What a Nunderful World Read online

  I bit my lower lip, but couldn’t help but wonder out loud, “Do you think Alma Zon represents the kind of friends Mitzy had? Because Jim Dandy, she didn’t seem very friendly when she was talking about Margot’s responsibilities. In fact, she seemed quite vexed.”

  Coop sighed, tucking her hair behind her ear. “If you listen to the drama vloggers, Margot and Alma are good friends. It would stand to reason she’d defend her friend if Mitzy’s as much of a tyrant as Alma made her sound. Though, Alma and Mitzy did have beef that was sus, but it was a long time ago.”

  My brow furrowed in confusion. “Beef that was sus?”

  Honest, sometimes I don’t know who my Coop is evolving into. As much as I loved her new zest for living her best life, I think I’m going to need a key to reference for all the new slang she’s learned.

  “It means a gripe between two people and it was suspect,” Oz said, tipping his hat at us both with a quick smile. “Sorry to eavesdrop, but I know a little slang because of my niece.”

  Aha. Interesting. I’d ask Coop later if she knew what the beef was between Alma and Mitzy, but in the meantime, Margot needed my help and that’s what I did best.

  I patted Oz on the arm. “Thanks for the slang interpretation, Oz. Good to see you again, and thanks for those donations to the shelter. Solomon loves that sweater you donated. Anyway, sorry we’re seeing each other under these circumstances.” Then I turned to Tansy, a question in my eyes. “May I?” I asked and hitched my jaw at Margot.

  She bounced her bleached-blonde head, her lips a thin line. “Please do, love. While you do that, I’m going to help canvas. It’s a bloody madhouse in here, innit? So many kiddies.” She scanned the crowd, now separated by the rest of her officers into manageable groups.

  “It sure is. Anyway, good luck. I’ll touch base with you once I have a little more information, okay?”

  Tansy patted me on the shoulder and nodded. “Good deal. See you in a bit.”

  Margot, who was sitting on the floor still in a shell-shocked heap, cried in earnest, fat tears coursing down her blushed cheeks. I knelt beside her and offered her my hand as Coop stooped on her haunches to gather the belongings of her purse someone had evidently located for her.

  “Margot? Please let me help you up. Maybe we’ll get a bit of water and talk?”

  But Margot shook her head vehemently, throwing her hands up in defeat and sobbing with a squeaky voice, “Where did all the EpiPens go? I always have two in my purse for her, and she always carries one, as well. Where is her purse? Oh, my God, I can’t believe this is happening! I failed her! And where is everyone? Where’s my team? How could we have let this happen?”

  Her team? I guess in light of the fact that Mitzy was a much bigger deal than I’d originally anticipated, a team made sense, but I’d have to look deeper into what that meant that later. For now, I needed to get Margot together so we could talk.

  I ignored her comments and cocked my head, offering my hand to her once again. “Please, Margot. My name is Trixie Lavender, and if you’ll let me, I’d like to help. Now, let’s get up off the floor and move somewhere more comfortable, okay?”

  This time, Margot actually looked at me, her blue eye finally focusing in on my face. She took my hand and allowed me to pull her up as the crowd around us diminished and the officers turned chaos into a modicum of peace. While they busied themselves blocking off the scene, I pulled Margot toward a chair at one of the high-topped tables.

  She slumped into the chair, her pretty blue eyes red-rimmed, but her makeup remarkably smudge-free. Tucking her hair behind her ears, she took a water bottle Coop had somehow managed to get her hands on and some tissues I’d dug out of my purse.

  “Margot?” I asked softly. “Can you tell me what happened?”

  She took in a shuddering breath and dabbed at her eyes. “I don’t know. I swear, I don’t know. She took a quick break and then she came back. One minute she was fine and shakin’ hands, and the next she was falling off the stage. I don’t know how it happened!”

  “Do you know where she went on the break?”

  “It couldn’t have been far,” she whispered. “She was only gone for maybe five minutes. I didn’t see it because I was tweetin’ the live event. ”

  “Is it true she has a peanut allergy?” I asked gently.

