Sprayed Stiff (4 page)

Emitting a huge sigh, I looked around for an easy escape—but the study had no desktop computer, no telephone. I saw a flash of white and my heart jumped into my throat. I yipped. In answer, a feline face peered around the corner of the massive desk.

Guinevere.

This just kept getting better and better. Locked in a room with a clownish corpse and a creepy cat. At least I had somebody to talk to. Besides a body.

“Hey, Guiny, what’s wrong with your dumb master anyway? Hasn’t he heard of e-mail?” With my bad luck, Lexa’s father was probably one of those old-fashioned guys who let their “secretaries” do all their high-tech work. Humph. Just because I thought my luck might be changing, I tried the doorknob. It was indeed locked.

Guinevere wound her way around my ankles. I looked down to find she was licking her little kitty lips. Oops, time to get moving before she thought I was dead, too.

I inched forward, just close enough to touch Wilma with the brush, my arm fully extended. The stand-up hair didn’t budge. What the heck had been put on it to make it so stiff? Could it be that new gel the kids were using to spike their hair? I hadn’t tried any, since most of my customers were the over-thirty crowd, but it sure looked like it made concrete out of hair strands. Still, it would be more like dried goop than whatever was in Wilma’s hair. Her gray bob looked like it had been shellacked. With a blowtorch. I took another step forward and sniffed. I recognized it in an instant—Main Mane by Hair’s Breadth. It had a distinctive horehound scent that couldn’t be missed. This was the triple-super-extra-hold variety, no doubt. I was impressed. And to think the beauty supply distributor had told me when he visited my shop just last week that Main Mane worked better than any hairspray on the market, and I hadn’t believed him. Maybe he’d killed Wilma and sprayed her hair just to prove his point. Silly, I know, but I had to admit the state her hair was currently in would make a great advertisement if it weren’t so morbid. Something wet and rough tickled my elbow.

“Ack!” Guinevere had jumped back into Wilma’s lap and was tasting me. I ran to the window.

What was I going to do? I knew that messing with her hair was going to get me in a mess of trouble. But each second I hesitated was one second further from the murder, one second longer for the killer to get away. I wondered which would be a bigger sin in the crime-fighter’s bible. Not that it really mattered beyond my ability to rationalize my screwup, because as I glanced out the window down to the lawn, I realized the second story in a mansion is more like the sixth floor of a high-rise and way too far to jump.

It was a good thing the window wasn’t open, because when an orchestra blasted out a dramatic phrase at about ten thousand decibels I jumped straight into the glass. I would have a goose egg above my right eyebrow. Good, maybe I could claim a concussion made me do it.

“What’s that?” I shouted. Had Guinevere become musical? Nope, she’d leaped off Wilma and was stalking toward me with her tail swishing in that pissed-off way cats have.

“This is Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, first movement,” came Lexa’s disembodied voice from a speaker in the ceiling camouflaged within a flying bust of Benjamin Franklin.

“Turn it off! Guinevere doesn’t like it.” I shooed at the cat, hoping to change her course. She was not initimidated, and kept padding toward me.

My answer from Lexa was a rise in the decibel level. Goody.

“Lexa!”

No answer. Of course. Furious, I scanned the room for the control of the intercom. Knowing what a control freak Wilma was, I figured it was probably in the room with the security camera screens. Would her husband, Percy, have stood for this, though? Music not of his own choosing in his private domain? Sitting down in Percy’s leather throne, I searched the desk, remembering at the last minute to grab a piece of paper to shield any fingerprints. His middle desk drawer was depressingly tidy—pens organized by color, then size. The rest of the drawers held file after file of dry legal documents. A cat paw appeared on top of the left row of files, and Guinevere slithered up on top. I scooted to the right and paused at a metal drawer divider, struck with an idea. Prying it loose, I marched over to the door and tried to wedge the divider between the door and the jamb, not caring if Lexa saw me. After all, I had the unloaded gun.

