Treated and Dyed (A Bekki the Beautician Cozy Mystery Book 13)

by Cindy Bell

  Bekki tried very hard to escape. The door creaked again as it swung shut. She heard footsteps walk across the shop. Luckily they were going in the opposite direction of where she was stuck. On one hand Bekki didn't want anyone to catch her trying to sneak in, on the other she didn't want to be stuck half in and half out of Get and Go until it opened the next morning. She opened her mouth to call out for help, but before she could she heard the front door open and close. The door was locked.

  Bekki was sure that it must have been Holly, as she would likely be the only one with a key. Bekki took a deep breath. She knew that the only way she was going to get out of the shop was to be forceful enough to rip her pocket. She pulled back out of the small door with all of her might. She pushed her hands against the tiled floor inside the shop and wiggled her hips at the same time. The combination of force and movement led to a few stitches tearing in the pocket of her skirt.

  Bekki felt a small amount of freedom, and then was suddenly tumbling backwards against the pavement. She landed with a grunt and a sigh of relief. She looked up at the sky which was dotted with rising stars. She knew that she had just escaped certain humiliation. Slowly she got to her feet. After a moment she ducked into the shadows cast by the roof of the shop. Holly should have been making her way to her car. After a few minutes passed, Bekki assumed that Holly had now walked over to the bakery. She wasn't daring enough to try to break into the shop again, but she decided to have a look inside Holly's car. She didn't want her attempt at an investigation to be a complete bust.

  Bekki walked over to Holly's car and peeked in the front window. She didn't notice anything unusual. Then she looked into the backseat. What she saw in the backseat made her heart stop for a moment. Several bags of the same type of candy that Stella had eaten the morning she died were strewn across the backseat. Beside them was a package sealer. Bekki knew what it was as her father had used one when he had sealed some of his own products in the shop. She had no doubt that Holly had resealed the bags of candy with it. Her mind was spinning as she realized that Nick's information had been right, Holly was the killer.

  Bekki stared at the bags of candy in the backseat. She didn't want to think about them being there, but she knew she couldn't ignore it. Why would Holly have stashed all of the candy from the shop in the backseat of her car? She decided that she should take some candy so that it could be tested at the police lab. Once they had proof that she was trying to hide tainted candy, they would be able to search the shop and Holly's home. As she was reaching for the door handle, she heard footsteps approaching.

  “Bekki? What are you doing back here?” Holly asked. She was standing only a few feet away with her hand tucked inside of her purse.

  “I was looking for you,” Bekki said.

  “Oh, I was inside,” Holly frowned. “I thought I heard knocking, but I was busy with inventory.”

  “I went to the front door but it was locked,” Bekki explained quickly. She knew that she was going to have to lie to get out of this. “I thought maybe you were in the parking lot back here.”

  “I am, now,” Holly smiled warmly. “What can I do for you?”

  Bekki studied her intently. No matter how hard she tried she could not picture Holly as a killer. Even after finding out about her background in pharmaceuticals, Bekki found it very hard to believe. Holly was so quiet and unassuming. She didn't look like she would harm a hair on anyone's head.

  “Maybe you could tell me why all of these bags of candy are on the backseat of your car?” Bekki asked. She braced herself for the woman's reaction, as she knew that anything could happen. Holly shifted her purse on her shoulder. Bekki cringed when her hand slipped out of her purse, but there was nothing in it.

  “Oh, those are out-of-date,” she explained. “I didn't want to take the chance of selling them to anyone so I just grabbed them off the shelf. I was going to take them to the dump myself.”

  “So, that no one else stood the chance of being killed?” Bekki asked before she could stop herself. Holly paused and stared at Bekki. Her entire demeanor transformed from amiable but withdrawn, to in control and dominant.

  “Are you accusing me of something, Bekki?” she asked. Bekki watched her closely as Holly rounded the front of the car and walked towards her.

  “I'm just asking why all of a sudden it is so important for you to only clean this candy off the shelf? How is it that only these candies were out-of-date, and no others?” Bekki asked. She stood her ground. Her shoulders were straight, her hips angled slightly away, and her feet firmly placed.

