The Brush Off (4 page)

“M
Y BRUSH!
” I
CROAKED
.

Okay, so it wasn’t the smartest statement I’ve ever made. The cops might never have known that I owned the murder weapon. My fingerprints weren’t in any criminal data bank. I really was going to have to work on this impulse honesty thing.

“That’s
your
brush?”

I could see I’d surprised Lieutenant Jackson Scythe for the fourth time that morning. I allowed myself a small shot of pleasure at that thought, not that I was keeping count or anything.

“At least, I think it’s mine.” Uh-oh. I’d backed up too late. My qualifier only intensified his interest.

His eyes roamed over my hands, my bodysuit, my skirt, my boots, in a detailed survey—different from his earlier perusal. He was using his cop’s eyes now, after using his man’s eyes to appraise me earlier. I swear, it was laser vision—sharp and hot, cataloging things on me I know I’d never recognize. I had nothing to hide, but I took a few steps closer to Ricardo to escape the scrutiny. As I did, I caught sight of movement above me, and I looked up at the ceiling, where I met my own eyes in a mirror. This was new since I’d been in the office. An entire mirrored ceiling? It afforded a better view of Ricardo’s body, although I doubted that had been his intention.

But what had?
I wondered.

Even with my attention turned upward, I received no divine reply, just heavy, silent attention from the guy next to me, who carried a gun, an attitude, and barf bags. All I was getting here was more questions, no answers, and a lot of hassle. Digesting that last thought sent a shot of guilt through me. How could I resent this with a bloody friend lying at my feet?

After I issued a cleansing sigh, my eyes left the reflection and returned to the real thing. I was surprised that the sight of Ricardo didn’t make me as tearful as the police-ridden salon did. Somehow, I could feel his spirit gone from his body a lot easier than I could imagine it gone from the place.

Scythe’s attention was palpable behind me. “What makes you think the brush is yours?”

I found I couldn’t turn around, couldn’t let my eyes leave Ricardo’s body. I considered tap-dancing around the truth, but that had never been my style—more because I’m not organized enough to keep up with a string of white lies than because of some lofty morality. My gran calls it Reyn’s Lazy Righteousness. She claims you’ve got to be real smart and willing to work hard to be a good liar and not get caught. I’m not sure which of the two she doesn’t think I qualify for—I’m afraid to ask. If you have the impression my family is opinionated, you’re right. They make me look downright diplomatic.

“I think it might be mine because Ricardo came by my salon yesterday to borrow a brush just like this,” I finally answered.

My hand moved in the direction of the brush, reaching to pluck it up and examine it, until I realized what I’d been about to do. I recoiled with a shiver of revulsion.

“Why would he borrow a brush when he has twenty-five salons and surely hundreds of brushes of his own?”

My gaze glued to the blood congealing around the base of the brush, I repeated the reason Ricardo had given me. I tried to ignore Scythe’s powerful skepticism which drew an invisible question mark in the space between us.

“So who was he meeting?” Scythe asked.

“He didn’t say and I didn’t ask.”

Crouching down, but not reaching out this time, I studied the brush. Same brand as mine. Used, not new. The pick was buried in his back all the way up to the shaft of the brush. No way to tell if that was my pick until it was…extracted.

“What I don’t get is, what’s on the end of that brush that’d croak a guy?” A hulking man jumped toward me from the corner of the room, and I flinched. I hadn’t noticed him before, but the mirrors reflected the trees from outside and the cars, and my subconscious must have written him off as one of them. That could be the only explanation, because he certainly was big enough to earn special notice everywhere except on a football field. Check that. Maybe a bowling alley would be more accurate, considering his girth. He chomped chewing gum and smacked up right beside me.

“Never seen anything so fu…uh…effing weird. And I seen a lot, lady, a lot.” As he double-smacked in exclamation, I caught a whiff of Juicy Fruit that suddenly overwhelmed the fresh metallic scent of Ricardo’s blood and the underlying odor of hairspray.

