The Brush Off

by Laura Bradley

  He blew a big breath that sounded like a hurricane in my right ear. “Let me talk to Claude. Please, ma’am.”

  Oh, a male chauvinist salesman. I’m not sure that was better than a crank caller. “He’s not available at the moment. And if you’re selling something, we’re not interested.”

  “The only thing I’m selling you, ma’am”—he nearly choked on that last word—“is a trip to the Bexar County cooler unless you begin to cooperate.”

  A trip as in vacation? Something about the place rang a bell. A new resort? One of those chic restaurants over at the trendy Quarry Market shopping complex? But I was digressing. Back to the subject at hand. Who was this guy? And what was this insistent, hard-sell attitude? Where did he think he was calling, the Bronx? This was friendly San Antonio, Texas, mister. Wait—how did he know Ricardo called me, anyway? Had telephone tracing technology become so common that any telemarketer could get hold of it? I felt fresh anger building. There are few things in life I hate more than telemarketers. I looked around for a pen to write down the company name. All I could find were some fingernail clippers and a Q-tip. I poised the little cotton wand like a pen—hoping the pose would make me somehow sound more threatening—and asked, “And with whom am I supposed to be cooperating?”

  “Ma’am.” He sighed heavily as if I were the one who woke him up. “I apologize. I identified myself at the beginning of our conversation, but it’s, ah, early. Your ‘whom’ is the police. SAPD. I’m afraid you’re required to cooperate with me.”

  Oh, that Bexar County cooler.

  Just as my mouth fell open, “I Feel Good” screeched from across the bedroom. James Brown on my customized alarm, designed to shock me out of bed in the right frame of mind every morning.

  …you know that I would now…do, do, do-do, dodo-do…

  “That Claude now?” he asked.

  I ignored his heavy sarcasm, not only because I’d been caught in a lie—by the cops, no less—but because my mind was galloping off in a thousand different directions, and I was trying to keep up with eyelids that still refused to open fully.

  …I feel good…

  “Sounds like someone had a good night,” he observed. Could you despise someone you didn’t even know? I wondered. Someone with this deep and rich a voice? Even politely pissy, he sounded pretty damned sexy. With a flush that seemed to precede conscious thought, I remembered him blowing into my ear—more accurately, into the phone and into my ear, and, to be fair, it really was a sigh of frustration. But if a pissed-off sigh was that good, just imagine what an amorous sigh would do to me.

  “Well, it wasn’t me,” I snapped, suddenly irritated with the implications of my own thoughts as well as those in his tone. He was sneaky, this detective, couching his pointed sarcasm in ma’amy politeness. Plus, I didn’t like the fact that he could evidently read my hormones long-distance. “How do you know I was talking to Ricardo last night?”

  “Ma’am, I’m a detective; I’m paid to figure out these things. Plus, when we got here, Ricardo was holding the phone, and your number’s the one it rang on redial.”

  “Great investigative work,” I muttered with a frown at the image of Ricardo sitting in his office chair, snoring, holding the phone for hours. Had he been drunk enough to pass out? I hoped he’d gotten dressed after his lady friend left. Maybe he’d called so I could drive him home. What a jerk I was.

  How right I was, and I still didn’t know the half of it.

  “And why didn’t Ricardo hang up the phone?” I finally asked, hating to hear that my vain friend, so concerned with appearances, would end up with his customers titillated by an embarrassment in the Express-News’s gossip columns.

  “Because he’s dead.”

  As I punched “end” on the phone, I looked around through the pale yellow morning light streaming through the windows at three pairs of eyes staring at me in questioning sympathy. The dogs always sensed my moods but must have been dumbfounded by the mixture of horror, grief, disbelief, and guilt swimming around in my head, clogging my throat, and congealing in my stomach right then. All they knew was that it was something they’d better pay attention to.

  “Girls, Ricardo’s dead.” I winced at the finality of my words.

  Beaujolais, recognizing me in a weak moment, snuck a paw onto the bed and licked my hand sympathetically as she inched the rest of her eighty-five-pound body onto the mattress. As if I wouldn’t notice. I noticed, all right, but right then, I didn’t much care.

