The Brush Off

by Laura Bradley

  They blinked at me as if I were a dense child. “You don’t need to get testy, Reyn,” Trudy huffed. “They showed some footage of Ricardo’s Broadway shop draped in all that awful yellow crime-scene tape. The reporter—I think it was that Phil Wimplepool—”

  “The one with those hideous bow ties,” Bettina interjected before I moved the nozzle closer and he/she shut up.

  Trudy nodded and leaned in to Bettina. Clearly, I was extraneous at this point. “He had the worst of his collection on today. Would you believe pond-scum green with chartreuse polka dots?”

  Bettina groaned. I think I growled.

  “Don’t get your panties in a wad, Reyn. Wimplepool said while police refused to say how he was killed, the case had been classified a homicide. He described Ricardo as renowned for building a beauty salon empire in the city, but a man whose past remained shrouded in mystery and who had no known relatives. Investigators were interviewing his employees, and then he said detectives had brought another salon owner and former employee in for questioning.”

  “Questioning?” I squawked, getting angrier with Scythe by the moment. “That obnoxious detective asked me to come down to identify Ricardo. I went willingly, as a favor to them.”

  “I’m sure that’s true, Reyn,” Trudy said dismissively, “but that’s not what was said across the airwaves to hundreds of thousands of people. Of course, that was before it hit CNN, so I guess now we could say millions. Anyway, whatever Wimplepool said doesn’t matter. The video they ran showed you coming out the front doors, looking pretty shook up and kinda green. Did you throw up?”

  Okay, I am internationally accused of murder, and my best friend only wants to know if I threw up when I saw the dead body. No, no sympathetic pats on the shoulder for me, no heartfelt hugs. Somehow, the fact that she expected me to lose my cookies pissed me off more than not being consoled. She wasn’t the only one today who thought I had a weak stomach.

  “No, I did not throw up,” I answered with deliberate delivery. I sucked in a breath and tried to lighten the moment. “Don’t I get credit for my skin matching Wimplepool’s tie?”

  Trudy folded her arms across her chest like I was the bad kid in class. I lost whatever remaining hold I had on my temper. “Come on, how should I have looked? Happy? Skipping down the steps humming a merry tune after seeing the bloody body of my friend and mentor?”

  “You could’ve looked less like you were facing life behind bars,” Trudy advised.

  “Gee, I’ll try to remember that the next time a friend of mine bites it.”

  “Despite all that, it wouldn’t have looked quite so bad for you if it weren’t for the next thing.”

  “It gets worse?”

  “Reporters caught an impossibly sexy detective leaving.” Trudy paused, distracted momentarily by her memory of Scythe. “He wasn’t classically handsome, you know. His features were a little too hard—his nose too Roman, his facial lines too deep, his eyes just too probing. But he was just so male. He positively radiated testosterone. It came right through the TV screen like raw heat. He’s a bit dangerous, I would say.”

  I let her mind wander off into whatever fantasy she’d concocted. I couldn’t blame her, considering whom she was married to. But suddenly, her eyes lost their faraway look, and she resumed her story. “The reporters asked him if you had anything to do with Ricardo’s murder. He just looked at the camera like the cat who swallowed the canary and then said, in this toe-curling voice”—Trudy dropped her own to mimic Scythe—“ ‘No comment.’ Have you already pissed off the police, Reyn?”

  Trudy said it like it was an expected activity—that’s me, always barfing and pissing people off. I bit the inside of my cheek and counted to ten before I answered. “What if the police pissed me off?”

  “You’re too sensitive,” Trudy pointed out self-righteously. I would’ve thrown my hands up in the air, but that would’ve meant relinquishing my weapon, so I contented myself with tapping my left boot on the floor to a ten count.

  Never one to let silence drag on longer than a full minute, Trudy finally broke it. “The TV never said how Ricardo died.”

  “I’m sure the TV doesn’t know,” I answered snootily. I’m a stickler for grammar, but the real motivation for my deflection was also that I didn’t want to tell her in the presence of Bettina and all the other ears in the salon.

