A Minute on the Lips Read online

  When Andi went to see Lynn, they always had the same conversation. As the bells rang over the door to the Hair Port, that conversation started as it always did.

  “Morning, Sheriff. It’s good to see you.”

  Andi nodded.

  “Are we gonna make any changes this time?” Lynn asked.

  Andi could understand Lynn’s total lack of hope when she asked that question. Today, Andi glanced around the shop to assess the crowd. It was a pretty light day so far, but things changed quickly at the Hair Port. As the only shop on the courthouse square, Lynn and the other three stylists got a lot of walk-in traffic. Normally that made Andi happy. Good business meant that Lynn would stay here and keep notes on her color mix. Now Andi wanted the smallest crowd she could get as she said, “Let’s do something different today, Lynn.”

  Crickets aren’t a normal sound in the middle of town, but if there’d been any around, they would have had a nice little concert. There was absolute silence in the Hair Port, as though all the humans in the room were collectively holding their breath and the air-conditioning was waiting for the okay to run. Andi glanced around self-consciously.

  The Hair Port went for a minimalistic style. Everything was white. White walls, white floors, white furniture, white uniforms and white drapes on the customers might make a person wonder if this was what beauty shops in heaven look like.

  Lynn shot a quick look at the other stylists and held out her hand. “Well, now. That I did not expect.” She patted her chair. “Just what did you have in mind, Sheriff?”

  Andi cleared her throat and slunk across the floor to hunker down in the seat. Her shoulders rose protectively to hover around her ears, but she’d already started this. “Well, I don’t want to change the color.”

  Lynn nodded. “Yeah, I can see that. It’s a pretty good color for you, maybe just a bit redder than your normal brown but not enough so people think you’re channeling Lucille Ball.” She pulled the rubber band out of Andi’s hair, and the heavy weight spread across her shoulders and down the middle of her back.

  Lynn turned Andi to look into the mirror as she ran her fingers through her hair. “Lots of curl. We could go short and get some really pretty ringlets going, Sheriff.”

  Andi shook her head slightly. “I don’t want to lose the ability to pull it back. I can imagine the trouble I’d have with the old codgers on the square if I looked like a fluffy girl.”

  She looked at the curls balanced precariously and beautifully on Lynn’s head and wondered what it would be like to have that much control over her hair. Lynn smiled and said, “Sometimes it’s good to be a fluffy girl, Sheriff.”

  Any sign of softness would be seen as weakness by Ray Evans. And even in Atlanta, far from this town and before elections, Andi had difficulty with softness. She’d spent a lot of time pretending she was in control. She had kept most relationships perfectly cordial and businesslike and performed every task she was given well enough to leave no room for criticism. Both really helped her in the FBI, an organization that appreciated no-nonsense hair. Andi sighed. “Yeah, I think I might like it, too, but let’s go somewhere in the middle. Can you do that?”

  Lynn nodded. “Yes, ma’am, I can do that. We’ll cut some of the length off, maybe put in some long layers so that when you want it to curl, it has nice body, and...what do you think about bangs this time around?”

  It was only hair, right? Lynn had asked about bangs every two months since they’d started working together. Maybe it was time to embrace the bangs. “All right. Let’s go for bangs.”

  Lynn and her stylists whooped as if she’d said, Remember the Alamo. Andi started to worry right then and there.

  A drape floated across her lap, and Lynn snapped it shut. She patted Andi on the shoulder as she said, “I’m going to go mix up your color. Want something to drink?”

  “Do you have tequila?” Andi muttered under her breath, but it wasn’t low enough.

  Lynn laughed and answered, “How about a bottle of water? Will that do instead?”

  As she returned with the hair color and the water, the bell over the door rang and two ladies entered. When Andi saw Miss Margaret, a retired sixth-grade teacher, and her best friend, Edna, who’d been secretary at the First Baptist Church since Noah built the ark, she sighed in relief. Edna was the biggest gossip in town and didn’t need much to prime the pump. Normally Gram caught up with them at Purl’s Place, the town’s one-stop craft shop, which was run by Andi’s best friend, Tammy, and her mother. With a few well-placed questions, Andi could sit back and soak up the news. They were both decked out in the latest in grandma chic: blinged-out velour sweat suits.