  “That would be my business, wouldn't it?” Holly asked. “Maybe it's best if you just stick to hair, Bekki.”

  “Maybe you don't know this, Holly, but my father ran the very shop that you now rent. I might have grown up in my mother's beauty salon, but I still spent many weekends in my father's shop, and I know for a fact that you make orders for things like candy on the same day. So, it stands to reason that more than one type of candy would expire on the same day,” Bekki said. “If these candies aren't expired, then why else would you be taking them to the dump?”

  Holly shifted from one foot to the other. Her hardened exterior had faded and now she looked terribly uncomfortable. “Please Bekki, just stay out of it,” she said.

  “I'm afraid I can't do that,” Bekki replied. “Just tell the truth, Holly. You made a mistake. You made a bad decision. I'm sure that you had your reasons. Now is your chance to fix it.”

  “My reasons?” Holly asked. She tipped her head back and laughed a little out of desperation. “I only needed one. She would come into my shop to collect the rent. She would pluck that bag of candy from the shelf, and without ever paying for it she would unwrap a candy and pop it in her mouth. Then she would hold out her grubby little hand for her rent check.”

  “What's so bad about that?” Bekki asked. “You did rent the place from her,” Bekki pointed out impatiently.

  “Yes I did,” Holly said. “She must have learned from a real shark, because she knew exactly what she was doing. When I moved in, I told her that I might have to pay more one month and less another. She told me she was flexible and it would be fine. Instead, each month she raised the rent. First by ten dollars, then by fifty, then by one hundred. Each time I said I needed a day or two to make the rent she would tack on late fees and threaten to padlock the door of the shop. I invested everything I had in this place, because she promised me that she would be flexible with me,” she pursed her lips. “She lied, and then she basically held me hostage. She told me the lease was binding, and it was in the language of the lease that she could raise the rent at any time for any reason. I didn't read it, I trusted her. I signed my life away.”

  “Surely, there had to be a way to solve this amicably,” Bekki said. She could see the flush in Holly's cheeks and the anger in her eyes. Holly no longer looked innocent or mild mannered.

  “I knew it was coming up to rent check time again,” Holly whispered. She was speaking more to herself than to Bekki. “All I could hear all day long, and even in my sleep, was her sucking on that candy. I knew I wouldn't have the rent. I knew that she would ruin me, and take everything from me. She always had that for rent sign in her car to put in the window if I was even thinking about being late. She threatened to take everything from me, like I was nothing more than trash to be thrown out on the curb.”

  “She was a business woman, maybe she wasn't the nicest or the most honest one, Holly, but that was no reason to kill her,” Bekki said.

  “I didn't say I did, did I?” Holly asked sharply. “I can see why people would want her dead though. Even after she was gone her lawyer was over here harassing me. Why can't people just leave me alone and let me live my life?”

  “Did you let Stella live her life, Holly?” Bekki asked as she stepped closer to her “Or did you take it away from her?”

  “No matter what happened to Stella she had it coming,” Holly said harshly. “She was a terrible person, and eventually someo
ne would have cracked under all of the pressure that she put on people. You can't just twist people into knots and threaten them and expect nothing bad to ever happen to you in return.”

  “So, you fell back on your old profession. You poisoned her favorite candy, so that you would never hear her suck on it again?” Bekki pressed. She wanted the truth from Holly. She also wanted to keep Holly from getting into her car. If all of those bags of candy were poisoned she wanted them as evidence and they needed to be destroyed before anyone else got hurt.

  “You'd like me to say that I did, wouldn't you, Bekki?” Holly asked. “Would that make you feel just so much better about yourself, Bekki? You treated that woman the same way everyone in this town did. Like she was above the standards of being a good person. You all knew what she was like, and yet no one tried to stop her from conducting business the way she did. No one stood up for the people she tried to destroy. What if it was your father that she had treated this way, Bekki?” she demanded.