  “Smarty pants,” Trudy mumbled, but blessedly got the message. “Another thing I was wondering was why the place was crawling with city cops when I thought the salon was in Alamo Heights.”

  “Ricardo built that salon just outside the Alamo Heights city limits because he wanted to be in a school district that needed the revenue. He wanted to help kids who weren’t spoiled and didn’t live in half-million-dollar homes.” I hadn’t thought about that in years, but it had struck me odd at the time, because Ricardo was never one even to notice children, much less have a soft spot for them.

  Bettina watched me closely. “You sure know a lot about Ricardo’s business.”

  “Not as much as I want to know.” I pressed down on the trigger, letting a little water trickle onto his/her left cheek.

  “Please don’t!” Panic shined in her obsidian eyes. “It takes me an hour and a half to get this makeup right.”

  “Hon, if you don’t mind me saying so,” Trudy interjected, “with skin that beautiful, you don’t look like you need any makeup.”

  “You’d be surprised,” I muttered snidely.

  Bettina managed to glare at me and flash a radiant smile at Trudy in practically the same instant. I was impressed. He/she might have the woman thing down after all, I realized, as Bettina demurred prettily. “I have to be at work by four.”

  I trickled water down her other cheek. Bettina’s newest best friend put her hand on my forearm. “Have a heart, Reyn.”

  “I have no heart.” I sneered, increasing the water flow. “Only a burning desire to clear my name and avenge my mentor.”

  Bettina bought my sorry Clint Eastwood imitation. “Okay, okay. You can come to work with me. We’ll ask around about what the other girls know about Ricardo. Some of them knew him better than I did. He only did my hair.”

  Wow. What did he do with the other “girls,” then? I wondered.

  “Great!” Trudy trilled. “Where’s work? Where are we going?”

  I smiled my own cat-who-got-the-canary smile. “You’ll see.”

  While Bettina, her head sporting ten pounds of curlers, sat under the dryer reading Dr. Laura’s The Ten Stupid Things Women Do to Mess Up Their Lives, Trudy and I made a list of motives Ricardo may have given someone to murder him. I don’t recommend this activity unless it’s absolutely necessary, because it inevitably leads to introspection, and you’re left pondering the reasons your friends and enemies have to murder you. I could concoct a long list without much thought. It leaves one feeling especially vulnerable.

  “It’s well known Ricardo was a ladies’ man,” Trudy began, dipping her hand into the bottomless bag of trail mix I kept at my desk and munching thoughtfully. “Maybe it was a jealous husband.”

  “Or a jealous lover.”

  After pausing for a second with a cashew half past her lips, Trudy finally popped it in, chewed, and shook her head. “No, I don’t see that. Ricardo had a way of charming women no matter how mad they might be. It must’ve been a pheromone thing. Remember the time you told me about that high-society babe who came in to get her hair done for her daughter’s wedding, and Ricardo turned her hair pink? He couldn’t fix it, so he convinced her it was the “in” thing. As soon as she was out the door, he was calling the florist to make sure all the arrangements matched her hair, the photographer to make sure he had lights to play down the pink and the society columnist to ensure a positive spin on the press coverage.”

  “I remember.” Ricardo’s secret of success, which he shared with me, was creating a labyrinth of favors owed him, carefully culled from select members in all facets of society and business. He knew g
angbangers from the barrio and the head of the richest telecommunications company in the country. The key, though, according to Ricardo, was to make sure never to stay in the red too long when it came to favors, because the longer they remained unpaid, the bigger the payback.

  Maybe he’d forgotten a favor. I shivered at the thought of the payback being his life.

  “Somehow, I don’t think it was a crime of passion,” I said, my train of thought leading me to a conclusion I couldn’t substantiate beyond intuition. “The scene didn’t feel chaotic. It felt cold.”

  “Hey, you never told me how he died.” Trudy dropped her voice to a whisper.