  “What if I had talked to him longer, really tried to understand what he was saying to me? Would he be dead now? Why did he call me? Why didn’t he call 911? Why didn’t I call 911?”

  Two blinks and a yawn didn’t qualify as an answer, but somehow it was comforting.

  That’s why I had dogs—they were someone to talk to. I have no respect for people who talk to themselves. With a mouth like mine, I had to use it regularly, or I was afraid the words would come out in an indistinguishable rush to the first person I ran across in the morning. I consider my dogs a community service.

  The two youngsters, Chardonnay and Cabernet, three-year-old sisters, yellow and black respectively, followed me into the bathroom. Their mother stretched out on my pillows.

  I stripped off my oversize Lyle Lovett “Fat Babies Have No Pride” nightshirt and jumped into the shower before the water warmed up. I figured the blast of ice water would serve me right for choosing sleep over sticking on the phone with my friend…former friend…dead friend. I put my face into the stream from the showerhead, letting it take my tears down the drain. I cried through the shampoo and sobbed over my leg shave. I eschewed touching up my bikini line as too dangerous in my current frame of mind. I stepped out of the shower, feeling cleaner on the outside but without managing a Pontius Pilate on the inside.

  After toweling off quickly, I pulled on some of my utilitarian cotton panties and unmatching—frayed, faded, toad-green polyester (hey, it was on sale!)—bra. I thought of the times Trudy had berated me for wearing ugly underwear. No one but the dogs see my underwear, I’d argued. She told me it didn’t matter who saw it, you knew what you had on, and it changed your whole attitude on life. Her theory is that women who wear sexy underwear move sexily, thus radiating sensuality. Translated in my case, it meant I clomped around, moving like my plain yet useful panties, radiating—no doubt—pragmatism. I told her they just got covered up with clothes, anyway, so if they did the job, their looks didn’t matter. She told me I was a disgrace to the beauty business, that beauty should come from within. I told her she was right about the latter but that I didn’t consider underwear to be within.

  Only half-naked now, I gently tugged open my closet door to consider my footwear. Or, rather, bootwear. I wear nothing but boots—unless I’m out walking the girls, that is. Then nearly three hundred pounds of dog requires some athletic shoe traction. All other times, though, I’m booted. I have forty-seven pairs of boots. My sister Pecan calls me Cowgirl Imelda. She ought to be more understanding, considering it’s partly her fault. As a child, I had to wear all the holey shoes and scuffed-up boots handed down from my four older siblings, two brothers and two sisters. I never owned a new pair of any footwear, which sparked in me a burning desire for a brand-new, shiny pair of boots—a desire that was not fulfilled until I left home at eighteen.

  But that one pair was not enough. I’m sure I have an obsession that would qualify some enterprising psychologist for a million-dollar federal grant.

  And I don’t care.

  I must point out that San Antonio is not really a cowboy-boot-wearing town. Not like Houston and Dallas, that is, where every third person has on a Stetson and Justins or, depending on what part of town you’re in, Luccheses or Dan Posts. It’s not like that here—except in February, rodeo season, when every high-society babe pulls out her alligator pointy-toes—so my year-round boot fashion did sort of stand out.

  I considered the carefully arranged (the only part of my life that was organized was m
y boot collection), custom-made three shelves of leather and various other animal and amphibian skins. What was appropriate for a crime scene? For mourning a friend? Plain, not lace-ups, as they might convey the wrong message. The black lizard pointy-toed gals with the silver trims beckoned, but I surely didn’t want the blowhard cop thinking I’d dressed up for him. Those indigo maroon kangaroo numbers called from the second story, but I ignored them. After all, why was I letting his fantasy-inspiring voice determine my choices when he probably had a doughnut overhang above his belt and considered his gun proof of some deeply hidden masculinity? He had been exceedingly polite when my misunderstanding had tested his patience, but that didn’t win many points with me.

  I chose a somber pair of Justin Ropers and yanked them on.

