What a Nunderful World Read online

  “And if we ever do something crazy like decide to sell, and you approve of the buyers, we give you a percentage of the profit.”

  He grumbled, making a growly noise in his throat. “You know I didn’t want to do that, young lady.”

  That was true. He hadn’t wanted to do that, but we owed him for all the free rent he’d given us since we’d came to Cobbler Cove. It was the very least we could do.

  “Ah. But if not for you, we’d have had to live under the Hawthorne Bridge. So I won’t hear any more about it, mister.”

  As I looked at the papers, pride surged through me. We’d done it. We’d found a place to call home, and we could afford to take out a loan and pay a mortgage. Boy, had we come a long way since we’d left the convent. I couldn’t wait to tell Coop. I hope it cheered her up a little.

  “I’ll get Coop’s signature and then get this right back to you. Thanks, Knuckles. You have no idea what this means to two orphans from a convent.”

  He winked at me. “I think I do. Okay, I’m out. I have clients coming in twenty, but tell Coopie-Doop I’m making her my special meatloaf for dinner tonight. That oughta help her get through the day.”

  “She’ll be thrilled. Thanks, Knuckles. I’ll see you later.”

  I waved him off with a warm smile, my heart full…until I looked at my laptop again, and then I sighed as I sat back in my office chair, another tweet catching my eye.

  Boy, their sure wasn’t a lot of love lost between Alma and Mitzy, but it was mostly catty remarks to one another—a lot of back and forth with one word in particular Alma seemed fond of reminding Mitzy belonged to her and her alone.

  “Jeff?”

  “Hmmm?” he hummed sleepily.

  “What in all of creation does GOAT mean?”

  Jeff began to laugh so hard, he fell out of his comfy orthopedic bed.

  Two hours later, I was still pondering some of the new words I’d learned today. Listen, I tweet for the shop all the time, but I don’t spend a lot of time on Twitter or Facebook because it can be a time suck if I’m not careful. However, I can’t say I’ve ever really paid attention to some of the slang so frequently used in the tweets I was reading from Mitzy and the others.

  If any of you are still wondering what GOAT means in reference to a person, it’s an acronym for “greatest of all time,” meaning Alma was one of the OGs (original gangsters) of the online makeup world and her tweets to Mitzy were meant to remind her of her place.

  Mitzy, in her typical fashion, told Alma to shut it in an epic clapback (which is a sharp return retort), where she reminded Alma the coins she was making solidified how little it meant to be a GOAT. Yep. That’s exactly how she’d said it. Coins. Of which, Mitzy had plenty.

  Mitzy had shot to fame rather meteorically, according to her Wiki page, and was now a multimillion-dollar entity. All this after doing only a couple of videos with Alma. Alma apparently felt as though she’d given Mitzy the wide exposure she needed to get where she was in the industry. She’d even called her nemesis a coattail rider.

  And so it went. They’d had tons of little spats with each other as far back as two years—which was all I could bear reading before I needed a break.

  Standing up and stretching, I rubbed my eyes and decided to check and see if anyone needed lunch. I’d been so ridiculously immersed in online battles, I’d forgotten we still didn’t even know if Mitzy’s death needed investigating.

  Coop was in the back of the shop in our break room, where we had a fridge and even a small stove, flipping through some pages of a magazine while she ate her lunch of egg salad and carrot sticks.

  She was so forlorn, sitting at our large walnut-stained table, the colorful walls of royal blue and light gray even looked depressed around her. I hated this for her. I hated that someone she’d developed such a connection with was gone, and for the first time, she was dealing with a loss.

  My intent was to gauge her temperature and see if she was feeling any better about last night before I asked her what she knew about the disagreements between all these makeup gurus, but she sure didn’t look like she felt any better.

  “Hey, Coop,” I said, sitting next to her. “How are you feeling today?”

  Her eyes met mine, sans makeup today, which was definitely strange in light of the fact that, since she’d found makeup, she’d worn it every day.

  “I think I feel melancholy. Yes. That’s the correct word.”

  I reached out and grabbed her hand. “Is that the word you found in the dictionary to use as your word of the day?”

  Her lips thinned, her eyes downcast. “It is, and it describes precisely how I’m feeling. I’m quite melancholy over Mitzy’s death. I can’t believe she’s gone. It’s so unfair, Trixie.”

  My nod was solemn. “It is, Coopie. She was only twenty-two.”

