To Brie or Not to Brie (34 page)

“Back there talking to a friend. She’ll catch up.”

“Let’s join the rest.”

Grandmère, Pépère, Matthew, and Meredith stood about fifty yards down the aisle of
grapevines.

“Heel, boy,” Amy said. Rocket leaped to his feet.

When we reached the family, Meredith said. “Amy, you have good running form.”

“Grandmère taught me.” Amy pumped her arms. Rocket looked befuddled by the command.
“She says runners are like ballerinas, only running goes in a straight line.” Amy
gazed at her great-grandmother. “
Merci
.”

“
De rien
,” Grandmère said, then whispered something in Amy’s ear and kissed the top of her
head. Amy giggled. They were two of a kind, with the same outlook on life. The bond
between them made me smile.

Seconds later, Clair ran up. Though a little out of breath, she was beaming, equally
proud of her ribbon. She held it out to display to her father.

“Who’s the guy?” Amy said.

Clair scrunched up her face. “What guy?”

“You know who. Geek-Face.” Amy mimed a pair of round glasses.

Clair tinged red. “Just another racer.”

“I’ll bet.” Singsong, Amy said, “Clair’s in love.”

“No, I’m not. Take it back.”

“Won’t.”

“Will.” Clair made a fist.

Amy dodged behind her father’s back and peeked out. “When are we getting our hair
done?”

Meredith tapped her watch. “Right now.”

“Uh-uh,” I said. “Home first to shower. The girls are not going to a salon with grape
gook and dirt clinging to their legs.”

* * *

After showering and switching into play clothes for the girls and work clothes for
me—I was bringing a change of clothes for the rehearsal dinner and would don them
at The Cheese Shop around five thirty—we headed to the hairdressers. The first order
of business was to do a trial run on the hairstyles for tomorrow’s wedding. We would
leave with our hair styled for the rehearsal dinner. I had even
agreed to allow the makeup artist to apply my makeup for the evening. I had never
done that before.

Tyanne met us at the door of Tip to Toe Salon. Bubbling with enthusiasm, she said,
“Oh, sugar, look at all of you. I can see excitement in those eyes. This way. Follow
me.” She crooked her finger and motioned us inside. Her pretty blond hair, held off
her face with a silver beaded bungee headband, swished to and fro as she marched ahead.

Clair leaned into me. “That’s the band I want on my hair.” She pointed to Tyanne’s.

“Done,” I said. While at the salon, I wanted both girls to feel like princesses.

Tip to Toe Salon had undergone a major face-lift in the past six months. Whereas it
was once a beige establishment with soft lights and no character, it now bustled with
energy and fun. The receptionist’s desk was shiny black granite with silver trim.
All the stylists’ stations were black with silver mirrors. Black and white tiles decorated
the floor. The customer chairs were bright yellow. Primary color art deco prints adorned
the walls. Vibrant rock music played through the speakers.

The day Tyanne’s sister, Lizzie, moved to town, I switched stylists. I was delighted
with her skill. I had been trying to grow my hair longer but hadn’t been pleased with
the look, and so I reverted to my shorter hairstyle. Lizzie had a knack for a sassy
cut.

“Tyanne, Lizzie has done a marvelous job with this place,” I said.

“Isn’t she the best?” She wiggled her fingers. “Lizzie, sugar, they’re all here.”

Lizzie looked entirely different from her sister. She was a good half-foot shorter,
she wore her red hair an inch long, and she dripped with funky jewelry—bracelets,
earrings, necklaces, and rings. She wore black shorts and a yellow tank top, and she
had jacked up her height with four-inch
wedge sandals. A butterfly battling a dragon tattoo graced her right shoulder.

“It’s so nice to meet y’all,” Lizzie said. She and Tyanne sounded the same, with similar
tone and syncopated rhythms. “Aren’t you the cutest?” She grabbed the chins of both
of the twins and twisted them gently to one side and the other. “Good bone structure,
ladies. This is going to be a pleasure.”

Clair and Amy ogled each other and shared a silent exchange:
What are we in for?

