The Brush Off

by Laura Bradley

  Not that Monte Vista was slumming it. It was one of two historical residential districts in San Antonio, featuring two dozen long, wide-street blocks and hundred-year-old homes, including many multimillion-dollar mansions. Mine wasn’t anywhere near that caliber, but I was proud of what I’d done with it. My chest puffed up with enough pride to turn my B-cups into Cs as I stepped on the newly buffed limestone steps that led to the wraparound porch. When the seventy-nine-year-old daughter of the original owner keeled over dead from a stroke while going through junk in the attic, her heirs just wanted to get rid of the run-down mess. I bought it for $102,000 (the price included a lot of that attic junk that cleaned up pretty well), and, with the help of my big brothers over one long, hot summer, I’d renovated it back to a two-story jewel that the appraisal district valued at three times the purchase price. Good thing I could write half of it off as a business. And good thing that business was holding its own, or I’d be in trouble.

  Pressure. The knot was building between my shoulder blades as I thought about paying bills and a $50-a-week customer I’d kept waiting and was now missing. That led to thoughts of Ricardo and his promise to let me run his fortune-making salons, which led to images of his dead body and not only a friend but an opportunity gone. I embarrassed myself at the mercenary thought, but there was something bugging me about the outlandish offer that I would have never considered had Ricardo been alive.

  And I still couldn’t find my keys. I yanked my hand out of the tote and dumped it out just as a figure ran at me from around the left side porch. I jumped against the column as my body electrified with what had to be the last of my twenty-four-hour supply of adrenaline. A flash of red jeweled pump skidded on the plastic cover my of checkbook, landing its owner with a thump, a skid, and a squeal on the front steps.

  “Jolie?” I unlocked my muscles, peeled myself off the column, and leaned over to offer her a hand up. I scanned her for injuries; the businesswoman part of me couldn’t help but wonder if my liability insurance covered customers slipping on checkbook covers on my porch.

  Ignoring my hand, she scrambled up—no small feat, considering her pencil-thin linen skirt—and nearly knocked me over with a tackle hug. I thought at first she was trying to strangle me for being late or for nearly breaking her neck.

  “Oh, Reyn, Reyn, you’re alive!”

  She pulled away to hold me at arm’s length. Her White Diamonds whooshed up in the rush of air between us. Her sleek, classic bob dyed Sunlit Linen bounced up and down as her eyes went top to bottom and back as if she were looking for missing parts. Finally, her dark doe eyes settled on mine, and she smiled, her brilliantly whitened teeth taking up more than half of her heart-shaped face.

  I finally found my voice, which was the only part of me that I’d been missing—as far as I knew, anyway. “Of course, I’m alive, Jolie. Why wouldn’t I be?”

  She nodded and shook her head all in one motion, the highlights in her hair flickering and the diamonds in her ears flashing. “I heard about Ricardo on the radio on the way over here this morning. Terrible. Then, when I got here and you weren’t open, didn’t answer my knock or my ring, I got worried. You’re never late. Never in the ten years I’ve been your client. I finally decided to call and got your answering machine. Then I thought I’d better look in the windows to be sure something horrid—like what happened to Ricardo—hadn’t happened to you.” Jolie paused to shudder.

  “A beauty salon serial murderer?” I certainly hadn’t considered that, and I didn’t now. I mean, what would prompt someone to do that? Flunking out of beauty school? Having one too many bad dye jobs? Snorting one too many perm chemicals?

  “Well.” Jolie dropped her hands from my arms to her hips. “It’s not that far-fetched. The world’s gone absolutely loco. Plus, I was rattled over the news of Ricardo, and then you had to go do something completely uncharacteristic. My imagination ran away.”

  “Really, it was sweet of you. I’m sorry I made you worry.” I leaned down to stuff my things back into my bag. Jolie’s slide into first had dislodged my keys, and I plucked them from between two porch floorboards.

  Jolie recovered her red, blue, and yellow Liz shoulder bag from the front walk and clucked over the skid marks. She climbed the five porch steps and handed me the checkbook, which had slid into the front flower bed. Lord knows what else was flung hither and yon. I made a mental note to do reconnaissance later.

