Chapter 34

Belle Coiffure was located in Camp Creek Marketplace, an outdoor shopping and dining complex off Camp Creek Parkway, a busy artery that led directly to Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport. National chain stores and restaurants were represented there: Target, Lowe’s, Circuit City, Barnes & Noble, Red Lobster, Ruby Tuesday. Dozens of local businesses were represented, too: wing restaurants, barber shops, delis, dentists’ offices.

Belle Coiffure had a prime location between a Hollywood Video and a Publix grocery store. The name “Belle Coiffure Hair Salon,” was spelled in elegant lettering in a big, luminous red sign. A red awning, emblazoned with the salon’s name, offered protection from the elements that could ruin a fresh ‘do. Large front windows gave views of the action inside: black women busy doing hair.

Dexter crawled past the salon in his Chevy. There were a several stylists at work, but none that he recognized as his wife.

He swung toward the corner of the large parking lot. He had to be careful about being seen. His wife knew he was hunting for her. She might have alerted her employees to the situation, circulated a photo of him, and instructed them to call the police if they spotted his face.

To take a closer look, he would have to conceal himself.

“Invisible,” he said. The expected visual and aural impressions arose: darting . . . hissing . . . and then the warm, rippling force field enveloped him.

To avoid setting off a bell dinging at his entrance, he waited until one of the customers came outside, and slipped through the doorway as she brushed past smelling of hair spray and grease.

It was like walking into a cage of squawking hens. As a Whitney Houston holiday song played over a stereo, the women chatted about men, children, other women, clothes—stupid female gossip that drove Dexter nuts. When he would pick up his wife from her job at the beauty salon in Chicago, he usually avoided going inside. He didn’t want his ears assaulted.

A look around confirmed that his wife was absent. But he found proof that this was her establishment hanging beside the front door: a large photograph of the salon owners and their team of stylists, all of them wearing matching black work shirts with “BC” embroidered on the breast pocket. His wife and another woman who was surely the co-owner, Tanisha Banks, posed front and center.

His wife looked different. She had cut her long auburn hair, and dyed it black. She wore glasses, too.

He wanted to laugh at her amateur disguise. Who did she think she was fooling? Drastic cosmetic surgery would have failed to conceal her identity from him. Her eyes would always be the same.

Each of the stylists had a dedicated station with a styling chair, full-length mirror, shelving, and utility cart that held the tools of their trade. The name of each stylist was elegantly inscribed above their respective mirrors: Precious, Tanisha, Jordan, Ashley . . .

Rachel’s station was near the front of the shop, on the right. The space was clean, all of the brushes, combs, curling irons, scissors, and other implements put away. It looked as if she had gone home for the day.

But there was one item of interest on the shelf: a wedding photo. His wife in her white bridal dress (as if this were her first marriage) stood beside a very tall, broad-shouldered brother with glasses. Both of them were cheesing for the camera.

Dexter’s cheeks bulged as if packed with tobacco.

The bitch, the motherfuckin’ bitch!

He turned on his heel and strode out of the salon. It would not have been wise for him to linger inside any longer.

If he had, he would have killed someone.

He’d parked in a location that gave him a good view of the salon’s front doors. It was a quarter past eight, and according to the listed hours, the shop closed at nine.

He would wait in the car. His wife might not have been working that evening, but one of those women could tell him where she lived—and one of them would, once he exercised his powers of persuasion.