A Poison Manicure & Peach Liqueur

by Traci Andrighetti

  Randall gave a laugh that was anything but happy. "Nor have you, thanks to daddy's money, even though you put on a good show."

  "You're just like Jim." Clark settled back into his chair. "Pathetic and bitter."

  "While we're drawing comparisons, you're a chip off the old rodfather." Randall rolled the r on the nickname, and Gia snickered at the reference.

  I shot her a silence-it look.

  "And we both know I'm not talking about fishing for cod, don't we, man?" Randall's tone had grown soft, but it was no less insidious. "I mean Asian tuna."

  Gia kicked my shoe, which told me that we were thinking the same shocking thing.

  But I kept my eyes trained on Clark.

  His face had hardened, and it wasn't from the pancake makeup. "You'd be wise to take a lesson from Jim and stand down."

  "Wise?" Randall rose from his chair.

  I backed toward a stall in case Gia and I needed to take cover. I'd never witnessed such rage.

  He moved to stand over Clark. "Don't confuse me with the character I'm playing in this nativity. Because if being a wise man means bowing to a Graham, then I'm not going to take a lesson from my dad. I don't have to." He patted the pocket where he'd put his phone. "Because I saw you with her at that motel, and I've got the pictures to prove it."

  Randall strode from the room, and Gia continued the work of making Clark into a magi.

  I knew my cousin wanted it to seem like we hadn't grasped the significance of their argument.

  But we had.

  The "Asian tuna" and the "her" at the motel were code for the same person.

  Jade Liu.

  * * *

  "Practically the whole town is here." I surveyed the packed pews from the church entrance.

  Gia handed theater programs to Dee Madison and Emma Quinn from the quilting guild. "I wonder how everyone'll react when they see that the cast members' hairstyles have taken on biblical proportions."

  "I know, I know. My aunt's wigs are big." I paused to give programs to Alex Jordan, owner of Finials and Facades Renovation, and her florist boyfriend, George Fontaine. "You know what they say in the South, 'The higher the hair, the closer to God.' And The Reverend wanted the nativity to have a Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat feel."

  "Well, he got a Technicolor Nightmarecoat. Let's just hope it doesn't do any more damage to The Clip and Sip."

  To avoid an argument, I didn't mention that she'd contributed to the Technicolor by giving smoky eyes to the cast—even the Three Wise Men, because they came from exotic lands, and Joseph, because he'd requested an evening look. Between her makeup, my aunt's hair, and The Reverend's costumes, the living nativity was going to look like a 1960s religious rendition of The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

  The lights flashed twice.

  "The nativity's about to start." I placed the programs on a table by the door. "Let's take our seats."

  We headed down the aisle, and Amy stood and waved from the second pew. She was wearing a light-up sweater with two blinking wreathes on her chest.

  Gia put a hand over her eyes. "Could we sit somewhere else?"

  "Amy came early to save our seats."

  She sighed and made her way to the middle of the pew.

  I took a seat beside my cousin. "Hi, Amy."

  She leaned around Gia, who recoiled from a wreath. "Where's your aunt?"

  "Backstage." I glanced at the closed curtains. "She stayed behind to help with the costumes."

  Donna Bocca, who was sitting in front of us between Elizabeth Ashby and former crossing guard Mabel Henderson, pivoted in her seat. "The Reverend loves to dress up in costume. Rumor has it that his father, Joseph, was the same way."

  Mrs. Henderson squinted at Dee Madison's granddaughter, Lindsay, on my right, instead of me. "The Vickers were an acting family."

  Or a cross-dressing one.

  Mrs. Henderson's cloudy eyes widened. "That's why his mother gave him the middle name Hamlet."

  The Hamlet revelation made my head hurt. I hoped The Reverend hadn't drawn dialogue inspiration from Shakespeare. The living nativity had enough drama as it was.

  Ivy Li pranced to the first pew, and my headache threatened to go rogue.

  She squeezed between Duncan Pickles and the Cove Chronicles editor. Without a word to either man, she spun around to Gia and me. "I came to see if anyone else would drop dead after you did their hair and makeup."

  The church lights dimmed to simulate night, which obscured Gia's obscene gesture.

  But not her obscene word.

  I hunkered low in my seat and focused on the darkened stage.

