“Oh, well, they seem to be certain enough that I was there anyway,” she said. “His identification won’t change anything.”
I should have begun to catch on then, but I fumbled it. The roof had to fall in on me before I realized why the news about that deputy sheriff made her so happy.
“Well, Pygmalion,” she said, “shall we commence? I’m quite eager to begin life as Susie Mumble.”
I was digging through the pile of women’s magazines. “There’s more to it than a haircut,” I said. “You have to
learn to talk like Susie.”
“I know. Just don’t rush me, honey.”
I jerked my face around and stared at her. She was
smiling.
“You catch on fast,” I said.
“Thanks, honey. I’m tryin’ all the time.” She had even dropped her voice down a little, into a kind of throaty contralto purr. I was conscious of thinking that her husband and Diana James and even the police force had been outnumbered from the first in trying to outguess her.
I found the magazine I was looking for, the one that had several pages of pictures of hair styles. Some of them were short-cropped and careless, and they looked easy. I had a hunch, though, that they weren’t that easy.
She was sitting upright in the chair, waiting. I folded the magazine open at one of the pictures and put it on the coffee table where I could see it and use it for a guide. I looked from it to Madelon Butler. The long dark hair just brushed her shoulders.
She glanced down at the picture and then at me with amusement. “You won’t find it that simple,” she said. “Carelessness is very carefully planned and executed.”
“Yes, I know,” I said. I took the scissors out of the bag and went into the bathroom for a towel and comb. I put the towel around her shoulders, under the cascade of hair. “Hold it there,” I said.
She caught it in front, at her throat. “You’ll make an awful mess of it,” she said. “But remember, it doesn’t matter. The principal thing is to get started, to get it cut, bleached, and waved. Then as soon as my face is tanned I can go to a beauty shop and have it repaired. I’ll just say I’ve been in Central America, and cry a little on their shoulders about the atrocious beauty shops down there.”
“That’s the idea,” I said. I pulled the comb through her hair, sighted at it, and started snipping. I cut around one side and then stood off and looked at it.
It was awful.
It looked as if she’d got caught in a machine.
“Let me see,” she said. She got up and went into the bathroom and looked in the mirror. I went with her. She didn’t explode, though. She merely sighed and shook her head.
“If you were thinking of hair dressing as a career—”
“So it doesn’t look so hot. I’m not finished yet.”
“All right,” she said. “I’ll tell you what you’re doing wrong. Don’t cut straight across as if you were sawing a plank in two. Hold the comb at an angle and taper it. And let each bunch of hair slide a little between the blades of the scissors so it won’t be chopped off square.”
We went back and I tried again. I’d left it plenty long intentionally so the first two or three runs at it would just be practice. I cut the other side and evened it up.
This time I got away from that square, chopped-off effect, but it was ragged. It was full of notches up the side of her head. She looked at it again.
“That’s better,” she said. “And now when you’re trying to smooth out those chopped places, the way to do it is to keep the comb and scissors both moving while you cut. Let the hair run through the comb. That way they’re not all the same length.”
I tried it again. I got the hang of it a little better and managed to erase some of the notches. Then I combed it again and went around the bottom once more, straightening out the jagged ends. We went into the bathroom and took another look at it in the mirror. I stood behind her. Our eyes met.
“It’s pretty bad,” I said. “But there’s one thing.”
“What’s that?”
“You sure as hell don’t look like the pictures of Mrs.
Butler.”
“Remember, darling?” she said in that throaty voice. “I’m not Mrs. Butler.”
“It’s a start,” I said. I went out and got the bottle of bleach. I handed it to her. “Mix yourself a redhead.”
While she was working on it I cleaned up the rug. I rolled the cut-off hair in the newspapers and threw the
whole works down the garbage chute.
We were erasing Madelon Butler.
No, I thought; she was erasing Madelon Butler. I had suggested it and started the job, but she was the one who knew how to do it. I could see her already getting the feel of it. She was brilliant; and she was an actress all the way in and out. When she finished the job they’d never find her. The person they were looking for would have ceased to exist. The coolly beautiful aristocrat would be a sexy cupcake talking slang.
It was two-thirty. I tuned the radio across all the stations and found a news program. There was no mention of her or of the deputy sheriff. I wondered if she had been lying. Well, it would be in the late editions.
She came out of the bathroom. She had finished shampooing her hair and was rubbing it with a towel. It was wild and tousled, and she looked like a chrysanthemum. I couldn’t see any change in the color.
“It looks as dark as ever,” I said.
“That’s because it’s still wet. As soon as it’s dry we can tell.”
She raised the Venetian blind again and sat down on the rug before the window, still rubbing her head with the towel. In a few minutes she threw the towel to one side and just ran her fingers through her hair, riffling it in the sunlight.
“I could use another drink,” she murmured, glancing around sidewise at me.
“You live on the stuff, don’t you?”
“Well,” she said, “it’s one way.”
I went out to the kitchen and poured her another. When I handed it to her she gave me that up-through- theeyelashes glance and said, “Thank you, honey.”
She looked like a chrysanthemum, all right, but a damn beautiful one. And the pajamas didn’t do her any harm.
“Practicing Susie again?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said. “How’m I doin’P”
“Not bad, considering you’re riding on a pass.”
She looked up at me, wide-eyed. “What do you mean?”
I squatted down in front of her and ran my fingers up into the tousled hair at the back of her neck. “You’re trying to get in free. From what I hear of Susie, she talked like the rustle of new-mown hay because she’d been there and she liked it. But I’d be glad to help you out.”
The eyes turned cold. “Aren’t you expecting a little too much?”
“How’s that?”
“Not even Susie could match your abysmal vulgarity.”
“Well, don’t get in an uproar. I just asked.”
“So you did, in your inimitable fashion. And now if you feel you have received an answer that is intelligible even to you, perhaps you’ll take your hand off me.”
“This is Susie talking?” I didn’t take the hand away. I moved it. It wasn’t padding.
“No,” she said. She put the drink down on the rug. “This is Susie.”
She hit me across the face.
I caught both her wrists and held them in my left hand. “Don’t make a habit of that,” I said. “It could get you into trouble.”
