by Nancy Warren
She had to assume that she’d fallen for some pretty faces. Pretty lies dressed up. Now it was time to get out the make up remover and scrub down to the naked truth.
She pulled out her notebook and went back to her list of every person she could think of who might have means, motive and opportunity to kill Nicole. Reluctantly, she added the name Joseph Mandeville. He could easily have met her in the hotel. Nicole wasn’t married anymore, but Toni doubted very much she did completely without male companionship. Besides, she’d had sex the night she died. And how many men were even in the hotel with Lady Bianca taking up most of the rooms?
Unlike Luke and his crew, she didn’t have to follow any rules but her own. If she wanted to treat the two deaths as random and unrelated then she could. And as the executive in charge of her own investigation, she made an executive decision to do exactly that. She would focus only on Nicole’s murder. Though the sex thing added another complication.
She tapped the page wondering, not for the first time, who could have hated Nicole enough to want her dead?
The timing hadn’t struck her as more than an unhappy coincidence that she’d found Nicole dead the same day they had that ugly and very public fight. Now that she took the first murder out of the equation, she wondered. What if Nicole had been killed that day precisely because she and Toni had the fight?
It was her bad luck and the killer’s good luck that she’d even been the one to find the body.
So, if she was right, whoever killed Nicole had seen the fight. Or heard about it, which meant every person at the convention and her hairdresser.
And at the mystery convention? Could Mandeville, for instance, have heard about the make-up slinging match?
She had to admit it was possible.
By the next day she knew that word had somehow got out that she was the person who had discovered Nicole’s body. Reporters sought her out, leaving messages on her room’s answering service and even trying to track her down in person.
Joseph Mandeville called her room. Not, as it turned out, because he was smitten by her hot bod, but because he thought she might like to be interviewed for his next book. “If you play your cards right,” he told her, “you might get your own chapter.”
Oh, joy.
She could feel the speculation almost like the whispers that seemed to tickle the back of her neck as she walked into workshops and to meals. No one was outwardly accusing her of anything, of course, not even the police, but she didn’t like this awful heaviness sitting over her.
It was time for it to stop.
On a hunch, she called Stacy and invited her for coffee. The poor woman dithered and seemed desperate to think of an excuse not to go, but Toni didn’t get to be a National Sales Director without being able to close the deal.
Stacy was sitting alone in the sparsely populated coffee shop when Toni joined her that afternoon.
The smell of the lunch buffet still hung in the atmosphere like the echoes of a sound that’s ended. A hint of pasta, the memory of the burner fluid for the hot trays, and the lingering scent of fried potato.
Stacy had chosen the same table where she’d joined Nicole for breakfast the day of her death. Toni wondered if she was even aware of her location. The lunch crowd, like the buffet, was gone – the workshops were in full swing by now. Toni needed a coffee to perk up, she’d slept so badly. She suspected the same was true of Stacy who looked even paler than usual.
After hesitating a moment, Toni walked up to her table. “How are you doing?” she asked softly.
Stacy looked up at her and, if possible, paled even more. “I’m fine.”
In her new found commitment to believing nothing that couldn’t be proven, Toni put that down as a big lie. The proof was in the colorless cheeks and trembling hands.
“I’m so sorry about Nicole,” she said, and, horrifyingly, her voice trembled with emotion.
Stacy seemed just as shocked. “Why are you crying? You didn’t even like her.”
“She didn’t deserve to die like that. No one does.”
“I’m going home,” Stacy said, which would have seemed like a non sequitur except that Toni could easily fill in the missing thoughts that led from her statement to Stacy’s. She didn’t want to die like that and so it was safer to head home.
Toni sat across from the woman and said, “I don’t think it’s some random psycho. I think Nicole was chosen deliberately.”
“But why?”
“I’m hoping you can give me some clues. You were part of her team, you knew her well.”
The pale blue gaze drifted lower until Stacy was looking at Toni’s top button. “The police already asked me. I had to tell them about your fight. I’m sorry.”
Toni waved her apology away. “Of course you had to tell them. Don’t worry about it. I told them myself.”
“You did?”
“I didn’t kill her. Which means that fight didn’t have anything to do with her murder.
“Something else caused it. And I think it was something to do with Lady Bianca.” Toni picked up her fork and began drawing invisible patterns on the table top. “I didn’t sleep much last night. I was thinking about why Nicole and I started fighting.”
Stacy put her hand on her head as though her headache was coming back. “I should get on the road.”
“She pressured you into buying stock you didn’t want and I’m guessing couldn’t afford.”
The pale blue eyes swam with tears. She leaned forward and whispered. “I’m going to leave Lady Bianca. I can’t do this anymore. I can’t lie to my husband.”
Toni reached over and patted the other woman’s hand. “Don’t do that honey. Don’t leave. Most of us don’t run our businesses the way Nicole did. You shouldn’t let one bad sales director put you off the business.”
“It’s not just that. I’m really not cut out for sales. I didn’t know it would be this much work.”
Toni nodded. She knew how important attitude was to success and it was clear that Stacy didn’t want success in Lady Bianca enough to put the effort in. Fair enough.
