A Killer Location

by Sarah T. Hobart

  I felt a momentary qualm. I’d trusted my locks to Steve in the past and had never been disappointed. Well, except for the one time. But anyone can have an off day.

  “I don’t really know why I’m here,” I said, honestly enough.

  “I do. Take a seat.” He grabbed the back of the ancient barber’s chair and swiveled it around so the seat was an invitation to my behind. The chair was upholstered in worn black leather, with a couple of gaping splits that always seemed to pinch me in tender spots. I hung my bag from a nail pounded into the wall and sat down, the worn cushion sighing as air escaped. My shoulders were rigid, and my back felt as stiff as a ramrod.

  Steve draped a vinyl cape around my shoulders, then took a can of beer from the mini-fridge, popped the tab, and placed it in my hand, turning me to face the mirror. “Deep, calming breaths,” he said.

  I tried a deep breath. Then I tried a sip of beer. It was flat, and on the warm side of cold. Steve took up a thatch of my hair and rolled it gently between his fingers, his eyes fixed on an invisible horizon. My scalp tingled, and I fought the urge to leap from the chair and run down the street, the cape trailing behind me like Wonder Woman.

  “Ah,” Steve said. His voice was pitched deep and low, as if he were addressing a congregation.

  “What? What is it?”

  “A burden. You’ve carried it a long time. Too long. Let it go.”

  I squirmed. “What makes you say that?”

  He rolled more strands. “It’s all here. In the follicles. Every thought, every emotion. The roots go down deep, into the very core of our being.” He met my eyes in the glass. “Fear is a wasteful emotion.”

  “I’m not. Afraid, I mean. There’s nothing I can’t handle.” That bravado again.

  “There’s one thing.”

  “What’s that?” I made my tone sarcastic, but my heart was racing.

  “Happiness,” he said softly.

  I opened my mouth to argue, then thought better of it. “I need a change.”

  “Change comes from within.”

  “Not in this case. Do you do highlights?”

  “I do everything.” He lifted the hair around my face, then let it fall, his manner suddenly brisk. “Highlights would look effing wonderful on you. I’m thinking a deep, bitchin’ auburn. We’ll make your natural color sit up and bark.”

  “Sounds great, but, well, I kind of lost my job. Maybe—”

  He held up a hand. “Say no more. You get a special deal.” He fastened a stiff paper collar around my neck so I looked as though I’d suffered a whiplash injury, then adjusted the cape so that it bound my arms like a straitjacket. He stomped on the silver foot pedal at the base of the chair until I ascended a shuddering six inches. Turning the chair so my back was to the mirror, he began to section off my hair with a rat-tail comb.

  “Nothing too dramatic,” I said nervously, trying to see over my shoulder.

  “This will be just dramatic enough. I have a new product that’s so simple to use you don’t even need a license to apply it.”

  “But you have one, right? A license?”

  He didn’t answer but continued to divide my scalp into parcels until it looked like the plat map of a city block. When it was pinned up to his satisfaction, he took a bottle off the shelf and splashed some of the contents into a ceramic bowl. From a cabinet above the sink, he retrieved a foil envelope, tested its weight in his hand, then emptied the entire contents into the bowl. Using a wooden stirrer that looked suspiciously like a Popsicle stick—in fact, I could see traces of grape on it—he stirred the mixture into a thick blue paste. A smell like a locker-room urinal, only ten times more potent, rolled through the salon.

  “Oh, jeez,” I said, pulling back. “That really stinks.”

  “That’s what change smells like, Sam. Embrace it.” He grabbed a rectangle of foil and a coarse paintbrush and began to slap the mixture on my hair.

  My eyes streamed. “What is this stuff?”

  “Top secret. I get it special from Bulgaria.” He giggled.

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  “Yep. Don’t fidget.” He applied more paste with all the élan of Michelangelo frescoing the Sistine Chapel, folding the foil pieces around each clump. I tried holding my breath.

  “Done,” he said at last. With a flourish, he spun me around until I was staring at myself in the mirror. With my head bristling in foil, I looked like a B-movie space alien.

