Chapter One
New people who walk into Flo’s Bow Wow Barbers must wonder, for a second, which decade they’ve stepped into. There’s Flo, the owner, who still wears a beehive hairstyle. Then there’s Tammy, the dog bather. She’s had the same Big 80s hair that she had in high school. You have to admire that kind of commitment, right? The shareholders of Aqua Net probably send them fancy gift baskets from Omaha Steaks every Christmas.
Then there’s me. My style is however-the-girl-at-ProCuts-translated-what-I-just-asked-for. That stuff is timeless.
I love these women, though, and I love my job at Flo’s. I get to work with dogs, who I usually find more pleasant to be around than people; it’s steady; there’s not a lot of drama except for your occasional biter or the sometimes ninja-like reflexes one must develop to protect a freshly bathed and blow-dried dog from stepping into a mess said dog has, either from anxiety-induced gastrointestinal distress or merely revenge, just made.
You know how people say, “Oh, I just hate drama!” That’s not me. I like drama, as long as it doesn’t involve me. And Tammy doesn’t need much to get her own drama going. Usually, it’s a harmless drama that only she gets caught up in, but it’s interesting for the rest of us to watch. For instance, the time she thought the car dealership had put a tracking device on her car when she went in for a safety recall on her seatbelts. “Think about it,” she’d said. “Why would they just call all these random people in like that?” She knows who really shot JFK. She knows that’s not really Paul McCartney. Tupac isn’t really dead, he’s running a barbecue joint in Mississippi. Every politician that comes on television is a puppet for some rich puppet master somewhere. Once, a road trip took Tammy near Roswell, New Mexico and now every time she forgets something or loses something, she blames it on a likely abduction by a secret government agency when she got too close to finding their top-secret hiding place. They messed with her memory and she’s still feeling the effects today. She doesn’t remember being abducted or even finding something that looked like it might be a top-secret hiding place, because duh—she wouldn’t, would she?
One of Tammy’s conspiracy theories that had been a through-line since before I’d started work at Flo’s was that Charlie Polk, the owner of one of our favorite Keeshonds, Hieronymus Bosch Polk, was an east coast mobster like in the movies. As far as I could tell, this was based on the fact that he was a successful real estate developer, and he had a thin mustache. Plus, “he just looks it,” according to Tammy.
And maybe Charlie Polk didn’t look like your typical West Texas cowboy. He was thin and on the short side, with coal black hair courtesy of Just For Men. Texas men didn’t usually dye their hair, not that I’d noticed. That was a pretty big leap to east coast mobster, though.
Still, every time we saw Hieronymus (whom we all called Hero) on the appointment book, Tammy would start up her mobster theories. He’d come down to Texas to infiltrate and before we knew it, the place was going to be overrun with men wearing pinkie rings, putting out contracts on who knew who. “I mean, who names their dog Heironabus or whatever? Weirdo. Guy’s probably whacked so many people it isn’t even funny. Probably pets Hero and feeds him Jerky Treats while he watches his henchmen break people’s kneecaps.”
So anyway, Tammy wasn’t allowed to talk to Mr. Polk, so she hung at the doorway of the next room, half-hidden by the door jamb, and glared at him as Flo or I checked Hero in and out, then talked for the rest of the day about weird new theories.
When Charlie Polk asked me to step outside for a chat when he picked up Hero one day, Tammy just about swallowed her gum. She popped her head around the corner, her eyes bugged. She darted a look between me and Flo and back. She looked at the phone then back at Flo, as if it to telepathically scream, “911!”
“Sure,” I said as I opened the swinging half-door and led Hero through it. “Let’s just go out here.”
In the reflection of the front windows, I could see Tammy rush up to the counter and stare at us in disbelief, as if I had just casually agreed to Mr. Polk’s suggestion that I step outside so he could bust a cap in me. I picked up the pace, anxious to get outside before she did something like scream, “Salem no!”
I had no idea what the man wanted to talk about, but figured it was likely a dog-sitting job, or else he had a concern about Hero that for some reason he wanted to discuss outside of the hearing of the strange woman with the 80s hair who always glared at him from the kennel room.
“Listen, I see on the news that you work for a private investigator,” he said as Hero nosed around the front sidewalk.
I had not expected that. “Nope,” I said, shaking my head. “I do not.”
He frowned. “But…I saw on the news about you finding that scammer with that painting and solving that murder.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “Yes, we have solved a few murders, and we did find that scammer with all the art. But those were accidents. We’re not private investigators.”
Here’s the thing. For a while, my friend Viv and I did go around telling people we were private detectives. Well, mostly Viv did that. I tagged after her because, like I said, I like drama I can watch—and we did help a few people. But I’d found out a few months ago that it is illegal to call yourself a private investigator if you didn’t have a license—like, it’s an actual felony. So, I’m now very careful to make things clear, because I cannot afford the ten-grand fine, and I certainly never want to go back to jail. Things in my life are finally going pretty well. I don’t want to mess up my trajectory now.
Polk just looked confused. “I could swear I saw you on the news and that woman you were with—your grandmother? I thought maybe it was a family business.”
“Viv is just a friend,” I said. “We just happened to be in the right place at the right time to give the police a little help.” Should I tell him about the podcast? When Viv found out about the whole accidental-felony thing, she’d invented a story that we were investigative journalists with a podcast. That way we could continue nosing around in other people’s business and not get arrested for it.