  I pushed away from my desk to check Bettina’s curls, partly because I needed to make sure no one was eavesdropping and partly just to bug Trudy. I’m petty that way. Bettina was reading chapter three (“Stupid Devotion”) of Dr. Laura’s book. I was afraid to ask, so instead I lifted the dryer helmet. A trace of dampness lingered. Five minutes, and the curls would be cooked. Trudy and I didn’t have long to finish hashing this out.

  Passing my chair, I reached into a cabinet for a notepad a client gave me one year for Christmas. It was neon orange with “Hairdressers Do It with Style” written diagonally across the upper left corner—not exactly the most subtle investigative accessory, but it would have to do. Seeing the clutter behind the door, I felt my throat swell with the memory of Ricardo’s disapproval only twenty-four hours before. Funny how death puts criticism in a different light. He cared. I should have appreciated it more at the time.

  Returning to my desk, I whispered in Trudy’s ear, “The murderer stabbed him in the back with the pick attached to a metal round brush.”

  Shock paralyzed her for a moment, but as soon as I saw her open her mouth, I clamped my hand over it, muffling her exclamation. “Muz if da bursh ee burd firmyu lisnit?”

  It would’ve been Was it the brush he borrowed from you last night? at ten thousand decibels had I not been a quick draw with my silencing hand. With a nod in answer, her eyes begged me to let her loose. Mine warned back to shut up. She nodded. I let my hand drop, wiping her spit and lipstick on my black synthetic tunic.

  “Holy water and horny toads, this isn’t good,” she couldn’t help interjecting. Trudy is fond of stating the obvious. “Do you have an alibi?”

  “Chardonnay, Beaujolais, and Cabernet will vouch for me,” I said, avoiding mention that the only human who could swear I was home in bed was now dead. Trudy looked close enough to turning me in to the police even without that choice bit of knowledge.

  “That badge-carrying hunk-of-the-month didn’t look the type to consider dogs reliable witnesses,” Trudy said dryly, then brightened. “But he did look the type to be swayed by a roll in the sack.”

  “Trudy!” This time, I hit ten decibels and compounded my sin by blushing.

  “Okay.” She held up a hand in surrender. “How about a blow job, then?”

  I stood up, more horrified by the blush that heated my face than by her suggestion. “Get out! I can’t believe I consider you a friend.”

  “Hey, I’m your best friend, the one who was—until you so gravely insulted me—trying to save your butt from being put in a sling.”

  “I don’t think sex will keep me out of the sling.”

  I saw the look in her eyes just in time.

  “Don’t say it,” I warned with a shake of my head.

  “Oh, all right,” she muttered, disappointed that she couldn’t give me ideas about sex in a sling. “But maybe when this whole thing is over, you and Detective Gorgeous can have a nice candlelight dinner.”

  “Right now, he’s probably doing his damnedest to picture me in handcuffs instead.”

  Trudy was getting that look again.

  “In handcuffs, fully clothed in an unattractive orange jumpsuit, and behind bars,” I clarified. “So, it’s probably a little early to be making us dinner reservations.”

  “Okay, but it will give me something to shoot for,” she said, “if you promise me you’re interested and will go out with him if I can arrange it.”

  Trudy was a tireless cupid; if this was the incentive she needed to help me do some digging for information about Ricardo, so be it. Her career as an interior designer left her a lot of free time. I could use an extra hand. Mario’s lucrative position as an underwriter for an insurance firm afforded her the ability to choose to work for whom she wanted, when she wanted. I wanted her to work for me. It wouldn’t be for free. But I doubt I’d ever have to pay that bill.

  “A rendezvous with Scythe.” I ripped off my smock.

  “In a sling.” I pulled the left shoulder of my bodysuit down. “In handcuffs.” I hiked my skirt up over my thigh. “Or at a table. You help me, and it’s a deal.”

  I didn’t know Trudy’s eyes could get that wide. Why was she so shocked when this had been what she was after? Her gaze drifted past me and back again.

