The Dead-End Job Mysteries Box Set 2

by Elaine Viets

  “Honey is no hooker,” Helen said. “Though I think she married him for his money.”

  “The other problem was his profession,” Margery said, and blew more smoke into the soft night. “His gossip empire embarrassed King’s daughter, Cassie. Some of the women at his former strip club were selling so-called special services, and King was arrested for pimping. His lawyers claimed that King wasn’t responsible for the after-hours activities of his employees, and he had no idea they were engaged in prostitution.

  “No one bought that argument except the jurors. King was acquitted. But his daughter suffered for his sins. He’d sent Cassie to an expensive private school. The students were merciless about her father’s arrest. They taunted her with how the man made his money. They hung strings of king-sized sausages on her locker door, left sex toys in her backpack and condoms in her textbooks.”

  Helen felt a pang of sympathy for Cassie. The young woman had been sulky at the wedding, but she’d loved her father—or so it seemed. “Kids can be cruel,” Helen said. “Didn’t the school step in and stop the harassment?”

  Margery snorted. “Are you kidding? Not when every other daddy and mommy is a lawyer. The headmaster claimed he’d cracked down on the troublemakers, but very little was done. The parents complained that King’s daughter couldn’t take a joke, their kids didn’t mean any harm and, besides, a child with her background did not belong in their fancy school.

  “King wanted to sue the school, or yank out his daughter and send her somewhere else, but his advisors told him it was time to tone down his act. King actually listened, for once. Next thing you know, he announced he was marrying Honey, and he started donating millions to charity.”

  Helen didn’t ask where her landlady got this information. Margery always knew the local gossip.

  “And that solved the problem?” Helen asked.

  “Let’s just say the kids stopped harassing Cassie once their parents had to go to King, begging for their favorite causes. Society managed to hold its nose and accept his dirty money. Cassie was never popular, but her life was better when her daddy changed his ways.”

  “Did he really change?”

  “Not all that much,” Phil said. “King has attracted some very nasty stories. They say he uses sex workers to help gather his gossip. Hookers know who’s unfaithful, who’s kinky and who’s back on drink and drugs.”

  “While we’re on the subject of change,” Margery said, “I have two new tenants for apartment 2C.”

  Helen and Phil groaned.

  “Who did you rent to this time?” Helen asked. “A bank robber? A grave robber? A cradle robber? Or someone who fleeces widows and orphans?”

  “Are their pictures in the post office?” Phil asked.

  “That’s enough,” Margery said. “I do not have crooks in 2C this time.”

  “That’s a first,” Phil said. “You’ve rented to con artists, embezzlers, a fortune-teller who advertises on late-night TV, and assorted thieves. You’ve never had an honest tenant in there since I’ve lived at the Coronado.”

  “These two young men are different,” Margery said. “Josh and Jason are in the construction business. They have special senior discounts. Jason is from Maryland. Josh is from the Midwest, where people still have a work ethic.”

  “Like my ex-husband, Rob?” Helen asked. “He was from St. Louis, Missouri. A drop of that man’s work sweat was so rare, it would cure cancer.”

  “Go ahead and laugh,” Margery said. “You’ll see.”

  Chapter 8

  The woman sitting in Miguel Angel’s chair looked tired. She had dark circles under her eyes and her jawline had a slight sag. Her hair was frizzy and shapeless.

  “Miguel Angel, I don’t know what’s wrong. I look old. I guess I am old—I’m fifty-five. But my husband is complaining that I don’t look good.”

  “Cecilia, you’ve had a stroke and brain surgery,” Miguel Angel said. “You’ve lost your hair, but it’s growing back.”

  “Not fast enough. I exercise and eat healthy, and it still doesn’t do any good.”

  “You’ve been very sick,” Miguel Angel said. “It takes time. Six months ago, you thought you were going to die. Look at you now. Up and walking.”

  “And partly bald,” Cecilia said.

  “Hair grows back,” he said. “But you do not rise from the dead. You’re a fighter.”

  A tear slid down her ravaged cheek. “I’m tired of fighting. I’m thinking about getting a facelift.”

  “No!” Miguel Angel said. “You don’t want a facelift, Cecilia. You’ll look like everyone else. It’s hard to style hair around the facelift scars. And those stretched-out eyes!" He pulled on his own eyelids with his fingers. “Your face has character. Don’t ruin it.”