“Now, sit yourselves down and get comfy. You’re going to be here for a while. And
tomorrow”—Lizzie tapped Meredith’s shoulder with her forefinger—“you will be the most
gorgeous bride on earth.”

Tears filled Meredith’s eyes.

“Aw, honey, don’t do that. I’ve got a refresher stick with caffeine for puffy eyes,
but we don’t want to use too much of that, you hear?” Lizzie grinned. “Pre-marriage
jitters, huh? I know. I’ve been there, done that. Three times. But yours, of course,
will last for a lifetime. I’m prickly.” She chortled. “Charlotte, why don’t you have
a sit-down, and I’ll deal with you last.” She rubbed strands of my finger-combed hair
and clucked her tongue. “Perhaps a little moisture for you, first. This feels like
straw. Did you change shampoos?” She grinned at me. “Slip on a gown. There are magazines
in the reception area.”

I stepped into the dressing room and zipped a black robe over my clothes, then exited
and found a silver-and-glass coffee table filled with magazines. I scrounged for one
that wasn’t all about style and was delighted to find a
Food and Wine
magazine beneath the pile. Almost nothing relaxed me more than reading recipes.

“Hi, Charlotte,” a woman said.

I pivoted and saw Iris checking out at the reception desk. Although her shaggy hair
was refreshed, her face
looked wan. The ecru blouse and slacks she wore did nothing to enhance her pallor.
Only her peacock blue tote bag added a hint of color. “Are you all right?”

“Fine,” she said, though her lackadaisical tone made me certain she was lying.

“Did something happen regarding the flowers for tomorrow?”

“What?” She brightened. “Oh, no, nothing like that. No, everything’s fine. I’ll be
at the ranch raring to go.”

“Is it Stratton?”

“No, he’s still my plus-one. Don’t worry about me.” She took her receipt from the
receptionist and headed out of the salon.

Lizzie tapped me on the shoulder. “Honey, the girls and Meredith are picking out the
beads and things they want in their hair. In the meantime, let’s get you shampooed.”
She offered me a glass of water with a slice of lemon in it. “I saw you talking to
Iris.”

“Yes. She seemed a little down.”

“She’s concerned about her daughter.”

“Why?”

“Chief Urso has been asking questions. Iris thinks he might be zeroing in on her daughter
as a suspect in that man’s murder. Can you believe it? She’s a kid. A Scoop, for heaven’s
sake, and on her way to college.” Lizzie guided me to the rear of the shop, sat me
in a black leather chair by a shampoo bowl, and draped me with a cape. “And to add
insult to injury, Prudence is being a pill to her.”

“To the daughter?”

“No, to Iris. I’m afraid poor Prudence can’t help herself.”

Lizzie wet my hair with warm water, squirted it with a solution that smelled of pineapple,
and scrubbed. I closed my eyes and drank in the relaxing feel of her fingers massaging
my scalp.

“I guess Prudence is less than thrilled that Iris has been
trying to fix her up on a date,” Lizzie went on. “I heard them talking on the cell
phone.”

“I thought we weren’t supposed to use cell phones in here.”

“You’re not, but that’s not saying everybody follows the rules. There are those that
do, and those that don’t.”

I was one that did…unless, of course, I had to break the rules to deal with an emergency
or to investigate a crime.

“Anyway, Prudence was giving Iris lip”—Lizzie’s fingers dug into my neck muscles—“telling
Iris that she heard Stratton talking about her behind her back.”

“When?”

“Last night.”

“What could Prudence be referring to? Stratton was doing
Hamlet
, and she wasn’t even there.”

“I guess she meant afterward. According to her, Stratton went to Timothy O’Shea’s
Irish Pub. She saw him there.”

“Prudence was at the pub? Whatever for?”

“Perhaps she was seeking companionship without Iris’s help.” Using heavenly warm water,
Lizzie rinsed the shampoo from my hair. “So back to my story, you’ll never guess what
happened next. Iris called that boyfriend and gave him what for. She said she’d see
him freeze in hell. I didn’t hear his side, of course, but it sounded like he was
begging and pleading.” Lizzie laughed. “Ooh-wee, I’ve got to say, it was like watching
a soap opera. I miss those, now that I work days.” Back in New Orleans, Lizzie had
owned a coffee shop. She had always wanted to switch careers. Moving to Providence
to be closer to Tyanne had given her the gumption to try something new. “I record
the darned things, but it’s not the same, you know? When they’re on live, it’s like
you’re in the moment with them.”

