Ms. Glick cleared her throat. “We think this sudden death may be affecting Taylor’s behavior in and out of school. On top of that, we have the oil spill. And of course your being lately in the media.”
“Yes, I’ve noticed it, too,” I said, glumly. In my monkey mind, I sat Jackson down in my salon chair and shaved his head bald.
“You probably don’t know, though, that Taylor’s hanging out at the Under There at night,” she said. They both looked down at the table.
“The Under There?” I said.
“Yes. It’s what they call the place. Lilith Robinson’s parents’ low, empty garage, usually too wet in the summers.” Anything low in our county was a disaster waiting to happen structurally. If you dug down at all, you’d reach water pretty quickly. Lilith was one of the hair-sheared kids who’d dropped out of college. The principal went on. “They’re drinking, smoking pot, and—”
“LaRue, they’re drinking cough syrup. This particular one gets them high if they drink enough of it,” the coach said.
“Some of these kids—this group—are really at risk,” Ms. Glick said. “The stuff can be addictive.” How much cough syrup would it take? I wondered.
I sat back and sighed, folded my arms, stared at the wall across from me. They were analyzing me, an adult with two mortgages, Grandma’s, Daddy’s, and of course the rent on my apartment downtown. Who did they think they were?
“Taylor is a good kid.” The principal backstepped, trying to appease me. “He started off the year really well. He has this thirst to learn that some kids don’t. He probably has a higher IQ than other kids in the school, and this makes it hard for him to connect. Most of them are trying to get pregnant or get someone pregnant, or not trying to get pregnant but getting pregnant anyway.”
The coach finished for her. “And considering that fishing is what the boys assume they’ll be fated to do forever, they just roll with it, if you will.”
“Right,” I said, when I wanted to say, Wrong. Not Taylor.
“Right,” said the principal. “Even though he’s better read and more worldly, he’s exhibiting some odd behaviors. Not only is he neglecting his work, but he uses the time to . . . to plot defense and security measures. For what, I don’t know. It’s paranoid, slightly. Even though these are strange times.” She shrugged.
“He’s not doing his work in class?” I said.
“No. And he doesn’t apologize for it. He says, ‘I’m working on something far more important.’ ” The coach imitated Tay and exchanged looks with Ms. Glick. “He has a whole system of how to camouflage himself plotted out on paper.”
“LaRue, I hate to do this, but I must. We found this on Taylor’s person earlier in the week. He was showing it off to a friend in the Under There crowd, and I had to bring him to the office,” said the principal. She pulled out Taylor’s Swiss Army knife.
“Oh,” I said. “Oh. He knows he’s not supposed to bring that to school.”
“The five of his teachers, who I’m representing, are suggesting he seek counseling,” the coach announced.
“Counseling?” I said. “He went through counseling during the divorce. It helped him then, but he’s pretty cynical about counselors now.” Not now, I thought. Please, not now. He’s a teenager. Do you remember that time in your life, people? God, what if they’d seen me just now, stealing things out of a guy’s car when all I’m doing is trying to figure out who killed Trina Lutz. I cringed at authority sometimes. I also heard what was between the lines: Columbine. Mass teen murderers. Insane people carrying weapons. My son was no killer.
“We think you’d be making a mistake not to get him counseling,” the principal said.
“Not yet,” I blurted out. “I’m—I think it will pass. He’s a sensitive—”
“It’s the sensitive ones who need it,” said the coach. His head of hair was hopeless.
“I’ll think about it,” I said. I took in a big breath and let it go. My nose felt clogged, stuffed up with years of dust and humanity.
Finally I said, “Is that all?” They looked at each other with knowing glances, and I stood up. They couldn’t make me do this. “I appreciate all you’re doing, all you’ve revealed to me. I will think this over and watch him carefully. I think I should monitor his nights more closely at any rate. I’ll check back in a week, okay?”
They both shook my hand gravely, and I blew out of there. It felt too much like jail. The ECOL letter was stashed under the newspaper on the front seat. I should be more careful. Randy could come by and just snatch the thing right back.
