Makeovers and Murder

by Tegan Maher

  Erol snorted. "As if. I mean, Noelle's cute and all, but let's be realistic here."

  Yeah, because it was perfectly realistic debating my odds of catching the eye of a fictional superhero.

  "It could be a thing," I scoffed.

  "Honey, not in that outfit," he said, doing that thing he did where he looked me up and down and found my wardrobe lacking.

  "Well excuse me," I said. "Let me rush right out and buy a leather superhero outfit. Maybe that'll catch his eye."

  "I'd be okay with that," Hunter said, waggling his brows at me.

  I rolled my eyes again. I was gonna need surgical intervention if this conversation became any more absurd. "I'm sure you would, babe. Maybe for Valentine's Day."

  He laughed and picked up the remote, switching it to the channel Erol asked for.

  "I have to grab my phone charger out of the truck," I said. "Would you give Norm and Sammie some crackers and make sure they have water?" Norm had been Erol's pet rat when he was alive, and I'd adopted him by default. He'd met Sammie, a nice girl rat, and brought her home. I figured they were good company for Erol.

  "Sure thing," he replied as I pulled on my coat and headed to the back door. I always parked in the alley to reserve street spaces for customers. I frowned when the cold smacked me in the face. It had probably dropped ten degrees since the sun had gone down, and the lone streetlight that stood by the dumpster behind Coralee's didn't do much to push back the darkness.

  I looked up and down the alley, then summoned a small light orb. The street was barely that—the asphalt was cracked and hooved up, which made walking on it treacherous enough in broad daylight. The last thing I wanted to do was go ass-over-teakettle on ice walking through the dark, especially when I didn't have to.

  It only took me a second to unlock my truck and pull my charger out of the port. I was halfway back to the shop door when something banged and yowled to my left, then bumped me on the leg on my way past. I let out an involuntary squeal of surprise before I realized it was just an alley cat, and when I whipped around to look, I lost my footing.

  Hunter must have heard the ruckus because he rushed out the door, whipping his head left and right looking for the threat. I grabbed onto him to keep from busting my butt.

  "What happened?" he asked, still glancing around.

  "Nothing," I said. "A stupid cat scared the crap out of me."

  "Oh," he said. "I thought from the sound of things ..." he stopped, looking in the direction of the light post. I followed his gaze. What appeared to be a set of legs and feet encased in boots stuck out from behind the dumpster.

  "Coralee?" I called as I rushed over. I was afraid she'd brought the trash out when she'd closed, and fallen on ice.

  Hunter grabbed the arm of my coat but didn't pull, probably because he didn't want to make me fall. The pressure didn't stop me, but I did glance over at him.

  "Be careful," he said. "You don't know who it is."

  He was right, of course, but it didn't really matter. Anybody lying out in sub-twenties temperatures would freeze to death, so we needed to get them out of the weather. Besides, it wasn't like we had a huge homeless population, and the few we did have weren't criminals.

  Once we were within a few feet, Hunter did stop me. "Let me," he said, and for once I was glad to listen to him. The body was way too long to be Coralee, but whoever it was hadn't responded when we'd answered. I was happy to leave it to law enforcement at that point.

  "Ma'am?" he said, bending over her. She didn't respond, and it was so dark I wasn't going to let him reach in there blind. I summoned another light orb and sucked in a breath when it glinted off the pair of scissors sticking out of the back of the person's red wool coat. I'd seen that before, at Coralee's. Unless I was wrong, I knew exactly who that was, and I closed my eyes, knowing my friend was in some serious hot water.

  CHAPTER THREE

  HUNTER'S FACE DRAINED of color and he pinched his lips together.

  "You know her?" he asked as he reached down to check for a pulse.

  "Yeah," I said, unable to tear my eyes off the body in front of me. I moved my hand a little and directed the ball closer to the woman's head. Luckily—or not—she was on her stomach with her face turned our direction, so when the light moved over her, it only took me two seconds to confirm my worst fear when I saw the pale face and sightless eyes staring up at me. I cringed and looked away. "Well, I don't know her know her. I just know who she is, sort of. Her name's Loretta something. She was in Coralee's at the same time I was today."

