Bode Chronicle:
BEAT THE WINTER BLUES AT BODE BEAUTY
Bode’s newly refurbished hair and beauty salon is having a sale.
Come on in and get a spray tan — perfect for the ball season with a free brow tint and shape.
Haircuts and up-dos will also be discounted, so pop in to see Gina and get a conditioning treatment half price for all of this month.
Mother’s Day packages including mani/pedi and facials will also be available.
Bode Beauty is open Wednesday through Saturday. Bookings recommended.
Feeling at a bit of a loose end without Faith, Anna wandered down to the cafe to see if she could be of any help to Mary.
“You’ve already done so much,” Mary said. “I couldn’t possibly expect you to do anything more.”
Mary was clearly struggling. Everything was clean and well organised in the kitchen but it was obvious there was too much work for her on her own.
“I’ve got nothing to do and nowhere to go for the next few days,” Anna told her, tying a rose-printed apron around her waist. “I really don’t fancy hanging out in the back of the van or talking to Mike at the garage all day. Seriously, I love this stuff. Let me help.”
“All right, but I’m going to pay you, you know. I’d be paying someone to do the work if I could find some help anyway.”
Anna thought about refusing, but that was stupid. She needed the money.
“Okay, I can help till Cliff gets back with my car part and fixes the van up.”
“I’ll pay you in cash if you like? Here, put this on.” Mary threw her a hair net and Anna pulled a face but tugged it on and stuffed her long ponytail underneath. She thought a little wistfully of her hairdryer.
While Mary dealt with the last of the morning tea crowd, Anna peeled eggs for sandwiches and made crème anglaise for the custard squares. Being in a commercial kitchen reminded her fondly of her chef school days, and of the part-time job she’d had in a bakery in Hamilton. Her flatmates had loved her when she’d brought home leftover sausage rolls and doughnuts at the end of the day. Hugely helpful when you were on a struggling student budget.
“Do you make salads for lunch, Mary?” she asked, when the older woman brought a stack of dishes back to be washed.
“I probably should. Maybe some of those fancy wrap things too, like you see in the city. Some of the younger ones ask for them, but I’m a bit of a stick-in-the-mud, I’m afraid, and I’m too old to change now.”
“It’s a lovely cafe. Very homely,” Anna said. “Apart from adding a few things like that, I really wouldn’t change much about it.”
“The older folk like what they like,” Mary agreed. “But they took it well when I put in the new coffee machine. A few complained that they missed their filter coffee but even Cliff was ordering a skinny latte within days. Silly old bugger,” she laughed. “I’m well ready to retire, but I do love the customers. Some of them have been coming here for years. Some I remember as wee ones bring in their little ones now.”
Anna had been introduced to several of the regular customers and had been surprised to find how welcoming they had been of her. She’d gotten so used to Aucklanders with their constant stressed, pressed-for-time attitudes. It was a nice change of pace to chat and not feel the need to rush.
She and Mary worked companionably together and by three had shut the doors. Anna cleaned the kitchen thoroughly while Mary took stock of what she needed to order for the next day. It was nice to do some physical work, Anna realised. She felt industrious, and like she’d accomplished something, even if it was just mastering the deep-fryer to get the glazed doughnuts just right.
“See you tomorrow, I’ll be here early,” Anna said with a wave as Mary locked up for the day. It was unlikely she’d have a great night’s sleep in the van, especially on her own. She was feeling a little bit nervous about being there without Faith, if she was being entirely honest.
Rather than go back to Rizzo too early she crossed the road and walked through the little park, admiring the early autumn colours and neat flower beds, and then wandered back up the main street. The hairdressing salon, Bode Beauty, was still open and the money Mary had paid her was sitting in a wad in her pocket.
It was a more modern shop than the rest on the main road. While most had flowering hanging baskets in their doorways, the hairdressers featured a black lacquered door with a diamante cut-glass doorknob and a sparkly fake chandelier in the entrance where a small counter housed a long glass jar filled with seashells and coloured glass beads. Two women stood chatting by the counter and they didn’t look busy, so on a whim, she pulled open the door and went in. The hair net had been awful and she’d felt like Ena Sharples all day. After her talk with Greg that morning, she felt ready for a change.
“Hi,” she called tentatively. The two women looked up and the shorter one, with the blue-black pixie cut, gave her a wide smile.
“Hey, come in. What can we do for you?”
“Are you free at the moment for a haircut?” Anna asked.
“Sure, no problem. I was just talking to Tina about the merits of gel nail polish. I’m Gina, by the way.” She held out a hand with short polish-less nails for Anna to shake. “Come and take a seat and we’ll see what we can do for you. What are you after?”
