Sprayed Stiff

by Laura Bradley

  Instead of answering, Lexa hummed Outcast’s latest hit. When Lexa hummed, it meant she was stressed-out to the max. This usually happened when one of her outrageous stunts failed to irritate Wilma the Hun. Lexa lived to bother Wilma. She’d moved back home after graduating Dartmouth with a philosophy degree to make that her full-time occupation. So, if Wilma was having a bad hair day, why was Lexa scrambling for a solution instead of celebrating?

  Before I could ask this aloud, Lexa said flatly, “She can’t call ’Om.”

  “Why? He owes her, after all the publicity she’s given him in the media. Her hair is the most talked-about style in South Texas, and she never fails to ensure his name gets in print along with hers.”

  “Reyn, you don’t understand. You are the only one I trust to fix this.” Now she was humming Smashing Pumpkins. Hard to do. Worse to listen to. “Mother…” That word again. “…Wilma has been sprayed…stiff.”

  Great. Sounded painful. For me, and for Wilma. But the humming was getting to me. I was such a pushover. I sighed. “What happened, Lex? She do some touch-up and go overboard on the hairspray?”

  “I don’t know what happened. I just know you’ll know what to do about it. You are the most capable, reasonable person I know.”

  Yikes. That in itself was scary. I had seen the kind of multipierced, personal hygiene–challenged people Lexa tended to hang with, and I daresay she was right.

  “What’s going on at this hour, anyway? Your mother have a late-night soiree planned—another one of her famous midnight buffets at the Argyle Club, maybe? Some kind of moonlight campaign fund-raiser?” I was dying to talk myself out of this. If I found out the house known as Horror on the Hill was about to be inundated by a bunch of soused Republicans in Versace, I was not going. No way, nohow.

  “Please, Reyn. It’s nothing like that. It’s for the photographers that are sure to come.”

  Maybe Wilma had been named Mother of the Year in an after-dark vote of homemakers. Lexa wasn’t giving it up, whatever the big news was. I tried one last-ditch effort to get out of what was sure to be torture. “Remember, your mother doesn’t like me.”

  Silence stretched on again for a minute. Maybe Lexa had covered the receiver and was telling Wilma exactly whom she was recruiting. Goody, that would get me off the hook. Suddenly, a big sniff snorted in my ear. Alarm bells rang in my head. I’d seen Lexa vexed, depressed, and exhilarated, but never had I seen her shed a tear. As she cleared her throat, her voice sounded strangely high, but certain. “Her opinion won’t be an issue. I promise.”

  Holding the receiver to my ear, I wandered back over to the refrigerator and reviewed what remained to be cleaned out—some plastic bags filled with coagulating mystery fruits, Tupperware containers of multicolored leftovers. Wilma might not be so bad after all. Maybe the old bat mellowed after midnight. And, even if she didn’t, at least I’d be making some money. I’d never made a house call before. How much extra could I charge? Hmm. Maybe that hairstyle simulation computer program I’d been coveting would be within reach after tonight.

  “I’ll be there in about ten minutes, Lexa, just tell your mom to sit tight.”

  Little did I know, Wilma was already doing just that.

  Two

  THE BARRISTER ESTATE was in Terrell Hills, a two-square-mile incorporated city within the city limits of San Antonio, and five miles from Monte Vista, the historical area where I lived and worked. I’d gotten my two-story Spanish Colonial home for a song and recruited my brothers and sisters to help me renovate. Three years later, I still needed to finish those renovations—at least the part where I had my salon, Transformations: More Than Meets the Eye, was done—but I’d learned the hard way that in a hundred-year-old house, maintenance never ended, repairs were never finished, and the checkbook was always open. Owning a historic house was worse than having a drug habit. On this midweek midnight, quiet streets met me as I eased my three-quarter-ton pickup away from home along Hildebrand Avenue, crossing the highway and heading straight into Poshtown.