  I felt a presence behind me and turned around.

  eight

  “HOW MUCH DID YOU HEAR?” I DEMANDED AS I wiggled myself back into my clothes. Scythe, who was leaning against my office doorjamb, reached over and slid his forefinger under the Lycra at my left shoulder that had wound itself into an impossibly tight wad. With a flick of his finger, he popped it loose. I yanked out of his reach, just as the electricity from his touch zinged home to every erogenous zone I possess. How did he do that?

  “I heard enough to make me glad I carry protection,” he answered with that damned poker face.

  The blush on my cheeks immediately suffused my whole body before I saw he was patting the bulge at his side that under the black leather jacket would be a gun. My lust-laden embarrassment morphed into fury.

  “I’ll make you glad,” I muttered, moving to the farthest corner of the office, which wasn’t nearly far enough.

  “Promise?” The great stone face softened into a smile. No, a leer is more accurate.

  I narrowed my eyes, crossed my arms over my chest, and considered how much violence I could get away with before he threw me into the slammer. I could hear Bettina’s soft alto beckoning me from the dryer. I ignored him/her.

  Trudy’s head was bobbing back and forth to look at Scythe and me, her goofy grin making her resemble a garish back-window auto ornament. I took my fury out on her.

  “What are you smirking at?” I snapped.

  Before she could answer, a clear tenor called from the hallway. “Reyn! I think I’m ready.”

  Bettina had lost patience and had resorted to testosterone to call my attention. Trudy’s brow wrinkled. Scythe looked confused.

  “Coming!” I hollered.

  “I didn’t see a man when I came in,” Scythe observed suspiciously. “Who’s that?”

  “My sweetheart, and he’s real jealous, so you’d better go.”

  “Claude?” Scythe guessed, part sarcastic humor and part uncertainty that Claude might really exist. Good, let him wonder.

  Now poor Trudy’s forehead looked like a road map. If she drew her brows together any harder, she’d have one long, well-plucked, copper caterpillar eyebrow. She opened her mouth to ask who the hell I was talking about and who the hell Claude was (not that way, of course, as, despite her reference to oral sex earlier, she is very pious). But without letting her get a word out, I stomped to the doorway, slipping through the space between Scythe’s body, his arm, and the doorjamb. He smelled of freshly cut wood, although I couldn’t place what kind. I had the urge to step back to get another whiff but resisted. Marching up to Bettina, I flipped the dryer off and whispered a warning to him/her as I unrolled one bouncy curl. I was betting she wouldn’t be inclined to be too friendly to Scythe as the cops’ recent hobby had been hassling Illusions.

  I was right. Bettina glared at Scythe, who’d followed me out of the office and now was peeking into Daisy Dawn’s nail haven as he stalked down the hall toward the room with Justine’s and Alejandra’s chairs.

  “You better not scare the customers,” I warned as I herded
Bettina to my chair.

  “Don’t worry,” he threw over his shoulder. “If they’re your customers, they don’t scare easily.”

  Behind me, Trudy blew a chuckle out her nose. So much for friends. Although I itched to follow Lieutenant Nosy down the hall, I began whipping curlers off Bettina’s head, flinging them into the tray with a necessary speed. As heavy as her hair was, if any curl hung loose for too long without maximum chemical support (i.e. mucho hairspray), the style would droop pitifully. Despite what I’d told Ricardo last night about not wanting to own an empire, I was ambitious. I didn’t want to be shown up in my chosen profession by anyone, dead or alive.

  “So, who’s Claude?” Trudy asked, pulling up a stool. She perched on it, crossed her legs, and bounced her sandal-clad foot up and down.

  Scythe reappeared, industrial steno pad in hand. His gaze lingered on Trudy’s legs, proving, I suppose, that he was a real man. I hadn’t found one yet who could resist staring at Trudy’s gams. She had the best pair I’d ever seen; long, perfectly shaped, tan, and—the true crime—without a trace of cellulite. Even her knees were pretty. She was truly inhuman. I considered it a credit to my character that I could be best friends with a woman with legs like that, especially since mine were best hidden under nothing less than ankle-length denim.