KillerHair
Chapter 18
Lacey treated Nan and Heidi to lunch. There were tears and regrets at the Sandwash Café. Neither woman knew anything about George, the mystery man who had called Tammi with the hair-for-money offer. Lacey again wondered aloud, casually, where Tammi’s hair was. Nan and Heidi just stared at each other and shrugged.
“I didn’t think about it,” Heidi said. “I didn’t really take a long look, you know.”
Nan suggested that the cops found it and took it for evidence. They couldn’t believe that Angie or Tammi had committed suicide, but neither stylist could fathom the thought of murder. Until Lacey brought it up. Something else Boyd Radford will thank me for.
“Oh my God,” Heidi said. “Do you think someone is going after stylists? That doesn’t make any sense!”
Nan ordered another Coke. “I don’t know, some people get really pissed off about their hair.”
“Has anything out of the ordinary happened lately at the salon?” Lacey wanted to know. Nan and Heidi shared a look and Heidi shook her head. Lacey felt a jolt. “What? Tell me.”
“We kind of agreed not to talk about it after Angie died,” Heidi said. She looked down at her plate. Nobody was eating much.
“Come on, guys. Two of your friends are dead, whether it’s suicide or something else. Whatever you’re avoiding, it’s better to get it out in the open. Is there some kind of theft ring operating out of the salons?”
Nan shook her head. “I don’t know anything about that. You know, the occasional bottle of shampoo takes a walk, but something big? No. Is that what you think?”
A tear dripped off the end of Heidi’s nose. “Oh God. We thought it was just a joke.”
“It could be nothing,” Lacey rushed to assure her. “But if you tell me, maybe we can figure something out.” You’re a glutton for punishment, Lacey.
“Come on, Heidi. We might as well tell her. And just for the record, if something weird is going on, I am not feeling like killing myself,” Nan said. “Although I’ve never felt worse.” Heidi agreed and wiped her eyes with a napkin.
“It’s that damn videotape,” Nan said. She reached for a cigarette, but remembered they were in a no-smoking section. “Few weeks ago, Tammi gets a package in the mail from Angie. A videotape with a note that says something like, ‘Don’t watch this garbage and don’t tell anyone. Please just hide it.’ ”
Heidi broke in. “Tammi figured Angie was just being funny and this was some kind of styling video from the company and it was Angie’s way of saying that it sucked.”
“Anyway,” Nan resumed, “we all think it’s gonna be a total hoot, you know, a bunch of you-gotta-be-kidding haircuts, so Tammi schedules a salon meeting to watch it, a half hour before the salon opens. We even pop popcorn in the microwave and get our smokes and sodas ready.” She snickered at the memory. “Well, goddamn, if it isn’t some funky homemade porno film! It’s pretty comical in a gross way. Starring all these Comb Overs and Helmet Heads. As if you want to see naked geezers. Geezers, well, you know, forty-somethings. Geezers with really young chicks, like teenagers. Gross. We’re just about ready to turn it off when Ratboy shows up.”
“At the salon?” Lacey asked.
“No, on the video,” Nan continued. “We see him hand over an envelope to some woman with a blond bubblehead cut, you know, short and puffy. And next thing you know, Ratboy’s dropped his drawers and Bubblehead is down to just her pearls, and bingo, bango, they’re doing it!”
“Now we call him ‘Jackrabbit.’ Or ‘R.R.’ For ‘Rapid Rodent, ’ ” Heidi said. “It was so funny I snorted Pepsi out of my nose.”
Nan mentioned that they played that part at least ten times. “Now we look at Rapid Rodent in, like, a whole new light.”
“Did you recognize anyone else?”
“Oh yeah, Marcia Robinson. She was just walking around the room topless with a plate of hors d’oeuvres like at a cocktail party,” Heidi said. “She’s kind of chubby to go totally naked. And some of the naked people looked familiar, like you’ve seen them on television or something, but I couldn’t tell you who they were.”
Nan helpfully added more details. “And some you couldn’t see very well because they’d been digitally altered, like on TV. It seemed to change to a couple of different places. I couldn’t say for sure.”