  Blinking white lights reflected on the curtains.

  "Could you turn off your bulbs?" Gia scowled at Amy's boobs. "The Three Wise Men have to be able to see the Star of Bethlehem."

  Amy blanched and switched off her sweater battery. "I hadn't thought of that."

  I sat up to look for another seat, but Zac was making his way up the pew.

  His face was somber as he took a seat beside me. And even though I was kind of relieved that he'd come to support me despite our fight, I did nothing to brighten his mood.

  A spotlight came on in the rear of the church, and the audience turned to the main doors. The Reverend and Olivia Olcott made their grand entrance as Joseph and Mary.

  Sort of.

  Joseph had a coat of many colors and a Patty Duke flip, and Mary looked like Priscilla when she married Elvis.

  "Hey, they have a donkey." Donna's lips spread into a leer. "Gia, that would've been a good part for you."

  My cousin gave a sweet smile. "That costume takes two people, so only if you'd played the ass."

  Elizabeth Ashby frowned. "Quiet, please."

  Under the spotlight, Joseph tiptoed to and fro toward the altar, turning his back on his pregnant wife and the donkey. "Fear not, Mary. For I shall find bread to satiate thine hunger and lodging to provide thine rest."

  My concerns about the hair and makeup vanished. Because the only thing the townspeople would remember about this performance was The Reverend.

  "Now I must gettest thou bread." Joseph took a couple of spins, overacting the search so his colored coat would flair.

  Amy leaned toward Gia and me. "I didn't know Joseph had a speaking part."

  "He's overcompensating for the emasculating effects of the immaculate conception." Gia didn't bother to whisper. "He doesn't want people to think he has unleavened man-bread."

  "Well, he sure is doing a lot of talking." Amy pushed up her glasses. "Mary hasn't said a single line."

  "Men are like that." I angled a glance at Zac, whose jaw tightened.

  "Lookest thou." Joseph gestured to the stage. "Yonder be an inn."

  The spotlight moved to a shack with a sign that read Ocean View Inn, and Bree Milford emerged looking like Ann-Margret in Viva Las Vegas. "Alas, there is no room at the inn for thee and thine wife. Or thine donkey."

  Joseph pressed his wrist to his brow. "Ay, Mary. We must goest into town."

  The curtain rose, revealing a backdrop of Bethlehem—with a Dooney Brothers Funeral Home.

  "There was a funeral parlor in Bethlehem?" Amy's tone was incredulous, as though this were the first surprising thing she'd seen.

  "Jesse and James Dooney donated the set, so The Reverend told them they could advertise." Donna snorted and shook her head. "Sponsorship is one thing, but the Dooneys are so cheap they made the set with scrap wood they had lying around the funeral home."

  I cringed and tried to forget she'd said that.

  Joseph and Mary reached the stage, and an angel appeared—Abigail Harris from the Savings & Loan in a Good Witch of the North gown but with hair and makeup like Jane Fonda in Barbarella.

  She raised her arms, and a crash sounded as part of the set collapsed.

  "Someone wants their coffin back," Gia quipped.

  Two of the Three Wise Men burst onto the stage in a fistfight. Their glittering robes glowed beneath the spotlight. />
  I didn't need to look beneath their headpieces to know they were Randall and Clark.

  "Oh, cool." Amy's eyes lit up like her bulbs. "A duel."

  Santiago Beltràn, the third wise man, stepped from behind the curtains but did nothing to break up his costars. His teeth and white turban gleamed in the spotlight as he smiled and waved a cigar.

  "What's he holding?" Mrs. Henderson asked. "Frankincense, gold, or myrrh?"

  "Cuban tobacco," Gia replied. "It's more precious than gold."

  "Kill the damn lights," The Reverend shouted in language unbefitting a Hamlet—or the foster father to Jesus.

  The spotlight shot above the stage instead of going dark.

  The crowd gasped, and the church went silent.

  Zac clasped my hand, and I clung to him for strength. Whatever words we'd exchanged didn't matter anymore.

  Because up in the rafters, beside a giant star made of cardboard and aluminum foil, hung the body of a woman.

  "So…" Gia's voice trailed off. "The Reverend turned the nativity into a Shakespearean tragedy, right?"

  But we all knew he hadn't.

