The Hair Lounge. It wasn’t a terribly creative or elegant name for a salon, but Rae wasn’t exactly elegant herself.
Instead of hitting the Saturday morning farmers market, I had driven out to Elmwood Park and was now sitting in my car across the street from the brick building with my travel mug of Earl Grey, looking at her Elmwood Park salon. Through the large front window, I saw red velvet curtains with gold fringe edging, flocked wallpaper, and ostentatious crystal chandeliers. Rae had turned her wardrobe into a decorating theme. Although I found the decor incredibly tacky and way over-the-top, I did see the consistency of the atmosphere and suspected, like all good business people, she knew her customer intimately.
The tight branding of her business was also a sign that she had a fair amount of business acumen under her big blown-out hair. With multiple locations and franchising deals, she was smarter than her stereotypical appearance would suggest.
Could that be what made her dangerous to her estranged husband?
I’d spent last night holed up in my home office playing with sticky notes on my whiteboard, sorting through the bits and pieces of stories that seemed to have an overlap I didn’t understand. Or, at the very least, people who overlapped, even if the actual incidents were not related. Two judges were dead, likely by the same killer. An alderman taking payola from a construction company. One of the judges had a huge debt to a construction company. The other had an alleged history of accepting bribes from a construction company. The Chicken Shack owner was connected to the construction people. And Felix Panici seemed to know them all, including one of the dead judges.
Panici seemed to be the key. And his estranged wife appeared to not only have important dirt on the man, but she also hated him, which was a bad combination for a divorce and an excellent combination for a journalist.
Saturdays were prime time in the salon world, so I’d driven out intending to walk into the salon the moment the door was unlocked, hoping to miss the crush of appointments.
I could see Rae checking her styling sprays at one of the front chairs as a tiny woman with short black hair hung the “Open” sign and turned the latch on the front door.
I exited my car and made my way across the street and into the salon. A soft chime alerted the women as I opened the door. Rae looked up. The smile on her face faded for a second when she saw me, as if I wasn’t who she was expecting. The interior of the salon was even more grandiose in its decorating than I’d been able to see from the car. Enormous silk floral arrangements sat on pedestals in the corners. Leopard-print curtains cordoned off the shampoo station, and more hanging-crystal draped lighting dotted the back ceiling.
“I’m sorry. We don’t take walk-ins on a Saturday,” Rae said. “Viola can set up an appointment for you, or come back on Monday. We’re slower then.”
The woman who had unlocked the door was tending to a carton of shampoo that needed unboxing and placement on the retail display shelf. She scurried over to the front desk, her heels clicking on the tile floor as she walked, ready to check her computer for me.
“Actually, Rae, I’m not here for a haircut. I was hoping we could talk. I was at court yesterday when you and your husband were leaving.” I kept my language neutral, not knowing how chatty she was with her staff about her personal life. Stepping forward, I handed her my card.
“Husband? Hah! That piece of shit hasn’t been my husband in two years, regardless of what the legal system has to say about it. I have plenty of words for him, and husband ain’t one of them.”
That answered my question about whether the subject was sensitive.
She looked at my card, flipping back a swath of bang that had drooped over her right eye.
“So, do you cover the ugly divorce beat or something? Wait around for couples to come to blows? Didn’t know there were journalist versions of an ambulance chaser. Or is this outfit you work for a local version of Star Magazine? Do you have photos of us mid-scream?”
She stood, hands on her hips, defiant. Challenging my professionalism and my character. I had to smile at that. Images of the brawl in the courthouse lobby would have been perfect fodder if that was the type of organization Link-Media aspired to be.
“I don’t have photographs, but they would have been terrific action shots,” I said, getting a laugh in response.
She shook her head and shrugged. “Okay. What do you want? ’Cause I got appointments coming in any minute.”
Three additional stylists had found their way from the back room to their stations and were giving us curious looks as they prepped for the onslaught.
“You made some loose allegations about your husband. Something about knowing where bodies are buried. Suggesting that he might want to silence you. Can you tell me about that?”
I didn’t know how much time I had before a customer would be demanding her attention, so I led with the juicy stuff. Rae grimaced slightly, glancing over toward the gals. The first customer was already at the front desk, checking in.
“Come with me,” she said.
She led me out the front door onto the sidewalk while her employee Viola watched us closely from the front desk.
“Felix isn’t always on the up-and-up, business-wise, is what I meant,” she said. “I didn’t mean bodies bodies. He ain’t a killer. There’s stuff I know that could make his life hell, and I remind him of that now and then. But he wouldn’t dare come after me. He’s just a narcissistic prick who thinks he can intimidate me.”
Her explanation was vague, and I sensed intentionally so. “Not on the up-and-up” was not what she had screamed yesterday in the lobby. And I doubted something so bland was fueling the level of protection she thought she had.
