What a Nunderful World Page 12

  And that meant I needed some help getting nightclub ready. I hoped Coop would lend a hand despite her funk.

  I also hoped Higgs was up for some dancing.

  He didn’t know it yet, but he was my hot date—wink-wink.

  Higgs stared at me thoughtfully as we stood outside the nightclub. “You look beautiful, Sister Trixie.”

  I curtsied, running a hand over my skinny jeans. They were a little snug these days from all the amazing family dinners Knuckles cooked up, but I loved the flowing white peasant blouse Coop had loaned me. She’d belted it around my waist with a chain belt that draped over my hip and insisted I wear these crazy spiky-heeled red boots that I could only walk a few feet in before I had to grab onto Higgs for support.

  She’d really thrown herself into my hair and makeup, giving me a smoky eye with a dramatic winged-out eyeliner. She’d quite willingly done my hair and makeup, but she’d been very quiet, and it was beginning to unnerve me.

  Higgs preached patience on Coop’s behalf, and I had to keep reminding myself, she seemed to be whipping through the stages of adolescence right now, and this, too, would pass.

  But I sure hoped it would pass soon. It was hard enough to know she struggled with expressing her emotions. To be this depressed but not have an outlet had to be frustrating.

  Hooking my arm through Higgs’s, I blushed, my cheeks going hot. “Thank you, kind sir. You don’t look so bad yourself. Now, are you ready to snoop around but not really snoop around but snoop around?”

  Higgs threw his head back and laughed. He looked quite handsome in his navy-blue blazer, white T-shirt and navy-blue slacks. “Snooping activated. Lead the way.”

  Entering the club was like entering another dimension. It was loud, with a thumping bass that vibrated right to my core as I looked out at the bodies pressed together from end to end in the space. Lights flashed and a DJ with a colorful knit cap scratched on his record player behind a glass case.

  I didn’t know how I was ever going to find any of the gurus, let alone think straight with all the noise. I was a nun for all the parts of my life that may have been spent clubbing. I felt totally out of my element. But if I was good at anything, I was a pretty good actress.

  So I decided to take that angle as Higgs led me to a corner where we had a good view of the dance floor and surrounding areas.

  Someone came by with a tray full of shots that glowed in the dark, but I shook my head at the pretty waitress. I didn’t need alcohol to muddy the waters for me, thank you very much. I wanted a clear head when I talked to them.

  Higgs nudged me and hitched his jaw toward the far corner of the room where the laughter seemed especially loud. Seated on a cushiony purple sectional, all of the gurus were in attendance. Sally, Mitzy’s assistant, Margot, Corinne, Nikki, Julie and a couple of other people I didn’t recognize.

  They’d popped a bottle of champagne and were pouring glasses, holding them up and saluting something Margot was saying.

  She was one person I hadn’t talked to yet, but I sure would like to know about the two purses Mitzy had, and why there was more than one when they were so personalized. Certainly, if anyone could, she’d be able to have one made if she’d been planning to kill Mitzy.

  As I watched them laughing and smiling, I decided I’d hit the jackpot in terms of possible suspects. I might as well make the best of it.

  Grabbing Higgs’s hand, I pulled him to the dance floor, weaving my way in and out of the crowd, doing my best imitation of what I’d seen people do on Dancing With the Stars. I wasn’t going to be asked to host Soul Train anytime soon, but I could shimmy when necessary—at least enough to fit in with the crowd.

  What I hadn’t expected was how good Higgs was. In fact, it made me pause for a second to appreciate how really good he was. He caught the eye of several women as he took the lead, and we danced our way to the tightly packed corner by the purple couch.

  Positioned almost in their laps, I tried to hear what they were saying, but it was almost impossible with the thump of music blaring.

  Higgs leaned down and yelled in my ear, making it ring. “Margot just said she was going to have a smoke.”

  I gave him a quizzical glance, standing on tiptoe to ask him, “How do you know?”

  “I can read lips. A little anyway. Learned it undercover. So, I guess you have to get some air?”

  Higgs was so dreamy, sometimes I had to remind myself he was real. I know he has faults in there somewhere, we all do. But as for a partner in crime, he was everything a girl could hope for.

