by Nancy Warren
Her relief at finding out for sure that the dead woman wasn’t a Lady Bianca rep was enormous. Not only did she not want to think of anyone in her business ending up … that way, but there was also a practical side to her relief. The convention could too easily be derailed by thousands of women gossiping about murder instead of learning about cosmetics.
The group moving the gurney stopped as one and turned to her.
“She’s not a Lady Bianca associate at all,” she announced. “I knew it the minute I saw those shoes. One of our representatives gave her a makeover, that’s all.”
“What makes you so sure?” asked Luke Marciano.
She pulled out another of her cards and waved it at them. “Lady Bianca cosmetics are sold outside a retail environment. Offering makeovers is how we introduce ourselves and our products, like I just did to you all. During the convention there are thousands of enthusiastic sales reps in and around the hotel. Someone offered this woman a makeover and she took them up on it. Which means she’s not part of Lady Bianca. Obviously, you’ll have to direct your efforts elsewhere.”
Detective Marciano took a couple of steps toward her. “You’re sure this woman couldn’t possibly be connected to Lady Bianca?”
“I’d swear to it on my grandmother’s grave. And I dearly loved my grandmother.” Of course, Gran had been cremated so she didn’t actually inhabit a grave. The urn containing her ashes occupied pride of place on the mantel of the electric fireplace her mama had bought at Wal-Mart. They both looked real nice in the double wide. Since, officially, there was no grave to swear on, Toni was more willing to take a flyer on the truth. But her gut told her this woman wasn’t Lady Bianca and her instincts were rarely wrong.
The detective sent her a look that probably made murderers fall down on their quivering knees and confess.
“How many murders have you solved, Ms. Diamond?”
She smiled sweetly. “About as many as you’ve done makeovers.” A muffled snort of amusement came from the other woman’s direction.
Marciano seemed to be debating something. He stared at her and his right hand slipped into his pocket to jingle change. After a long moment he said, “There were cosmetics found beside the body. Lady Bianca brand.”
This didn’t depress her. The news had the opposite effect. “A small package? With travel sized samples in it?”
“Sounds about right.”
She nodded, forcing herself to suppress her smile of relief out of respect for the recently departed. “It’s the starter kit. We give it to all our makeovers. Encourages them to use the products, then they get hooked and become customers for life.” She glanced at the black body bag, thinking the dead woman’s life as a Lady Bianca customer had been extraordinarily short.
She wondered what that woman had done during her time on earth, and why she’d agreed to a makeover today of all days. Or maybe it had been yesterday.
He looked at the female cop. “If she’s not a Lady Bianca rep, then who the hell is she?”
Toni figured it was a rhetorical question, but she answered him anyway. “I can’t tell you that, but I can find out who gave her the makeover. We always get our clients’ names and contact information when we do a makeover.” She thought for a minute. “Can I see the make up samples?”
Now the cop looked puzzled. “I thought you said giving out samples was standard procedure?”
“It is. But a good rep will customize the pack a little bit, choosing colors that will compliment a woman’s coloring.” She shrugged. “Some can’t be bothered.” She tried not to let the irritation she felt for such sloppy sales practices show in her tone, but if there was one thing she’d learned in more than fifteen years in the business it was that attention to detail mattered. A woman whose Lady Bianca makeover left her looking fabulous was much more likely to spend her money on cosmetics than a woman who merely looked good.
“If I’d done that woman’s make up, I’d have gone with a softer palette. The pumpkin spice, mulled cider and hickory would look great on a brunette like you, ma’am, with your tawny skin tones and big brown eyes, but with this lady’s white and pink tones and what I’m guessing are blue eyes, I’d have chosen our fall mauves and plum tones, I’d have feathered a little eggplant right--”
“Get to the point ma’am. We’re more interested in catching the killer than getting a lesson in cosmetics.”
Well, he might be, but she could tell she’d caught the attention of the female cop.
“What that means is that whoever gave this poor woman her final makeover was either new, incompetent or had overbought on the tawny palette and was trying to push that stock.”
The air down here smelled musty and under the harsh lighting the dust motes floating lazily in the air were the size of dandruff.
“The make up package is upstairs. Find Detective Henderson and tell him Marciano sent you.” He sent her a stern glance. “And you don’t touch anything.”
When she widened her eyes, her mascara-darkened lashes jabbed her as though she’d taken two forks to her eyelids. “Of course not. But it might give me a clue as to who did the makeover.”
“If you find out who did it you call me immediately. Don’t approach the person yourself.”
“But—“
“Ms. Diamond, this woman didn’t die of old age.”
Chapter Three
It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances. —Oscar Wilde
The cops wheeled their gruesome cargo towards a loading dock with such casual assurance that a shiver crossed Toni’s skin as she wondered how often in the past they’d had to perform the same task.
She turned away.
She’d never been in the service end of a hotel before. None of the fancy stuff here, she noted. The hotel behind the scenes was like a woman before she’d made herself up. Bare cement floors, industrial lighting, cinderblock walls -- all of which had been covered over and prettied up out front for the public.