  “Let’s see, now.” Steve grabbed up the mystery bottle and squinted at the tiny print on the label. “Fuckin’ Cyrillic alphabet,” he muttered.

  “What? What did you say?”

  He met my eyes in the mirror and gave me a goofy smile. “Just yankin’ your chain, Sam. We’ll give you fifteen minutes to start, how’s that sound? Then we’ll check the color every two minutes after that.”

  I took a sip of my beer to distract me from the noxious fumes that hung in a cloud around my head. “I hope I don’t regret this.”

  “You won’t. Trust me.” He grabbed a small oscillating fan and set it up to blow on my face. None too soon, because I was starting to hallucinate: I thought I saw my stylist take a fat joint out of the pocket of his smock.

  “You mind if I medicate?” he said.

  I shook my head. My vision swam in and out for a second; it made the joint look as big around as a toilet-paper roll. “Are you sure this is the best time? I mean, for medicating?”

  “Never better,” he said. “Check this out. Just got my license.” He whipped a plasticized card out of his wallet and held it up for my inspection. I stared at it, expecting to see his hairdressing credentials. Instead, I saw a few lines of text superimposed on a spiky green leaf.

  “Sam, I’m proud to say I’m now a card-carrying member of the medical marijuana community,” he said. “The revolution has begun, my friend.”

  “I’m not familiar with Dr. Anwar Aliwah. What’s his specialty?”

  Steve held a lighter to the end of the joint, and a spurt of flame shot up that nearly singed his eyebrows. “He’s a doctor of the soul, man. His is the wisdom of Mother Gaia. I’m telling you, Sam, legalization is just around the corner. Got the state policymakers on board and the Feds aren’t far behind. In fact, there’s only one sector throwing a monkey wrench in the works.”

  “Whah?” Between the secondhand smoke and the chemical fumes, I was feeling distinctly woozy.

  “Big pharma, that’s who.”

  “I don’t believe this.” The room grew larger, then shrank to a pinpoint.

  “Believe it. The pill pushers are going down, Sam. You’ve heard of cannabinoids? Those are the little wonders that work the magic.” He held out the joint, and I shook my head, addling my vision so that I saw half a dozen joints. In fact, there seemed to be a whole roomful of Steves.

  “Just imagine a world with no need for prescription pills,” the Steves said in unison. “That’s why the drug companies have been lobbying against legalization all these years. They know they’re selling bad medicine. And because they’re in bed with the fuckin’ FDA they can jack the price of any pill on the market. But then their victims got educated about cannabis, and told their representatives, ‘We want it safe and legal.’ It’s a beautiful thing.” He put his lips to the joint and inhaled deeply.

  I shook my head to clear it. “Maybe you should check the color now.”

  He blew out a cannabinoid-laced gust of air. “Good call.” Carefully pinching the end of the joint to extinguish it, he placed it up on the shelf next to the curling iron. He drew on a pair of rubber dishwashing gloves and unfolded one of the foil packets jutting from my scalp. “Whoa.”

  “What? Is it okay?”

  “It’s perfect. Sam, you’re gonna love this.” Working quickly, he removed the foil, then turned the chair and tipped me back so my head dangled over the sink.

  “Close your eyes,” he said. “This shit’ll fry your retinas.”

  Five minutes later, I was shampooed and towel-d
ried. Steve grabbed a blow-dryer and roasted my head for a minute or two, fluffing with a brush as he went. He studied the result, then hit the whole thing with a blast of hair spray that smelled like marine-grade varnish. At last he spun me around. “Voilà.”

  I was transformed. My brunette locks were suddenly alive with streaks of vibrant auburn. My mouth dropped open. “Wow. Amazing. You’re a genius.”

  “I know,” he said modestly. “Tell your friends.”

  Chapter 24

  I took some care navigating the route back to my vehicle; the crumbling curb and rough pavement seemed like an obstacle course rife with cunning pitfalls to trip me up.

  When I got to the van, Bernie Aguilar was leaning against it, holding a white bakery bag.

  “You weren’t at the office,” he said.

