Something to Dye For (Curl Up and Dye Mysteries, #2)

by Aimee Nicole Walker

  I was used to seeing kids cut their own hair and Mom or Dad rushing them in to see me, but the opposite happened to my first client–well, except the kid didn’t drive them to my salon. She looked to be around four years old and much too short to see over the steering wheel.

  Wow, little Tabitha did a number on her mommy’s hair too. There was no fucking way we were avoiding short-as-fuck bangs. “I can’t believe I fell asleep,” Victoria said. Tears flowed down her face and little Tabitha, unaware of how much trauma she caused, sat in her mommy’s lap and lovingly caressed her mother’s face.

  I worked Victoria in between routine maintenance appointments. By the time I was finished, those tears of horror were tears of happiness. “I look like that one actress in that one movie.” I had no fucking idea what she was talking about, but she totally rocked those motherfucking bangs.

  “Um, might I make a tiny suggestion?” I asked. I hated to ruin the good mood she was in, but with the shorter bangs it was obvious as hell the woman had zero maintenance program for her brows. They looked like two sasquatches stretched across her forehead that were nearly holding hands above her nose to form one long brow.

  “Okay,” she replied timidly when I suggested a brow wax. “Will it hurt?”

  “Stings a little, but it’s totally worth it,” I replied.

  She loved her new brows so much, Tabitha got a mani/pedi in the little kids’ chair, I got a huge tip, and Victoria bought several new products for her hair and skin. “Let’s go get a brownie and hot chocolate from The Brew,” I heard Victoria tell Tabitha as they left. I knew next to nothing about raising kids, but I thought it was completely possible that Victoria was giving Tabitha the wrong impression about actions and consequences.

  Next through my door was a complete surprise. Nadine Beaumont, wife to the sleazy town mayor, entered my salon looking like a Hollywood A-lister trying to go incognito while drawing attention to themselves at the same time. I could see the floral print of the scarf she wore around her head beneath the hood of her red wool peacoat and her oversized sunglasses, on a cloudy day, was a nice finishing touch.

  I’d banned Nadine from my salon when she broke the heart of my dear friend who happened to be her former boss and wife of the man she screwed behind her back. They had a soap opera style throw down in my salon that caused damage to my property and face. Nadine had tried to apologize to me since then and she looked truly sincere when she said that she wished she could take it all back and make things right with Georgia. Unfortunately for her, she came to that realization after Georgia was murdered by her housekeeper.

  I realized two things since I refused my services to her. Nadine’s marriage to that son of a bitch was a bigger punishment than anything I, or anyone else, could dole out to her and sometimes people truly were sorry about their misdeeds and perhaps deserved second chances. I might’ve been willing to extend the olive branch to Nadine but it would be a cold day in hell before I did the same thing for her loser husband. I had thought about calling Nadine and trying to make amends with her, but I wasn’t really sure how to approach the subject without looking desperate for business, which I definitely was not.

  “Josh,” she said breathlessly. “Please take me back.” Again with her daytime soap opera theatrics. “I just can’t go on like this.”

  She had the eye of everyone in the room. Her attempt to hide the disastrous effects of whatever was beneath the scarf told me she was tired of being the talk of the town. I led her into the kitchenette and closed the door so we could have some privacy.

  “What have you done, Nadine?”

  She burst into tears and I’m not talking about a few tears here. I mean full on body shaking sobs. “There’s so many things,” she managed to say in between sobs.

  “Honey, I meant your hair. I’m just the Hair Jesus, not the real Jesus.”

  “I know,” she said pitifully. Then she lowered her hood and slowly unwound the long scarf from her head.

  “Holy fuck!” I knew my exclamation was loud enough to be heard in the next county just as certain as I knew it didn’t help to dispel the curiosity of the clients in my salon. “Who did this to you, Nadine? There has to be laws against this type of treatment to your formerly beautiful hair.”

  “It… was… the… new… salon…” She got her words out in between sobbing hiccups.

