Aretha Moon and the Dead Hairdresser: Aretha Moon Book 2 (Aretha Moon Mysteries) by Linda Ross (reading books for 7 year olds .TXT) 📗

I sat politely on a brown corduroy sofa and looked around while Darlene fiddled with her pants.  The room was nice and neat, although the candles on the mantel looked as though they’d been through a hurricane.

I heard a ripping sound.  “Oh, crap,” Darlene said.  “Hold on.”

She left the room and returned a couple of minutes later wearing a different pair of pants.  The curlers were still in her hair.

“Let me just get rid of these,” she said apologetically, pulling at the curlers, which seemed to be glued to her hair.  They weren’t budging.  “Oh, crap,” she said again.  “I don’t know why they won’t come out.  I hope I don’t have to cut them out again.”

“You’ve had to do that before?”

“A couple of months ago.  That’s why my hair is so short.”  She was standing in front of a mirror behind the sofa, facing me as she talked.

I wondered why she was using the curlers again after that episode, but I guess we all figure things will turn out differently when we repeat a disastrous approach.  “Why don’t I put on a light so you can see better?” I asked.  I reached over and turned the switch on the lamp on the side table, but nothing happened.

“Oh, that light doesn’t work,” she said.  “None of them do.”

“None of them?  Why don’t you put in new bulbs?”

“It wouldn’t help.  As soon as I touch the switch the light burns out.”

“So you sit in the dark at night?”

“Yeah, pretty much.  I lit some candles one night, but I had to quit that after the curtains caught fire.”  She indicated the curtain on the window by the front door, and I saw that the bottom half was burned off.

There was a ripping sound, and a curler came away with a hunk of hair on it.  “Ow,” she said.

I couldn’t stand it.  “Here, let me try.”  I gently grabbed a curler and began to pull, but it wasn’t going to move.  “Have you got any hair conditioner?  And a towel?”

She nodded her head, and all the curlers bobbed like buoys in a channel.  She left the room and returned a minute later with a bottle of conditioner.

“You’re going to have to wash your hair again to get it out,” I told her.

“Oh, that’s fine.  I have to wash it every day anyway.  I’m always getting stuff in it.  Popcorn, bacon, windshield wiper fluid.”

I had her sit down on the couch and drape the towel around her neck.  Then I slathered conditioner on each curler and massaged it into the hair.  It was a gooey mess by the time I had each one covered.  Then I began the process of unrolling them one by one.  Once I got it started I was able to get the curler out without taking hair with it, but it was a long process.  Half an hour later Darlene had a lap full of curlers and a head of hair that looked like a tossed salad with too much dressing.

“Thank you,” she said.  “I’m so glad I didn’t have to cut them out again.”

“Have you thought about getting a perm or just wearing your hair straight?”

“I tried a perm and my hair fell out.  And if I wear it straight it just sticks out all over.”

I thought maybe that would be preferable to what she had going on now, but I didn’t say it.

“So tell me about getting struck by lightning and being able to make light bulbs glow.”  I figured I’d better get on with the reason I was here.

“Well, the first time I got struck by lightning nothing happened after.”

“You’ve been struck by lightning twice?”

“Well, actually three times.  Once when I was ten.  I was riding my bike home in a rain storm.  Then when I was twenty-five I was camping with friends and I got hit when I was in the outhouse.  That one was kind of bad, because the lightning blew the door off the outhouse and the roof collapsed.  We all had to use the men’s outhouse for the rest of the week.”

“Surely you didn’t stay there after that,” I said.

Darlene shrugged.  “I didn’t mind.  I mean I had a little trouble seeing, but the hospital said I was okay.  And everybody was having such a good time.”

“And the time this summer?”

“I was jogging through the park and lightning struck a metal trash can and jumped to me.  And then light bulbs came on whenever I got close to them.”

“So how come all of your lights are burned out?”

“That’s how it goes.  Sometimes they come on when I get close and sometimes they burn out.  I never know what they’ll do.”  She shrugged apologetically, and then her eyes widened when she saw my purse on the floor.  “You have a hole in your purse.  I’m so sorry.”

“It’s not your fault,” I said.

“It’s not?  Well, it usually is.  I mean, I don’t do anything deliberately, but things just happen when I get around stuff.”

“Well, this definitely isn’t your fault.  It was courtesy of a chihuahua who hates my guts.”

Darlene sighed.  “I don’t know why, but my whole life has been one big accident.  One disaster after another.  I don’t even date anymore.  I mean, what’s the point when they’re either going to start having accidents or go to jail after they meet me?”

“Really?”

“My first boyfriend dropped his bowling ball on his own head somehow and shortly after that he crashed his car into a massage parlor.  And it turned out that half the girls there knew him by name.  I dropped him, and my next boyfriend was bitten by a llama at the petting zoo.  He got an