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I
n the town center, I found a parking spot on a side street and glanced at my watch. Just enough time to get a haircut before the dinner crowd arrived. I pushed open the door of the salon and was greeted by a swoosh of sound: dueling hair dryers, a ringing phone, and Carol, laughing loudly with Lola, who was in the process of getting shampooed. Carol had a booming, joyful, infectious laugh that could lighten up even the gloomiest days. It was the first thing I noticed about her. Whenever I needed more funny in my life, she was my go-to person.

I waved from the receptionist's desk, and Carol motioned for me to join them. Snippets had garnered a reputation for great service and reasonable prices. I walked down the middle of the salon, through two parallel rows of cutting and color stations, to the back wall, where silver side-by-side sinks were occupied by Lola and another Etonville patron. The woman on the right stood and wrapped a towel around her head and walked to a cutting station.

“Busy today?” I asked Carol.

“As a one-armed paperhanger.”

“Can you fit me in? I just need a half-inch taken off,” I said.

“Lola, can you wait a few minutes?” Carol asked.

“Sure. I told Walter I was going home after I was finished here anyway.”

I plopped down into the vacant chair. Carol's curly salt-and-pepper head bobbed as she whipped out a cape, snapping it open and around my neck in one motion. Carol was a firmly grounded, forty-year-old Sicilian beauty. After Lola, Carol was my other BFF.

“Speaking of Walter ...” Carol said.

Lola sat up straighter. “Have you heard something?”

Carol lowered her voice. “I hear his ex has been carrying on.” She arched an eyebrow.

“About what?” I asked.

While she shampooed my hair, rinsed out the suds, and brushed some conditioner through it, Carol divulged the latest on Walter's divorce. We didn't call Snippets gossip central for no reason. I was just generally interested in catching up with the small-town goings-on. Lola had a more personal stake in Walter's marital status. We settled into her cutting station.

“Annie Walsh. Remember her?” Carol asked.

Lola frowned. “Is she the one who used to own the bake shop on Anderson Street before it became Georgette's?”

Georgette's was a pastry shop
par excellence
that provided all of the Windjammer's desserts.

“That's the one. Well, she was in here yesterday, and
she
said that Walter's
ex
said that he was holding out on her alimony.”

“What does that mean?” Lola was a tad defensive.

Carol shrugged. “Something about his having money in other accounts that he didn't fess up to during the divorce proceedings.”

“I find that hard to believe,” Lola said and opened a magazine.

Carol and I exchanged glances. I'd picked up a little scuttlebutt about Walter's shaky finances from some theater folks one night at the Windjammer.

“What are we doing?” Carol brandished the scissors and frowned at my shoulder-length locks.

“Just clip off the split ends.” I swiveled my chair to see the other side of my head in the mirror facing me and looked beyond the sinks to the very rear of the salon. “Is that Pauli?”

He looked up and gave the three of us a solemn wave. Carol stomped on the hydraulic foot rest with authority, and the chair dropped several inches. She glanced over her shoulder to see her seventeen-year-old son, Pauli, seated on a carton of shampoo bottles, securely wedged between a portable hair dryer on wheels and a rolling service tray. His head was bent over a laptop, with an iPod for company.

“I told him he could use the receptionist's desk. I think he's a little self-conscious being in a salon with all these women around.”

“What's he doing?” Lola squinted at him.

“Creating a website for Snippets,” Carol said.

“Wow. Good for him.” Pauli's father was a tech guy who worked in the city.
Like father, like son
, I thought. Pauli was a bright kid, but a little quiet. Whenever I visited Carol's home and he happened to be visible, it was usually with his face buried in a computer game on his laptop or cell phone, or on Carol's iPad.

Carol combed and clipped and combed and clipped vigorously. “Yeah, I'm proud of him. He wants to start a business doing websites. Can you imagine?”

“His dad must be pleased.”

“He is, but I worry,” she said.

I noticed Pauli texting, his thumbs moving so quickly they were like appendages of his brain.