  The phone shrilled again. I stared at it; the dogs stared at me. I was expected down at Ricardo’s main salon on Broadway to talk to Officer Charming, “Asap,” he’d instructed into my stunned silence. I hate people who turn acronyms into words, as if I didn’t have enough reasons to dislike this guy, anyway. Calling with the news that Ricardo was dead and waking me up to do it were numbers one and two on the growing list.

  Maybe the caller was he, saying I wasn’t required after all. They’d wanted me to arrive to give the positive ID. They knew who he was; Ricardo had been the object of media attention enough over the years for most of the city to know him on sight. But there were “procedures,” the copper had said, brooking no argument. There were a dozen people closer to Ricardo than I was, who saw him on a daily basis, who could give the ID, but that’s not a referral someone would thank me for later. I did have a business to worry about, after all, a business in which appearance and discretion were just about everything.

  “Hello.” I picked up after the tenth ring, giving in to curiosity.

  “Guess your back’s not any better this morning, huh?” Trudy surmised from my snarly tone.

  “It’s not that,” I began as the tears resurfaced, my mood swinging from grumpy to grief-stricken in a second. “It’s that…”

  “Now, Reyn, don’t be embarrassed about last night. I won’t tell a soul.”

  Sure, I thought, you with the biggest mouth west of the Brazos River. Then I felt immediately guilty that I’d harbor an ill thought about a friend lucky enough to still be living. “No, it’s not the Mario Hair Debacle. It’s something worse.”

  “Worse? What could be worse? I spent another hour at home last night getting out all the tangles.”

  “Oh, Trudy.” I tempered my tone. Now was not the time to lose my temper. When had getting angry with her ever worked? I considered the most delicate way to tell her. The silence stretched on.

  “Spit it out, sister.” Trudy wasn’t big on patience, either.

  Okay, she’d asked for it.

  “Ricardo’s dead.”

  A squeal and a thud were the only responses I got.

  three

  IF I HADN’T RECOGNIZED THE SQUEAL ON THE OTHER end of the line as Trudy’s standard prelude to a faint, I would’ve seriously wondered if another one of my friends had died while talking to me over the phone. As it was, I realized I hadn’t been considerate enough, hadn’t asked if she was sitting down before I blurted out the truth. I knew very well she was prone to fainting. I called her name a few times into the phone and then Mario’s name. I even yelled to her that I was wearing ugly, mismatched underwear, thinking that might drive straight to her subconscious and rile her up. No such luck. I reluctantly gave up. I had places to go, a dead friend to identify. I’d have to get back to Trudy later.

  I pulled on a black sleeveless bodysuit and a long straight jeans skirt. With a whistle to the dogs, I ran down the stairs, accompanied by their tapping nails on the hardwood steps which made each descent sound like an indoor hailstorm. I opened the door, and they filed out in various stages of enthusiasm. I planted my right Justin below Beaujolais’s tail to push her out, slamming the door shut and flipping the dead bolt.

  After passing the refrigerator without a twinge, I stopped at my Bunn to grind some coffee beans and do the three-minute brew. I told myself it was to fortify me for the task that was to come, but the fact was, I was addicted. I can’t think of anything that would make me give up the first cup of coffee in the morning. Except maybe that vitamin salesman who’d moved in four doors down. Man-oh-man, did he have some sexual charisma. Of course, we were destined never to meet professionally, he was bald, and I wasn’t ever buying vitamins—waste of money if there ever was one. I really wasn’t the sort of cookie-baking neighbor who could just stop by with a plate hot out of the oven, so my only hope of meeting him was if one of my dogs left a calling card on his lawn, and that wasn’t the best of circumstances in which to start a romance.

  With that downer adding to my depression, I climbed into my seven-year-old white Chevy crew-cab truck and made the five-minute drive to Ricardo’s main salon. The sight of the gold foil sign bearing his name didn’t make me want to cry as I’d anticipated; it made me numb. A uniformed policewoman—uh, police officer; my New Year’s resolution is to try to be more politically correct— stopped me as I turned into the parking lot.

  “I’m sorry, ma’am. You can’t come in here today.”