  Margot instantly began to cry again, her shoulders shaking. “Yes,” she breathed out. “It’s very severe. I mean, she almost died once before from nothing more than an open package next to her. But we had the EpiPens. We always have the EpiPens. I always have at least two EpiPens. I don’t understand how this happened!”

  Her rising hysteria made me pause and reach across the table to clutch her hand again, hoping to ground her. I wanted to ask why the people attending hadn’t been warned if her allergy was so severe that death was a possibility, but I didn’t have to.

  “That’s why we had the wands and security check, for pity’s sake! It wasn’t just for guns and harmful paraphernalia. Everyone knows about Mitzy’s allergies—at least, you’d think they do. She talked about it in some of her videos. We made it clear as day on the website when we decided to do the meet and greets that every ticket holder was subject to a search because of her allergy. I checked and double-checked…and now, look! Look what’s happened!”

  Well, that explained the security measures I’d thought were pretty extreme for a gathering of makeup lovers. The security had, indeed, looked through my purse. The extra insurance all made sense now. Though, Coop had never said a word to me about it. It’s a good thing I’m more of an M&M’s girl. I always carried some in my purse.

  Still, the missing EpiPens didn’t make any sense at all.

  “And how many EpiPens do you normally keep with you, Margot? Just the one in your purse?”

  Margot shook her auburn head, her eyes brimming with more tears. “No! I usually have two with me and Mitzy always has one in her purse, as well. But the team carries them for just such emergencies, too. Where the blazes are they?” she fumed.

  There was that term again. The team. “Who’s part of this team, Margot?”

  She gulped in some air and swallowed hard. “Mitzy has a team of people who do what amounts to gofer’s responsibilities and they’re all volunteers.”

  Margot said the word with just a hint of a sneer to it, leading me to believe either she didn’t like the volunteers, or Mitzy abused the privilege of having the volunteers.

  “So unpaid help. An intern sort of thing?” I asked, wondering if I’d have worked for Britney Spears for free.

  Margot appeared to think about that for a moment, and then she squared her shoulders and said, “Yes. They’re unpaid. Though I don’t know if I’d use the term intern. They’re super fans, mostly. People willing to do almost anything to be even a little part of Mitzy’s world. Anyway, while I deal with venue and the management of the venue, caterers, the fans, the security, etcetera, the team, consistin’ of four people, do the tasks I can’t. I guess you could say they’re the assistants to the assistant. And they all have EpiPens because they know how dangerous something like this can be for Mitzy and how easily an accident can happen. We handed them out to each of them before the dang event.”

  I scanned the room as though I’d actually know who this team of gofers were if they bit me on the nose. I also questioned the smarts behind giving a bunch of people who weren’t paid and really only wanted to orbit Mitzy because they were fans, the huge responsibility of carrying EpiPens when her allergy was life or death.

  Coop saw me searching the room and tapped me on the shoulder. “Mitzy’s team all wear silver ballcaps that read, ‘Team Glitzy Mitzy.’ I saw them earlier, but I haven’t seen them since she took the stage.”

  How strange they’d all disappeared when Mitzy needed them most during her speech, but I didn’t want to focus on that detail right now. There was no reason to jump to the conclusion this was a malicious act, and Margot already looked as though she had the weight of the w
orld on her shoulders. I didn’t want to add more.

  But her eyes hardened and her resolve strengthened. “We need to find them. We need to find them now, and when I get my hands on them…oooh!” Margot cried through clenched teeth, her accent becoming quite pronounced. “They’re in for a load a grief from me!”

  Huh. If the rumor about Mitzy was true, and she was the tyrant Alma Zon made her out to be, and these “volunteers” were unpaid, perhaps they’d decided rubbing shoulders with the famous makeup diva wasn’t worth the hassle if they had to go through Margot. Or maybe their idol had fallen and, as a result, they’d fallen out of love.

  But all four at once? That definitely felt suspicious…

  Hush, Trixie Lavender. Stop borrowing trouble.

