by Laura Durham
“It’s a good thing you called me when you did,” Fern said to Kate, who nodded absently as she squirted a blue gel into her palm.
I glared at Kate, noticing that her red miniskirt was very mini. “So this is all your doing?”
“You’re welcome.” Kate rubbed her palms together and began working the gel through her bob. “I knew you wouldn’t do it, and I don’t think you’ve had your hair done since the Simpson/Moskowitz wedding, and that was nine months ago. Besides, after yesterday, you deserve to take your mind off things.”
I opened my mouth to protest but realized she was probably right.
Fern began arranging his bottles and brushes on my dining room table.
“I can’t believe someone threw a cocktail at your car and set it on fire.”
“A Molotov cocktail,” I said.
Fern tapped a finger to his lips. “Now is that a vodka drink?”
“It’s not a drink,” I said. “It’s an explosive.”
Fern steered me to a dining room chair and sat me down, unfurling a black smock around my shoulders. “It sounds like a craft cocktail to me. Regardless, a neighborhood with real-estate prices this high should not have car fires.”
“Whoever torched my car was warning me off Tricia’s murder investigation. And it worked.”
“I’m surprised your clients aren’t talking about her,” Kate said as Fern pulled the black elastic from my head. “I would have thought the murder of a rich girl would have been prime gossip.”
Fern eyed my hair as he combed it down my back. “I’m sure they want to, but I’ve had the receptionist tell everyone I’m in mourning and not to bring up her name.” He waved a hand in front of his clothes. “Hence the all-black.”
Kate grinned at him. “Brilliant.”
“If I sense one of those two-bit hussies is getting close to the topic, I reach for a tissue and excuse myself for a moment. Then I go to the back and sneak some Champagne from the bottles reserved for clients.”
“Even more brilliant,” Kate said.
“How much Champagne have you had today?” I asked, aware that he would soon be cutting my hair and hoping very much that he wasn’t drunk.
Fern waved a hand to dismiss my concern. “A glass or two.”
“It’s only ten a.m.” I hoped I wouldn’t end up with a Mohawk or a pixie cut. I knew I couldn’t pull off either. I tried to turn my head to give Fern a look, but he held it straight as he sprayed my hair with water. “And how are you in mourning? You couldn’t stand Tricia.”
“Of course I couldn’t, and neither could any of the people who are dying to talk about her.” He picked up his pointy scissors from the table. “Are you okay with losing a few inches? Otherwise you’ll be sitting on your hair by the time you come see me again.”
“That’s fine,” I said. “But nothing crazy.”
Fern leaned into my ear. “Darling, would I ever do something crazy?”
I thought back to the time he dressed like Little Bo Peep for Halloween and carried a toy poodle as a sheep, and I declined to answer.
“So I don’t suppose you’ve learned anything juicy about Tricia then?” Kate asked. Fern’s salon had been a good source of intel during past investigations.
Fern snipped, and from the corner of my eye I saw a clump of hair fall to the floor. “Sorry, girls. Was I supposed to be getting information? I did hear a juicy one about Brianna, though. Did you know she’s been running a call-girl service through her business?”
I looked at Kate, but she wouldn’t meet my eyes. “We should probably tell you the truth before this gets way out of hand.”
Fern dropped his scissors, and they clattered onto my hardwood floor. “Don’t tell me you two are running a call-girl service, too?”
I waved my hands wildly in front of me. “Of course not. But we might have planted the information about Brianna.”
Fern let out a breath as he bent to pick up his scissors. “Well, that’s a relief.”
“The only reason we said it was because she was spreading awful rumors about us,” Kate said.
“You don’t have to explain to me,” Fern said. “That one has been jealous of you two since she blew into town on her blond broom. I’m not surprised she was the one behind all the nasty rumors about Wedding Belles.”
“Do you think she’ll be too embarrassed to stay in the city?” Kate asked, her face hopeful. “Now that she’s been outed as a pimp.”