  I left it at that for the moment, not wanting to throw her under the bus until I'd had a little time to process.

  Hunter nodded, then reached for his phone. While he made the necessary calls, I went back to stand by the door of my shop. The last thing I wanted to do was stand outside with a dead body, but I wasn't going to leave him back there alone, either. Apparently, we had a killer on the loose.

  Since we were right by the courthouse, it didn't take long for more cops to show up. As soon as they did, I went back inside. When the door clicked shut behind me, I leaned against it, shaking. Somewhere in the back of my brain, I realized shock was probably setting in, but there wasn't much I could do about it.

  Erol took one look at me, then swooped through the back wall, probably to check on Hunter. A minute or so later, he drifted back through, concern etched on his face.

  "Honey, you need to come in here and sit down." I followed him, the shock wearing off as the warmth of the shop chased away the chill.

  "Please tell me that isn't the woman who sent Coralee over the edge today," he said after I'd come around a little.

  I pulled in a deep breath and blew it out through my cheeks. "I'd love nothing better, but I'd be lying. It's her."

  Erol began to pace back and forth mid-air. "Does Hunter know yet?"

  I shook my head. "Not yet. But I have to tell him." I looked up at the man who'd become one of my closest friends.

  "Yes," he said. "You definitely do. Stick to the facts, though. Leave out the emotion. He knows Coralee; he doesn't need anything else to fill in the blanks."

  I pulled out my phone and called Rae. This wasn't exactly something you texted. When I gave her the rundown, she insisted on coming right away.

  "You don't have to do that," I said. "I'm sure they're almost finished up, so we'll be at the farm. Or at least I will be. I'm sure Hunter will have to do all the paperwork and whatnot."

  She agreed to meet me there in a half hour, and we hung up. I chewed on my lip as I stared at my phone, debating the dilemma of whether or not I should call Coralee. I decided I should. She was my friend; the least I could do was give her a heads up.

  "Hey, Coralee," I said when she answered. "Listen, I'm not quite sure how to say this other than to just come out with it."

  "Okay, then," she replied. "Get on with it, then."

  I took a deep breath and dived in headfirst. "Me and Hunter just found Loretta out back in the alley behind your shop. Somebody up and stabbed her in the back with a pair of hair scissors."

  She was so quiet for a minute that I checked to make sure the call hadn't dropped. "Coralee?" I asked, worried.

  "I'm here," she answered. "I'm just ... I don't know what to say. I'm not sorry she's dead, I reckon, by I am sure sorry they found her behind my place like that."

  "Yeah," I said, my tone dull. "Me too."

  "Sugar?" she said in a soothing tone. "Are you all right?"

  "I guess as all right as I can be," I replied.

  "You have to tell him about the squabble in the salon today, you know that, right?"

  That shocked me, but when I thought about it for a second, it was quintessential Coralee. Despite being a bit of a spitfire, she was a stickler for doing the right thing.

  "Are you sure you won't be mad at me?" I asked, more for the reassurance than anything. I didn't want her to think I sold her out. Though there was no doubt in my mind I was going to tell him, I wanted her to be okay w
ith it.

  "It's not even a question," she said. "He's gonna find out anyway, so it may as well be from you. I got nothin' to hide."

  She said it with conviction, but I knew she had to be scared. After all, that very afternoon, she'd threatened the chick that was currently lying dead in the alley behind her shop.

  "Okay, then." I pushed my hair back from my face and put my hand on my forehead. "If you want, you can come to the farm. Rae's meeting me there."

  "Nah, that's all right, sugar. Thanks for the offer, but Buddy's here. I'll be just fine."

  "Okay. If you change your mind, you know where we're at."

  "I do, sweetie. Now go help your man find who did this before my own hotheadedness bites me in the ass."

  As far as I was concerned, that was the least I could do.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  RAE AND SHELBY WERE waiting for me when I got home.

  Rae handed me a glass of wine. "I thought you could use this," she said.