The divider was too thick. I let it drop to the carpet. It missed Guinevere by inches. Too bad. She meowed at me in warning.

I looked at the cabinet that flanked the window. It was a unique design, with open segments for books interrupted by small cabinet doors every foot or so. Maybe the intercom was hidden behind one of the doors. Maybe he stored a laptop I could plug into a handy-dandy modem and use to summon the authorities. I reached for a pencil and, carefully holding it between my index finger and thumb around the metal band, popped open the first cabinet door. It held a collection of porno tapes along the lines of
Debbie Does Dallas.
I sighed. Did all men have to be so predictable? I was moving to the next cabinet when my subconscious warned me I hadn’t had a Guinevere encounter in the expected amount of time. Where was she?

I spun and found her on Wilma again, having a snack.

“Shoo!” I waved my arms. She flicked me a look, and promptly ignored all my flapping. I stamped my foot toward her. She chewed harder. I grabbed one of the videotapes and flung it at her. It smacked the cat on the shoulder, sending her back under the desk with an angry growl. I would certainly pay for that later, but now it was way past time for me to get lucky. I popped open the next cabinet door. Jackpot! There was a collection of cameras. Most were so sophisticated that it would take a point-and-shoot woman like me years to learn to use them, but one camera was a simple 35mm auto-focus. Thank goodness. I felt my shoulders relax a degree and tried to act like I was still looking for the intercom. If I could take pictures of Wilma’s hair and face now, I wouldn’t feel so bad about messing around with the crime scene.

But what about Big Sister watching me? Hmm. I spun my body toward the window and cocked my head like I was listening to something. I ran to the window, looked out, and let my hand fly to my mouth in mock shock. “Lexa, I think someone is at the front gate.”

This was a gamble, I knew. The security camera surveillance area was a mystery to me. It could have a full-blown view of the front gate for all I knew. But I was betting it didn’t.

I swallowed hard for the camera and looked out with bug eyes. “Oh, no! I hope it’s not the police!”

I paused a beat, imagining her jumping up and rushing out of the room. Then I stuck the brush handle in the waistband of my jeans and got to work. I slid the Canon Sure Shot off the shelf, aimed, and clicked off about three photos of Wilma from different angles. Then I put it back and used the pencil to close the cabinet door. All in about twenty seconds or less. I’d tell the police about it on the sly. Lexa could hate me later when the photos came out at the trial. My whole goal now was to keep her semisane until the cops got there.

Rushing back to my post at the window, I held my breath as the music continued uninterrupted. Lexa hadn’t blasted in and confiscated the camera. I guessed I was in the clear.

“They drove off. I guess someone with the wrong house,” I mused for her benefit. I shook my head and returned to Wilma, toying with her hair. “Lexa, I have an important question,” I addressed the intercom. “Does Wilma normally use Main Mane triple-super-extra-hold hairspray?”

“Heavens, no.” Lexa’s out-of-breath tone told me she hadn’t caught my subterfuge. She’d been running to a window to check for the cops. “She’s never purchased anything but ’Om’s personal label. Now, get to work.”

So the killer packed a can of designer hairspray along with a gun. He/she wasn’t cheap. A sixteen-ounce can of the stuff cost around thirty dollars, which was why I chose not to stock it at Transformations. I was so practical and so honest that I’d have a hard time selling a can of Main Mane when customers could get the same results at a tenth of the price. Of course, now that I’d seen the results were better than promised, I’d have to say I was wrong about that one.

This was not the first time I’d be wrong over the next few days.

T
HERE ARE ADVANTAGES
to having a dead customer. Especially when that customer is Wilma Barrister. I remembered our last encounter and how she’d hammered on me mercilessly and then, when she couldn’t find anything more about me to pick on, began criticizing her daughter for everything she could think of. I could see how she’d become such a successful fund-raiser: People gave her money just to get her to leave them the hell alone.