  Gripping Margot’s hand, I squeezed it again to remind her I was still here and she had to stay on task if we hoped to understand what had happened. “Coop? Maybe we could set about trying to find some of the team and check on how they are? Because I’m seeing no one with silver ball caps.”

  A loud banging from somewhere in the back of the hall made us all pause and turn. Then someone—correction, several someone’s—began to scream for help.

  I looked at Coop and she looked at me as the police began to run toward the stairwell on the opposite end of where we sat. They descended the short staircase and, as we followed closely behind, I noted a heavy door, rusty and gray.

  Behind it, there was a ruckus before the screaming and banging subsided a bit and an officer yelled, “This is The Portland PD! Move away from the door!”

  Gun drawn, a burly officer gave the door a hard kick with his foot, to no avail, but it wasn’t long before they brought in a battering ram and began to thrash it into the door.

  When it finally crumbled under the pressure from two policemen and the door flew open, four startled, pale people—wearing “Team Glitzy Mitzy” ball caps—stared back at four officers, their guns drawn and pointed at them.

  Well, The Case of the Missing Interns was solved.

  But what in all of Heaven were they doing locked in a room?

  Plot twist.

  Chapter 3

  “Put your hands where we can see them!” the big officer bellowed roughly, his stance wide, his eyes narrowed.

  And that was when two of Mitzy’s volunteers began to openly weep, throwing their hands in the air, their arms trembling. “Pl-please, please don’t shoot!”

  Margot was the first to react. She nearly toppled over the officers to get to the volunteers, but it wasn’t to see about their safety and inquire about their well-being.

  Nay, she had daggers in her eyes as she literally pushed one officer out of the way—while he held a loaded gun, mind you.

  “Where have y’all been?” she rasped, that hysterical tone in her voice returning. “Do you have any idea what’s happened? I’m going to kill all y’all!”

  I winced. Oh, dear. Maybe it wasn’t such a great idea to mention murder when we might be in the middle of investigating one. I was about to redirect her back to the table, but Alma beat me to the task.

  She latched onto Margot’s arm and swung her around, gripping her by the shoulders, her heavily made-up eyes intense as they honed in on the assistant’s face.

  “Mama, get a hold of yourself! You can’t go knockin’ officers of the law out of the way or you’re gonna end up in the clink. You hear me, Margot Winters? Get it together right now!”

  I was surprised to hear a small hint of a southern accent from Alma now, too, that wasn’t there when she’d been talking to Octavia about Ames. Maybe she hid it? But why?

  It was as though Margot suddenly realized the volunteers had been in jeopardy, and giving them what for because they’d disappeared wasn’t going to earn her brownie points with anyone, because the person who’d clock those points on her scorecard was dead.

  Instantly, she crumpled against Alma and began to cry all over the drag queen’s rhinestoned shoulder. I wasn’t sure if it was shame for how she’d treated these traumatized kids in front of the crowd that made her so openly begin to weep, or the horrific events of the evening had begun to resurface.

  Recognizing us, the police let us help the kids up the stairs while the paramedics brought blankets and bottles of water.

  Most of them didn’t look much more than twenty at best, and they were all chalk white and shivering.

  I began wrapping blankets around shoulders and leading them to chairs where they could sit and take a moment before the police began to question them, while a few questions of my own bounced around in my brain.

  One young woman shivered so violently, I thought surely I’d heard her bones rattle. She was tiny and blonde and her eyes, now rather raccoon-ish from crying and her mascara running down her cheeks, were the size of quarters. She was whom I zeroed in on because she looked like she needed the most attention.

  With a sympathetic glance, I tucked the blanket tighter around her neck, bending at the waist so she could see me. “My name is Trixie Lavender and I’m here to help. Can I get you anything else? Tell me what I can do for you and I’m on it.”

  She looked at me as she pushed the ball cap from her head and let it fall to the floor, her face stricken as tears began to fall. “It was so dark in there and no one could hear us. No one! We yelled and yelled, but…” Her words tapered as she stared off into space.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Nikki. Nikki Peters,” she replied, her voice scratchy and hoarse, likely from screaming for help.

