by Terry Shames
“You have to get that dog out of here! I could lose my license!” She starts shooing him away, and I grab for him. Instead of backing up and heading out the door like he usually does, he leaps on her and starts barking with excitement.
“Dusty! Down!” It’s the only command I’ve used consistently, but it makes no difference. He’s leaping and bounding, and the woman squeals more in annoyance than fear.
I manage to grab his collar and take him outside. I get a leash from the car and tie him up to the fence in front of the salon.
Back inside, I apologize, but she’s not happy. “How could you have let that dog in here?” she says. “You’re a lawman, you ought to know better.” I’m wearing my uniform shirt this morning, which is how she knows I’m a lawman.
“You’re right. He usually behaves better than that, but he’s a pup, and today he seems full of energy.” I actually don’t know anything about beauty salon regulations. I suppose there must be health department standards for beauty salons, but it’s a surprise to me that dogs can’t come in. I suspect that even if it is true, if one of her best clients came in with a well-behaved poodle, she’d be fine with that.
“You’re the chief of police who called yesterday?”
“That’s right.”
“What can I help you with?” she says, still frowning. She’s eyeing my hair as if she’s got ideas. If she does her own hair, I’m surprised that women take it as a sign that she’s good at what she does. It’s flat on the top and frizzy on the sides. I can’t imagine anybody who would look good with hair like that.
“I need your help with a police matter,” I say.
I’m pulling out the photos to show her when the door opens and a woman walks in. Dusty has set up a racket outside, and the woman says, “What is that dog doing out there?”
“He’s mine,” I say. “Sorry about the racket.”
“Humph. Oh, Darlene, I’m in a hurry this morning. I hope you can get me out of here in an hour.” She’s at least sixty, but her hair is dyed jet black, and she is wearing a low-cut blouse and skirt that hits above her knobby knees.
“Of course I can, Louise. Sit down in the shampoo chair.” Darlene takes a plastic drape out of a cabinet and arranges it around the woman’s shoulders, then runs her fingers through her hair looking at the roots. “I guess we can get by without taking care of those roots for another week.”
“I hope so. I don’t have time to sit while the color sets.”
As if she had hoped I would disappear, Darlene turns back to me. “What is it you said you need help with?”
“I’d like you to take a look at these photographs and see if you recognize them.”
She makes an impatient sound as she snatches them from my hand. “Oh.” She looks up at me. “Yes, I recognize them. They’re both clients of mine. You know that one of them was killed?”
“Who’s that?” the woman in the chair says. “Is that poor Elaine?” She sits back up and cranes her head to see the photos.
“Yes, it is.”
“That was terrible,” the woman says, her sharp eyes glittering. She gets out of the chair for a closer look. “Who’s the other woman?”
“That’s Loretta Singletary,” Darlene says. “She hasn’t been coming here very long. Only a few months. So I don’t know her very well.”
“Why do you have her picture?” the client asks me, apparently forgetting that she was in a hurry.
“She’s missing, and I’m trying to find out if the two women knew each other. Do you know if they were friends?” I ask Darlene.
She shakes her head. “I don’t know. But Loretta wasn’t actually my client. She gets her hair done by the other girl, Lucy.”
“Is Lucy working today?”
“She usually only comes in on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, but she has a couple of clients later today.”
I groan inwardly. It has already been too long since Loretta disappeared. I can’t afford another day. “I’m going to need a way to get in touch with her,” I say.
“I don’t like to give out my employees’ home information,” she says. “You can talk to her this afternoon or tomorrow.”
“It’s too urgent for me to wait. I need to get her address and phone number from you.”
She sighs. “Just a minute.” She goes into the back room. “Missing?” the client says. “You don’t think . . .” Her question dies away as she sees the look on my face. “Well, I don’t envy her having Lucy do her hair. Between you and me, Lucy’s a sourpuss. Always complaining.” She says this as Darlene returns.