Marcia had told Lacey she had been selling tapes on the Web site. Maybe this was the blooper tape—outtakes that were too hot to handle?
“Where is the tape now?”
“I don’t know. The next day Angie was dead. The tape didn’t seem so funny anymore and we didn’t talk about it after that.” Heidi glanced at Nan.
“Don’t look at me,” Nan said. “I don’t know what happened to it. What do you think, Lacey?”
Would Radford kill for it? And who were the others on the tape? “I think you should tell the cops.”
“What, that we watched a dirty movie with our boss in it? Sounds like a quick trip to the unemployment line to me.” Nan and Heidi crossed their arms in unison. “We’re not talking to the police,” Nan said. “Bad enough they’ve got videocams on the boardwalk now.”
“What if it has something to do with Angie’s and Tammie’s deaths?” They looked doubtful. “If that video surfaces, I think it should find its way to the police. Anonymously.” They still looked unconvinced. “Having that videotape could be lethal.”
“Lethal?” Heidi said.
“You just told me Angie sent the tape to Tammi. Now they’re both dead. It’s a dangerous secret. If I write about the tape in my column, it’s no longer a secret. No reason to kill anybody.” I hope.
Nan wanted to know if Lacey would have to tell the police about it. Lacey assured them that it was only hearsay to the police. “From their point of view, I haven’t seen it and I’d need to have more proof that it even exists. I will have to write about it, though. It and Tammi.”
“She’d like that,” Heidi said.
“That’s cool, if you don’t mention us,” Nan said. “And Rapid Rodent, don’t mention that he’s on it.”
A welter of questions sprang to her mind: Who knows about the tape? How did Angie get her hands on it in the first place? Was it still in the salon or did Tammi belatedly hide it? And who were those almost-familiar people on the tape? But the stylists didn’t know any more about it.
She asked if they knew Sherri Gold. They said no, and Heidi, who filled in the salon book, claimed no one of that name had made an appointment recently and they didn’t remember anyone of her description. “We get more ‘beachy’ people. You know: tan, blond, pretty,” Heidi said.
Lacey wanted to see the other Virginia Beach Stylettos, and Nan offered to drive her to the strip mall where it was located. Ram’s-Head Heidi went home after hugs all around. Nan introduced Lacey to the hulking bronze 1960s Ford land yacht she called the “Bronze Bomber.” It was battle scarred but feared no one. The muffler and air-conditioning were shot, but the stereo was fine and belted out some retro rock from Heart.
“I love this monster,” Nan said. “Nobody gets in my way.”
The bronze behemoth delivered them safely, if loudly, to the other salon. Inside the storefront, beauticians were abuzz with the news of Tammi’s death. Apparently no one had heard of the mysterious George. But then, all the stylists there had very short hair, from Audrey-Hepburn chic to punkette. Not George’s style. They were dying to talk about Tammi’s death and knowing nothing wasn’t going to stop them.
After exhausting her questions about Tammi, Angie, Leonardo, and George Something, and learning nothing, Lacey turned to Nan. “Do you know where Radford’s beach house is?”
“Oh yeah. I’ve had fantasies about TP-ing it. In my younger days I would have. Want to see it?”
Back in the Bronze Bomber, Nan switched the radio to WCMS, blasting out Toby Keith. They cruised Ocean Front Avenue, past a number of beach homes. Radford’s matched its neighbors, a dove-gray exterior with blue-gray trim, an ocean-front view, and a profusion of decks.
More interesting was the collection of cars outside: the Jaguar, Vic’s Jeep, and a red Camaro that pulled in the drive beside the Jag while the Bomber was parked across the street. Beauregard Radford emerged after checking his reflection in the rearview mirror, which was cluttered with hanging air fresheners. He looked too slight to be driving that flashy car, but he was making a stab at a more daring look, wearing his thin dark hair in a sleek ponytail that screamed “artiste.” The puny ponytail was an improvement on his previous Prince Valiant, Lacey thought.
“Who’s that?” Nan asked.
“Beau Radford,” Lacey answered. “You don’t know him?”
