by Gina LaManna
“Um, lots of things,” I said, glancing between Annalise and the front desk receptionist at Salon 68, Melinda’s place of employment. “I like curls.”
“Oh, Lola,” Annalise said again. “I’ll say no more—just remember, you got yourself into this.”
“Shall I get you seated?” The receptionist glanced between us. “Melinda will be right out. She’s getting things ready in the back.”
“Great!” I chirped, trying to believe my head could handle a pile of springy curls. In reality, I’d never even considered a perm before yesterday. I mostly wore my hair in some version of a ponytail because styling it often felt like climbing Mount Everest. “I’m excited to try something new. Experiment.”
“I’m just getting a haircut,” Annalise clarified to the receptionist. “No perms for me. Just a trim. One inch. Nothing drastic.”
The receptionist nodded and led us back, getting me situated into a seat that felt a little bit like it an electric chair. Then again, my hair might look fried after whatever was happening on my head, so I held my breath and hoped for the best.
“I just love perms,” a squat, jolly woman said emerging from the back room, her hands piled with styling tools. “Volume, volume, and more volume, I say!”
The reflection in the mirror told me that if this woman was Melinda, she had the dark hair and tanned skin of someone with Latin roots. She spoke with the slightest accent that suggested English wasn’t her first language.
“Um,” I said, pasting a smile on my face as the first round of nerves tingled in my fingers. “How much volume are we talking about?”
“Don’t be nervous,” Melinda said. “I’ll make you look like a star.”
“I’m sort of reconsidering this whole perm thing,” I admitted. “Is it too late for me to chicken out?”
“You could use some volume in this hair,” Melinda said with a frown. “I promise it’ll look good. Do you trust me?”
I’d barely exchanged two words with the woman, so I wasn’t sure how to answer that. Instead, I dodged it. “Will I look like a poodle?”
She laughed. “Sit back and relax, honey. I’ll keep things on the tame side. Just let Mama Melinda work her magic.”
“Just a trim for me,” Annalise said quickly. “One inch. I have to keep it the same length for the circus.”
“Gabriella will be with you in a second,” Melinda said to Annalise. Then she sized me up, made some noises with her mouth that suggested it’d been too long since I’d last seen a salon, and ended with a cluck. “Don’t worry, dear, we’ll get this mess mopped up in no time.”
“Gee, I didn’t know things were so horrible back there,” I muttered to Annalise as Melinda left for more tools—presumably something stronger, like a hedge-trimmer.
“You think it’s bad now?” Annalise asked. “Wait for the perm.”
“You just watch,” I said. “You’ll be jealous.”
Annalise raised her eyebrows, but she didn’t have time before Melinda returned, set up her hair products like a tool belt, and launched into an attack on my head.
“Tell me all about yourself,” Melinda said as she set to work. “You know, originally, I’m from Mexico. I moved here with my family when I was five, but I didn’t make it to the Sunshine Shore until I was twenty-two and fresh out of hair school. I love it here, don’t you?”
Melinda didn’t give me time to respond, let alone tell her all about myself. Instead, she lodged right into a series of stories that explained every detail of her life from her first baby steps to what she’d eaten for breakfast yesterday morning.
“Oh, my, I can really talk when I get going,” Melinda said with a laugh. “Can you believe how the time has flown? Time to move you under the dryer.”
It’d been almost two hours of Melinda talking nonstop, and I was getting antsy. If I walked out of here with a frizzy head and no leads on a venue for the charity ball, I’d be quite upset.
Meanwhile, Annalise looked trimmed, proper, and pretty as she flipped through one magazine after the next up front. She’d been sending me half smiles all morning. Under normal circumstances, she would’ve left hours ago out of impatience. The fact that she’d stuck around was a testament to the horrors that would surely be the final product of my hair.
I glared at her as Melinda led me back to the chair and began unwinding my hair from the curlers. “So, do you know the Sunshine Shore well?” I asked, trying to gradually transition the subject to locations, or at a minimum, wedding planning. “It sounds like you’ve explored all there is to see around these parts.”
