Dead Hair Day Read online

  Dead Hair Day

  Martin and Owen Funny Romantic Mysteries, Book 4

  Nina Cordoba

  Copyright 2022, Nina Cordoba

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Cast of Characters

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  To my Mr. Nina:Thank you for encouraging me and being so unapologetically proud of me. I miss you every night. Come visit me in my dreams.

  Cast of Characters

  Starring

  Paprika “Rika” Martín

  Nicholas “Nick” Owen

  LeeAnne Barr

  Gucci the Maltese

  Cast (Alphabetical by 1st name)

  Belinda Martínez - Gabe’s wife.

  BillyBob McGwire (triplet) - Thought to be local criminal.

  Brandt - (mention only) Actor who broke up with Rika via his doorman.

  BreeAnne – (mention only) Nick’s second ex-wife.

  Charlotte - Infant. Living with mother, Markita Costas.

  Cherry - Strawberry blonde dancer.

  DeeAnne “Dee” Owen - Nick’s sister.

  Deputy Daniel “Danny” Scruggs - Sheriff’s brainless right-hand man

  Dill - Owner of Dill’s Dollar Store.

  Dwight Barr - LeeAnne’s brother.

  Eliza “Liza” Green - Murder victim. Nick’s cousin.

  Fletcher Funck - Owner of Mary Queen.

  Frankie Gonzales - Stocker at Dill’s Dollar Store.

  Gabe, Jr. - Gabe and Belinda’s son.

  Gordy Hoff - (Mention only) Tow truck driver.

  GracieAnne “Grace” Galloway - Nick family friend from Texas. Now an L.A. realtor.

  Harper Green Nybo - Infant. Was living with her mother Eliza Green before murder.

  Hon. Gabriel “Gabe” Martínez - Nick’s best friend in Bolo, local judge.

  J.J. Boyle - Attorney who prosecuted Rika for murder last summer.

  Jasmine - Blonde dancer.

  JimBob McGwire (triplet) - Local criminal. Nearly let Rika go down for murder.

  JoeBob McGwire (triplet) - Thought to be local criminal.

  Julian - Young cop in L.A. who has a crush on Rika.

  “Lita”- What Rika calls her Colombian-American grandmother in L.A.

  Lonny Baumgartner - (mention only) Middle aged stoner and Eliza’s landlord.

  Lucia “Lucy” Delgado - Medical Examiner.

  Mack - Private Investigator. Previously Austin homicide detective.

  Mandy - (Mention) Nick’s 1st wife. Pretended she was pregnant in high school.

  Markita “Markie” Costas - Young, single mom. Eliza’s neighbor.

  Marla - Latest woman Nick found stranded on side of the road

  Megan - (mention only) Nick’s third ex-wife.

  Motar Nybo - Eliza’s ex husband.

  Mr. Lopez - (Mention only) Owns auto shop.

  Mrs. Ruiz - Rika’s grandmother’s neighbor in L.A.

  Petra - Dwight’s girlfriend

  ReeAnne - Gossipy cashier at Dill’s Dollar Store.

  Rev. Jenkins - Pastor of Bolo Bible Church.

  Sheriff Wade Strickland - Local lawman who arrested Rika for murder.

  Tammy Lynn - Nick’s drama mama

  Terry Lynn - Tammy Lynn’s sister, Eliza’s mother

  Tía Madi -(mention only) Rika’s aunt, mother’s younger sister

  Tía Margo - (mention only) Rika’s aunt, mother’s older sister. Psychologist.

  Chapter One

  Rika Martín

  The Twinkie was chasing me, his short, tube sock-encased legs racing faster than you’d think legs that size could move. I sprinted away, determined to avoid his yummy cake outer layer and creamy filling this time. I couldn’t afford the calories.

  I checked over my shoulder to see if he was gaining on me. My body slammed into something solid. I looked up as strong arms encircled me.