“You’re kidding! That’s Shampoo Boy?” Nan took a closer look. “Jeez, I haven’t seen him in years. Not since he went away to college the first time, maybe six years ago. Ratboy used to make him shampoo clients in the summer when we couldn’t get enough help. He was as lazy as you’d expect the heir to the throne to be. But I wouldn’t have recognized him!”
Lacey wondered briefly if Beau could suspect his own father in the deaths. An eye-popping yellow Corvette roared in next to the Camaro. The D.C. license plate said LEO 1. Leo paid no attention to the women watching from across the street in the big brown car.
Lacey didn’t know what more she could glean from the scene, so Nan chauffeured her back to the hotel. Lacey handed her twenty dollars for gas money.
“Hey, thanks, Lacey. The Bomber loves to guzzle.” Nan promised to call if she found the videotape or if the elusive George came sniffing around. She zoomed off in her beloved beast.
It was after six when Lacey checked into her hotel room, crawled into bed, and fell into a sound sleep. She woke, groggy and disoriented, to the sound of pounding on the door.
“It’s Vic. Open up.”
She let him in and stood unsteadily, rubbing her eyes. The clock said it was seven-thirty. Is it a.m. or p.m.? Lacey wondered.
“If you can manage to open up your eyes, sleepyhead, I’ll take you to dinner.”
She yawned and stumbled into a strategically placed chair. “Shouldn’t you be getting back to town?”
“Don’t worry about me. Can you believe there was a vacancy? Booked a room. Right here; two floors up. Lucky, huh?”
“Lucky you. Still riding shotgun on me, huh?”
“No sense in driving back now. It’s been a hard day.” He moved behind her and rubbed her shoulders. It felt very nice.
“What did you find out about Tammi?” she asked, her eyes beginning to open.
He stopped rubbing her shoulders and moved toward the door. “I’m not taking you to dinner to hash this out. Not now.”
“Two identical deaths! If that isn’t murder, what is?”
“That hasn’t been determined yet. I’ve found someone you can talk to tomorrow, a Virginia Beach detective named Harding. But tonight, no more about this.” He folded his arms and leaned against the door. “You have to be able to turn it off. Something like this can eat you up.”
“What about Radford? What is he really doing here?”
“Time out, Smithsonian. I just want to go to dinner. I need some down-home cooking. You do too.”
Lacey opened her mouth to protest but then changed her mind. As long as Vic wasn’t going to cough up any information or listen to her, she wasn’t going to tell anyone about the videotape—at least until she talked with Marcia.
She looked in the mirror and saw sheet creases on her face. How utterly glamorous. At least her makeup hadn’t smeared. Bedroom eyes are one thing; raccoon eyes are another. She agreed to meet Vic in the bar in a half hour, which gave her time to wake up.
Bloody mirrors and crying stylists wound through her thoughts while she freshened up. Lacey wished she could puzzle out the day’s events while spending the evening waltzing through Aunt Mimi’s patterns. She wanted to select a new item for her Forties wardrobe, something fabulous. But she couldn’t very well ask Vic to drop her off at a mall so she could wander around looking at fabrics. Silks in wonderful colors might serve as an escape from the day’s events, but she suspected Vic wouldn’t understand. He was, after all, a man.
She changed into a close-fitting crocheted sweater in violet that had been a gift from Mimi. Though it was more than five years old, it still looked new and it flattered her complexion. She grabbed a black shawl embroidered with colorful flowers and glanced one last time in the mirror.
It made her cranky that she was having dinner with a gorgeous man who wasn’t remotely interested in her except as a source of information—or trouble. At least she was hungry. And he, no doubt, was on an expense account.
The hotel bar was full of light wood, blue leather, and sailing paraphernalia. On a Tuesday, only a few souls were worshiping in this dimly lit shrine to naughty weekends at the beach. The air-conditioning was on high and it made her shiver through the sweater. Lacey ordered a club soda and dove into a straw bowl of peanuts on the bar. She suggested a seafood restaurant down the beach. Vic insisted they needed more sustenance than a tourist-trap crab shack could offer and suggested they take the Jeep to look for a “real place, with real food,” like a caveman in search of a woolly mammoth. They drove away from the beach town as hunger gnawed and elevated her crankiness quotient.
