“Oh.” I felt myself blush. “Thanks.”
She bent her head to examine the ends. “Tell me what you’re thinking, Ivy.”
“Well, I’ve always debated cutting it short, but I think it might just stick straight out to the sides if—”
Her hands fisted around locks of my hair. “You cannot cut it! You can’t. People would kill for hair like yours.”
Not that that was a good reason to keep it long if I didn’t want to, but I smiled, flattered. No one had ever been so enthusiastic about my untamed mop. “Oh. Well. It was just a thought. I haven’t had it short in a long time—”
“With good reason! It’s perfect as it is.”
I pressed my lips together for a moment processing the compliment. “A trim, then?”
Gretchen grabbed a white towel from a stack on the shelf behind her. She wrapped it around my shoulders and secured it with a metal clip. “Perfect. You don’t need anything more than that.” She pointed to the low shelf on the table in front of me. “You can leave your purse there. Let’s go wash and condition; then we’ll clean up the ends.”
Okay, so it was happening now. I felt nervous but followed her. At the washing station, I sat in one of the black reclining chairs. Gretchen used a lever to raise the footrest and I leaned back, my neck supported by the horseshoe cutout of the sink behind me.
“I’m so glad I came in,” I said.
“Me, too!” She sprayed warm water over my head, taking care not to spatter it on my face. “Are you a local?”
I closed my eyes as she guided the water to moisten every strand of my hair. “I am. Born and raised, although I was living in Texas for a long time. I came back here pretty recently.”
“Well, I’m glad you came in! I love meeting new people. I’m kinda new here, too. I came to Santa Sofia about three years go.”
“What brought you here?”
She smiled, a little dreamily. “We lived in Kalamazoo. Long way from here, but my dad brought me a few times when I was really little. I fell in love with this town then and always knew I’d come back.”
That I understood. “I couldn’t wait to get away when I was younger. Sometimes you can’t appreciate what you have until you leave it behind.”
“Isn’t that the truth?! That is a great piece of wisdom, Ivy! I’m going to remember that.”
“I never knew this salon was here. I live in the historic district. I walked here this morning, in fact. I don’t know how I missed this place.”
“You discovered it now, that’s what matters, right?” Gretchen pumped a dollop of shampoo into one hand, rubbed it together with her other hand, and began sudsing my head.
The head massage during a shampoo was, in my opinion, the best part of a salon appointment. I was after information about Nessa Renchrik, but Gretchen’s magic fingers almost made me forget.
Almost, but not quite.
“That’s right. I’m here now.” I sighed, contentedly. Gretchen was a master shampooer, her fingertips, then her fingernails, moving along my scalp. I enjoyed it for a few minutes before I said, “Nessa Renchrik came to you, didn’t she?”
Her fingers slowed for a beat, the pressure lessening before she caught herself and amped up again. “Yes. She did. Did you know her?”
Her voice had lost the built-in enthusiasm it had held a moment ago. No exclamation points. I needed to reassure her, so I didn’t lose her. “No. No. We have a mutual friend, that’s all. I told her I was looking for someone to do my hair. She mentioned you.”
Gretchen’s hands relaxed back into their movements, but she didn’t say anything more about Nessa. I tried again. “Really tragic about her death.”
“Mmm. Yeah,” she said as she finished the shampoo, rinsing it out with warm water before working in conditioner. “We’ll let it sit for a few minutes,” she said.
“How did you meet Nessa?” I asked, trying again.
Gretchen leaned her back against the wall and folded her arms over her baby bulge. “I remember that day like it was yesterday!”
I exhaled. The exclamation points were back. “Oh really. Why?”
“Rachel—that’s her daughter—called to schedule the appointment. She wanted an updo for homecoming. The nanny brought her. Carmen. But she couldn’t stay, so Mrs. Renchrik picked her up. She was not happy about it, either, let me tell you. I felt bad for Rachel. Mrs. Renchrik wasn’t the type to yell, but she always had a way of making you feel pretty bad.”
“Mmm.”
