What a Nunderful World Page 4

  I took the phone and nodded. “It’s probably not a big deal. But the police are going to want to know why everyone who had an EpiPen was locked into a room in the basement.” I paused for a moment before I asked, “Speaking of, do you have the EpiPen still on your person? Margot said all of the volunteers had pens as a precaution for Mitzy’s peanut allergy.”

  Her hand instantly went to the fanny pack she wore around her small waist and opened the zipper. She rooted around for a minute and pulled out the EpiPen. “Why wouldn’t I have it? I don’t understand what’s happening. What’s going on? Why is there going to be an investigation just because we got locked in a room?”

  It occurred to me then, no one had explained what happened to Mitzy… Oh, gravy. Guilt from my head to my toes washed over me. I’d rushed into questioning her before I’d explained myself and broken the new about Mitzy.

  But I didn’t have to. Nikki slid to the edge of the chair and turned around to face the stage where Mitzy had fallen. It was then she saw the body covered with a sheet, Mitzy’s gorgeous silver shoes poking out from beneath.

  Her hand when to her mouth, and her eyes filled with horror.

  “Is…is that… Oh, my God, is that Mitzy?” she squealed between her fingers.

  Man, I’d really blown this. “I’m sorry, Nikki. It is Mitzy. She had an allergic reaction to something, and no one had an EpiPen—”

  “You!” she yelled at me as she knocked the chair down, backing away from me. “You’re trying to trick me! You were trying to get me to say horrible things about her so you could blame me, weren’t you? I’ve seen it happen over and over, but no way! You’re not going to railroad me, lady!”

  I rapidly shook my head to dissuade her from going down this path. That seemed such an odd rationalization, but then, everyone was sensitive these days. People went the extra mile to read between lines that sometimes weren’t there because social media had turned everything into an outrage.

  “No. No, Nikki. That wasn’t what I was trying to do at all. Please, if you’ll let me explain what I do in conjunction with the Portland PD—”

  “You stay away from me!” she cried, pointing an accusatory finger at me as she looked around the room with wild eyes for somewhere to escape. “I want a lawyer! You leave me alone! You’re not going to trap me into saying something I don’t mean!”

  Nikki took off toward the other end of the hall, leaving me with egg on my face as I picked up the chair that had toppled over in her haste to get away from me.

  Out of nowhere, Higgs was behind me, his strong hands, soothing on my shoulders as he rumbled in my ear, “Can I help?”

  I sagged against him in defeat with a shake of my head as I explained what I’d done. “Basically, I blew it. Now she thinks I consider her a suspect.”

  “Do you?”

  I shrugged my shoulders, letting my chin touch my chest. “I don’t even know if we need to look for suspects yet. I don’t have official word this is a murder. But I’m telling you, it sure feels like one. Anyway, I blew it, and now she’s going to tell her friends not to talk to me, too.”

  He turned me around and dropped a light kiss on my forehead, eyeing me critically. “I doubt you blew it, but how about you tell me what the heck’s going on. I thought this was a makeup convention, but outside it looks more like a One Direction concert. Kids are crying, the parents of the kids look like they’re on their last legs because of all the crying. Cops are everywhere. I barely made it through the crowd, but some of the guys knew who I was, so they let me in. Still, nobody could tell me what’s going on. All I know is it’s very purple and silver in here, and you and Coop are in the middle of it. So what’s going on?”

  As he listened to me tell him what happened to Mitzy, and the ensuing moments after her death, he held my hands, rubbing his thumbs over the backs, and it never failed to make me tingle from head to toe—even in the middle of a crisis.

  He was the kind of strength and stalwart support every girl yearned for in their lives. That he was gorgeous and kind and lived to serve the community made him near perfect.

  “Shoot,” Higgs said when I finished, his eyes full of concern. “Poor Coop. I know how much she was looking forward to tonight. How is she taking this?”

  Sighing, I wrinkled my nose. “You know Coop. Stoic as always, no emotion, but it has to be eating her up inside. She’s been waiting for three months to meet Mitzy, and she never even got anywhere near her.”

  “Though, I see she talked you into being her guinea pig again,” he teased with his handsome grin.

