Color Me Dead Read online

  “That’s called a motive for murder,” Nellie said.

  Pete looked startled. “Really? You think Manus could’ve killed Victoria.”

  “If looks could kill she would’ve been dead yesterday,” Nellie said.

  I had to wonder if Nellie was right. I didn’t know Manus, and the things it takes to push someone across the line vary incredibly.

  CHAPTER NINE

  There was a bit of a ceremony before the competition started. Gloria wasn’t going to waste an opportunity to draw attention to the events, so as we watched someone on the PA system announce each of the contestants, their model, and the salon they were with. Then the contestant and model walked out from the wings to center stage and one assistant walked over to the station.

  This bit of pageantry was obviously intended to get the attention of local television stations and it seemed to work. As the contestants and models lined up in front of the stations, I stared at Dave. He was standing next to Sylvia. At that moment, the obvious occurred to me. “Dave isn’t the killer,” I told Nellie.

  “No? Why do you say that? The man has a mean streak.” Then she laughed. “Don’t tell me you aren’t giving him credit for the bit of niceness you saw a while ago?”

  “It isn’t that. I’m staring at the evidence. Look at him. Sylvia, who is next to him is a little shorter than Victoria was. Now imagine him plunging a knife in her chest. Keep in mind that it was a downward thrust, like when you grip the knife in your fist and swing down from over your head.”

  “He’d poke it through her belly button,” Nellie said.

  “Right. Not impossible for him to manage, but not likely.”

  “He could’ve stood on the chair you saw. Why else would it be pulled out?”

  “If she was waiting for me, she might’ve sat down. When the murderer came in, she would naturally stand up.”

  “Why?”

  I smiled. “Victoria thought that a person standing had the advantage over someone sitting. She’d never give away that kind of advantage. It was a reflex with her.”

  “Weird,” Nellie said. “Of course, nearly everything in this city is weird.”

  The contestants acknowledged the applause and headed for their stations. “It’s going to start now.”

  “Pete looks pretty calm,” she said.

  “Which means he’s either calm or totally scared to death.”

  We saw Betina take his hand as they went to the station. She whispered something in his ear and then smiled as she slipped into the chair. Pete shook his head as if to clear it, and put the cape around her neck. A lot of the hairdressers had their names on their capes. Pete used one of ours that said, “TEASEN AND PLEASEN.”

  “He’s probably the only one in the contest that hasn’t any baggage with this business,” Nellie said.

  It was true. I thought about all the business deals, the personality conflicts and conflicting egos in that room and realized that hair styling in the city probably wouldn’t ever suit me. “I’m glad I’m not down there,” I said.

  “You are not a competitive person,” Nellie said. “You like puzzles, solving things, but it isn’t in your nature to care whether you are better or worse than other people.”

  “That’s why Victoria and I got along,” I said, suddenly realizing it. “She knew I’d never be competing with her.”

  “Trust me, that’s a good thing,” Nellie said. “A very good thing. Now shut up and let’s watch Pete kick some city ass.”

  Trust Nellie to get to the core of the matter.

  # # #

  When the bell went off to start the competition, the noise level dropped. We watched the competitors focus on their models and their tools. There was a soft murmur in the audience and the soft whirring of Dave’s ICS as it seemed to operate smoothly, whisking him around the svelte young woman in his chair.

  Most of the models were obviously professionals. That’s one of the competitive advantages you can legally gain. Making someone look stunning is easier when they know how to hold themselves, when they’ve been selected because their basic appearance lines up with the current ideas of beauty and their hair is appropriate for the cut you have in mind. There were both men and women models, although most were women. When they entered, each competitor had selected to compete for the best hairstyle for women or men. There would be a prize in each category and then an overall winner chosen from those two.

  If I hadn’t been used to seeing Pete cut hair, I would’ve thought he was lost. He had a tendency to make a few cuts, then step back from his client, wearing a puzzled expression. That’s what it looked like. It wasn’t though. Pete could be nervous, uncertain, or even insecure. But when it came to hair he was never puzzled. He was simply ensuring that it looked the way it was supposed to and evaluating what to do if it wasn’t right.

  “Hair speaks to me,” he once told me and I believed him. If he had any ambition he would be truly great, but the reality, at least as I saw it, was that he just loved cutting hair. He loved his clients. He enjoyed chatting with them, hearing about their lives, their loves, and it was an important part of the process for him. Being a superstar, or even known, wasn’t that important. If I hadn’t nudged him, he never would’ve applied. He did it for me and I doubted he’d ever want to do it again.

  The competition had a time limit and there wasn’t time to waste. That and the intensity of the atmosphere were the reasons that viewing the styling as a performance unsettled him. But watching him, I could sense his assurance. He’d left that behind him.

  It didn’t hurt any that Leander was standing beside him as his assistant, handing him tools when he needed them, wiping his brow like nurses do for a surgeon. Leander confessed to knowing next to nothing about hair styling. “Who needs to know anything about it when your boyfriend is so great at it?” he asked me once. But if he knew nothing about cutting hair, watching them move together told you how well they knew each other.

