Holiday Hooligans: Cozy Mystery (The Teasen & Pleasen Hair Salon Cozy Mystery Series Book 3) Read online

  Holiday Hooligans

  By

  Constance Barker

  "I heard the bells on Christmas Day

  Their old familiar carols play,

  And wild and sweet

  The words repeat

  Of peace on earth, good-will to men!”

  Christmas Bells -Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  CHAPTER ONE

  Friday, December 9th — Seventeen days Before Christmas

  It was far too early in the morning for anything but coffee, but Ellen Hart wanted to talk and unfortunately, right or wrong, the customer is always the boss. Especially regular customers.

  No sooner did I get her in my chair at the Teasen and Pleasen Hair Salon than she started in on her current subject. “Savannah Jeffries, I’m telling you that you just wouldn’t believe what they do in Baton Rouge,” Ellen Hart said.

  It seemed like whenever anyone went to a big city they inevitably came back needing to make comparisons with life in our little town of Knockemstiff, Louisiana. If they liked our little town, the comparisons always focused on the bad things about city life. If they were bored here, everything in the city was alive and stimulating.

  “Oh, I hope you're talking about some kinky stuff,” Nellie Phlint said. Nellie, who has been my best friend since childhood is our manicurist and makeup specialist. This morning she was engaged in trying to salvage Janet Tikkermann’s badly bitten nails. “It’s a slow day so whatever you saw needs to be kinky,” Nellie said. “In fact any juicy news coming from the evil big city should be disgusting and perverted or what’s the point?”

  I could see the look on Ellen’s face as she considered her options and quickly opted to ignore Nellie. Ellen has no sense of humor and it unnerves her that she can never figure out when Nellie, whose sense of humor is overdeveloped, is teasing. By opting for assuming that Nellie is always teasing she manages to walk a safe path.

  “I just got back from visiting my mother in Baton Rouge. My husband and I went for Thanksgiving but decided to stay for a few days. We don’t get there often, so we wanted to spend a little time with her and see the place. You must know how that is.” I didn’t really, but nodded wisely. Running a salon you learn to do that and then find yourself doing it a lot.

  As the mayor of Knockemstiff and the owner of Hart Realty, Ellen tended to see every other town and city, regardless of its size, as a competitor to Knockemstiff, Louisiana. Never mind that it isn’t clear what we were competing for or that the entire population of Knockemstiff, all 768 souls, could fit into one of New Orlean’s bigger hotels and there would still be room left over for a small convention. Ellen was always on a full tilt campaign to promote the virtues of our little town. I guess she saw our tendency to get the Christmas decorations up later, which I was sure was more to laziness than planning, as some sort of product differentiation.

  I always admired Ellen’s energetic, even hyperbolic civic spirit, and she was serious about being a good mayor, but at times the speechifying could be a bit much.

  “Anyway,” Ellen went on, “I was shocked to see that when I went out for a walk the morning after Thanksgiving the city had already started putting up the Christmas decorations.” She paused to let us see that she was, indeed, shocked and likely to see if we were as well. “Even worse, all the stores were already decorated. They must’ve had everything in the back room all ready to go even before Thanksgiving and then worked all night to be ready. I mean they had all new Christmas displays out and huge sales going on. Apparently they normally do that, because it was insane. They had more people than you can imagine into the malls and big stores.”

  “They want to take advantage of Black Friday,” Nellie said.

  Ellen looked puzzled. “No, it wasn’t just black people shopping—everyone was doing it. It was a madhouse.”

  I stifled a chuckle.

  “Black Friday is the biggest shopping day of the year,” Betina said from her station. The svelte redhead is our youngest stylist – she starting interning with us in high school and graduated a couple of years ago. “Haven’t you ever seen the news reports.”

  “I thought that was some sort of reality television show,” Ellen said. “You mean it’s a real thing? Why would people do that?”