  “Nick?” I said, surprised to find him here. He was shirtless, wearing only jeans and a cowboy hat.

  He smiled.

  “Did you come to save me from the Twinkie?” I asked.

  “Better.” Then, as I watched, his entire body began morphing until he was brown from head to toe.

  Not Colombian brown like me, though. He looked more like the chocolate rabbits the Easter Bunny brought me when I was young. Except for being Nick-shaped, of course.

  “Go ahead, babe. Have a lick. You know you want to.”

  Before I had a chance to think about it, I knelt down in front of him. Pressing my tongue to the chocolaty skin above his waistband, I stood gradually as I slid my tongue upward over his ab muscles and pecs, all the way to his collarbone.

  Milk. Chocolaty. Goodness.

  Yum!

  I rose onto my tiptoes and nearly bit his ear off before I stopped myself. It took all the willpower I had to step away.

  “What’s the matter?” he asked. “Would you prefer dark chocolate?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

  “I’ll be fine,” he replied. “Besides, we need to fatten you up. Wouldn’t want you to disappear completely.”

  In a split second, my excitement drained away. The calories! How could I have forgotten about the calories? And why was Nick trying to fatten me up? What a jerk!

  Then I remembered he’d said something like that before. When he was normal Nick, before he morphed into chocolate form.

  My anger melted away as quickly as it had come.

  He wasn’t being a jerk. He just didn’t get it. He’d never had a weight problem and didn’t know how much effort it took me to get healthy after high school, when I weighed enough for two five-four-and-a-half-foot people instead of one.

  He didn’t know because I’d never told him. I just wanted to put that part of my life in the past. And I certainly didn’t want Nick imagining me in the Dumbo body I used to live in.

  I should tell him the truth. “Nick... I need to...”

  Suddenly, my feet left the floor and chocolate cowboy Nick was cradling me in his arms. “This will be more fun in the bedroom,” he said.

  Was he offering me sex and chocolate simultaneously?

  Yes, please!

  He carried me into my room and laid me on my Hello Kitty sheets.

  Wait, a voice whispered from the back of my mind. You don’t own Hello Kitty sheets.

  “Bolo city limits!” Someone cried.

  LeeAnne? What was she doing here? If she was looking for a threesome, she’d better have turned herself into a can of whipped cream.

  I jolted awake.

  “Damn!” Nick said. “Can’t believe I forgot about that pothole. Nothing ever chan
ges in this town. Not for the good, anyway.”

  I twisted my neck around to check LeeAnne’s expression, expecting her to argue the point, but she surprised me by nodding in agreement.

  Nick and LeeAnne could argue about just about anything, but they’d also sort of taken care of each other when they were kids. The problem was, neither of them seemed to think they actually needed the other’s help, hence the arguing.

  I blinked and glanced around, confused about where we were. Then I realized we were coming in from a different direction than I had when I’d first driven into Bolo seven months ago. We might be in the city limits–the word “city” questionable in this context–but there were no lights in sight.

  I checked my lap for Gucci and experienced a split-second of panic when she wasn’t there. I rubbed the sleep from my eyes and looked toward Nick. The Maltese was standing with her hind feet on his thigh, nose pressed to the window, looking out into the darkness, sniffing audibly. I guess that tiny nose wasn’t too tiny to smell home.

  Then, the dream came back to me.

  Oh, jeez. My subconscious had managed to combine my sweets addiction, my desire for Nick, and my fear of regaining the weight I’d lost into one dream. And I was pretty sure the Hello Kitty sheets were in there because of the scrubs the Bolo sheriff gave me to wear when my clothes were taken as evidence last time I was here.

  Subconsciously, was I afraid to return to Bolo? I mean, the one time I’d been here I’d been arrested and put on trial for murder and had almost gotten killed. Even worse, I’d gained back five pounds because I was being fed by Nick at home and LeeAnne at her restaurant-bar.