CHAPTER 23
FLORIDIANS BEHAVE LIKE SCARED GOATS when the weather gets chilly. We bleat and fret and huddle together, saying “It’s cold!” when someone from the Midwest would laugh and call it a warm fall day. The only time I spent time in a Northeastern city in winter, curse words spewed out of my mouth when I went outside. I was literally in pain from the cold. Not at all like a chilly December in north Florida. But I guess without all that cold winter weather, the Santa Claus, reindeer, sled-and-snow and down-the-chimney thing just gets surreal. Nobody really believes a guy in a red suit with white fur when it’s 70 degrees outside.
So it was in the low 60s, and as I looked out the shop window, a light rain was misting in the air. I called Madonna, who couldn’t believe anyone would wake her up at such an hour—during her after-breakfast nap so she could cope with staying up until two a.m. I told her about “the horrid school conference.” She listened without a word.
“This is why I dropped out of school,” she said finally. “School sucks, LaRue. I’m younger than you. Have you been to a public high school lately? Almost a third of kids don’t even graduate, okay? Just read that in—I don’t know—somewhere important, I’m sure. Tay’s a good kid.” She hung up, but I wondered. When it’s your own kid, you worry. You know the principal doesn’t know how your kid’s doing, but do you, the parent?
The clouds covered the whole sky, a low, heavy ceiling, and promising change yet again. At least there was no big wind, no hurricane pushing the oil our way. I remembered talking to the owner of the Island Hotel a few days after the spill. Clyde fished and ran the restaurant. We’d sat outside on the swing at the front of the hotel in the heat of early May, commenting under our breath about how our eyes stung and there was a strange smell in the air. “If we get a hurricane, and the oil comes this way,” he said. “Just burn it all down, the top of the water, the buildings along the Gulf, everything. Take it all down,” he’d said. We’d nodded gravely in agreement. Everyone felt this way, but no one else had said this aloud. It was just that devastating to us all.
But some rain wouldn’t be a bad thing. I swallowed a bagel and threw down a cup of coffee behind it. In the distance, I could hear the clanging of metal on the mast of a sailboat in the harbor.
For a change, a few customers began to arrive at the shop. In walked Fletch and his too-long crew cut. Behind him, a walk-in tourist in skimpy dress with starfish on it. Wasn’t she freezing? Behind him, Isabelle the taxi driver.
I booked the tourist for forty-five minutes later. One hour sounded like too long a wait to a tourist, but forty-five minutes gave me time to really spend with the local ahead of her. Isabelle looked at Fletch out of the corner of her eye and asked if I could book her after the tourist. Friday had often proved hectic, an unpredictable day. I tried to make room for as many appointments as possible. After the flurry of walk-in booking activity, now the shop sat empty except for Fletch and me.
“Have a seat, Fletch,” I said, patting the top of the chair. “Can I start on your sideburns? They’re back in style, you know.”
“Nope,” he said, as always. I loathed giving him the crew cut. Asking me to do a crew cut was sort of like asking Picasso to paint your bedroom in white paint—not that I thought I was a Picasso, but that lack of creative generosity made me impatient. But a hair stylist gives the customer what the customer wants, within reason. That is, if we can’t gingerly talk them out
of something drastically bad.
“Just the usual,” he said, as always.
“So how are you doing, then?” I asked. “I’m so sorry about Trina.” We pretended our bar conversation after pool hadn’t happened.
“She loved those kids of yours,” he said, smoothing his hand over his head. His eyes suddenly took the color of steel. I’d seen Fletch smooth his hands over his head like that before.
“They’re having a rough time, especially Taylor,” I said. Fletch didn’t seem to be. He looked rested as I pulled the cape over him.
“Yep. It’s tough,” he said. “So how’s your pop?”
“Dad? Daddy? Dad’s fine,” I said. “Enjoying his garden.” I thought I’d try to catch him off guard. “So what’s this group called ECOL?”
“ECOL?” he said. The hand went up to his head, even though my scissors were in the hair on the side of his skull. “Don’t believe I’ve heard of it.”
