Deadly Blessings (5 page)

Right now, my hair, chestnut brown, was just
past shoulder length. Perfect for rubber-banding in place. If I was
going somewhere fancy, I simply side-parted it and let it hang.
Someone once told me that I should go shorter, and that bangs would
help camouflage my high forehead, but I liked it simple. And my
hair was exactly that. Despite Gabriela’s insistence that I could
use a new look, I wasn’t willing to suffer through more than a trim
for the benefit of one of her stories.

Several girls were still sweeping the floor,
although it seemed to me it was already clean enough to eat off of.
The white of the tile sparkled, but broom after broom continued to
sweep invisible dirt away. Two girls were cleaning the mirrors.
Again, they were spotless, but still were being shined and polished
as though to get them cleaner.

Other girls straightened magazine racks and
hair care displays, taking each bottle and jar down one at a time
to dust, then replace it on the now cleaned, clean shelf.

I wondered how they could afford to keep
such a large staff on duty all day. And why they chose to. These
women clearly had nothing to do, and yet they didn’t sit down to
gossip; they worked as they gossiped. Must be why the prices were
so high.

They spoke in Polish, some of them racing
through conversation in a dialect I couldn’t quite follow. I’d been
raised on my parents’ English-bastardized version of the
language.

“
Hallo,” a voice behind me
said. I turned to greet a young woman, about twenty-four years old.
She must have come from the back room, because I hadn’t seen her
before. She was a bigger girl than I was; she had me by about three
inches in height and at least thirty pounds in weight. But she
carried it well. Like Marilyn Monroe, she had a voluptuous, curvy
look. And like Marilyn, she was an attractive girl. Until she
smiled.

She tried to keep her mouth closed, but her
pronounced overbite and large teeth marred what could have been a
stunning face. When she grinned, which she did when I said “hi,”
her whole face lit up, and the pink of her rounded cheeks deepened.
I liked her immediately.

“
I am Sophia,” she said
with a little lilt, like a question, as she pointed to her
chest.

“
I’m Alex.”

“
Alex?” she tilted her
head. “This is name for boy, no?”

“
I guess,” I said, sitting
back down at the sink chair.

Sophia reached over and fingered my hair,
making appraising noises as she did so. I couldn’t guess at what
she meant as she lifted strands and slid them through her
fingers.

“
Cut?” she finally
said.

“
Just a trim.”

She led me to a different chair by the
mirrors and I obediently sat. Standing behind me she pulled the
ends of my hair up in such a way that it looked as though she’d
lopped off a good four inches. The new length hit just above my
earlobe. Way too short.

“
Umm,” I said, “I like to
keep it up in a pony-tail.”

“
No pony-tail. No.” She
lowered her head till it was next to mine and smiled into the
mirror at me as she let my hair drop. “You see? You have long face.
Long hair make it drag.” She pulled it up again, this time holding
it, bun-like at the back of my head, then pulled a few wisps in
front of my eyes and did some sort of contortion with them that
made me look as though I sported bangs. “Look now. You see?
Different. Pretty blue eyes. You got boyfriend?”

“
Uh, yeah.”

“
He will tell you how
beautiful you are.”

I laughed. She obviously didn’t know Dan.
“I’d rather keep it long,” I said, though I had to admit she was
probably right. The shorter look did seem to frame my face better
than the straggly brown mess I was used to. “Just a trim,” I
repeated.

Her look told me she was disappointed in my
decision. She stood back and gave me another appraising look. “You
try maybe highlights?”

The broken English was starting to get to
me. I thought life might be easier if I told her I spoke Polish,
and then, once we got started on the hair I could put my feelers
out about Milla Voight, but I was interrupted before I could start.
The front door made its tinkling announcement and a young man
strode in, every tense inch of him telegraphing anger.

He made his way directly toward us, waving a
newspaper in my stylist’s face, calling to her in Polish, making
her name sound like Zophia. My knee-jerk reaction was that he was
her boyfriend, but the twin expressions of warning on their faces
as they stared each other down made me reassess.