“Just a cut, I think,” Anna said, sinking gratefully into the squishy leatherette chair.
“No colour?” Gina picked up a strand of Anna’s hair and ran it through her fingers. “Nice blonde, by the way, you have well-looked-after hair.”
Anna sighed. “You know what, I’m kind of sick of the constant highlights and conditioning masks. And the blow-drying. Too much maintenance. Can you cut it all off? I love your cut but I don’t know if it would suit me.”
“You have a gorgeous face, lovely wide eyes. Any style would look fine but how about we go for a bit longer? Chinlength bob, perhaps with a bit of texture like you’ve just rolled out of bed and don’t give a shit.”
Anna laughed. “That sounds perfect. Kind of how I’m feeling right now.”
Tina’s waxing appointment arrived and she took her to the treatment room at the back of the shop. “Don’t go before I get to have a look,” she said over her shoulder.
It was nice to have a proper hair wash and Gina gave a great head massage. Anna told her so.
“Thanks, my husband would suggest I could put my strong fingers to better use.” She flexed her fingers and cackled. “Do you think he means opening jars?”
Gina started deftly pinning, combing and cutting and Anna’s hair soon lay in long, pale strands on the floor, like the old Anna had just shrugged off her fancy clothes and was now sitting bold and naked. A phoenix rising from the ash.
“You’re new in town, aren’t you? What brings you here?”
“How do you know I’m new? Do you know everyone here?”
“Pretty much. I grew up here as a kid and now I’m back, not much has changed. One thing about being a hairdresser is that you get to hear all the local gossip. Believe me, some of it I’d really rather not know. Last week, Audrey Graham told me that her husband likes to suck her toes, which is why she gets Tina to give her a pedicure every week. Audrey is about seventy. Not judging, you know, but there are some things you don’t need to be privy to.” She laughed. “So, what’s your story?”
“I’m on a road trip with a friend and our camper broke down,” Anna said. “Fortunately we were saved by a very hunky policeman who brought us into town and now we’re just waiting to get the van fixed.”
“You must mean Kurt. I don’t think anyone would have called our other cop, Wayne, hunky for at least twenty years. If ever.” She snorted and grinned at Anna’s reflection in the mirror.
‘He’s hot enough to make you want to commit a crime and have him cuff you. I suppose he’s married though?”
“Are you digging for information?” Gina laughed. “Kurt’s single. He was married to Julie but they’ve been divorced for years now. Nice guy too. How’s this length for you?”
Anna found she desperately wanted to know more about Kurt but couldn’t bring the conversation back round to him without seeming obvious. They talked about which celebrities they thought would hook up and who was going to be next to announce they were pregnant with twins and any chance to find out more about Kurt was lost.
Tina finished with her customer and came out from the back wearing a long zebra print trench coat with a matching handbag. “I’m off. Your hair looks amazing by the way. Are you still on for drinks later, Geens?”
“Sure, six sound good?” She stopped in the middle of scrunching product into Anna’s hair. “Hey, you and your friend should come too. Nothing fancy, just a glass of wine at the local pub. They do two for one on a Wednesday night and half-price nachos.”
It sounded a lot more appealing than a can of baked beans in the back of Rizzo.
“My friend, Faith, has gone to Invercargill for a few days but if you don’t mind me tagging along?”
“Of course not,” Gina said.
“The more the merrier,” Tina added. “It’s just down the road, past the hardware store. O’Leary’s.”
Anna unlocked the door to the garage, hoping to use the toilet and have a quick wash-up and put some makeup on before she met Gina and Tina at the pub. She was glad, on reflection, that she didn’t have to cook in the small staff kitchen, which consisted of an ancient kettle, a dirty microwave and a couple of coffee-stained mugs. There was a Formica table with two wobbly chairs and a seat in the corner with ripped crimson vinyl. It looked like it had come out of the front of a 1960s Morris Minor. The bathroom was worse, with a faded pin-up of a young Britt Ekland, who someone had given a handlebar moustache. Anna cleared a space in the grimy mirror and attempted to put a bit of makeup on. She swapped her T-shirt for her cashmere jumper but didn’t bother changing her jeans. She checked that Rizzo was locked, glanced around the yard at the dark shadows and wished King was there.
O’Leary’s was warm and crowded. It was a typical Irish pub, darkly lit with a row of beer taps lining the small wooden bar that ran along the back in an L shape. There were round wooden bar leaners and flags on the wall. A fiddle hung above the bar and two slot machines sat against a wall near the bathroom corridor. It smelt faintly of sweat and whiskey and there was a steady thrum of voices. Anna spotted Gina at a table by the window and wandered over to join her.
“Here,” she said, pushing a glass of white wine over to her.