As I flicked at the tips of her stiff hair with the boar’s bristles, I had to admit she was still going to be a pain in the ass, but a silent one this time.

Who would’ve had the balls to silence Wilma with such dramatic flair? Perfect Percy, fed up with her control over his music? Or had Lexa killed her to escape her emotional prison? While I couldn’t blame Lexa if she really did off her Mommy Dearest, I didn’t think she had. The police would, though. Lexa would be their number-two suspect right behind her father, leaving Lexa’s brother at number three for geographical reasons (he lived in Houston). Cops loved to write bloodshed off as a domestic squabble. It was so much easier for everyone but the family. And while the statistics were on their side, sometimes they didn’t even try to see through the numbers. A small police force like Terrell Hills’ likely didn’t see a murder but every decade. It didn’t bode well for Lexa.

I took a deep breath and leaned in closer to the body. I hadn’t noticed the tape around her neck before because the high neck of her gown had been artfully arranged to cover it. This sicko had gone to a lot of trouble to present Wilma just so. It was the ultimate in premeditation. Someone had hated Wilma with a purple passion. The tape held what looked to me like a curtain rod running up her spine and the back of her head, which the sprayed-stiff hair had been arranged to cover as well. This was good news for me, because it was going to keep her head from lolling from side to side as I muscled the strands into a semblance of order.

I looked Wilma in the eye. “It’s now or never.” I swiped at her hair with the brush and nearly pulled my arm out of the socket. The brush stuck. I wrapped my other hand around my wrist. The brush didn’t budge. I released the handle. The bristles held as if glued there. I reversed my grip and pulled harder. The first movement of the symphony moved into a crescendo. I felt something give.
Squ-wench.
Her head wiggled.
Squunch.
Either I was pulling Wilma’s head off her shoulders or the tape was giving way. Uh-oh. Either way, I was screwed. Damn. I stopped pulling and studied the situation. Hair covered the brush completely around its circumference. It was hopelessly tangled in a dead woman’s hair with my fingerprints all over it, sticking out of her head like an absurd flag. I wanted to sink to the six-figure carpet and cry. Instead, I closed my eyes to think, rubbing my temples and humming with the bizarre Beethoven chaperone.

The first movement repeated.

I think the music was making fun of me.

Air ruffled the tips of my hair.

Wilma? Had she come back to life?

I cracked open one eye. Not Wilma.

Guinevere was perched on Wilma’s shoulder, batting at the brush.

Great, at least she was trying to help.

Deciding the brush was out of commission—unless Guiny managed a miracle—I returned to the desk for emergency supplies. I was determined to pick the lock on the door. The pens would be too thick. I straightened out a pair of paper clips. Hey, didn’t people in the movies use these to pick locks? I rushed over to the door and slid one of the clips into the lock. I wiggled and listened. I didn’t know what I was listening for, but maybe I had some untapped lock-picking instinct that would tell me when I heard it.

“Give it up, Reyn, and get to work,” Big Sister commanded from the Franklin head. “The tumblers are pickproof. Father made sure of that. He deals in all sorts of high-profile cases he can’t have anyone knowing about.”

Hmm, was that right? Should’ve paid more attention when I perused his files. Perhaps I could’ve blackmailed someone for an early retirement.

Sighing heavily, I returned to my customer, armed with the clip-picks. It seemed to take forever, easing one strand of hair at a time out of its chemical jail and knocking Guinevere off Wilma’s lap, only to have her leap back up a few minutes later. A couple of times my head started to swim from the hairspray fumes. Finally, I had the do tamed down to what looked like a manically teased beehive. It wasn’t Wilma’s normal perfect bob, but, hey, I wasn’t a magician.

I’d left the brush for last. The cat and I hadn’t had much luck unsticking it, but at least now it was hidden behind her head, its handle resting against her back. Just as I began to wedge the paper clips between the bristles and the hair, Guinevere ran and hid. I heard the door open behind me. I stopped my head from bobbing to the dramatic swell of the wood instruments, surprised that my captor would release me before the job was done.