“A pick fits into the bottom of the brush,” I explained, looking back at Ricardo’s body.

“So?”
Smack. Smack.

Nausea suddenly welled up in my throat. The edges of my vision blurred.

“You okay?” Scythe asked.

His intuitive question caught me almost as off-guard as my sudden reaction had. I had to concentrate on the facts, or I was going to give in to shock. I refused to give Scythe the satisfaction of being right. Clearing my throat as if that was the only reason I paused, I gestured to the brush and continued. “The pick’s pointed, made of hard plastic, about six inches long, and it looks a little like a thick ice pick. These brushes are made of a hollow, round metal core and are designed to be used with a blow-dryer. The dryer air heats the metal, which sets the hair in a curl. The pick’s used to separate the hair in a workable hank.”

I finished in a rush of words as tears threatened to compete with my nausea and dizziness

“Whatever happened to curlers and a helmet hair dryer?”

“We still use those, but contemporary styles are more natural, less structured.” Both men’s eyes began to glaze over, but I plowed on, happy to be distracted from Ricardo. “This method—the blow-dryer and the brush—produce a looser, more natural-looking curl. Sometimes when a customer is only looking for a little extra body…”

Oops, bad choice of words. My gaze dropped back to Ricardo, and for the first time I really noticed the blood that had flowed over his silk shirt was already dried, stiffening the cloth. That, more than anything else I’d seen so far, made me sad. He was always so fastidious. My palms itched to take it off and put him in a clean Prada shirt.

“The pick’s sharp enough to bury in somebody’s back? That’s fu…effing scary,” Gum Smacker groused.

“Well, it’s not usually that sharp.” My inappropriate honesty again.

Lieutenant Scythe stood at my other elbow and looked down, way down, at me crouched near Ricardo. I couldn’t see him. I
felt
his focus. I cranked my eyes as far back as they could go; I wasn’t about to twist my tightening back. I still couldn’t meet his eyes. Just as well.

“What do you mean, ‘not usually’?” he asked finally.

Leave it to ole Jackson to cut to the heart of the matter. I thought for a minute I was going to get away with my careless statement.

“Well…”I began. “You see, the brush that Ricardo borrowed was my cleaning tool.”

“Hawh?” Gum Smacker scratched his head.

Scythe said nothing.

“I sharpened the pick so I could use it to clean the other brushes and blow-dryers and tools in my shop.”

“Sharpened? With what?” Scythe asked quietly, ominously.

“A kitchen knife.”

“Doesn’t your profession have tools you can purchase to do that cleaning?”

My invisible hackles rose at the patronizing way he’d said a “profession,” kind of the way he might refer to the world’s oldest profession. Apparently, he accorded them equal respect. Like none. I forced my urge to argue back down in light of the obvious suspicion in his tone. “I’m cheap,” was all I said.

Gum Smacker snorted. Scythe’s left eyebrow half quirked.

“Right,” Scythe muttered, turning away. He spoke to his companion. “Fred, I think the print tech can lift the latents now.”

“Yeah, enough of this jacking around.”

Fred Gum Smacker ambled off.

“Who’s that?” I asked.

Scythe turned his intense focus back on me. “My partner, Fred Crandall. You ought to be honored. He doesn’t tone down his swearing for just anybody. You probably remind him of his daughter.”

I tried to imagine a feminine version of Crandall and shuddered. Jackson Scythe had definitely
not
just delivered me a compliment. In the absence of hackles and bared teeth, his statement deserved an eye-to-eye challenge. I balanced on the balls of my feet and tried to use my quadriceps to stand. It didn’t help much. I unfolded like a rusty old picnic chair. I felt the burn of dry-ice eyes.

“What’s the matter with you?”

“My back went out yesterday,” I grumbled, rolling my head and gaining a little relaxation in my neck. My back refused to give, though.

“Oh?” Only his right eyebrow shagged up. I was beginning to recognize that eyebrow movement as an alert to suspicions, as opposed to his half-hitch twitch on the left, which indicated surprise. Give me twenty more minutes with this guy, and I’d have him completely pegged. “How did you hurt your back?” he asked quietly but not softly.