  “What new salon?” Just how busy had I been with Gabe’s dick up my ass that I didn’t know a competitor had moved into my territory.

  “Bargain Beauty Salon,” she whimpered. “I didn’t know what else to do since you kicked me out.”

  Now look, I was all sympathetic about her hair up until that point. She was the one who said such horrible things to Georgia in my salon. For all I knew, she was the one who gave me a shiner. My mind reeled with what to do. I could send her on her un-merry way, and force her to deal with the disaster she presented me on her own, or I could be kind and help her out. If I decided to be kind, I then had to choose whether to take her out into the middle of the salon so she could be an example to anyone who thought about leaving me for a “bargain,” or I could be a kind human being and keep her away from prying eyes.

  I really must’ve wanted to get on the real Jesus’ good side because I said, “Stay here, Nadine. Let me go whip something up to try and remove that lemony-yellow-Jell-O look you’ve got going on there.” Hey, I at least got my digs in.

  I didn’t think anyone could outdo Nadine in the hair disaster department, but I was so, so wrong. Laura Sampson won the title hands down. She stood timidly in my salon with her hair looking like it got caught in a motherfucking electric mixer, like cake mixing gone wild. There was even some kind of brown substance in her long locks.

  “Girl, what the ever-loving-fuck happened to you?” I asked.

  “Kids! Kids happened to me, Josh!”

  “Honey, come sit down,” I said, gesturing to my chair.

  I know that people who knew my story would think I had something against Laura, but the truth was I didn’t. Laura had always been kind to me in school and, as far as I was concerned, she was another one of Billy’s victims. Laura plopped down in my chair and I gingerly stuck my hands in the tangled mess to figure out what the hell she’d gotten into because she was crying too hard to help me.

  “Aha,” I said when I located the huge wad of gum in her hair. The gooey brown substance was peanut butter. She had hoped the oil in the peanuts would break down the gum and help ease it out of her hair.

  “I tried ice too,” she said. “Nothing worked. I had to wait until my mother-in-law finished work before I could come in. Billy’s been gone for a few days and…”

  I filed away her statement about Billy to be dissected later. The only thing that mattered was finding a way to remove the gum and make her feel beautiful again. It didn’t take me long to figure out what had to happen. “Honey, I’m afraid I’m going to need to cut your hair.”

  “Billy is going to be so mad at me,” she said tearfully.

  I hated men who thought they had the right to tell their wives how to wear their hair. Were those assholes up and styling their women’s hair for them every day? It was the same story all the time. “My husband doesn’t like short hair.” “My husband only likes straight hair.” Well, the world never had and never would operate that way.

  I kept my opinion about her asshole for a husband to myself and said, “I’m sorry, honey. If I could find another way…”

  “Just do it,” she said. “It’ll grow back and if he had been home like he should’ve been then maybe it wouldn’t have happened. I never let the kids sleep with me when he’s home. I didn’t even know one of the little buggers had gum in their mouths. I’m just lucky and grateful that they didn’t choke on it.”

  By the time I was finished, Laura loved her hair. She gave me a tight squeeze and a nice tip before she left my salon looking much happier than when she arrived. I just hoped her happiness stayed with her once Billy decided to drag his ass home f
rom God knew where.

  “It’s not my problem,” I told myself when I finally trudged upstairs at the end of the day. “Hey, babe,” I said when my eyes landed on Detective I Can Fuck Like a Machine.

  Gabe looked up at me from where he sat on the couch watching his sports talk program. “Hey, yourself.” I noticed he was staring at me longer than normal, as if he was assessing me.

  “What?” I asked.

  “I kind of miss the streak of color you used to wear in your hair,” he replied.

  I narrowed my eyes at him before I stomped to my bedroom to put on more comfortable clothes.

  “What did I say?” I heard him ask in confusion.

  “Men,” I said to Diva who was curled up on my bed.

