Just then, Weiss found the shop he wanted. He was rapping on the glass door. Pressing his nose to the cold surface of it to peer inside. MOSTLY YOU, the place was called. WIGS AND HAIR EXTENSIONS. The sign said it was closed for lunch until two o’clock. But Weiss had been in the coffee shop across the street and seen the man go in.
The shop was on the border of the Haight. Right between a smoke shop that served the last of the local stoners and a Century 21 that catered to the incoming gentry. Another investigator would’ve felt less eager coming here, would’ve figured it was just another stop in a long, half-hopeless canvas of the city’s stores. But Weiss, with his weird instincts for other people’s minds, had gotten used to being right about such things. He knew he was getting close.
He knuckled the glass again. A round white face appeared mistily in the shop’s inner gloom. The man in there put on a mime show, shaking his hands, tapping his wristwatch: We’re not open yet, go away. Weiss rapped heavily again, insistent. Rolling his eyes heaven-ward, the man inside came toward him down the aisle.
The man in the wig shop was the owner, it turned out. Patrick Fandler. What Weiss thought of as a standard-issue city homosexual: crew cut, hipless, blandly handsome, the slacks and pullover painted on.
“What does the little sign tell us?” he said, annoyed, as he cracked the door open. “Lunchy-time. It’s only a wig store, after all. Whatever you need, I’m sure it can wait.” Then, taking a glance at Weiss’s sloppy salt-and-pepper hair: “Or maybe not. I wouldn’t want to turn away an actual emergency.”
Weiss pushed a card through the crack in the door. “My name is Weiss. I’m a private detective.”
“Are you? Just like in the movies?”
“Pretty much. Except not. Could I come in and ask you a couple of questions?”
Fandler considered the card another moment. “Mi casa es su casa,” he said then, and he stepped back and pulled the door wide.
Weiss followed the man up the aisle to a counter in the back. The remains of a tuna salad sandwich sat in its wrapper atop a display of weaving extensions. The bizarrely curled stretches of brown and blond hair lay under the glass like the trophy tails of hunted animals. Weiss set the photograph of Julie Wyant down on top of them.
Patrick Fandler took a single glance. “Oh yes,” he said. “I could never forget that hair.”
Weiss nodded. He had hoped for as much. No one, as far as he was concerned, could ever forget that hair. He kept his hangdog expression in place but he could feel his inner systems ratcheting up. He was excited.
“And that face!” Fandler went on. “She was so beautiful she almost made me wish I was a lesbian.”
Weiss lowered his chin by way of acknowledging the joke. “This is about three months ago?” He wanted to be sure.
“Yes, about then.”
“And did she buy anything?”
“Well, yes, that’s why I remember. She bought a wig.”
Weiss managed to keep his deadpan. But he had to breathe deep to steady himself. “A wig.”
“Yes, and I mean, why would a girl with hair like that want to cover it with a wig?” said Fandler.
“Right,” said Weiss. And he thought, She’s alive. He was sure of it, suddenly, standing there in the little shop. Julie Wyant was still alive. She had faked her suicide, disguised herself with the wig and run away.
“She bought three, now I think of it,” said Fandler. “One blond, two brunettes, one with sort of auburn highlights. She tried them on right in here.”
He led the way down a narrow aisle to a curtain. Pulled the curtain back. Weiss looked into a cluttered changing room. A stool, a vanity table, a lighted mirror. He gazed at them. The stool, the mirror. She had sat right there. She had looked at herself right there. It made his old heart go thumpety-thump just to think about it. And she was still alive.
“She said the funniest thing,” said Fandler.
Weiss glanced at him. “Yeah?”
“She was trying on the blond one I remember. I just gave a little peek in to see how she was making out, you know. And she was studying herself, turning this way and that with the wig on. So I said, ‘Is everything all right?’ And she looked just…so sad, for a moment. So terribly sad. There were absolute tears in her eyes. And she said to me—I remember this so clearly—she just looked right at me in the mirror and said, ‘Well…I’m still me anyway.’”
Weiss turned again to look at the stool, at the mirror. Thinking about her, his heart thumping.
“‘I’m still me,’” Fandler repeated softly.
Jarring, Weiss’s cell phone rang. He blinked, came to himself. Drew it from his jacket pocket.
“This is Weiss,” he murmured.
“It’s Ketchum,” said the Inspector’s voice. “Get over to SFO jig time. I just got you in to see the Identity Man.”
Weiss only nodded. Slipped the little phone back into his jacket. Stood another second, staring at the vanity table.
I’m still me, he thought.
Julie Wyant was alive.