  On the floor over by the cash register Finnegan moaned softly in his sleep, although you couldn’t assume it had anything to do with the conversations floating around his sensitive ears. See, Finnegan is an old blue tick hound. I never would’ve picked a dog like him, but I inherited from a man who used to live in our little town. His name is Connor O’Sullivan and once he was a friend, but now he is doing time for murder. It’s a long story but when Connor was arrested I wound up with Finnegan. I don’t mind, as he’s a good dog, almost invisible most of the time. He didn’t mind me adopting him either. He adapted to going to work with me most days and quickly became a fixture at my salon. A business can get away with things like that in a small town. In the city they scream about health regulations, although I don’t understand how that makes sense in a hair salon. Here, we were the go-to place in Knockemstiff for hair treatments, makeovers, manicures, and lots of gossip. So with Finnegan’s arrival it also got known as the place to pet a nice dog. We also serve pastries and coffee in an adjacent room that opens up with a few small tables where folks can commiserate about the goings on in their lives.

  That right there tells you a heck of a lot about the town of Knockemstiff and why I moved back here when my marriage, my entire life in Baton Rouge, went down the tubes. I’d opened the salon, hired Nellie and settled in for the duration. We’d built a nice business, hired Pete Dawson, a rather dashing twenty-one year old stylist, and then Betina. It hadn’t been easy, but it had helped me regain my self confidence and self respect and it was a good life.

  Now I found myself staring intently at the odd way Ellen Hart’s straight blonde hair lay limp over her forehead. Clearly something was wrong with her bangs but I was having trouble putting my finger on exactly what was bothering me about them. They seemed lopsided.

  “Hold still please, Ellen,” I said. Not being sure was making me a little grumpy. It didn’t help that Marshé Grosri, our local excuse for a grocery store, had run out of the French roast coffee I like. We buy it there in bulk about once a week, but somehow they forgot to reorder or decided it was too much trouble. I’d had to settle for some Mexican beans they said were dark roast, but I swear they didn’t have any kick to them at all. If I’d known Ellen was in Baton Rouge I would’ve gotten her to bring a big bag of the good stuff. Nellie had suggested we order it online and that was probably cheaper, but I figured that if you wanted to keep the advantages of a small town going, you needed to shop local, keep the other businesses going too.

  Unless, of course, they stopped getting in my kind of java. That would require drastic action. I might have to actually think about getting a computer.

  Ellen frowned as I circled her like a fighter, moving around the chair hoping a different perspective would help me sort out this odd hair problem. “I thought you liked Christmas,” I said, just to get the conversation flowing again.

  “I do. It’s an exciting time.”

  “I certainly can’t say the same,” Janet Tikkermann said. “It’s so awful the way people pretend it’s special.”

  Not having finished her explanation, Ellen ignored Janet. “I do like Christmas a lot, all I’m saying is that it seems crazy to start it so early, right on the tail of Thanksgiving. I can’t see how that�
��s really good business. You don’t get time to catch your breath from one extravagant display and pitch to buy things and here comes the next—a whole month before the big day. Of course I’ll be the first to admit that some of the decorations Baton Rouge puts up are really nice, but after a time who sees them? By Christmas Eve they're old hat. And with all the stores playing the same Christmas songs over and over again I’d think they'd just plain wear everyone’s Christmas spirit out before the holiday ever even started. I was there, in the city for just three days of it and I came home hoping I’d never hear another Christmas carol. I don’t think that’s the way to make Christmas profitable for the merchants.”

  “What would be better?” Nellie asked. Ellen snapped a glance in her direction and saw she was seriously asking.

  “Better?”

  “I mean how would you promote Christmas better?”

  Ellen poked a hand in the air. “Well, often as not scarcity makes something more desirable, so I’d make sure that we focused on the run up to the holiday, when you can smell Christmas coming.” As she thought through her idea, her face lit up. “I was thinking of a slogan… ‘Come to Knockemstiff, where Christmas is celebrated at Christmas.’ Maybe we could have the city council pass legislation that Christmas displays aren’t permitted until two weeks before Christmas.”

