Read Killer Hair for Free Online Page A

prison would be dressed more attractively. Of course Lacey wasn’t really sure what nineteenth-century prison garb looked like, but the woman’s dirty gray outfit was punitive enough. The long, wrinkled skirt was gathered at the waist and would flatter no one. With it, the woman wore a matching oversized shapeless gray top, probably costing hundreds of dollars. Lacey hated gray. It was personal.
    Sherri Gold was angular and muscular in an aggressively overtrained way that looked obsessive. She had medium brown hair and a bony face that some might call striking, even scary runway-model beautiful, but to Lacey the flaring nostrils and oversized mouth resembled a gargoyle. Sherri opened that mouth and wailed. “What am I going to do? No one can cut my hair like Angie.” She pushed her hair away from her face with both hands. “It’s so curly. Angie was the one who taught me how to blow-dry it straight.”
    So you, too, can achieve the Washington Helmet Head. Lacey shook herself. “It’s tragic about Angie, don’t you think?” Lacey glanced toward the coffin.
    “My God, yes! Now I’ll have to go to New York just to get my hair cut. And it costs a fortune in New York. You have no idea.”
    “Yeah, first you gotta take the Metroliner,” Stella said.
    “Did Angie seem depressed when you saw her last?” Lacey asked Sherri. “Suicidal?”
    Sherri looked puzzled. Thinking about someone else apparently was a challenge. “I don’t know. We talked about conditioners.”
    “Did she seem unhappy, or upset about anything?”
    “Yes. She thought my ends were too dry. But she didn’t have what I needed. Why?”
    “Because she died that night,” Lacey said.
    “I know. Isn’t it awful? What am I going to do?” Sherri wailed and stalked off, leaving Stella doing a slow burn.
    “New York can have her.”
    “I’m with you, Stel,” Michelle Wilson, Stella’s assistant manager, said as she slipped in to sit on the other side of Stella. Michelle was a pretty black woman with skin the color of warm honey and striking amber eyes. Dark locks were coiled elaborately on her head. “Sherri’s one of those clients who just wants a celebrity stylist. She switched to Angie as soon as Marcia’s makeover was in the paper. With any luck she’s out of our hair now.”
    “What does she do?” Lacey asked.
    “I don’t know. Something on the Hill.”
    “Like Marcia?”
    “I guess.”
    “Did they know each other?”
    “I don’t know. But maybe, because Sherri was able to get Marcia’s slot after she canceled. Maybe Marcia told her the time was open.” Michelle picked up a memorial card and studied it.
    “There’s Ratboy.” Stella nudged Lacey and indicated a man of about fifty seated two rows behind them and to the right. He caught Lacey’s eye and winked. She turned back to Stella.
    “Ratboy? Your boss?”
    “Boyd Radford. The one and only.”
    Lacey turned back again and stared. From certain angles, the man did resemble a sleek, prosperous rodent. Radford must have been better looking when he was younger, she thought, but time was bringing out the rat in his DNA. Full-face he was almost handsome, in a high-school-jock-gone-to-seed way. But in profile, he had an elongated snout, a weak chin, mean little black bullet eyes, and slightly protruding teeth. His dark, slicked-back hair revealed a bald spot. The Rogaine wasn’t working, Stella reported; he was considering plugs. Apparently every stylist he employed called him “Ratboy” behind his back. Nevertheless, in the tradition of rich creeps everywhere and despite all evidence to the contrary, he believed he was a babe magnet.
    Boyd Radford was the owner of Stylettos, a growing chain of salons throughout Washington, Maryland, and Virginia. He was mean and feral, but he had managed to lock on to success in spite of himself. Boyd had inherited the salons from his uncle Maximilian, and with the genius of Boyd’s former wife, Josephine Radford, had seen them grow