This had to be her brother. From the looks
of it, younger, by about three or four years.

They spoke so fast, and with so much
emotion, that I had a hard time keeping up with the conversation. I
arranged my expression into careful nonchalance, but paid close
attention.

“
Matthew,” she said in
English, her voice low. “I have client here.”

He gave me a cursory look, and a polite nod,
as if to acknowledge my presence. If it slowed him down, the effect
was temporary. Fair-haired and handsome, Matthew was a bigger, more
masculine version of his sister. Over six feet tall, he had the
clear, peaches and cream complexion, and bright blue eyes his
sister had, but as though a sculptor had sat down to work with two
identical lumps of clay, each maintained a strength of
gender—though the resemblance was uncanny.

His face set in a scowl, I couldn’t help but
think about how handsome he would be if he smiled. He was a bit too
young for my tastes, but I could nonetheless appreciate his
attractiveness. And while he had a small overbite, and the same
large teeth that Sophia did, it wasn’t quite so pronounced on his
larger frame.

Their Polish became clearer as I began to
catch the rhythm of their speech.

“
So tell me Sophia, tell me
again about your great future in this place,” he said, hissing the
sibilant consonants, “What kind of future does Milla have
now?”

Milla? Had to be Milla Voight.

“
Please,” she said. It
wasn’t a request. “I have no time for this, Matthew.”

She placed both of her hands on my head, one
on each side of my part, as though ready to commence styling. My
inner alarm went off. No!

I sensed it was an attempt to dismiss him,
but he walked around in front of me. Even if I weren’t a
people-watcher by nature, my interest would have been piqued when
he held up the article that had apparently precipitated this angry
outburst. The Polish newspaper’s headline story featured a large
picture of Milla Voight and a very small one of Father de los
Santos. But it seemed that it was the priest who had gotten the
brother’s ire up.

I felt like the salami in a sandwich, the
two of them arguing over me, close, invading my space. Sophia’s
hands had moved to my shoulders, preventing me from getting up. She
couldn’t know that I was understanding this conversation and there
was no chance I’d try to get away.

I caught a glimpse of her nails, ragged and
bitten to the quick. She held a comb, tight in her right hand.
“Please,” she said again in her native language, “this woman is a
paying customer.”

“
Yes,” he said, derision
obvious in his tone. He wagged his head. “What would Mama
think?”

Sophie moved closer to him, placing one hand
on his arm.

He shook it off, but his tone softened. “We
can go somewhere else. Another city. Start again.”

Her hands twitched with tension. “Matthew,
let’s talk about this later. At home. All right?”

Behind me, at the back of the shop, a door
opened. I might have missed the noise and the movement, had it not
been for the reaction of the staff. By the time the knob clicked
closed, everyone’s eyes had shot toward the sound. As of course,
did mine.

A large man had emerged and was making his
way toward us. Scary large. His clothes were not cheap, that much I
could tell, but he wore them too small. My guess was that this
bruiser did that on purpose, to emphasize the muscles in his chest
and the bulge in his pants.

His thick dark hair was so short that it
spiked out around his massive head, and he sported a neat Fu
Manchu. Olive-complected, he was the sort of fellow who steps out
of the shadows in movies just to make the protagonist nervous.
Which is exactly the effect he was having on Sophie and her
brother. I felt like a rapt audience member, itching to see what
would happen next. Except I wasn’t used to sitting this close to
the action.

“
Problem, Sophia?” He asked
in clear unaccented English. Despite the calm his dark eyes exuded,
there was an alertness, a wariness, within them.

“
Oh. … No. My brother has a
disagreement,” she said with what looked like a forced smile, “with
… with our landlord.” I watched Milla’s face disappear into the
newspaper’s fold as Matthew tucked it under his arm.

Except for the old lady
customer who sat reading
Cosmo
under the hum of a dryer, her foot tapping a
rhythm that nobody else could hear, everyone’s attention was on us.
No secrets in this place, I thought.