Not quite sure where she was, she decided to take the service elevator back the way she’d come.
When she’d taken those cards out to give them to the officers, she’d noticed a new text message on her phone. Her daughter, most likely.
Pulling her cell out of her bag she saw she was right. The message read, Nd mr Ilinr, teen hieroglyphics for need more eyeliner. No greeting or please or thank you or salutation. Extraordinary how a three-word message could drip with surliness. She didn’t even have to specify color. Tiffany’s current palette only contained one shade: black.
She took the service elevator up a floor and emerged into another cement floored hallway. A few steps led her into the kitchen. She must have got off the elevator a floor too soon, but, since she’d had enough of that cavernous metal cage, she kept going and got a sneak preview of the food for today’s luncheon banquet.
White coated and capped kitchen help were busy at massive industrial ovens and the smells of baking bread and roasting meat would have made her mouth water under normal circumstances.
A female chef shouted orders to a harried looking underling and then glared at Toni as she edged through the organized bustle.
“Sorry,” she whispered as she eased herself around a gleaming stainless prep counter where salads where being made in assembly line fashion. She headed for the nearest exit and found herself in the ballroom where lunch would be served. After the mayhem of the kitchen, the space looked huge and lonely with so many empty tables. A team of waiters were setting up, flipping lilac table cloths onto the round tables.
Next door to the big ballroom was a conference room now set up as a Lady Bianca cosmetics store featuring everything from the full collection of products to the equally enormous array of prizes that could be won by hard working sales associates.
Even in here she could tell that the atmosphere was different than usual. Less upbeat, verging on somber. This would never do. The sooner they could prove that that poor dead woman was not associated with Lady Bianca, the quicker
they could all get back to business.
After buying four of the thick kohl pencils Tiffany favored, and reminding herself once more that goth was a phase like any other, she checked her watch. Normally, she took a second to admire the way the twelve diamonds on its face twinkled, reminding her that every hour of her life was a sparkling opportunity. But now she noted that the next sessions had already started.
She hoped that with the body removed, the associates had gone ahead in and weren’t gawping like buzzards fixin' to light into a dead possum.
She strode out into the corridor ready to play mother hen if she had to, and found Orin Shellenbach, VP of Sales for Lady Bianca, shepherding the last stragglers into sessions.
Once they’d all disappeared she walked forward and poked her head inside Longhorn C.
“Crime scene, ma’am,” a sharp voice greeted her. It belonged to a heavy-set black woman with a no-nonsense manner.
“I’m looking for Detective Henderson,” she said.
The woman glared at her like she might be here to report a broken nail and they all had better things to do. “He’s out interviewing.”
“Any idea where?”
“Honey, I have enough trouble keeping track of my own people.”
“Okay. Thanks for your help,” she said, with all the sweetness in her, while taking a quick visual sweep of the area.
A man in blue overalls knelt on the ground and sliced the carpet around a dark, greasy looking blood stain where the body had lain, and the fingerprint guy was spraying something on the walls. Otherwise, she was surprised how lacking in drama the scene looked. No broken glasses or overturned chairs. Apart from the blood stain and the crime tape, the room looked ready to hold a meeting.
In the end it didn’t take enormous powers of sleuthing to find Detective Henderson. He’d set up in Longhorn B, where he was interviewing a cleaner. Henderson was in his fifties with iron gray hair cut like a marine’s. A long, gaunt ribbon of a man, he had the lean and hungry look of someone who either runs marathons or has an eating disorder.
He scribbled in a notebook. She didn’t want to interrupt so she poured herself a glass of water from the ice water station in the corridor and stood sipping it. Not even in times of extreme stress did she neglect her eight glasses of water a day. She waited politely outside the open door, though the cleaner spoke clearly enough that she could hear every word.
The woman was Hispanic and her face was flushed either with anger or fear. Or maybe high blood pressure.
“You’re absolutely sure there was no one in the conference room, Longhorn C,” he glanced at his notes, “when you cleaned it at 9:20 p.m. last night?”
“I already told you. There wasn’t anybody.”
“Did you see anyone in the area?”
“No. Nobody.”
“Hear anything?”
She shook her head. “I had the vacuum going.”
“Before you went into the room, where were you?”
“In this room. I do Longhorn A, then B, then C.” Logical. Though Toni bet that if she had to clean hotels, she’d switch the order she cleaned rooms if only to make her routine a bit more interesting.
“And after you finished Longhorn C?”
The woman shrugged. “Then I went on my break. In the staff room downstairs.”
“Did you come back up later?”
“No. I was finished in this part of the hotel. I did the bathrooms on the main floor after my break. Then I went home.”
“Okay. Thank you for your help. If you remember anything, anything at all…”
“I got your card.”
The woman walked off with a heavy tread, like she spent all day on her feet and they were getting tired of it. The detective glanced at his watch and then scribbled some more.
“Excuse me? Detective Henderson?”
He turned to her. His eyes were so undecided between gray and blue that they were virtually colorless. “Yes?”