“Louise, don’t say that. You know Lucy has a perfectly good reason for being cranky. She’s bitter, and I don’t blame her after what that husband of hers did to her.”
“I know it, but she shouldn’t take it out on everyone else.”
“Her clients like her fine,” Darlene says. “Now, if I’m going to get you out of here in time, you’d better sit down.”
The woman scurries back to the shampoo chair. Darlene hands me a piece of paper. “Here’s Lucy’s phone number and address. I don’t even know if she’s home today. She might have gone away for the weekend. I usually try to get out of town on my days off.”
Darlene walks over to her client’s chair and turns on the water with enough force that I’m surprised the client doesn’t protest.
Back outside, I retrieve Dusty and climb into the squad car. I get out my phone to call Lucy, but Dusty lunges for the piece of paper with her information written on it. I have to pry it out of his mouth. “What has gotten into you?” I say. His nose is working overtime. I sniff the paper, but I don’t smell anything. Doc England, the vet, told me that dogs have a much greater capacity to smell than people do. Maybe because Loretta has been in the shop, the paper has retained a faint scent from her. Or maybe Dusty is being a teenager.
I decide Dusty did me a favor by grabbing the paper. It’s probably better to surprise the woman rather than calling first anyway. Although I know Bobtail pretty well, I don’t recognize the street name, so I put the address into my phone’s GPS. Even with the directions, it’s hard to find. It’s a small house that must have been built at least fifty years ago. There are two cars parked in front, both small Toyotas.
There is only one house nearby, right next door, in poor repair, with a sagging porch and a roof that looks like a good wind would blow it off. It looks like nobody lives there. Other than that, the nearest neighbors are a block in every direction. I wonder if they’re tearing down these houses for a new subdivision.
The assessment that Lucy Nettleman is a sourpuss was well-founded. She’s Darlene’s age but with a deep cleft in her forehead between her eyes that tells me she’s accustomed to frowning. Besides that, she’s all angles, with a sharp pointed chin, and wrists and elbows that seem to poke out of her skin.
“You the lawman Darlene called me about?”
So much for surprise. “Yes, I’d like to ask you some questions about one of your clients.”
“I don’t know why this couldn’t have waited until this afternoon when I’m in the shop, but I guess you’d better come on in.” She’s dressed in jeans and a loose-fitting shirt, which along with her close-cropped hair and square face gave her a mannish appearance.
Despite her ill-humored manner, her living room is welcoming, with a butter yellow sofa and comfortable easy chairs. Family photos decorate the walls, along with a couple pictures of Bible scenes. I hear kitchen noises from the back of the house. “Someone else here?”
“My daughter. She came over to bake with me. The bread is going to have to be kneaded again soon, so I can’t talk long.”
The scent in the air reminds me of Loretta’s cinnamon rolls, which gives me a pang. “I won’t keep you long.”
She gestures to one of the easy chairs and sits in the other without offering coffee or water.
“Just to be clear, I’d like you to identify these photos for me.”
She recognizes Elaine’s photo an
d confirms that Loretta is her client.
“How long has Loretta been coming to you?”
“Not long. I’ve only done her hair three or four times. I could look up the exact times if you come to the shop later.”
“Why did she choose you?”
Lucy sits back, eyes flashing. “Because I’m pretty much the only stylist around here who trained in a city salon, and I know what I’m doing. I can do modern hairstyles, which not everybody can do.”
“How did she find you?”
She looks past me, lips pursed, considering. “I believe it was Sheila Fenton who told her.”
“And how do you know Sheila?”
There’s a crash from the kitchen. Lucy jumps up and without a word rushes out of the room. I don’t hear individual words, but I hear Lucy’s tone, fussing at her daughter.
When she returns, Lucy’s face is red. She stays standing. “What do you actually need from me?”