  I slid across Broadway, which ran from downtown to the first urban loop that encircled the city, to heavily treed New Braunfels Avenue and wondered how so much of San Antonio’s old money had ended up here in the 78209 zip code. The acreage estates, their pretentious homes hidden behind motorized wrought-iron gates and limestone walls, were so imposing one could easily imagine cattle baron heirs raising their perfectly well bred, private-schooled, towheaded children behind them, but many of the homes were ordinary, with only a rare picket fence to contain the ankle-biters. Though extremely well kept, with three-hundred-dollar brass planters in the front yards and gleaming new Yukons in the driveways, these homes were still cousins of ones that could be found across the railroad tracks in lower-middle-class neighborhoods—some retro-fifties asbestos-sided, some one-bedroom clapboards small enough to be considered cottages, albeit cottages that sold for a quarter million dollars and up.

  I turned onto the Barristers’ street and began looking for house numbers. The confining perfection of the neighborhood gave me more insight into the enigma that was my client. I could imagine how a rebel could feed off the suffocation of money and expectation here. I’d often wondered why Lexa hadn’t taken her degree (what was one supposed to do with a philosophy degree anyway, except answer the tough questions in the crossword?) and gone to grad school instead of choosing to slip back under the thumb of her domineering mother. Of course, she often wiggled out from under that thumb. Had done so since she was a baby, to the point that it was more than a habit, it was a profession. She’d told me she hadn’t gone to law school because her father had told her he expected her to either get a law degree or marry one. “ ‘Our name is Barrister, after all, Alexandra,’ ” she’d mimicked Percy’s pompous tone for me. “ ‘It’s predestined that you become part of the bar one way or another.’ ”

  I knew that, financially, she did not have to live at home as many twentysomethings do as they make their starts in life. At twenty-one, she’d gotten a trust fund that would cover the expenses of a modest lifestyle. Wouldn’t we all like the luxury of one of those? But Lexa didn’t use it to buy freedom. Why? At some point, while contemplating the revolving door that is my receptionist desk, I’d offered Lexa the job of answering phones and setting up appointments. Her eyes had lit up with a combination of hope and fear, and in that fear I saw a little of my answer. Drifting down her street, I understood some of the rest. What happens when what you’re pushing against stops pushing back? You fall. And the reverse would be true. Maybe Lexa was afraid she would leave her mother with an empty life if she ever stopped pushing back.

  Or maybe she was afraid of falling herself.

  I mostly blamed Wilma for fostering this codependence in a sensitive, free-spirited child who was clearly not suited for what she was trying to make her. But, by the same token, Lexa surely was old enough now to get over it. And to tell her mother so, in words instead of actions.

  I knew she’d been tempted to break free that once by my offer, so I’d dropped a few more lures—passing along news of available jobs I heard about from clients—but Lexa never bit, so I gave up and just supported her small rebellions, like the time she wanted chunky lime highlights in her hair. Just thinking about dinner in the Barrister manse that night was enough to make me smile for a week. Now I was headed to the manse in question to do something that likely wouldn’t make me smile unless, of course, I suddenly took leave of my senses and gave Wilma a buzz cut.

  I flipped on my blinker and turned my seven-year-old truck into the driveway—or, rather, the six-foot stretch of cobblestones outside the wrought iron gate that led to the driveway. I pressed the button on the intercom and waited.

  “Oh,” I heard Lexa’s soprano moan, “I wish you hadn’t done that.”

  “Done what?”

  “Rang the intercom. Did you use your finger?”

  “Yes,” I answered carefully, looking at the offending digit. “Was I supposed to use my nose?”<
br />
  “No, no. I had planned to open the gate when I saw you turn in. I was watching for you from the downstairs drawing room, but, um, then, ah, I had to check on Mo—Wilma.”

  What was going on? Was she afraid the buzzer would disturb a party in progress? Why was she checking on Wilma the Hun? I stared beyond the closed gate. The three-story dark and rather imposing Tudor seemed quiet, with only a few lights on within the second story. I was getting weird vibes on top of an already queer twist in my gut. Of course, an impending close encounter with Wilma Barrister probably gave that combo to everyone who knew her. “How about opening it now?”

  “Opening what?”

  “The gate,” I said, my patience wearing thin. I might have snapped at her if her behavior hadn’t been so out of character. Lexa was a lot of things, but spacey wasn’t one of them. What was going on?

  “Oh, the gate. I’ll be at the back door; drive around the right side of the house.”

  The servants’ entrance? I cranked the truck back into drive and eased forward as the gate slowly swung open.

  “Wait, Reyn!”