I didn’t have the heart to tell her that soap operas were taped. “I don’t think Iris
has had the best luck with men.”

“That’s an understatement.” Lizzie leaned down and whispered, “Left at the altar.”

“I heard that. So it’s true?”

“All is
not
fair in love and war. Oh, and to top it all off, she once had a stalker.”

Her words made me tense up. Anabelle came to mind, not because of the stalker angle—I
felt sure she was telling the truth about her ex-boyfriend—but because I wondered
whether Urso had nailed down the guy’s whereabouts.

Lizzie tapped my shoulder. “Honey, where did you go? Relax that forehead before you
look like an old lady.”

I worked hard to put thoughts of the investigation out of my mind and focused on the
soap operas that Lizzie mentioned, wishing I had time to watch one or two, when suddenly
my thoughts boomeranged back to Anabelle. She said she had been watching TV at the
time of the murder, specifically the Glenn Close retrospective. What if she had taped
it? She could have forced Giacomo to the Igloo, killed him, returned to the store,
breezed through the recorded programming to glean the story, and cemented her alibi.
But how did she gain entrance to the Igloo? Had one of the Scoops left the door open?
Was that why Urso was fixated on Iris’s daughter?

As Lizzie rubbed in a luscious conditioner that smelled like coconut and cherries,
she said, “Honey, this is going to do the trick and get your hair back to silky smooth.
Jordan will thank me. Promise.” She combed my hair, wrapped a plastic cap around it,
and guided me to a hair dryer. “Grab a few winks. You’ve got twenty minutes.”

I needed them. My brainpower was spent.

“How was business today?” I asked Rebecca as I removed a platter of sliced Fontina,
Montgomery Clothbound Cheddar, and Green Dirt Farm Bossa from The Cheese Shop’s refrigerator
and set it on the island counter, ready to spruce it up for the rehearsal dinner.
When I had entered the store at three forty-five, the shelves had looked restocked
and the cheese case neat and tidy.

“Good but not great,” she said as she orbited around me, her gaze moving from my head
to my toes. “I think everyone in town was either participating in or attending the
race.”

I frowned. “What are you doing?”

“Getting style tips. Lizzie did a nice job with your hair. It’s flirty. And your makeup
is ooh-la-la.”

I blushed. The makeup artist had gone a little bit overboard. I rarely wore this much
eyeliner and shadow and definitely not this much lipstick. She told me the extra color
would make all the difference in photographs. That was
when it dawned on me I hadn’t arranged for a photographer for the rehearsal dinner.
Luckily Tyanne had. She had thought of everything.

“The girls look fabulous, too.” I added dried apricots around the rim of the cheese
platter and mounded toasted almonds in the center. “You’ll see tonight. Neither wanted
to remove the glitzy hair jewelry or stretchy headband.”

Rebecca checked the clock on the wall. “Only a few minutes until we close up and guests
arrive. Are we ready?”

“All I have to do is unwrap these”—I picked up a stack of gold napkins embossed with
M&M—“and change clothes.” I had hung my cocktail dress in the office and had advised
Tyanne and Iris to do the same.

“I almost forgot to tell you.” Rebecca fluttered a hand. “Matthew called. The buses
have arrived at Lavender and Lace. He’s loading up his family. Nobody missed a flight.”

“Perfect.”

I peeked through the kitchen archway toward the wine annex. Tyanne weaved between
tables, straightening chairs and place settings. Iris tweaked the cobalt blue ribbons
around the crystal fishbowl-shaped vases that were filled with white roses, asters,
and greens. She appeared happier than she had at Tip to Toe Salon. Perhaps all she
had needed was to vent to Lizzie. At our initial appointment, Lizzie confided that
hairstylists, like bartenders, were often called upon to act as consolers.