Frosted Shadow - A Toni Diamond Mystery

by Nancy Warren

  “My customers don’t want to wait for me to order their products; they want me to have items available for them at any time. That’s why I needed Toni to stock me up before my Love your Lips party tomorrow night.” She turned to Toni. “Wait ‘til I show you the invitations. They’re shaped like kisses. When I saw them I knew I had to have the party. It was a sign.”

  “Stevie next door wanted to know why I was throwing a Valentine’s party in July. If brains were grease she wouldn’t have enough to slick the head of a pin.”

  He recalled the check writing. “And you have to buy all this stuff up front?”

  “Exactly like a store. I buy at wholesale and sell at retail, which gives me a very nice fifty percent profit on all my sales.”

  He opened all the cupboards except the one marked Men because, frankly, he didn’t want to know.

  “Where are the sample packs you give out when you do a makeover?”

  “Advertising and Marketing.”

  He opened the cupboard. Inside, along with poster board glossies of faces that looked as though they belonged at a display booth, and boxes of brochures, business cards and catalogs, he found four varieties of the same sample pack that had been beside the dead woman when she’d been found.

  Toni left what she was doing and came up beside him. “Here’s what I was talking about. We’ve got sample packs in different shades to complement a client’s coloring. These are the ones for this year.” She raised her voice, “Mama, do you have any of the sample packs from last year?”

  “Goodness, no, honey. Why would I have those? They’re no good anymore.”

  Toni raised her eyebrows at him. “See? No rep with an ounce of integrity is going to give out old ones.”

  He rubbed his thumb along the edge of the plastic package. Even mass produced, they had to cost a buck or two a pop. “Do the reps have to buy those?”

  “Of course.”

  “Marketing must cost a ton.”

  “Cost of doing business, Detective. You get out of an enterprise what you put into it.”

  Or invested your hard-earned money in a lot of colored junk you couldn’t sell. He supposed it was, as Toni would no doubt tell him, all about attitude.

  The three of them headed back down the hallway to the main living area.

  “How about staying for lunch, honey? I’ve got some fruit salad and I can rustle up –”

  “We can’t stay. I’m going to miss a session as it is, and Detective Marciano has a murder to solve.”

  “Murder?” Her mother suddenly dropped the happy face, and he saw Toni’s lips move, no doubt as she swore silently at herself. He didn’t think she’d intended to tell her mom there’d been a murder -- though she was being naïve if she thought it wouldn’t be in all the papers and on the local TV.

  “Who was murdered?” Linda Plotnik glanced at him, “And what does Toni have to do with it?”

  “Nothing, Mama. It’s nothing to do with me. The woman had had a Lady Bianca makeover that’s all, and the police want to know all about our business in case there’s a connection.” She turned to him. “Even though there isn’t one.”

  Linda Plotnik did not look relieved. “I never watch the news or read the papers if I can help; it. Too negative. But—“ She put a hand to her chest. “Oh, my. A woman involved in Lady Bianca was murdered? I hope you’re looking after my girl, Detective.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  She turned to Toni, a worried expression pulling her eyebrows together. “And don’t you go putting your nose in things that are none of your business.”

  “I won’t.”

  Ignoring her daughter, she turned back to Luke. “She does, you know. Nosy. That’s what she is. Always has been from the time she was no bigger than a June bug.”

  “Can we talk about something else?”

  “Are you a married man, Detective?”

  “Not that!”

  “Well, it’s the other subject I’m interested in.”

  “Mother,” Toni said in a warning tone. “Detective Marciano is here on business.”

  Those baby blue doll’s eyes widened. “I’m thinking about business. He could have a wife, girlfriend, mother, sisters, all kinds of future Lady Bianca customers. You don’t know until you ask.”

  Luke felt sizzles of emotion running through the atmosphere. Toni’s cheeks were pink with embarrassment. Linda, unabashed, was clearly checking him out. And from the kid he picked up pure, unadulterated humiliation to be stuck in this trailer with these people.