  I slammed on the brakes. “What?” I yelled back toward the little metal box.

  “You didn’t notice anyone following you?”

  Following me? Why would someone want to follow me—to do an exposé on two-timing your hairdresser at midnight? Surely the media couldn’t be that hard up. “No, Lex, I wasn’t followed.”

  “Okay, come on, then.”

  Had the girl finally cracked? There was no doubt she had enough personal pressures to throw her over the edge into insanity. I slid my foot off the brake and glided down the cobblestone driveway toward the Barrister castle, looking at the dark, heavy stone and thick, blocky columns. Yuck. I could envision medieval war-lords inside, splattered with the brains of their enemies as they gnawed on celebratory mutton legs. Evoking that kind of imagery would have made sense if this were really a seven-hundred-year-old structure in Scotland. But this was the middle of a South Texas neighborhood, and the house was probably built within the last fifty years to intimidate no one but the neighbors. Really sick. Lexa said she’d never lived anywhere else. What kind of people would choose to raise kids here? Gargoyles perched on corners of the gables; bloodthirsty-looking, six-foot-tall lions guarding the front steps. I knew I was going to have nightmares, and I was thirty-one. I tried not to imagine little five-year-old, artistic Lexa catching a ball in the yard and looking up into one of those pointy-toothed faces. I was amazed it had taken her this long to go loopy, having to sleep here night in and night out.

  The house—castle, mausoleum, whatever you wanted to call it—certainly made a statement. To me, it screamed, “Run for your life!”

  I’m going to learn to listen to my intuition one day. It just wasn’t going to be this day.

  “Psst!”

  I’d gone around the back of the house as instructed and saw Lexa’s slim, pale arm beckoning me from a doorway. I parked the truck next to Lexa’s battered old orange Pinto and got out. I considered locking the doors, then scoffed at myself. Although the three-car garage about forty yards from the house could hide the Barristers’ cars, no others were evident on the premises. No party was happening, that was for sure, not unless they’d been bused in.

  “Psst! Reyn, hurry, please!”

  “I’m coming,” I assured her as I slammed the truck door shut and stepped around a fifteen-pound (five of them hair) gray and white cat who’d slid out the door and was now winding around my ankles in an overly friendly manner that made me instantly suspicious. I like cats, but I’ve got to say, they are a little sneaky. They are the only animals on earth with an ulterior motive.

  “Guinevere,” Lexa called. “Leave Reyn alone.”

  Guinevere? Now I knew her ulterior motive—she wanted to find a new home where she would be named Fluffy or Mouser or something much less fatuous. With my new best friend between my legs, I walked to the door like a cowboy after a ten-day cattle drive. Lexa grabbed my forearm and drew me into a kitchen lit only by a couple of night-lights. Guinevere came, too, and I nearly tripped and fell over her as I made my way into a chef’s paradise. The kitchen had not one, not two, but three islands—one with a built-in cutting board, one with an eight-burner stove, and one that was plain countertop, albeit two-hundred-dollar-a-foot Texas pink granite countertop—probably where Wilma let the servants eat. Perfectly polished copper pots that had never graced a burner hung from racks. Four ovens banked the back wall. The gleam of a chrome Sub-Zero refrigerator/freezer could be seen at the end of the cavernous room. This was a kitchen for the Four Seasons, not the private home of a family of three, one of whom was skinny enough to be on the verge of anorexia. I reached up to the wall to flip a light switch, but Lexa caught my hand. Okay. Maybe they were into energy conservation—in a ten-thousand-square-foot mansion. Right.

  “Where is everybody?” I asked. This kind of space required reinforcements. No three people could keep this much kitchen clean.

  “The help?” Lexa asked. I held my hands out, palms up, hoping she would volunteer the whereabouts of everyone she could think of. I didn’t want to catch Mr. “Predestined for the Bar” Barrister in his skivvies in the hall. Lexa’s eyes shifted to the closed doors that led, presumably, to the rest of the house. “The staff?” She paused, distracted, then her eyes cleared. “Micah does the yard; he leaves at dark. Cindy is our house manager…”

  “House manager”? Was that the current politically correct term for “maid”?

