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with sequiny evening gowns draped artfully across backseats and sparkly tiaras hanging from rearview mirrors. Mr. Race must have garnered a corner on the Girls with Glittery Crowns market. No wonder Bud liked to get his hair cut there. I patronized Cecil’s Barber Shop for Men in Osage Beach. Cecil deemed me an honorary member despite my female gender, the thought of which reminded me that if my hair was long enough to pull back in a ponytail, I needed to cut it off ASAP. Black wouldn’t like that, but he didn’t like the T-shirts and jeans with ripped knees I wore much, either. It didn’t seem to keep his hands off me, though.
    Winning Locks was an ultramodern establishment with lots of silken drapes of varying shades of turquoise, green, and cobalt hanging in two gigantic front windows. Mr. Race hid rotating fans around inside that kept the fabric flowing in continuous motion and gave the effect of an underwater seascape. Big tanks of tropical fish finished the illusion. The front door was made of mahogany and beveled glass that blurred the interior. As we pulled it open, loud, and I mean headache-inducing, cringing-to-the-knees loud, feminine screeching quivered our goose bumps into marching order. Crystal stemware beware. Eardrums brace yourself. Even Celine Dion couldn’t hold a candle to this pitch range. Actually, the racket was coming from Mr. Race himself. Yes, inside was a scene straight out of Dante’s Inferno, salon style.
    Bud took charge with his usual official aplomb. “Hey, cut out that shrill crap, Race. You sound worse than a stuck pig.”
    The girly squeals stopped abruptly, followed by sobs that sounded a bit more manly, but didn’t exactly rise to the machismo level. I decided that this altercation was Bud’s baby and he could handle it. I’d stand around and be his backup and pull both my weapons if anybody started throwing brushes and pomade at us.
    Mr. Race was breathing hard, chest heaving under his signature black satin shirt, and yes, it hung open, revealing his manly chest. Not a single hair was visible there, but it could’ve been hidden behind the big silver medallion he wore, one about the size of an IHOP pancake. His thin lips were trembling like crazy. I observed and analyzed the situation as I had been trained to do. His irate client had him bound to the swivel chair at his own red velvet–draped, thronelike styling station. One of his personalized black plastic smocks with Mr. Race’s scribbled, hard-to-read signature emblazoned in silver script bound him bodily to the back. He seemed most relieved to see that armed law enforcement officers had arrived on the scene.
    â€œBud, Bud, oh, thank gawd, it’s you. Corkie says she’s gonna throw hair bleach right in my face. And she dumped in some permanent solution, some real potent stuff! You gotta stop her, Bud. It’ll damage my skin for sure, and look, my nine and nine-thirty are both here waiting. This is really putting me behind.”
    I edged around Mr. Race’s plump manicurist, a lady I hadn’t been introduced to, but whose name tag identified her as Flash. She was dressed in a purple-and-pink tie-dyed shirt and bright yellow Capris and was calmly buffing the nails of a bouf-fanted, blue-haired octogenarian wearing a coral-and-gold lamé jogging suit. The old lady had chosen to polish her long clawlike nails the color of a very ripe eggplant. All ten nails were also adorned with little red stickers shaped like hats, identifying her at once as a member of the famous Red Hat Society, a group notorious at the lake for their wild monthly dinners at Applebee’s, during which they all wore red or purple feather boas and took lots of pictures of each other. A good, wholesome group, however, who rarely caused trouble for the police.
    Flash and the old lady were ignoring the commotion with Mr. Race and Corkie. But no wonder. The Young and the Restless was playing on a