“No. A night will be fine.”
“Okay.” Genevieve sighed, straining to heave herself out of the chair. “The things I do for you kids.”
I watched them waddle through the conference room door and down the stairs. When they had waddled themselves out of the building, I took the phone, fully expecting that the dismayed caller had given up.
She hadn’t.
“Oh, thank God, Bubbles. You’ve got to come down right away. You wouldn’t believe what I’ve found. This might solve everything!”
It was Sandy.
I was out the door in a flash.
Chapter Five
I
t was a disconcerting thing to see images of Santa Claus, apple cheeked and jolly, surrounded by yellow plastic DO NOT CROSS police tape. It was worse to see the tape hanging on the metal storm door of my favorite hangout in the world—my best friend’s warm and homey salon.
I’d always considered the House of Beauty a safety zone—a place where you could kick off your pinching high-heeled sandals, lean back into warm, soapy water and talk freely among close friends and trusted neighbors. Here you could trade recipes for pot roast in a crock pot one minute and just as easily express your disgust for certain local politicians the next. Most of all you could gossip freely.
Who was sleeping with whom. Whose kid had disappeared for days. Who was so desperate to remarry that she was hanging on to a boyfriend who treated her poorly. Who was out of cash and running up her credit card with disastrous abandon. Who had killed the cheerleader with Slim-Fast.
I had dug some of my best dirt at the House of Beauty. Now the House of Beauty
was
the dirt.
I parked the Camaro out front, applied a bright sheen of Raspberry Riot lip gloss to my slightly chapped lips and practiced smiling in my rearview. I didn’t want to greet Sandy frowning or, worse, unglossed. There simply is no excuse for being unglossed, no matter what the circumstances.
The babushkas had gone, taking their aluminum folding chairs with them. Only pieces of popcorn remained behind. The front door was locked, so I went around back. A few days until Christmas and the HOB was empty. I’d taken a gander at today’s appointment book before Debbie keeled over. It had been full up. The salon should have been packed.
I tried not to think of Mario and the bad perm.
“Come in,” Sandy called feebly. Her voice sounded hoarse, as if she’d been shouting. Or crying.
Turned out it was all those, plus smoking. Sandy was lower than I’d ever seen her. Gone was her peach polyester uniform and carefully contained hair. It was all frizz now, as if she’d been pulling it out by the roots. Her dingy yellow sweat suit—I didn’t know Sandy even owned a sweat suit—was stained with coffee and littered with flecks of gray cigarette ashes. It was all very depressing.
“Sandy!” I plunked down my purse and went to the sink, pouring her a glass of water, which happened to be the only thing I could think of to do.
She was at her desk, hunched over and staring at something in her hand. “I shouldn’t have called you down here. I don’t know what I was thinking. Sorry.”
I handed her the Dixie cup and ordered her to sip. She was shaking so violently she had to grip the cup hard to bring it to her mouth.
“I was hoping . . .” she started, as if getting out the whole sentence was too, too much work. “I was hoping this would have the answer. Now . . . I don’t know what I’m doing.” Wincing as if in pain, she clutched her stomach and bent over. “Cramps. Damn cramps.”
This was bad. It meant Sandy was having her period, which meant she wasn’t pregnant. She and Martin had been trying for years to have a baby, unbeknownst to me—until recently.
I’d always assumed she was happy without kids. I mean, those two were such neat freaks. And cloggers. Cloggers who liked complete quiet when they weren’t clogging. Also, they were into early bedtimes and sleeping late on the weekends. Not exactly little-kid material.
But then, after the thing with Jane last month, Sandy let it slip that getting pregnant didn’t come as easy to her as it did to me. Or at least as it had eighteen years ago. She and Martin were actually desperate to have a child.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered.
“It’s the stress.” She cringed again. “I was positive this was the month. Guess not. I think this is the worst day of my life. All I want is to go home and lie down, let Martin take care of me.”
I rubbed her back, feeling bad that I couldn’t do more for her. The muscles were bunched and twisted between her shoulder blades. I’d intended to ask her more about how someone could possibly have gotten into her locked, private bathroom, but decided now was not an ideal moment. “What can I do to help?”
She held something out to me, the thing she’d been staring at. It was small and metallic, and as soon as I understood what it was, my heart fell. I was no good with these. In fact, one might call me a disaster.