“Take Tina’s drink since she’s not here yet. Probably peeling one of the kids off her leg or chewing Mike out about something. Besides, she owes me for last week.”
The wine was barely cold and tasted like it had come out of a cask but Anna wasn’t complaining. Tina arrived a moment later, throwing off her coat and flopping into a spare seat. There was a splodge of tomato sauce on her pale skinny jeans, marring an otherwise perfect look.
“Bloody hell, you’d think by now Mike would remember Cody only eats plain pasta, wouldn’t you?” she sighed. “Oi, where’s my drink?”
“Gave it to Anna here. You’re too slow.”
“I’ll get another four then,” she said, getting up. “Have to catch up. Nachos as well?”
She was back in no time, having pushed her way to the front of the bar, balancing a table number and four drinks. Men parted like the red sea as she came through and she carefully placed the drinks on the table. “So, are you one of the plumber chicks in the toilet van?” she said to Anna.
“What? No, we’re not plumbers. But we are in the van — it’s a long story.”
“Mike was telling me about towing you and I put two and two together that you were the chick from the salon. Said he’d never seen two such ace-looking plumbers but your van was shit.”
“Mike from the garage?”
“Yeah, my husband. His uncle Cliff owns the garage but he’s more or less retired. Mike’s been there since he left school.”
“Hey, you were all over the internet,” Gina said suddenly.
“There were a whole heap of students tracking you, weren’t there? Apparently if someone took a photo, their friends had to shout them a pint or something.”
“Should have got Mike to snap a picture then. I could have got you bitches to buy me a wine,” Tina sniffed. She’d almost drained her first glass already. “Hey, I have two little monsters,” she said when Gina gave her a look. “You’ve already got Molly off your hands.”
Anna was about to ask about husbands and kids when a cheery-looking woman brought over two huge bowls of nachos. She realised she hadn’t eaten since breakfast that morning and was suddenly starving.
Someone came around after that selling tickets for a meat raffle and they had another glass of wine before Tina announced she needed to get home. Her youngest, Cory, was only a baby and still liable to wake up a hundred times in the night, she told Anna. Gina declared she needed to get going too as her first customer was booked in for eight-thirty and Anna realised she’d need to be up even earlier to help Mary. They parted ways outside the pub, and Anna made her way back to the garage. Once again, she wished King was there as she pushed open the gate and slunk across the shadowy yard to Rizzo. Without even bothering to remove her makeup, she pulled on pyjamas and climbed into bed. She’d never sleep, she thought, on her own with all the noises of the night.
Shit, she thought, waking some time later. Why hadn’t she peed at the pub? It was all very well lying here thinking she’d go back to sleep and her bladder would wait until morning, but she knew it wouldn’t. Anna had never been overly afraid of the dark but the car yard freaked her out a little. The tow truck loomed like a menacing Transformer as she trotted across the asphalt, shivering from the cold. She unlocked the door and felt her way along the wall to the dirty bathroom. After she’d peed as quickly as she could, she crept back to the van, eager to get back into her warm bed.
A shadowy figure moved near the van. Anna froze. It was probably nothing. The light was playing tricks. She took a step forward and the shadow moved again. It was definitely a person and it spun towards Anna. She was close enough to see that it was a man, tall, head covered by a beanie. Anna’s mouth opened wordlessly. Her feet were glued to the spot. Her heart thumped loudly in her chest. The figure moved towards her, something in his hand, raised above his head, like the grim reaper in a horror movie.
Headlights from a car suddenly lit up the yard and shone on the man too. She could see now that he was holding a crowbar. A car door opened, and then slammed. A choking warbled sound erupted from Anna as relief flowed through her as the man dropped the crowbar, turned and fled, scaling the back fence surprisingly quickly.
“Stop, police,” a voice called. “Stay there,” he commanded Anna as he took chase. It was Kurt, she realised. He disappeared, clambering over the fence, after her assailant.
Anna wrapped her arms around herself and by the time Kurt came back she was shaking, both with adrenaline and cold. He was panting a little.
“Couldn’t catch him. He disappeared in a red Mazda but I got the plates. Are you okay?”
“I’m okay, I think. He was trying to get into the van.”
“Any idea who he was?”
Anna shook her head.
“Come on, hop in the car. I’ll put the heater on. I’ll take you back to my place for a cuppa.”
Anna made sure Rizzo was locked and climbed into the police car, suddenly very aware she was only wearing pyjamas. While Kurt went around to the driver’s side she took a quick peek in the rear-vision mirror. Her makeup was a complete mess but at least her new haircut still looked pretty good. Kurt opened the driver’s door and she quickly sat back, hoping he hadn’t seen her checking herself out.
“Nice hairdo,” he said. She was sure he was smirking and she wished she could say it wasn’t attractive.
