy. The area is wealthy and has a very rich history.”
Katherine’s eyes were starry and I wondered if she had been practicing any memorable scenes from Pay Taxes or Die with the Man from Gujarat.
“Sounds like a nice place.”
“Deepak wants to make his mark here and then go back to India to start an orphanage for laundry children.”
“Laundry children?”
“There are laundries in Mumbai where men come and pick up your things, and they can’t read but they never, ever mix up your laundry with anybody else’s, and they put it out to dry on outdoor clotheslines, and it comes back completely white and perfectly pressed. Did you know that?”
I shook my head.
“But if they die, their children have no one to take care of them if their mothers are dead. Deepak wants to make a difference there.”
Meanwhile, he’s writing code in the big city to the west of us where anyone who breathes can get a job, provided they know something about something that I know nothing of.
Katherine looked in the mirror with the most gaga expression on her face. I could see she was smitten.
After Katherine left, I put the “Back in 30 Minutes” sign on my door and walked across the street to the diner. Shirley was behind the counter looking glum.
“What’s the matter?” I asked. “Boyfriend troubles?”
“I wish,” she said. “My identity’s been stolen.”
That night, Carl and Joe were out on patrol when they stopped a car on Main Street with one of its tail-lights out. When he came home at five a.m., I woke up and he told me all about it.
“Before I could get to the driver’s door, the guy took off,” Carl said. “We gave chase all the way to the interstate. The guy exited at the worst place for him and the best place for us.”
“Summit Park, I’ll bet.” The streets in Summit Park are windy and narrow. They dead end or loop around.
“Eventually, he realized he was cooked, so he stopped and ran into the forest.”
“On foot? I’ll bet you didn’t chase him.”
“Why bother? He had no place to go. We searched his car and found other people’s checks totaling eight thousand dollars, a certificate of title, two money grams for five hundred dollars each, lots of unopened mail that were clearly credit card offers, and blank checks allowing the signer to pay for stuff by credit card.”
“This all came out of people’s mail boxes?”
“Yup. There was a burglary tool used to fish out mail from apartment mailboxes. And a bottle of sticky liquid they use to get mail to stick to the tool.”
“What kind of sticky liquid?”
“The same kind that covers rat traps.”
“Eeuuw.”
“In fact, there were several rat traps in the car. And there was also a glass pipe and a plastic wrapper with crystal meth in it.”
“So this guy is a cooker?”
“Or a user.”
“Is he a local?
“Not likely or he would never have taken that exit off the highway.”
“Has he been found?”
“The K9s tracked him to a hollow on the side of a mountain. He actually looked glad to see us. He was wet and freezing.”
I laughed. “You do good work, honey. I hope he goes to prison.”
We nuzzled and things accelerated from there. Before long, we made the sex scenes in Pay Taxes or Die look G-rated.
“Tracy! Are you here?”
I almost hid in my drape closet, I was so sure I didn’t want to be here. Candy Fiber was speeding through the salon.
“Tracy, I need you!”
What for? An order for two hundred bottles of dietary supplements? A flat of vitamin elixirs? A gallon of rejuvenating potion?
Candy Fiber had added emollient wrinkle remover to her ever-growing list of miracle cures, and I wanted none of it.
“My identity has been stolen and I want Carl to fix it!”
I imagined a brigade of Candy Fibers, cloned and marching all over identity-theft land. I needed to sit down.
“My mail’s been stolen from my mailbox,” she said, “and I want justice!”
Then why aren’t you at the police station? I wanted to say that. But of course, I didn’t. “Tell me what happened.”
“This has been going on for weeks. First, I was missing some checks, then some credit cards, and now my tax return. Gone—right out of my mailbox.”
“Where do you live?”
She told me—right down the street from Katherine and Shirley.
“I think it’s that mental retard who broke into the post office!”
I cringed. Surely, she couldn’t mean Tinker Bell.
“The Changing Lives residence is on my corner,” she said.
She did think it was Tinker Bell.
“I want Carl to ransack that place from top to bottom.”
“Now, Candy, there�
�s no evidence that says anyone at Changing Lives is–”
“Don’t whitewash it. That little retard. Oh, I see you’re offended. I need to be politically correct. That intellectually-challenged retard is stealing my mail.”
“What makes you think so?” I asked.
“Because I’ve gotten bills from credit cards that I didn’t apply for and checks have been cashed that never got to me.”
“And you think she’s done this?”
“Of course.”
“I thought you said she was intellectually disabled. How’d she get the smarts all of a sudden to cash checks and submit credit card applications?”
Candy had no answer for that.
“I can see you’re thinking twice now,” I said, and told her about the meth head in the woods. Now she looked roundly chastened—an old-fashioned phrase that meant she was eating shit.
“Candy,” I said. “Let’s go see Carl.”
I put the “Back in 30 Minutes” sign on the door and we took Candy’s little MG down to the station.
Candy made an impact as soon as she arrived. Not only is she 36” 24” 36” but she was dispensing cigars from a box she keeps in the trunk of her little MG. She told her story to Chief Fort Dukes who, after he lit his stogie up, ordered Carl and Joe to conduct a stakeout of Candy’s street.
For the next ten nights I hardly saw my beautiful man. Carl and Joe ate doughnuts, pizza, and Chinese takeout while they watched all the mailboxes on the streets of Candy’s neighborhood. Yet one month later the incidence of identity theft in our town was still increasing and the police were no closer to a solution than when they started.
“Hello?” said a tentative voice from the front of my salon.
“Good morning,” I said.
A woman with limp brown hair, dull brown eyes, and a pilled brown sweater entered. My computer said her name was Mary Owens. I picked up my Client Notebook and invited her to sit on my sofa.
“I’m so glad to meet you,” I said. “What can I do for you?”
Mary said she would like a wash, a deep conditioning treatment, and a trim. I noted: “Limp hair, dingy color, sallow complexion, face sores” in my book. We chatted for a moment. “And your address?” I asked, poised over the page with my pen.
Petty Crimes & Head Cases Page 18