  I gave him a saucy wink, batting my falsies at him. “Was it the eyelashes that look like I could rival the Wright Brothers for first flight or the red lipstick smeared on my teeth?”

  He tilted my chin up and used his thumb to wipe the corner of my mouth, where I’m sure I had some smeared lipstick. “I think you look beautiful. Coop’s really good at this, but then, you’re a great canvass.”

  Smiling at him, I gave his hand a quick squeeze and let him go before I got too lost in the moment, something I found myself doing more and more as of late. I liked Higgs so much. I was incredibly attracted to him, but every time I considered what beginning a relationship with him looked like, I had to think about how it looked to him.

  And I’m thinking it looks pretty bananapants. Who wants a possessed girlfriend?

  No one. That’s who.

  We’ve shared one kiss, and that was sort of in the heat of the moment after the last crime we were neck deep in came to a screeching halt and we were just glad to still be alive. I’ve avoided any intimacy since, but I won’t tell you that hasn’t been hard.

  Because it has. I find Higgs nigh-on irresistible, but Artur, the demon who possess me, has made my life topsy-turvy on occasion, and that’s putting it mildly.

  Higgs had seen me in full-on demon mode. I hated that my secrets were all revealed that way. I hated that I hadn’t told him, and I knew he felt a bit cheated that I hadn’t trusted him enough to tell him.

  But it was a heavy burden to bear.

  Alas, since that night, I’ve tried to keep things as lighthearted as possible due to my current circumstances. I don’t want to find myself in this alone. I’m not sure I’m ready for that kind of rejection. Although, Coop assures me Higgs is crazy about me. She says when he looks at me, his eyes go all dreamy and soft.

  But I think Coop might be watching too many rom-coms. Another of her live-your-best-life passions—she hoped it would help her learn how to laugh because blending in is still as important as ever.

  I affected a southern accent and brushed off his compliment with a joke. “You’re too kind, sir,” I cooed with a giggle.

  Higgs draped his arm around me, his dark hair damp from the rain, curling at the collar of his red and black flannel shirt. “Okay, so whaddya say we go see if we can scare off another perp?”

  I flicked him in the ribs and chuckled. “Nikki’s not a perp. I don’t even know if this is a murder, buddy. I’m presuming far too much at this point.”

  But I think I knew deep in my gut this was a murder. If someone knew Mitzy was so deathly allergic to peanuts, and they’d even had patrons of the tickets to this event agree to a search of their personal belongings as part of the ticket sale and entry to makeup Heaven, and she’d still died because of her peanut allergy?

  That said murder to me. That screamed murder loud and proud.

  Add to that the fact someone had locked anyone with an EpiPen in a room—and Margot carried one with her for just such occasions and it was nowhere to be found? That definitely said murder to me. It was all too much of a coincidence.

  “Ah. But! I think you’re almost hoping some shenanigans are at play here. It’s been a long while since you’ve been eyeball deep in a mystery other than an Agatha Raisin or a Father Brown episode.”

  That was very true. Not since that whole mess with Deacon Delacorte, a.k.a, Emile Franklin, imposter and sadistic killer, but I wasn’t sitting aroun
d every day, hoping someone would die so I could sate my appetite for a mystery. I had a really busy life. Between running the shop and its surge in popularity, researching possessions, my volunteer work, and keeping track of Solomon, my plate was mostly full.

  And I said as much, maybe a little too defensively. “While I do love a good mystery, I don’t want you thinking I’m sitting around just hoping for someone to kick the bucket so I can fumble my way through a murder investigation only to find myself in a precarious position while I’m held at gunpoint.”

  Higgs chuckled and leaned into me, his cologne light and fresh. “Aw, c’mon. You didn’t fumble. I think faltered is a better word. And listen, I’m an ex-cop and I still didn’t figure it out. I mean, I was trained to figure stuff like that out, and I didn’t figure it out.”

  I snorted and grinned. “I like your version of the story better. And all joking aside…I don’t know that there’s any other explanation for what happened to Mitzy. If it’s not murder then it’s sure a lot of coincidences rolled into a package that looks very much like murder.”