  “I can't answer that,” Bekki said. “I don't know for sure what I would do. But I do know what I wouldn't do. I wouldn't murder someone because I couldn't pay my rent.”

  “As if it was really that simple!” Holly nearly shouted. Bekki started to take a step towards her, but suddenly stopped when she heard something that made every muscle in her body tense up.

  Bekki heard the release of the safety before she even knew that someone else had walked up to the car. She froze at the sound of the subtle click. Holly didn't appear to have heard it, perhaps because she was still so focused on Bekki. As Bekki slowly tilted her head to the side to look in the direction of the sound, it felt as if the entire world had slowed down. She wasn't sure if she would have another second to live. When her eyes settled on the face of the person holding the gun, she was even more shocked.

  Chapter Nine

  “Jodie?” Bekki asked. Her voice was weak as her breath was shortened by confusion and panic. Jodie continued to point the gun directly at Holly. Holly finally realized that Jodie was there and turned to face her.

  “Don't shoot!” Holly gasped with fear. “Jodie, what are you doing?”

  “Don't shoot,” Jodie mimicked teasingly. “That's quite an original thought to have, Holly. Is that the extent of your creativity?”

  “Jodie, just put the gun down,” Bekki said. Her words were muddled by the trembling in her voice. She took a slow breath to try to steady herself. “Whatever you have done, there is help for it. This isn't the way out of it.”

  Had she been mistaken the entire time? Were Holly and Jodie in on the crime together?

  “I know what I'm doing,” Jodie snapped. “Like I said, Bekki, you honor my mother your way, and I'll honor her my way. You're going to pay for what you did, Holly,” Jodie said.

  “What are you talking about, Jodie?” Holly demanded. “You hated that old witch as much as I did.”

  “Jodie, let's talk this out. Whatever you've done, Nick can help you,” Bekki offered in an attempt to diffuse the situation.

  “Whatever I have done?” Jodie asked. She narrowed her eyes at Holly. She would not dare to even look in Bekki's direction. “I've had a lot of things taken from me in my life. My father, my step-father, my chance at living a decent healthy life. All of those things were taken from me. So, it shouldn't have come as any surprise to me that my mother would be taken from me, too.”

  Bekki looked from Jodie, to Holly, and then back to Jodie. She had no idea what was going to happen next.

  “As if you even care,” Holly said. She pursed her lips dismissively. “I saw the way that you treated your mother, as if she was a bank. While she was dragging every last penny out of my pocket, she was padding yours with whatever you wanted.”

  “Is that what all of this was about, Holly? Jealousy?” Jodie demanded. Bekki stared between the two women. She could feel the hatred flowing between both of them.

  “We should talk about this down at the police station,” Bekki spoke up.

  “Quiet Bekki!” Jodie snapped. She kept the gun pointed at Holly despite yelling at Bekki.

  “Why shouldn't I be jealous?” Holly asked gravely. “We're the same age, did you know that, Jodie?”

  “No,” Jodie replied. Bekki was a little startled by the revelation as well. Holly looked at least ten years older than Jodie.

  “Of course you didn't, because you've been pampered all of your life. You've had facials, and massages. While my face wrinkled and cracked from heat and hard work, you slathered on the most expensive lotions money could buy. How’s that fair?” Holly laughed bitterly. “What did I do so wrong that I ended up fighting every day of my life, while you got to coast through it?”

  “It's not my fault if you've had a hard life,” Jodie said defensively. “It's not like mine has been easy.”

  “It's not my fault either,” Holly nearly shouted. “That's the point. My mother used to tell me that all it took was hard work and dedication. She said all I had to do was live a good life, and I would be rewarded for it. But that's not what happened. I did everything right. I studied hard, but I didn't get a scholarship. I pinched every penny and dime while I worked full time and paid for college tuition. I got my degree, even if it meant I missed out on every single party invitation I ever received. I knew it would all pay off in the end. I was going to be a pharmacist. I would get to help people while making a good living, but that's not what happened. Because I was so tired I made one stupid mistake and that was it, everything I had done meant nothing. I scraped up just enough to rent this store, and told myself, I could do it. Maybe I could have,” she shrugged. “I never had the chance to find out, because your mother conned me out of every single cent. She didn't even need the money. She had more money than she could ever spend.”