The receptionist called out: “Hey, Ro? When
you have a minute?”

Like a bear in the zoo on a hot summer day,
the guy turned with movements both graceful and powerful. This was
not a man in a hurry. Ro looked at girl who’d called to him,
nodded, then turned back to Matthew. “Let me know if there’s
anything I can do. Any brother of Sophie’s is a friend of mine.” He
didn’t wait for a response before heading over to the receptionist,
who led him to the back of the shop.

As soon as he was out of earshot, Matthew
lapsed back into Polish again. “I’m going to prove it to you,” he
said, dropping the folded paper onto her shelf of supplies.

Prove what? I wondered.

“
Matthew,” she said, but
he’d turned to leave. “Please, don’t do anything foolish …
Matthew!”

He yanked the front door open hard enough to
send the bells into jangle spasms. They reverberated through the
now-silent salon for what had to be seconds but felt like hours.
Sophie bit the insides of her mouth, pulling her cheeks in, like a
fish. Her fists gripped the gray comb so hard I could see the
knuckles go white.

Chapter Four

My pager sounded just as I settled up with
Sophie. Pressing my card into her hand, along with a sizeable tip,
I whispered to her in Polish, “Call me, if there’s anything I can
do; I might be able to help, somehow.” My sixth sense told me there
was a story here.

The realization that I’d heard and
understood the conversation between her and Matthew flashed into
her eyes and she stopped for a moment, speechless. Pushing my luck,
I continued, “If you ever want to talk about your friend Milla, or
if you need help …” I left the statement intentionally vague,
hoping she’d fill in the blanks herself and take a chance on me.
She hadn’t exactly opened up during the hair styling, but we’d
established a rapport of sorts. I could only hope.

When I left the salon, she hadn’t smiled,
but I saw her pocket my business card.

I pulled out my cell phone when I got back
into my car. The interior had been warmed by the October sun and
now smelled a bit like French fries. I’d caught a glimpse of myself
in the ubiquitous mirrors in the salon, but I just had to take
another gander before calling in. I pulled down the visor mirror
for a good hard look.

The first word that had gone through my mind
at the salon was “beehive,” and my style hadn’t miraculously
changed in the past five minutes. Unfortunately. The receptionist
had pulled Sophie over to the side while the highlights I’d
reluctantly agreed to, “processed.” I can only assume she told
Sophie how much I liked the ‘do in that one book. My sarcasm had
been lost on my audience. Well, it wouldn’t be the first time.

Grimacing, I flipped the visor back up. It
came out of its little hinge-y thing and I spent another minute or
so fixing it. As cars go, mine is pretty utilitarian. People make
jokes about Fords, and when I bought this one, brand-spanking new
four years ago, I’d half-expected problems to surface right away.
So far, however, it had been a dream. My little white Escort was
small, easy to maneuver, and cheap. Exactly what I wanted in a
vehicle.

Settled, I punched in the phone number to
the office.

Jordan answered on the second ring, “Alex
St. James’ office.”

“
Hey, Jordan, I got the
page, but I’m running late. Think you can get Bass to stall the
meeting for about— “

“
The meeting’s been
rescheduled for two, but you better get down here. That’s why I
beeped you.”

“
What’s up?”

She made a noise and I could almost see the
look on her face. Combination annoyance and puzzlement. “Something
big is brewing around here. Mr. Mulhall’s coming.”

“
Hank? What
for?”

“
They’re making this new
guy thing into a big deal. And—now this is just a rumor—so don’t
quote me …”

Jordan’s rumors were nothing to be ignored.
“Yeah?”

“
I heard that they’re
letting folks go. We’re supposed to find out right before the
meeting, but I been hearing that heads are gonna roll.”

“
But they just hired
…”

“
Yeah. Fenn-ton.” She
elongated the name in a sing-song way.

“
Have you met
him?”

“
Unfortunately.”

“
And?”

Jordan snorted. A very unladylike sound. “I
give him two months.”