“Hello, darling, it’s Paige,” she says into her phone. “I need your help. It’s an emergency.”
I can always count on my friends. This makes me feel warm and fuzzy to know she’s got my back.
“No, not for me, for Kennedy,” she continues, before turning to face me and staring me up and down before shaking her head sadly at me.
What the hell is she doing? She doesn’t need to look at me like that just to call another PI firm a few towns over for some additional help.
“Yes, I think it has to be today. She can’t go on like this anymore,” Paige adds. “Perfect! You are a lifesaver. Kiss, kiss. We’ll see you in twenty.”
Paige hangs up the phone and walks around her desk to retrieve her purse from one of the drawers.
“Why do we need to go see the guys at Osborne Investigations? Can’t they just send someone over so I can fill them in on the case?”
Paige pulls her keys out of her purse and walks back over to me, linking her arm through mine and pulling me toward the door.
“What are you talking about? I didn’t call Osborne. I called Sven. Your roots are atrocious. There’s no way I’m letting you anywhere near Griffin Crawford again with hair like that.”
She clutches my arm with both hands when she feels me start to resist, I don’t even bother hiding my contempt by calling her every bad name I can think of from A to Z, starting with asshat and ending with…
GD zoo animal cray-cray.
CHAPTER 5
Get away from me, you little rat,” I whisper to Mrs. Justin Bieber as she sniffs the toe of my boot and then walks away in an angry huff.
I glare at Paige as she happily chats up Sven a few feet away, hoping she’ll feel my stare of death and get me the hell out of here. I don’t have time for this. I have a bail jumper to catch and a Harley man to get rid of.
I reach my fingers up to the neckband of the black plastic cape and tug on it, trying to relieve some of the choking sensation. My head itches like crazy so I use one of my fingernails to dig in between the foils.
“Don’t touch anysing. Vhat is vrong viff you. You mess up my masterpiece,” Sven scolds as he walks over to me, smacks my hand away, and lifts up some of the foils on my head to check them.
I know for a fact Sven’s name is really Steve and he was born and raised in Jersey. Every time he speaks I want to borrow a page out of my dad’s handbook, smack him upside the head, and ask him what the hell is wrong with him.
“Can you please remoof da gun? It making me so nervous. You shoot Sven on accident,” he tells me with a nervous shiver as he stares down at my gun in its holster at my hip.
“How much longer is this going to take? I have work to do,” I complain as I unclip my gun and holster and set it on the tray of unused foils next to me.
“Beauty takes time, Kennedy. Be a good girl and maybe I’ll take you out for ice cream when we’re finished,” Paige says with a smile.
Is it illegal for me to pull my gun in the middle of a salon? I need to check the rules of my CCW permit.
“Here, why don’t you read through McFadden’s file while you’re sitting there so patient and well behaved.” Paige picks up the folder on the floor by my feet and drops it into my lap.
While Sven walks over to the front desk and Paige flips through a magazine next to me, I watch as Mrs. Justin Bieber whizzes on the floor in the middle of the room. Rolling my eyes, I suck it up and try to get some work done while I’m slowly tortured to death with foil and hair color.
Flipping through the pages of the life and times of Martin McFadden, I almost can’t believe what I’m seeing. This guy is nuts. According to what Lorelei found in his court records, he’s been to jail twenty-two times for making erroneous phone calls to the police. Phone calls about tiny little green men from Mars that were trying to break into his house and eat his brain. Two years ago he was arrested outside of a costume shop at Halloween, screaming at anyone who would listen that if they bought alien costumes, it would anger the little men and they would kill us all. Six months ago he petitioned for a patent for his “Alien Safety Helmet,” a pile of tinfoil that he believes should be mandatory for all citizens to wear to protect them from their thoughts being stolen in the middle of the night. He even wrote a book called They’re Reading Our Minds, Watching Us Sleep.
Sweet Jesus. This is the guy I have to track down?
As I continue reading, I hear the bell as the door opens and someone asks if they handle dog grooming. As I continue to read and try to ignore the conversation going on by the reception desk, I hear a word that makes me whip my head up and my eyes bug out of my head: Tinkerdoodle.
My eyes meet McFadden’s across the room as he cradles a trembling brown Chihuahua in his arms. I didn’t get a very good look at him when he sped off in his Honda, but I have one of his mug shots and it’s definitely my guy. If he hadn’t already shot at me, I’d say he looks harmless. Almost like a professor of literature with his dark brown corduroy pants, blue button-down shirt, and light brown, cable-knit sweater, his brown hair graying at the temples.
Even with all the foil on top of my head and the cape draped around me, he recognizes me immediately and lets out an ear-piercing shriek before turning and running for the door.
“SON OF A BITCH!” I shout as I scramble to get out of the chair. My feet immediately get caught in the yards of plastic cape and I land in a cursing heap on the floor.
“PAIGE, STOP HIM!” I shout to my friend as she immediately bursts into action and easily leaps over Mrs. Justin Bieber in her four-inch Manolo Blahniks and runs toward the door. McFadden shoves Sven out of the way and into a shelf of hair products and everything comes crashing to the ground, Sven included.