“It’s a cell phone,” Sandy said.
“I know.”
“Debbie’s cell phone.”
The words hung in the air. My first thought was
Take this to the cops,
which was not a very good thought for a crime reporter, especially a graduate of the Two Guys Community College School of Journalism, where Mr. Salvo had encouraged us to be resourceful.
Woodward and Bernstein wouldn’t have taken this cell phone to the cops. Then again, cell phones hit the market long after Woodward and Bernstein. Probably Woodward and Bernstein wouldn’t have known to press SEND or END. They’d be staring at it stupidly, as I was, banging it against their heads or something, like monkeys.
“Wasn’t Debbie talking on her cell when she . . . you know?” Sandy asked. “I think she was. There’s a way to find out what calls she received and what calls she made.” Sandy started pushing buttons.
Why did I have the feeling that Sandy had already checked what calls Debbie had received and made?
“See. You just press this button and then this one and, whoops, well now I’ve gone and done it.”
She was prattling faster than a runaway express train, her prior depression taking a backseat to a burst of hysterical energy. “Hmmm. Look at all these numbers. They’re the same ones. In and out. Look, Bubbles. You’re not looking.”
I was looking. It was just that the number repeated over and over had no meaning. Was it Debbie’s home? Get Together Now! Travel, where she worked?
“Hey.” Sandy tapped her chin. “I wonder if this number is the number for Jeffrey Andre of Jeffrey Andre’s Salon. Let’s look it up.”
The phonebook on Sandy’s desk was already open to ANDERSON-ARONSON. Sandy’s finger ran right down the list of names to a greasy spot by ANDRE, J.
Sure enough. The same number.
“What do you think it means?” she asked.
“That she was calling Jeffrey Andre at his home and Jeffrey Andre was calling her.” I didn’t want to hurt Sandy’s feelings by observing that maybe Debbie was arranging a hair appointment. “He could be a client. Maybe he wanted to book a trip through Get Together Now!?”
“No, I don’t think so,” Sandy said. “I think it means something else. But I can’t go down to his salon and find out because, well, because I’m not sure my legs work anymore. I’m not sure I could face him in my . . . my disgrace.”
And with that, Sandy covered her face with her hands and burst into tears.
Clearly, I had no other option.
Five minutes later I was at the door of Jeffrey Andre’s swanky salon.
The “warehouse district” was on Third Street, precariously close to Lehigh Steel. To the workers slogging in and out of the Steel, as it was called, the collection of shops, restaurants and boutiques in their factory’s old warehouses must have loomed like a vulture waiting to pick apart their dying carcasses.
What was the wimpy fate that awaited the once mighty industry that constructed our nation’s bridges, its skyscrapers, the ships that carried our soldiers overseas to defeat Hitler?
Williams Sonoma. Starbucks. Jeffrey Andre.
The thing is, we fear change in Lehigh. We don’t like eating dinner after six. It’s too late, too European. And if we eat ravioli, it should be filled with meat or cheese, not pumpkin. If something’s been blackened, it’s been burned. As for coffee, it should be served in thick ceramic mugs with plenty of creamer and, no matter what, it shouldn’t cost four bucks.
Which might explain why Jeffrey Andre was not as busy as I might have expected.
“Do you halfff an appointment?” A young man with short, short black hair sat on a high stool before a podium like a maître d’, instead of at a regular desk as God intended.
“Umm,” I said, still taking in my surroundings. Wide blond oak floors. Super-high ceilings and the pervasive smell of cappuccino. It was so big and . . . bare. Not a Christmas decoration in sight. Not even one of those fruity white-and-gold trees. It didn’t even smell like a normal salon. It smelled like grapefruit . . . and cappuccino.
“We’re verrrrry busy,” Mr. Receptionist said. “We are all booked up.”
Actually, as far as I could see, there was no one here. Only . . . was that G?
G was Jane’s old boyfriend who went by one letter for a name. G, as he was fond of saying, stood for God or Genius, depending. He used to be a slacker with an incurable addiction to SpongeBob SquarePants until his true, amazing talent as a stylist emerged quite by accident.
Now G was all in demand, except by Jane, who had dropped him after “the incident.” Jane had dropped a lot of stuff after “the incident,” including her courage and ambition to become a world-renowned physicist.
