Angel’s the punk star, he thought, making his quick classification. Brandy’s the gentle dreamer. Another woman with an angel badge came rushing out from the back, brandishing a pair of scissors like a relay runner who has just been passed the baton.
“I’ll finish you up,” she told the lady in the front chair with twists of cone-shaped aluminum on her head.
“If I wanted you, Jill, I would have asked for you,” said the lady. Jill smiled, bent over, and gave a vicious yank to a metallic cone.
“Hey!” her client said.
“Oh, I’m so sorry. Did that hurt?” She winked at Paul. “How do you know Angel?” she said a moment later. They could all hear the whispered voices rising from behind the curtain.
“I don’t. Not yet, anyway,” said Paul. “Mind telling me what you’re doing there?”
“Frosting,” she said, then laughed at his expression. “I’m streaking her hair. It brightens up a dull look. Helps transition ladies to gray.”
“You saying my hair’s dull and gray?” asked the client.
“Oh, come on. Would I insult you? You’re one of our best clients,” Jill answered without answering.
“Angel, I don’t have all day,” called the other woman in curlers.
The whispers stopped. Angel came out first, smoothing her apron. She put a hand on the woman’s shoulder, said a few words in a low voice, and walked up to Paul, followed closely by the girl in the skirt. “Follow me, okay?”
“After you,” Wish said. They all squeezed out the door into the walkway right outside the salon. Slot machines pinged all around them.
“Nina’s waiting. We have an appointment set up for you,” Paul said.
The two women looked sick. Brandy said, “Mr. van Wagoner, I don’t know if we can go through with this. We went back to my house in Palo Alto last night and there’s still no sign of Bruce. I’m scared. I don’t think we should tell anyone anything. Maybe Cody kidnapped Bruce!”
“And I’m worried about my family.” Angel bit her lip.
“What should we do?” Brandy asked, agitated. “Tell the police Bruce’s kidnapped? I don’t even want to see the police. I want to stay out of this thing. Maybe he’s fly-fishing somewhere in Alaska for a few days with some client of his who’s got money to burn. That’s more logical, more real. That guy, Cody, why would he go after Bruce anyway?”
“Right! He’d go after us!” Angel said. “He won’t be thinking about my kids and my husband. They’ll be safe because he’ll want me or my sister. We want to hide until they all go away.”
“Where?” Paul asked. “Where would you go?”
Brandy looked at Paul and Wish. “Somewhere only we know.”
Angel shook her head. “I’m so confused. Oh, man, this is the point on TV where people don’t tell the police what they know and get whacked.”
“Nobody’s going to get whacked,” Wish said, horrified. “We’d never let that happen.”
“You have no choice,” Paul told them. “The police can arrest you as material witnesses if you don’t come forward. Believe me. Talking to them is the wise thing to do.”
“Can’t Nina just tell them what we told her?” Brandy asked. “She knows the story.”
“You have to tell the D.A. what you saw,” Paul answered, tired of arguing. “Let’s go.”
“And exactly who are you, anyway?” Brandy asked Wish.
“She sent me to protect you,” Wish said. “Don’t worry.”
“Oh. Wow.” Brandy gave him a radiant smile and Wish dissolved into his high-tops.
Paul didn’t think telling her they weren’t leaving without them would improve the situation. “We’re here to escort you safely to the police. Once the D.A. has your statement about what happened at the campground, you’ve done your duty,” he said. “You’ll be safer. It’s like insurance.”
“Angel, if you don’t come back in here right now,” said a voice from inside the salon, “I’m going to get up and walk out of here with one half of my head full of pink curlers, then I’m going up to Raley’s and tell everybody there why I look so foolish.”
“Coming!” she said. “Look, I have to finish Mrs. Gerdes before I can leave.”
“How long will that take?”
“Let’s see, finish rolling, then the perm, wash it out, dry it. Make it look outstanding. At least an hour, maybe longer.”
“We’ll wait,” Paul said. “But you’ll go?”
Angel looked at her sister, then back at Paul. “Yeah, we’ll go.”
When Paul’s stomach began to rumble as loudly as Wish’s, he sent him out for some food. Paul balanced himself on the flimsy bench in the salon and observed Jill’s frosting of the coneheaded woman and the manufacture of artificial curls on the head of Angel’s client.
Brandy sat with him. She spoke hardly a word to Paul, but she perked up when Wish arrived, slightly bent with the weight of bags full of quesadillas and nachos. They spread the food between them and ate and talked. Brandy asked Wish questions about his studies. Listening to them, Paul learned that she had been a philosophy major at community college and that she didn’t feel like she belonged in Palo Alto. She didn’t talk about her fiancé, Paul noticed. Wish seemed to be making a conquest. Or he was being vanquished, Paul wasn’t sure which.
After a while, Angel finished and joined them. They all piled into the Mustang.
“You know, we always intended to go to the police. We wouldn’t have let that bastard get away with killing her,” Angel said as they drove alongside the lake toward Al Tahoe Boulevard. “We’re just afraid.”
“Sure you are,” Paul said.
“Why did Cody have to kill Phoebe?” Brandy asked.
“You know why,” Angel said. “Sexual jealousy. She was with another guy.” Sitting in the front seat beside Paul, she pulled her feet up on the car seat as if settling down for some titillating gossip. “This is what we heard. Phoebe is sleeping with Mario but he gets arrested and lands in prison for a long time, like maybe a whole year,” she explained. “He and Cody were old friends from way back, and so Phoebe and Cody’re hangin’ out together moaning about poor Mario. And then one fine night they get-”
“Down and dirty,” Brandy said from behind her.
“And Mario gets out of prison earlier than anyone expected,” Angel continued. “He shows up out of the blue at Cody’s house. Well, it makes sense. He goes to see his best friend first thing-”
“Wanting to spend the night on the couch and collect the money Cody’s keeping for him,” Brandy said.
“But Cody’s surprised and not that happy to see Mario after all. He’s cagey. He doesn’t want Mario to know about Phoebe hanging with him, so he makes up an excuse and says, ‘You can’t stay here.’ He swears he doesn’t have the money but promises to get it and bring it to Mario the next day.”
“They were in on a drug deal together and Cody held the money for Mario while he was in prison,” Brandy said.
“Taking the rap, I think,” said Angel.
“So Mario asks, ‘Well, then, where the hell can I go?’ ’Cause you have to remember, he’s got practically no money,” Brandy added.
“So then Cody gives him twenty bucks or so and sends Mario to the campground with a ratty old tent and a bag. Some friend.”
“Meanwhile, guess who’s listening from somewhere behind the drapes?” Brandy asked rhetorically.
“Mario’s old girlfriend, Phoebe, who’s actually been missing him or maybe is just getting very sick of Cody, his second-rate stand-in,” said Angel. “Mario was definitely the better-looking one.”
“So Phoebe sneaks out and follows Mario to the campground. And initiates a rowdy reunion. If she’d only known. It’s so awful. I guess that’s what those other people who had our campsite before really objected to. Probably they were hanging all over each other,” Brandy said.
“Indiscreet,” Angel agreed.
“So Cody-he came back late at night. And he killed her! Angel, should we really do this?”