  Although Pete was calmer than he’d been all weekend, a large sense of tension filled the ballroom. It wasn’t all from the pressure of competition and knowing your every move was displayed on the monitors, larger than life. It was the sabotage, the knowledge that tool and hair products might not be what they were supposed to be, no matter how many times you’d checked them. I saw stylists hesitate every time they reached for a new tool, holding up scissors or a comb before using them, as if they could spot some defect in them in time. Hair dryers and irons were held gingerly.

  It wasn’t just the sabotage that had them nervous—Victoria’s death was an unsolved riddle that generated spiderweb of suspicion. Until we knew why Victoria had been killed it was impossible for anyone in that circle to feel totally safe. For once Pete’s outsider status was a benefit. No one knew him; no one had a grudge against him. If he won that would change, but for the moment he was invisible and scarcely worthy of notice.

  That suited him just fine.

  # # #

  While the contestants worked, like most people in the audience I rotated my attention over the various competitors. Part of it was professional curiosity. It had been a long time since I’d watched other stylists work. But part of me, the involuntary, obsessive sleuth part of my brain, was watching for clues. Not that I had anything in particular in mind; I was looking for anything that triggered an idea about a motive or means for murder or inconsistencies in what we thought we knew.

  The scissors Victoria had been killed with were definitely a clue. They were Manus’s scissors—his new brand. Unfortunately, before Victoria was killed, and ironically, just as she predicted, every contestant had been given a free pair. Anyone who had come down to their station that morning could have gotten their hands on a pair. On top of that, he’d given them out at his press conference as well. And it seemed reasonable that Manus had a lot more pairs available, just in case. Since his booth wasn’t locked up at night, anyone who passed through the lobby could have grabbed a pair. That meant you couldn’t even narrow the suspect
s to the thousand or so actual hotel guests. The entire known universe seemed to have access to them.

  Of course the pair that killed Victoria weren’t being used, but most of the contestants wouldn’t be using their free Manus scissors—not for the competition. So not seeing them didn’t mean they’d lost them, perhaps stuck them in Victoria’s chest and then walked off without them. Some, like Pete, Dave, and Victoria herself, preferred to stick with the tools they had been using. Others were happy to try something new.

  So no clues there. And anyway, as I told Nellie, I’d eliminated Dave from my list.

  Of course, thinking only of the other contestants as suspects was artificially narrowing my horizons. Just because she’d been killed here, with scissors, and just before the competition, didn’t rule out a killer who had nothing to do with the competition, or even nothing to do with the industry. I wished I had an idea what it was she wanted to talk about. I hadn’t been around Victoria in a long time and I had no idea what sorts of enemies she might have, enemies who knew she’d be here today because it was an advertised event that she was unlikely to skip out on.

  “What’s the matter?” Nellie asked. “Did he goof up?”

  “What? Nothing special is the matter. Why?”

  “You let out a dramatic sigh.”

  “No I didn’t.”

  “Yes you did. A lot of people have been sighing that way lately.”

  “Including you.”

  “I guess so. It’s easier to spot in other people.”

  “There have been lots of reasons to sigh.”

  She took my arm. “I’m really sorry about Victoria, Savannah. I didn’t like her, but I know she meant something to you.”

  “Something. Yes, she did mean something to me.” That was an accurate, if sad analysis of that relationship, even if I didn’t know what that something was.

  CHAPTER TEN

  When the buzzer sounded, everyone was supposed to immediately put down their tools and step away from the chair. Then the model was supposed to stand up. Of course there were a few last minute snips here and there, but for the most part it was orderly.

  As the models got out of the chairs, the assistants removed their capes and shook them out. Then the three judges walked past each station, looking at the models, having them turn in place. Each judge had a clipboard and they made notes to themselves and checked off boxes. When all three were satisfied, they moved on to the next station. I think they made the contestants stand there so that everyone could see them sweat.

  “You know, Christmas comes slow too, but this is agonizing,” Nellie said.

  “They want to be thorough and heighten the dramatic effect,” I said.

  “At least Betina is enjoying herself.”

  And she was. While they waited their turn, Leander handed her a mirror and she was checking herself out and saying very happy things to Pete. I caught her on the screen and I had to admit that her hair looked stunning. He’d cut the sides short and lightened her hair in that area just a shade. The top came down toward her forehead in a point and he’d done something with a rinse that made her natural red absolutely glow. It was almost luminescent.

  The judges arrived and Betina almost sparkled as they gave her hair their full attention. She was smiling brightly and turning as they looked her over.

  “Is it my imagination or are they really taking more time looking at her than they have for the other models?” Nellie asked.

  “My sense of time is as distorted as yours,” I said. “It seems like they’ve been staring at her hair forever. I can’t imagine what more there is to see.” Two judges were making notes and the third was moving his hand in the air, parallel to the lines of the cut. I wasn’t even honestly sure what the criteria for judging was, but they sure weren’t dismissing Pete’s work out of hand.