  “I’m tired of listening to my husband complain about my looks. The world is full of pretty young women on the prowl.”

  “And your husband, is he asking his barber for a makeover?”

  “No,” Cecilia said. “It’s different for a man.”

  “It’s not different,” Miguel Angel said. “We let men get by with more. We tell them they are distinguished when they’re really old.”

  “I used to be a knockout before I got sick,” Cecilia said.

  “And now you are well,” Miguel Angel said. “Anything plastic surgeons can do with a knife, I can do with a brush. I will give you a facelift using makeup. It’s the best kind—no infection, no pain, no swelling, no scars. If you don’t like the new look, you can wash it off.”

  “A washable facelift,” Cecilia said. “I like that idea.”

  “Let’s start by washing your hair. Then I’ll show you some makeup tricks. Phoebe!” Miguel Angel called. There was no response.

  He stalked over to Ana Luisa’s reception desk. “Where is that worthless woman? Find her. Get her on the phone,” he said. “I will wash Cecilia’s hair myself.”

  Cecilia picked up her cane and limped to the washing sinks. Helen carried the woman’s briefcase. Cecilia was a teacher. She never rested at the salon. She packed a case full of papers and education magazines to read, as well as healthy snacks and herbal tea.

  Miguel Angel washed and rinsed Cecilia’s hair, then wrapped her head in a towel. When she was back in his chair, he combed out her damp hair.

  “What are we going to do about my hair?” Cecilia asked. “It’s so thin.”

  “We will fix that, too,” he said. “But let’s start with the makeup first. Helen, bring my case, please.”

  Helen hauled the heavy salon case out of the cabinet in the prep room. Miguel Angel opened it and took out his salon makeup brushes. They were packed in a black container that reminded Helen of the holder for her grandmother’s good silverware. It was like a giant leather envelope, with a slot for each size makeup brush. Some brushes had only a few hairs. Others were thick and fat, and one was a feathery fan.

  Miguel Angel took a wedge sponge and began patting foundation on Cecilia. He took three times as long as Helen would have to cover Cecilia’s face from jaw to hairline. He made sure there was foundation in the creases around her nose and chin, on her forehead, even under and around her eyes.

  Then he picked up a dark brown “studio touch-up stick” and drew lines under Cecilia’s cheekbones, along her jaw, and two lines down her nose. With the clean side of the makeup sponge, he carefully blended the dark lines, creating shadows under her cheekbones and drawing attention away from her slightly sagging jaw.

  “Brilliant,” Cecilia said. “I have cheekbones like a model.”

  Miguel Angel took a fat brush, dipped it in a rose powder blush, and brushed the tops of her real cheekbones with color.

  “Are you going to put concealer under my eyes?” Cecilia said.

  “No, that gives you shiny white rings.” Instead, he blended a tiny amount of concealer at the edge of her eyes, then brushed wheat-colored powder on her eyelids. He lined her lids with dark blue powder. The lines slanted upward, giving her an eye lift
.

  Miguel Angel spent what Helen thought was an ungodly amount of time putting mascara on Cecilia’s lashes, constantly instructing her to look up while he seemed to paint each lash individually. Sometime during the mascara, Phoebe materialized by the chair.

  Miguel glared at her but said nothing. He lined Cecilia’s lips with a neutral lip pencil and painted them a soft rose.

  “I like that lip color,” she said. “The lip gloss tastes like raspberries.”

  Miguel Angel removed one of his huge blowdryers from its holster and dried Cecilia’s hair, pulling on it until it was longer and straighter. Older women’s hair tends to get thin and frizzy, but Miguel knew how to give them the thick, glossy hair of their youth.

  “How do you do that?” Helen said. “My wrists would hurt.”

  “Practice,” Miguel Angel said. “You need strong hands for this job.”

  Cecilia’s hair color was a rich brown, and thanks to Miguel’s shampoo and styling potions, it was shiny. Helen noticed that Cecilia’s hair was thick on the right side, but so thin on the left that her ear showed. Miguel Angel opened a drawer and brought out a fall of brown human hair. He held it against Cecilia’s own hair.

  “Too dark.”

