“Next of kin!” Sandy screeched.
“It doesn’t look good. They weren’t able to resuscitate her. I’m assuming they’ll pronounce her DOA at the hospital.”
“Oh, no,” Sandy wailed, petting Oscar so hard he was getting static cling. “This is horrible. Just horrible.”
I thought of Phil. What would he do without his soul mate? Scrap that, what would the single women in my neighborhood do once they found out the most ideal husband in Lehigh had been widowered? There’d be so many casseroles he could open a restaurant.
“Who called in that it was poison?” Vava asked.
“Poison?” Sandy said. “I called 911, but I didn’t say anything about poison.”
“Well, someone did because at 13:05 an anonymous call came across dispatch that one Debbie Shatsky, age thirty-eight, was in the process of being poisoned at the House of Beauty.”
Stunned, Sandy and I looked at each other. I felt an odd sensation at the back of my neck—the one you get when you realize that the due date on your Visa bill changes each month so Visa can collect more late fees.
The feeling you get when you realize you’ve been set up.
Chapter Two
“T
hat’soutrageous,” Sandy said. “What kind of creep would make a disgusting crank call like that to the police?”
A handsome, red-haired man in a navy jumpsuit and rubber gloves carrying a kit of test tubes and swabs and other alarming scientific stuff walked through the door. I recognized him as Eric Wachowski, a nice enough guy who went to St. Anne’s Catholic Church and was putting himself through med school by working as a tech in the medical examiner’s.
I knew all this because he happened to be Sissy Dolan’s grandson, which meant as soon as Sissy saw him she would announce to the world that Debbie was dead.
“Crime lab,” Vava said flatly. “Mind if he takes a few samples?”
“I have nothing to hide. Go ahead.” Sandy tossed him the keys to her office.
Sandy may have had nothing to hide, but as a crime reporter myself—as well as the ex-wife/fiancée of the sleaziest lawyer in town—I wasn’t so sure letting the crime lab have free range without a search warrant was such a hot idea. I mean, when a girl’s got rights, she needs to protect them.
“Oh, look, it’s Eric!” Sissy squealed. “That must mean Debbie didn’t make it. That must mean she kicked the bucket.”
Tula Kramer gasped.
Sissy waved crazily. “Hi, sweetie! Is wittle Ewwic woowking hawwd?”
Eric waved hi to his grandmother, bowed his head out of mortification from being addressed in baby talk and headed to Sandy’s office.
“Why does he have to take samples from there?” Sandy asked, her voice reaching a new level of panic.
“Just following the tip,” Vava said.
“Must have been some tip,” I observed, “what with all the excruciating detail.”
Vava nodded. “It was very thorough, yes. By the way, you know anyone who might have wanted to harm Mrs. Shatsky?”
That was when I remembered the mysterious Marguerite. Right before she broke out in hives, Debbie had been yapping about how this desperate housewife was out to claim Phil and how Marguerite would have to step over her dead body first.
Like they say, be careful what you wish for.
I decided to keep the Marguerite info to myself. This could be a blockbuster news story and I wanted to get to the main suspect before the cops did and ruined all my fun.
“Not really,” I answered. “Everyone liked Debbie. Say, Sandy?”
Sandy furrowed her brows.
Vava bent down and picked up the hair extension Sandy had been applying when Debbie suddenly went berserk.
“What’s this?” Vava asked, sniffing the glue end of the hair extension.
“A hair extension,” Sandy said nervously. “Debbie gets them here all the time.”
Vava looked doubtful. “All the time?”
“Whenever she and her husband go out to dinner or a special occasion. She likes to have her hair piled up high.”
Had to have the highest hair in the room, that was our Debbie.
“It smells weird,” Vava said.
“That’s because of the special hypoallergenic glue I have to use. Debbie mixes it herself at home and brings it in.” Sandy bit her lip. “That’s what I’m afraid of, Officer. Debbie’s allergic to latex. Superallergic. She told me once that a pair of false eyelashes could kill her. Or even a condom.”
“No kidding,” Vava said. “A lethal condom.”
And here I’d assumed that was an urban myth boys used to spread in high school.
“It’s true,” Sandy insisted. “That’s why Debbie brings her own glue. She brought a fresh batch today. It’s right there. On the vanity.”
