Oliver Twisted (An Ivy Meadows Mystery Book 3) by Cindy Brown Read Free Book Online

coffee. Not only did I need the caffeine boost, I hoped it might cover up what I suspected was pretty bad morning breath.
    Coffee might also help my Dickens hangover. Bloody images from Two Cities flickered in the back of my mind, like scenes on a big screen TV in a bar, with Harley’s imagined autopsied body interspersed between reels like an especially gruesome commercial. I wished I had time to talk to Uncle Bob. He always made me feel better.
    I shoved open the door to Sweedlepipe’s Salon at five past seven. Just one stylist at work this early, dressed like a Victorian barber in a white coat over a vest and tie.
    I felt an unwarranted sense of relief. It could have been the genteel normality of the scene, or it could have been the coffee. He was drinking coffee.
    It smelled better than anything ever.
    “Coffee,” I croaked.
    The stylist opened his mouth as if to say something, then thought better of it. He poured me a cup from a coffeemaker and carried it over to a barber-style chair. I took the hint and sat in the chair, where I was rewarded with the elixir of life.
    “Jonas sent me.”
    “Ah, the new girl. I’m Martin. Welcome aboard…I guess.”
    “What?” I craned my head to look at him.
    Martin leaned toward me conspiratorially, even though there was no one else in the salon. “I mean, maybe this isn’t the luckiest ship to be on right now. You did hear the news? About the dead body?”
    Oh no. Just when I’d banished those horrible images. But maybe I could learn something. “No,” I lied. “Who died?”
    “A crew member named Kawasaki.”
    “Really? How did he die?”
    “Someone found him locked inside a freezer.”
    I froze too. Could we have a serial murderer on our hands?
    “I heard he was stuffed inside it, dressed in costume like a girl.”
    Stuffed inside…dressed in costume…wait. “Kawasaki,” I said. “Like the motorcycle?”
    “I think so.”
    “You know him?”
    “Nah. You know how many crew members are onboard?”
    “Anyone you know a personal friend of his?”
    “No, but it was all anyone talked about in the canteen this morning: Kawasaki stuffed in the freezer.”
    Phew. I was pretty sure it wasn’t a serial murder, just a bad case of got-the-info-wrong gossip-itis, where Harley stuffed in a closet turned into another motorcycle-named guy crammed into a freezer. Like that Telephone game we played as kids. Still, now I really wanted to talk to Uncle Bob, to see if any news was circulating among the guests. I checked my phone. No reception.
    A weird noise behind me, like someone zipping up a tent flap over and over. I turned. Martin grinned at me as he ran a straight razor up and down a leather strap clipped to the counter. “You’re an actor, right?” He stopped sharpening the razor and lifted it to the light, eyeing its edge. “I always wanted to be an actor. I’d be a great Sweeney Todd.” He regarded the gleaming razor with a rapt expression. “The demon barber of Fleet Street,” he sang.
    So much for genteel normality.
    “Just kidding,” Martin said. Of course. Still, I was relieved when he put down the razor. “I don’t actually like straight razors, and I really can’t sing.” He couldn’t. “So what are we going to do with you today?” He lifted my orange and blonde hair by the ends. “Oh, honey. Were you trying to look like a cantaloupe?”
    “I do not look like a cantaloupe,” I said. “I look like a sexy Creamsicle.”
    “You were nearly a Bald-sicle. What in the world did you do to yourself?”
    After a bit more scolding about home hair products, Martin pronounced my hair unsalvageable.
    “What do you mean?”
    “Let’s just say it’s a good thing you have nice little ears.”
    An hour and a half later, I walked out of the salon with strawberry blonde hair. What was left of it, I mean. The whole inch and a half. Besides the near-buzz cut, Martin also gave me a wig he had in the back room, a rat’s nest of mouse-brown synthetic hair.