  Grinning up at him, I nodded my head and as I watched Margot inch her way toward the front door with Julie and Sally hot on her heels. Squeezing his arm and mouthing “wait here,” I turned to follow.

  It was chilly outside, but I pretended I was overheated as I decided how I was going to approach this. I didn’t want to be a gushing fan. That might turn them off on tonight of all nights. Though, they didn’t appear to mind the attention they’d received on their way out of the club.

  Mostly, I wanted to eavesdrop to see if they said anything at all that would lead to figuring out this mystery, seeing as no one else appeared terribly interested in finding a killer.

  Maybe that’s not fair. Maybe the PD are outnumbered here. I know Tansy’s job is tough. And maybe the wall of silence she’d erected was the reason they appeared so disinterested, but I just couldn’t let this go.

  Fanning myself, I leaned back against the brick façade and breathed heavily, inhaling some of their smoke. I knew it would catch someone’s attention. I really hoped it would be Margot or Julie’s. I also hoped Margot recognized me from the other night, and she’d see I wasn’t the enemy.

  “Phew!” I panted. When Margot noticed I was near and looked my way, I smiled at her. “It’s so hot in there, huh?”

  She gave me a vague smile, but Julie was the one who pulled out a Handi Wipe from her purse and handed it to me. She was a pretty brunette with vividly made-up eyes, purple lipstick and very white teeth.

  “Here, I use these all the time. Rub it on your neck. The cool air and the moisture from the towelette will help.”

  “Thank you.” I took it from her and rubbed it along my neck, even though I was freezing.

  “Your makeup is amazing,” she commented with a tentative smile. “How did you blend your eyeshadow so well? I have so much trouble getting mine even, but yours is fierce.”

  I had no idea how Coop did what she did. I do know, it involved a lot of brushes and several shades to deepen the colors. She’d muttered as much as she’d applied it.

  Because I had no idea, I deflected. “Forget my eyeshadow. I love your makeup. It’s so bright and fun.”

  “Thanks, I try,” she said self-consciously, tucking her hair over her shoulder.

  Leaning around her, I honed in on Margot, who stood under the neon of the club, her face eerily pale in the garish light. “Hey, aren’t you Margot Winters?”

  Taking a long drag from her cigarette, she eyed me suspiciously. “That’s me. Who are you?” she asked in her light southern lilt.

  “We met the other night. Under unfortunate circumstances, I’m sorry to say. I’m Trixie Lavender. I was with you when…” I cast my eyes downward at my crazy spike-heeled boots and waited.

  “Oh, yeah. Y’all were there when Mitzy…” She shook her auburn head. “At the meet and greet. You were really nice to me when I was all but flippin’ out. Thank y’all for that.”

  Inching toward her carefully, so as not to tip over, I asked, “How are you feeling, Margot? I know this has been an awful time for you—for all of you.”

  Tipping her head, she let the back of her skull lean on the brick wall and closed her eyes. It was clear it had been a trying few days for Margot. “It’s been pretty crummy. The police have been all over me, asking me a million questions I have no answers for. I just want to go home to my house and my cats and figure out what to do with my life, now that Mitzy’s passed over to the great bey
ond.”

  I gave her a sympathetic look through the haze of smoke. “You must have really loved her. I’m so sorry for your loss.”

  There was a long pause—a really long, awkward, uncomfortable pause—before she looked me right in the eye and said, “Are you kidding me? Pardon my honesty, but I hated Mitzy’s ever-lovin’ guts.”

  My mouth fell open. Oh dear.

  Yet another plot twist.

  Chapter 13

  Ummm.

  I wasn’t sure how to respond to that. But it certainly was a tasty bit of information I needed to dig into with a big spoon.

  However, that’s the moment Sally finally chimed in. “Don’t talk like that, Margot! She’s dead, for God’s sake,” she warned with a fierce tone, her green eyes flashing disapproval. “Talking like that is a great way to get in deeper with the cops.”