“That’s funny, because I saw an envelope with the stationery and your name on it when I was subbing for Tiffany in the office the other day, along with the Senator and some—”
“Oh, that,” he said. “It’s an economic, ecological growth package we’re working on.” This didn’t fit his vocabulary. He’d never left the island, so didn’t switch from country to college in a heartbeat. But he’d spouted this ECOL explanation out like it was rote. Like he’d programmed himself to sound semi-knowledgeable if asked. “We got a park and some low-density residential property development.” He tripped over that phrase.
“On wetlands?” I said. I was trimming the back short.
“LaRue, we’re developing with the agreement of the county and state regulations.” He said the words as if he were talking to a naughty, stupid child.
“I get the impression that Trina didn’t like it,” I said. He sat up a little, then went still.
“Trina didn’t approve of a lot of things, bless her heart. Why don’t you stick to the haircuts and get out of the Nancy Drew business, honey. Trina was an unhappy woman. I’m afraid I knew that too well. I loved her dearly, of course.” His hand went to his head again. “Wasn’t nothing I could do to console her.” He sat back in the chair with a set mouth, his jowls sagging. Steely eyes stared back from the mirror.
I realized I shouldn’t have confronted him. I apologized. Fletch was one thing, but Mac came from city culture. You could confront Mac, and he wouldn’t think much of it. Fletch? Well. Many older Southern men will never forgive a truly confrontational woman who makes them lose face. And he had clout in the community. He could make it hard for us—Dad, Grandma, Daisy, Taylor. So I apologized profusely.
“You’re right, Fletch,” I said. “I shouldn’t bring up these things right now. I know it’s hard for you.” In my fantasies, I was giving him a Mohawk and dying it purple. In walked the tourist, and the talk between Fletch and me turned to weather.
I finished up Fletch, and he paid me well, and tipped well as usual. But a chill ran through me as he left. Call it intuition. He was cold as a Chicago winter. But I didn’t have time to process it. I trimmed the tourist woman’s straight blonde hair and used the iron to make a flat round curl, first teasing it a little to give her some volume. Voila, soft curls for the day—they matched the dress. I sprayed the heck out of it because of the weather. She felt perky and tipped well. If she liked the cut and style, she’d go tell others about my place.
In walked Isabelle. She already wore a pageboy and had healthy silvery hair. Yet her face looked a bit like cooled lava on a craggy mountain.
She sat down. I could tell she didn’t need anything haircut-wise. She wanted to talk. “How about a shampoo and a bang trim?” I suggested.
“Sounds about right,” she said. Her voice sounded as crackly as a radio talk station that doesn’t quite come in. During the lavender shampoo, I gave her a good scalp massage. She began to talk.
“That damn Fletch,” she said. “He is one home wrecker. Done been carrying on with his brother’s wife for years. I mean years while Trina was at home working hard.”
“Who, Isabelle, which brother?” I said. It sounded Old Testament, somehow, and important.
“Cooter, who else.” She shook her head and shrugged her shoulders.
“Fletch?” I said, trying to sound neutral and unknowing.
“LaRue, they got this place up yonder at Cureall,” she said. “Lotsa times, I’m out on the road, you know, taking folks back to the airport up Tallahassee way?”
“Cureall?” I said. She nodded, went on. I pulled out the razor to texture her boxy bangs for softness.
“Well, they’re one or the other of the two of them always turning off on the same little rut road back into the woods. You know the sign with the squirrel on it? Says ‘Squirrel’s Nest?’ ”
“Yeah, I’ve seen it,” I said. “Doesn’t it stink to high heavens over in Cureall?”
“Naw, you’re thinking of in the town. I’m talking about up closer to Tallahassee from there in the woods. It don’t stink. Anyhow, I seen ’em turning in there to do their hanky pank for years now.”
“Years. How long?” I said.
“Oh, twenty, say,” she said as hair drifted into her face and she spit it away. I’d talked her out of color about a year ago. Her silver hair was prettier than anything in a bottle.
“Twenty years?!” I said. “It’s like a, a marriage! Are you sure it’s been that long?”