“Good timing. I’m just about finished, Lexa.”

I heard a big sigh. “You’re finished, all right.”

I recognized that dry voice, and it wasn’t Lexa’s. It belonged to San Antonio Police Lieutenant Jackson Scythe, homicide detective. Maybe I’d gotten so high off the Main Mane fumes and the repeating Symphony no. 5 that I was hallucinating. Maybe I’d been dreaming about him so much that all men’s voices were starting to sound like his. Maybe it was just Mr. Barrister behind me, and I could easily explain away my hands all over his dead wife’s hair.

But when I turned my head and dropped my hands to my sides, I saw I was right the first time. Boy, sometimes I hate it when I’m right.

“What are
you
doing here?” I demanded. It’s best to stay on the offensive around this guy.

Issuing another of his famous long-suffering sighs, Scythe shook his rusty blond head as the door opened wider and three other cops filtered in around him, the two younger dudes wearing Terrell Hills Police Department uniforms. The older guy I pegged as the tiny hamlet’s police chief. Scythe was wearing a slightly wrinkled long-sleeved button-down denim shirt and what looked like yesterday’s Wranglers. He appeared to have been summoned straight out of bed. That made me wonder whom he’d been in bed with and what they’d been doing—

“Cut the tunes,” he hollered, and magically the music stopped.

Now, why the hell hadn’t I thought of that?

Scythe strode toward me. “I can’t believe you. You have the gall to demand what
I’m
doing here when you’re alone in a room with a dead woman who looks like she’s going to a Shriners’ circus prom.”

“Well…” I jammed my hands on my hips. “Are you going to answer my question?”

I noticed in my peripheral vision that the cops were watching us instead of looking around for clues. But, in all fairness, I imagine this was the most entertainment the 2.4-square-mile town had had in years. The murder, that is, not me and Scythe.

Scythe’s laser blues burned a hole through my admittedly less powerful gaze. But I’m more stubborn than he is, so I held the searing look. He hitched that damned left eyebrow. “No,” he said finally. “Why I’m here is none of your business. You just ought to be thanking your lucky stars that I
am
here.”

Oh, sure. I’m thrilled to death.
I glanced at my erstwhile customer.
Oops—sorry, Wilma.

The police chief, cleared his throat. “Lieutenant Scythe is on loan to us from the SAPD. We are very fortunate to have him for a month to help refine our investigative techniques.”

Scythe cut a look at the chief, then turned to the rest of us and smiled with no humor. “And isn’t it nice of Miss Sawyer to have provided us with something to investigate?”

“Hey, I didn’t have anything to do with this.”

“Right,” Scythe answered in that hard tone that brooked no argument. “Which is why we found you dancing to a concerto—”

“It’s a Beethoven symphony. Number five, actually,” I corrected pompously. I wouldn’t have known it either if Lexa hadn’t told me, but I had to try to hold the higher ground.

“—bent over a woman with a hole in her chest, and with a gun tucked in your waistband.”

My hand went automatically to my waistband. The uniforms’ hands flew to their gun butts. Scythe shook his head, so instead I dropped my hands to my sides, twisted my torso, and nodded to the offending item. “This isn’t my gun.”

“That’s smart,” the youngest of the group chirped in a weedy tenor. His nameplate said
HARLAND
. “You should never kill someone with your own gun. Too obvious, too easy to trace.”

Uh-oh. I think Harland had been watching too much cop TV.

“It’s not loaded. You can check,” I offered.

“O’ course it’s not loaded. One bullet’s all it takes and it’s in the vic,” the other uniform put in bullishly.

Scythe’s eyes looked like they were about to roll to the ceiling before he stopped them by shutting his eyelids for a beat. Maybe this assignment was trying his patience. Probably a lot more so now, considering I was involved.

