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I dragged Bucephelus T. Taggart to the Elk Salon. I won’t say kicking and screaming, but he took his time stepping down from the Vanagon’s passenger seat.
“Man, Durwoody, you’re killing my margins,” he said. “If I have to refund Blanche Beaudelaire ten crates of my flagship essential oils product?”
I led the way to the salon door, which had a bell and a window with frost-print antlers.
“Flagship product,” I repeated.
“That’s right. Get your foot in the door with essential oils” — Buce scratched excitedly at his orange hair — “next thing you know you’re moving loofahs, bath bombs, aromatherapy products.”
I suggested he had some work to do on those aromas.
Inside, Blanche burst from her desk to greet me. It looked like she was in the middle of some treatment, green smudged across her cheeks and forehead.
“Durwood Oak Jones! I just knew you’d come thr—”
She stopped mid-word at the sight of Buce. “What’d you bring *that one* around for?”
Crimps appeared in her green face.
Buce dropped his head. He wore cutoff jean shorts. One of his knees was twitching, making the frayed threads jump. He winced over at me as though asking if I was sure we had to do this.
I said, “Mr. Taggart has information about those essential oils of yours. Ones that reeked of fried chicken.”
Blanche Beaudelaire’s eyes swelled. Her head tipped askew. Cows make a similar expression around new milkmaids.
Buce confessed about Dan’s Dandy Diner, the possibility his sixteen-step cleansing process had not fully overcome the oil’s tenure in the fry basket.
Blanche was aghast. “You passed off grease from a diner as essential oils? That is outrageous. Unconscionable. Essential oils must be perfectly balanced and calibrated if they’re to provide any health benefit whatsoever.”
Buce scoffed. “Guess they were balanced ’nuff to fool you. That or the fancy bottle.”
Blanche glared at the maverick entrepreneur.
“I should sue,” she said. “You’ve done harm to my reputation. Permanent, irreparable harm.”
“Go head, sue me!” Buce said wildly. “I’ll put you in touch with my attorney, Minerva Mulvaney. You know her, works out of the licorice factory on Pine? Boy, oh boy, she’ll counter-sue your powdered ass for every last dime—”
“Enough,” I said.
While arguing, they’d come very close. I stepped between them and carefully removed a curling iron from Blanche’s fist.
“Now,” I continued. “Behave, both of you. Nobody needs lawyers dragged into this.”
#ElkSalonOils
I explained to Buce about the fried chicken smell. How Blanche Beaudelaire was trying to attract upscale clients. He disputed the defect at first.
“How does she know it’s my essential oils? Those women use all kinds of spritzers, lotions.” Buce raised his arms and sniffed about. “There could be cross-effects at work.”
“According to Blanche,” I said, “the pattern was consistent.”
He flung an arm backwards, knocking a string of dangling hubcaps. The clatter was deafening. It woke Sue-Ann, who’d fallen asleep on a mat of crosshatched straw.
“Well, hell,” he said. “I ain’t running the Ford Motor Company here. You know Loretta Sykes, lives in that little efficiency over Jed’s Joint?”
“Sure.”
“Loretta handles my bottling. It could be her — she could be playing pranks! Might have hidden cameras set up all around town, catch some video of a fancypants smelling like greasy chicken. Take it viral.”
The way Buce’s eyes were gleaming, the idea could have been his.
According to my neighbor, #Crole, Buce and Loretta were an item. Though I put no stock in Crole’s scuttlebutt. His rumors are as good as his fish stories.
“Be that as it may,” I said, “the tainted oils came from here. Your operation. Your responsibility.”
Buce stood and paced.
“Might not’a been, might not’a been.” He snapped his fingers as he talked. “Could be my source materials failed me. Old Jebson had a rocky night over on the fry basket? There you go. That’ll do ’er.”
“Source materials,” I said. “Jebson works over at Dan’s Dandy Diner, correct?”
“Yep.”
“Your oil comes from the diner?”