  Miguel Angel rummaged in the drawer for a lighter shade and held it up again.

  “Perfect match,” Cecilia said.

  “Still not right,” Miguel Angel said, though the hair looked okay to Helen.

  He pulled out a third fall. “Perfect.”

  He used the combs in the fall to hold it in place, then accepted the hairpins Phoebe handed him. She passed them gingerly, as if Miguel might bite.

  Miguel brushed some of Cecilia’s own hair over the fall, fluffed and sprayed it, then said, “There. What do you think?”

  “I look ten years younger.” Cecilia smiled for the first time since she’d entered the salon.

  Helen handed Cecilia her blouse on a hanger, and she changed in the dressing room. Ana Luisa gave Cecilia the bill. Helen noticed that Miguel Angel had given her a price break on the makeup lesson and the fall. Cecilia tipped him fifty dollars.

  Cecilia left the salon, wearing her black blouse and jeans. Her limp disappeared. Her walk was a confident strut, and she turned heads up and down Las Olas.

  “Bravo,” Helen said. “But you shaved some money off her bill.”

  “She really can’t afford to come here, but she is a nice person,” Miguel Angel said. “I cried when I thought she was going to die.”

  “You old softie,” Helen said. There it was again: Despite the salon’s hard, chic exterior, Miguel Angel could be unexpectedly kind. He closed his salon case and handed it to Helen to put away.

  “Not everything is about money,” Miguel Angel said. “I can afford to indulge myself sometimes.”

  “So you’re a fairy godmother?” Helen asked.

  “Let’s not talk about sex, please,” he said, and laughed.

  “Is Cecilia’s husband as big a jerk as he sounds?”

  “No. He’s a good man, but he doesn’t understand how he hurts her when he talks about her appearance. Cecilia is getting older, and she’s trying to look good for him, but it’s hard.”

  Helen heard Ana Luisa shout, “Miguel! Quick! The wedding murder is on the noon news.”

  Helen and Miguel had carefully avoided the subject all day, as if talking about King’s death would make the cops materialize in the salon. Now Helen, Miguel Angel and Phoebe crowded into the back prep area, where there was a tiny television. The story was headlined A KING IS DEAD.

  Helen saw shots of King’s palace, a clip from the wedding video, and footage of the hospital where he was pronounced dead. There was also an interview with a police spokesman who said King’s death was murder.

  “The autopsy shows that the victim was alive when he went into the water,” the police spokesman said, “and injuries indicate that he struggled to get out of the pool. The victim was a strong individual, but he was in an intoxicated state, which impaired his ability to fight for his life. The victim drowned in his pool. The coroner has ruled Mr. King Oden’s death a homicide.”

  A reporter interviewed a woman identified as DEATH WEDDING GUEST. “I saw the groom—the dead King—arguing with a woman in a blue dress by the pool. The woman wore high-heeled sandals and had blond hair.”

  Helen groaned. “Miguel Angel, why did you pick blue? Didn’t the bride have any black dresses?”

  “Blue is a better color for me,” he said.

  “They’ll never find the killer now,” Helen said. “Every other woman at that wedding wore a blue dress.”

  “But I’m the one who ran,” Miguel Angel said.

  Helen noticed that Phoebe was hanging on to their words. Miguel Angel noticed that, too.

  “Back to work, everyone,” he said. “We’ve wasted enough time today. Helen, sweep the floor around my chair, will you?”

  “Sure.” Helen picked up a broom.

  “Carolina is here,” Ana Luisa said. “And after her, there’s Ursula.”

  Carolina wanted color, a cut and a blowdry. Her skeletal arms were freckled with liver spots. Helen figured the woman was close to seventy, but Carolina had convinced herself that she looked forty. She wore her blond hair draped over one eye, like a forties movie star.

  Phoebe handed Miguel Angel squares of foil while he painted highlights into Carolina’s thinning hair. When he finished, Phoebe plugged in a color-processing dryer, which had two heated wings, like a mechanical butterfly. The heat sped up the color process. Miguel Angel set the timer, and promised to be back in twenty minutes.

  Meanwhile, he turned his attention to Ursula, a large woman with shoe-polish-black hair.