  Lexa must not have noticed my eye roll. “…she goes to her sister’s for dinner every Wednesday night. Mr. and Mrs. Carricales, the butler and cook, live in. But it’s their night off. They usually go watch their grandkids at flamenco class, get some enchiladas at Blanco Café, then play bingo down on West before heading home.”

  Suddenly she gasped and grabbed my forearm again, dragging me through the French doors, then through a dining room with an ornate mahogany table for at least two dozen (I lost count at twenty-five) to the stairway in the foyer. “We have to hurry, before they all descend. The vultures.”

  “They who? The Carricaleses?” I was confused. From her warm tone in talking about their evening with their grandchildren, I could’ve sworn she was fond of them.

  “Oh, I guess I should worry about them, too,” she mused, running a hand through her cropped hair.

  Too? I stopped her on the fourth stair. “Where are your parents, Lexa?”

  “Father is at some lawyer get-sloshed dinner-and-what-all. Moth—Wilma…is…”

  I waited—rather patiently, I thought—as she tugged on my arm. Finally, I had to prompt her. “Wilma is…where?”

  Lexa’s eyes snapped back to reality. “In the study.”

  “To get her hair done? Why?”

  Lexa looked at me like I was nuts for asking the question. “Reyn, go in there and you won’t have to ask why.”

  That wonderfully useless sixth sense I have about danger warned me to no avail. My gray ostrich Tony Lamas lost their purchase on the oriental rug running up the stairs as Lexa, showing amazing strength for such a rail-thin little thing, pulled me forward with her.

  Okay, maybe it was none of my business. Maybe Wilma was entertaining the other two members of a ménage à trois while hubby was away. Maybe she was hosting vampire bridge. Guinevere tiptoed up the stairs past us, ran down the hall, and vanished through a door that was cracked open. It emitted just enough light into the upstairs hall so we could see where we were going.

  Just barely.

  I wondered why Lexa liked knocking around in the dark. Maybe she couldn’t bear to see all the ostentation surrounding her. Feeling a pang of empathy for her, I reached for the light switch at the top of the stairs. Lexa grabbed my hand away. “Please. I don’t want anyone to know we’re up here.”

  “I thought you said no one else was here.”

  “Who knows? After what’s happened tonight—” She paused, darted a look left and right, then droppe
d her voice to a whisper. “What I mean is, someone else was here. With Wilma. Before I got home.”

  Okay. Maybe it was an affair, after all. Maybe Lexa thought she’d surprised her mother’s sancho, and he was hiding in a closet. Wild sex had mussed Mum’s hair and I had to fix it before Percy the Perfect arrived home. She was of the Donna Reed generation after all, like my mother, who couldn’t do more than surface-comb her own hair between visits to the salon. Wild sex was one thing (my mother certainly had a corner on that one, but that’s another story), wielding a curling iron was another. I had to see this. I took off down the hall toward the study with Lexa scrambling to catch up with me.

  I pushed the door open and wondered immediately why Wilma would let the fuzzball of a cat up in the middle of her Yves Saint Laurent gown. It just seemed so out of character. Guinevere was hunkered down in Wilma’s royal blue lap, getting her fur all over the taffeta, licking her mistress’s heavily bejeweled fingers. My mouth opened to scream before my brain registered that the cat wasn’t licking Wilma’s fingers, she was chewing Wilma’s fingers, and the cat hair wasn’t the worst thing to happen to Wilma’s gown that night.

  Three

  “WILMA, REYN’S HERE. Your hair is just moments from being its perfect self again,” Lexa cajoled.

  I jumped and sent a Ming vase, along with the ceramic pedestal it sat on, crashing against the wall. Lexa, who’d eased up next to me, didn’t flinch. Uh-oh. Bad sign.

  Instead, she smiled beatifically at Wilma, whose luxurious silver hair was brushed straight out from her head and sprayed absolutely stiff. To complete the look, she was wearing full clown-face makeup. The cat was still chewing. Ick.

  Lexa hadn’t seemed to notice Guinevere. It might be a while, since she apparently hadn’t noticed her mother was dead either. I took a tentative step forward and tried to shoo the cat away. She stared at me and licked her lips. I wished I had a barf bag, which made me think of Police Lieutenant Jackson Scythe, which made me realize I was in big trouble, and I hadn’t even done anything yet.