  “WHAT ABOUT MEN?” I asked Josh. He was so worked up about something he didn’t even hear me follow him. I leaned in the doorway and waited for the show to start. Little did he know, I wasn’t in the mood to participate in whatever little tantrum he wanted to throw.

  “You’re always telling people how to wear their hair and shit,” he snarled over his shoulder.

  “I’m not always telling people how to wear their hair,” I told him. “I simply just made a comment that I missed the color streak in the front of your hair. You’re the guy telling people how to wear their hair.”

  “I make suggestions, but I always leave it up to them.” He narrowed his eyes when he realized what he said wasn’t much different than what I said. “I see what you did there.”

  “What’s really got you upset, babe?” I went to him and tugged him into my arms, earning a glare from Diva who was enjoying the loving she was getting from her human. I listened to him talk about his crazy day and how it ended with Laura Sampson’s visit.

  “Where’s he been?” I asked when he got to the part where she said Billy had been gone for a few days. We knew damn well that he’d been in town because both of us saw him multiple times the previous days.

  “I didn’t ask because it’s not my business.” Josh stepped away and began to take off his clothes. “These damn hair disasters make a man hangry.”

  As hard as it was for me to do when his clothes started coming off, I took a step back. “I’ll make dinner. How’s spaghetti and garlic bread sound?”

  He pursed his lips and tipped his head. “I have stuff to make spaghetti and garlic bread?”

  “You do now because I stopped on the way home. It sounded really good to me, but if you’d rather…”

  Josh held his hand up to stop me. “No. Spaghetti sounds great. Just let me finish getting my pjs on and I’ll help you.”

  “I can handle spaghetti,” I tossed over my shoulder on my way to the kitchen.

  I felt his presence in the kitchen before I heard him because my guy was like a ninja. Josh poured himself a glass of wine and leaned against the counter instead of going into the living room to watch TV. “Okay, you heard all about my day so let’s hear about yours. How’d it go with IA?”

  I started to tell him about the interview, but didn’t get past their names before he interrupted.

  “Wait! Their names are Officers Ronnie Cobb and Lonnie Popp?” he asked, as if I was joking. “What did Ronnie and Lonnie look like?”

  “Really?” I asked him.

  “Yeah, you’re right. Besides, I bet they’re much more interesting in my mind than in real life.” I had no doubt that he was correct. Other than their names, nothing about them stuck out in my mind.

  “They were really serious as all Internal Affairs officers are,” I told him.

  “You’ve dealt with them before?” Josh wanted to know.

  “Yep,” I replied.

  “Is that common? I’d think a guy could go his entire career in law enforcement and not have a run-in with IA, but you’ve done it twice in how many years?” It was actually three times so I held up three fingers. He cocked his head to the side then looked me up and down. He was probably right about it being unusual for me having a run-in with IA that many times, but I had nothing to compare it to. “What happened the first time?” he asked.

  As much as I wanted to tell Josh what happened, I couldn’t. “I can’t talk about it, babe. It’s an ongoing case from about four years ago.”

  “Wow, it must’ve happened right before you moved here,” he said, but not in a fishing sort of way. Josh knew how seriously I took my job and never pried for information out of me that I shouldn’t share.

  “The second time?” Josh asked.

  “Oscar.”

  “Oh.” Josh blinked a few times then his expression morphed into concern. “I’m sorry, Gabe.”

  “You have nothing to apologize for, babe. You did nothing wrong,” I assured him. “I will never be sorry that you survived that night and ended up in my life. Never.”

  My words sounded awfully close to a declaration that he wasn’t prepared to hear. He cleared his throat and said, “Anyway, back to your current interrogation.”

  “Ouch.” I dropped my hand between my legs and rubbed my balls as if he’d just kicked them. My theatrics garnered an eye roll but little else. “Jillian Rosewood, my union rep, was awesome. Picture Annalise Keating,” I said to give him a visual, “and…”

  “Which wig?”

  “Josh,” I said in a warning tone, “do you want to hear this story tonight or are we going to drag this out all week long?”