“Doubtful,” I said. “We aren’t that lucky.”
“At least we’re officially out of the crime-solving business and our names have been cleared,” Kate said. “It’s a relief that the police have a suspect in custody.”
“Who?” Fern asked.
I cut my eyes to Kate. “Didn’t you tell him?”
Sorry. I forgot. We were busy packing up his salon to bring here.”
“The guy you helped Leatrice stake out,” I said.
“Effing Frank?” Fern sounded delighted. “Did he finally show up?”
“When Leatrice went to move her car, she saw lights on inside, so we called the police.”
Fern paused his cutting. “Just think of all the crazy things that have happened in the past week, girls.”
Kate began ticking off on her fingers. “The wedding where you had to drag the bride down the aisle. The awful reviews. The bride and groom get shot. The police suspect us. Annabelle sees Mrs. Toker meeting with a guy who we later discover is Effing Frank, her daughter’s gun-happy neighbor. Mrs. Toker dies. Annabelle’s car gets torched. We discover that Frank works for the Tokers. The police catch him.”
“It puts the wedding day disaster in perspective, doesn’t it?” Fern asked.
I tried to turn around again. “What wedding day disaster?” Aside from Tricia being a nightmare, the wedding had been disaster-free.
“The best man’s toast,” Fern said. “Don’t you remember? When he said the maid of honor’s name instead of the bride and then stammered something about how he thought he would be giving his toast for Dave and Madeleine’s wedding and not Dave and Tricia’s?”
Kate dropped a plastic bottle of styling serum. It bounced on the floor and rolled under my couch. “What?”
Fern shook his head in exasperation. “You two never listen to the toasts, do you?”
Chapter 40
I grabbed Fern’s wrist as he attempted to resume cutting my hair. “The best man said what?”
Fern sighed and pulled his hand out of my grasp. “I thought you cued all the toasts. How did you miss it?”
“Once we cue them, we go off and start gathering all the items to give the couple at the end of the night,” Kate said. “After you’ve heard a couple hundred speeches, they all start to sound the same.”
“Did you miss my toast?” He narrowed his eyes at me.
“Of course not,” Kate said. “It was amazing.” She was telling the truth since she’d heard his toast even though I’d only listened to part of it.
“Thank you. I thought the bit I did from The Sound of Music was inspired, if I do say so myself. ” Fern put his hands on his hips, the pointy scissors jutting out on one side and the comb on the other. “But you should have stayed for the best man. It was something special.”
“How did Tricia react?” I asked. Our former bride had not been known for her under-reactions or for letting things go.
Fern drew his comb across his neck as if he were using it to cut his throat. “She looked like she wanted to kill him, which made it even worse. He started stuttering about it being an easy mistake to make since Dave had started out with Madeleine.”
Kate began pacing. “Started out with her? Like they dated first?”
Fern shrugged and turned my head forward. “That’s what I assumed, but you know I would never gossip.”
Kate and I exchanged a look. Fern loved nothing more than juicy gossip and his salon was one of the main conduits in Georgetown.
“Make an exception,” I said, twisting tow
ard him again.
Fern screwed up his face like he was debating. Then he continued. “Before the best man could say anything else, the bride elbowed the groom, and he jumped in.”
“Did Madeleine seem upset?” I asked as Fern straightened my head and tipped it down so that I stared into my lap, snippets of hair covering the black smock.
“Upset?” Fern said. “Her face turned bright pink, so I think she was embarrassed. But who wouldn’t be if an entire wedding was looking at you and wondering about your relationship with the groom?”
“Poor thing.” I could imagine how it must have sounded to the guests. Everyone had heard too many stories of best men sleeping with brides and bridesmaids sleeping with grooms not to jump to conclusions.
“I can’t believe we missed that,” Kate said. “After hundreds of boring speeches, we finally get a juicy one and what are we doing? Packing up the wedding presents.”
“I’m thinking sideswept bangs,” Fern said. “Are we onboard with this?”