  “It’s late, and you’re tired,” Nick said to me. “I’ll drop you off at the house, first, so you can let Gucci out and get ready for bed or whatever.” He shrugged as if women’s bedtime machinations were still a mystery to him.

  Honestly, I didn’t have many bedtime rituals. I washed my face, brushed my teeth, and put on a nightshirt, which was typically one of the too-large shirts given to me at Comic-Con or some other convention.

  I was willing to bet that Nick’s ex-wives had a boatload of feminine-smelling products they dabbed and sprayed and slathered all over themselves before they went to bed at night.

  I slid my palms up my face, wondering if I needed to start slathering.

  “I can’t wait to see Dwight and Petra!” LeeAnne cried. Since she’d moved to L.A. to stay with my family and follow her dream of becoming a celebrity stylist, her brother Dwight and his girlfriend Petra had been living in the house LeeAnne and Dwight used to share.

  Nick breathed out a quiet sigh. I wondered if he was thinking about his cousin or was just tired from the travel.

  Even though we’d learned we needed to return to Bolo, Texas, less than thirty-six hours ago, it felt like a week had gone by. Air travel tended to make me feel that way. There was something about being picked up in your day-to-day world and dropped, within hours, into a completely different one that generated a surreal feeling I’d never liked.

  It had happened each time I’d gone to visit my dad in Colombia over the years. When I was a kid, I’d stay for a month in the summer and just when I’d gotten used to everything there–made a friend, caught on to the new Colombian Spanish slang, and figured out the places that sold my favorite sweets–it was time to get on a plane and be dropped back into Los Angeles and life with my grandmother, or “Lita,” as I called her.

  I didn’t mind Los Angeles, or Bogotá or Medellín, Colombia for that matter. And the resort in the beautiful town of Cartagena would have been paradise if I hadn’t been too chubby to feel comfortable in a bathing suit by then.

  My dad was “climbing the kitchen ladder,” as he called it, taking better and better jobs until he became a celebrated South American chef.

  Thinking of my faraway dad reminded me of how brokenhearted I was night before last at the idea that Nick’s mom had called him to Bolo because of his cousin’s death. I was afraid once he was in his awesome house, again, he’d get comfortable and forget to come back to me, like my dad.

  Not that my dad forgot. Homeland security just decided not to let him return to the U.S. after he went to Colombia to see his dying mother, only months after his wife, my mother, had been abducted and murdered.

  So, when Nick told me he needed to come to Bolo, my first thought was that I’d never see him again. I started swallowing my tears like crazy, trying to be brave and not cry in front of him. That’s when he said, “I was hoping we were flying out,” emphasis on the “we.”

  I was confused at first, since I’d been expecting to say goodbye to him, possibly forever. In my life, the people I needed the most had gone away and never come back. Not by choice, but still...

  He’d watched me for a moment, then cleared his throat. “I’m not much of a private investigator without my partner.”

  Did he just invite me to go with him? My brain asked my ears to make sure it hadn’t imagined the words.

  He did invite us to go with him! My ears replied.

  The tears of sadness had morphed into tears of joy. My eyes burned with them.

  He isn’t leaving me.

  I hopped up off the couch so Nick wouldn’t see how hard I was blinking. “Okay, I don’t want to hold you up,” I said. “I should pack. When are we leaving?”

  “There’s a flight to Austin in the morning. We can fly there and rent a–”

  “Where’re y’all goin’?”

  We turned toward the stairs to see LeeAnne, freshly dressed and done up. She was wearing a bright red, skin-tight, knit mini dress that covered her rear end, and, maybe, three inches of thigh, max. Her platform heels made the dress look even shorter, probably because they made her legs look a mile long. That day, the bling was in her necklace, a flattened disco ball hanging on a chain with extra-large links. Her below-the-shoulder blonde hair was set to maximum volume, as usual. Her lovely blue eyes sparkled under a whole lot of pink eye shadow.

  “Rika and I are flying to Bolo tomorrow,” Nick answered. “My cousin Liza was murdered.”