Vava leaned over and sniffed the small Tupperware container of white stuff. “And is that the glue you used?”
“Oh, absolutely. It’s the glue I always use.”
Vava snapped on a pair of rubber gloves, pulled out a plastic bag and dropped in the hair extension. Then she got another bag, capped the Tupperware and threw that in.
Sandy’s eyes were bugging. She was used to living a normal life, running a respectable salon where nothing dramatic happened except maybe a dryer overheated or the washing machine overfilled. She paid her taxes quarterly, kept her premises litter-free, got a Pap smear every year and invested regularly in her IRA.
She’d been married to the same boring man for twenty boring years, going to bed at eight and waking up at four because he was a baker. She was not used to the police holding hairpieces she owned as evidence or the crime lab going through her back office.
“Are you sure you didn’t accidentally confuse Debbie’s glue with a latex-based glue?” Vava asked.
“I’m positive.” Sandy held up her hand, Girl Scout-like. “I’m always careful.”
I came to her defense. “It’s true. Sandy is the most conscientious hairdresser I know. If Debbie’s dead, it must have been by natural causes or murder.”
“Murder?” Vava wrote this down.
Sandy poked me. “Thanks a bunch, Bubbles.”
I rushed to clarify. “What I mean is that Sandy would never cause a client’s death, at least not through negligence.”
“Negligence? Did I just hear my favorite word?”
Dan was pushing his way through the crowd. As usual his black hair was slicked back and he wore a black wool coat. I didn’t know what look Dan was going for. Maybe Vampire
GQ
.
His fat white fingers were adorned with garish gold pinky rings, including one for Lehigh University, where we met at a fraternity party and—after five minutes of conversation, one glass of rubbing-alcohol punch and two minutes on a sticky, beer-soaked fraternity floor—conceived our daughter.
I’d forgotten that he was supposed to pick me up so we could get our marriage license today. Funny how that slipped my mind.
“What’s all the commotion?” he asked, glancing at Vava, trying to place her.
“We had an accident,” I explained. I knew Sandy would be worried that Dan might misconstrue or, worse, might claim to be Phil Shatsky’s lawyer and file a lawsuit on the spot. “A client suffered an allergic reaction.”
Dan raised an eyebrow. “Is the client okay?”
“Not really,” I said. “She’s kind of dead.”
“That sucks,” he said.
Vava pointed her pencil at him. “Aren’t you Chip Ritter, the lawyer? You must have broken every speed limit to catch up to that ambulance.”
Dan smiled, as if chasing ambulances were a special talent. “Actually, I was on my way to pick up this little lady.” He wrapped his arm around me. “How’s about a kiss, foxy mama?” He pursed his bluish, wet lips. They were like two slugs fresh out of the garden.
I fought back a gag.
“You two know each other?” Vava asked.
“He’s my ex-husband,” I said.
“She’s my fiancée,” Dan answered.
Vava seemed confused.
“It’s complicated,” Sandy explained. “Honestly, you don’t want to know. It’s sordid. Let’s get back to Debbie.”
A bright light flashed. Over Sandy’s shoulder I could see Travis Miner with his omnipresent TV camera. Travis Miner was a patrolling shark, just like Dan, though instead of searching for victims to exploit through litigation, he searched for victims to exploit through grainy cable TV news.
Not that Travis worked for a television station. He was a freelancer—or mercenary, depending on your perspective—who kept two police scanners on his belt and cruised the town, trolling for that mother of all news stories: the five-car pileup, the full-blown house fire or, if lucky, a homicide in a beauty salon.
“What’s
he
doing here?” Sandy hissed.
“Don’t you worry, Sandy. Let me handle this.” Never one to miss an opportunity to grandstand before a television audience, no matter how small or how house-bound, Dan brushed off his coat sleeves and marched toward Travis.
“Perhaps I can help you. I’m Chip Ritter of the law firm of Ritter, Ryjeski and Gold. We’ll sue when others won’t.” Dan then molded his eyebrows into his “serious squint,” which he always did at the end of his introduction. “What’re your concerns, son?”
“Um,” said Travis intelligently. “I don’t know if you’d exactly call them concerns. I’m looking for the owner. A Sandy something. I got a tip that a murder just took place here.”
A murder? I looked to Sandy, who had petted Oscar so his head was a smooth ball while the rest of his fur stood on end.