  “I’m Reyn Marten Sawyer. One of your detectives called and asked me to come to, uh, identify the…”I cleared my throat, only to have my voice sound more like fingernails on a chalkboard than it had before. “I…I was a friend of Ricardo’s,” I finished clumsily.

  She glanced down at her notebook. “We were told to expect someone named Claude.”

  “Very funny,” I muttered under my breath.

  Her porcine eyes narrowed at me. She planed a pair of sturdy fists on equally sturdy hips clad in that ultra-flattering blue SAPD polyester. “Excuse me?”

  I cleared my throat again. I was beginning to sound like I had a problem with hairballs. “Claude. That’s my nickname.”

  “Oh,” she said, suddenly disinterested, and waved me through. I saw her talking into her walkie-talkie as I pulled the truck forward.

  Perversely, I was disappointed at her acceptance of my think-on-my-feet answer. I wanted to give my brain another test to distract me from what awaited behind the double smoked-glass doors of Ricardo’s Realm.

  The parking lot was full of San Antonio police cars and dark Crown Victorias which either also belonged to police or were an odd coincidence among early-morning customers. I drove around for a minute before I settled on a space between two trees. Ricardo had taught me that anything associated with your name would reflect back on you, and his parking lot was a fine example. He’d planted expensive full-grown oaks and fragrant mountain laurels, and instead of putting in rows of parking spaces, he’d slipped them between trees at odd, aesthetically pleasing angles. It gave the impression of a trip to the park rather than a beauty salon. It also provided cover if you were leaving after just having your eyebrows and mustache waxed.

  I got out of the truck and locked it. The police presence wouldn’t deter a car thief. The ones in San Antonio had no fear and weren’t subtle enough to recognize intimidation.

  As I walked slowly to the salon, I looked at it as the police might. A four-thousand-square-foot box, all shiny gold metal and dark, tinted glass. Even the concrete outside the shop had been stained black. This was where I’d had my first job out of high school. I’d come from the country to the big city to go to college with a measly scholarship and no money. I’d gotten my cosmetology training back when I was still living in Dime Box, my hometown, but hadn’t had any experience beyond giving too-tight perms, pouring blue rinses, and teasing old ladies’ hair to twice the height of their heads. Ricardo was legendary even back in Dime Box. I knew he didn’t hire anyone with less than five years’ experience. Ten was the average. He was a perfectionist and a brutal taskmaster. Hairstylists were usually independent contractors, all working under the same roof, paying for rent and maybe pooling for a receptionist, but most had to pay for their own supp
lies and managed their own time. Not in Ricardo’s shops. His stylists were employees, and starters took pretty low pay for the honor. But I wasn’t easily intimidated. Gran always told me I had more guts than a sausage factory and just as much sense. Not a terribly flattering portrait, but those guts got me the job and out of Dime Box. Either that or the fact that Ricardo wanted in my pants. Either way, it paid for my business degree at Our Lady of the Lake University. And Ricardo got more than he bargained for businesswise…and less in the personal department. I think it was a fair trade.

  The memories made me misty again.

  Sucking in a deep breath, I yanked on the gold-plated door handle and nearly fell on my butt.

  The heavy door suddenly swung out, and as I stumbled and fumbled to get my Justins under me, I looked up and saw a pair of jeans-clad thighs that made me feel suddenly and intensely feminine and vulnerable. I resisted the melting sensation south of my navel as inappropriate at a murder scene, but my lets still turned rubbery just when I needed them most. Grabbing the door handle for support, I straightened and felt my back tighten up. So much for the Ben Gay. I bit the inside of my cheek, finally regained my balance, and met the eyes that belonged to the thighs.

  Arctic blue. I immediately thought of the ice packs in my freezer. Then I saw the burn behind the ice and revised it to dry ice. Icy and smoking at the same time. Those eyes and the sardonic turn of his lips—an intriguing mixture of thin upper and full lower—were just enough to immediately dissipate the mush in my gut and make my hackles rise. I just wished he could see them. Visible hackles were just one of many things I envied in my dogs.