“By driving my brush into my friend’s back, that’s how,” I snapped, irritated that he’d suspect me and tired of putting up with his cop psychology. One look at the well-hidden laughter in his face told me he never really did suspect me. He was just playing with me—the old cat and mouse—and that made me even angrier. “What kind of cop are you? Don’t you want to take my confession?”

Crandall snorted. “Your confession of what? Getting a bad haircut?”

I looked in the mirror at the asymmetrical bob I’d coached one of the stylists at my shop through just two days before. I liked it. My hair swept straight down from a left side part to brush my right shoulder, tapering up around along the nape of my neck to the left side, where it just brushed my earlobe. Anyone could see it was a stylish statement. Maybe it was the color that was distracting him. I had to admit the shade, called red wine, was really closer to a cherry Coke and didn’t particularly complement my fair skin. It tended to bring out the freckles sprinkling the bridge of my nose. I knew I shouldn’t have tried such a risky color, but being naturally blond was so boring. Sometimes I just had to break out.

“Watch it, Fred.” Scythe’s voice was low, but its warning was not.

“What, hotshot? Maybe we’ve found our motive. If Ricardo cut her hair to look like a flying saucer, I’d call that motive for murder.”

“I apologize for my partner; he’s of the old school. I think your hairdo”—his eyes roamed over me, head to toe again—“suits you.”

Scythe delivered the comment in the same impassive way he said just about everything else, which made it hard to tell how it was meant. There were a lot of ways to take what Jackson Scythe said.

“Alejandra, a stylist at my shop, gave me this cut,” I answered neutrally, watching as a fingerprint technician shuffled in, unpacked a little kit and began dusting powder over the plastic end of the brush in Ricardo’s back. My brush. A shiver slithered down my back as I forced my body still. Scythe’s eyebrow barely flicked, which I suppose meant I wasn’t entirely successful at achieving pure stillness. Or maybe he was telepathic.

“There goes your motive, Fred.” Scythe dismissed his partner before turning back to me. “Your shop. Where’s that?” He pulled his notebook out of a front inside pocket of his sports jacket.

“In Monte Vista, on the southwest corner of Magnolia and McCullough.”

He wrote that down. I didn’t know whether that was good or bad.

“What’s it called?”

“Transformations: More than Meets the Eye.”

His Bic stopped in midair, and his eyes shifted their focus from the page to meet mine. “Is that the name or a social statement?”

“Both. Books have subtitles, why can’t stores? Beauty’s about more than what’s on the outside, although what’s on the outside can change the way one feels on the inside.”
Except for underwear,
I almost added, then stopped myself. I didn’t need to have that argument with Jackson Scythe.
Not yet, anyway,
I added slyly.

“Whoa,” he said, holding up the last three fingers of the hand holding the Bic. “I’m not equipped for a philosophical discussion right now. I’m just here to solve a murder which, no matter how complicated, promises to be less of a bog than a beauty debate with a woman who could clearly outargue me from its every angle.”

How did he issue a compliment and a criticism in the same sentence so damned smoothly? It effectively tied my tongue, which was well practiced in pithy rejoinders. I hadn’t been this self-conscious since high school. “You sound just like my aunt Mavis,” I muttered under my breath.

Unexpectedly, Jackson Scythe chuckled. The skin along the nape of my neck tingled in response to the conservative rumble, the rusty essence of which made me think the lieutenant didn’t laugh often. That the fingerprint tech nearly dropped her kit was another clue.

Scythe cut it short at her wide-eyed stare. He cleared his throat. “Sounds like aunt Mavis has her priorities in order.”

Like
I
didn’t? I wondered suddenly if Jackson Scythe kept
his
cabinets organized.

“Speaking of priorities, hotshot.” Crandall reappeared, lumbering into the room and pausing for a few juicy smacks. “You have to decide when to talk to the vultures. They’re setting up camp.”