“Oh, I have,” she said. “In fact, when I read about that murder in the paper, I could picture the exact location with my eyes closed. Can you believe it?”
“The murder?” I played dumb, wanting to hear the details as interpreted by an unbiased third party. “Which one is that?”
“Which one?” She laughed. “It’s not like we have a lot of them. Don’t tell me you didn’t hear about Andrea! That’s old news by now. My goodness, if I’d have known you hadn’t heard about that I would’ve told you hours ago.”
“It vaguely rings a bell,” I said. “But I’ve been so busy at work I haven’t picked up a paper this week. I could hardly fit in my hair appointment.”
“Tragic, isn’t it?” She did the clucking noise with her tongue again. “Well, Andrea was a client here. A regular. She switched off between Gabriella and myself because she was in here so often. One person couldn’t handle her.”
“She was difficult?”
“No, but...” Melinda shook her head. “She loved beauty more than anyone I’ve ever known. Eyebrow wax, hair blowout, fingernails, toes, massage, Brazilians—you name it.”
“Yikes. Well, I’m so sorry for your loss. She was a friend?”
“I suppose, just based on the sheer amount of time we spent together. She didn’t talk much though. She preferred to look at her phone.”
I briefly wondered if it was because Andrea had heard Melinda’s life story three times over and had been trying to ward off additional commentary. “Do you know who killed her?”
“I haven’t read anything about it in the papers, but I heard from someone that it was the man she was dating who offed her.”
“Who was she dating?” My heart leapt as I waited to hear if she’d say Ryan’s name, or if she knew the identity of a potential new boyfriend. “This was recent?”
“Recent, but not secret.” Melinda dropped a few curlers onto my lap and walked over to grab a magazine. “I’m blanking on the name, but you’d know him. Lives up in Castlewood. There he is—right there.”
My eyes followed her finger as she pointed to the Technology section in Glamoured magazine. There, in an issue from just last month, was a photo of Dane and Andrea arm in arm. Underneath the photo was a headline speculating: New Squeeze for Tech Billionaire?
The image stunned me silent for a long moment, though I’d seen the photo before. When I spoke, I could only manage a question. “You think Dane Clark killed her?”
She must have heard the gasp in my voice. “Do you know him?”
“I’m just surprised,” I said, dodging her question. “Isn’t he a billionaire? Why would he kill her?”
“A billionaire if not more. Have you seen that castle? I mean, the outside. Nobody gets on the inside. Except for Andrea, I suppose.”
“Right,” I agreed. “But just because they were dating doesn’t mean he killed her, does it?”
“They’re saying the murder weapon belonged to him,” she said. “I don’t think they wrote what it was though. A gun maybe? I don’t know; I didn’t read that far—or maybe they didn’t say. I get mixed up between what I overhear in the salon and what I read in the news.” Her voice quieted. “It’s sad, you know. She’ll never come in through those doors again.”
“It is sad,” I agreed, staring at Dane’s photo. “I just can’t believe it would be him.”
“I hope she was dating that Clark guy,” Mel
inda said, drawing me out of my thoughts. “He’s gotta be better than the last one she was going with. He was a real dud.”
“Ryan?” I said reflexively. “Wasn’t that her last boyfriend?”
Melinda’s hands froze in my hair. “I thought you didn’t know anything about the situation?”
“Oh, no, I don’t. Just a lucky guess.”
“Wow, that’s a good guess. Is it because you’re Dotty Pink’s grandkid? You know, Dotty came in here a lot. She told me a bunch of good things about my future. I loved that woman. You must’ve inherited a bit of her psychic powers, then.”
“I guess so.” I played with my fingers. “Why was Ryan so horrible for Andrea? He’s not from the Sunshine Shore, right? I would’ve known him if he’d grown up here.”
“He’s from outside of the Shore in the burbs,” Melinda said. “Last I remember Andrea told me that he’d moved into that new complex off Peach Street. She was thinking of moving in with him, but they were so hot and cold it was on one minute and off with his head the next.”