“As long as you’re onboard with her pinning them up with a bobby pin everyday,” Kate said.
I looked up to protest but realized that she was completely correct.
Fern clutched his hands to his heart. “Bobby pins? Why don’t you use a banana clip and finish me off for good?”
“I promise not to use bobby pins,” I said. “What happened after the groom cut off the best man?”
Fern’s foot tapped beneath me. “The groom made some sort of joke so that everyone laughed, and the little strawberry blonde ran off to the bathroom. I think the bride’s mother went after her.”
“The bride’s mother?” Kate said. “That’s interesting.”
“So what does this mean?” I asked as Fern combed my hair down so it created a wet curtain around my face. “What kind of relationship did the maid of honor have with the groom?”
“The bigger question is how did I not pick up on it?” Kate asked. “Sensing secret relationships is my superpower.” Kate did have an uncanny ability to look at people and know if they were involved romantically and how deeply.
I parted the hair in front of my eyes so I could see her clearly. “To be fair, you never saw those two together, did you?”
Kate tapped a finger to her lips. “Maybe not. When the groom attended a meeting, Madeleine didn’t, and when the bride brought her maid of honor with her, Dave never came.”
“And does your power even extend to past involvement?” I asked Kate. “You can’t tell if two people used to date ages ago, can you?”
She raised an eyebrow. “Are you doubting my powers, Annabelle?”
I let the hair fall back in front of my face. “Forget I asked.”
Fern raised my head and pulled his fingers through my hair. “You aren’t allergic to fish, are you?”
“What? No. Why?”
He held up a silver tube. “Caviar hair serum.”
“Will I smell like fish eggs?” I asked.
Fern squirted a gold gel into his palm and shrugged. “Beauty has a price, darling.”
“We need to find out about this thing between Madeleine and Dave.” Kate walked down the hall toward my office and returned with my laptop as Fern worked the gel through my hair.
“And you’re going to do this how?” I wrinkled my nose at the salty scent of the serum. This caviar potion had better be worth me smelling like sushi.
Kate set the laptop on the table and flipped it open. “The same way we find any good dirt. Facebook.”
She tapped away at the keyboard while Fern plugged in his industrial black hair-dryer and picked up an oversized round brush. He began tugging the brush through my hair as he dried each wide strand. I could see Kate’s fingers flying along the keyboard, even if I couldn’t hear them anymore over the roaring in my ears.
“Nothing on Tricia’s page,” Kate screamed. “I’m going to try Dave’s page. Did he friend us, too?”
“I don’t think so,” I yelled back, putting a hand over my nose to block out the aroma of cooking fish that emanated from my head. “But Madeleine did. I think Tricia made her.”
Kate nodded and didn’t look up from the screen.
“When is the last time you updated your profile pic?” Fern asked, stopping the dryer to fluff my hair with his hands. “Aren’t you still using your first headshot?”
“Maybe,” I said. “It’s not like I look any different than I did six years ago.”
“Mmmmhmmm.” Fern turned on the blow-dryer.
“Did you just roll your eyes at me?” I yelled over the noise.
He shook his head. “I can’t hear you.”
“Bingo.” Kate turned the laptop around so I could see the screen.
I sat up to get a better look and cracked my head on the barrel of the dryer. “Could you turn that off for a second?”
Fern clicked off the hair-dryer, set it on the table, and leaned over with me.
Kate pointed to the images of Dave and Madeleine wrapped around each other, holding hands, kissing. “These are from their freshman year in college.”
“And they’re on Madeleine’s page?” I rubbed my head where it had hit the hard plastic of the hair-dryer.
Kate nodded. “Yes, but they’re actually other people’s photos that she’s tagged in. She must have taken down all of her posts.”
“Or Tricia made her remove them,” I said.
“They look happy,” Fern said. “Happier than Tricia ever did.”
“When did Tricia and Dave start dating?” I asked.
