Snared (Elemental Assassin #16)(53)
Someone was sitting inside the vehicle now, although I couldn’t tell exactly who, given the dark tint on the windshield. I did have the impression that it was a man, although I didn’t get a clear look at his features, which were hidden by a hat, his sunglasses, and the thick scarf he had wrapped around the bottom half of his face.
He spotted me too. For a second, I thought that he might gun the engine, jump the curb, and come roaring at me, trying to mow me down with his car. Instead, he threw the vehicle into reverse, wrenched the steering wheel, and whipped a beautiful U-turn right in the middle of the street. Three seconds later, he was speeding away in the opposite direction, and I knew that he would be long gone by the time I reached my own car.
“Dammit!” I snarled. “Dammit!”
For a mad, mad moment, I thought about chucking my knife down the street after the car. Not because I had any chance of hitting the vehicle but just to relieve some of the anger and frustration surging through me. But that would have been petty and pointless, so I forced myself to take deep breaths, slow my racing heart, and think things through.
Whether it was the Dollmaker or someone else, whoever had been watching me had wanted me to find the gold Glo-Glo tube. Someone had wanted me to know about the Heartbreaker color. Someone had deliberately left me a breadcrumb. Well, I was going to oblige the bastard.
Time to follow the lipstick trail.
? ? ?
I slid my knife back up my sleeve, got into my car, and cranked the engine. I also took a moment to pull the lipstick out of my jeans pocket and set it in the cup holder in the center console. The gold tube glinted in the sun, almost like an eye slyly winking at me over and over again, daring me to find out where it had come from. Well, at least I wouldn’t be going back to Jade empty-handed. I had a clue, and I was determined to follow it.
Even if I still didn’t know who had left it for me or why.
I pulled out of the parking lot and headed toward the one person who might be able to give me some answers about the lipstick: Jolene “Jo-Jo” Deveraux. Her salon was close to Northern Aggression, so I decided to visit her first and see what I could find out before I reported back to Jade.
Twenty minutes later, I steered up a driveway and squeezed my car in next to several others already parked. The front door was always open during business hours, so I let myself into the white plantation house and walked down the long hallway to the back of the structure, which opened into an old-fashioned beauty salon.
Cherry-red salon chairs were lined up in a row along one wall while stacks of glossy magazines and plastic pink tubs full of nail polish covered all the tables. A long counter ran along another wall, bristling with combs, curlers, scissors, styling irons, nail files, makeup brushes, and every other beauty tool known to womanhood. The air smelled of hair dye and other chemicals, although the harsh aroma was somewhat softened by the sweet vanilla that Jo-Jo infused into her homemade healing ointments, facial scrubs, and other beauty treatments.
Thursday was one of the salon’s busiest days, since everyone was getting their hair, nails, and faces done for the weekend. Every chair in the salon was full, with several women reading magazines and letting their hair slowly set under the industrial dryers.
I headed over to the far corner of the room, where a middle-aged dwarf with perfect white-blond curls was painting the nails of a little girl who looked to be about five. The girl had on a poofy pink princess dress, along with a slightly askew silver plastic tiara and sparkly pink ballet shoes, as though today was a special occasion. Her mother sat nearby, waving her own freshly painted nails back and forth in the air to help dry them.
Jo-Jo looked up at the sound of my footsteps. So did Rosco, her basset hound, who was comfortably ensconced in his white wicker basket in the corner.
Her face creased into a smile. “Gin! What brings you here today?”
“I was wondering if you could help me with something.”
“Of course,” Jo-Jo said. “Just give me a few minutes to finish up with this little birthday princess.”
She winked at the girl, who let out a pleased giggle. Jo-Jo bent over the girl’s nails again, and I sank onto one of the sofas to wait. I eyed a stack of magazines on the table at my elbow, but they all focused on beauty tips, fashion, and hairstyles. Not exactly my milieu, but I picked up one and flipped through it just to have something to do. Beside me, two women in their early twenties with pink curlers in their hair chatted back and forth as they waited for Jo-Jo to get back to them.
“I can’t believe that you talked me into competing in the Miss Ashland Pageant,” one of the girls, a pretty brunette, complained. “If I’d known it was going to be this much freaking work, I would have told you no.”
The other girl, an equally pretty redhead, rolled her eyes. “And I told you that it would be an easy way to get some scholarship money. So chillax already and enjoy being pampered.”
The brunette huffed, crossed her arms over her chest, and slouched a little lower in her chair. “Well, I still say that our hunting trip to Cloudburst Falls next weekend will be way more fun than this.”
I brought my magazine up to hide my grin. Beauty pageants one weekend, hunting the next. Ah, the wide and varied interests of Southern women.
I agreed with the brunette, though. Hunting was always much more fun. And I was going to bag a serial killer before all was said and done.
Jo-Jo finished up with the little girl and her mom, then checked and made sure that her other customers were okay by themselves for a few minutes. She crooked her finger at me, and we headed into the kitchen for some privacy. Rosco let out a loud woof, heaved himself to his feet, and followed us in hopes of scoring a doggy treat.