  “I was here.” The three words seemed so logical and profound that I started giggling.

  Bernie reached over and touched my hair. “Highlights. Nice. And you’re stoned.”

  “I am not stoned. It’s the Bulgarian chemicals.” And the secondhand weed.

  “Get in,” he said. “I’ll drive you home.”

  “You don’t have to do that.”

  “I’m pretty sure I do. Either that or take your hairdresser into custody.”

  “Fine. But won’t you be stranded?” I climbed into the passenger seat, feeling giddy. That was the power of great hair.

  “One of my guys can swing by and pick me up.” He handed me the bakery bag and settled into the driver’s seat, ratcheting it back several notches. “Since you were too busy for Ramona’s, I thought I’d deliver.”

  “Sweet of you. But I’m off cookies.”

  “For how long?”

  “However long it takes.” I opened the bag and peeked inside. The cookies were still warm, their chocolate goodness radiating through the paper. “How’d you find me?”

  “I just got lucky.” He turned the key. The van leaped forward, then stalled.

  “Go easy on the clutch,” I said. “It has to last another sixty thousand miles.”

  He had better luck the second time around, and we rumbled up Fifth Street, turning right on South G opposite the big-box grocery. Suddenly I grabbed the wheel and we swerved. “Turn in here.”

  “Jesus, don’t do that!” Bernie steered into the parking lot and shut off the engine.

  “I’ll be right back,” I said.

  I returned a minute later with a bottle of screwtop white wine for Stacy and two frozen pizzas. Fabulous hair called for a fabulous dinner.

  Bernie smiled into his mustache. Damned if he wasn’t the best-looking man I’d ever seen.

  “You ever do it in a Volkswagen?” I asked.

  The smile grew broader. “Is that an offer?”

  “I’m just making conversation.” I reached over and ran a hand down his thigh. “There’s more room in the back.”

  “Don’t tempt me.”

  “Suit yourself.” My hand did a little more work. “You’re wearing too much hardware.”

  He closed his eyes. “Because I’m on duty in twenty minutes.”

  “Plenty of time.” I leaned over and kissed him. It started off soft and tender and quickly grew hot and urgent. I leaned into him, tugging at his hair, kissing him till I couldn’t breathe. His arms came up around me, and he pulled me onto his lap. One hand cupped my breast. The steering wheel dug into my back. I tried to straddle him, and my knee hit the gearshift and knocked it into neutral. The van started to roll.

  Bernie broke away and hauled on the hand brake, breathing hard.

  “Maybe this is a bad idea,” I said.

  “It’s a great idea.” His eyes were as dark as chocolate syrup. Then he put a hand to his forehead. “I should have my head examined for saying this, but I think we should get you home.”

  “Chicken.” I settled back into the passenger seat and dug a cookie out of the bag while he started the engine. We pulled out of the lot as I focused on the first bite, rich and fudgy. It wasn’t hot bus sex, but it was a pretty close second.

  We drove in silence until Bernie said, “I have an update for you.”

  “Oh?”

  “You might recall you suggested that finger number one didn’t belong to Marian Woods.”

  “Crazy, I know.” I ran my tongue over my lips to remove some chocolate, and Bernie drove up over the curb.

  “Watch it,” I said. “I just had my front end aligned.” In my dreams. “You were saying?”

  “What? Oh. Turns out you were right.”

  I stared at him. “I was?”

  “Go figure. Just got a follow-up from the lab. There were two blood types associated with the finger. One was from a sample taken from the severed end. The other—”

  “I get the idea.” I dropped the rest of the cookie back in the bag. “They dug a little deeper.”

  “Right. And that produced different results.”

  “The paring knife,” I said.

  “What about it?”

  “It was in the sink. Marian nicked herself, then doctored the, uh, end. What about yesterday’s finger?”

  “No results yet. You think it ties in?”

  “Don’t you?”

  He didn’t answer. The engine whined as we began to climb past the university toward Fickle Court. “You mind telling me how you knew?”

  “I didn’t know. I only guessed.”

  “Okay. How’d you guess?”

  I hedged a bit. “Off the record?”

