“Oh, Rock, this is Garth Mills. We hired him recently as a caretaker and handyman.”
“I’m Rick Duff,” I enunciated, extending my hand and shaking his. His grip was feeble. “I’m a salesman of beauty products.” I held up my briefcase as proof of the falsehood. Garth merely grunted.
He had given me an idea, however: “Why not hire me as Mills’s assistant? Say I’m tired of being on the road all the time. While he trains me, I can watch for clues.”
The next morning I arrived at the Palace in workclothes, doubling the male presence and reducing the good looks. Mills didn’t seem very friendly – or very bright – as he showed where the supplies were stored and where to put the swept-up hair and trash, all the while being as unobtrusive as possible. He was the kind of man, I suspected, that women dream about…when they have nightmares.
I watched the three beauticians, but saw nothing suspicious: all worked diligently and were efficient, which was more than anyone could say about me. Again and again I thought I was following Mills’ instructions, but somehow I screwed up, putting the wrong bottles into the wrong cabinets. I did notice that some of the labels appeared to have been loosened.
As the day wore on, I was giving a whole new meaning to the word “inept”. If Ms. Mona fired me, it would bring my investigation to an abrupt end, but if she didn’t it would look very suspicious.
Sometimes a case is solved by diligent detail-gathering, logical deduction, or the discovery of a key clue. At other times it is by sheer luck. With the Palace of Beauty crime, it was the last.
Soon after four, I went to the storeroom unexpectedly for some supplies for one of the beauticians. Mills looked up startled and guiltily. He was holding a bottle of dye from which he was peeling the label; on a table was another bottle with the label removed. He was switching them.
“You,” I said.
“Yeah, me,” he sneered.
“Why?”
“Because of what this place did to my beautiful young wife. She just wanted a trim, but by mistake they dyed her hair a silvery-blue. She looked like Methuselah’s grandmother.” I tried to visualize her, but failed. “My wife’s name is Donna Fox and when we were married we kept our own names, being an enlightened couple, so when I talked Lisa into hiring me, she didn’t see any connection. I’ve been trying to put her out of business by sabotage.” Revenge, I have learned, is a powerful motivator.
“Hair grows back,” I said.
“Not fast enough.”
I called Lisa into the storeroom and explained the vandalism. She fired Garth, of course, but decided not to call the police because a trial would have been bad publicity.
Getting rid of Garth solved one problem, but created a new one: who would replace Mills? Lisa wanted me to stay, but I knew that I would cause as many screw-ups as Mills, albeit unintentionally. She decided to advertise the job in the local paper.
She offered to pay me my fee or give me a year’s free haircuts and dye jobs. I took the cash and I think she was glad because trying to make me handsome was a monumental, if not impossible task.
I am still trying to picture Ms. Fox as “Methuselah’s grandmother”. Maybe she could be Hecate in my projected versions of Macbeth, but no, I still think my ex-wife is the better choice.