  "You ain't kiddin'," I said, taking a gulp. "If it weren't for the colossal hangover, I'd go straight to the scotch."

  Max, who'd been snoozing on his bed by the fireplace, clopped in, ears splayed flat and furry brows drawn down. "I hope you're not referring to my Glenlivet," he said. "I won that fair and square beating Earl at chess, and it's mine."

  I raised my brows and looked at him. "Really? And who pours it for you and pays the bills so you have a nice, warm place to drink it?"

  "Your point?" he asked.

  I pulled in a deep breath, exhausted and unwilling to engage him, especially since I had zero intention of touching his scotch. I did needle him a little though. "Fine, you win," I said, waving my hand and adding a touch of defeat to my tone. "I'll leave your booze alone. After all, I just found some dead chick with scissors sticking out of her back in the alley behind the shop. Why would I possibly need a stiff shot?"

  He looked at me, appraising. "Did you really find a dead body, or are you just saying that to gain my pity, and thus my Glenlivet?"

  I shook my head and looked at the ceiling. "You got me. I'm making it all up just to get to your stash." I scowled at him. "Of course I found a dead body. And it was awful, in more ways than one."

  Apparently, Shelby hadn't already heard about it. "You're serious?" she said, sitting up straighter in her chair. "You really found a dead body?"

  "She did," Rae answered for me as I downed the rest of my wine and poured another. "And it was a woman Coralee had fought with earlier in the day."

  Shelby glanced back and forth between us, then dropped her shoulders as the implications set in. "That's so not good."

  "Tell me about it," I said. "And the problem is that she came to the parlor specifically to poke at Coralee, or I think she did, and Coralee threw her out and told her she'd better not run into her again, or else. So who's to say she didn't come back again? That's what any cop who doesn't know Coralee directly is going to ask."

  "Okay," Shelby said. "Was anybody else in the shop to witness it, or was it just her?"

  I hadn't thought about Loretta's friend until that moment. When I did, it was like somebody'd dumped ice water over me. "She had a friend with her. I didn't know her, but Loretta called her Priscilla."

  "Lovely," Raeann said. "So basically, it's gonna be her word against yours, and even though there are three of you, they'll say you and Alyse are covering for her if this Priscilla lies and makes it worse."

  "Oh," I said, "the truth is bad enough. Other than killing her outright, Coralee couldn't have set herself up for the fall any better than she did. I had to hold her back."

  Max had ambled over to the table to listen. "This conundrum is absurd to me. In my day, things were much simpler. The woman came into Coralee's shop and picked a fight for no reason. Coralee would have been within her rights to kill her right there. They would have simply thrown some dirt over the blood, dragged the body outside, and gone on about their business."

  I wasn't even sure how to respond to that, so I just got up and poured an inch of Glenlivet into his bowl. At least he was commiserating in his own way rather than playing devil's advocate like he usually did.

  I noticed a pile of papers lying on the table, and the top one was a UGA pamphlet. "Checking out colleges?" I asked her as I sat down.

  "Yeah," she replied, pulling the pile to her and shuffling through them. "Cody and I have both been looking. Emma too."

  She'd wanted to go to veterinary school for as long as I could remember, and I'd always assumed she'd go to UGA. When she pulled out pamphlets for a few other schools, one as far away as Colorado, I was surprised, and not in a good way. It was hard enough thinking about her being just a couple of hours away. I couldn't imagine not being able to see her on weekends any time she wanted to come home or I wanted to go see her.

  "Colorado State? The University of Florida?" I tried to keep my voice neutral because it was her future, not mine, and I didn't want to guilt her into doing anything she didn't want to, even if it meant I wouldn't get to see her as often as I wanted. "I didn't know you were interested in moving away."

  She sighed and made a point of studying the fliers in front of her. "I'm not, but with the way I acted after Addy died, my grades slipped. I'm not sure I'm going to be accepted to UGA, so I figured I'd better have a backup plan."

  "What about Cody?" Raeann asked. Shelby'd been dating him for over a year, and even though they were young, they were one of those rare young couples that just seemed to fit together exactly right. It helped that he was an A student and as honest and good to Shelby as could be.

