Of course, Bevin had the best hair in town. She had the best everything in town—or as close as anyone could come to the best. With her brilliant red hair, extraordinary face, and Barbie-doll figure, Bevin Thompson was the envy of all who knew her.
Trina returned with wonderful news. “Muffy will be working on your hair, Colleen! She’s fabulous at making curls go away! You’re so lucky she’s free! And I’ll be around to supervise,” she said.
I had hoped to have some private time to talk to Trina, but with the technician taking charge of my hair, I wasn’t certain it would happen.
An hour and change into the treatment, Muffy took a breather before the next step in the straightening process began. I found plenty of time to talk to Trina.
“Dear God! How long does this take? I’ve been sitting here for days for end!” I complained.
Trina laughed. “You have at least an hour to go. Muffy still has to flat-iron you, and then you’ll need the solution rinsed out, a conditioning mask, and of course you’ll want your hair trimmed and styled. I’ll be doing the trimming and styling myself.”
I glanced in the mirror and stopped myself from frowning. My hair looked pretty flat as it was, and I wasn’t at all sure anymore that having super-sleek hair was the look for me.
“This is all really great,” I lied. “I’d love to get the process down step-by-step for our readers.” Bevin, as if on cue, handed me my pocketbook, and I pulled out my notebook and a pen. “Does it always take this long to get straight hair?”
Trina laughed. “It’s not the kind of thing you’d want to rush. If you’d like, I can give you a brochure that explains the process. Make sure you mention our Brazilian Blowout process is formaldehyde-free.”
That sounded pretty good to me. I hated the thought of my hair being straightened by stuff meant to preserve removed internal organs. “Terrific. You know, I originally had an appointment with Dizzie Oliver to get this done. Of course, we all know why my hair was so curly when I first walked in here.”
Trina shook her head. “Awful. Simply ghastly.”
“Did you know Dizzie well?” I asked. “Were you two friends?”
“No, we were more acquaintances than friends,” Trina explained. “I guess we were competitors, but not in that really nasty way some people are. We were very different types. She was, well, extremely gregarious … and I have to admit, a little on the loud side. Very Central Jersey.”
I bristled at the comment. I wondered who this alluring, plastic-looking creature thought she was anyway? I could understand why someone like Trina would consider Dizzie a bit uncouth. But I could also see that big-mouth Dizzie Oliver didn’t have a fake bone in her body, while Trina Cranford was nothing but phony from her dark brown roots all the way down to her acrylic toenails.
“But you knew each other,” I continued to pry.
“Oh, yes. I knew both of the Olivers. Dizzie, of course, but I met her husband, Matthew Oliver, through the Tranquil Harbor Chamber of Commerce. He fixed my furnace when I moved here last year in the absolute dead of winter. He came out to the house in a near blizzard. It took him hours and hours to fix it. I was just so grateful.”
Really? I thought. How grateful?
“Dizzie was also a member,” she continued. “We were the only two full-service salons in town. Of course, now there’s just me—unless you count that little salon, that ridiculous place on the shady side of town—Short and Long of It.”
I hadn’t heard of Short and Long of It. “What happens there?” I asked.
“They mostly cater to people who actually walk in off the street for a haircut. Their stylists wet hair, cut it, and send their clients, if you could call them clients, on their merry way. I think their customers must be very poor, or they have the world’s tightest purse strings!”
I figured I’d be one of their clients in a year’s time, maybe less, if I didn’t go full-time at the paper soon.
“I’d better send your tech over. You’re ready for the next step,” Trina said. She left us in search of Muffy the technician. I looked at Bevin.
“She’s a cow,” Bevin whispered.
I laughed out loud.
“Now, girls, you’re having entirely too much fun,” Muffy told us, hurrying over. “We need to rinse you out and do that conditioning, Colleen. Let’s get you started.”
After all the processing was done, I was led to a chair for a trim and a blowout. Bevin followed me every step of the way, with her face screwed up in an ugly frown. As promised, Trina came back to work on me.