“I understand that you don’t want to take the time to talk to me, but I’m afraid you’re going to have to. We have a woman who was murdered and another woman missing, and I don’t want her to be the next victim. The missing woman is your client. I’m sorry if you’re inconvenienced.”
I don’t usually lose my temper, but in this case I can’t help it, and it works to my advantage. She creeps back to the chair she vacated and eases into it. “All right, I didn’t mean to be short with you. My daughter is all thumbs in the kitchen, and I hate to leave her alone too long. I’ll do my best to help you, though, as long as you don’t mind if I run off to check on her every now and then.”
“It won’t take me long. I was asking how you know Sheila, the woman who introduced Loretta to you.”
“We’re all Baptists. The Jarrett Creek Baptist Church Ladies’ Circle was the guest of Bobtail First Baptist—this was in October and Loretta came. She said she had gone over to Houston and gotten a new hairstyle and wanted to know if anybody around here could copy her new style. Sheila has been a customer of mine for a long time. She likes to keep up on the latest styles, so she comes to me. She told Loretta I could do it.”
“How long have you worked for Darlene’s Beauty Shop?”
The question was innocent enough, but she flushes bright red. “I went to work for Darlene last summer.”
“Where were you before that?”
She thrusts her chin out. “Before that I had my own shop. But my husband ran off with my money, and I couldn’t make enough money to keep it going. After a while, I had to close up and go to work for Darlene.”
That explains Darlene’s reference to Lucy’s bitterness at her husband. “How is that working out?”
“Darlene’s okay. She has a clean shop, which not everybody does. I’d like to be closer into town, but I had to take whatever job I could get in a hurry.”
Her daughter starts humming in the kitchen, which makes Lucy give a quick glance in that direction. It’s an annoying sound, high and tuneless.
“Can you tell me if Loretta and Elaine Farquart knew each other?”
She shakes her head slowly. “I’m sorry, but I don’t have any idea. I don’t know either of them personally, so I can’t tell you whether they were acquainted.”
I remember Amy telling me that Elaine wasn’t much of a churchgoer. “Did Elaine ever come to any of your Baptist activities?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Did Loretta ever mention to you that she had joined a dating website?”
“I believe she did.” Her cheeks grow pink, and I wonder whether she’s embarrassed at the idea that a woman Loretta’s age would look to strangers for a date.
“Do you recall what she said?”
She gives a thin-lipped smile. “If I remembered everything my clients said to me, I wouldn’t have room for my own thoughts.”
“She never mentioned any men in particular who she planned to go out with?”
“Not that I recall.”
Suddenly Lucy’s daughter appears at the door to the living room, looking frazzled. Although she looks like Lucy, she’s bigger. Her apron and hands are covered with flour, with patches of flour on her face. “Mamma, this dough doesn’t look right.”
“I’m sure it’s fine.”
“No, it’s not! It’s a mess.” The girl has her hands on her hips, and she’s practically yelling.
Lucy jumps up, glancing at me and then back to her daughter, torn between the two of us. “It’s all right. I’m coming right now.”
I stand up. “I’ll let you get back to your baking. Do you know how I can get in touch with Sheila Fenton?”
Lucy edges in her daughter’s direction. “Her information will be at the shop. Darlene keeps all the records.”
I thank her and leave my card on an end table. “If you think of anything or hear something that might be of interest, I’d appreciate a call.”
“Mamma, I need you now!”
“I can see myself out,” I say.
I drive away, thinking that Lucy has her hands full with her demanding daughter. At least I’ve found a tiny link between Elaine and Loretta, but it’s not enough. Maybe I can find out more from Sheila Fenton.
Darlene is cutting someone’s hair while another woman sits under the dryer and yet another is sitting in a chair reading a magazine, flicking the pages as if they have offended her. As busy as she is, Darlene is once again impatient at my request for information, this time about Sheila Fenton. She brings a rolodex from the back room and thrusts it at me. “It’s in there.”
