Beauty Expos Are Murder

by Libby Klein

  Dr. Lance chuckled to himself for the audience’s benefit. “And that is only the beginning. I’m working with my team of biochemists to develop a radical, light-activated serum that erases cell damage and rehydrates the skin, filling it with luminous proteins. You’ll glow from the inside out! It’s my very own Fountain of Youth. I hope you saved your money and didn’t buy too many items promising miracles and delivering disappointment in the mirror. Throw away whatever you bought this weekend, because this replaces everything! I have the breakthrough you’ve been waiting for.”

  A woman rushed the stage from the wings. “You’re a dangerous fraud!” Agnes Pfeister-Pinze, the lone protestor, jabbed at the doctor. His body shook violently, and he went down in a heap.

  The rent-a-cop ambled to the stage and pulled her off. He pressed a button on the walkie-talkie fastened to his shoulder. “I’ve got her. She used a Taser. Get the paramedics.” He dragged Agnes kicking and flailing offstage.

  Mother Gibson let out a loud, “Girrrl, you best get ahold of yourself!”

  Mrs. Davis munched on a piece of jerky. “The security here isn’t very good, is it?”

  Dr. Rubin held up his arm, and the audience gasped. “I’m okay. I’m okay.” He struggled to his feet. “My mouth tastes like I just got a filling, but I’m alright.”

  The crowd applauded, which invigorated the doctor. “The lady is clearly disturbed. I just hope she gets the help she needs. Now, I believe we have some raffle tickets to call for some lucky winners to try out my revolutionary UV mask.”

  The white coats took the stage with a fishbowl of tickets and started pulling numbers. Sawyer had both hands up and her fingers crossed. “Pick me, pick me.”

  Aunt Ginny was on the other side of me, doing the same thing. I thought they were both crazy. You couldn’t pay me to put that thing on.

  Aunt Ginny’s number was called and she squealed. “It’s me. It’s me!”

  “Well, lucky lady, you’ve won a UVaderm treatment in our studio.”

  Aunt Ginny rushed the stage to collect her envelope. “UVaderm? What is it? I don’t care, I want it. When can I have it?”

  Tally led her offstage, presumably to make arrangements, and I looked around the room for Shayla. She had disappeared. The beauty execs from the Lolly sheet mask booth and the Glow Skin Care people were having a furious tête-à-tête, and angrily watching Dr. Rubin posing for pictures with fans onstage. Even the ultra-expensive Qualicel Beauty team was huddled up with the hippies at Naked Skin Care.

  Sawyer and I wandered through the room, each waiting for the other to speak first.

  After overhearing the words “slander” and “lawsuit,” Sawyer snickered. “He did not make any friends tonight.”

  “You’d think he would play nicer while they were in the same room. Those Glow ladies look like they’re planning to jump him when he goes to his car.”

  We arrived at the stage, where Dr. Rubin was taking questions. He spotted me and waved me over. He pulled a card out of the breast pocket of his jacket and slipped it to me with a wink before going back to the gathering. I turned it over. Meet me tomorrow morning before the Expo opens. I want to discuss a treatment with you.

  Sawyer craned her neck to read my card. “What’s that all about?”

  I shoved the card in my purse. “He wants me to get liposuction.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he thinks it will fix what’s wrong with me.”

  “That’s ridiculous. You’re perfect the way you are.”

  “I don’t feel perfect. I feel like a lone watermelon in a field of asparagus.”

  “Ew. Who wants to be an asparagus?”

  “Do you think Gia would rather I look . . . like you?”

  Sawyer stopped walking. “Truthfully? If Gia wanted someone who looks like me, he could have had me. I had a lot of lattes the first couple of months after Kurt and I broke up. He never made a move. I think he’s interested in something unique to you, and it has nothing to do with your weight.”

  We started walking again and finished a lap of the room on small talk. When we made it back to our chairs, Sawyer sat down. “I’m sorry I wasn’t here to help the other day.”

  “I didn’t need your help, I needed you. I miss you.”