“I wish he'd get out more. You know. With girls.”

“He doesn't date?”

“He has this group of boys he hangs out with. All of them like him—glued to the computer and video games. He has no social life.”

“I think if you're seventeen that is a social life these days. That and Facebook and Instagram.”

Lola folded her magazine open and held it up in front of my face. “Look at this. It's a recipe for strawberries dipped in chocolate and covered with fresh cream. Yummy
and
romantic.” Lola's eyes lit up.

“Are you looking for dessert recipes?” Carol stopped mid-snip.

“I'm working on the theme food for
Romeo and Juliet
and drawing a blank. I've ruled out Italian,” I said.

“Too bad. I could give you my meatball recipe.” Her husband's chubby physique was a testament to Carol's cooking.

Henry had inaugurated the dinner-then-theater with corned beef and cabbage to celebrate St. Patrick's Day—and the step dancing—and folks had been a little slow to come aboard. But things picked up with a French farce accompanied by beef Bourguignon, and Etonville was eating up the new idea. By the time the ELT produced
Dames at Sea
and I had devised a seafood buffet, patrons were getting used to dining early and darting next door to the show. It was a marriage made in culinary heaven.

“Something romantic might work.”

“I remember a dinner
al fresco
years ago . . . oysters, cheeses, avocados, champagne.... It was luscious.” Lola sighed.

“Maybe we should look into an outdoor café,” I said, as Carol blow-dried my hair, giving it a fluff now and then. “Lola thinks I should audition for
R and J
.”

“We need all the potential actors we can get,” Lola trilled, still flipping through the magazine.

“Why don't you audition?” I said to Carol, looking at her in the mirror.

“When would I have time to rehearse a play? Not to mention that I can't act.”

“Ditto,” I said. “Are you helping with the hair and makeup?”

“Yes, she is,” Lola volunteered. “Walter needs her expertise.”

“If I can get the shop covered.” She gelled her hands and patted my hair to pacify the frizzies.

Without our realizing it, Pauli had abandoned his nest in the back of the salon and ambled over to Carol's station.

“Mom?”

Carol looked up and smiled. “Honey, say hi to Lola and Dodie.”

He brushed a hunk of dark hair off his pimply forehead. “Hey.”

“Are you hungry?” Carol asked.

“I can wait.” He was smart
and
considerate.

“After I do Lola, I'll drive you home.”

I stood up and grabbed my bag from the floor. “How's the website going?”

Pauli hesitated. “Okay, I guess.”

“Better than okay. Show Dodie what you've done.” Carol nudged him.

He pretended to be reluctant to demonstrate his computer prowess, but I could read his face. He was thrilled to walk me through the various pages and links. It was impressive.

“Maybe we can hire you to do one for the Windjammer. I've been on Henry's case to move into the twenty-first century. I'll let you know.”

Pauli just nodded, trying to hide his enthusiasm.

My cell binged: a text from Henry, wanting to know where I was. “See you all later.”

* * *

At ten-thirty p.m., I took a break in my favorite booth with a bowl of black bean soup—Henry was famous for his homemade soups—and mulled over the idea of an
R and J
amorous dinner theme. I was just getting lost in the romantic possibilities of various entrees when I heard, “Thought I'd find you here.”

“Hi, Jerome,” I said to the elderly gentleman who sat down across from me. “Want something to eat? Kitchen's open for about twenty more minutes.”

He shook his head. “Just a drink.”

I waved to Benny and pointed to Jerome Angleton. Benny nodded. Jerome was a regular. He drank a double Scotch, Chivas Regal, neat, no more, no less, almost every night that the Windjammer was open. Often, he exited the Etonville Little Theatre, walked next door, and sat at the bar. But when I wasn't busy, he liked to sit with me. I enjoyed his company.