“I feel so bad that you put that five thousand dollars on your credit card just so your team would win the top sales in our division.”
Stacy fidgeted a little, flicked her hair over her shoulders and suddenly said, “It wasn’t only me. Nicole said she got another ten thousand dollar order on top of mine.”
Toni nodded, using a trick she’d seen the detectives employ of waiting and letting the witness keep speaking without interruption.
Stacy glanced at Toni and then away again. “She only told you about the one because she thought you’d run out and get another big order yourself.”
“I don’t work that way,” Toni said softly. “Sometimes people get so caught up in the competition that they lose perspective. I can’t believe she pushed another rep into ordering ten grand worth of stuff so she could scoop another diamond ring. It’s insane.”
“I hope I can put a stop on my order. I really don’t want to have to tell my husband that I spent another five thousand dollars we can’t afford.”
Okay, so the quiet nodding hadn’t worked. Sometimes, a girl had to be more direct. “Who came up with the ten grand?”
“I don’t know.” Stacy jerked to her feet. “Look, I’ve got to go. I need to check out and get on the road. I’ve got a long drive home.”
“But aren’t you going to stay for the gala banquet? Your team still wins the sales division. You’ve earned your ring, Stacy. You should collect it.”
“No. I can’t. I want to go home.”
“We’re all upset right now. Don’t make a final decision yet on quitting.”
“Okay. I won’t.” But it was said more to appease than that she had any intention of continuing on. Too bad. Toni thought she’d shown real promise.
“At least have a coffee before you go. Come on, I insist.”
The woman nodded and sat down again. The got their coffees and both sipped quietly f
or a minute, recruiting strength.
“Did Nicole have a boyfriend?”
Stacy choked and snorted coffee up her nose. Her eyes started to water and she grabbed a napkin. “What did you say?”
“Did Nicole have a boyfriend?” Toni repeated.
“I don’t know.” But her color was heightened and Toni didn’t think it was from her recent coughing fit.
“Why is it a secret?”
“It’s not. Look, I should really go. I’ve got to get on the road.”
Toni put a hand on her wrist. “This is important, Stacy. You can’t protect Nicole. She’s already dead. Don’t you want to find out who killed her?”
“He would never have killed her. But it’s a secret and I promised I’d never tell a soul. She didn’t tell me. I saw him coming out of her room.” She slapped a hand over her mouth and snapped her mug to the table.
“Here? You saw him coming out of her room here? At the conference?” She thought of Joseph Mandeville. Oh, she’d give him a chapter for his book all right. “Would you recognize him again if you saw him?”
Stacy looked at her like she’d been in the hot sun too long. “What are you talking about? We see him every day. I promised I’d never tell. She didn’t want people thinking she was only sleeping with him to get ahead in the company.”
Toni couldn’t believe it. “Nicole was sleeping with someone in Lady Bianca?”
Stacy shot her a ‘duh’ look and rose to her feet. “I’ve really got to go.”
She’d never seen Nicole with any of the male reps. Then she realized Stacy had mentioned getting ahead in the company and she knew.
“Orin Shellenbach. She was sleeping with Orin Shellenbach.”
“I never told you that. Good bye Toni,” Stacy said, gathering her bag. “Enjoy the rest of your conference.”
“Yeah. Bye. Drive safely.” Her mind was reeling. Of course, now a bunch of things made sense. Like the fact that she and Melody had known about the Diamond Hard Eyebrow Pencil launch before it was announced. And how Orin had known all about the fight she and Nicole had had only hours after it happened. She’d assumed Nicole had gone running to him to tattle, but maybe it came out naturally during pillow talk.
She’d also confided in Orin about the nasty notes.
Surely Mr. Melanoma wouldn’t kill Nicole. Why would he? She was a top producer, an asset to the company and, it turned out, his lover.
Unless she’d threatened to go public with their affair. Or to his wife.
She tapped her hands on the table top. The manicure she’d had this morning at the salon wasn’t bad, a glossy pale pink, but she missed her diamonds.
Killing Nicole to stop her destroying his marriage, and, knowing how strait-laced Lady Bianca was, probably his career. Not bad, as motives go.
As Stacy hurried away, her conference bag smacking her legs as though to punish her for cutting out so soon, another thought struck Toni. Stacy had been bullied and pushed by Nicole into five thousand dollars of debt she didn’t want. She’d obviously been upset, had she been upset enough to kill Another person with a motive.
She shook her head at her own foolishness. All Stacy had needed to do was cancel the charge before it went through. Nobody was going to kill another person over a five thousand dollar credit card purchase. At least she hoped not.
The notion tugged at her, though. If Nicole was pushing Stacy like that, logic suggested she was doing the same with her other recruits.
The one she knew the best was Melody Feckler so, blowing off yet one more conference session, she tracked her down finally in the main lobby where she and her husband were hand in hand heading toward the exit.
“Melody, can I talk to you for a second?”
“Stacy left. Did you know?”
Toni nodded.