  I spotted Aunt Ginny scanning the room. I caught her eye, and she made a beeline for me. She held up a new bag from the CBD booth. “I went back and bought some more. I took a twenty from your purse on the floor.”

  I let that sink in, then held up my arm to show Aunt Ginny my purse hanging from my elbow.

  Her eyes grew big and she looked at an open, brown pocketbook on the floor in front of her chair. Then she squinted at the red purse hanging from my arm. “I gotta go.”

  Sawyer chuckled. “I’ll walk her home to make sure she gets there okay. I parked at your house anyway.”

  “Okay, but when can we talk?”

  Sawyer hustled after Aunt Ginny. “I’ll call you; I promise.”

  I was heading back to the La Dolce Vita booth to help close down for the night when my purse vibrated. “That was fast.”

  It was a text from Amber. Where are you? Meet me at the Marquis, now!

  Now? Geez, Amber, it’s late. I texted Gia to say that I had an emergency and had to go. He sent me a heart emoji and said he’d see me in the morning. On my way out to the boardwalk, I spotted Stubby. He looked like he was having a deep discussion with a woman, almost intimate.

  I was trying to work up the courage to say hello to him, especially since there would be an eyewitness if he felt I disrespected him and he wanted to whack me. A car honked, and the woman turned her face into the light. It was Alex.

  CHAPTER 18

  Like a fancy yacht bobbing in an ocean of bed and breakfasts, the Marquis de Lafayette was one of Cape May’s oldest hotels. The ambling, six-story white building had rows and rows of oceanfront balconies awash in the neon-blue glow of the center tower scrollwork. I stood in the parking lot wondering what Alex was doing talking to the man who does security for Gia and waiting for Amber to mosey along with this emergency she had.

  A lime-green car the size of a playpen pulled up and the horn squeaked out a wheet whee! The car had enough dents and dings to look like it played goalie for the Flyers, and there was a basketball-size doughnut of rust just behind the passenger-side door. I squatted down to look through the window, hoping to find a lost Canadian looking for directions. My heart sank when Amber waved me in.

  Her car looked like it had been on spring break without her. I had to move several empty McDonald’s bags to find the seat. Then a spring poked through the cloth and jabbed me in the butt, causing me to jump and hit my head on the ceiling, the lining of which was being held up by about a hundred red, white, and blue thumbtacks in the design of the Union Jack.

  “Would you get settled? We don’t have a lot of time for this.”

  “Good God, Amber, where did you get this car?”

  “It’s a hand-me-down.”

  “From who? Abraham Lincoln?”

  “I’ve had it since college.”

  “I didn’t know you went to college.”

  “Well, I did . . . for almost a whole year.”

  “Oh.”

  “Okay, give me a break. It wasn’t for me.”

  “What, I didn’t say anything.” After several yanks I wrangled my seat belt in place. There was a lot of crunching happening under my feet, and discarded wrappers were sticking to my shoes. I started collecting the plastic bags and cellophane and stuffing them into an empty Slurpee cup.

  Amber wove through the streets like we were being chased. When she flew through a red light in an empty intersection, I felt my stomach give me a tweak. “Are you allowed to do that when you’re off-duty?” Or on duty?

  “We’re in a hurry.”

  “Yeah, I’ll be sure to use that the next time I get pulled over.” I felt like I was riding in a thirteen-year-old boy’s bedroom. I didn’t really get nervous until I not
iced the lack of a passenger-side airbag. And the fire extinguisher behind the driver’s seat. And the outline of the word Pinto above the glove box. I lurched, and my seat belt clutched me in a death grip.

  “What’s wrong with you?”

  “Holy crap, Amber! Is this one of those cars that explodes when it’s rear-ended?”

  “Calm down . . . I have a fire extinguisher. It probably still works.”

  I twisted my head in circles and let my neck pop. “Where are we going?”

  “I need you to do some recon. Things have escalated in the last twenty-four hours. This did not just blow over like the chief assured me it would. Internal Affairs is now involved, and they’ve sent Kieran Dunne. He’s a hatchet man. If he’s involved, someone up the food chain believes I’m guilty, and they sent him to take me down. I had a deposition today, and it was not just a formality.”

