One more corner. It was like a maze down here and she’d completely lost any sense of direction.
Grabbing a bright red fire extinguisher off the wall, she followed the next jog in the hallway.
And stumbled onto a mountain of towels. There must have been thousands of white hotel towels heaped beneath a massive laundry chute. Three walls. A dead end but for a closed door on the other side of the towels.
“Please,” she whispered as she ran for the door.
It was locked.
“No!” she yelled. She bashed at the door handle with the fire extinguisher but it didn’t fly open like in the movies.
She was trapped.
Her gaze darted around the area. Amazingly, she bounced past it twice before she recognized a plain black phone attached to the wall. She leapt for it even as she heard Feckler getting closer.
“Hello? Hello?” She screeched into the phone.
“Housekeeping,” a voice said. A real live voice.
“Thank God. This is Toni Diamond. I’m trapped in the basement laundry area. Thomas Feckler has a knife. Tell Detective Marciano. Tell the cops.”
“Miss? Where are you?”
“The laundry room. Downstairs in the hotel. Get the cops!” she screamed.
She thought about diving under those towels and burrowing deep inside, the way she might have hidden in her bed clothes back when she was a kid and frightened of monsters. But this was a real life monster and she couldn’t stand the thought of cowering under there while he systematically worked his way through the towels until he found her.
Maybe she was going to die, but she was a woman in a sparkling dress and this princess was going to go down fighting. She pulled the pin on the fire extinguisher as she ran back, pressing herself against the wall. He’d have to pass her. With luck he’d be past her before he saw her, and her pounding heart wouldn’t give her away.
The next few moments were the most terrifying of her life. She stayed pressed against the beige cinderblock wall, the extinguisher heavy in her hands, listening as the wheezing, grunting, muttering Feckler drew closer.
Hitchcock couldn’t have filmed anything more frightening than the way his shadow came into view before he did, a colossal figure, brandishing a long, sharp knife.
Then the real Feckler came into view. He was walking carefully through the slick soap, but sadly he hadn’t slipped on it and cracked his head. All she’d done was slow him down. He stared at the towels. “I know you’re in here,” he panted. “There’s no way out.” He limped forward. “Are you hiding? Shall we play hide and seek?”
She aimed the nozzle of the fire extinguisher and squeezed the handle, letting Feckler have it.
The blast wasn’t strong enough to do any damage, but at least it might disorient him enough that she could get back down the corridor, back to the elevator and freedom.
She might even be able to knock him out with the metal canister if she could get close enough to him without being stabbed.
“You are ruining everything,” he screamed. She kept the stream of fire retardant spewing into his face. As he lunged at her, she thought he’d let go of whatever sanity he’d clung to. Feckler’s howl echoed off the walls as he ran at Toni with the knife raised. The foam had matted his perfect hair and clung to his face so he looked like the loser in a pie throwing contest. She squirted him again as he came at her with that knife in murder mode.
Holding the fire extinguisher in front of her like a shield, she backed toward the corridor.
He was running blind. And he’d forgotten the soap.
Feckler’s feet hit the pool of liquid soap and his legs flipped out from under him. She heard the wet smack as the man’s body hit the soapy ground.
Any hopes she had that he’d knocked himself out were soon gone.
The mix of rage and bruised vanity that spewed forth from his mouth sounded like another language. Toni turned to run back the way they’d come, but she couldn’t move fast or she’d slip too. As she picked her way, Feckler scissored his legs out and tripped her, so she tumbled down to the soapy floor too.
He was rolling around, grabbing for her and he was hanging onto that knife a lot harder than he was holding onto sanity.
At that moment, she heard Luke yell, “Toni?”
“Luke!” she cried. “Down here by the laundry chute.” She pulled up to her hands and knees and crawled toward safety. In that second, as she thanked God, her lucky stars, the Corvallis Police Department and Detective Luke Marciano, Thomas Feckler grabbed her ankle and yanked.
With a muffled scream, she bounced toward him, but managed to toss herself away from that deadly blade, so her body dropped sideways across Feckler’s like something out of WWF.
He grunted when Toni fell on him, breaking her own fall and jabbing him in the solar plexis, but the man was beyond feeling pain. His teeth were bared and even as Toni grabbed the wrist holding the knife, he was flipping over, taking her with him.
She could hear the pounding of feet getting closer. Luke wasn’t alone.
She tried desperately to stop Feckler from rolling on top of her but she couldn’t get any traction in the pool of liquid soap. It was like they were Jell-O wrestling on a cement floor, except that this bout was in deadly earnest.
“Luke,” she yelled as loud as she could. “Here!”
Feckler grabbed her skirt and yanked Toni forward. She kicked at him with all her might, but all she did was slide. She was tiring fast, her arm trembling with the effort of holding off that knife.
Feckler bared his teeth and shoved, rolling over until he was on top of Toni, the knife poised above her throat where she could feel her pulse jangling.
She heard the stomp of feet and the abrupt stop of same. But she couldn’t see anything. Nothing but Thomas Feckler’s face, feral and mad above her.
