“I HAVE AN appointment at six-thirty,” Grace stated crisply, stepping up to the receptionist’s desk. Behind it sat Mary, an impossibly shy creature with a head of lank hair that seemed to forever fall into the girl’s eyes, despite her attempt at harnessing the mess of it into a ponytail.
“She isn’t running behind, is she?” Grace glanced at the gold watch on her wrist, thinking that she had to leave town by seven-thirty at the latest if she wanted to arrive on time for her eight o’clock meeting with her publisher at Tony’s in downtown St. Louis. “I’m on a tight schedule—”
“No,” Mary quietly interrupted. “LaVyrle’s never late.”
“Good.”
“She’s finishing up with Mrs. Beaner, so if you wouldn’t mind having a seat. Um, we’ve got the latest Midwest Travelers magazine in if you’d like to take a peek.”
“I’m good.” Grace sat down and stared toward the salon’s rear where LaVyrle had her private cubby. As she shifted to get comfortable, the chair’s vinyl upholstery emitted a series of squeaks.
She found a dog-eared copy of Good Housekeeping and was impatiently thumbing through it when she inhaled a strong dose of hairspray from above. She slowly raised her eyes to see Bertha Beaner, the bigger, if not better, half of Art Beaner, chairman of the town board, glaring down at her. She clutched a large satchel to her heaving chest as her beady eyes shot daggers.
“Hello, Bertha,” Grace said, bracing herself for what was to come. “Can I help you with something?”
“Help? That’s the last thing I’d want from you!” the woman said with a snort. “I do hope you’re satisfied with yourself, Grace Simpson. “You’ve got this whole town all shook up.”
Grace set aside the magazine and calmly asked, “What exactly are you accusing me of?”
“You must know I mean your horrid book!”
“Ah, my horrid book.” Grace wrinkled her brow, setting her hands in her lap. It was hardly the first time one of River Bend’s denizens had approached her lately and acted as if she were Lucifer. Funny, because not too long before that, they had behaved as though she were a savior, there to solve all their problems. “I find it interesting how excitable everyone’s gotten when it’s not even published. How can you judge a book you haven’t even read?”
Something changed in Bertha’s doughy face, and she reached inside her satchel, withdrawing a legal-sized pad full of rumpled yellow pages. “Oh, I’ve read enough.”
Grace blinked. No, she told herself. It couldn’t be. Nancy had kept everything under lock and key while she’d typed up the book. And she’d looked Grace in the eye not twenty minutes ago, assuring her that the notes had been destroyed.
“Cat got your tongue?” Bertha snapped, and her overripe features flushed. She leaned in to hiss, “How dare you ask us to trust you with our deepest secrets, only to peddle them to a publisher for profit! And you have the nerve to call it academic! Rubbish!” Mrs. Beaner puffed. “It’s disgusting, that’s what it is, Grace Simpson, and if you go through with this publishing deal, either God will strike you down for it, or one of us will!”
“How did you get that?” Grace grunted and jumped from her chair, snatching the yellow pages from Bertha’s grip. “It belongs to me!”
Bertha looked mad enough to spit. Instead, she turned on her heel and slapped a bill on the counter in front of a wide-eyed Mary. Then she stomped out of the beauty shop with her newly-coiffed head held high. The door shut with a bang, and the plate-glass window behind Grace rattled.
Grace felt rattled as well.
Would all of River Bend blame her for the broken water main last winter, too? How about the murder that happened before she’d even moved to town?
“So she’s a fan of yours, huh?”
Grace hadn’t noticed LaVyrle approach. She’d been too busy wondering if she should fire Nancy tonight or wait until her incompetent assistant showed up at work in the morning.
“Yeah, my biggest fan,” Grace muttered, trying not to tremble as she bent the legal pad in half and stuffed it inside her purse.
“People are funny.” LaVyrle’s dark brows arched high above eyelids painted a robin’s egg blue. “They sure like talkin’ about others, but they don’t like it a bit when they hear someone talkin’ about them.”
Grace rose from her seat, taking a step toward the beautician. “Ah, LaVyrle,” she said and set her hand on the woman’s shoulder. “I do believe you’re the only person in town who knows more about the people who live here than I do.”
“Right,” LaVyrle remarked as she led the way toward her secluded station. “But with you, all they get for their money is advice. With me, they get an ear to listen, plus a cut and blow-dry.”
Grace couldn’t help but smile. “And that’s why therapists will never put hair salons out of business.”
“You got that right, Mrs. S,” LaVyrle replied, chuckling. “Just leave your purse under the counter and head on back so Mary can shampoo you.”
“Yes, yes, I know the routine by heart,” Grace said and ditched her bag as instructed. It wasn’t as though Bertha Beaner was going to stomp back to LaVyrle’s and try to steal the legal pad. She’d already seen enough to get her good and riled.
“I’ll get you all fixed up for that dinner in St. Louis I heard you tellin’ Mary about,” the beautician assured her.
“You’re a godsend, LaVyrle.”
“Me?” LaVyrle blushed. “Nah,” she said with a flip of her hand. “I’m just a girl doing her best to make an honest buck.”
Grace grinned at LaVyrle, thinking she probably liked the small-town beautician better than anyone else in this burg. LaVyrle reminded her of a kindhearted and middle-aged gangster’s moll. “What I think, sweetie,” Grace said as she headed off to the shampoo sink around the corner, “is that there’s a lot more to you than anyone knows.”
“That’s ’cause I do all of the listening and they do all the yakkin’,” LaVyrle hollered after her.
And it was a good thing they did talk, Grace mused as she tracked down Mary for a shampoo, or else there would’ve been nothing for her to write about and less still about which the patrons of LaVyrle’s could gossip.