Something caught my eye and I looked into the shop to see Tammy’s head emerge from behind a shelf of shampoos and flea treatments. Obviously, I didn’t want Mr. Polk to see her acting like such a whacko, but I also—and I know this is mean—enjoyed the thought of Tammy inside the shop, panicking that a black limo with blacked-out windows was about to slide up and I was going to get inside.
I reached out for Hero’s leash. “Let’s go around the corner so Hero can find some grass to pee on.”
When we reached the strip of grass between our parking lot and the street, I asked him, “What did you need a PI for? I could probably recommend someone.”
He sighed. “It’s a sad story, really. I’m doing this big downtown redevelopment project. You might have read about it.”
“Oh yeah,” I said. “A little bit.”
To say the redevelopment project had been controversial was an understatement. It was going to revitalize downtown, but it was also wiping out an entire neighborhood of small, low-budget houses where families had lived for generations. The owners had been compensated, but there was a lot of talk about how the prices they were getting wouldn’t be enough to get another house in town. The buyouts had forced many who’d had the benefits of stable homeownership into renting, and scattered neighbors who’d been friends for years to different parts of town. Most of this had taken place when I was still deep in my drinking days, and I hadn’t been particularly interested in the happenings around Lubbock unless it involved drink specials.
After I got sober, got this job, and started hearing Tammy’s crazy theories about Charlie Polk, I went back and studied up a little bit on the redevelopment. There was many a contentious town hall meeting about how the project would be good for the people who already had things pretty good—business owners, banks, big corporations with chain hotels and restaurants, and it was great for the university—but was devastating to low-income families who just wanted to stay in the neighborhood they were familiar with. Their houses might be small and not worth much, but they were their homes.
You might guess how much good that did. The last time I’d driven through that part of town, I saw lots and lots of cleared dirt lots, ready for some new hotel or apartment building.
“Those Yankees don’t care about family,” Tammy had declared when I brought up the subject at work. “Unless, of course, it’s the family.” Then she winked.
But I’d seen plenty of West Texas good ol’ boys in those town halls, using phrases like, “trickle down” and “a rising tide lifts all boats.”
“We’re making good progress,” Mr. Polk said, bringing me back to the present. “But I have one holdout that I simply cannot convince to sell.”
“One of the homeowners?”
“Yeah. The only house left on that block, and he’s holding out. I’ve offered the guy four times what the other residents got, and he’s not budging.”
“Some people can’t be bought,” I said, and instantly regretted it. Charlie Polk wasn’t a great tipper, but I did like Hero and, on the off chance Tammy was right on this one, I wanted to stay on Polk’s good side.
“It’s a sad story, really. The homeowner’s daughter ran away last year, and he’s afraid if he sells, she won’t know where to find him when she comes back. He says he’s staying, not matter what, until she comes back.”
“Wow. That is sad.” I was confused, though. If the owner didn’t go for four times the going rate, what did Polk think Viv and I were going to do? For half a second, Tammy’s lunacy got to me and I wondered if he was going to ask us to head over there and break the guy’s kneecaps.
“So, I told him I would find her. And that’s when I thought of you and your grandmother.”
I pictured the poor father, sitting in a cracked leather recliner in his little wooden house, a plastic flower pinwheel that was once his daughter’s stuck into the ground near the front porch. All around his tiny house, bull dozers cleared away his neighbors’ homes, men in hard hats ate lunches out of metal lunchboxes, three-story apartments rose and threw his tiny little house into the shade. And all the while he sat and waited, the plastic pinwheel fading and cracking.
It was enough to make me almost consider committing another felony.
But no. There were others much more qualified than we were. And this wasn’t the kind of story for Viv’s true crime podcast. I would feel sleazy, capitalizing on such a sad story just so Viv could have something interesting to do—and let’s face it, that was exactly the purpose of the podcast. Viv had more money and energy than sense, and she liked to get into people’s business. I liked going along for the ride, because she had a nice car and would sometimes buy lunch. I had no money, and since I’d quit drinking, I was kind of bored, too. That’s why we’d continued our private investigator act after we accidentally solved our first murder.
But there wasn’t really a crime to solve here, and anyway, we weren’t qualified to address it if there was.
I heard metal scraping against metal, and I looked at the back door to Bow Wow Barbers. The dumpster blocked most of the view, but I saw the door open softly, then close again. Above the dumpster, white frizzy bangs made their way along the edge and then disappeared behind.
If it’s possible to mentally roll your eyes, that’s what I did. I shifted so that Polk’s back would be to the dumpster, then leaned close and said in a low voice, “That is very sad, and I understand the position you’re in. But we really can’t help you. There are other people in town, though, who probably could.”
“Oh, they charge an arm and a leg,” he said with a dismissive wave. “I was hoping that because we already had this relationship built, you and I could work out a deal.”
You cheap son of a monkey, I thought. So that’s what this is about.
At the words ‘relationship’ and ‘work out a deal,’ Tammy’s face appeared above the dumpster, her eyes bugged.
Okay, enough was enough.
I straightened and said loudly. “Listen, just hold tight. I know a guy. Don’t do anything until you hear from me.” I shifted like I was moving away, but then said, “And it’s probably better if you and I don’t meet here anymore. This place isn’t safe for these kinds of discussions, if you know what I mean.”
From the look on his face, he clearly didn’t know what I meant, but I repeated, “I know a guy. He’ll be able to get this worked out to your satisfaction, boss.”
I walked away, knowing I’d left a confusing impression, but if he wanted clarity, he’d have to pay for it. Sheesh.
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