“Oh, sure. I get their frying oil, end of the night. Canola I believe. But don’t you worry. It’s all purified and aerified and sanitized.” Buce raised his chin in earnest. “Bulletproof sixteen-step process.”
“I smelled the stuff,” I said. “With my own nose.”
Buce tried several more excuses, each wilder than the one before. All you had to do was look him dead-level in the eye until he gave it up.
Finally, I stood. Sue looked up reluctantly. She’d gotten comfy on the straw mat.
“Let’s go see Blanche,” I said. “Let’s make it right.”
Buce dropped his head, orange hair sagging forward.
#ElkSalonOils
I needed to ask Bucephelus T. Taggart about these essential oils of his. It’s one thing to see an opportunity and make a buck. It’s another to leave decent women smelling like poultry.
The junkyard sat back from a dirt road. I weaved through tractor axles and husks of cars to a building with a sign that said, “A helluva lot of men’s trash ain’t trash.” I found Buce hunched over a laptop.
I nodded back the way I’d come. “What do you have going with that old cement mixer?”
Buce grinned and tapped the screen. “Giant bubble maker for fairs and birthday parties. I just need this part off Ebay, then I’m golden.”
That about figured.
“Listen,” I said. “I was over at the Elk Salon, talking to Blanche Beaudelaire.”
Buce raised his eyebrows, which were regular colored — not orange like his hair.
“Hubba hubba,” he said. “She put the moves on you?”
His leg jittered and he jerked the computer mouse. Something happened onscreen.
Buce deals in just about every product line you can imagine. Could be he was nipping from the store.
“She bought these, uh, essential oils,” I said. “Local supplier. Know anything about that?”
Buce’s eyes got a wild look. They were different to start with — one green, one brown. “Checked the bottom of the bottle, did’ja?”
I confirmed I had.
Buce said, “I’m diversifying. I’ve long contemplated entering the luxury goods sector.”
I looked around. In this inside space, Buce had prototypes for cooking contraptions with dials. For some motorized vehicle you rode laying down on your tummy.
“Well,” I said. “You need to go back to the drawing board.”
#ElkSalonOils
The letters on Blanche Beaudelaire’s bottle of essential oils, “BTT,” were local. I recognized the typeset. I’d seen it around Elk Garden on flyers, on those restaurant placemats with ads, and streaming behind a Red Baron biplane sprawled across a fifty-foot banner.
They stand for Bucephelus T. Taggart.
“Buce,” I muttered.
Blanche leaned over her desk intimately. “Pardon me?”
“Your supplier didn’t mention he was getting these essential oils from just up the road?”
“Just up the road?” Blanche scoffed. “I’m sure that can’t be right. The caliber of product we sell could never be produced in *Elk Garden.*”
My head hurt, though I shouldn’t have been surprised. Why not essential oils? Buce was into everything else — ride hailing, food delivery, “realtime handyman work.”
I didn’t understand that last one. I guess the rest of us have been working in fake time.
I turned Blanche’s smooth bottle in my rough hands.
“The man who bottled this,” I told her, “has orange hair and drives a dozen vehicles around town. Most without mufflers.”
Blanche said, “I … I have no response to that.”
Sue-Ann and I took the van out to Buce’s. He operates out of a few places. The warehouse by the river. The old school bus-turned-RV. Ma Guidry’s piano room, where he’ll drink and listen to The Dirtkickers while tabulating his receipts.
But the junkyard’s your best bet.
#ElkSalonOils
Blanche Beaudelaire explained her new supplier’s essential oils smelled fine going on but matured to a fried chicken scent.
I asked, “How long’s it take?”
Blanche’s tongue played over her lip. “Selma Quinn was the first. She applied it faithfully for six days, and on the seventh, just as Judd Klenecke was opening the door of his old Bronco for her, her neck started emitting fumes of succulent fowl.”
I know Judd Klenecke. “He didn’t cotton to it?”
Blanche lowered her gaze.
“Okay,” I said. “This happened to all your customers?”