“I know the one,” I said. “Those condos are really nice. But they tore down a local grocery store, and I think I’d rather have the grocer.”
“Me too,” Melinda said. “But it’s fitting for Ryan.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that he came in here once or twice, and he thinks he is all that and a bag of hot Cheetos. And he is not, let me tell you.”
“Do you think he had anything to do with Andrea’s death?”
Melinda pursed her lips, sizing me up in the mirror as she unwound the last few curlers. “The way I see Ryan, it’s like this: He’s shiny and nice looking on the outside, just like the new condo he bought. But underneath, he doesn’t care who gets hurt so long as he gets what he wants. He could care less whether he knocked a hundred local grocery stores out of business so long as he has some fancy new digs.”
Annalise made her way to the back, her eyes on my hair as the last of the curlers came out.
Meanwhile, Melinda kept talking. “As to whether or not he killed her? I don’t think so. If I’m continuing on with my analogy, he’d never do the dirty work—he’d never break ground or actually build those condos. Heck, he’d never have the guts to kick old Mr. Reynolds out of his store, but he’ll most certainly plop himself into the buildings once they’re all done. Nope—Ryan wouldn’t do the dirty work. He doesn’t have the guts to kill her.”
“He sounds like a nice guy,” Annalise muttered. “Poor Mr. Reynolds.”
“Unless,” Melinda said, ignoring Annalise. “It was an accident. Ryan Lexington has a temper on him, and boy does he unleash it when his buttons are pushed. Do I think he could’ve killed Andrea? No, not on purpose. In a blind rage? Now that I wouldn’t doubt. Have you heard how she was killed?”
“Um, no,” I said quickly. “Haven’t heard.”
But in the back of my mind, the blunt force trauma to the back of Andrea’s head had my wheels spinning. I wondered if Melinda might have stumbled onto something without realizing it. Had Andrea tried to break up with him and he’d flown off the handle? Or had she secretly broken things off with him and started dating someone else? If he’d found out, he probably wouldn’t have been happy. The question was, had it bothered him enough to have murdered her on accident and then struggled to cover it up and frame Dane Clark?
“Let me get you all fluffed and ready to go,” Melinda said. “We’re almost done here.”
“I’m excited to see my hair,” I lied. “I’m actually throwing this huge event for a charity, but it’s a real bear to find a proper venue this close to the date—especially with things being all booked up for the festival.”
Melinda shooed me toward the driers. “Is that right? What sort of party?”
“You know, ritzy investors, expensive food, delicate drinks,” I said. “A real fancy thing. It’s a shame nobody knows any good recommendations for location.”
Melinda seemed intrigued by the challenge. “Well, that’s not entirely true. I know a few places.”
“Is that right?”
“There’s the old bowling alley,” Melinda said, stealing glances around the room to make sure everyone heard her advice. She glowed under being the center of attention. “It’s out of use, but could be retro. There’s the Reynolds family farmhouse—I love a nice wedding there. Have you thought about the bluff? Or I hear tastings are very in vogue these days. Maybe a nice, out of the way bar and grill spruced up with some high-end decorations?”
“What about—” My words were cut off by the roar of the drier, and by the time she pulled my head out from underneath it, I could hardly speak—even to save Dane Clark’s charity gala.
My hair. It wasn’t bad.
“What do you think?” Melinda asked. “I gave you a real soft wave that should just give you the slightest of boosts. Just use a little of this, blow dry, then spray some of that and you’ll have some real volume without the ringlets,” she said as she handed me bottles of styling products.
Annalise stepped behind the chair to get a better view. “Wow,” she said with true amazement. “That is magnificent, Lola. Melinda—you are a star.”
Chapter 12
“I DIDN’T AGREE TO THIS.” Annalise crossed her arms in the driver’s seat of her car, refusing to turn the key. “I’m not bringing you to some woman’s psycho ex-boyfriend’s condo. Especially if he’s a murder suspect!”
“But I paid for your hair,” I wheedled. “Which looks fabulous by the way.”