  “This’d better be good.”

  “Fine. Okay. The nail was bitten. Marian’s weren’t. And there was a ring on the finger. It seemed to tie things to Everett. But it was, um, kind of a loose fit.”

  He groaned. “Tell me you didn’t touch anything.”

  “I was curious. It’s not like I knew it was a crime scene. Anyway, that just started me thinking.” I stared up at the roof for a second. “So, now what?”

  “We had the lab run a few more tests on finger number one. Seemed like a long shot, but we found traces of arsenic.”

  I was speechless, but not for long. “You’re saying it was poisoned?”

  “Not necessarily. Could be a false positive. But it would help to know who it belongs to. You pick up any other pertinent information?”

  I thought of all the bits and pieces I’d gathered. None of it seemed to make any sense, and the sauna business was downright embarrassing. “Nope. At least, nothing pertinent.”

  “Why don’t you let me be the judge of that.”

  “Well—” I told him about my visit to the crematorium with Gail. “I’m almost certain Marian got the finger there. But we didn’t get much from the owner.”

  “We’ll talk to him. What else?”

  “I don’t know. How about you drop the charges against Everett?”

  He shook his head. “We’re not there yet.”

  “Oh, come off it. He was set up.”

  “By his ex? An even better motive for him to want her dead. We need more to go on.”

  I fished inside the bag and took out the cookie I’d started. “I think you should tell me some stuff for a change.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like that couple who ripped me off. Were you able to find them?” I polished off the cookie in a couple of quick bites.

  “Not yet. Your description of the pair is on a be-on-the-lookout bulletin. If they’re still in the area, we’ll track them down.”

  “Good. What about Mr. Williams? Why was he killed?”

  “Wrong place, wrong time is my guess. You have a different theory?”

  “No. I just wonder where the gun came from.”

  “Marian Woods has a twenty-two registered in her name.”

  I stared at him. “But she didn’t shoot Mr. Williams.”

  “No. She didn’t shoot Mr. Williams.”

  We were on my street. Bernie pulled up in front of the house and shut off the engine. “I have to get to work. Call me.”

  “If I t
hink of anything?”

  “That, too.” He leaned over and kissed me with some seriousness, then hopped out and started up the street on foot, radio in hand. I watched him go. Then I grabbed my cookies, pizzas, and wine and headed inside.

  —

  I burst through the front door. “Ta-da!” I sang.

  Harley opened one eye from his spot on the couch. Max looked up from a saucepan on the stove. “Hey, Mom.”

  “Notice anything different about me?”

  He gave me about a quarter of his attention. “Are those new shoes?”

  “Yeah, that’s it. Nailed it on the first try. My three-year-old shoes. Here’s a hint: it’s my hair.”

  “I knew that. You got it cut, right?”

  I sighed. “Right. How was work?”

  “It was okay. I know the proper way to wipe down a StairMaster now.” He saw the pizzas. “Uh, I was making fried rice for dinner. But I can save it till tomorrow.”

  “Fried rice is fine.” I stuck the pizzas in the freezer.

  “Aunt Stacy gave me the recipe. It’s vegan. I hope you don’t mind.”

  “Mind? Of course not. I love vegetables.”

  He shot me a look. “You feel okay?”

  “Never better.” And I meant it. Maybe a tad lightheaded from Steve’s domestic and Bulgarian chemicals and Bernie’s attentions, but pretty tip-top.

  “She’s joining us for dinner.”

  I’d expected that; still, my happy mood evaporated fast. I stomped into my bedroom and changed into sweatpants and a threadbare Niners T-shirt. Retreating to my closet of a bathroom, I checked my hair in the mirror above the sink and smiled. I could face Stacy with hair like this.

  She showed up a few minutes later and ran an eye over my outfit. “You shouldn’t have dressed up on my account.” Then she saw my hair. “Whoa. Welcome to the twenty-first century.”

  “What do you think?” I did a full twirl to show off the highlights.

  “Not bad,” she said grudgingly. She handed me her crutches and took a seat at the table. I poured her a glass of wine and took a beer for myself.