“My name is Toni Diamond. I’m with Lady Bianca Cosmetics.” She watched what little color was in his eyes leach out as though she not only didn’t deserve his attention, she didn’t deserve full ocular pigmentation.
“What can I do for you, ma’am?” Brisk. No time to waste.
“Detective Marciano asked me to have a look at the cosmetics you found on the…at the scene of the crime.”
The blankness vanished. If anything, he now looked at her with suspicion.
If there was one thing she’d learned in her years of selling it was that with some people less is more in the talking department. Detective Henderson, she’d guess, was of the less is more school. She let him think about her request uninterrupted while he pinned her with that unnerving stare. Then he gave a sharp nod and said, “This way.”
He led her back to Longhorn C and called over one of the technicians and asked for the make up samples. They all wore coverings over their shoes so even Henderson wasn’t going to go into that room without putting on special gear.
The technician was young enough that he still had a little acne on his forehead. “It’s been bagged and tagged.”
She got it. She wasn’t going to open the big baggie thing and apply the eye makeup, even if there hadn’t been a rusty red smudge in one corner of the Lady Bianca sampler pack that she didn’t even want to think about.
He held it at eye level and she squinted at the starter kit. Henderson stood beside her so quiet and still she barely noticed him, but she felt his gaze on her face while she inspected the kit.
“That’s odd,” she said.
“What’s odd?”
She turned sharply to find Detective Marciano at her elbow. She’d been so busy staring at the tiny case, trying to make sense of it that she hadn’t heard him approach. Or maybe creeping was one of his detective talents.
“These samples?”
“Yeah,” he sounded vaguely irritable. “Are they the same colors Jane Doe was wearing?”
“No. They aren’t even this year’s colors.” She turned to him. “We haven’t handed out those samples since last year.”
Detectives Marciano and Henderson seemed a tad underwhelmed at the news that the woman had died with last year’s sampler pack. Of course, to them it wouldn’t mean anything.
“It’s against the rules. Once the colors change the sales rep is required to give out the new sampler packs.”
They both nodded politely. “Thank you for your help, ma’am,” Marciano said. This time he didn’t even add the ‘if you think of anything call us,’ routine. Clearly, they didn’t think she had much of value to offer the investigation.
If Toni were a believer in omens, she’d have to say that seeing a murder victim on the first morning of the annual conference wasn’t a good one. She felt pretty shaken up by the experience, but she didn’t have time to waste in self-indulgent moaning.
She needed to stop whoever was giving out old sampler packs and the most efficient way she could think of to do that was to get hold of Orin Shellenbach and get him to send a reminder email to all the reps. Hopefully, he’d also find a way to reinforce the message to everyone who was right here at the conference.
She headed down the escalator to the main level and noticed that registration was still backed up. Lady Bianca associates had been registering for two days now and still the procession of women waiting to be checked in snaked like the world’s slowest conga line.
No hotel they’d ever found could smoothly register several thousand woman all arriving at once.
The reception desk, even fully staffed, couldn’t hope to get through this many women in less than a couple of hours. But then the consultants were used to that. There they stood in long, curling lines. They’d come from every state in the union as well as Mexico and Canada. Some had flown and others had driven hours, even days to get here. And yet every one of them looked professionally turned out. Their hair was neat, their clothes businesslike. They wore hose and closed toed shoes, various recognition pins and jewelr
y. And, of course, their makeup was flawless.
Even though they were standing with their luggage and the lineups were barely inching forward, there was more excitement and happiness in this crowd than she’d seen – well, since last year’s conference.
And the noise! The gals gossiped, giggled, traded war stories, introduced each other and inched toward the eight harried desk clerks.
Of course, no cohort of thousands is without its bad apples and as she hit the main level and stepped off the escalator, she saw one particularly moldy Golden Delicious coming toward her. The lobby was so crowded with women waiting to check in that only a narrow corridor was left to pass from one end to the other so it was impossible for her to avoid the only person in Lady Bianca she truly despised.
Nicole Freedman never met a corner she couldn’t cut. If there was something she wanted, she’d lie, cheat and push out a few crocodile tears if necessary. Unfortunately, she and Toni were chief rivals for this year’s top sales division prize. Not for the first time.
Toni donned a smile as fake as the diamonds on her suit buttons and said, “Well, hello, Nicole. You’re looking wonderful.” In fact, she’d gone a shade too dark in the hair dye on her sleek bob. With her pale complexion and the raven’s wing hair she reminded Toni of a much older version of Tiffany and her friends. Mom Goth – yeah, that was a trend that was going to be big.
As usual, Nicole was surrounded by a couple of groupies. Melody Feckler, her confidante, right hand and dog’s body, had taken to dying her hair the same shade as her mentor, Toni noted. It wasn’t much of a surprise since Melody tended to copy everything Nicole did. They wore similar suits, shoes and bags, but it was clear that Nicole spent a lot more money on herself. Melody was like one of those magazine layouts where they show the designer runway model and then recreate the look with cheap imitations from TJ Maxx and Penney’s. Melody had a sweet face and candid blue eyes, but with the black hair she looked like Snow White’s older, overweight cousin.