They finally settled on the required “down-home food” in a funky storefront restaurant, aptly named The Wild Monkey, in the older, quainter Ghent neighborhood of Norfolk. A friendly waitress led them to a tiny Formica-topped table in the crowded dining room. Lacey found the hubbub surprisingly comforting. The menu and wine list were written on a huge chalkboard the length of the wall and the place seemed packed with regulars. It was a good sign. Lacey ordered a chicken caesar salad and Vic demanded the meatloaf.
“Meatloaf?” She made a gagging noise.
“Mmmm, meatloaf,” he said.
“Our specialty,” the waitress replied. “It’s real popular.”
Lacey gazed around the room. Nearly every man in The Wild Monkey was chowing down enormous quantities of meatloaf. Yum. No doubt made with woolly mammoth. Cavemen.
The waitress returned shortly, weighed down with heaping mounds of meatloaf and potatoes, Lacey’s ladylike plate of foliage and poultry, and a delightful basketful of hot bread and butter. The waitress winked at Vic. He had a certain effect on waitresses, Lacey noticed. So the road to Vic’s heart is through his meatloaf, she thought. He probably thinks stuffed peppers are gourmet.
Vic was obviously grooving on some memory of his mom in a kitchen apron. He chomped with pleasure and washed the meatloaf down with Guinness. Her memory dredged up the tasteless stuff that her mother produced, which Lacey could barely choke down with milk. Felicity at the office was always offering her a surefire recipe for “great meatloaf,” which Lacey considered a contradiction in terms. It did not exist.
Eventually, the food, the dim roar of the regulars, and several glasses of cabernet sauvignon calmed her nerves. She was content to eavesdrop on strangers. She overheard the words “great meatloaf.” The wine was warming and had the effect of loosening her tongue, something she always regretted later.
“Vic, are we friends, or what?”
He looked at her, his eyes glittering like green glass in this light, and with that insufferable smirk.
“Sure we’re friends, Lacey. Why?”
She wondered how she could ask him why he was no longer interested in her. “When we were in Sagebrush, things were different.”
“Different?” He wasn’t making this easy.
She took a deep breath and a sip of wine. Shut up, Lacey. “I always thought you were interested in me. Attracted to me.” He nodded. “Was it only because there were so few women there? Or you were on the rebound from your wife? Or were you just hazing me because I was the girl reporter and you were the alpha cop?”
He laughed. Bastard, she thought. “Oh, forget it.” She swilled down more wine.
“Lacey, Lacey. This is a different time and place. I chased after you for two years and you always said no. You said more colorful things than no. I can take a hint.”
“You were married!”
“I was in the middle of a divorce, as you know now and knew then. And you were cute.”
Cute! Ugh! You’re a dead man.
“You were wasting your time with that cowboy,” Vic asserted. “Whatever his name was.”
“Let’s just leave ‘whatever his name was’ out of it right now. And he wasn’t a cowboy. Cowboy indeed. Cattleman,” she corrected.
“Hell, as soon as Cowboy wanted to make it permanent you were out of town like a shot.”
She choked on her wine. “You knew he proposed?”
“Everybody in town knew. Felt mighty sorry for that boy. It was a nice little ring he got you.” Now she remembered another reason why she had left town: Everybody knew everything about everyone. “You’re skittish, Lacey.”
“Who told you that?”
“Personal observation.”
“You kissed me once.” Oh God, why did I say that?
“I remember. I might like to do it again someday.” He could see she was flustered. “You never know,” he continued. “I might be waiting for an invitation. I wouldn’t turn down an outright offer; it wouldn’t be gentlemanly.”
You arrogant—ooh—what’s the word? Man! Lacey did not like this at all. There were few enough things that men ever took responsibility for. Now he was making her completely responsible for anything that might happen between them. All she’d wanted to know was whether he was attracted to her.
“So you’re not interested anymore,” she said. “I just wanted to get it straight between us.”
“If I were interested, I wouldn’t want to hear you say no another ten thousand times.”
“It wasn’t ten thousand times.” And I didn’t want to say no. He offered her the chance to order a gooey dessert, but she wasn’t in the mood. She just wanted to return to her room. Alone.
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