  I could hear the salon phone ringing as I fit the key into the front door lock. I looked through the beveled glass of the front door to see if the caller would leave a message. But no red light went on. A hang-up. Just as well. I had to hustle to get Jolie’s color and style done before my eight o’clock arrived.

  Jolie followed me into the foyer, closing the door behind her and then walking into the rest room to change into a smock. I flipped on the lights and looked around at my salon, suddenly struck with the contrast between my shop and Ricardo’s. His ultra-modern, cold, and clean. Mine old, warm, and cluttered. An unmatching assortment of antique chandeliers lit the rooms, an odd collection of Chippendale, Duncan Fife, and other old furniture I couldn’t name filled the small waiting room and sat scattered in the halls that led to other stylists’ and nail technicians’ rooms. Frayed Oriental rugs, which I hoped looked tasteful instead of just old, carpeted the polished oak floors in the hall and waiting room, which were paneled in oak stained a lighter shade than the floor. Each room was papered in mock antique paper, my only requirement being that people had to be featured on the paper. Not as easy as it sounds. Just try looking for it sometime. Flowers and animals, no problem, but people on paper—that was rare. What does that say about modern society? All of what customers saw in my salon—that wasn’t “junk” from my attic—was collected mostly from flea markets and estate sales over eight years while I worked for Ricardo, went to college, and dreamed of owning my own business.

  I’m a real believer in visualization. The power of the psyche can make dreams come true.

  Now, looking at the salon, I wondered if it was also my subconscious that tried to make my shop look so much different from Ricardo’s, and if so, why?

  “So, where were you?” Jolie asked as she clicked into step behind me and we entered the last room on the left, my room. She settled into my chair while I went through the door to my adjoining office and dumped my tote. I snatched up a smock and slipped it over my bodysuit and skirt, snapping it together as I walked. As I passed the laundry room on my way back, I tried not to think about Ricardo there just hours ago and what I could have done to prevent his demise.

  “I was at Ricardo’s,” I said as I mixed up Jolie’s color.

  Her doe eyes widened in the mirror as they met mine. “But how’d you hear about it so soon? It had just come over as a news bulletin when I pulled up here.”

  “The police called me and asked me to come identify the…him.”

  “But why you?”

  I shrugged, hoping it looked convincing. I knew whatever I said would be spread through certain zip codes quicker than a broadcast news bulletin. I had to be careful. “Just got lucky, I guess.”

  “But you haven’t worked for Ricardo in two years, Reyn. How much do you know about him and his business now? Or is it someone from his past they suspect?”

  “I used to know Ricardo well, Jolie, but we’ve been too busy to see much of each other lately. As for whom the police suspect, I don’t know for sure…” Besides me, that is. I kept that part to myself.

  “But why did the cops call you?” she pursued with a terrier’s tenacity. “You must know something. They didn’t pull you out of his appointment book, did they?”

  Trudy knew how to get the truth out of me, that was for sure, by intimating that I’d been Ricardo’s lover.

  As I pulled on my thin vinyl gloves, I tamped down my urge to deny it vigorously and considered how much to say. She’d surely hear about Ricardo’s visit. Trudy and Mario, sensation seekers that they were, would milk being there
for all it was worth no matter how much I might beg them to keep quiet. “Ricardo stopped by last night. I guess the cops just wanted to talk to the last person who saw him alive. I mean, not the last, because that would be the person who…uh…did it.”

  Possibly in more ways than one. I recalled his reputation for sleeping with customers. Could they have done it and then she did him in with the brush? I wondered whom Ricardo had the appointment with that ill-fated evening and wished I had asked him. A crime of passion—wasn’t that usually motive number one?

  Jolie widened her eyes again, blinked, and pulled her lips down over her teeth. A warning bell went off in my head. The only other time I’d seen Jolie hide her prominent teeth was when she’d sneaked off to another stylist to get her bob trimmed and I’d guessed it at her next appointment. What was she up to now? I did a quick survey of her hair. No other stylist this time; her style had my mark all over it. Her behavior had to have something to do with Ricardo.

