The Brush Off by Laura Bradley Read Free Book Online

Smacker scratched his head.
    Scythe said nothing.
    “I sharpened the pick so I could use it to clean the other brushes and blow-dryers and tools in my shop.”
    “Sharpened? With what?” Scythe asked quietly, ominously.
    “A kitchen knife.”
    “Doesn’t your profession have tools you can purchase to do that cleaning?”
    My invisible hackles rose at the patronizing way he’d said a “profession,” kind of the way he might refer to the world’s oldest profession. Apparently, he accorded them equal respect. Like none. I forced my urge to argue back down in light of the obvious suspicion in his tone. “I’m cheap,” was all I said.
    Gum Smacker snorted. Scythe’s left eyebrow half quirked.
    “Right,” Scythe muttered, turning away. He spoke to his companion. “Fred, I think the print tech can lift the latents now.”
    “Yeah, enough of this jacking around.”
    Fred Gum Smacker ambled off.
    “Who’s that?” I asked.
    Scythe turned his intense focus back on me. “My partner, Fred Crandall. You ought to be honored. He doesn’t tone down his swearing for just anybody. You probably remind him of his daughter.”
    I tried to imagine a feminine version of Crandall and shuddered. Jackson Scythe had definitely not just delivered me a compliment. In the absence of hackles and bared teeth, his statement deserved an eye-to-eye challenge. I balanced on the balls of my feet and tried to use my quadriceps to stand. It didn’t help much. I unfolded like a rusty old picnic chair. I felt the burn of dry-ice eyes.
    “What’s the matter with you?”
    “My back went out yesterday,” I grumbled, rolling my head and gaining a little relaxation in my neck. My back refused to give, though.
    “Oh?” Only his right eyebrow shagged up. I was beginning to recognize that eyebrow movement as an alert to suspicions, as opposed to his half-hitch twitch on the left, which indicated surprise. Give me twenty more minutes with this guy, and I’d have him completely pegged. “How did you hurt your back?” he asked quietly but not softly.
    “By driving my brush into my friend’s back, that’s how,” I snapped, irritated that he’d suspect me and tired of putting up with his cop psychology. One look at the well-hidden laughter in his face told me he never really did suspect me. He was just playing with me—the old cat and mouse—and that made me even angrier. “What kind of cop are you? Don’t you want to take my confession?”
    Crandall snorted. “Your confession of what? Getting a bad haircut?”
    I looked in the mirror at the asymmetrical bob I’d coached one of the stylists at my shop through just two days before. I liked it. My hair swept straight down from a left side part to brush my right shoulder, tapering up around along the nape of my neck to the left side, where it just brushed my earlobe. Anyone could see it was a stylish statement. Maybe it was the color that was distracting him. I had to admit the shade, called red wine, was really closer to a cherry Coke and didn’t particularly complement my fair skin. It tended to bring out the freckles sprinkling the bridge of my nose. I knew I shouldn’t have tried such a risky color, but being naturally blond was so boring. Sometimes I just had to break out.
    “Watch it, Fred.” Scythe’s voice was low, but its warning was not.
    “What, hotshot? Maybe we’ve found our motive. If Ricardo cut her hair to look like a flying saucer, I’d call that motive for murder.”
    “I apologize for my partner; he’s of the old school. I think your hairdo”—his eyes roamed over me, head to toe again—“suits you.”
    Scythe delivered the comment in the same impassive way he said just about everything else, which made it hard to tell how it was meant. There were a lot of ways to take what Jackson Scythe said.
    “Alejandra, a stylist at my shop, gave me this cut,” I answered neutrally, watching as a fingerprint technician shuffled in, unpacked a little kit and began