  Now we were getting somewhere. “Can I call someone for you, Nikki?”

  But she shook her mussed head and gave me a dejected look. “No…no thank you. I have my phone in my back pocket.” Then her eyes grew intense and she gripped my wrist. “But we couldn’t…we couldn’t get any…” She hiccupped and gulped back another sob. “We couldn’t get any bars to call for hel-help. We were in too…too deep.”

  I didn’t understand what she meant by in too deep. They were just beyond the door when the police broke it down. Maybe all the raucous and loud music had prevented us from hearing their cries for help?

  “I don’t understand, Nikki. You were only a room a way. What do you mean you were in too deep?”

  She took a swig of water and used the scratchy blanket to wipe under her eyes, smearing her eyeliner. “No, that wasn’t the only room down there. We were locked into another room. There’s a big tunnel that leads to a room. A dark, cold, ugly room!” she said, her voice gaining momentum as her fingers twisted together and she shivered again.

  “A tunnel?”

  Her breathing shuddered again before she gathered herself. “I think it’s a janitor’s closet. We were trapped in there, Miss Lavender. Someone locked us in,” Nikki hissed. “We couldn’t see two inches in front of us it was so dark, but Mickey, one of the other volunteers, managed to pry the door open after we felt around for anything that would help get us out of there. Julie remembered she’d seen some janitorial stuff just before someone turned the lights off and slammed the door. She felt around in the dark and found a hammer and Mickey used the claw end of it to pry the door open part of the way and then we knocked it down.”

  Huh. The more I heard, the more I felt this was certainly looking like murder. Margot hadn’t been unable to locate a single, EpiPen, and all the volunteers ended up locked in a sub-basement room. Volunteers who all had EpiPens…

  “Someone locked you in? Are you sure?”

  Nikki bobbed her head, her beautiful blue eyes going wide, making her false eyelashes touch her eyebrows. “I’m positive. You can ask any one of us. We all were in the room and the lights went off and the door suddenly slammed shut. Scared the life out of all of us. But I know what I heard—what we all heard. We heard whoever slammed the door turn the lock.”

  I blinked. A lock on the outside of the door? Maybe it was a closet they kept valuables in? If it was the janitor’s closet, maybe the janitor locked up their supplies.

  Reaching forw
ard, I took her hand. “That must have been so frightening, Nikki. I’m sorry you all went through that. Are you sure you didn’t see who slammed the door?”

  “Nuh-uh.”

  “But why were you all in there together? Weren’t you supposed to be doing things out here with all the guests? That’s what Margot told us you were all volunteering to do…”

  Nikki slid to the edge of her seat and gripped my forearm again, her tone heated. “Yes. That’s what we were supposed to be doing. I wish I’d never signed on to, believe you me! Margot is horrible, and so is Mitzy! I don’t know what I was thinking, signing up to be abused and yelled at for hours on end. I didn’t learn anything useful, that’s for sure. Unless you count all the new curse words I’ve heard. And all for what? Some stupid eyeshadow and primer I still haven’t seen? Oh, it’s been awful!”

  Ah. Still more to unpack. The horrible M twins had some explaining to do, I suppose, but I’d table that as well for the moment.

  “But why were you all in there at once, Nikki? Can you explain how you ended up in the room together?”

  Nikki huffed in disgust. “Mitzy! She sent us a text and told us our swag for helping her as part of the Glitzy team was in there. She said we should grab it before everyone was let inside the venue. So, because we were all feeling pretty let down by this whole experience, we went to see if it might be something extra special. I know it sounds ungrateful, but these last four days we’ve spent helping her prepare for this have been terrible, and I know everyone else will tell you the same,” she said defensively.

  “You don’t have to defend how you feel, Nikki,” I soothed. “Now, can you show me the text she sent, please? We need to make sure we share this with the detectives. It could be important to the investigation.”

  Nikki paled, biting her lower lip as she dug her phone out and typed in the passcode, scrolling her texts. She handed it to me, her eyes full of fear. “Investigation?”