“Carmen was a saint. And now Fernanda.” She shook her head. “I couldn’t do it.”
“But Nessa started coming to you, so she liked you?”
Gretchen pushed off the wall and came back to the washbasin. She ran the water until it was warm, then rinsed the conditioner from my hair. “I wouldn’t say that. Honestly, I don’t think she really liked anyone. Definitely not me!”
“But my friend Candy, she said Nessa came to you for a couple of years. Why would she keep coming to you if she didn’t like you?”
She hesitated before saying, “To be honest, I don’t really know. She never seemed to like what I did to her hair and she always left me the crappiest tips.”
I looked up at her from my reclined position. Was she holding something back? “Why did you keep taking her appointments?”
Gretchen patted her swollen belly. “I can’t be choosy right now, you know?” She squeezed the excess water from my hair, wound it up in a towel, and led me back to her cutting station. “Look, she didn’t like her own family. That first homecoming updo I did for Rachel, it looked good. I mean, it looked gooood! But Mrs. Renchrik hated it. She said it make Rachel look like fifteen going on twenty-three.” She laughed. “Twenty-three like me! And Carmen. Poor thing. I got to know her pretty well. She always brought Rachel. Mrs. Renchrik never did. She only picked her up that once. Carmen did everything for Mrs. Renchrik, only to be deported. Mrs. Renchrik didn’t lift a finger to help Carmen. Oh man, Rachel was so upset when Carmen left. So sad.”
I thought about this as Gretchen finished towel drying my hair, then combed through it until it was tangle-free. I hadn’t thought it was possible, but my estimation of Nessa lowered even more than it had already been. Estranged from her own family. More enemies than friends. Even if she’d had a part in it, she hadn’t even pretended to help her children’s nanny when she’d been picked up for deportation. I knew for a fact that Nessa Renchrik and I would never have been friends.
Gretchen got to work, talking all the while. She’d completely warmed up to the subject and didn’t need any other prompting from me. “Sometimes I wonder if Carmen is better off now. I mean she didn’t want to go back to Mexico, I’m sure. She was here for a long time. You know, she practically raised Rachel and her little brother. That’s what Rachel told me, anyway. And then she was just gone. Can you imagine? She was just ripped from the life she’d made here. At least she didn’t have to deal with Mrs. Renchrik anymore. That’s the silver lining, I guess, if there is one.”
“How long had she worked for the Renchriks?” I asked.
“Oh wow. Since before Tate was born, I think. A long time.”
Candy had said Tate was in fifth grade. That made him around ten years old. If Carmen had been with the family since before the boy was born, that was a long, long time. Gretchen was right. To be ripped from the family you’d worked for for so long would be heartbreaking. My thoughts drifted to Sylvia. She’d been torn from her own family, her job, the country she’d been raised in and called home. I sighed. There had to be a better way.
The hairdresser with the station beyond the mirror appeared out of nowhere with a client. Her chipper voice carried over to us.
“Hey, Ali!” Gretchen called.
Ali poked her head around the mirror and waved. She was tall and rail thin. Half her hair was shorn close to her scalp, but the other half, which started at a side part, was dyed pink and hung artfully down one side of her face, falling loosely over one eye. “Heya
, Gretchen. How’s little G doing?”
Gretchen laughed, glanced at me, and pointed to her belly. “That’s what we call the baby. I don’t know if it’s a boy or a girl.”
“Little G. That’s for ‘the Gymnast,’ not for ‘Gretchen,’ ” Ali said to me with a wink. “That baby does somersaults like you wouldn’t believe.”
Gretchen patted her belly. “Needless to say, I don’t sleep much. But I don’t mind!” She looked at Ali. “Full day for you?”
“Nope. Leaving at three today. Rendezvous with my baby daddy.”
In the mirror’s reflection, Gretchen’s eyebrows arched. “Really? I thought he was out of the picture.”
“He wants to be, but I’m not going to let him off the hook that easy. I got in touch with him.” To me, she said, “He didn’t want to have anything to do with us, but it’s his kid, too, right?”