She ran her talons through my newly-straight hair. “Lovely job,” she muttered. “Simply gorgeous. Muffy is one of the very best—a true artist!”
I glanced in the mirror. I looked like one of those Afghan hounds people go crazy for at the Westminster Dog Show. Though I hated my insane, abundant curls, it was clear the arrow-straight look wasn’t for me.
“Is there some way you could trim it that would give it a little more body and bounce?” I asked Trina.
“Well, of course, my little darling. Hair is all about bounce and flow, isn’t it?” she said.
Bevin snorted from the chair next to mine. Trina gave her a long sideways look before she began cutting.
A half an hour later, the damage had been done. I looked at myself in the mirror and bit my lower lip to keep from crying.
Everything looked flat. My hair did glisten with amazing shine, but that’s where the beauty of it ended. The sleek look did nothing for my face. Clearly, I was meant to have curls.
“What do you think?” Trina asked, turning the chair and offering me a hand-held mirror to check out the back. “Amazing, isn’t it? Truly amazing!”
“I …” I began, but couldn’t finish. There were no words.
Trina smiled. “I know. I know. It simply takes your breath away.”
“Like a punch in the gut,” Bevin mumbled.
* * *
Bevin dropped me off at home, where I picked up the Sentra and drove myself to the newspaper office. I knew when Willy Rojas saw me, he’d torture me with nasty hair comments for the rest of the day.
I steeled myself and walked through the door and into the newsroom.
“Oh my God!” Meredith Mancini muttered. She was standing in the aisle, munching on a cookie and shooting the breeze with Mark Doran, the sports editor.
“You’re kidding, right?” Doran said. “I mean, really, you’re kidding.”
Everyone stood up in their cubicles to see what was going on. There were a few giggles. I even heard a long, hearty laugh from across the room. Calypso Trent, the normally reserved head of accounting, covered her mouth in an attempt to hold it in, but it was clear she thought the sleek new me wasn’t making the grade.
Ken Rhodes stepped out of his office. “What’s going on around here?” he asked.
Meredith pointed in my direction.
“Seriously?” he said when he saw me. “You mean we’re footing the bill for that?”
I had had enough. “So it didn’t turn out the way I wanted it! Big freaking deal!”
Ken beckoned me to join him in his office with a curl of his finger. I hated when people did that, like I was some kind of dog—though with my Afghan hound hair, it wasn’t entirely inappropriate. I went to Meredith’s cubicle and found a rubber band to make a ponytail out of my newly tamed mane.
“This is your fault, you know,” I said, slipping into a chair in front of his desk. “You forced me to go there!”
“Just how much did that set us back?” he inquired.
I dug in my pocketbook and retrieved the corporate card and a receipt from my wallet. “Four hundred dollars,” I told him, tossing them both on his desk.
His face went so deeply, richly purple that I thought for sure he had burst his aorta. He took a few seconds to recover and actually smiled, or maybe grimaced, depending on whether or not his heart had stopped beating.
“Dear God, Colleen,” he said. “How do I justify this as an
expense?”
“You told me to get my hair straightened because it would give me more time to talk to Trina Cranford. It took over three hours. Unfortunately, most of the work was done by the hair technician, Candy, or Pumpkin, or something like that.”
“You don’t even remember who worked on your hair?” he asked.
I took out my notes and flipped the pages. “Oh, her name’s Muffy. It figures.”
Ken shook his head. “Did you manage any time at all with the Cranford woman?”
“I did. The Cranford woman is no lady, though she tries her best to fake it. What a complete snob! And unless I’m mistaken, I think she had something going on with the Hot Air King at one point last year.”
“Maybe,” Ken said noncommittally.
“Well, Dizzie and Matthew were married a few years ago, so maybe he had this high-maintenance chick on the side. I’d love to learn a little more about that. He doesn’t really seem like the type, though. He cut money off his installation bill for my furnace and air.”