  Miguel Angel mixed her color and covered the skunk stripe of white roots with a brush. Ursula insisted that her hair be dyed flat black. Miguel Angel tactfully suggested that she lighten her hair or add some highlights, but Ursula refused.

  “I was born with raven hair and that’s the color I’ll keep,” she said, shutting down all discussion. No one told her the raven had long ago turned into a common crow.

  Ursula and Miguel Angel debated the merits of trimming her bangs.

  The timer dinged. That was Phoebe’s signal to wash Carolina’s hair. She led the woman to a sink and carefully pulled out the foils. Then Phoebe held up a peach bottle and said, “We have a special shampoo for thin, older hair.”

  The woman twitched as if she’d been stung. Helen thought Carolina was angry, and Phoebe was so clueless she didn’t know she’d insulted a customer.

  Phoebe wrapped a dark towel around the neck of Carolina’s cape and adjusted the height of the sink. She gently rinsed Carolina’s hair. “Is that water too hot?” she asked.

  “No, I like it hot,” Carolina said.

  “Do the Hustle,” an ancient disco tune, played on the sound track. The woman tapped her foot.

  “Is this the music you liked when you were young?” Phoebe asked.

  Carolina shot straight up. “When I was what?” She tore off her cape, threw the towel on the floor and marched over to Miguel Angel. “That idiot insulted me. I’m not paying three hundred dollars to be told I’m old.”

  “Carolina, please wait,” Miguel Angel said.

  “Why? So you can insult me again? Do I look stupid enough to have danced to disco?”

  Carolina marched out of the salon, wet head held high.

  “Do you know what happened?” he asked Helen.

  “Yes,” she said, and told him what Phoebe had said.

  “That moron,” Miguel Angel said. “I’ve wanted Phoebe out of here. Now I will get my wish.”

  He took Phoebe aside and fired her. She ran for the door, weeping.

  “You’ve ruined my life. I’ll make you sorry,” Phoebe cried. “I’ll make you both regret this.”

  Chapter 9

  Phoebe flounced out, slamming the salon door behind her. “Do the Hustle,” the disco tune that got Miguel Angel’s useless assistant fire
d, faded away in a flurry of silly squeaks.

  Helen and Ana Luisa stared at each other. The silence was deafening, but the two women didn’t dare break it. Ana Luisa raised one perfectly waxed eyebrow.

  “I should have fired her weeks ago,” Miguel Angel said. “God knows how much business she’s cost me with her stupid remarks.”

  Helen was relieved that Phoebe was gone, but she was worried by her threat. Now the bitter assistant knew that Miguel Angel had escaped the police by dressing as a woman—wearing the same outfit as the last person seen talking to King before his death.

  “Miguel, do you have Honey’s dress in your apartment?” Helen asked.

  “No,” he said. “I threw it away.”

  “Where?” she said.

  “In the Dumpster in back of the salon.”

  Fear gripped Helen’s heart. “Phoebe heard us talking about that dress. What if she tells the police?”

  “She won’t,” Miguel Angel said. “She can’t go to the police because of her boyfriend, Ramon. He’s a drug dealer.”

  “The skanky guy with the brown hair and bad skin?”

  “That’s him.”

  “He looks like a rough-trade Fabio. His hair is dirty. You’d think Phoebe would at least wash it for him. Doesn’t he make deliveries for the shops around here? I wondered what she saw in him.”

  “A lot of white powder,” Miguel Angel said. “He delivers more than Cuban sandwiches. Besides, she was wearing a blue dress at the wedding, too.”

  “But—” Helen said.

  “I am not going to worry. She has as much to lose as I do. Drug dealers’ whores do not go to the police. I’m safe.”

  Before Helen could say anything more, Ana Luisa softly interrupted. “Virginia is here,” the curvy blond receptionist said. “She’s scheduled for color, a cut and blowdry.”

  “Just what I needed today,” Miguel Angel said. “Well, I will deal with it—and her.”

  Virginia’s clothes dripped designer labels. She was a gym-toned woman in that gray no-man’s land between fifty and sixty. And it was gray. Her roots were nearly an inch long, but she’d combed her hair to hide as much gray as possible. Some women thought they saved money by delaying their touch-ups. Instead, it cost them more. Their color grew dull, and Miguel had to give them new highlights plus color, instead of a less expensive touch-up.