Read Nightshades (Nameless Detective) for Free Online

and an appointment book on it.
    All of the women looked at me when I came in. I felt like an idiot standing there under their scrutiny; I always felt like an idiot in places like this, the more or less exclusive domain of women. I also felt myself grinning fatuously at the six females, none of whom grinned back. The smells of shampoo and other beauty salon concoctions were in the air, a mixture that was vaguely reminiscent of disinfectant; it made my nose twitch and I wanted to sneeze. I got that under control, wiped off the stupid grin, and went over to the reception desk.
    The woman behind it was a well-groomed blonde, dressed in an outfit that matched the blue-and-green color scheme; she was about forty and made up to look thirty, and you were supposed to believe that her secret was in the various bottles and tubes and decanters on the display shelves at her back, and in whatever was going on—buzzings, clickings, murmurings—beyond a lattice-bordered archway to one side. She gave me the same kind of look a bum might get if he wandered in off the street for a handout, and asked, snootily, if there was anything she could do for me.
    I wasn’t in a mood to tolerate being sneered at, so I leaned over in front of her and said, “I’m a detective, here to see Penny Belson,” in a tough-guy voice. “If she’s in, sister, trot her out here so we can talk. Pronto.” Philip Marlowe, circa 1940.
    But the blonde wasn’t a Chandler fan; she blinked at me a couple of times, gnawed her underlip a couple of times, asked my name in a much more polite tone, and then used her telephone to talk to somebody I assumed was Penny Belson. When she put the receiver down she said, “Miss Belson will be right out.” Then she sat stiff-backed and stared at me.
    The waiting customers were staring at me too; they’d overheard my exchange with the receptionist. But the stares were of a different kind now and I felt better about the whole thing. I put on a little more tough-guy for them, in the form of a glower, and it would have worked out fine if the damned salon smell hadn’t been so strong in there. I sneezed right in the middle of the glower, none too quietly, and scared hell out of them and me both.
    Another blonde came through the latticed archway, this one about the same age as the receptionist and just as attractive and well-groomed. But she had more poise, a kind of icy self-possession; and her eyes were an odd, striking gray accented by makeup. A very sexy number, if you like them chipped and chiseled and sharp around the eyes and mouth. She was wearing a sort of tailored smock in the same colors as the reception room and the receptionist. She was also wearing an expression as unrevealing as a snowfield in a blizzard. I wouldn’t have liked to play poker with her. Or anything else with her, for that matter.
    She looked at me and said, “I’m Penny Belson. Come with me, please.” That was all; no fuss of any kind. It was in deference to the customers, no doubt—never make a scene in front of customers—but she handled it with aplomb.
    So I went through the arch into another room full of women, this batch evidently being tortured in various ways. Most of them were sitting under big hair dryers that looked like hunched, helmeted aliens devouring their heads; a few of these were reading magazines like Vogue, a few were having their nails done by manicurists, and a few were either asleep or dead. None of them paid any attention to me as I followed Penny Belson on a course to another door at the far end.
    This one led to La Belson’s private office, a room in marked contrast to the other two. Flat white decor, a mostly bare desk, some file cabinets, three chairs, a bowl of cut flowers on a small side table, and a still life on one wall. Sterile. No frills, no nonsense. A room where business was transacted and the take was counted assiduously at the end of each day.
    She shut the door, went to the desk, sat down behind it, waited