  “Detective Butt Munch,” he grumbled before he took another sip of wine. “You know how much I love Annalise.”

  “Why yes, Josh, I do like to munch on your butt and yes I know how much you love Annalise,” I replied before I moved on again. “Jillian kept Ronnie and Lonnie,” Josh chuckled when I said their names again, “on the straight and narrow.”

  “Did you learn anything about the photos of me or who sent them? Did you get the impression that Ronnie and Lonnie thought there was someone in the CPD involved in this case or just you?”

  “Me?”

  “Oh come on, you know they’re looking hard at you, especially since you’ve already tangled with IA twice before.” Josh let out a sad sigh and shook his head. “They think you killed Nate then vandalized Princess and dropped off the subsequent photos of me to divert attention.”

  “You’re pretty damn good at this,” I told him. “What happened after that?”

  “Annalise, I mean, Jillian reminded them that you had an alibi for the night Nate was killed,” he pointed to himself, “so you couldn’t possibly have been the one to run Nate off the road and shoot him in the head. Frick and Frack–because I can’t say their real names without laughing–are now willing to concede that you didn’t kill Nate yourself, but they suspect you know who did. By now they might’ve even talked to a few patrons of Vibe, or even their bartenders,” he added excitedly, “and know about your personal visit with Nate not long before he died. Add in the email…” Josh let his words trail off.

  I shut off the burners beneath the meat sauce and noodles. “You’re really good at this,” I told him. To the best of my knowledge, they didn’t know about my hookup with Nate. If they did, it wasn’t mentioned to me. I wouldn’t have denied it, but I wasn’t volunteering information either.

  “I’m good at a lot of things,” he boasted. Was it a boast if it was true?

  “Yes, you are.” I drained the pasta and returned it to the pot then poured the pasta sauce over top of it. Josh handed me the slotted spaghetti spoon. I mixed the sauce and noodles while the bread baked for the final minute. “I’m going to go in there tomorrow and thank her for her time, but I have my own representation.”

  Josh pinched my ass hard before he opened the cabinet to get the plates out. “Don’t be snarky,” he told me. “There’s only room for one snarkicist in this relationship.” Josh turned and swayed his perky ass over to the table.

  “Hey, you said ‘relationship’ without stuttering or breaking into hives,” I replied.

  “You want to make it three days?” he asked. Little did he know, I wasn’t waiting another
damn day before I saw his studio. I knew him better than he realized. He was wanting to make it perfect for me and the only thing I needed for that to happen was him. He was my perfection. “Snarkicist?”

  “Snarkicist. S-n-a-r-k-i-c-i-s-t. It’s someone who uses snark as a main form of communication, often in a passive-aggressive way.”

  “You learn that talk in Psychology one-oh-one when you went to school to become an accountant?” I asked, knowing it would get a rise out of him. He stood silently with his back to me for so long that I thought I’d gone too far. “Josh…”

  He turned around suddenly when he heard the apologetic tone in my voice. “I take it back, Detective Snarky Pants. There is enough room in this relationship for two snarkicists.”

  “Good thing,” I told him. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  “On a serious note,” Josh said once we sat down and started to eat, “you’re not really under a lot of scrutiny, are you?”

  “Some,” I said with a shrug. “I can’t blame them and I’m not worried about my job because I haven’t done anything wrong. The only thing that concerns me is that while they’re focusing on me they’re letting a killer get closer to you.”

  “I think it’s smoke and mirrors,” Josh said. “I think the vandalism was done to get to you, as were the pictures, so you’d stop investigating something bigger.”

  “Adrian and I have batted that around a bit, but neither of us are willing to stake your life on it.”

  Josh insisted on washing the dishes and I let him because I did the same thing for him when he cooked. That’s the way it worked in my house growing up and I was glad to see it was working for Josh and me. I was on him the minute the last dish was dried and put away. I gently threw him over my shoulder–he did just eat after all–and carried him to the door that led to the attic. He fussed and put up a little fight, but settled down when I swatted him on his plump ass cheek.