  “Who do you suppose it was?” Jolie whispered, even though we were the only two in the salon.

  “I don’t know.” I began sponging color onto her roots with my pressurized squeeze gun. “You have any theories?”

  “Me?” she shouted. The sudden change in her vocal volume startled me, and I spurted too much color out of the gun at once. I grabbed a towel before the purplish lotion began oozing down her forehead. She modulated her voice with a forced casual tone as she continued, “What would I know about it?”

  “You did go to Ricardo for a long time before you started with me,” I pointed out. Jolie’s defection was something that always intrigued me. At the time, I was fresh on the job in Ricardo’s salon, and to have one of his clients request me was an incredible honor that I was afraid to question. As time passed, it got more and more difficult to broach the subject. Plus, I’d always thought of it as none of my business. It didn’t stop me from being curious, though. Especially now.

  “For nearly fifteen years,” she admitted wistfully.

  “I’ve always wanted to ask,” I began carefully, feeling like I was tiptoeing through a minefield. I should just leave this alone, but my mouth rarely listened to reason. “Why did you start coming to me? I know my brilliant talent dazzled you, but I also remember you saying something about finding out that Ricardo knew your best friend from way back.”

  Jolie didn’t chuckle at my weak attempt at humor. She pressed her lips more tightly together. I was really hoping to see some teeth here. I could only think of how I was going to do without this fifty bucks a week. Pressure knotted again, tweaking his brother Pain in my back, who hadn’t been heard from in a while.

  I checked to make sure I’d covered all of Jolie’s roots with the color, then I put the squeeze gun down on my tray and began peeling my gloves off.

  “Who is your best friend, anyway, Jolie?”

  “Celine Villita.”

  “I remember her,” I said. “You brought her in once to have me do her hair when her stylist was sick or out of town or something.”

  Suddenly, Jolie moved her jeweled shoes from the chair’s bar to the floor and spun around to face me. “Reyn, you wouldn’t be trying to nose around and find out what happened to Ricardo, would you?”

  I hadn’t been—at least, not consciously—until that moment. I felt the shock or grief or whatever that had been holding me numb for hours lift, and sounds and images filled in—Ricardo’s strange offer to run his salons the night before, his middle-of-the-night call for help, my bloody brush sticking out of his back, an arrogant cop’s suspicion—and for the first time I began to take his murder personally.

  “Reyn,” Jolie warned, tipped off, no doubt, by the determined look in my eyes. Or perhaps I radiated determination. I hate to admit it, but one way or another, I’m as transparent as glass. This could be another reason I can’t lie for beans.

  “It just bugs the hell out of me.” I forced the nonchalance into my tone. “He was a good friend.”

  “So, go do the rosary, send flowers to the funeral home, but stay out of the investigation. It’ll be best for everybody if you just keep out of it.”

  Them’s fighting words. My perverse personality doesn’t take to being told not to do something. It virtually guarantees that I will do that self-same thing.

  After all, I reasoned as I smiled reassuringly to Jolie and spun her back around, Ricardo died before I could even up the favors.

  I still owed him one.

  six

  DISTRACTED AS I WAS AFTER JOLIE LEFT, WELL coiffed but still ominously hiding her teeth, I made it through a morning full of appointments with no major insights from my customers regarding Ricardo’s demise but no major disasters, either. Of course, one incident could’ve qualified had it not been for my quick-thinking nail technician. I had Mrs. Reinmeyer in my chair when Inez, a pal of mine who styles at Ricardo’s Huebner store, called, telling my receptionist that it was an emergency. It wasn’t, but it became one when Inez told me the gossip was that Ricardo swung both ways, was AC/DC, or liked to do the horizontal boogie with men and women, whatever you might call it.

  My right hand—which was doing a touch-up with the clippers at Mrs. Reinmeyer’s nape—slipped north rather suddenly, leaving a distinctive track through her sprayed silver curls. Mrs. Reinmeyer gasped, the receiver slipped off my shoulder, crashing onto the floor just as Daisy Dawn Washington walked by. She took it all in in one glance and, being the quick thinker that she is, exclaimed, “Oh, Miz Reinmeyer” the thick syrup in her East Texas accent completely hid the put-on in her tone—“you smart thing, you. You’re getting one of those new tower styles.”