“Right,” I said, loving the camaraderie here.
Gretchen clapped, bouncing on her tiptoes. “You go, Ali. You got this.”
Ali winked at us both before ducking back behind the mirror and returning to her client.
Gretchen leaned down, her voice low. “No secrets in a hair salon.”
“I guess not,” I said with a laugh, hoping that would work in my favor.
A moment later, Gretchen began cutting my hair, combing through long strands, pulling the curls straight, then using her sharp scissors to trim the ends. Next, she angled her scissors down to thin each section.
Gretchen was very train-of-thought, talking about whatever came to mind. I sat back and listened, waiting for an opportunity to ask another question about Nessa. The pregnant hairdresser was the furthest thing from a murderer I could imagine, but it was possible she could shed some light on Nessa’s life. Anything that could help direct me to the truth. She started talking about children, her pregnancy, and her boyfriend, who wasn’t very interested in the baby they were having, then moved on to her apartment and the obnoxiously loud neighbors they had living over them. “They don’t walk. They clomp.” She dropped the strand of my hair she’d been ready to slide her scissors through and proceeded to stomp in a circle around me. “I mean, I don’t sleep as it is, but how am I supposed to get any with them pounding on my ceiling like that all the time?”
That would be tough. I felt for her. “Have you talked to them about it?”
“Yes! I’ve tried. Hasn’t done one bit of good. I have to say, I ask every one of my clients about this dilemma thinking that maybe someone will have a brilliant idea.” She frowned.
“No?” I asked.
“No.”
She went back to my hair, finishing up the last of the trim. “Ivy! It’s done. I’m going to use a diffuser to keep your curls—”
“Ivy?” a voice called. “Ivy, is that you?”
I knew that voice. “Mrs. Branford?” I said, raising my voice above Ali’s from the next station and the din of hair dryers, chatter, and other salon noises that permeated the air.
“Let me help you,” a woman said with a slight accent, but Mrs. Branford’s voice said, “I’m perfectly fine, Yasamin, but thank you.” I could picture Mrs. Branford waving Yasamin, who I assumed was her hairdresser, away. A moment later, Mrs. Branford appeared from around the corner. Her thin white hair was wound around small curlers lined up in neat rows on her head. Her lime-green velour lounge suit was half-hidden under a navy styling cape. Her pristine white shoes practically glowed. “Ivy Culpepper. Speak of the devil.”
My smile faltered. Mrs. Branford did not speak randomly. “Speak of the devil” meant she’d been discussing something related to me, presumably with Yasamin. Gretchen had just said there were no secrets in a salon. I hoped Mrs. Branford wasn’t spilling any of mine. “Oh?”
Mrs. Branford smiled, her lips thin but amused. “Yasamin is a former student.”
“Who isn’t?” I said with a laugh. To Yasamin, I said, “Nice to meet you.”
Yasamin pulled a chair forward for Mrs. Branford and guided her into it. “You are at the bread shop,” she said. “And a little detective, too, right?”
Her accent, heavy with stressed vowels, was from somewhere in the Middle Eastern region. Persian would be my guess. Iranian. The skin of her forehead was pulled taut and had a sheen to it. I couldn’t detect a single smile line at her eyes. Botox, I thought. Her dark hair had a burgundy wash over it. I placed her somewhere in her fifties, but I couldn’t pinpoint early, middle, or late. She came across as hip and younger than she was.
“That’s mostly right,” I said.
“And important to the sheriff, this lady says.” She grinned at Mrs. Branford “This one is your biggest fan. I have heard so much about you. So much.”
I shot Mrs. Branford a look, but she just bent her head forward slightly and patted her curlers. “Yasamin, how you do go on,” she said, but to me, she added, “You are too modest, my dear.”
Gretchen’s eyes popped wide. She stood back, her hands once again clasped over her round belly. “You’re a detective?”
I fluttered my hands. “No, no, I’m not. I’m a photographer and I work at the bread shop. That’s it.”
“Pshaw,” Mrs. Branford said, a proud grin on her face. “You have helped the sheriff time and time again.”