  “Well, good morning there, Sheriff!” Miss Margaret still used her perky, let’s-all-get-ready-to-learn voice when she spoke to anyone under forty. That made sense. She’d been the first person to tell Andi she needed good grades to get into college. Andi probably hadn’t even thought about college at eleven, but it had been good advice and it stuck with her.

  Miss Margaret had helped her get out of Tall Pines the first time. She might not have recommended a double major in Mandarin and Persian Studies, but it’s hard to tell where life’s twisting paths will take a tween. They’d been highly sought after fields for FBI work. For retail jobs in Tall Pines? Not so much.

  “Hi, Miss Margaret.” Andi would have nodded also, but Lynn was slowly moving over her head with a smelly, frothy paintbrush. Every now and then one sprig of hair would flop over her eye. She tried not to think about how ridiculous she might look to anyone who glanced in the window. And she pasted on a smile of greeting for Edna. When the two ladies were settled in chairs with Sue and Rhonda, two stylists in the shop, Lynn threw out the first volley. “Did you hear about the fight Amanda and her husband got into last weekend at the Smokehouse?”

  Everybody knew someone who’d been there at the time, which might or might not have been true but it was a popular place. Apparently George had been spending too much time out on the lake instead of manning the smoker and Amanda’d had enough. Andi squirmed through that conversation, certain her date with the newspaper man would be the next hot topic. She told herself she was hanging on every word because a good sheriff knew clues could come from the most unlikely places. Lynn finished up the hair color and had Andi move over to one of the more comfortable chairs in the waiting area. She took a long drink of water while she listened to the conversation swirling around the shop. When they’d finished enumerating the long list of people who were fighting, going on vacation and coming home from the hospital, Andi cleared her throat. “Uh, Lynn, are we almost done with the first round?”

  Lynn nodded. “Yes, ma’am. Let me go set up for the highlights and it’ll be time.”

  Margaret and Edna continued to flutter and flit through all the juicy stories. Andi watched the hand on the clock. At some point, someone would ask her about Jackie. And if she was lucky, no one would ask her about Mark Taylor. And then it happened.

  “Why, Sheriff,” Miss Margaret said, “I meant to ask you this when we came in, but can you tell us about what happened at the diner?”

  Andi heaved a mental sigh. The best course was to stick with the facts. Any time Andi gave her opinion, it came back through the grapevine as gospel. “Yesterday morning Jackie called me over to the Country Kitchen because someone broke in and took the contents of his safe and his trophies. I don’t have any new developments at this point, but I’ll be interviewing people today. I hope to have some more information for Jackie tomorrow.”

  “The newspaper man was a suspect,” Edna said.

  Miss Margaret tsked. “Some people will try to pin every bad thing on the newest person in town. I just can’t see that nice young man doing something so terrible.”

  Andi bit her tongue. It was nice to hear her giving a newcomer the benefit of the doubt. Andi’s burgeoning hope for mankind was da
shed when Margaret added, “He’s too handsome for something like that.”

  Edna snorted. “Handsome doesn’t mean innocent, Margaret. You ought to know that by now.” Much as Andi hated to agree with Edna, this time she was right.

  Margaret flapped her hands as Sue walked her over to sit under the dryer next to Andi. “Of course I do. But it certainly doesn’t hurt, does it?”

  She had a good point there.

  “All right, Sheriff. Come on back, and we’ll rinse that out of your hair so I can add the highlights.”

  Warm water nearly always made Andi sleepy. Despite her certainty that she’d lie awake contemplating every single thing she’d said to Mark Taylor and pondering every one of his smirks, she’d slept much better than the night before. But she kept waking up from weird dreams. All of them had featured Mark in some form or fashion, but her favorite had been seeing him launched to the moon with a monkey companion. She had watched a show about the space program before bed. That had to be it. She didn’t even want to think about the symbolism.

