Chocolate Heart Killer: A Pumpkin Hollow Mystery, book 14 by Kathleen Suzette (guided reading books .TXT) 📗

I smiled and headed over to the chair she indicated. “I’m so glad you could get me in. It’s been ages since I had a trim and the split ends have been bugging me. I don’t know why I waited so long.”

She came around to the chair as I took a seat and lifted up the ends of my hair. “Oh, you do have some split ends here. You’ve got to keep on top of the trims if you want healthy hair growth. What else are we going to do for you today?” Amber’s own chestnut hair was streaked with highlights and she wore it in a cute shoulder-length cut.

“How about a deep conditioning? I haven’t had one of those in ages.”

“Sounds good. What about highlights?” she asked, running her fingers through my hair. “We could do some really nice bright highlights for you." She looked at me in the mirror as she stood behind me.

“I think I’m going to skip the highlights,” I said. My hair was a medium brown, and probably could have benefited from some highlights, but I had begun squirreling away a little money here and there for the upcoming wedding. We hadn’t set a date yet, but I didn’t want to go into debt over it. Highlights could wait until the wedding.

She nodded. “Okay, sounds good,” she said brightly. “We’ll do a shampoo before the deep conditioning so it soaks in really well.”

She turned the chair around and laid it back so that my hair was in the sink. “I’m so glad the sun has come out,” I said as she got to work.

“You and me both,” she said as she turned on the water and began shampooing my hair. “I can’t stand when we go for days and days with an overcast sky. All those dark clouds wear on me. It’s depressing.”

“I know what you mean. I feel the same way about it.” I looked up at the ceiling, preparing to bring up Logan. “It sure was a shame to hear about Logan Michaels.” I waited to see what she would say.

We made eye contact for a moment and then she went back to washing my hair. “A shame? I suppose it was.”

That didn’t sound convincing to me. “It’s just awful that he ended up dying the way he did.” I wasn’t sure if it was common knowledge that he had been murdered.

She nodded and began humming. After a moment she stopped. “I heard someone murdered him.”

“I heard the same thing,” I said casually. I clasped my hands together beneath the plastic apron she had draped across me.

She nodded again and began humming and running water over my hair. “It’s always a shock when somebody is murdered. But then, sometimes it isn’t so much a shock. Not that it’s expected exactly, but it’s just not a shock, if that makes sense.”

I glanced at her. “What do you mean by that? Not a shock?”

She shrugged and continued rinsing the shampoo from my hair. “He was a terrible businessman. His shop was dirty and Beth Rogan’s husband picked up lice from his shop. Can you believe it?” Her eyes didn’t meet mine when she said it.

I tried to catch her eye, but she was busy rinsing my hair. “Lice? That’s awful. Are you sure about that?”

She nodded. “Sure am. Beth came in here so upset back in October, telling me about it. Her husband had gone there to get a haircut, and I’m guessing that Logan wasn’t sterilizing his combs and razors the way he should. Anybody would know that you can’t use something on more than one person’s hair without sterilizing it.” She made a clucking noise and shook her head. “Some people shouldn’t be in the hair business.”

I wasn’t sure how she was connecting these two things. Was she trying to say someone killed him because they got lice from his shop? But I couldn’t believe it was true about the lice. Ethan wouldn’t have continued going to Logan’s shop if he hadn’t kept things clean.

“What did Beth’s husband say about it? Did he say something to Logan?”

She nodded. “Sure did. He was hot about it. And I don’t blame him one bit. He’s been coming to me ever since.”

“What did Logan say when he confronted him about it?” I asked.

“He denied it, of course. That doesn’t surprise me at all. Logan was just a very shady character in general, and I’m not at all surprised that he denied it. It was just laziness on his part. It’s not like it takes a lot of effort to keep things clean.”

“What makes you think his murder had something to do with him not keeping his shop clean?” It didn’t make sense to me that she was linking the two.

“I guess I don’t know that for sure,” she said, hesitating now. “I’m just saying, his reputation around here isn’t that great. But if it wasn’t one of his customers, then I think the person that might have killed him would have to be his girlfriend, Mariah.”

Amber wasn’t making sense. First she was saying Logan’s death was because he wasn’t a good business person, now she was saying his girlfriend might have killed him. It made me suspicious. Was she trying to cover for something?

“Why do you think Mariah killed him?” I asked.

“Because the two fought like cats and dogs. Everyone knows that. They were on-again off-again more times than I can count. And Mariah, when she was off, she was off. I mean, she would go into a rage whenever someone brought Logan’s name up if it happened to be when they were split up.” She clucked again and shook her head. “That girl is something else.”

I wondered if this was true. Certainly by now most people knew that their relationship hadn’t been stable, but would