“Drop the knife and back away,” Luke ordered in a calm, commanding voice.
She and Feckler were both sleekly, slippery, sticky with soap. Her eyes burned and her lashes felt gooey.
“If I’m going down, I’m taking this bitch with me,” Feckler snarled. He raised the knife and Toni knew this was it.
She wasn’t sure whether it was a memory from self-defense for women or instinct, but she heaved her knee up between Feckler’s legs with all the strength she could muster. It wasn’t much, but the impact was enough to make her attacker jerk his head back in pain.
“Aagh,” he said.
Followed immediately by the blast of a bullet. Feckler’s body jerked and blood rained down on Toni. She rolled her body to the side so that the knife clanked harmlessly to the cement.
She was smothering. She heard the grunts of effort coming from her throat as she heaved and pushed to get the body off.
Luke was there, rolling Feckler away. He kicked the knife to the side and dragged Toni to her feet.
“Don’t look,” he ordered, but it was too late. She’d already seen Feckler. Half his head had blown off.
Chapter Thirty
Be yourself. Everyone else is already taken.
-- Oscar Wilde
Luke grabbed her into his arms and held her. She was shaking so hard it was like trying to stand through an earthquake. But she didn’t think all the trembling was coming from her. Luke held her hard against him, his heart banging against hers. “You okay?”
She laughed weakly. “My hair’s a mess, my dress is ruined and my makeup is a disaster.”
She kissed him, blood, soap and all. “But I’m alive.”
Frank Henderson stepped forward carefully, sliding once and catching his balance. “We’re going to need to ask you a few questions.”
“Later.” Luke said. “We’ll let her clean up first, and see her daughter.”
A look passed between them and Henderson nodded and went back to huddle with the rest of the cops, security guards and the housekeeper who’d led them to her.
“Thanks,” she said to the woman, touching her arm, as Luke led her away. They s
lid on sticky ribbons on soap a few times. It was like the first time she’d gone skating, hanging onto her partner for dear life.
“What is this stuff?”
“Laundry soap.”
“Good one.”
Luke led her back to the service elevator. She had as much enthusiasm about getting into that elevator again as a horse being pushed toward a burning barn.
“It’s okay,” he said. “I’m right here.”
She licked her lips and tasted soap. “I know it must seem crazy for me to get scared now, but –” She was shaking so hard her teeth were chattering.
“Perfectly normal,” he said. “It’s reaction setting in.”
“I don’t –”
“Your options are this service elevator, climbing twenty flights of stairs, or going out front to the regular elevators.”
Clinging to his arm, she stepped into the service elevator and tried not to freak out when the gate closed and it started to lurch upward.
His arm tightened around her and she concentrated only on that. The strength of his muscles, the heat from his body, the knowledge that he was here and they were fine. Everything else she forced away from her mind. Later she’d think about the horror of the evening. Not now.
“Almost there,” he said after a while. “It’s going to jerk when it stops.”
Then the gate opened and he hustled her out of the service door and down the corridor to her room.
“The key –” she said stupidly as they approached her door. She’d left it – somewhere.
“Got it.”
“Toni? Mom!” The two greatest women in the world were running toward her down the corridor.
“Don’t hug me, I’m a mess,” she protested. But they both flung themselves on her, and the three of them were hugging and crying together. “You’re okay?”
“I’m fine.”
“Is that blood?”
“Most of it’s not mine.”
Linda touched her side and she winced. “A little cut. It’s nothing.”
“I’ll fix her up, Linda,” Luke said. “I’m first aid certified.”
Linda looked at him, long and steady. Then she turned to her daughter. “You get some sleep, honey. We’re right down the hall if you need us.”
“Thanks Mama. I love you guys.” She hugged them both again.
“Love you, too, Mom. You won a ring.”
“I’ll collect it tomorrow.”
“The soap’s drying,” Linda said. “You better get in there and wash off. And let the detective look at that cut.”
And then her room door was open and she and Luke were stumbling inside. He held on to her all the way into the bathroom, where he jerked on the shower and let it run hot while he undressed her. Except that the thick, industrial soap glued the fabric of her dress with all its diamonds to her skin. He tried to drag it off but when it caught, she moaned.
“I’m usually smoother at this,” he assured her.
She kicked off her shoes and then wished she wasn’t such a fervent rule follower when she found her soapy nylons had turned her legs into glue sticks.
Her skin was starting to itch and at this point she could see only one solution. She stepped into the shower, clothes and all.
The pounding spray took all the hardness of the soap away but it also turned her into a slick, sliding, soapy mess. “Watch out,” said Luke, holding her when she started to slip.
She tilted her head back and let the water keep washing over her. He still kept a hand on her and when she felt that the worst of the soap slick was washed away, she took his tie in her hand – a blue one with a really bad squiggle pattern – and pulled on it, dragging him toward her. “That soap isn’t coming off you, either.”
He dragged off his jacket, let it fall to the white tiled floor and then kicked off his own shoes and got in with her.
It still wasn’t an easy task to get their clothes off, but it was a lot simpler once the soap was washed out of them.