  Nellie laughed. “But the day after Thanksgiving Day is when all the big stores have their huge sales.”

  Ellen waved her hand in dismissal. “But we don’t have any big stores. Worse, our merchants can’t give huge discounts. What we can do is maybe make our town a place for a more relaxed and elegant Christmas experience.”

  “I know what you mean,” I told her, not meaning anything by it at all. I was pretty sure that ‘relaxed and elegant’ were the antithesis of Christmas for most people. “Oh, I see what it is now.”

  “What it is?” Ellen scowled, wrinkling her brow and making her eyebrow problems even worse.

  “Stop that.”

  “What?” she asked.

  “Stop that frowning. No frowning allowed.”

  “I wasn’t frowning.”

  “Yes you were, and you still are.”

  “Oh. But why can’t I frown?”

  “Because I’m calibrating your eyebrows—I need to get a baseline for this cut.” I’d finally seen the problem—the problem with her hair, not with early onset Christmas decorations. I’d been looking at her head wrong, staring at the bangs and blaming them for looking odd when it wasn’t her bangs that were wrong at all—it was her face. Her eyebrows were lopsided and that made the bangs look off kilter. It’s funny how you can know someone for a long time and never notice something like that, at least consciously.

  Now that I knew the problem, I could compensate. That would be what Pete did, that clever young man. He’d compensate and never mention Ellen’s lopsided eyebrows, unless it was to suggest that she work with Nellie to use makeup and trimming to even them out.

  “Pete never objects when I frown,” she said, putting me in my place.

  I nodded. “As far as Christmas goes, I don’t know or care much about anyone else, but we intend to put a ton of decorations up in the salon tonight. Sarah and I will do the house this weekend. There are seventeen days left until Christmas and that’s not nearly enough time for me to tire of it.”

  “Oh, anytime now makes sense,” Ellen said. She was trying to be conciliatory.

  “Don’t do it, Savannah,” Janet Tikkermann said. “Your salon is a safe haven. Don’t fill it up with that silly Christmas garbage.”

  “No? Why not.”

  “This place is perfectly fine the way it is, Savannah. The last thing you need here is a lot of Christmas trash making the salon look tacky. There’s no reason to clutter up the place, right Betina?”

  Betina, who was adding silver highlights to the dark hair of Melly Jackson, the town vet, sighed and shook her longish red hair. Betina took care of herself. Her hair could only be described as lustrous and when she shook her head it flowed the way it does on television when women with full-time hairdressers shake their heads, usually in slow motion. I have no idea what she did to it to make that happen. “I’m not the person to ask about Christmas decorations,” she said. In fact, I might be the very last person to ask.”

  That was a fair statement. Our normally ebullient young intern always seemed a little down this time of year.

  “I love Christmas,” Nellie announced. “It wouldn’t be great year round, but it gives the kids a reason to behave and I like to see decorated trees, presents, and tacky Christmas stuff everywhere. It’s so over the top that I have to love it. We have some really nice decorations for the Salon, Miz Tikkermann. Savannah and I have collected them over the years, hanging on to the best ones. And maybe some of them are slight silly, but Christmas is about fun and goodwill toward women.”

  “And men,” Betina said.

  Nellie grinned at her. “Well, some men. Like Pete.”

  “And Sanders,” she added.

  “Okay then, goodwill toward women, and Pete, and the Bald Eagle, and one or two others.” The Bald Eagle was what we called Sanders, because of his bald head. The seventy-two year old loved it.

  “Pshaw,” Janet Tikkermann said with great finality.

  I hadn’t ever cut Ellen’s hair before and hadn’t realized how tricky her simple cut really was. Hats off to Pete. She is his client and he has a way of making her look nice. Not pretty, but then she likes to have what she calls a professional businesswoman look. I know Pete is extremely tactful, but he also apparently understands exactly what that look means to her. She certainly loves what he does with her hair. And when it seems appropriate, like when she’s doing a television commercial for her realty company he convinces her to let Nellie do her makeup in a way that doesn’t insult her, or make her feel she does it badly.