  Bekki stared between the two women. She didn't want anyone to get hurt. She knew with the highly charged emotions running through both women that one of them was bound to explode at any moment.

  “So what?” Jodie demanded. “She had every right to treat you the way she did. You think the world owes you something because you were born poor? Get over it, Holly, you've never made anything of yourself because you're a screw up. I found out about your past, I had McAllister look into it. That's how I knew it was you who did this. That's how I knew that you had been the one to tamper with the candy and murder my mother. You lost your job because you were careless. Now, you're going to lose the rest of your life because you are a heartless killer,” Jodie took a step closer to Holly.

  “We can call all of this a misunderstanding,” Bekki attempted to interrupt. She nervously watched the gun in Jodie's hands.

  “Shut up!” Holly snapped. “Did you have to watch this spoiled brat get everything she wanted while her rigid, stingy, old mother robbed me? No you didn't!”

  “Don't you talk about my mother that way!” Jodie shrieked. She took another step forward. Bekki without thinking stepped between the two women. She turned to face Jodie.

  “Jodie, don't do this. Your mother is gone, nothing can change that,” she reminded her. “But you have the chance now to make her proud of you. This wouldn't make her proud.”

  “Nothing I have done or can do would have made my mother proud. My mother may have been a mean, old broad,” Jodie said darkly. “But she didn't deserve to die for it. You're a murderer, Holly, and you're going to pay for it.”

  “This wasn't supposed to happen like this,” Holly moaned. “No one was supposed to suspect anything. Your mother was old, death from a heart attack should have appeared to be natural causes. You would have had everything you wanted, Jodie, all of her money. I thought you wouldn't have cared about the shop, you would have left me alone to run it.”

  “Or maybe you hoped that if something was suspicious, all eyes would be on me?” Jodie asked. “That the people of this town would think I was capable of killing my own mother?”

  “They did, didn't they?” Holly smirked. “Even Bekki thought you did, didn't you, Bekki?”


  Bekki lowered her eyes. She still had herself positioned between them. She tried not to look directly at Jodie as she didn't want to spark a reaction from her. Bekki was sure that Jodie was drunk. She realized that she must have been driving the car that was swerving all over the road. This had been her intention, to get revenge for her mother's death on the night of her memorial. It would be very difficult to convince Jodie that she was making the wrong choice.

  “Jodie, Nick knows that I am here. He's going to be here any minute. He will arrest Holly and he will prove that she murdered your mother. If he shows up and you still have that gun in your hand, you're going to be in trouble. Just put the gun away. You deserve time to grieve your mother, not any of this,” Bekki said quietly.

  “Grieve her,” Jodie muttered. “The only thing I'll be grieving is that I never had a mother to cry for in the first place.”

  Bekki bit into her lower lip. She didn't want to argue with a woman who was wielding a gun.

  “You see? I did you a favor, you should be thanking me,” Holly said with a laugh. “Just let me go, Jodie, you'll never see me again.”

  “No,” Jodie said coolly. “My mother was not much of a mother, but if someone had done something to hurt me, she never would have stood for it. I can do the same for her. We at least had that. Get down on the ground, Holly.”

  Bekki took a sharp breath. She wondered for a moment if Jodie was cruel enough to shoot Holly.

  “Don't Jodie,” Bekki pleaded and continued to stand between them.

  “Here Bekki, if you want to be so helpful, then be helpful,” Jodie tossed her a length of rope that she had tucked in her pocket. “Tie her hands. I don't want her getting away. I don't want this murder getting pinned on me.”

  Holly was still standing boldly beside the car.

  “Just do what she says, Holly,” Bekki said quietly as she moved closer to her.

  “Is this it?” Holly asked as she looked into Bekki's eyes. “Is this your version of small town justice? She deserved to die, Bekki, you know she did.”