“There was no murder!” Sandy corrected. “And it wasn’t poison.”
Travis swung his camera onto her. “Poison, you say. Do you often go around poisoning your clients? And I happened to notice that your license on the wall has expired.”
Damn. I’d reminded her about that just yesterday.
Vava went over to check the license and took it off the wall, dropping it in yet another plastic bag.
Sandy burst into fresh tears.
Travis said, “We had a tip this joint was behind code.”
“Hmm-mm.” Detective Vava Wilson shook her head. “All these tips. There is something fishy going on here.”
I checked my watch to see if school was out yet. That might explain the bogus murder tips. Kids.
“Excuse me, Detective Wilson.” Eric the lab guy was back, holding another Ziploc bag with something white in it. I noticed that Travis had swung his camera off Sandy and was now focused on the bag.
“Yes, Wachowski?” Vava said.
“Just want you to know that we found this in the locked bathroom in the office. It appears as if someone might have been trying to flush it down the toilet.”
Sandy wiped her tears. “But I’m the only one with keys to the bathroom. I didn’t put anything down the toilet.”
“What is it?” Vava asked.
“It’s a type of adhesive,” Wachowski said. “It appears to be homemade.”
Debbie’s hair glue. But why would someone have tried to flush it down the toilet?
“And this?” Vava asked, handing him the bag with the glue Sandy had been using. “Is this latex?”
Wachowski opened the bag and sniffed. There certainly was a heck of a lot of sniffing going on. I mean, how scientific was it to just sniff?
“Well, I haven’t run any tests, obviously, but it smells latex-based to me. Pretty strong odor, like a brand-new car.”
Thunk!
Sandy was on the floor, having fainted. Oscar leaped out of her arms and yipped hysterically.
“Hold on,” Dan said to me, stepping over Sandy as if she were driftwood. “Are they saying this client died from an allergic reaction to glue Sandy applied?”
I nodded.
“Well, then, that’s a whole different story. Sandy’s in a heap of trouble if that’s the case.” He kicked off Oscar, who was leaping and snapping at his pants leg. “I hope she has good insurance, Sandy, ’cause she’s looking at a multimillion-dollar lawsuit. Dang, I’d bring it myself if I wasn’t getting married to you, Bubbles. A settlement like that could pay for the entire wedding and then some.”
He actually rubbed his hands in greedy glee.
I don’t remember what happened next. There was a flash of red, which could have been either my bloodlust or the brand-new press-on nails I’d applied that morning. And then my hands were around Dan’s flabby white neck.
Fortunately—or unfortunately, depending on whether you’re me—Travis Miner was there to film it all.
Chapter Three
O
n a good day, a day when he hits four under par, when Hess’s takes out two more pages of full-page lingerie ads and First National doesn’t call to inquire about his wife’s overdrawn checking account,
News-Times
editor in chief Dix Notch is
still
in a bad mood.
But this afternoon, as I stood in the newsroom with him and every other reporter watching the extremely local news on Channel 93, public-access cable, Mr. Notch wore an eerily benign smile.
It was the kind of smile you used to find on mental patients after successful lobotomies. The kind you see on the faces of rich women still sweaty from yoga class when they’re shopping for organic quinoa down at the co-op and privately congratulating themselves for being so healthy.
Dix Notch’s smile made me feel nostalgic for the good old days, when he would blow his stack and hit things.
“Johnson,” he said calmly. “Please play that part again, the part where our beloved Bubbles lunges for Mr. Ritter’s throat.”
Beloved Bubbles?
Justin Johnson, our high school intern, pressed the rewind button on the remote.
Playing the tape backward, it seemed like Detective Vava Wilson was bringing Dan and me together instead of separating us. It was humorous in a
Funniest Home Videos
kind of way. Mama and her best friend, Genevieve, would have found it knee-slapping, wet-your-pants hysterical.
Johnson freeze-framed the point where I was strangling Dan. At the risk of sounding vain, I have to admit I looked pretty good, considering a woman had just died in front of me, my best friend was being wrongly implicated in her murder and I was running on all sorts of crazed emotions. My roots weren’t too black, my sunshine blond hair wasn’t too brassy and my legs looked terrific. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: leopard-print leotards are a girl’s best friend.