“Only because she’s my friend,” I said slowly, hoping Mrs. Branford would get the hint to stop.
I hoped in vain. Gretchen picked up the conversation. She was no fool and put two and two together in no time flat. “Oh wow! You’re trying to figure out who killed Nessa Renchrik, aren’t you?” Her voice seemed to bellow throughout the salon.
Ali poked her head around the mirror wall again and looked at her friend. “That crazy bit—” She stopped herself just in time. “I mean, that woman was horrible to you. And you, of all people—”
Ali broke off when she looked at Gretchen and saw her eyes turning glassy.
It was true. You should be kind to your hairdresser. They kind of hold your life in their hands—at least until a bad haircut grows out.
“How was she horrible to you, dear?” Mrs. Branford asked. Her voice was sweet, but I knew she was gathering information. She knew I was worried about Captain York’s laser focus on Miguel and she was on a mission to help me get to the truth.
Gretchen blinked away her tears and gave a little shrug. “It doesn’t matter.”
“Tell them,” Ali urged.
Gretchen just shook her head. “It doesn’t matter what she was like to me. She thought she was a good mother, but she wasn’t. I thought she wanted me to help her understand Rachel. She’d talk a lot about her, you know? Like she was trying to prove she knew her daughter. That she loved her. How can you just ignore your own child?” She swallowed and swiped at her eyes. “Some people aren’t meant to be mothers,” she said, gently circling her hand over her belly, “but I’ll be there for Rachel.”
Chapter 17
Gretchen wrapped up my hair, giving me just enough time to speed walk home with Agatha, then race across town to the law offices of Brendall and Choken. They were a small outfit situated in a business park that also housed a physical therapy practice, a medical supply company, and a printing company.
Before I’d raced out of my house, I’d changed from the jeans and T-shirt I’d worn to the salon. Now, with my hair full of product, the curls controlled and in place, and wearing a pair of black skinny pants and a sheer floral-patterned blouse with a cami underneath, I felt ready to face Lulu Sanchez-Patrick.
The receptionist greeted me with a pleasant smile. “How can I help you?”
“I have an eleven o’clock appointment with Ms. Sanchez-Patrick,” I said, matching her smile and raising her by exposing my teeth. “Ivy Culpepper.”
She checked her computer. “I’ll let her know you’re here. If you’d like to have a seat,” she said, indicating the armchairs in the waiting area.
I thanked her and picked up a magazine before sitting. It was a current copy of Newsweek, the label addressed to the
firm at this address. Impressive. Often, the address labels were either cut out or blacked out because the magazines went to a person rather than the company that later displayed them. Good to know that Brendall and Choken spent some of their clients’ money to keep them entertained while they waited.
I flipped through the pages, stopping here and there to read a story or sidebar that caught my eye, but eventually replaced the magazine on the table and pulled out my phone. I called up my texting app and sent a message to Olaya. She was probably busy finishing up the daily baking and getting ready to start the prep for the Spring Fling. She might not see the text right away—or at all—but I sent it anyway: At an appointment. I’ll be in to help soon.
To my surprise, three dots appeared, followed by a single-word response: Bueno.
I tucked my phone away just as the door between the waiting area and the offices opened up. A woman stepped out, her eyes zeroing in on me. She was curvy in all the right ways. She wore a slim navy skirt, pale pink blouse, and fitted navy blazer, along with high-heeled pumps. Highlighted streaks artfully flowed through her auburn locks. Frankly, she was gorgeous, and even with my newly trimmed and styled hair and the dressy clothes I’d changed into, I felt dowdy in comparison.
“Ms. Culpepper?”
I nodded and stood.
Her lipsticked mouth curved into a welcoming smile. “I’m Lulu Sanchez-Patrick. You can call me Lulu. Come on back.”
I tried to picture her together with her husband, Joseph Patrick. He was tall and graying, with piercing eyes. She was Eva Mendes in a suit. They were a power couple, through and through.
Death Gone A-Rye Page 15