  Higgs held out his arm and smiled that heart-stopping smile of his. “Then let’s go investigate a maybe-murder, Sister Trixie.”

  Chapter 4

  The next day, I sat at my desk at the shop and yawned as I looked through old tweets from Alma, Margot, Mitzy, Ames, and Octavia, and that was only the beginning of the list of people who weren’t too fond of Mitzy and had been involved in a Twitter war of some kind with her.

  We’d gotten in at three in the morning once all the questioning was over (after Nikki’s outburst, no one would talk to me, as hard as I tried to convince them I had no authority to arrest anyone), and everyone had packed up and gone home. But Coop had refused to leave until she saw Mitzy’s body respectfully taken from the hall and sent off to the coroner’s.

  Poor Coop. She’d been so torn up over Mitzy’s death, there was no way I was going to leave her there alone, but these days, I’m finding I need a solid eight hours of shuteye or I’m a little cranky. I’d offered to give Coop the day off, but she’d shook her head in firm negative fashion.

  She said there was no way she was going to disappoint her clients just because she’d been out until the cows came home. That wasn’t how a responsible working girl behaved. I had to admire her grit because I wished I’d given myself the day off.

  I was having trouble keeping my eyes open as I scrolled timelines and tried to decipher what some of the words they used meant.

  “Aye, what are they sayin’ on the Twitters, Trixie?” Livingston asked from his perch above my desk as he rolled his head, his glassy eyes focused on my laptop. “And what in the Emerald Isle does clapback mean, and why are they doing it on the Twitter?”

  Leaning on the heel of my hand, I shook my head in confusion. “I have no clue, my friend. What I can tell you is, a lot of people hashtag stan Mitzy and far less people hashtag stan Alma with this particular argument they had back in November over a poor review Mitzy gave to yet another makeup guru’s eyeshadow palette. Um, the recipient of the poor review is Mixin’ Vixen, a.k.a Sally Mixon, and her palette called Viva La Vixen. Apparently, Mitzy didn’t like it.” I fought another loud yawn. “What do you suppose stan means, Livingston?”

  He twittered on his perch, his feathers ruffling, and clucked his tongue. “I tell ya, Trixie doll, I don’ understand a ting the kids say these days on the social medias. But I did know a Stan once. Fine fella, he was. Dated my sister—”

  “It means they’re obsessed with a person, Trixie,” Jeff said from his dog bed on the floor beside my desk. I was babysitting today while Higgs took some of the men from the shelter to a transitioning seminar.

  I scrunched up my face in confusion. “Obsessed? As in, these fans with the hashtag ‘stan Mitzy’ are obsessed with her choice to say she didn’t like the palette?”

  What?

  Jeff stretched his paws upward and repositioned himself in his fluffy bed. “Uh, yup. Sort of. It’s kind of like ride or die, but really it’s just slang for someone who’s basically overenthusiastic about a celebrity and everything that celebrity does is golden as far as they’re concerned. Wicked, right?”

  I chewed on the tip of my pen. “It makes no sense to be obsessed and consider that some kind of support, but okay. I’ll take your word for it. So there were several arguments and thousands of tweets from fans who stan—or is it stanned?—Mitzy. Then Mixin’ Vixen got involved and told her fans it was okay if Mitzy didn’t like her palette, and that everyone was entitled to their opinion, even if it was wrong. Which is very adult of her, compared to some of these tweets. But that only made Mitzy’s fans come harder for Mixin’ Vixen.” I paused a moment as my eyes widened. “And holy crow, some of the GIFs attached to the tweets are just dreadful.”

  The Internet was a scary place where you couldn’t see your foe and they could say whatever they wanted without fear of face-to-face confrontation.

  I looked up the word stan and, according to Google, it was a combination of stalker and fan, and Jeff was right. It did mean someone who was overly obsessed with a celebrity.

  Jeff sat up and looked at me, cocking his sweet ears. “Why are you even lookin’ at all that, Trixie? You said no one called that lady’s death a murder yet. Maybe you’re puttin’ the cart before the horse here?” he asked with his light Bostonian accent, which Higgs was still trying to acclimate to.

