“Are you sure you don’t want me to drive?”
“Nah, this is easier. I know where we’re going.”
“My phone—like many this day and age—has GPS,” I said, wishing I had forced her to consider this alternate plan before I became a hostage in her passenger seat. Nothing about Hazel screamed ‘safe and responsible driver.’
“Seriously, don’t worry about it. Drink your latte andrelax. You’re the one doing me a favor, I’m not going to force you to drive me around, too.”
I didn’t say it out loud, but letting me drive in this situation would actuallybethe favor. Although, I might have thought better of this plan halfway there and forced us to turn around. I had tried to tell Hazel that the best plan for getting her cat back was to come up with a few carefully thought-out hypotheses and then look for proof. The pool of suspects couldn’t be huge. But we’d have to be cautious. Clearly, someone deranged enough to steal a cat wasn’t in a great state of mind.
“Remind me again why you’re so sure it’s your old boss,” I said, taking a tentative sip of my latte. It was shockingly delicious. I took another drawn-out sip.
“I kind of orchestrated a coup.” She winced as the car rolled to a stop at a red light. The streets were empty, given the early hour. Hazel had mentioned her old boss, Clinton, always got to work at least an hour before the salon opened.
“A coup,” I repeated. “As in a revolution? How does one do that at a hair salon?”
“He’s a dick, Reid. You don’t understand.” Her tone grew more defensive. “He has this bullshit pay structure that I seriously doubt is even legal. He hires us under the guise that the salon itself is well known and going to bring in all this clientele, and then we’ll work on commission. So if I brought in more clients one week, I’d get paid a bonus. It’s bullshit, because we still had to find all our own clients and most of us were barely making minimum wage while Clinton was taking the majority of the earnings.”
“That does sound shitty,” I said.
“I was working there for a few months when I’d had it. I started talking to some of the other girls, and we were all fed up. I said we could go on a strike and post about it on social media.”
“So you made a video on your social media dragging him?”
She licked her lips and glanced at me before returning her eyes to the road. “It’s a tiny bit worse than that.”
I slammed my foot against the floorboard instinctively as Hazel came a little too close to the truck in front of us.
“What did you do?”
“Well, I had access to the salon’s social media.”
“You didn’t.”
“I did. I posted from the main account, detailing how much he was screwing over the stylists. And it may have gone a teensy bit viral.”
I balked at her, kind of horrified, but also kind of impressed.
“It wasn’t crazy viral, but local-viral. His salon got bombarded with one-star reviews and he was livid. Said I ruined his business and fired me on the spot.”
A laugh escaped me. Hazel certainly wasn’t a pushover, that was for sure.
“So potentially a candidate for a severe grudge, but do you really think he’d blackmail you?”
“After I posted that I won the lottery?—”
I shot her a disapproving glare.
“I know, I know, but you can’t keep holding that against me. It’s done. Anyway, he responded to my post, saying I should pay him back for everything I caused him to lose, or something like that. I took a screenshot if you want to see, but then I blocked him.”
“So it’s not outside the realm of possibility.”
“Right,” she said.
The car made another dying sound as if wheezing its last breath when she pulled into a parking lot. The salon was housed in a sleek white building at the far end of the plaza.
Hazel pulled into a spot, the brakes squealing when she stopped.
“Real discreet,” I muttered. “This isn’t exactly ideal for a stakeout, you know.” I pointed to her car, easily the loudestvehicle I’d ever ridden in. It practically announced its arrival a block ahead.
