Chapter 8 - The Salon on Blossom Hill
The strip mall on Blossom Hill Road smelled of industrial degreaser from the neighboring automated car wash and fried dough from the drive-thru doughnut shop on the corner.
It was eleven-thirty in the morning.
The neon sign in the window of Brianna’s Crown & Mane was glowing pink against the dusty plate glass: OPEN.
Through the window, you could see the three hydraulic chairs upholstered in white faux-leather, the gold-framed mirrors, and the shelves of expensive French shampoos that had been purchased with money stolen from the city’s water pipe fund.
Brianna was sitting in the center styling chair, wearing a black satin stylist’s smock and high-heeled boots.
Her hair had been touched up—someone had attempted to blend the ragged, jagged edges of the bob I had cut into a deliberate punk style, but her neck was stiff, her movements jerky with the residual rage of the weekend.
Sitting under the chrome hood dryer in the corner was Cheryl Vance—Brandon’s mother.
Cheryl was fifty-five years old, with skin that had been tanned to the texture of a luxury handbag at the local salon, wearing three gold chains around her neck and holding a copy of a celebrity gossip magazine. She was talking loudly over the roar of the dryer, gesturing with a manicured hand that bore a three-carat diamond anniversary ring.
The bell above the glass door chimed as I pushed it open.
The sound was small, cheerful, and utterly out of place.
I walked in first, followed by my mother.
Behind us, stepping through the doorway with the heavy, unhurried presence of an executioner carrying his bench, walked Officer Frank Delgado of the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Department, carrying a thick sheaf of blue-backed legal papers in his left hand.
Brianna spun around in her hydraulic chair, a silver pair of shears glinting in her right hand.
When she saw my face, the professional smirk that had lived on her lips for twenty-five years vanished. Her eyes dropped to the sheriff’s uniform, then snapped back to my eyes, her nostrils flaring with sudden, instinctive panic.
“What the hell are you doing here?” she demanded, jumping out of the chair, her voice rising to that sharp, nasal pitch that had mocked my mother in the bridal suite. “Get out of my shop! I’m calling Brandon! Waylon told me what you did last night with that chemical spray! You’re going to jail, you crazy bitch!”
Under the dryer, Cheryl Vance pulled the chrome hood up with a screech of metal.
Her face was purple with indignation as she struggled out of the chair, her magazine falling to the floor.
“Naomi!” Cheryl shrieked, smoothing her linen blouse with trembling, furious hands. “How dare you show your face in front of us after the humiliation you caused on Saturday! Do you have any idea how much money we lost on the flowers? Do you have any idea what my friends are saying at the club?”
I didn't answer Cheryl.
I didn't even look at her.
I walked to the center of the salon, my heels clicking on the black-and-white checkered linoleum, until I was standing two feet from Brianna’s styling station.
I looked down at the counter.
There, resting in a glass jar filled with blue disinfectant solution, was the long pair of German-made shears Brianna had used on my mother’s braid on Saturday morning.
“Brianna Vance,” Officer Delgado said, his voice flat, mechanical, bored with the smallness of the people he arrested every day.
Cheryl froze. Her jaw dropped by half an inch.
“What did you call her?” Cheryl asked, her voice cracking. “Her name is Moore. Why are you calling her Vance?”
Officer Delgado didn't look at her. He pulled the top document from his stack.
“I have an emergency seizure order issued by the Superior Court of California, County of Santa Clara, under case number twenty-four-CV-eighty-nine-fourteen,” Delgado read, his thumb resting on the red municipal seal. “All assets, fixtures, accounts, and inventory belonging to B. Vance Aesthetic Services LLC are hereby attached under a criminal fraud writ issued by the State Attorney General’s Office.”
Brianna’s face turned the color of lard.
“That’s… that’s impossible,” she stammered, dropping her shears onto the glass counter with a sharp, vibrating clatter. “This is my business! Brandon set this up for me! Walter set this up!”
“Walter set this up with stolen bond money, sweetheart,” I said, my voice quiet, dropping into the small room like cold lead shot. “And he used the Willow Glen house as the guarantor. The house that Cheryl thought was in her family trust.”
Cheryl rounded on Brianna, her gold chains rattling against her chest as her face twisted into a mask of pure, vicious disbelief.
“What is she talking about?” Cheryl screamed, grabbing Brianna’s arm with fingers that looked like claws. “Why is your company named Vance? What does Walter have to do with this building? What does he have to do with you?!”
Brianna pulled her arm away with a violent jerk, all the delicate, victimized pretense falling away in an instant, revealing the gutter-born survival instinct she had inherited from her mother.
“Ask your husband, you stupid old cow!” Brianna screamed back, her face inches from Cheryl’s. “Ask Walter who paid for my apartment on Lincoln Avenue for four years! Ask him who bought that Mercedes parked out back! You thought you were the only one who had his name on a check? You haven't touched him in ten years!”
Cheryl let out a strangled, breathless wail—the sound of an arrogant woman realizing she had spent her life guarding an empty safe while her husband gave the combination to the girl who did her highlights.
She lunged toward Brianna, her manicured nails aiming for the girl’s eyes, but Officer Delgado stepped between them with the practiced ease of a man who had separated bar fights since the nineteen-nineties.
“Ladies, take it outside,” Delgado said, shoving Cheryl back toward the waiting sofa with one massive forearm. “The locks are being changed in ten minutes. The state tax board is on their way with the padlock crew.”
I turned toward my mother.
Miriam was standing by the door.
She had not said a word. She had not raised her voice. She had simply stood there, watching the two women who had mocked her poverty and her lineage tear each other apart over the scrap meat of a bankrupt empire.
Miriam walked slowly to the styling chair.
May you like
She reached out with her rough, calloused hand, picked up the German shears from the glass jar, and laid them gently on the edge of the counter, pushing them toward Brianna with a single, slow motion.
“Keep them,” Miriam whispered, looking Brianna directly in her wide, terrified eyes. “You’re going to need them to cut your own hair when they give you that orange suit.”