Kate spun the laptop around to face her again, typed a few keystrokes and began scrolling. “It looks like the first photo of Tricia and Dave appears a month after the last photo I could find of Madeleine and Dave.” She angled the screen so Fern and I could see the photo of Dave and Tricia cheek to cheek. Tricia’s smile looked desperate it was so bright.
I sat back in my chair. “So Tricia stole her best friend’s boyfriend.”
“And married him,” Kate added.
Fern whistled. “I’m surprised Madeleine didn’t kill Tricia.”
Kate gave a low whistle back. “Hell has no fury like a woman’s thorn.”
Fern raised a hand in the air. “Preach, girl.”
Chapter 41
“Well, who’s to say she didn’t kill her?” I stood up so I could walk around the room. Walking helped me think. If only I could walk away from the smell of my own head. I wasn’t sure if smelling like fish was better or worse than smelling like roasted car.
“Probably the cops.” Kate twisted in her chair to face me. “Since they have the neighbor in custody and there’s so much evidence linking him to both murders.”
“Knock, knock,” Leatrice said as she opened the door and came inside.
“Hi, Leatrice,” I said before replying to Kate. “It’s just shocking to learn such a big secret about the bride’s best friend and her husband. I mean, we did work with the couple for a year.”
“Was that only a year?” Kate asked. “It felt like a decade.”
Leatrice looked at the array of hair products and appliances on the dining table. “Are you doing makeovers?”
Fern’s eyes went to Leatrice’s burgundy hair, and he patted the chair in front of him. “Step right up.”
“You’d think we would have gotten some hint of this bombshell before now,” I said.
“Well, to be fair, the rest of the world heard about it at the wedding.” Fern shook his round hairbrush at me.
Leatrice bounded over to Fern’s empty chair and let him unfurl a black smock around her shoulders. “Heard about what?”
“Are you open to a new color?” Fern asked Leatrice as he held up a strand of her electric burgundy hair. When she gave a distracted nod, he grinned and began poking through a canvas sack at his feet.
Kate angled the laptop so Leatrice could see the images on the screen. “Heard that the groom and the maid of honor dated before the bride and groom did.”
Leatrice pressed her eye
brows together as she studied the photos. “And you didn’t know about this before?”
“I did.” Fern misted Leatrice’s hair with his pink plastic spray bottle. “The best man let it slip during his wedding toast, but these two missed it.”
“We were packing up the wedding presents,” I said. “It’s not like we were off taking naps.”
“And I had to get the mother of the bride’s car out of valet since she was taking all the gifts, remember?” Kate asked.
I thought back to the end of the wedding and how my feet had ached as we’d loaded the boxes and gift bags into the back of Mrs. Toker’s Land Rover. “But she wasn’t taking them that night, remember? Madeleine took the car because the mom wanted to stay in her suite.”
Kate snapped her fingers. “And she asked Madeleine to take the gifts to her house that night.”
Fern tilted Leatrice’s head forward as he combed out her damp hair. “Being maid of honor really is the worst job.”
Things began to click in my brain. “Madeleine had the mother’s car the whole time. She mentioned having to chauffeur her when we were at the hospital after the shooting.”
“So it wasn’t the mother at the bride’s house at the time of the shooting?” Leatrice looked up, and Fern pushed her head back down. “Remember how the mother got a parking ticket that morning?”
“So it was just her car,” I said. “With the maid of honor driving it.”
Kate’s mouth opened, and she shook her head. “But the cops have enough evidence to charge the neighbor, right? Otherwise, why is he in custody?”
Leatrice looked up from under the curtain of wet hair in front of her eyes. “He’s not. That’s what I came up here to tell you. Boots did a little poking on his own and found out that they released Effing Frank late last night.”
“What?” Kate and I said simultaneously.
“Apparently, he has an airtight alibi for Tricia’s murder and all of the other evidence is circumstantial,” Leatrice said.
“But the feud.” Kate stood up, and began pacing the same path I’d used. “And the guns. And he works at Cogent. And that’s where the threatening email came from. And he had a suspicious meeting with the mom.”