Even though it seemed counter-intuitive, she took the bar of soap the hotel provided – and be damned to her three step cleansing routine for once in her life, a little soap wasn’t going to kill her. She scrubbed her face, washed her body, and then passed him the bar.
“How’s the cut?”
“The scratch has already stopped bleeding.”
He touched it. “I can’t believe it’s not deeper.”
“Know what saved me? My diamonds. The bodice was so stiff in order to hold all the diamonds that it was like armor.”
He chuckled, and touched her cheek. “Thank God for diamonds.”
He was staring at her with a distinctly un-policelike expression in his eyes.
“Aren’t you on duty?”
“Dinner break,” he snapped, pulling her against him, wet and warm and very naked. She looked up into his eyes, ringed with spiky wet lashes and suddenly laughed.
“What?”
“You have done what no other man has done in twenty years,” she told him.
“What’s that?” his voice was soft, sexy.
“Seen me without a snitch of makeup on.”
His hand came up and traced a water droplet down her nose. “I like what I see,” he said, and then, leaning forward, kissed her.
The End
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Enjoy an excerpt from
Ultimate Concealer
Chapter One
There are no ugly women; only lazy ones.
— Helena Rubinstein
“If I put on enough makeup, I feel like I’m someone else,” Donna Ray Atkins said. “But then, when you work on a pig farm, you usually want to look like someone else.”
Donna Ray’s smiling face came through on Toni Diamond’s computer screen along with the faces of the other five members of her top tier sales team. As Independent Beauty Consultants for the Lady Bianca line of cosmetics, each of these women was as important to Toni’s business success as she was to theirs.
She loved the video conferencing technology that allowed her to talk to her team each week from the comforts of their own homes. She used this time to pump up the team, to strategize ways to boost sales and to hang out with women she liked.
“I feel like I am showing the best me I can be,” Suzanne Mireille said, the slight French lilt in her voice adding drama to her words.
Toni wrote the comments down in her notebook, thinking she might make up some slogan cards for her girls.
“I put my Lady Bianca makeup on in the morning, then I look at my face in the mirror and I see success!” Ruth Collier chimed in. A retired school teacher, Ruth was making more money in her second career than she had in her first.
“I love that,” Toni said. “You are so right.” She sat in the home office of the house she’d bought herself thanks to her success selling cosmetics for Lady Bianca. “And speaking of success,” she said as she leaned forward, closer to the screen. “The monthly sales report is in.” She pumped her fist in the air. “We beat our sales targets for the month, sold a higher volume than last month. Once again, we are the top sales team in Texas.”
Toni didn’t think of herself as a ruthless woman, but rather that success floated all boats. And the better other sales teams performed, the more inspired she and her sales associates became, spurred on to offer a few more free facials and makeovers to their friends, family, colleagues and women in the grocery store. However, she wasn’t above a little fist pumping in the privacy of her own office and with her own team.
She also wasn’t above using the fresh information as inspiration to her girls, the sales recruits she’d brought into the business. She loved every one of them, and she loved their success. Of course, each tube of lipstick and each pot of face cream that they sold not only netted them a commission, but also brought Toni
a tiny scoop of the gravy as their sales director. A lot of small commissions could certainly add up.
When she finished the conference, she sent an immediate email blast to every sales rep in her region. “Hey, girls! We are slicker than this season’s Berry Parfait Lip Gloss. Our team is number one again this month. Congrats to all of you for your hard work. I love you! Toni.”
“I love you? You have got to be kidding,” a bored and cynical teenage voice drawled behind her right shoulder.
Toni’s perfectly manicured hand flapped to her chest, a flash of sparkle from the diamond rings on her fingers sparkling in her peripheral vision. “Oh, my goodness, Tiff, you startled me.” She turned to glance at her sixteen-year-old daughter, filled as always with a combination of love and exasperation at so much youth and beauty hidden under the scowl and black, shapeless clothing.
“Sorry, just needed to check that my gag reflex was still working.”
“I do love them,” she said. “Some of those women were struggling single moms like I used to be. I helped them find a way to look better, help other women and make money. I am proud of every one of them.”
“Yeah, yeah. I’ve heard it all before.”
Tiffany slouched to the big pink corkboard where Toni hung inspirational quotations, lists of ideas and her weekly, monthly and yearly sales targets. In the center of the board was an article she’d cut out of Texas Today magazine. The article was a profile of successful Texas business women. Toni was interviewed about direct selling techniques. Tiffany took one of Toni’s fake diamond-headed push pins in her black-manicured fingers and attached her own notice to the board.
“What’s that, honey?”
“An article I found on the Greenpeace website about how the chemicals in makeup are poisoning the earth.”
“You know, every month where sales are as good as this one means more money in your college fund.”
“Not going to college, Mom.”
Since Toni strongly suspected that this statement, like the Greenpeace article, was an attempt to irritate her, she bit her tongue and counted to ten. Then eleven. Twelve. At thirteen she felt calm enough to open her mouth without screaming, “Of course you’re going to college.
Frosted Shadow, a Toni Diamond Mystery: Toni Diamond Mysteries Page 21