That thought cheered me up a bit, until I saw him fiddling with his handcuffs. Double uh-oh. Now, I’d had some dreams involving Scythe and handcuffs, but I didn’t think that’s what he had in mind just then.

“Look, let me tell you what happened. Lexa—” I nodded toward Wilma. “—that’s the dead woman’s daughter, she’s a client and a friend of mine. She called me to come help fix her mom’s hair. I didn’t know Wilma was dead. When I got here and saw what had happened, I tried to convince her to call the police, but then she pulled out this gun and threatened me if I didn’t fix Wilma’s hair. I got her to drop the gun and talked her out of trying to change the makeup. She was really bent on doing that, but I thought it would make you guys’ job harder.”

“Gee, thanks,” the king of the dry wit muttered.

“Well, then Lexa grabbed the gun again. Then I talked her into giving it to me. Then she locked me in here and told me I couldn’t leave until I styled her mother’s hair.” I paused, seeing the wheels turning in Scythe’s head and knowing this wasn’t making Lexa sound very good, so I added, “I know she didn’t mean to threaten me, not really. She was just desperate.”

“Committing murder does that to a person,” Scythe pointed out.

“No, she didn’t do it,” I put in sharply. “You see, she feels guilty about being such a thorn in her mother’s side for all those years….”

I looked at a phalanx of blank male faces, none of them getting the whole female emotional blackmail deal. Not even kind of. “Once I combed out Wilma’s hair, Lexa was going to call nine-one-one.” I paused, suddenly struck by a terrible thought. Who’d called the police, anyway? Had Lexa tried to set me up? Locking me in the room with the corpse with the blaring Beethoven so I wouldn’t hear the sirens when the law arrived? Boy, was I a sucker.

“Well, unless she drove down to the Pack ’n Pay down on Broadway to place an anonymous call from a pay phone, she wasn’t the one who blew the whistle.”

Was Lexa working in tandem? Or maybe the killer had called? But why wait so long to do it, and from not all that far away? None of this was making any sense. Looking at the cops, I saw it made even less sense to them. That was bad news for me, since I was standing in front of them. I probably made a lot more sense as the killer than anybody else did.

“Are you going to relinquish your weapon or are we going to have to draw on you?” Scythe asked.

The two uniformed officers tensed, put their hands on their gun butts again, and looked way too excited by that prospect.

“Down, boys,” I said, raising my arms slowly into the air. Scythe laser-beamed me. I glared at him. “Come and get the damned thing. I didn’t want it to begin with, I just didn’t want any more killing going on around here. How was I to know it wasn’t loaded? Of course, it might be; I never checked what Lexa told me after she locked me in.”

Scythe ambled forward and slid the gun out of my waistband, a bit more slowly than necessary, with a little more contact with the small of my back than necessary. I stifled a shiver. Behind me, he smiled. Don’t ask me how I know that; call it women’s intuition. Plus, I had a clue.

“What’s so funny, Lieutenant Scythe?” Harland asked.

“You are, Harland,” the chief snapped before turning to address me. “Miss Barrister is being held so we can interview her once we secure the scene.”

“Yeah,” snarled the surly muscle-bound guy about my age with
MANNING
on his name tag. Dirty Harry lived. He leaned toward me and I nearly fainted from his rancid breath. “So don’t plan on trying to get your stories straight ahead of time. We’re going to keep you separated. We’re going to get the truth, or else.”

“With fingernail torture no doubt,” I muttered as I dropped my hands to my sides. Or they could simply hold me down and make Manning breathe on me and I’d give.

“Watch your mouth.” Scythe’s breath ruffled the hair at the shell of my ear. “Or I’ll get duct tape to go with these.” Cold steel clicked around my left wrist. He pulled it down, behind my back.

“Where did you get this rash on your palm?”

The boar’s bristles had left an angry red mark. “What happened was—I was—”

“Stop,” he said from behind me. “I changed my mind. I’m sure this is something I don’t want to know. It probably involves something illegal.”