  I’m sure part of that is that he flatters her. He’s gay, but he’s attractive and attentive, and Ellen isn’t above enjoying flattery from an attractive man. And Pete manages to develop a dialogue with his clients. I’ve heard them discussing her look, how she wants to be strong and confident, but not “mannish.” Pete apparently gets what she means by that too, and he never forgets to compliment her, telling her how good that professional look is for her.

  “Where is Pete today?” Ellen asked the question as if she had just realized he wasn’t there and that someone else was cutting her hair. I guess she’d been preoccupied with competitive city decorating.

  “He has rehearsals for the big community Christmas play.”

  “We have to call it the Holiday Season play now,” Ellen said. “What is it this year?”

  “It’s called ‘Santa vs. The Pelican’ but don’t ask me what it’s about. All I know is that Pete has a small part in it and that he’s the understudy for the part of Santa’s lawyer, which is apparently the male lead.”

  “Why would Santa need a lawyer?” Ellen asked.

  “Beats me.”

  “He probably got busted as a terrorist flying around over major cities at night with no flight plan. Who knows? It hasn’t been on the nightly news yet,” Nellie said. “We have no idea what the trial is about.”

  “I guess we won’t know until we see the play,” Milly said. “I always enjoy going, even though sometimes they aren’t very good. I like to support local theater.”

  “Sure,” Ellen said uncertainly.

  I’d been happy to give Pete the time off for rehearsals. He doesn’t ask for much and he’s reliable and cheerful. Almost a boy scout. A shy boy scout. His work with the theater was helping him be more extroverted. Of course him being off left me stuck dealing with Ellen’s hair, trying to figure out how he did whatever it was he did for Ellen Hart’s lopsided eyebrows.

  “It’s a busy time of year,” Ellen said.

  Art Granger growled his agreement. “It’s too darn busy for my taste. People are rushing around all crazy. Worse, they are buying up things and making everything more expensi
ve.” Art was sitting in our cafe area as he often did, sipping a cup of coffee, reading a magazine or two and eating the snacks we put out. Even when I buy good coffee, we make a big urn of it at a time, so our coffee probably isn’t as good as other places in town, like the Bacon Up, but it’s free. For Art that makes it the best coffee in town. Price is his prime consideration in all things. For instance, while he didn’t mind drinking our coffee and eating our snacks, he cut his own hair, without any concern that he gave himself a pretty raggedy look. Spending money on a trim was out of the question. “The price of everything seems to go up this time of year,” he went on. “Everyone takes advantage. Of course almost nothing is reduced after the holidays. It’s just an excuse to bump prices up. The merchants aren’t going to give us a break any time soon.”

  While I didn’t think our merchants ran their prices up for the season, there were things in the stores at this time of year that were expensive and I had to agree that everyone was getting busy. The hustle and bustle of the season was felt even here. Even without the people of Knockemstiff starting to market the season as early as possible, with us having no Black Friday for people of any color, the way Ellen was complaining they did in the big city, the demands of the holiday season had everyone rushing around crazily. I’m often amazed at how busy a tiny town like ours can manage so much drama and activity.

  “Nellie’s right, Miz Tikkermann,” I told her. “I’m sorry you don’t approve, but I’m afraid you will just have to put up with us trashing the salon with Christmas. We love our decorations and we’ve been looking forward to tonight. After closing we’ll have a little party and deck the halls. Most of us are excited about it, and we’ve been making preparations for some time. Just like the stores in Baton Rouge we have everything we need stored in the back room ready to go.”

  That earned me a rather heartfelt harrumph. I didn’t care. Every year Janet Tikkermann’s dislike of Christmas seemed to grow stronger. I never remember her being thrilled about it. She never decorated her house or went to Christmas parties, but the last few years it seemed that even seeing someone else celebrating the holiday got her angry. I didn’t care if my celebrating made her grumpy, but I didn’t want to be in her face about it either.