“That doesn’t automatically make him a model husband. Besides, your column is about crime, not affairs,” Ken told me. “What about that other body, the one in the field?”
“I haven’t had the chance to write much about that yet. I was thinking about doing a tie-in. Maybe something about how two recent, suspicious deaths are tarnishing Tranquil Harbor’s fine reputation.”
“Yeah. Right.”
“They have to be connected,” I said. “I mean, two really odd deaths in the span of a couple of weeks?” I thought about what the mechanic told me. “That guy at the airport. What’s his name?” I flipped through a few more pages until I found my notes about the flying-lessons story. “Drake Tuttle. Let’s see. He told me Hank Barber’s wife walked out on him a couple of weeks before we spotted that body from the plane. That was his wife’s body, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, that was her body in the field. Leona Barber. You should know this, Colleen. You should have been all over this since day one.”
I had never been good dealing with criticism, even when it was warranted. “Look, there’s a lot going on right now, and I’m doing my best.”
“I don’t want excuses. I want you to start doing the legwork on these deaths. Your column’s due tomorrow. Think you can you manage that?”
I closed my notebook, got out of the chair, and headed for the door. “Yeah, I can manage that,” I told him. My feathers were ruffled. I had thought Rhodes was a surly but decent guy with who also just happened to be sexy and debonair. The last five minutes, though, gave me another view. At the moment, he seemed nothing more than a run-of-the-mill, sarcastic, unsympathetic boss.
12
The medical examiner released what remained of Leona Barber’s remains, but I didn’t have a reason to go to her wake. I knew the casket would be closed. How could it not be? There was no point attending if I couldn’t examine the body. Besides, I barely knew Hank, and I had never met Leona.
I let sufficient time pass before contacting the airport guys to finish the story on flying lessons and, of course, interviewing Hank would be killing two birds with one stone, so to speak. I would be able to question him, as well as Drake Tuttle, about Leona’s death.
The temperature was a delicious seventy degrees when I drove out to Tranquil Harbor Airport during the second week of October. The leaves on several of the smaller trees, though still mostly green, had begun to turn. Hints of bright red and orange could be seen on a few of the uppermost branches. Humidity was low—not that it mattered anymore. My super-straight hair was gathered into a ponytail, just as it had been every day since Trina Cranford and her young technician chemically flattened every curl on my head.
I coaxed Hank Barber out of his tiny office and into the snack bar, where we had more room to chat. We sat at a worn-out table sipping coffee between questions. I began the interview with the most pressing issue—his wife, Leona.
I wracked my brain for a delicate way to approach the subject. Nothing came to me. I figured the direct approach would have to do. “I heard Leona died from massive trauma. Is that what you were told?”
“Massive trauma?’ Hank asked. He leaned over the table and took a glimpse at my notes. “Every bone in her body was shattered.”
I winced, and corrected my mistake at once. “What was the conclusion? Do the police have any theories?”
“Just one, as far as I know. They were impact injuries.”
“Impact injuries?” I asked, feigning surprise.
“From hitting the ground.”
A funny, hideous thought came to mind, and I begged God to forgive me for having it. It wasn’t the fall that killed Hank Barber’s wife—it was the landing.
“There’s no chance at all she could have sustained those injuries beforehand?” I asked.
Hank covered his face with both hands, muffling his reply. “Either way would be terrible, don’t you think? I mean, was she beaten unconscious and thrown from a plane? Dear God. Though I guess the other alternative is even worse. What if she was conscious when she … fell?”
I felt like a heel for questioning him, but I needed answers. “Excuse me for asking this, but were you and your wife having problems when she left?”
He looked at me like I was crazy. “She walked out on me. Of course we were having problems.”