Long retired from Etonville High as an English teacher, Jerome—seventyish, tall, and lanky with thinning hair and a lot of energy—was a fixture at the theater. He supervised the box office, ushered, did some backstage work, and once in a while assumed a role on stage. His big break had been Sergeant Trotter in
The Mousetrap
last year. I had no idea what he did when he wasn't at the ELT. But he was friendly, had taken a liking to me—if I was twenty years older, or he was twenty years younger, we might be hitting on each other—and he shared my love of mysteries and thrillers.

He pulled a paperback out of his jacket pocket. “Got the new Cindy Collins mystery.”

“Yeah? Let me see.” I eyeballed the cover art. An angry slash of red broken up by crisscrossing lines of a picket fence, the title in bold type.
Murder One and a Half
.

“You can have it when I'm finished,” he said as Benny set his drink on a coaster.

“Here you go, Jerome.” Benny smiled at the older man and sauntered back to the bar.

Jerome took a long swallow. He looked frazzled.

“Tough day in show business?” I asked.

“It's Walter. He's been on everybody's case. Especially mine.”

“He's probably just anxious about auditions next week. Shakespeare. . . you know?”

“Maybe, but I think there's something going on.”

“Oh?”

Jerome lowered his voice. “Money's been disappearing from the safe.”

“Seriously?”

“Whenever I've been in the safe, I leave an accounting of what I take out for petty cash for the costume shop or whatever. Lately there've been some . . . irregularities.”

I knew about the business practices at the ELT from Lola. My Accounting 101 professor would have yanked the few stray hairs on his head out by the roots. Walter kept Post-its scattered around his desk with notes on bank deposits and withdrawals and the petty cash account in the safe. I had hinted to Lola more than once that Walter needed to keep a better eye on the financial status of the theater. She agreed, but said Walter was testy about management suggestions. He liked to run all aspects of the show his way.

My management mind was racing to create a to-do list for Jerome: talk to theater folks to see if anyone else was in the safe; check all of the Post-it notes for an accounting error; confirm who had keys to the theater and knew the combination to the safe.

“Have you approached him with it?”

Jerome nodded. “In a roundabout way.”

“And?”

“He said that I was the one responsible for petty cash accounting.”

“Is he accusing you of stealing from the theater? He can't think you would do such a thing. What are we talking here, fifty bucks? A hundred?”

Jerome emptied his glass and returned it carefully to the coaster. “More. Lots more.”

“Like how much more?” I asked carefully.

“Over the past month or so, more like a thousand.”

My jaw hung loosely on its hinge, my mouth forming an O. “In cash?”

Jerome nodded.

“No wonder Walter's on edge. Did he call the police?”

“I told him he should, but he just waved me away.” Jerome took a swipe at the air in imitation of Walter's dismissive gesture.

Funny that Lola hadn't mentioned anything about this. Did she know? It seemed that she and Walter were getting closer these days, but maybe—

“Don't tell anyone I told you, okay? Walter is short-tempered enough, and I wouldn't want to aggravate him further.”

“No problem.”

“Take care, Dodie,” Jerome said and saluted. It was his standard way of saying good-night.

“'Night, Jerome. And don't let this get you down. I'm sure it will all work out.”

I knew better than that. Walter was a smooth operator in front of an audience or when hosting post-show wine and cheese parties. But I'd had occasion to see his wrath in full bloom when the dinner-then-theater program hit a few bumps. There were two sides to his personality.

A thousand dollars, I mused. Walter was the one having some post-marital financial difficulties at the moment.

“Go home. I'll finish up,” I called to Benny, who was about to take a wet mop to the tile floor. He nodded with appreciation. Benny had a four-year-old daughter, a working wife, and a mortgage. Besides waiting tables at the Windjammer, he drove a UPS delivery truck part-time and always looked tired.

“Thanks.” He practically ran out the door.

* * *

By eleven-thirty, I had shooed Henry out the door, too. I could close up more efficiently by myself; straightening up the dining room, closing out the register, doing a last bar inventory and freezer check to see what needed to be ordered for the weekend. Henry had gussied up the menu with a few “spring changes.” La Famiglia had already printed its spring menu in the
Etonville Standard
. The competition was really getting to him.