“Not as good as yours.” Annalise glanced at my hair, which took a lot longer than normal because there was a lot more to look at. For once, it wasn’t dead flat. “You asked for a ride.”
“Exactly. My ride happens to be to the new condos where Mr. Reynold’s grocery store used to be. You can just drop me off, I swear.”
“I thought you wanted a ride back to the castle, or maybe to Babs’s office. This is a life-threatening errand.”
“You can stay in the car,” I said. “In fact, that’s a much better idea. Stay in the car and make sure I come out alive.”
“Let you go in alone? No way.”
“Annalise,” I said, situating myself in the passenger seat to face her. “Look at it this way: if you do this for me, your good deed for the day will be done. See, I’m going there either way. You can either help me or ignore me.”
“You’re guilting me into helping you investigate a crime that’s none of your business?”
“I paid over fifty bucks for you to get the ends straightened on your hair!”
“It does look good.” Annalise eyed herself in the mirror. “Gabriella knows how to wield a comb.”
“Please?”
“I can wait in the car?”
“I promise to only call you if I need help.”
Annalise let out a sigh that shook her whole body. “I’m giving you five minutes before I bust through the door.”
“Ten minutes—I’ll need to talk to him.”
“Five.”
“Okay,” I said with a smile. “Thank you.”
We arrived at the complex, and as much as I hated to tie my new hairdo back, I slipped it into a low ponytail just in case things went south with Ryan. I couldn’t have my new glamorous hair sticking to my Chapstick while it blew around like a L’Oréal commercial as I was running for my life. After I pulled myself together, I climbed out of the car, waved to Annalise, and headed for the building.
Annalise gripped her phone like a lifeline. She had three screens minimized—the dialer set to 911, speed dial to Babs, and a meditation app. “Five minutes,” she called through the window, plugging in one earbud and tapping the screen to start her meditation. “Five minutes and I’m breaking the door down!”
I took an additional second to scan the parking lot, a twinge of sadness coursing through my veins as I realized that I stood on the very spot where Mr. Reynolds’s family-owned store had stood not ten years before. It’d been here for nearly a
hundred years.
Now the space was nothing more than a parking lot. Ahead of me stood the tallest building within an hour’s drive of the Sunshine Shore. Though it stretched only four levels high, it was the closest thing to a skyscraper between us and the nearest metropolis. According to the address I’d finagled from Nicolas, Dane’s Director of Operations for Clark Company, Ryan Lexington was on the second floor.
I buzzed myself in and waved at the doorman. Apparently both the buzzer and the doorman were a mere formality because I made it to the second floor with no problems. I located Ryan’s apartment ten seconds later and knocked quickly before I could chicken out.
“Who is it?” A man’s voice called from inside the thin walls.
I could hear his every footstep as he walked toward the door, and I heard when he stopped just on the other side of the peephole. Putting a smile on my face, I used the most chipper voice I could muster. “I’m Lola Pink.”
Finally, the door opened after what I imagined was a thorough examination through the peephole. “Do I know you?” Ryan asked. “You said your name is Lola?”
“Um, I don’t think you know me,” I said, immediately averting my eyes from Ryan’s mid-section. I guess the man didn’t know how to use buttons. He had on jeans and a white shirt, but the shirt hung open to reveal an obviously fake-tanned stomach with a mediocre four-pack underneath. “I think we have a mutual friend.”
Ryan studied me further, so I took the time to study him from the neck up. His hair was the sort of black that had me wondering if he added a little shoe polish to his shampoo, and his eyes were the sort of hazel that suggested he’d layered green contacts over brown eyes. Fake, just as Melinda had suggested.
At my extended silence, he raised his eyebrows. “Then may I ask what brings you here?”
“I am writing a story,” I said. “And I was hoping to get a quote from you about something.”
Immediately, his look of skepticism turned into a pleased expression, proving my theory right. If I flattered Ryan into thinking I’d sought him out because of his importance, maybe he’d jump on the opportunity to be quoted for my fake publication.