  Finally they moved on.

  When they were done, the announcer came on and had each model walk across the front of the stage to parade their new look for the audience. The big screens showed the model, the stylist and the judges at the same time. It was good theater.

  Finally the program was over. “The judges will be announcing the winners tomorrow afternoon,” the announcer told us.

  “They sure are milking this thing,” Nellie said. “I bet they’ve already picked the winner.”

  “Sure. But if they announce that now, the contestants, their friends and support teams will all leave. The hotel would be a ghost town, which would not please the people who have events going on tomorrow, or the exhibitors in the Expo.”

  “True. I keep forgetting the total commercial package.”

  “Which is why you are a fantastic nail stylist in a tiny town and not the toast of a city such as Atlanta.”

  “I’ve never been to Atlanta.”

  “You know, if you wanted to go look at the place, I’d be willing to bet that the salon would pay for your trip, just like the modeling agency is paying for Betina’s trip.”

  Nellie squeezed my arm. “If I wanted to go, I might try that out. Truth is, it’s easier to resist temptation when you are a long way from it.”

  “There’s something to be said for that.”

  “So I’ll stay home and see that few, if any, of my family get eaten by a bear.”

  “A noble calling.”

  “See.”

  # # #

  “Well all we can do now is wait for the results,” Pete said. “It’s carefully planned. They have to make certain that all the contestants are in the first stages of heart failure before they announce the winner.”

  “I’m ready to declare you the winner right now,” Betina said, looking at her hair in the mirror in the lobby. “And it is Pete Dawson, with an ‘o’, This cut is positively amazing.”

  And it was. It was creative and perfect for Betina.

  “Let’s have a drink,” Nellie said.

  “Not calling home yet?” I asked.

  “And double the stress I’m under? I’m trying out a ‘what I don’t know can’t scare me’ phase of smothering love.”

  “Good for you.”

  She winced. “If you say so.”

  We found a booth in the hotel bar that was just being vacated and grabbed it. The waitress came over and took orders. Pete seemed a bit morose, while I’d never seen Betina quite so animated. “I never expected anything like this Pete,” she said, standing to peek at herself in the mirror behind the bar. “I mean, I knew it would be good, but this is so far out there. I didn’t think you liked to push the envelope.”

  “Not for our normal clients back home,” he said. “But I like giving people what they want. To be honest I studied some of the magazines you read to see what the trends were and stole from the ones that I knew you were attracted to.”

  “Those hair magazines?”

  “No, the celebrity magazines. I wanted to see what those people were doing. I thought that they’d be moving this way, and took a gamble.”

  “That wasn’t a gamble,” I told him. “That was inspiration.”

  “If you say so,” he said. “We’ll see what the judges think. There are a lot of pretty wonderful styles that we saw today.”

  “Hello.” They looked to see an elegant woman with short, wispy blonde hair standing at their table. She was looking at Betina. “Would you give me a minute of your time?”

  “I don’t have any money,” she said. “A timeshare is out of the question.”

  The woman laughed. “Good, because I’m not selling. In a sense, I’m buying.”

  I liked her attitude. “Have a seat and tell us what you are buying,” I said.

  She handed Betina a card and pulled up a chair. “We, my firm, is interested in you, Betina.”

  “You’re with a modeling agency?” she asked.

  “The Stearnes Agency. I’m proud to say that we are the biggest agency in the Southeast. We provided models for most of the companies in the expo and that isn’t even our core business.”

  “You are Jessie
Stearnes?”

  “That’s right. I’m in charge of talent, and my brother Bob handles the client side—getting our talent jobs.”

  Betina turned the card, tapping it on the table. “How do you even know who I am?”

  “It was in the program, along with Pete Dawson’s name and the name of the salon you work at.”

  “Wow.” She indicated me. “This is Savannah Jeffries, my boss.”

  She smiled, looking honestly embarassed. “Oh my. This is awkward.”

  I was certain I guessed where this was headed. “Not at all. Betina cuts hair in my salon, but she’s also my friend. Please go ahead with your pitch.”

  Her eyes thanked me. “Betina, I’d like you to consider a career as a model, working for my agency. I don’t mean working the booths in the expo, either. I watched the competition and you stood out. You have what it takes. With some coaching, some lessons, and our promotion, you have the potential to become a fashion model.”

  “Me?” Betina looked stunned.

  “Lessons usually come at a price,” Nellie said, voicing her usual cautionary cynicism.

  The woman put her hand on Betina’s and smiled. “Your friends are looking out for you. But this isn’t some kind of con.” She looked at Nellie. “I’m not trying to get you to buy modeling lessons. What I meant was that if you worked for us, we’d provide them. They’d be modeling lessons but also you’d learn how the business works and get the skills to meet our standards.”

  I was impressed. “Your standards?” Betina asked.

  “Of beauty and quality. You looked hot during the competition. You have the right kind of look and bearing for a particular set of clients. We could develop that.”

  “Develop?” she asked.

  “There is a lot more to modeling than looking good. We call it knowing how to look and how to be.”