Madelina Part 2

It wasn’t until I was walking home that day that things finally got a little interesting. Instead of thirty minutes late, I now held a new personal record for forty minutes. That had earned me a good hour of detention in the principal’s office. I knew that place well.

            The streets were mostly empty as I walked. Rush hour would soon come, but for now there was no one around. My usual route I took was the longest and wound around some small businesses in the area, one of which was the hair salan.

            That’s when my life suddenly became interesting. Passing the hair salan, I mean.

            First I thought it was a party. There were lots of people and noise and colorful lights. And then I realized the lights were police cars.

            I paused on the street, staring dumbly into the building. Something was definitely wrong. There was lots of commotion and shouts but I couldn’t figure out what was going on. The noise was indecipherable.

            Becoming bored with the lack of an understanding at all this, I finally walked on and ignored it. What happened, did someone’s hair dryer blow up? Maybe there was a shortage on colorants for a woman’s fiftieth hair dye job.

            I didn’t think about the scene for the rest of that day, although I certainly should have. Nothing interesting ever happened in this town. And certainly nothing I had the pleasure of witnessing. In fact, it wasn’t until Dad came home from work that I found out what was going on.

            “Did you hear about the accident at the hair salan?” he asked, pouring himself a cup of coffee. Dad loved to drink coffee at night. Especially when he was on call. It meant getting out of bed at 1 a.m. would be easier.

            “What accident?” I decided to play stupid and not add in any negligent details at what I saw.

            “Apparently someone was murdered. I suppose accident was the wrong word.”

            My head spun. A murder? Murders didn’t occur here. They just didn’t. This really was big.

            “Murder?” I repeated, as if the word confused me.

            Dad nodded, taking a sip of coffee. “Some woman was killed by one of the employees. Drowned I guess.”

             How was one drowned in a hair salan? Who was the woman? Unfortunately Dad didn’t provide any answers to these unspoken questions. I was surprised he knew about this, actually. Normally he was stuck in his own little medical world.

            “The police are doing an investigation now,” he added.