  Margot rolled her eyes at Sally and made a face. “Mitzy, Mitzy, Mitzy, y’all! I’m sick to death of hearin’ her name! Even dead she’s still torturing me. She was a horrible person, and you know it, Sally. Look at what she did to you!”

  Sally crossed her arms over her chest, her chin-length bob swinging forward. “Oh, I know what she allegedly did to me, Margot. Believe me, I know. It was all over the YT for months. But that’s not the point, girl. She can’t do those things anymore because she’s dead. Dead! And you’d better stop going around living in your truth or you’re going to need bail money!” she hollered into the chilly night so loud, the bouncers looked over at us.

  Margot crossed her arms over her chest in a defensive gesture. “Oh, please. It’s not like I could lie, Sally. They have all the emails between me and Mitzy. The one where I told her I hated her ugly, mean guts and I couldn’t wait until my contract with her was up this summer. The one where I called her a tyrant for making me come in to work after I’d been up all night with Kenny.”

  “Kenny?” I asked without meaning to, rubbing my arms because I, too, was beginning to get cold.

  Sally looked at me, her small eyes and piercing gaze glittering. “That’s one of her cats. Her cat got sick, and she had to take him into an emergency vet. Margot had been there all night long and she was bone tired. But Mitzy didn’t care. She had prize winners’ packages that she claimed had to go out that day no matter what. Mitzy was awful, for sure. She was a horrible boss, but she didn’t deserve to die, Margot.”

  Margot ran a hand through her shiny hair. “I didn’t say she deserved to die, bless her heart. I said I hated her and I couldn’t wait to get away from her. But I foolishly signed a contract, and my parole hearing wasn’t until summer.”

  “Parole?” Julie squeaked, her eyes going wide.

  “It’s a metaphor, Julie,” Margot remarked dryly, pushing her hair behind her shoulder in a huff. “I felt like I was in prison because my contract wasn’t done until this summer. But now I’m free as a bird.”

  Mitzy was sounding more and more like a real treat to work for. There hadn’t been a fond memory from anyone at this point. Surely Tansy saw that? They had more motive for murder than motive had motive.

  Tucking my purse under my arm, I decided it was now or never. “How did you come to work for Mitzy, Margot?”

  “We went to college for a coupla semesters together. Neither one of us knew what we wanted to do, but we both loved makeup. We used to watch YouTube videos all the time instead of attending classes—something I sorely regret now, because who’s gonna hire an assistant with only makeup and lip gloss on her pathetic resume? Anyway, she was always better at it ‘n me, so she used me as her guinea pig to practice.”

  I nodded my head in understanding. “So, I suppose you were fans of Alma and some of the older gurus? Someone told me Alma was the OG on the YT, and Mitzy sort of usurped her.” (Phew. Look at me use the lingo. Stand back and watch me work.)

  Her snort was sardonic, her gaze faraway as she appeared to stare at the trees across the street, bending in the wind. “We sure were, and she sure did. It was just before she became a limelight monster. Well, before she became a monster to me, anyway. She was never very nice to other people unless she needed somethin’, and I didn’t realize that until I found out what she needed me for.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Tech,” she said quite plainly. “I had somethin’ she wanted. I might not be as gifted at makeup, but I knew how to make a decent enough video and upload it, create graphics…you name it, I did it. Anyway, she left college and took me with her to LA with a bunch of bogus promises and we’ve been doing this ever since. And with every single month, with every sponsorship she nabbed, with every million-dollar deal she made, the more egotistical she got…the more arrogant, greedier, until I couldn’t take it anymore, y’all. Swear, I thought my head would explode.

  “So I sent her an email and told her to stuff it right up the wazoo and the second my contract was up, I was out. I’m goin’ back to Nashville where my family lives. Where real people with real lives and my real friends live. I hate phony LA, and I hated Mitzy, and there’s no point in lyin’ about it now.”

  Wow. I sure hadn’t planned on hearing that.

  “And you told the police about all this?” I asked, adding as much disbelief as I could to my tone of voice.