  Pushing her egg salad out of the way, she set the magazine down. “I don’t understand…why her?”

  Ah. The age-old question. Why? Why would whoever was running the universe take a young woman, full of life and with so much left to give? If Coop was going to experience her best life, she had to understand that life also had its disappointments, its heartaches, and a bunch of unanswered questions. I hoped I was able to console her through it as she mourned.

  I squeezed her hand before I let go with a wistful sigh. “You know what, Coop? I don’t know. I don’t know why Mitzy. I don’t know anything. I wish I did. I’d give you the answer if I had one. I promise, but I don’t. I’d give you the religious answer if I thought it would make things better, but I’m not sure I can share that with you—what I was taught, anyway—and not still have the same questions you have.

  “I can only tell you that this is what life is all about, and it’s why we have to appreciate the people around us and tell them how much they mean to us every day. Because contrary to a demon’s life, human lives are short. All we can do, as far as I can see anyway, is be the best people we can be. Be kind, be generous, be honest.”

  Coop did something then, something I think I’ll probably always remember because I knew it meant something. I knew she didn’t understand these new feelings coursing through her veins, but I also knew that when she reached out, when she expressed an emotion, it came from her core—from her soul.

  Coop leaned forward and slung her arm around my neck, pulling me close to rest her forehead on my shoulder. “I love you, Trixie Lavender.”

  My throat began to close up, threatening to choke my words, but I managed to compose myself enough to say, “I love you, too, Coop. I’m sorry you’re so sad.”

  “This is the part where I’m supposed to cry, isn’t it?” she mumbled against my shirt in a tone that came off very close to miserable.

  I giggled and set her away from me, giving her a sympathetic smile. “Crying doesn’t necessarily go hand in hand with sadness, Coop. Just because you can’t cry, doesn’t make your feelings any less valid.”

  She stared at me, her green gaze intense and though still oddly blank as ever. “Krystle Carrington always cries when she’s sad. But I don’t understand how to make water fall from my eyes, Trixie. Why can’t I do that? I’ve read crying makes you feel better, that it helps ease the pain. Maybe I’ll never be able to ease the pain I feel right here in my belly.” She put a hand on her stomach to show me where it hurt.

  I hated that she hurt this way. “Aw, Coop. I don’t know if that will ever happen, but it’s not as though you’re some heartless lug. You’re not laughing about Mitzy’s death either. So you can’t cry tears—”

  “Fair maiden! Fair maiden, wherefore art thou? I need you!” Solomon yelled from the front of the store as he raced toward us, his voice full of the anxious panic I’d become so familiar with, his feet clomping against the concrete floor.

  That he was addressing me with his infamous medieval speak meant he was upset and fearful. It also meant I should respond in kind.

  The chair scraped as I pushed it out, giving Coop one last squeeze of her han
d before I called, “My liege, I’m in the break room. Have you come for sustenance? I have a delightful bowl of split pea soup sire Knuckles made last eve.”

  I tried to get Solomon to come in every day for a warm meal, especially when it was cold and rainy, but it wasn’t always easy. He distracted so easily and if something caught his eye, he was sure to take off and forget to eat.

  Solomon skidded to a halt, his Viking hat teetering precariously on his head. Though, I was pleased to note, he smelled of soap and deodorant. Some of what we’d been trying to teach him about good hygiene was sinking in.

  His hand flapped in the air as he clutched his new tote bag around his neck. We’d managed to wrestle his old bag from him—it was so torn he was losing things and accusing some of the other men at the shelter of stealing from him.

  Also, with this new bag, we could spot him from a mile away which was helpful when you were trying to keep track of a skittish Solomon.

  “Fair maiden! I have made a discovery. An important discovery upon my dumpster quest today!” he yelped in my face.

  I wrinkled my nose and frowned in disapproval. While we had been successful in getting Solomon to shower each day, we hadn’t been so successful at getting him to quit dumpster diving.

  My stomach twisted into a knot. “Oh, Solomon. What have we told you about that? The dumpsters are full of germs. I don’t want you getting sick again. Do you remember how awful that was, and your stay in the hospital? You hated that.”

  His hand flapped harder, a sure sign he was agitated. “Forget that, fair maiden. Look what mine eyes have feasted upon!”

  His sweet face, lined with his years of living on the streets, turned to mine as he used his other hand to slap the tote around his neck in rapid fashion.