CHAPTER 22
Another dead end. Sheila Fenton is perfectly willing to cooperate, but she doesn’t know a thing about Loretta. She says the only time she ever met her was that time when she introduced her to Lucy. She praises Lucy’s skills, and she does have a nice-looking head of hair, so I guess she’s right that Lucy knows what she’s doing. As much as I know about it.
After I talk to Sheila, I swing by the Bobtail Police Department to see whether my friend Wallace is in. He is, and I tell him I’m about at the end of my ideas. “Short of going house to house and knocking on doors, I don’t know what else to do.”
“I saw the flyers all over town. You haven’t gotten anything from that?”
I shake my head. I’m so discouraged I can hardly talk.
“That’s what Hogarth says too. They don’t have a clue what happened to Mrs. Farquart. Whoever took those women had it all worked out. Look, you know as well as I do that you have to keep poking at things and hope something comes of it.”
And hope it isn’t too late. I have an awful feeling that if it wasn’t Loretta in peril, I’d be freer with my thinking. My anxiety about her has impeded my ability to reason things out.
I head back to Jarrett Creek. It doesn’t help when I get a phone call from Maria wanting to know whether I had any luck and then, barely keeping her criticism to herself, insinuating that if she had been there to talk to the two hairdressers, she probably would have gotten more out of them than I did.
“You could be right,” I say, probably more sharply than I intended.
I’m hungry, but I don’t feel like stopping at Town Café. Instead, I go home to fix a sandwich. It’s there that I get the first good news of the day.
“Is this Chief Craddock?” It’s a woman’s voice that sounds almost familiar, with an exaggerated drawl.
“It is. How can I help you?”
“Are you at home or at work?”
“I’m home.”
“You can help me by staying right where you are, so I can come over there and jump your bones.”
I burst out laughing. “Are you back?”
“Yes, and it’s a good thing you guessed it was me, otherwise I would have thought you were ready to hop in the sack with any woman who called.”
“Just get over here,” I say.
“I’m calling you from the gas station. I was afraid I’d run out of gas two blocks from your house. I’ll be there in five minutes.”
If a
nything can momentarily distract me from my troubles, it’s having Wendy come squealing in through my front door and wrapping her arms around my neck as she kisses me like it’s the first kiss she has ever had. Then she has to crouch down and pay attention to Dusty, who is delirious with happiness at seeing her.
Only after we’ve gone through a proper greeting, in the bedroom, does she ask me whether we’ve found Loretta.
“No word.”
“Oh, no.” She gets up and starts putting on her clothes. “I feel guilty having fun with you while she’s . . .”
I put my hand up to stop her. “Hush. I’m trying to savor this moment. I’ve been a wreck, and I’m trying not to dwell on what might be happening to her.”
She sits down on the side of the bed and runs her hand over my chest. “You’re right. It doesn’t do any good to let your imagination run wild.”
I smile because her curly hair has sprung out of its clip. “Speaking of wild.” I reach up and ruffle her hair.
We haven’t had lunch. I make ham sandwiches, which we take out on the porch.
“Would it help if you told me the details of what you’ve done to find Loretta?”
She has put her hair back in a short ponytail, and she looks at me with such earnest concern that I can’t help thinking about the women I’ve talked to this morning who hardly could be bothered. Wendy is a good person.
I tell her everything that has happened, not only with regard to Loretta, but including the Baptist minister’s power play with the rodeo and the brothers who have been at each other’s throats—except when they were flying their toy drone.
She’s quiet. She knows how to listen. “I know it sounds silly,” she says when I’m done, “but part of me thinks you might be right—the only way you’re going to find Loretta is to knock on doors.”
“It doesn’t sound silly, but it’s impossible. She could be anywhere— Bobtail, Bryan, right here in Jarrett Creek, or anywhere in between.” I picture the acres of land, often dotted with lonely farmhouses, or the sprawl of houses that spreads out from the center of Bobtail and Bryan.