“I thought at least Nicole’s team would stay for the banquet.” She blinked a little. Even though she’d obviously made full use of every trick known to a make-up rep, it was still obvious she’d done a lot of crying recently. “Nicole would want us all to go on.”
“Absolutely.” She touched Mel on the shoulder and sensed Thomas squeezing her hand a little tighter.
“I need to get away for a bit. We’re playing a little hooky and going to walk across the street to the mall. I need some black hose to wear with my dress at the gala. Why don’t you come with us?”
“Oh, I’m sure the two of you want some time alone.”
Thomas spoke up. “It would be a pleasure to have you join us.”
“Thanks.” Once they were outside, she said, “I’m so sorry about Nicole, Melody. I know you two were great friends as well as colleagues.”
The woman nodded jerkily. “She was my inspiration, my mentor and my best friend. She believed in me so completely it made it impossible for me to doubt. A truly great lady and an inspiring leader. Who would kill a woman like that? It’s so senseless.”
“There’s a rumor that one of Nicole’s reps put in a ten thousand dollar order right before the deadline. Do you know anything about that?”
Melody dug her sunglasses out of her bag and slipped them on. They were oversized movie-star type dark glasses.
“That’s not so unusual. A rep who’s really working her business is going to keep needing new stock, you know that. You have to invest in your own success.”
For a second she sounded so much like Nicole that Toni was taken aback. “Absolutely, it’s just that the order was right before deadline, which made me wonder if Nicole was maybe –” she searched for a softer word than ‘forcing’ and came up with – “encouraging her sales associates to put in bigger orders than they were comfortable with?”
Melody stopped in her tracks. They were waiting for an endless red light to turn green in order to cross the freeway. She swung around, rigid in every plane of her body. “She’s dead, Toni. You destroyed her last day on earth. Why are you trying to dirty her memory?”
She was taken aback at the violence of Melody’s tone. “I’m not. I want to find out who killed her.”
“She made some calls back home to her sales reps. Somebody came up with a big order. So what? She didn’t live long enough even to wear her tiara and collect her diamond ring.” Her voice rose and she stopped speaking to swallow. “The only person who really hated her was you. She’s dead. Can’t you let her rest?” She grabbed a clean, pressed handkerchief from her bag and dabbed under her eyeglasses. Her husband glared at Toni and wrapped an arm around his wife.
The light turned green and they crossed, arms twined around each other like the devoted couple they obviously were. Toni let them go. She turned back, thinking that she’d caused herself more trouble for nothing.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Beauty is only skin deep, but ugly goes clean to the bone. —Dorothy Parker
Toni gave up on the mall and instead went back to her room and flipped on her computer to check her email using the hotel’s wireless connection.
She skimmed quickly the subject lines to see what was important. Her book club had assigned a new book. It was Heather Watson’s turn to pick, which likely meant something high-brow with a miserable ending. Just what she needed. Enough spam to feed every Monty Python fan around the globe, two messages from sales reps who hadn’t been able to attend the conference and then as she scrolled the cursor down she felt as though she’d stepped on a high voltage wire and been blasted by an electric shock.
There was a message from Nicole Freedman. For a second her heart jumped. Nicole wasn’t dead after all. Somehow, she’d made a terrible mistake.
Then common sense reasserted itself. Was it an old email she’d somehow missed? No, it was sent only a few hours earlier.
The subject line was A Suggestion. Toni stared at it for a good five seconds, the hairs on the back of her neck prickling, and then she clicked open the message.
Please stop nosing around, or you’ll be sorry.
That was it. But the few words were enough to make her feel physically
ill.
She wanted to run out of her room screaming. But when she started toward the door she found herself throwing the wishbone shaped thing over it instead, keeping everyone out.
Because the idea that someone could send her emails that seemed to be from Nicole made her skin crawl with the possibility that they could be right outside her door at this very moment. Knife raised Norman Bates style.
Of course there wouldn’t be anyone out there, but she was too scared to listen to her own sense of reason.
Her hand shook as she called Luke on her cell phone.
He picked up immediately and identified himself.
“It’s Toni. I got an email.”
The tone of her voice must have told him what kind. “Are you in your room?”
“Yes.”
“Stay there. I’m on my way up.”
“You’re in the hotel?”
“Just got here.”
She was waiting by the door, her eye practically welded to the peephole when he arrived in less than two minutes. It took her a few seconds to unlatch all the safety locks and chains but he didn’t comment. His face was grim as he entered.
“You okay?”
“Yeah.” Pants on fire.
She led him into the room to the desk where her laptop was still open to that message. He read it, frowning. “What have you been doing?”
“You mean the part where it tells me to stop nosing around?”
“Bingo.”
“Nothing.” His dark eyes didn’t even flicker, they stayed on hers until she burst out, “I can’t help it. I found Nicole. This is on my mind, so if I happen to bump into anyone who might know something about her or her business, I might bring up the subject and maybe ask them a simple question or two. That’s it. I swear.”
He took a step closer and grabbed her shoulders. “This is no time to play Nancy Drew. Two women are dead. You saw how they ended up. This killer’s not fooling around.”