“What were you doing down here anyway?” she said, coming off a bit snappy.
“Dad — Cliff — rang me to say you were staying here. Thought I might check to make sure you were okay.”
“So you specially came down because you thought I’d be frightened or something?”
“Part of the job,” he replied. His smile faltered. “Looks like it was just as well I did.”
They didn’t speak as Kurt reversed the car and drove a short way before turning into a driveway. It was too dark to see much but Anna could make out a single-level weatherboard house. Kurt led her into a cosy kitchen, not much changed from when it had been built in the 1960s from the look of it. He flicked on a jug and took two mugs down from a cupboard.
“Tea?”
“Thanks.”
“Milk? Sugar?”
“Just milk, thanks.”
They were silent again until he put a steaming mug of tea in front of her. Anna wrapped her hands around it gratefully. There was a heat pump on in the room and it was warm.
“What were you doing staying in the van anyway?” Kurt asked. “I thought you were at the motel?”
“We were going to, but we’re on a bit of a budget. It seemed wasteful when we had free beds just down the road. I’m sorry, we should have just checked with Cliff that it was okay.”
“Do you have any idea why someone was trying to break in?”
“You said he got into a red Mazda, right? Well, a red Mazda pulled up just before you rescued us from the roadside yesterday, and then it took off.”
“Yes, I remember.”
Anna sighed. “I think he was after the drugs.”
Kurt raised his eyebrows for just a second before he adopted what she imagined was his professional interrogation face and waited for her to continue.
“I think it might have been the same guy who we saw in Dunedin. He was trying to get into the van when we got back from lunch and said something about knowing the guy we bought it off in Wellington and leaving something behind. Faith thought it was the crappy rap CD in the glove box so she gave him that, but afterwards we thought it might have been the drugs he was after.”
“Go on.”
“Well, when we bought the van, we found some stuff in a little bag.”
“What kind of stuff?
“You know.” She lowered her voice. “Cannabis. Weed. Little Green Friends.”
Kurt barked out something like a laugh but then it became a cough. “So you think this guy followed you all the way from Wellington for, what, a fifty bag of weed? Maybe if it was a brick of coke …”
“Oh God, you don’t think my ex-husband’s got someone following me, do you?”
“Does he want you dead?” She was sure his lips twitched again.
“It does seem a bit unlikely. He’s a dickhead but he’s a bit squeamish.”
“But you think he might have you followed?”
“Well, only because I’ve left him.”
“So do you still have the weed?”
“No, we, er, burnt it.”
“You smoked it?”
“No! God, no. We threw it in a fire. We didn’t mean to inhale any of it.”
Kurt kept his mug up by his face but his eyes were smiling.
“Okay, so we’ve established you no longer have it. Is there anything else you’ve found in the van that someone might have wanted?”
“Nothing at all. Definitely not the budget brand baked beans.”
Anna finished her tea. “I guess I’d better get back. I’m helping Mary out tomorrow and want to get there by six if I can.”
“You’re not going back down there.”
“Like I said before, I can’t really afford the motel at the moment. I’ve still got to sort the finances from my split with my ex-husband.”
“We’ve no idea whether the guy will come back and he was clearly willing to assault you earlier. You can stay here. We’ve got a spare room.”
“We?” She felt a moment of disappointment. Gina must have got it wrong that Kurt was single.
“I live with my dad.”
“Oh. Right.” Now it was her turn to raise her mug up to cover her grin.
“Come on, I’ll show you to the room.”
Kurt led Anna down a hallway. She wondered which room was his but all the doors were shut, apart from one which was clearly the bathroom. He pushed open a door and switched on the light, holding the door for her to enter. “Sorry, it’s just a single but probably more comfortable than the van anyway. Bathroom’s across the hall, there are towels in the cupboard under the sink.” His eyes roved over her pyjamas briefly. “I can take you back to the van in the morning and we’ll pick up your stuff but you’d be best to stay here until Cliff gets back with your part. I’ll leave something for you to wear in the morning outside the door.”
“Thank you.”
He left, closing the door behind him, and Anna looked around. There was a bed against the wall, a chest of drawers next to it and a straight-backed chair in the corner. No other furniture. Two posters were pinned to the wall — the one above the dresser was an ’80s band picture of Guns N’ Roses and another, right beside the bed, of Pamela Anderson. A framed photo on the dresser showed a teenaged Kurt standing proudly next to a grey Ford Escort. This must be Kurt’s childhood bedroom, she thought as she climbed into bed, pushing the naughty thoughts that suddenly surfaced deep down into the recesses of her mind.
It took her a little longer to get to sleep this time thinking about Kurt in the next room, but when she did, it was for the same reason.