  I held on to the dashboard because it was the only area that didn’t look sticky. “Are you worried?”

  She snapped a look at me. “I’ve asked you to help me, haven’t I? That’s somewhere around my ninth circle of Hell.”

  I muttered peevishly to myself, “No offense taken.”

  Amber dug around under her seat and pulled out an open bag of nacho cheese Combos. She blew some dust out of the bag and offered me one.

  “No thank you.” Speaking of ninth circles of Hell.

  She took a handful and popped them in her mouth. “I need you to search the victim’s apartment. I have a box of latex gloves in there.” She pointed her Combos bag at the glove compartment. “See what looks out of place to you. The cops will have turned off the AC and the lights, but they won’t have touched anything else. That door doesn’t open from the inside, so you can stop trying.”

  We had pulled up to a red light in North Cape May and I was yanking on the handle like Ted Bundy was in the driver’s seat. “I didn’t sign on for breaking and entering.”

  Amber put her hand on my arm. It would have been a nice moment, except she was pinching me like we were in fourth grade again. “I don’t ask you for a lot, McAllister.”

  “Ow. You’re hurting me.”

  “Look, when you’re done with this, I’ll owe you one, okay?”

  I relaxed my grip on the door and she relaxed hers on the back of my arm. “I don’t even know what I’m looking for.”

  “You have good instincts. Just look around and see what you think. And whatever you do, don’t turn the lights on. The neighbor across the hall doesn’t miss anything.”

  I dug out the gloves, along with a package of Choco-diles that had been discontinued during the Clinton administration, and held them up to the light. “You have a problem, you know that?”

  Amber grabbed the chocolate-covered Twinkies. “Don’t touch my snacks. I paid a fortune for those on eBay.”

  She gave me the rundown of where Temarius Jackson’s apartment was in the HUD building, which housed a lot of senior citizens and people with disabilities, then rattled off a list of what not to do once inside. We pulled into a dimly lit parking lot behind the Bay Vista Apartments, a brown-brick building on the edge of the Villas. A plastic ShopRite bag skipped around a brown dumpster. Iron bars guarded the windows on the ground floor and only two apartments on the upper levels had lights on.

  I took a breath and willed my stomach to stop quivering.

  Amber gave me a nod.

  I nodded back. “You ready?”

  “Ready for what? I’m waiting here.”

  “You’re not coming with me?”

  “McAllister, if I could go in there, I wouldn’t need you. If you get caught, it’s trespassing. You’ll do community service, and honestly, with Aunt Ginny as a defense, it’ll be time served. If I get caught, I’ll look like I’m tampering with evidence. I could go to jail for that alone.”

  I gave a huff and manually cranked down my window, then shoved my arm out to open the door from the outside.

  “Thank you. I’ll be right here the whole time.”

  Ducky.

  The lobby was nothing to write home about. I’d seen cheerier laundry rooms. I walked three flights up the dank stairwell to the fourth floor while I mentally prepared my defense about how I was on unofficial police duty for a cop on administrative leave and not really breaking into the apartment. I was met by a lone flickering bulb and the feeling that a set of creepy twins holding hands would be at the end of the hall. Amber had said that Temarius’s apartment was number 412, the second door on the left. It was also the only one with a crisscross of yellow police tape blocking the entrance. I put on my latex gloves and tried the doorknob. Locked. I pulled my wallet out of my bra and took out my Torrid credit card, then reconsidered. I can’t live without that one. I put it back and used the Home Depot card instead. There was a gap at the latch where the doorjamb was splintered, and wood was chipped away. This wasn’t the first break-in the apartment had seen.

  I wiggled my credit card around like I’d seen on Charlie’s Angels, but all I achieved was breaking off a corner. How did Farrah Fawcett do this in a miniskirt and go-go boots?

  I was getting irritated and about to go tell Amber I needed a screwdriver when I heard a click. I was able to force the latch aside and the door creaked open under its own weight. I climbed through the spiderweb of police tape, which in my mind looked just like Angelina Jolie climbing through a laser maze, and gently closed the door behind me.