  “I’m divorced,” he finally said. “And I don’t think I’ll be buying my ex-wife make up any time soon. Sisters and mother live too far away. But thanks.”

  “Toni’s divorced, too.”

  “Mama!”

  “In case you were wondering.”

  “Did you bring my eyeliners?” Tiffany asked her mother.

  “Yes. Glad you reminded me.” She hefted her purse and pulled out a quartet of black pencils.

  “Cool.”

  “And be good for Grandma. She’s really excited about you helping with the party tomorrow.”

  “Whatever.”

  While Toni had a few words with her daughter, the mother sidled up to him not looking at all abashed at being caught out in some of the most heavy-handed match making he’d ever witnessed. “Don’t mind me. I want to see her happy, is all.”

  “I don’t mind.”

  “I have no patience for subtlety.” Like that was news. He had a shrewd idea she bullied her friends into buying makeup.

  She looked at him with eyes that reminded him of Toni’s. “You’re a good man. I can tell these things. I’m a lot smarter than I look, you know.”

  “I know.” He leaned closer, so he could see each individual platinum curl and the smell of hairspray caught in the back of his throat. “So’s your daughter.”

  She laughed aloud at that and patted him on the shoulder. “I hope I see you again.”

  “Good-bye, Mother,” Toni said, before he could answer. Which he figured was just as well.

  “Sorry about that,” Toni said as soon as they were back on the road. “I thought you being a cop might intimidate my mama. Seems I was wrong.”

  “Don’t be hard on her. I like your mom.”

  “Truth is, I like her too.” She sighed. “And one day, I hope, my daughter will like me again.” She glanced over at him. “Do you have kids?”

  “No. Never got around to it.”

  They were silent for a few minutes as the highway rolled beneath them. “You told Mama you’ve got a mom and sisters, is that true?”

  “Sure. I grew up in a big, Italian, Catholic family. I’m the baby with three older sisters who all bossed me around.”

  “Wow, you seem so tough to be from an all girl family.”

  “Having three older sisters is what made me tough.”

  She laughed. “What about your father?”

  “He’s been gone three years, now. He was an auto mechanic. Took the business over from his father and wanted me to take over from him. But I knew from way back I wanted to be a cop.”

  “So, the business closed?”

  He shook his head, looking amused. “Marciano & Sons is now run by Maria Marciano, the oldest. He got such a kick out of that.”

  “You help her out sometimes?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “Your hands. You’ve got a trace of grease under your nails and the skin is cracking, from harsh cleaners, I bet.”

  He glanced down at his hands ruefully. “I remodel old trucks. It’s a hobby, specially when I can’t sleep. I was working on one last night.”

  “Lady Bianca has a nice cuticle cream that should help with the dry skin and prevent that cracking.”

  He chuckled. “You never give up, do you?”

  “Don’t worry. I promise not to sell you anything. This is a present.”

  She could feel him looking at her. “I want to ask you something and I don’t want you to take it
the wrong way,” Marciano said to her.

  She glanced up at him. “Whoa. Now I’m on my guard. Is this how you interrogate your prisoners? ‘I’m going to ask you some tough questions but I don’t want you to take them the wrong way?’”

  He met her gaze. “Depends on the prisoner.”

  The highway rolled beneath them with a shushing sound.

  “So, what do you want to ask me that I might take the wrong way?”

  “You’re smart. What are you doing shilling makeup door to door?”

  “And here I thought you were going to ask me about my political affiliations or my religious beliefs.” She sighed. “This is not the first time I’ve been asked this question. I love what I do. I like helping a woman bring out her unique beauty. Every face is a new possibility. A blank canvas if you like.”

  “Hope you’re more of a Gainsborough than a Picasso,” he muttered, making her snort with laughter.

  “I thought you of all people would understand.”