“Hi, G!” I called out.
G was foiling a businessman’s hair. Seeing me, he gulped and concentrated on his foiling, as if I were a total stranger.
That wasn’t like him at all.
“If you came here to socialize . . .” Mr. Receptionist was saying.
“I’d like to talk to Jeffrey Andre,” I said firmly. “It’s important.”
The man raised one—was that a plucked?—eyebrow. “I ham sooo sorry. Mr. Andre is verrry busy.”
“I’m Bubbles Yablonsky from the
News-Times
. I’d like to know why his home phone number appears repeatedly on the cell phone of a woman who was just murdered.” And then, in a stroke of brilliance, I remembered Mr. Notch’s constant admonition, reached into my purse and pulled out my Reporter’s Notebook.
The receptionist raised his other eyebrow at the notebook. “Oooohkay.” He tossed a pencil on the podium, slid out of his high stool and shuffled off, I assumed to find Jeffrey Andre.
I clutched my notebook and waited, feeling unreasonably nervous. I was suddenly seized by a mad wish for Stiletto to be here and was massaging my temples to make my wish go away when G popped up next to me.
“I just want you to know that even though I work here, I am totally heterosexual.”
G was holding the box of foil he’d been using a minute ago when he pretended not to know who I was. He was blonder than when I last saw him and there might have been biceps under the black sleeves of his supertight T-shirt. He looked pretty darn good.
“Okay? ’Cause if Jane hears I’m working for Jeffrey Andre, it’s gonna get all over town that I’ve gone, you know, to the other side.”
“No, it won’t.”
“I can’t take that risk. My studly quotient is everything.”
This was a total lie. Sleeping until two was everything to G.
It surprised me how happy I was to see him, though. I missed the boy. I missed the way he raided my Cap’n Crunch and left bowls of moldy cereal around the house. I even missed his smelly socks balled up on the floor.
“What’re you doing?” he cried, flinching as I held out my arms.
“Nothing. I wanted to give you a hug.”
“Ick. You’re my ex-girlfriend’s mother, Mrs. Y. That’s like incest or something. Let’s stick to Jane, okay? How is she? She still dating that jerk?”
It was my unfortunate duty to report that, indeed, Jane was still dating that jerk Jason. Jason who wore a pink buttoned-down shirt and was the high school “liaison” to the Lehigh Valley Rotarians. Jason who sported a buzz cut and wore a chastity ring and never let his jeans ride so low that you could see his underwear—unlike G.
G was obviously crestfallen.
“But don’t worry,” I said. “I have a plan. I’m inviting you to my wedding on Saturday.”
“Awesome.” G high-fived me. “You’re finally marrying that old dude.”
“What old dude?”
“Stalagmite.”
“Stiletto?”
“Yeah, him.”
“No,” I said, bristling. “And Stiletto’s not old. He’s my age.” I caught myself. I’d sounded exactly like Mama defending Clarence the pharmacist. “Actually, I’m remarrying Jane’s father.”
G jumped back. “Not the human oil slick?”
That was a pretty apt description, I had to admit.
“Our hope is that it will help Jane recover. Dr. Lori Caswell, our family therapist, is of the opinion that a nuclear family will do wonders.” No need to confess what else Dr. Caswell said about my maternal inadequacies, especially after G had just accused me of “incest.”
G shook his head. “I’m not buying it. I didn’t grow up in no nuclear family and it didn’t hurt me none.”
That statement said oh so much.
“What’re you doing here anyway? Heard you had some action down at the old HOB today. Seems Sandy really fu—messed up, say?”
There was muffled conversation at the far end of the salon. I suspected Jeffrey Andre was putting up some resistance to meeting me.
In a lowered voice, I gave G the quick rundown, making sure to stress that Sandy had not fu—messed up, but that Debbie Shatsky had been murdered.
“Sandy . . . a murderer?” G shouted.
I slapped my hand over the nimrod’s mouth. “Shhh. Sandy didn’t murder anyone. But it seems as if someone is eager to pin the blame on her.” I dropped my hand and explained about the two hair glues and how one was found in her private toilet. Odd, confusing thoughts were running around G’s mind. I could tell he wanted to delve further, but couldn’t bring himself to question how hair glue ended up in a toilet.