  We’d left the hall last night defeated, with no answers to any of our questions. For instance, who’d locked Mitzy’s volunteers in what we’d found out was indeed a janitor’s closet? Who’d stolen the EpiPen from Margot’s purse, and where in blue blazes was Mitzy’s purse?

  As we waited to find out whether Tansy and the DA were going to call this a murder, I’d decided to do a little digging once I’d had some sleep. Now, here I was, three hours later and a million tweets deep, trying to decide if I was wasting my time.

  Maybe Tansy and the coroner would have a reasonable explanation for the missing EpiPens. Though, I will tell you, I don’t for one second think it was anything other than an allergic reaction to peanuts. The question remained, was it an accidental reaction or a premeditated one?

  Livingston hooted. “I think our Trixie has one of those feelin’s, don’t ya, darlin’?”

  I shrugged my shoulders and looked out into the lobby of Inkerbelle’s, where I saw Knuckles and Goose enter the etched-glass door, ready for their shifts. “Well, like I said several times last night, it seems very suspicious to me that everyone knew Mitzy had a peanut allergy so severe it could kill her but when she went into anaphylactic shock, anyone with an EpiPen was either locked up in the basement or couldn’t find their purse.”

  Knuckles rapped on the door with his wide fist and poked his head in. “Trixie girl, you and Coopie okay? I heard you had a pretty rough night.”

  I smiled warmly at him and waved him in. Knuckles was probably one of my most favorite people on the planet, and had been since we’d met. “I’m just tired. Who knew makeup could be so cutthroat, huh?”

  He stepped inside my office, bobbing his head, covered in his signature red do-rag and grinned. “Poor Coop. She sure loved that lady, Trixie. Looked up to her. She was all broken up this morning when we had breakfast together.”

  Knuckles warmed my heart to its very depths. I’d overslept and he’d picked up my slack. “You took her to breakfast?”

  He grinned. “I sure did. When I woke up, she was lookin’ mighty blue—I mean, blue for even Coop, and then she told me what happened. So I brought her to Betty’s and we shared the Farmer’s Special with extra bacon, because you know how much living her best life includes bacon. Then she had a big glass of orange juice. Thought that might cheer her up. Though, never can tell how she’s feelin’. You know our Coop and that beautiful blank face, but she seemed to feel a little better when I dropped her off here before goin’ to the bank.”

  Knuckles paused and rustled around in his vest. “Speaking of the bank,
I have a little something for you.” He pulled some papers out and put them on my desk. “The papers for the guesthouse, madam,” he said with a flourish.

  I tingled from head to toe with excitement. The shop had been doing really well. Well enough, thanks to Coop, Goose, and Knuckles, that we’d been able to save a good deal of money, and we’d decided to make an offer on his guesthouse and call it our permanent residence. Coop and I had talked about it for a couple of months, and we’d done some serious market research and came up with what we thought was a fair offer.

  Before we’d come along, desperate and broke, Knuckles had considered selling the guesthouse anyway, which was what had made us decide to make him an offer we hoped he couldn’t refuse.

  I hopped up from my desk and gave him a kiss on his round cheek and a squeeze around his neck. “I guess this makes it official. We’re going to be your pesky neighbors for eternity,” I said on a chuckle.

  Knuckles laughed and ran the tip of his index finger down the length of my nose. “I told you, you could stay forever without buying me out. You know I love havin’ you and my girl Coop where I can keep an eye on you. Specially the way you two keep finding trouble.”

  I flapped my hands at him. “I know, but listen, things are going really well for us here at Inkerbelle’s, and that’s in large part due to you and your generosity and the clients you’ve brought in. Seeing as you kept refusing to take rent, we had to do something to cement our place in your life. We figured buying the guesthouse was the surest way to keep you from getting rid of us. I don’t know about Coop, but I don’t want to ever have to give up Thursday-night stroganoff.”

  He popped his lips and scowled playfully. “Get rid of you? Never. But if it makes you feel like you have those roots you’re always talkin’ about, I’m happy to give you the garden to plant ’em. Now, all you two have to do is sign the title and pay the bank every month and it’s all yours for as long as you want it.”