  After she rinsed the color out, Lynn led Andi back to her chair and gave her hair a quick rough cut and dry. As Andi watched her work through newly cut bangs, she listened. Margaret, Edna and the rest of the ladies were on a juicy topic.

  Edna took the lead. Sue was removing the rollers she’d used to set her hair so clearly time was winding down. A few fluffs and Edna would run out of prime beauty shop time.

  Edna casually studied her nails to ratchet up the suspense. “Well, I don’t know whether or not y’all have heard this, but I got the news from Rosa down at the grocery store. She saw it all herself so it’s the honest truth.”

  There was that word again. Truth.

  If those crickets had miraculously shown up in the Hair Port, they would have been able to hear a pin drop right then. Lynn had lifted the dryer to check again or Andi would never have heard Edna’s intro.

  Into the tense and expectant silence, Lynn said, “All right, Sheriff, let’s go get you a rinse.”

  Andi hoped she’d be fast. The shampoo was usually her favorite part, but she wanted to hear Edna’s hot lead. Andi made a mental note to start spending more time in the grocery store and monitoring Facebook. For work purposes, of course. It would be sort of like listening to the police scanner but in reverse.

  When Andi thought about it, her growing interest in the sources of all this “information” worried her. Growing up as the focus of the stories that spread through town, she’d been certain other places were different. They weren’t really, mainly because Andi was the same. Whether Andi was in Tall Pines or Atlanta, she wanted to know what was going on. And even worse, she wanted to drop something juicy just to watch eyes light up. There was power in knowing something no one else did. She imagined Edna felt the same and squirmed in her seat. If she stayed here where she knew everyone and everyone knew her, someday she might be sitting in this same chair, wearing a blinged-out tracksuit, happy to share the latest thing she’d overheard. She might be Edna someday. And eighteen-year-old Andi, the one who’d hated being the focus of that interest, would be gone.

  Secrets, Andi. You wanted to know them. Pay attention.

  When Lynn finished rinsing her hair, all the ladies in the shop were discussing who had the best source of up-to-date news. The Hair Port was the undisputed winner.

  Miss Margaret cut through the chatter. “All right, so everybody’s got a different source, but I want to know what the story is, Edna.” Oh, me, too. Thank you, Miss Margaret.

  “Well,” Edna said, and paused dramatically. “I hate to be the one to spread the news, but there’s been a truck parked over at Maylene’s house.”

  Andi suppressed a shrug, but there were titters all around. Lynn’s steady scissoring paused for a second then she asked, “Whose truck is it, Edna?”

  Andi could see Edna’s face in the mirror. She looked very, very happy and alive in a way that she hadn’t when she walked in. The pink tint to her fluffy curls might have helped with that a bit.

  “It’s Jimmy Monroe’s truck, ladies.” And Andi would swear every head in the place swiveled in her direction. They probably expected her to have known somehow, but she didn’t track the movements of her deputies after they left work. Besides that, he was single. And Maylene’s divorce had been final for at least a year. They were both in their late twenties, old enough to know exactly what they wanted and smart enough to understand the consequences at this point. Unless they were growing an illegal crop or plotting a treasonous rebellion, Andi didn’t care. And she was ready to set an example—a nice, indifferent example.

  At the growing silence, Andi decided she had to say something. She looked up at Lynn. “Are you done?”

  There was a silent but collective sigh. The windows of the Hair Port didn’t fog up at the heated disappointment, but it was a close call. Lynn said, “Yes, ma’am, let me dry this out so we see what we’ve got.”

  Andi nodded. When hair started flying, she closed her eyes and pondered what she should say. Lynn worked quickly and soon Andi could feel a fluffy cloud of curls touching her shoulders. When she turned the dryer off, Andi kept her eyes closed. She’d once received a direct shot to the eye from a can of hairspray. Without protective gear to fall back on, she used her eyelids.