  “Tower styles?” Mrs. Reinmeyer and I echoed together.

  With a warning glance at me, Daisy Dawn continued, smiling in admiration at my eighty-year-old client. “Oh, yeah, didn’t Reyn tell you? They’re all the rage in L.A. right now. I saw at least four gals at the Oscars with them tower ’dos.”

  “You did?” Mrs. Reinmeyer was brightening as she sneaked peeks in the mirrors, so I decided to play along, calculating the damage control I could manage on her style while making it look like I’d planned it that way. I swallowed my horrified apology and smiled reassuringly at Mrs. Reinmeyer.

  Daisy Dawn nodded. “Sure, I swear Olympia Dukakis and Angela Lansbury had towers. Maybe Michelle Pfeiffer, too, although I can’t be sure about that; the camera moved too quick for me to tell.”

  “Oh!” I heard Mrs. Reinmeyer’s pancake makeup crack as her mouth curled into an unfamiliar smile. Truth be told, it looked a little scary.

  “A trendsetter in our midst,” Daisy Dawn whispered reverently, pausing a few seconds for effect. “Just imagine.”

  “Well.” Mrs. Reinmeyer warmed to the praise, bless Daisy Dawn’s lying little soul. “I did tell Reyn I wanted something different and daring.”

  She did no such thing. She’d stomped her scrawny purple-polyester-pantsuit-clad body across my expensively restored wood floor, complaining about her last cut and set as she had every single month she’d been my customer. Now, finally, she had something real to complain about, and she wasn’t doing it. Go figure. If I’d only known, I would’ve given her a mohawk years ago.

  “Now, Reyn, finish up,” Mrs. Reinmeyer ordered with a twitch of her starched shoulders, having fully regained her superior attitude. “I can’t wait to see the girls at bridge drop their teeth when I walk in with a tower, especially Marge Kelley. She’s always so hoity-toity after her seasonal trips east to Bloomie’s.”

  The irony of the image was too much for Daisy Dawn, who was biting down hard on her magenta- glossed lower lip. She patted Mrs. Reinmeyer’s liver-spotted hand with three-inch talons that were amazingly natural. I never could see how she managed to put nails on others with nails of her own that long. “Go get ’em, girlfriend.”

  “Cool,” Mrs. Reinmeyer answered, trying out the word the kids had resurrected from the sixties—one that she’d certainly only ever used to describe temperature. Daisy Dawn didn’t let
her silent laughter loose until she was down the hall, well out of Mrs. Reinmeyer’s line of sight. Her dark Rastafarian braids shook, clicking the beads at the ends together merrily.

  I owed her one.

  If I wasn’t careful, I was going to owe everyone in San Antonio favors. For some reason, that thought brought to mind Lieutenant Jackson Scythe. I wasn’t ever going to owe him a favor, as he’d have to apologize for his arrogance first, and I doubted that would ever happen unless he was under the influence of some mind-altering drug. Or in a haze of lust brought on by the company of a naked woman.

  And I wouldn’t be that naked woman unless he apologized first.

  The-chicken-or-the-egg dilemma. Probably the undoing of most potential relationships.

  Quickly, before she regained her senses, I trimmed the hair on the right side of Mrs. Reinmeyer’s head to match the left. And, to be perfectly honest, it left her with a style that would be more at home on a Star Trek set than on an old western, so maybe it was more chic than I knew.

  Still grinning (a scary sight even without her scalp showing), she paid cash, shed her plastic smock, and left humming a turn-of-the-century tune. It’s not what you’re thinking—not turn of last century like Enrique Caruso, but turn of this one, Butthole Surfers. I’m telling you I meant what I said to Scythe at Ricardo’s. Changing your hair can change your life. I just hoped I hadn’t accidentally changed Mrs. Reinmeyer into an eighty-year-old headbanger.