  "We're applying to all of them together," she replied, still not looking up, "but his heart's set on UGA because he wants to be able to come home if Will needs him. I don't know what I'll do if I'm not accepted and he is. It doesn't seem fair to ask him to give that up or move so far away from Will just because I was a screwup."

  "Oh, honey," I said, my heart going out to her. "All you can do is apply. That was only a semester, and you've managed to get straight As since then. I think you should hold off on worrying and cross that bridge when and if you come to it."

  "That's what Addy said when she found out what I was bein' all down about," she replied, tipping one corner of her mouth up in a half smile. "Actually, she quoted Scarlett O'Hara and reminded me that tomorrow's another day. I'm not entirely sure the quote fits quite right, but I got the gist."

  "Speaking of Addy," I said, looking around, "where is she? I haven't heard a peep from her all day."

  "She was here earlier," Shelby replied. "She ran off in a hurry a little bit ago."

  "She probably got a ghostly call from Belle," Rae said. "Unless I miss my guess, her knickers are all atwist over this whole murder thing. She grumbles and nags, but Coralee's like a daughter to her."

  "That's probably it." I turned to Shelby. "Is Will having any luck finding an office assistant?"

  Before his wife had tried to kill the three of us a year or so before, she'd been the one to do all the admin stuff for Will's veterinary business. Since then, a wonderful lady named Irva had been doing it, but she and her husband had just retired to Florida and Will had been trying to run it all by himself. Shelby and Cody helped out as much as they could, but since they were in school, they didn't have a whole lot of time other than on the weekends. Even then, they mostly helped with the actual doctoring part rather than the paperwork end of things. The poor guy rarely had a day off.

  Shelby raised her brows and shook her head. "We thought he'd found a good one. She looked great on paper, but man, all the lights are on, but nobody's home."

  I couldn't help but laugh. "She can't be that bad. How long's she been there?"

  "Only a couple weeks, but I'm serious. I don't know how she ties her own shoes in the morning," she said.

  "Well maybe she'll settle in and get the hang of it," Rae said.

  Shelby tilted her head sideways and crinkled her nose. "Trust me. That's not gonna be the case. We got an order of cat food
in the other day, and she asked us if she needed to organize it by color or size. Then later in the day, she freaked out when she saw Ralphie Simpson's pet rat. The poor thing had a cold, and she asked if she should call animal control or if we were just gonna squish it with a shoe. She thought he'd trapped it or something."

  I rubbed my hand over my mouth, trying not to laugh. "You're making that up."

  She held up her hand. "Right hand to God, I'm not."

  "Is she at least good at the admin part of it?" Rae asked. "Maybe he could just use her for that rather than having her deal with the patients and deliveries."

  Shelby lifted a shoulder. "I don't know, but if she wanted to organize the cat food by size or color, I can only imagine what she'd do to the filing system. I worry because if we can't find him somebody and have her—or him—trained well by the time we leave for college, I don't know what he'll do. Cody and I've been handling the deliveries and cleaning the kennels for him in the evenings. If he has to take on all that on top of being the only large-animal vet around here, he's gonna work himself to death."

  I got up and took my wine glass to the sink, then laid a hand on her shoulder. "Just take one day at a time, sister. Things have a way of shaking out the way they're supposed to."

  Even though I wholeheartedly believed that, I found myself with a whole host of new things to worry about.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CONSIDERING THE RUSH we'd had at Brew that day, I had to do some baking. I figured I should probably make extra since we had no idea where they'd come from. Sometimes we got hit like that as a fluke, especially when it was cold, but our one and only hotel also had the largest banquet and conference hall in a forty-mile radius. It wasn't uncommon for larger companies to host annual training events and award ceremonies there.

  It took me a little longer than usual to get in the zone, but I eventually did. I loved that part of it because my mind was free to drift. If I had a problem that needed solving, the solution often came to me while my brain was disconnected like that. That was also the time when my magic poured into the doughs and batters, giving the pastries that extra something that kept people coming back for more.