  After Miss Margaret and Edna paid, they paused at the door and Edna, possibly burned at how little reaction Andi had given her news, said, “Well, Sheriff, I do hope you’ll tell Jimmy that his activities with Maylene have not gone unnoticed.”

  Andi risked opening her eyes to meet Edna’s glare directly. “He’s a grown man. She’s a grown woman. They’re both single. There is nothing illegal in their activities, and as such, I do not consider it any of my business.” Andi watched Edna narrow her eyes and said calmly, “He does an excellent job of serving this town. Until it affects me directly, I’m not going to spread this story around, much less hurt my friend Jimmy by repeating gossip.”

  Edna made herself as tall as she could. Andi wasn’t impressed. At best she was the center of the front row. She’d never be back-row material. “Gossip? I would never repeat gossip.” Andi squeezed her eyes shut and bit her tongue, silently willing Edna to move along. “Rosa saw it herself. I’d think as sheriff you’d be interested in the goings-on of your deputies.”

  Andi shook her head. “And maybe you ought to take a little trip to the dictionary for the definition of gossip.” She couldn’t help it. She had to go there. “The fact is that there’s been a truck parked in front of Maylene’s house. Big deal. You’ve made that into some kind of...who knows what you imagine they’re doing. But it’s not your business or mine. And spreading it while implying something...else about it, that’s gossip, Edna.”

  Edna sneered, and Andi knew she was in for it. “A girl like you, somebody who could turn her back on her own grandmother, forget this town and her family just like her father did, might not understand the importance of good laws and good morals, but we value both here in Tall Pines,” Edna said. “A good sheriff would understand that.”

  Andi heard the emphasis on you. The rest of the shop heard it, too, and there was a gasp from one of the other stylists. Things were about to get real in the Hair Port. There was no way she could let that pass, but she had no idea what to say that wouldn’t set Edna’s newly pink and fluffy hair on fire.

  Before Andi could gather her breath and her wits to let Edna know what she thought about her viciousness, she heard a masculine drawl from behind her. “Now, Edna, there’s no call for that. The sheriff doesn’t love a good story like the rest of us, but she’s also loyal, something we like in our sheriffs, am I right?”

  When Andi spun around, she found Mark Taylor in Sue’s chair. He must have come in while she was deep in the blow-dry stage because she wouldn’t have missed his entrance for any other reason. Sue was trimming his hair, and he was clearly on his
way to shorter but still rumpled. And he looked pleased with himself. Maybe he’d managed to avert verbal Armageddon with his cleverness, but Andi wanted to unleash on Edna. She wanted to say the magic thing that would convince people in this town to leave Jimmy and Maylene alone, to realize that what they said could hurt people, not smooth over choppy waters.

  Mark smiled at Andi in the mirror. Miss Margaret seized her chance to usher a calmer Edna out the door. “Well, ladies, it’s been a real nice visit.” The clang of the bells over the door was a welcome sound. And simultaneously all the women in the shop took a deep breath.

  Lynn whipped off the cape and said, “Sheriff, why don’t you take a peek and let me know what you think?”

  Andi managed to tear her eyes away from Mark’s to see what Lynn had wrought. She had to give the girl credit. Even if she didn’t look old enough to operate a motor vehicle, Lynn was a magician with scissors. Andi had appeared tired and frumpy but businesslike when she walked in. Lynn wiped all that business away and now Andi had bombshell hair that fell in nice fluffy waves to her shoulders. Bangs softened her look and she might even seem younger. Around here, that could be a problem. But she’d worry about that later.

  Andi spun the chair around, stood and walked over to Sue’s station.

  Mark Taylor smiled up at her and then whistled long and loud. “Howdy, Sheriff. That’s a real nice look for you.”

  “How long have you been here? Are you following me?”

  He tried to seem innocent. “I did warn you, Sheriff. We could do dinner or I could continue to show up when you least expect it. But I’ve had this appointment for a month. You can ask Sue.” Sue pursed her lips but didn’t make eye contact. He might have been telling the truth but it didn’t look good.