  "Oh, look." Mrs. Henderson pointed to the lifeless woman. "Another angel."

  "That's no angel." I stared dumbstruck at the scarlet wig. "It's a madam."

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Magnolia hoofed it down the stage steps so fast her head struggled to stay in line with her legs. She checked her hive and then slid beside Gia and me in the first pew.

  "While I was fetchin' my purse backstage, I could hear that Dr. Cooper lady talkin' to the detective." She took a gulp of air. "Whoever done Sabine in, done it right before the show."

  I glanced at Dr. Cooper, who was onstage in the sweater, pencil skirt, and pearls she'd worn to the performance. She looked like an actress in a play rather than a medical examiner at work. Except that the body she was kneeling over wasn't pretending to be dead. "How do you know?"

  "She said the madam was as warm as a Texas winter when they unhung her. And the detective talked to that houseboy of hers, Rico Suave." My aunt's reference to the Gerardo song signaled her scorn for the male maid.

  "How'd they find out about him?" Gia asked between strokes of her lip gloss wand.

  "He rung up Sabine, and her phone was in her purse backstage. The detective answered and had a chat with Rico, who told him he'd last talked to her at six fifteen."

  My hand went to my throat. Someone had strangled the ex-madam while we were working nearby. "So that's why the police made us stay. We're suspects like the cast members."

  "Well, people do keep getting whacked wherever we go." Gia threw her lip gloss into her bag in a display of disgust. "It's like an episode of Murder, She Wrote, only we're in Danger Cove instead of Cabot Cove."

  Detective Marshall emerged from the hallway where the police were interrogating cast members. "What do you know? There's a dead body at the living nativity, and Conti and Di Mitri are here."

  Apparently, our Jessica Fletcher–like timing wasn't lost on him either.

  "If I didn't have an investigation to oversee, I would personally book the three of you into jail." Contempt dripped from his voice like pus from an infected wound.

  Magnolia popped from the pew. "We were workin' our tail ends off when that woman got strung up."

  "Were you working when you went to her house?" He stared my aunt down until she sunk to her seat.

  Gia and I shared an uh-oh look. Rico must've tipped off the detective to our visit.

  "Sabine was my uncle's business associate." My tone was as cool as my gaze even though I was shivering inside. "I wasn't breaking any laws by talking to her."

  "Don't try to make this about your uncle, young lady." He leaned over me. "You went to Seattle because of Jade Liu. The only way Vincent Conti figures into this case is that you and your cousin started this crime spree by keeping a copy of his client list."

  It was my turn to pop off the pew. "That responsibility lies with whoever stole the list and gave it to the newspaper."

  The detective grimaced and pulled a pad from his suit coat pocket. "We'll settle this later. Right now I need to get some details straight about your work schedule." He glanced at the pad. "Can you confirm that Clark Graham and Randall Olcott had their makeup done from six to six thirty p.m.?"

  "Randall stormed out at six fifteen, so I couldn't finish," I said.

  Gia smirked. "He and Clark had a fight about cod and Asian tuna."

  My cousin intended to make the questioning difficult for the detective, so I took over. "What she means is, they were talking about a woman Clark met at a hotel. The 'Asian tuna' could've been a reference to Jade Liu."

  Detective Marshall seemed unimpressed with my deductive reasoning. "And Mr. Graham was in hair from six thirty until six forty?"

  Magnolia bobbed her beehive. "All I had to do was fix a fez on his head."

  He scribbled a note. "Miss Conti, did Mr. Olcott return to let you finish his makeup?"

  "An hour later, at seven fifteen. I worked on him for fifteen minutes, and then I sent him to hair and started on The Reverend."

  "And what time did he get his hairdo?"

  I glanced at my aunt. "Seven forty-five."

  He tapped his pen on the pad. "How was the demeanor of the three men?"

  "Clark was calm, Randall alternated between tense and angry, and—" I stopped when Charlotte entered from the hallway.

  "I don't know The Reverend from Adam," Magnolia said. "But I think he's got somethin' to hide. He was shakin' like a mule passin' peach pits when I was workin' on him."

  Gia snorted. "Probably because he'd seen your hairstyles."