“My understanding is that your divorce has been going on for quite some time. If you have knowledge of shady business dealings, wouldn’t that help move your divorce along? Apply extra pressure?”
Something felt unsaid here. As contentious as Cai said this divorce was, why would Rae hold back information that could settle the case in her favor? That wasn’t how divorce worked, not a divorce like theirs, anyway. You didn’t hold back the good stuff until the last minute, playing the odds on whether you should or shouldn’t put it into evidence. And Rae seemed to be holding this card close to her chest.
“You’re right. This divorce has gone on so long that I’ve seen Felix’s hairline recede two inches. The way he’s playing it, he’ll be needing hair plugs before we’re done. He got one judge kicked off the case for a trumped-up conflict of interest, and now our second judge is dead. So the whole timeline is shit. And that’s the way he wants it. Drag, drag, drag it out and he thinks he’ll win.”
Delay was not an unusual tactic, particularly when arrogant men were involved, but I wasn’t getting the full story.
“Felix ain’t exactly a choir boy. Never has been. And as they say, I’ve got the receipts. He just doesn’t know how many of them. So, yeah, I got that in my back pocket. What they call the nuclear option. If I need to, Felix and his… Felix, he’ll have to face some tough questions.”
What had she stopped herself from saying? Felix and his…what? She shot her eyes over my shoulder, realizing the near miss. I watched her face, seeing a glint of emotion. Fear, perhaps? Then she turned toward the shop, and my eyes followed. Viola was still staring at us intently. Too intently.
“You claimed you had an insurance policy. That sounds like you have evidence. Is that what you mean by receipts? Documents, a paper trail, or videos, maybe, that could prove he’d had suspicious business dealings. Or were they illegal business dealings?”
For an angry ex-wife, she was blowing a lot of vague smoke, but I couldn’t tell if it was bluster or self-protection. Rae was certainly hot-tempered, as was her ex, so the drama of dangling loose threats didn’t surprise me. But she also didn’t strike me as someone who would threaten if she didn’t have the goods. That left me wondering if she was holding back because she was complicit. That would explain her “nuclear option” comment. If she released on him, she’d be releasing on herself, too.
I knew from my own marriage that a wife wasn’t always enmeshed in her husband’s dealings. That phrase “a wife always knows” was utter bullshit, and I was proof. Whether Felix was engaged in illegal activity or just shitty husband stuff, I couldn’t assume Rae was knee-deep in whatever Felix was up to. But her silence felt like more than a divorce strategy. Who waits two years to trot out the dirt in court without a damn good reason? She was protecting herself or someone else. Why?
“Let’s just say I can back up anything I say. Felix can dangle on the end of that hook, wondering what I have, for as long as I decide to toy with him. And I hope that makes his intestines cramp. I’ve seen his world firsthand. I know how this works. I’ll get what I want eventually, one way or another. In the meantime, I’m happy to be a wild card.”
She shifted her hips and tossed her hair as a smug smile crossed her face. And there it was again, a vague reference to something bigger than just Felix and their divorce.
“Felix is an attorney, correct? What kind of business dealings would he have that wouldn’t be on the up-and-up, as you called it?” Of course, I had all kinds of ideas on ways attorneys could skim or manipulate filings, but Rae didn’t need to know that.
“The legal stuff, the day job, he can’t stray too far with that. But Felix always has a side hustle. Thinks he’s smarter than everyone else. There’s always some deal he’s cooking up. Doesn’t even keep it in the family. When his mind was still intact, my father never would have let him get tied up with that Russian. Family is everything. But Felix thinks he can play in the big leagues and control loyalties. Not outside the family, he can’t. He’s gonna learn the hard way.”
What? Side hustles? Family? The Russian? Rae was on a roll. She was giving me clues, but I didn’t have the framework to put it in perspective. I needed the decoder ring before I could make sense of this.
“What kind of deals are you talking about?” I asked.
A woman in her late fifties approached the door, her hair a platinum-blond version of Rae’s. “Good morning, Harriet. I’ll be right there. Just take a seat,” Rae said.
“I gotta go,” Rae said, once her customer was inside. “If you want more, help me out. Be a reporter. Uncover something. Go find his secrets. He has a lot of them. Maybe you can take him down so I don’t have to.”
She smiled wickedly and went back inside. I watched her sashay over to her waiting customer and turn on the charm, then I returned to my car. I sat in the car for a minute, jotting down notes while they were fresh in my mind, then scrolled Twitter and email for anything that I needed to address before I moved on. Abbiocco was my next stop.
Movement at the salon door caught my attention. Viola had walked away from the desk. She shot a furtive look toward Rae, stepped to the side of the door to be out of sight, and placed a brief call.
Was she reporting to Felix, perhaps?