  It took a moment to find the button on the flashlight. There were a few evidence tags around the room. By the couch. On the wall behind the couch. On the air conditioner. The room smelled like wet dog and burnt hair. Someone had left bologna and cheese on the kitchen counter, and a half-eaten sandwich sat on the coffee table. The front door had a tower of dead bolts and a chain that were intact, so they must not have been set when the killer entered.

  I walked over to the couch and scanned it. There was a very obvious hole in the back of the cushion, and the fabric around it was much darker and looked gummy and sticky. I peeked into the bedroom in the back. It was a mess. Not a somebody-tossed-this-room-looking-for-stuff mess, but a teenager-lives-here mess. Bed not made, basketball on the floor next to a pile of dirty laundry. A stack of graphic novels on the nightstand.

  The only evidence in the bathroom was that this boy didn’t do much cleaning, but there was nothing damning. Toothpaste, toothbrush, Scope, Axe body spray.

  Across the hall was a second bedroom. The room was tidy, the bed was neatly made, and there was a Bible and a devotional on the bedside table.

  I went back to the living room and looked at the couch again. I touched it. My glove was brown and wet—the cushion was soaked. For some reason that made my heart break for the boy who had died here. I didn’t even know him, but everything in his apartment screamed I’m just a kid.

  There was a pillow smooshed into the corner of the couch. Out of habit, I tugged it out to fluff it up, and something hard fell to the floor between the frame. I reached under the couch and fished out a cell phone. The battery was at 5 percent, but the screen displayed one text message at 5:27 a.m. I clicked the envelope. “OMW.” I checked his call log to see if Amber’s number showed up, but there was only one number in and out. No contact info. No name. Just a 647 area code. I stuffed the cell in my pocket to give it to Amber. It’s not like she gave me evidence bags—although if you’re someone who carries a box of latex gloves in the car, how far-fetched would some Ziploc baggies be? I just wanted to get out of there. This would have to be enough.

  I flicked the switch on the flashlight and the room went dark. I froze with my hand on the doorknob as glowing blue tracks from the chair to the front door were brightening before my eyes.

  CHAPTER 19

  I peeled off my gloves and shoved them in my pocket, then raced down the stairs, preparing to run for the car. Blue lights bounced off the lobby walls. Why were the cops here? I wanted to find somewhere to hide, but it would only be a matter of time before they came inside. I slipped through the exit
and ducked behind a giant boxwood with a sock sticking out of it. Two police cruisers were blocking the back exit of the parking lot. Amber was pushed up against a black-and-white by the dumpster. Her hands were being cuffed behind her back by the policewoman I’d heard Amber call Crabtree at the winery. We hadn’t formerly met, so she probably didn’t know I was the harbinger of death to Cape May County yet. It seemed wise to keep it that way.

  Amber was pulled away from the car and her face turned toward the door. She was watching for me. Our eyes met and she shook her head no ever so slightly.

  The officers were pointing to the apartment building. I had a sick feeling they were heading over here any second. I skirted the edge of the parking lot in the shadows and tried a couple cars until I found an unlocked Oldsmobile. I got in behind the wheel and pulled the door gently closed. I crouched down in the front seat and kept my eyes glued to the rearview mirror. They hadn’t noticed me.

  A very pale, blond officer with gloved hands held up a gun and dropped it into a plastic bag as Amber was guided into the back seat of the police cruiser. An attractive-looking, dark-haired man in a suit leaned down to her window and said something. Amber didn’t answer; she turned her face and looked the other way.

  Officer Crabtree climbed into the front of the cruiser and the suit patted the top of the car. She sped off, while the remaining officers continued their search of the dumpster and surrounding area. All the while the suit leaned against an unmarked black sedan with his hands in his pockets and silently watched.

  My heart started to pound when the officer who’d found the gun headed my way, his flashlight bouncing off the mirror in the Olds. He moved toward Amber’s car and poked around. After a few minutes of searching he rolled up the windows and slammed the doors shut.