  "Actually," Charlotte intervened in a tone as cold as Sabine's body, "it was because he was about to play Joseph, which is an important role." She turned to the detective. "He rehearsed with me until he went into hair and makeup."

  "A convenient alibi." Gia flashed a Cheshire-cat smile at The Reverend's Kitten. "But how are you going to explain his solo visit to Sabine's last night?"

  Charlotte's gray eyes turned black, and I wouldn't have sworn to it, but I thought I saw Satan in them.

  Detective Marshall shifted his gaze from Charlotte to our pew. "I'll settle up with you three tomorrow. And while you're still in church, you'd better pray for divine intervention." He put his hand on Charlotte's back. "Mrs. Vickers, I need you to come with me to your husband's office."

  "Delighted to, Detective." The Kitten played coquette as he led her to the hall. "I'll have the church secretary bring us a nice pot of coffee and some cookies."

  Magnolia sucked her teeth. "That Charlotte's slicker 'n a slop jar."

  "Totally." Gia uttered the word like a grr. "Whatever a slop jar is."

  Charlotte was slick. Because either she'd lied to me about The Reverend rehearsing alone until the performance, or she'd lied to the detective when she claimed to have helped him prepare.

  "Whadda you think, sugar plum? Did Sabine come to see Reverend?"

  Gia gave a frustrated hair flip. "Well, she wasn't here to see the nativity."

  Two EMTs entered the main door and carried a stretcher to the stage.

  I looked at Sabine, wishing she could answer my aunt. Because I didn't know if the madam had told us the truth when she'd said she hadn't seen The Reverend. If that was the case, then we'd alerted her to his presence on her street, and she might've come to ask him what he'd been doing there.

  On the other hand, maybe The Reverend and Sabine had met before we showed up in Seattle, and she'd come to the Cove because the two of them had unfinished business.

  Either way, I had to find out what their liaison had to do with Jade Liu.

  And whether The Reverend had killed Jade and Sabine too.

  * * *

  "To Sabine." Gia rose from her stool at the Bottoms Up bar and raised her Let's Get Blitzened glass. "May she rest in pleasure—and in pudding—in that big brothel in the sky."

  Amy and I joined the toast and downed
the pumpkin pie–flavored vodka. Then we returned to our seats on the Victorian couch. Its crimson color reminded me of scarlet, and I wondered whether Sabine had bought it for the house.

  In keeping with the theme of her glass, Gia poured another shot. "Did Zac leave?"

  "He's still outside talking to Donatello." My tone was morose like my mood. "After we filled them in on our little chat with Detective Marshall, Zac wanted to get his take on the murders and our situation with the police."

  "Donny's lucky he got assigned to patrol our place tonight." Gia took a slug of her vodka. "He missed one hell of a nativity."

  Hell was an appropriate way to describe it, including the infernal threat of going to jail.

  "So who do you guys think killed Sabine?" Amy looked from Gia to me. "Reverend Vickers?"

  I leaned my head on the back of the couch. "Well, he might've met with her last night, and he did meet with Jade. And it is suspicious that out of all the men in this town, he cast Randall and Clark in the nativity."

  Amy snapped her fingers, and her wreathes lit up. "He could've been planning to frame them for Sabine's death. Or maybe he and Sabine were blackmailing Randall and Clark, and one of them killed her."

  I switched off her sweater battery. I'd had enough bright lights for one night. "It's also possible that Sabine went to the church to blackmail all three of them. Last night I basically spoon-fed her their fathers' names."

  Gia's head lurched like she was going to upchuck. "Did you have to use that analogy?"

  "You're the one who brought up Sabine's pudding."

  Amy nudged my side. "Didn't you say that Jade wasn't Annabelle's daughter?"

  "If Sabine was telling the truth about Annabelle's death, then she couldn't have been."

  "Did Mei have other daughters?" she asked.

  I'd wondered the same thing. "If she did, I doubt they would've been from the brothel client, which means that The Reverend, Clark, or Randall couldn't have been Jade's half uncle."

  Amy tapped her fingers on her glass. "Then why would they pay blackmail money if Jade was an imposter?"

  "Because they didn't know she was a fraud." Gia flopped into the violet high-backed chair beside the couch and kicked a leg over the arm. "And Sabine wouldn't have told them. If Vinnie's any indication, she exploited all illegal opportunities that came her way."