“Well, I came here from Georgia twenty-two years ago, and started taxi driving a year later. Almost the whole time I been seeing ’em turning up into their little love nest, yes sir. I ’bout lost my accent now, my Georgia one,” she said. Hardly, I thought. She went on. “’Cept he wouldn’t leave Trina for nothing. Set in his ways, you know.”
“Don’t I know it,” I said. “I can’t even get him to grow sideburns.”
“Mary despised Trina, you know,” Isabelle said. “All she ever wanted was to get her hands on Fletch, and his money wouldn’t hurt her none, neither, know what I mean? She felt Trina was taking all that from her, when it was really flipped the other way round.”
“But Mary—Mary would have—okay, Mary would have been fourteen when they started seeing each other,” I said, horrified. Younger than Taylor, only a few years older than Daisy.
“I’m telling you, that Fletch is a skunk. And I think Mary married Cooter to get close as she could to Fletch,” Isabelle said.
“Ew,” I said, realizing I sounded like Tay’s friends. I clicked on the hair dryer, trying to sort through all this. “It makes sense that she’s—well, kind of off. Guess that’s why she’s always acting drunk and crazy.”
“Now don’t go all soft, LaRue,” she said. “You coulda done the same with what all you been through. She ain’t got no morals is her problem. She’s just a whore.” I winced, but didn’t want to get into the semantics of moral ambiguity or calling women sexist names. Hairdressers don’t do that in a small town or they’d close down faster than mullet jumps when you aren’t looking. “I think she wanted to kill Cooter when she went at him with the knife,” Isabelle said.
Luckily, the phone in my pocket buzzed. Jackson. I told him I’d call him after I finished Isabelle’s blow dry.
I decided to put on the Avett Brothers, music to cheer myself up. Isabelle and I sang “I and Love and You” together as I dried her hair. She didn’t know the words or the band, but they sounded country and the words were simple enough that she caught on. My hands they shake, my head, it spins. Ah, Brooklyn, Brooklyn, take me in. Are you aware the shape I’m in.
She tipped big, and then left. I finally had earned Christmas money. I did a little jig.
“Did you call because I broke the law, Officer?” I deadpanned Jackson when I called him back.
“No, but I might have to fire you, Señora Panther,” he said in a Mexican accent.
I had to laugh. “You’re rotten. What a stereotype.”
He put on the thick Hispanic accent again. “You have not been
checking out this Mary and this Tiffany as I requested. But if you like, I can tell you about Señor Mac and the Mexico connection.”
“Really?” I said, relieved. “I hope it’s good. It’s so far a rough day. And I do have some word on Mary. You first, though.”
“Well, first things first. Are you doing okay?” he said. I told him about the horrid school conference.
“Kids are kids,” he said. “Boys his age don’t belong in school. At least not in the kind of schools most public education provides. Hey, he’s coping. But I hope you’ll pull him home weeknights, not that it’s any of my bus—”
“Nope. Sure isn’t,” I said, and then softened. “But I will.”
“Okay, then. Never tell a single mom how to raise her kids. Point taken. Next, Mexico,” he said, the professional tone setting in. “Mac had a mistrial in a case of money laundering in Guatemala. Seems he was fired, and whatever it was got covered up. But there wasn’t enough evidence to convict him of anything.”
“And?” I said.
“That’s all I could get for now,” he said. I could hear phones ringing and people talking in the background.
I figured he was busy, so I started. “I’m wondering about—”
“Wait. Couple more things,” he said. “The blood in the bag you gave me from the boat matches the blood on the knife. Most significant thing is, it’s human blood. And the blood type matches Trina’s blood type. Good work. It’s something we can go on. But we need more if we want to exhume the body without using your testimony.” Her blood had spilled on that boat. With a knife.
“Also, I’m going to send you a copy of the coroner’s report on Trina’s cause of death. Remember I told you the signature looked girly? See what you think. I’ll fax it to Laura’s office after we get off the phone. You should go directly over there when we hang up so that it doesn’t get into any other hands.”
I glanced across the street. Laura’s office lights gleamed. “Got it. Thanks,” I said. I meant it. He’d been good to me. I told him what Isabelle had said to me regarding Fletch and Mary’s twenty-year relationship.
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