She nodded. “It’s tragic for my reputation. As you well know, Durwood, I sell exclusively premium products.”
I looked around her office. She had a bin of those puffy sponges for bathing. Massagers made of some exotic wood.
I asked if she had a sample.
“I do!” Blanche said. She produced a vial from within her shirt, the bodice region, and pushed it into my calloused hands. “Look at this cute bottle. It’s half the reason I switched suppliers.”
I raised the stoppered oils to eye level. Supposed oils. I examined the bottle. It was cute — as I understand the term. A bowed shape and delicate handle. Attractive curves. The liquid rustled inside like some pampered magic.
Blanche said, “You can understand why I was entranced.”
I raised the bottle to check its underside. There was a trademark. Frilly looking letters. Three of them. The first a pair of humps, one on top of the other; the last two straight and sharp.
*BTT*
#ElkSalonOils
I let those words, “essential oils,” take a stroll through my head.
They found no benches.
“What’re they?” I asked. “Those hair dryers take oil, commercial hair dryers?”
Blanche tittered.
“Your HVAC?” I tried.
Blanche explained essential oils were applied to the body’s regions of peace and solace.
I said, “Whereabouts is that?”
Her eyes gleamed, a fair amber shade. Then she said, “The top of the head, the neck. Your temples. Your wrists — that’s a good pulse point.”
She dragged a painted fingernail along her inner forearm.
I asked what the pulse had to do with the price of tea in China.
“So the oils can enter the bloodstream quickly,” she said.
“That’s desirable?”
“Oh, *very*,” Blanche said in a husky voice.
I resettled in my chair, fixing my blue jeans. “And what happened with these oils that was unjust?”
“Well, I switched suppliers last month.” Blanche sat back in a leather chair. She kept a tidy office. Inbound/outbound trays. Locked file cabinet. “My distributor showed me this new product, *lavender twist*. It smelled divine, and it came in the cutest little bottle.”
She pushed a delicate bottle across her desk. It had a blue tint, a tapered handle, and a spout shaped like lips.
“Hm,” I said.
“And the wholesale price was thirty percent cheaper than what I’d been paying.”
I pushed my hat up my head. “Sounds like an easy call.”
Blanche smiled, shaking her head.
“It was,” she said. “Right up until my customers started smelling like fried chicken.”
#ElkSalonOils
Most injustice letters I get from out-of-towners. We have injustice here in Elk Garden, but I guess folks handle it themselves. Or else consider it strange contacting me about — me who they see at Nethkin's or around town.
Blanche Beaudelaire is the exception.
"Durwood, oh good — you came!" she said the other day. "I wasn't sure that website worked."
We were sitting in a back room of The Elk Spa, the salon Blanche runs over on Pine Street.
"It works," I said. "Your injustice request came through right away last night."
She did an impressed bat of the eyelashes. "Do you maintain thirdchancestories.com?"
I said I did. Quaid Rafferty has no patience for computer work, and Molly McGill is swamped running her kids around.
Blanche drew her rosy lower lip into her mouth. "You're a man of many talents, Durwood. I truly wish you'd reconsider my offer to become head of security here at the salon. The girls and I would feel so much safer in our work."
Ah, here we go. Does she have an injustice or is this a ruse?
“You don't need a head of security," I said. "Nothing happens here but nails and hairdos."
Her mouth turned into a big O like she took offense. "Now that is utter nonsense. We have all sorts of drama. Rumors. Nasty talk at the hair-wash stations. Jealous husbands."
“Jealous why?" I said.
Blanche giggled and leaned forward over her desk. "Is that an invitation? Because my Richard gets as green as any of 'em."
I happen to know her Richard spends most days on a stool at Josephine's Bar & Grill, face more red than green.
“Let's talk about your injustice, " I said. "You mentioned oil in your submission."
Blanche's blue eyes glittered a moment. Then she sighed, accepting the change of subject.
"Yes," she said. "Essential oils."
#ElkSalonOils
Third Chance Stories | Heroes too big to stay inside a book
thirdchancestories.com
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