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“I heard my name.” A woman in her mid-forties, with curly blonde hair boasting plaits and pins and all sorts of funky shit, comes to the front desk and stares down at Rebecca for a moment. Not to intimidate, but as though to ask, ‘what the fuck?’
When the younger of the pair can’t formulate a sentence, Trudy glances up and raises a brow. “Gentlemen?”
“Detective Charlie Fletcher,” Fletch says, more professional now. “And my partner, Detective Archer Malone. We’re from Copeland PD, and we were hoping to sit down and have a chat with you.”
“Sure.” She flicks her wrist and turns on her heels for us to follow. “But I’m in the middle of a full head of foils, so either you wait an hour and I’ll come to you, or you speak while I work.”
She leads us into a giant gallery-type room—mirrored walls, and enough stylists’ chairs to make a man’s head spin. Only one chair currently has a client sitting in it, so Trudy heads back and picks up where she left off.
Foil. Paint. Fold. Continue.
“Is this about Melissa Boyd, by chance?”
“It is.” I come around to lean against the empty chair beside the client so I can look into Trudy’s eyes. So I can see her face and expressions when she answers my questions. “But why would you automatically assume this is about her?”
“Because I saw her face on the news this morning.” Foil. Paint. Fold. “And she didn’t turn up to work at nine. One and one makes two in my world, Detective. Is everything okay with her?”
“Uh… no.” Fletch pulls up a seat on the client’s other side and takes out his notebook. Slowly bringing his gaze up, he waits till Trudy’s painting hand stops. “Melissa Boyd was found dead last night in City Park.”
With a sharp intake of air, Trudy pulls her dye brush away from her client’s hair and places her free hand on her stomach. “No.”
“Unfortunately,” Fletch continues, “evidence leads us to believe her death results from foul play. So we’re talking to everyone who was close to Ms. Boyd in hopes of getting an idea of what happened in the days preceding her death. Did she work yesterday?”
“Y-yeah, she did.” Shaky now, Trudy steps in and continues her work. Maybe she’s a workaholic like everyone else we know. Or maybe the motion of her hands calms her. “Mel works six days a week, and she’s never not here, except a couple times in the last few months for doctor appointments. But they were always planned ahead of time and her clients were taken care of.”
“What time did she work yesterday?”
Fletch writes, so I keep my attention on Trudy. On her client. Even on the hovering Rebecca as she inches closer.
“What time did she start?” he clarifies. “What time did she finish?”
“Her first client was at nine,” she rasps. “She took a break around one,” she looks across to Rebecca as though to confirm, then she nods and goes back to work. “She took an hour at one. Back at two. Then she and I closed up a few hours after that.”
“Long day.”
“They usually are,” she murmurs. Foil. Paint. Fold. “Many of our clients work a nine-to-five schedule, so we get those we can in during the daytime hours, but often, we move our lunch to fit them in, and work late to get the others after they’re done for the day. It’s not uncommon to work well past dinnertime.”
“How was Melissa acting yesterday?” I ask. “Was she happy? Sad? Worried? Distracted?”
“She was normal.” Foil. Paint. Fold. “Completely and utterly normal. We worked. We discussed life, in between clients. We discussed all the things we typically would.”
“How was Melissa’s pregnancy progressing?” Fletch looks up and waits with a lifted brow. “Was she unwell? Excited?”
“She wassoexcited,” she says. Her words imply happiness, but her eyes hold grief. “Things were starting to pick up speed, so her excitement was growing.”
“What was picking up speed? What do you mean?”
“She was having contractions. Irregular,” she adds. “Nothing too painful. Her doctor was aware, and they’d agreed to let it happen however nature intended.”
“What does that mean?” I look to Fletch, since his experience as a father clearly makes him a pro on the subject. “How nature intended?”
“It means she was only eight months along,” Trudy fills in. “Still a little early, but every single scan she had of the baby showed it was growing ahead of schedule. Her doctor was confident the baby would not suffer as a result of early labor, so when the mild contractions began, he was fine with it. They wouldn’t stop it, but they also wouldn’t actively speed it up.”
“How were her contractions yesterday?” Fletch asks. “Are we talking about the pesky Braxton Hicks, or the fully fledged kind?”
“Braxton Hicks.” When Rebecca sets down a fresh bowl of paint, Trudy goes to that one and starts on a new color. “They were a little nasty, took Mel’s breath away once or twice, but we read that if she sits down to rest and has a drink of water, and they go away, then they’re not the real thing.”
“Nothinghelps the real thing,” the client finally speaks up. She’s a woman who is easily fifty or sixty years old. Her hair is a silvery gray underneath the foil, but the colors Trudy paints in come in every shade of the rainbow. “I’ve had three children of my own, and she’s right. Braxton Hicks go away when you stop and rest. It’s the body’s way of making an expectant mother slow down. But when it’s the real thing, ain’t nothing gonna stop that train, no matter how hard a woman tries.”