  “Liza...? Is dead?” LeeAnne replied. “Oh, my God! We went to elementary school together!”

  “What flight are y’all taking? I’ll see if I can get on the same one.”

  “There’s no need for you to go, LeeAnne,” Nick said. “You’ve got a lot going on here.”

  “That’s okay,” she replied. “The boutique will let me off. And I need to go see your mama. When she was little, Liza was like a daughter to Tammy Lynn.”

  “Rika and I are going to be busy investigating...” Nick tried again.

  LeeAnne put her hands on her hips. “It’s not like you have to babysit me,” she said. “I have a house there, and I need to visit my brother and Petra anyway.”

  Nick closed his eyes and lifted his hand to the back of his neck. As much as he cared about LeeAnne, she exasperated him, and he didn’t need to be exasperated on top of everything else. But I guess he was resigned to his fate. He pulled out his phone. “Okay, then.” He sighed. “I’ll get you a ticket.”

  “I’ll call in to work and pack up,” LeeAnne said. “I can’t wait to show off my new Hollywood wardrobe to ReeAnne. She was so snotty about me thinking I could make it in L.A.”

  “She told me you were her best friend,” I said.

  “In her dreams!” LeeAnne rolled her eyes. “She is not a nice person, no matter how much she pretends to be. She’s nice to your face while she’s sticking a knife in your back.”

  Hearing the name ReeAnne reminded me of the weird naming customs in Bolo. I’d never been anywhere so conformist. It seemed that each generation of moms tended to give their daughters similar names or at least the same middle names. It was weird. It wasn’t just LeeAnne and ReeAnne. Nick’s ex was BreeAnne, and his sister was DeeAnne, although she preferred Dee in her Seattle life.

  I recalled how ReeAnne was always saying catty things about LeeAnne and others, then punctuating it with a faux-sympathetic hea
d tilt and a “Bless her heart.” So passive-aggressively bitchy.

  Knowing nothing else about the case, I decided to put ReeAnne at the top of my suspect list. LeeAnne had been good to me, a stranger, when I most needed a friend. Anyone who treated her badly was a meanie at the very least and some meanies turned into murderers.

  After Nick bought the tickets, he sat, messing with his phone, but not really doing anything. I laid my hand on his shoulder, feeling awkward about comforting such a big, macho guy.

  Nick shook his head. “I can’t believe she’s gone,” he said in a near whisper. “She had a baby girl.”

  A motherless child. Like me.

  Except that little girl would have no memories of her mother to cling to. Tears tried to come up again, but they felt selfish since I wasn’t sure which one of us I was crying for.

  I stood. “Do you want to keep me company while I pack?”

  “Yeah, thanks,” he said solemnly.

  I offered my hand. He took it, then followed me to my room. I felt guilty about how happy that made me, considering the circumstances.

  Anyway, all that was only yesterday, but as I said, it felt like longer. I hadn’t slept much last night, and Nick looked like he hadn’t slept at all.

  I mean, he was still tall and ruggedly handsome with eyes that were Bondi blue in the right light. But today the blue was surrounded by tiny red veins.

  He turned the black Chevy Suburban he rented at the airport into his drive and pulled up to the front of the house. I’d been surprised, at first, that he hadn’t opted for one of the pickup trucks that was available. Then I realized he might be thinking ahead. I assumed we’d be going to some sort of funeral–and whatever else Protestants did when a person died–and might need the extra passenger seating.

  The night air was cool but humid as I opened the door and pulled my backpack out of the Suburban. At least this time I’d have my computer to use in Bolo.

  Nick grabbed both our suitcases and set them inside the front door. We were in the entryway when he said, “I’ll dump LeeAnne off as fast as I can and come home. She sure knows how to make a long travel day longer.”

  “Nick,” I said. He went still and made eye contact with me. “Don’t you think you and LeeAnne should lay off the bickering while we’re here? Under the circumstances...?”