“Phil home for dinner?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said.
“I think I’ll skip it,” I said. “I’ve got some work to do.”
I was almost to the car when I heard her say, “Toby, take care of yourself.” There was real concern in her voice, and I turned to look at her, wondering whether she saw me the way Wilson Wong saw Sam Billings. It was depressing.
I should have headed home to nurse my aches and see whether there were messages from my midget and giant investigators, but Ruth’s words had cut deep. My response, I knew, would be to push harder, to prove I could take care of myself and come out on top, which I was not at all sure I could prove.
My car and body knew where I was going without being told by my brain. The car took me from the valley down Laurel Canyon and headed toward Sherman Oaks and beyond to Tarzana. There was about as much chance that a beauty school would be open on Sunday night as there was that Japan would launch its attack on California in the morning. But I couldn’t face going back to the boarding house. I would have tried my ex-wife Anne but didn’t have the energy to talk my way into her apartment for a flash of sympathy and a firm goodbye, which would have been more discouraging than nothing at all. I found a parking space with no trouble and looked west to see the sun going down. Night would be here soon, and other peoples’ vampires would rise. My vampire paid no attention to such fineries as tradition. His trade tool was a tire iron and a good surprise.
Personality Plus was on the second floor of an ordinary neighborhood office building. It was open. The reception area had a counter behind which were shelves of bottles of hair products-hair conditioner, shampoos, mostly green with bubbles in them. A cardboard ad for Breck shampoo was displayed prominently on the counter. The carpet was marine blue and green, long-wearing but with no depth. Large color photographs, some of them badly faded, featured what were meant to be the latest hairdos, but the quality of the pictures led me to believe that they were probably a few years old.
There was a lot of traffic, women sitting in chairs waiting, some of them with children. I walked to the counter, behind which stood a youngish man wearing barber white. Behind him in a room with a lot of talk sat various women with white gook in their hair or wet red nails held out in front of them to dry.
“Can I help you?” said the young dark man.
I had expected a little mincing or a fey wrist, but he gave none and was all business. “Are you always busy like this on Sunday night?” I said.
“Many of our customers work in defense plants,” he explained. “We keep special war hours. Sunday is one of our busiest days. We’re open till ten. Can I help you?”
“Bedelia Sue Frye,” I said. “I’d like to see her. It’s important. Is she a student here?”
“Miss Frye is the director of the school,” he said, looking beyond me to see how the customers were taking me. I looked as if I were in search of an emergency room instead of a beauty operator. On second thought, maybe I could use a little cosmetic help to put me in presentable condition.
“Terrific,” I said. “Now can I see her? Tell her it’s in connection with the Dark Knights. She’ll see me.”
“The dark nights?” he said incredulously.
“You’ve got it,” I said. He left me to face the gathered waiting women and children. A few looked at me. Most kept their noses in their magazines.
The young dark man came back and asked me to follow him. I went around the counter and down a hallway, where we met a trio of white-clad young women, each carrying a human head in her hands. The young man didn’t stop, and the women passed close enough for me to see that the heads were mannequins with hair done up in curlers. The deeper we went into the place, the stronger the smell, a sickly, almost sweet smell something like vinegar, but not quite.
“Through there,” said my guide, pointing to a room. “Miss Frye will be with you in a minute.”
I went through there and found myself in a white, bright office with a window showing out into a long room lined with chairs in which women were sitting having their scalps, hair, faces, and anatomies worked on, plastered, baked, and threatened by an ant colony of instructors and teachers. Even in the relatively thick-walled office I could make out the rumble of sound from the big room beyond. While I watched, a blonde woman in white strode down the aisle that separated the two rows of chairs. She was stopped every few feet by a student or customer with a question, a problem, or a crisis. Gradually, she made her way toward the room I was in. As she came closer, looking directly at me, I could see that she was somewhere in her thirties, built like Veronica Lake, and possessed of a white, gleaming smile that would have looked great in a Teal commercial. She opened the door, letting in the vibration of voices, and closed it again behind her.
“Yes, Mr. Peters?” she said.
“How did you know my name?” I said, leaning back against the small desk. “I didn’t give it to Wilhelm.”
“His name is Walter,” she said, “and we met Friday. You wanted to talk to me?” She moved over to the desk, reached for a cigarette in a silver box, changed her mind, and looked at me with a smile and folded arms.
“I’m trying to stop,” she said, crinkling her nose.
“You’re Bedelia Sue Frye?” I said.
“I’m Bedelia Sue Frye,” she said mockingly.
I looked at her for an incredible few seconds while her amusement grew. The height was right, but that was about it. This woman was a natural blonde with a healthy complexion and very little makeup. Her smile was as good as the sun, and she stood straight and was full of bouncing energy.
“The same one who’s a member of the Dark Knights of Transylvania?” I said.
“The same,” she said, holding up her right hand. “Honest. It’s like a release for me. I dress up for the meetings, put on a wig, change my face, do a little acting. I’m under a lot of pressure here,” she said with a shrug, “and at one time I had thoughts of going into movies. Actually got a few small roles and then I got into this.” Her hand swept the room broadly and took in the outside. “None of my staff knows about the Dark Knights, and I was under the impression that no one would find out.”
“I’m a private detective,” I explained. “I was with Bela Lugosi Friday because he’s had some threatening letters, phone calls, other things, and we have some good reasons to believe that one of the Dark Knights is responsible for the threats and that things may get worse.”
“That accounts for the way you look?” she said, finally unable to resist the cigarette, which she took quickly.
“I think so,” I said, reaching up to try my scalp.
“So,” she said, “what can I do for you?” Her will power returned and she put down the cigarette.
“Putting it straight,” I said, looking into her blue eyes, “I’m here to find out if you’re the one who might be responsible for the threats on my client.”
“Me?” she said, returning my look. “Why would I want to… that’s ridiculous. I don’t even believe in any of that stuff. And I don’t care one way or the other about his movies. He looked to me like a tired old man. Anyone who would give him a hard time has to be an all-out looney, which I am not. Say, listen, I’d like to keep talking. I really would, but things are going crazy out there.”
“Maybe we could get together some time,” I said. “I mean get together and talk about the Dark Knights and Lugosi.”
Her smile was broad and direct.
“That might be nice,” she said. I reached into my pocket, got my wallet, and found my card. I grabbed a pencil from the desk and wrote my home address and the number of the phone in the hall of the boarding house. “I’ll give you a call.”
She took the card, looked at it, tapped it with her long fingers, and tucked it in the clean pocket of her blouse over her heart. Things were never what they seemed, I thought, as she went back through the door and into the colony.
I made my way out, wondering what Wilson Wong would make of his prime suspect if he had been with me. I also realized that of the five members of the Dark Knights at least two claimed to have no commitment at all to vampirism. Back outside in the darkness, I made up my mind to wrap up both the Lugosi and the Faulkner cases as quickly as possible and investigate possibilities with Bedelia Sue Frye. I was not so twitter-patted, however, that I didn’t watch my back and front as I went back to my car with my hand near my jacket and gun. I unlocked the car, checked the back seat, locked the door behind me, and headed home.