  Margot popped her icy-pink lips. “Yep. Like I said, what was the point of lyin’? They were gonna check her emails. I’m sure of it. People in the industry knew she treated me like her handmaid. They’d heard us argue all the time. So what was the point in not tellin’ them? If they were going to pin this on me, at least I told them everything before they found it themselves. I’m an open book.”

  “So the police think she was murdered?” I said on a gasp I summoned from deep within.

  Margot shook her head and stubbed out her cigarette with a shrug of her shoulders. “I don’t know. All they did was question me until my eyes crossed, and I did what I should have done. I told them the truth. But they did ask that none of us leave town. So maybe they do think she was murdered.”

  Sally poked Margot in the ribs before she lit another cigarette. “And I told her it was stupid. She’s playing with fire. Why not just put the handcuffs on and lock herself in a jail cell for them?”

  “Yeaaah. Fire,” Margot drawled. “You, on the other hand, darlin’, are behavin’ like a cat cornered in a crawl space. I can’t believe you let her get away with what she did, Sally. Did you tell the police what she did to you?”

  So, of course, you know I have to know what Mitzy did to Sally, right? I think it had to do with her eyeshadow, but I wanted to make sure.

  “May I ask what happened to you, Sally?” I inquired softly.

  “It was a couple of years ago. Long since over with, and I did tell the police, Margot. I was truthful,” she accused with a lift of her pointy chin.

  “You wanna know what Mitzy did to Sally, Trixie? I’ll tell you what she did,” she spat with an angry turn of her lips. “Because she was angry that Sally got a deal with Taylor Cosmetics and they’d taken a big ol’ pass on Mitzy’s idea, she gave Sally’s eyeshadow palette a poor review. But that’s not all she did. Oh, no. She somehow—I don’t know how—managed to make her eye swell up to the size of a watermelon, and she claimed it happened after using Sally’s palette. She tanked her sales because no one wanted whatever the gunk was that she claimed happened to her eye. Now, no one will touch Sally, and she can’t afford to finance her own palette.”

  But Sally was quick to defend Mitzy. “We don’t know that didn’t happen, Margot. Maybe she did get an eye infection from the palette. It could have been a bad batch.”

  Why was Sally so eager to defend Mitzy? Was it because she had something to hide, or was it simply because she didn’t want to create waves in the community where Mitzy appeared to run the show?

  When your every move depended on how many likes and subscribers you earned, I’d imagine it made you quite cautious. When they involved the ultra-popular, very cunning Mitzy, who was at the top of her game and very influential in the
community, you didn’t want that kind of rage to turn on you.

  Margot made a face and rolled her eyes. “If it was a bad batch, everyone else who got the same batch would have gotten the same eye infection, wouldn’t they, Sally? But suspiciously, she was the only one who had a bad reaction. She sabotaged you. She played it to her subs like she hated hurtin’ Sally’s palette, but I know the truth. She was underhanded and sneaky, and I don’t know how she did it, but she did that to her eye herself. I know she did. I feel it in my gut. And who would know better than me—the person who slaved over a hot makeup palette day and night for just enough to squeeze out a living in Phony-Town LA—what Mitzy was capable of?”

  Sally bit her lip and looked at Julie. Yeah. She was definitely afraid this would get out in the makeup community. So Mitzy was so powerful, she had Sally afraid to challenge her? And her next response cinched the deal for me.

  “But you were never able to prove it, is the point, Margot. I can’t have you going around—”

  “What?” Margot yelled with a sharp clap of her hands, her face red. “Tellin’ the truth? You’d rather keep your membership with the fabulous people at the expense of your own reputation? I can’t anymore with you bunch of phonies!”

  Sally cringed, but she didn’t say anything else.

  Julie, who’d been very quiet almost the entire time we talked, finally spoke up. “She was really mean to Margot. I can tell you that from experience.”

  “She was also very cruel to you, Julie,” Margot said, her voice softer now.

  “Ye-yeah,” Julie stuttered on a long exhale. “She was pretty mean the whole time we were volunteering. She was really mean to Nikki. Said her makeup looked like a sad clown’s makeup after a hard day at the circus.”

  Yikes. All I kept thinking during this whole truth-letting ceremony was…why? Why would they let someone, anyone, treat them like that?