Was I?
In lust? Heck yes. Had feelings for him? Absolutely. In love? It was too soon for the L-word.
Right?
The microwave dinged and I welcomed the distraction. Thinking about my feelings for Blue wasn’t going to help him with this case. I could think about that later.
I sipped the newly warmed coffee. Ahhhh. It was good.
So. If Susan was somehow involved with Dom and if he had come here to check up on his product… that product had to be drugs.
Susan was keeping drugs in this salon.
But where?
My eyes went directly to the door in the room. The room that supposedly held the water heater and electrical stuff.
But what if there was more?
I peeked back out into the salon at Susan’s office. The light was off and the rest of the salon was empty.
It was a good time to be sneaky.
I went straight for the door and turned the handle, giving it a good yank.
It was locked.
Interesting.
“If I were a key, where would I be?” I asked myself, looking around the room for a spare key. I searched through all the drawers, looked under the sink, behind the fridge, and around the doorframe.
It was nowhere to be found.
I wasn’t going to be deterred. I strode out to my station and dug around for a bobby pin. Hey, if MacGyver could build bombs with some duct tape and a tube of toothpaste, then I sure as hell could pick a lock with a bobby pin.
Using my teeth, I separated the little metal prongs and then slid the end into the lock. It took quite a few tries.
Okay, it took ten.
On the eleventh try, the handle turned and I smiled. Leaving the bobby pin sticking out of the handle, I pushed it open and went inside.
It was dark, but overhead was a bare bulb hanging from the ceiling. I yanked the little chain dangling down and the room flooded with light.
There was a water heater and circuit breaker box in here, along with some old brooms and dustpans and a vacuum from the nineteen fifties. But among those things were also boxes.
Boxes of hair color.
Why in the world would she have me order all that hair color when we had boxes of it sitting in here?
Suspicion tasted worse than cold coffee. Looking over my shoulder to make sure I was still alone, I crept closer to the boxes.
Pulling down one of the cardboard boxes from the top, I dropped it at my feet, wincing because it was heavier than I expected it to be. After a few minutes of no one rushing in to see what the loud noise was about (thankfully, I was still alone), I knelt down to pull off the thin layer of tape sealing the box.
Once the top was completely open, I looked inside.
And frowned.
There in neat and symmetrical rows were the black boxes I knew so well. It was just developer. Developer was the stuff we mixed with the actual hair color; it was the stuff that actually changed the hair. It put the blond in blond. The higher the developer, the more lift you got in the shade of your hair.
Still not understanding why there would be so much of this stuff back here, I broke open one of the boxes and pulled out the clear bag of white powder.
I knew right away what was going on.
This powder wasn’t as thick, wasn’t as heavy as the developer I used every single day. It was finer, a little lighter looking. It was like sugar compared to flour.
But this wasn’t sugar.
And this wasn’t the same kind of clear bag the developer came in from the supplier.
I wasn’t a druggie. I never even experimented with drugs as a teenager (it was too scary). But I knew cocaine when I saw it.
I’d found my proof.
Proof I kinda hoped I wouldn’t find. I mean, what girl wanted to find out that her boss was in bed with a bunch of nasty scumbag drug dealers?
Not me.
I stood up, still holding the bag of cocaine in my hands. I had to find a way to get word to Blue. I had to tell him what I found.
I turned to rush out of the back room.
I gasped, stopping in my tracks, as I stared down the barrel of a pistol.
The bag of coke dropped onto the floor with a smacking sound, and I put my hands up in the air.
The police officer on the other side of the gun looked like he wasn’t afraid to shoot.
“Ma’am,” he said, his tone hard and very impolite, “you’re under arrest.”
“Arrest!” I gasped, flinging my hands out in shock.
His arms jerked and the gun pointed at me with renewed force. “Hands up!” he yelled.
I put them up. I heard footsteps rushing in from the front of the salon.
“In here!” the officer yelled, not taking his eyes off me.
“There’s been a mistake.” I tried.
He looked at me with unveiled disgust dripping from his features. “No mistake. You’re under the arrest for possession of an illegal substance.”
He glanced at the boxes lining the walls and then back at me. “Lots of it.”