Die Job(34)

I hustled to keep up with her and we climbed the steps to the salon’s veranda together. Mom was using a curling iron on a customer’s hair and Stella had a client in the Nail Nook. Althea sat on the love seat in our waiting area, flipping through the pages of a magazine. She looked at us from under her brows as I shut the door. “You dragging clients in off the streets now, baby-girl?” she asked.

Lindsay looked startled. I motioned her toward my chair, saying, “No. The Locks of Love girls are coming here.” I explained the change of plan.

“That’s a good idea, Grace,” Mom said. “Shasta here is my last client of the day, so Althea and I can help when the other girls get here.”

I flipped a cape around Lindsay’s shoulders and brushed her hair back from her forehead. She had enviably clear skin and strong bones. She was pretty now, but I figured she’d be striking once she hit her late twenties or thirties. I secured her hair with an elastic at the nape of her neck and quickly braided it. “You’re sure?” I said, lifting my shears.

She gave a sharp nod. “Yeah. This was really important to Braden—his little sister died of leukemia—and I really feel I should do it for him. I owe him this.”

I stood there stunned. “I had no idea. His poor parents. That’s awful!” I shut up; there weren’t any words that could begin to address the McCullerses’ family tragedies.

“Yeah.” Lindsay bowed her head and I thought for a moment she might be praying, but when she slanted me a look, I realized she was waiting for me to chop off her hair.

I cut off the braid and put it aside to be mailed to Locks of Love with the others when we’d collected them. Then, I led her to the shampoo basin and washed her hair, enjoying the fragrance of our new lavender-scented shampoo as it bubbled in the sink.

By the time I’d finished giving Lindsay a jaw-length bob, the other girls were trickling in, looking around curiously. “This is way cozier than Chez Pierre out on the highway,” one of them observed, running a hand through the fern fronds dripping from a hanging basket. “I need to tell my mom about this place.”

Mom beamed and swept her off to the shampoo sink. Althea and I each hooked up with a teenager, and the three of us were busy for an hour and a half. By the end of the afternoon, we had ten braids of varying length and thicknesses to send along to Locks of Love. I’d even remembered to take photos so Rachel could use them in the yearbook.

“I’m bushed,” Althea said when the last girl left. She sat on the love seat, kicked her shoes off, and began to massage the ball of one foot.

“Let me do that for you, Althea,” Stella said. She brought over the foot basin she used for pedicures and gently submerged Althea’s feet.

Althea leaned back and closed her eyes. “Thank you, Stel. That feels right good. I don’t know what’s more tiring—being on my feet all day or listening to all that chatter. Bunch of magpies!” But she said it with a tolerant smile.

“It reminds me of when you and Alice Rose were in high school,” Mom said, plopping her combs into the container of blue germicide. “And all your friends used to come around. Maybe we should do some kind of promotion to attract a younger clientele. Maybe Rachel would have some ideas. I hope she’s doing okay.”

“Nobody’s okay ten minutes after someone they cared about dies,” Althea said testily, opening one eye. “You of all people should know that, Vi.”

“I do.” She thought for a moment, standing with a comb forgotten in her hand. “I guess I was guilty of thinking that things like this don’t hit young people as hard because youth is so resilient. But they do. Sometimes harder.”

The salon door creaked open and we all turned, surprised, to see a young man on the threshold. He was tall, with a football player’s broad shoulders and thick neck. He wore the same letter jacket he’d had on at Rothmere. Mark Crenshaw. He shifted from foot to foot, looking uncomfortable in the feminine salon, with four pairs of female eyes—five, if you count Beauty—staring at him.

“Um, is Lindsay here?” he asked. “Lindsay Tandy?”

“She left almost two hours ago,” I said. “She said something about volleyball practice.”

“That’s just it,” he said, bringing his thumb to his mouth to gnaw on the cuticle. “I was supposed to meet her after practice, but coach said she never showed. She’d never skip practice. Something’s happened to her.”





Chapter Ten





IMAGES OF A GHOSTLY FIGURE PUSHING BRADEN down the stairs and a werewolf smothering him in his hospital bed jumped into my mind. Could some deranged killer be after all the kids who were on the field trip? What if—