The man’s demeanor told me he was clearly shaken. Everyone knew to look to the person closest to the victim as the prime suspect, with the husband being the very first in line. If what Hank Barber told me was true, how could he have possibly tossed his wife from a plane he was flying? Even if Leona had been unconscious at the time, just the physical act of pushing her from a plane he was piloting would have been a pretty tricky process. I supposed he could have put her in the seat, left the door ajar, and, once airborne, tilted the plane to such a degree as to have gravity take over and cause Leona to spill out. But that theory seemed dicey. Too many things could go wrong, including Leona falling twenty feet rather than several hundred. Hank seemed too conscientious a pilot to leave something like that to chance.
A more logical case could be made for Leona and Hank fighting inside the plane, with Leona accidentally falling out during the struggle. But how much fighting could have taken place? Hank would have been busy flying the plane. Besides, he wouldn’t have deliberately shoved her out, only to have her body land in the vast field that was part of the airport property. That would have been stupid on his part, and he appeared to have more brains than to do something like that.
He didn’t seem to have it in him to kill his wife, accidentally or otherwise. I simply couldn’t picture him being involved in something so horrendous.
“I think we should change the subject,” I said. “Let’s focus on that advertorial instead.”
Hank Barber looked relieved. “Good idea. I’ll give you a rundown on the flying lessons. Drake can help out with some of it.”
I flipped my notebook to the section where I began my notes on the original article. I knew I would go back to the notes on Leona Barber’s death by the time lunch rolled around.
* * *
I thought the best person to shed some light on the particulars of Leona Barber’s death would be Ron Haver. I left the airport and drove straight to New Brunswick. The usual bottleneck going north on Route 18 had cleared by the time I reached New Street, and getting into the city was no problem. Ron’s office, located on Kirkpatrick Street, was only a short ride once I got off the highway. I pulled into an empty parking space and fed the meter. I thought I could use the old I just happened to be in the neighborhood excuse to lure him out for lunch when I called him to come outside and join me.
“Looks like rain,” he said. He glanced up at the sky, then at the outfit I wore. I was dressed in my standard sunnier-weather attire—yoga pants, a T-shirt, and snow white sneakers.
“I interviewed Hank Barber this morning,” I told him. “The sun was bright and shining. You must have an effect on the weather or some
thing.”
“Yeah, Colleen. And you just happened to be in the neighborhood after interviewing Hank Barber. What a coinkydink!”
“I drove up here to get a pair of fall shoes. There’s a FootPrints over on George Street,” I said.
“That’s a good hike from here. Good thing you wore sneakers!”
Okay, my excuse for being in New Brunswick hadn’t been a brilliant deception, but it wasn’t bad for a spur-of-the-moment lie either. “You caught me. I’d thought maybe you’d let me pick your brain a little and have lunch with me. Your treat, of course.”
He offered a lopsided grin. “How can I refuse such a gracious offer?”
We walked down a block and entered one of the cute little restaurants the city seemed to have saturated itself with over the past few years. This particular eatery distinguished itself from the rest because the clientele consisted of mostly lawyers and investigators that stopped in for a very quick lunch and a long cold beer.
Ron led me to a table in the back of the restaurant, away from nosy colleagues. The waiter came and took our order, and we sat back to wait for our drinks to arrive.
I reached in my purse to retrieve my notebook.
“Don’t even think about taking notes, Colleen,” he warned me, anticipating my actions.
“Um, no, just looking for gum,” I said.
“Yeah. Right.”
“Fine. No notes.” I closed my pocketbook. “I’ll just ask you some questions. I guess I shouldn’t expect an answer for most of them.”
“Good thinking,” he said.
“Is there any chance at all I can see the pictures Kate took with her cell phone when we found Dizzie?”
“No, there isn’t.”
“How about this? What, exactly, were the circumstances of Leona Barber’s death?”
“Impact injuries and massive trauma.”
I smiled sweetly, needing Ron to confirm the information Hank Barber had shared with me earlier. “Trauma from what?”
Hide nor Hair (A Jersey Girl Cozy Mystery Book 2) Page 9