  “You thought I would understand selling makeup?”

  “In a way, we’re in the same business you and I.”

  “Come again?” If she’d grabbed his revolver and shot him with it he couldn’t have looked more shocked.

  “Think about it. We both try to clean up the world’s ugliness and make it a better place.”

  He hit her with his steeliest glance. “I’m a cop. I fight crime.”

  “How much of your day is spent on paperwork and bureaucracy? Boring meetings and community relations?”

  “More than I’d like,” he admitted. “But that’s got nothing to do with my question.”

  He was so serious looking and yet there was a sizzle of something behind his eyes that suggested this man strapped on his tough cop persona every morning along with his gun holster. She knew all about assuming an identity. She did it every morning, too.

  “You know that expression ‘dirt poor’?”

  “Sure.”

  “Well, I lived it. My daddy was a two-bit rodeo rider when he met Mama. By the time I was born he was already out west trying to break into the movies. He had a bit part in a Spaghetti Western and I guess he thought he was headed for the big time. But Westerns were in decline and he was a bowlegged country boy who didn’t know how to do much but talk Texan and ride a bronco. He stuck it out for a while, doing stunts and eking out a living. But not enough to send us any money. So we lived with my mom’s folks and let me tell you, a Pentecostal preacher in a town where folks were poor was even poorer. If somebody gave him a few dollars for marrying them or something, you know what he’d do?”

  “What?”

  “He’d find somebody worse off to share the wealth with. And he really had to look hard to find anybody poorer than us. But they were good people and they loved Mama and me even though she’d fallen from the path of righteousness and I was the living proof.”

  “It’s hard to picture you dirt poor.”

  “I was a kid in the 1980s. The biggest shows on television were Dallas and Dynasty and we didn’t have a TV. I used to sneak to my friend Jo-Jo’s house and watch that life I knew I wanted. I fell in love right then and there with glamorous people and clothes and I vowed to myself that I was gonna be one of ‘em. Them.” She shook her head. “I get talking about the old days and I start talking white trash which was the official language of my childhood.”

  “Looks like you got your wish.”

  “Yes, sir, I did. I got it by working hard and selling a product I believe in. I’ve also helped a goodly number of women set up their own independent businesses. I’m real proud of my team.”

  “You’re selling me all right. But everybody in your organization isn’t as ethical as you are. I checked out some websites.”

  The look she sent him was far from apologetic. “Lady Bianca is a big organization. Sometimes the wrong people join up. Are you going to tell me that every police officer in the country is perfect, law abiding and honest?”

  His face registered surprise as he glanced at her. It was a look she’d been getting since she’d first grown breasts and dyed her hair blond. The kind of look Marilyn Monroe might have received if she’d opened her mouth and expounded a new theory of quantum physics.

  “I take your point.”

  She accelerated smoothly around a U-haul truck. “I help women look better and that makes them feel good about themselves. If you ask me, happy people have less reason to commit crime.”

  “Oh, come on.”

  “Look, I’m not pretending I can cure cancer or solve world hunger or fix that whole global warming thing. But if I make someone feel better about themselves maybe that gives them a little more confidence to get out there and do those things. We are also a very green company,” she told him. “I’m sure you noticed the minimal packaging, no extra boxes or cellophane and every one of our containers is recyclable. And, as I keep telling Tiffany, we also use natural ingredients grown and harvested in a sustainable manner.”

  “It would be greener if everybody stopped wearing make up.”

  She glanced at him from under her lashes. “Now you’re just being silly.”

  Chapter Nine

  I have always a sacred veneration for anyone I observe to be a little out of repair in his person, as supposing him either a poet or a philosopher. —Jonathon Swift

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” Luke said as they walked into the hotel to find the day’s electronic message board had changed. The Lady Bianca convention still held top billing, but the area toastmasters were gone. In their place were two new groups -- a medical equipment sales seminar in the Getty Ballroom and, lo and behold, Mystery Readers of America registration and opening banquet in the Cactus room.

  Toni paused beside him. “A mystery readers’ convention. What do you bet Violet was here to attend that?” Satisfaction spiked like a tiny fist punching the air, Yes!

  He nodded, still staring at the board.

  “It makes sense that she was a bookworm. She looked like a teacher or librarian, didn’t she? The clothes, the Birkenstocks, the ink between her fingers. And she named herself after a Holmes character.”

  He stuck his hand in his pocket and jingled the change in there. “Then the bookworm had a makeover. She said because she had a date.”

  “Which suggests she was trying to impress. First date, maybe.”

  She cast her mind back to the image of the woman’s dead body on the gurney and the picture came through as clear as though she’d snapped a photo.

  “She wasn’t wearing a wedding ring, unless that Celtic design was one, which I doubt.”

  “Think I’ll check out the Cactus Ballroom.”

  “Sorry you wasted your time today,” she said, feeling anything but sorry. She was still sad the poor woman had been murdered but it was nice to be proven right. The death had nothing to do with Lady Bianca and they could all get back to their seminar.

  “Oh,” he said, letting his espresso gaze settle on her for a warm moment, “It wasn’t a waste.”

  And he was gone.

  Which was just as well since she was, for the first time in years, speechless.

  Luke strode into the Cactus Room and knew he wasn’t in Lady Bianca land anymore. Not a sequin, a sash or a single balloon could he find in the sparsely populated conference room. No dress code either unless the requirements were tweed, knit sweaters and eyeglasses.

  Where the Lady Bianca crowd tended to display cosmetics and prizes everywhere, usually with a lot of purple frills and glitzy helium balloons wafting along for the ride, the mystery readers went in for books. Tables stacked with books. Hard cover, paperback and trade paperback. Hefty, glossy bestsellers written by household names and obscure, small-press titles whose print run was probably in the hundreds.

  The bookworms who had registered wandered around, some with their name tags already hanging around their necks, holding simple cloth bags printed with the words “A Conference to Die For.” The logo was a laughing skull.

&
nbsp; In Jane Doe’s case those words were more prescient than the conference organizers could have imagined.

  He headed first for the long table at the front of the room where three registrars sat: two ladies who had to be in their seventies, grandmotherly types with white hair and glasses, and a skinny young man, intense and scraggly in a black sweater vest. College student, Luke guessed.

  Both the young guy and one of the older women were occupied with registrations, but the other woman put down her Kindle when he stepped in front of her, and eyed him with a smiling welcome.

  “Here to register?”

  “I’m a police officer.” He backed up so she could see his belt badge and sidearm, then introduced himself. “I’ve got a few questions.”

  Her expression was a cross between amusement and concern. “We only read about crime, Detective. We aren’t planning any.”

  “There’s already been a murder in the hotel.”

  Her hand went to her heart and he wished he hadn’t been so blunt. “But -- I didn’t -- I’ve been so busy, traveling straight here and then coming down to help with the registration that I never listened to the news. Oh, how awful. What happened?”

  “A woman was stabbed to death. I think she might have been with your group.” He pulled out the photograph. “Do you recognize this woman?”

  The lady adjusted her glasses more firmly on her nose and gazed at the photograph for a long time, long enough that he began to hope she had recognized the dead woman. Finally she said, “It’s so sad to see them die young. One of my nieces died tragically. Drug overdose. I remember the viewing. How pale she looked, and how peaceful. This reminds me – a little.”

  “I’m sorry to upset you. Do you need some water?”

  “No. I’m fine.” She blinked hard. “Just for that moment…”

  “Any chance you recognize the woman in the picture?”

  “No. I’m sorry. I’ve never seen her before.” She handed back the photo.

  “How many do you expect at the convention?”

  “About a hundred and fifty. And then the speakers and authors on top of that. But our members come from all over the country. I don’t know them all.”