  I put my hands behind my back so he knew I wasn’t going to touch him unless he wanted me to, and I tried to look in the bag. “Is it in the tote, Solomon?”

  “’Tis, fair maiden!” he said excitedly, his eyes beaming.

  “May I be so forward, my liege?” I asked tentatively.

  But Solomon yanked the tote from around his neck and pointed inside.

  As I looked at the interior of his tote, I saw many things I was quite hesitant to touch, but I didn’t understand what he wanted me to see until he suddenly reached a hand in and pulled out something purple and square, flashing it in front of my eyes.

  Coop gasped. “I’ve seen that before,” she said as she jumped up and came closer to inspect the object, holding her hand out to Solomon. “May I see that, Solomon?”

  Coop was always so gentle with him, it made my heart burst with pride. She’d taken special care to understand each of the quirks the people she dealt with had in her service to the community. She really studied their habits, likes and dislikes, and set about making them feel comfortable.

  Solomon looked at me with wild eyes for only a moment before he handed it to Coop and, for the first time, I realized it was a purse.

  Coop popped it open, and her eyes went wide. “I knew it,” she said as she held it away from her so I could see.

  Oh, gravy.

  Running my hand through my hair, I blew out a long breath. A call to Tansy was unquestionably in order.

  Because the purple purse was undoubtedly Glitzy Mitzy’s missing purse.

  Chapter 5

  I looked to Solomon, wondering how he knew the purse was important. “What made you decide to bring this to me, sire?”

  He shrank back against the wall, his eyes darting to the floor. “I knew it belonged to that fancy purple lady. I saw her with it when she went inside the hall.”

  Thank goodness we were back to talking like we lived in the twenty-first century. I cocked my head in his direction. “You were at Cobbler Cove Hall last night, Solomon?”

  He bobbed his head, putting a hand to his tattered Viking helmet to hold it steady. “Yep, I sure was. I heard Higgs say you were going to be there. I needed to talk to you, so I walked over there. But it was too crowded. So many people. Too many people. Too-too many.” Then he visibly shuddered.

  I wanted to focus on Mitzy’s purse, but the idea that Solomon had sought me out last night, certainly a rarity unless he was coming into the shop for food, was a sign of trust. Hard won, but still there, regardless.

  My heart glowed when I asked, “Did you need me for something last night, Solomon?”

  He began to back away in that hesitant two-step he did when he didn’t want to tell me something he considered a secret. “No-no-no. It’s okay. I forget what it was anyway, but I did see that lady, Trixie. I did. She was all dressed up and sparkly when she went into the hall and she had that purse. When I saw it in the dumpster, I was gonna give it back, but then I heard she died, and I knew Coop liked her. I thought she’d be sad, so I was gonna to give it to her as a gift to cheer her up.”

  His hand began to flap harder, his rough-hewn face going a bit red. He liked Coop. That he’d gone out of his way to make her feel better was genuine and sweet, and it surely meant he was becoming attached to us and—not to be ignored—he was displaying empathy.

  Coop looked directly at Solomon, something he was learning to accept as part of social interaction without cringing openly. “That was so very kind, Solomon. Thank you.”

  “What dumpster did you find it in, Solomon?” I asked as Coop examined it with half an eye. There was no doubt it was Mitzy’s. It had her initials on the front in silver rhinestones.

  “You won’t tell anyone where it is, will ya?” he asked, his lined face screwing up with worry. “It’s got a lot of really good stuff there. I don’t want to share it, Trixie. I won’t!”

  “Solomon,” Coop soothed, yet her tone was commanding. “You don’t believe Trixie would ever tell anyone something you asked her to keep confidential, do you? I know you know better. Please tell us where you found the purse.”

  He instantly relaxed as he realized Coop spoke the truth, his posture slumping in relief. “By the ice cream shop. Wasn’t hardly anyone there, though. It’s too cold for ice cream. Cold-cold-cold!”

  “On Monroe?” I asked. That was two blocks away from Cobbler Hall.

  Someone definitely didn’t want the purse to be found.

  “Yup-yup-yup! I have to go, Trixie. I have to go before somebody else finds it. It has tons of goodies I can add to my shopping cart!” He tightened his grip on his tote as he backed farther away to make his escape.

  I gave him a pointed look. I didn’t want to upset him, but I also didn’t want him to get sick again. “Solomon, I don’t like that you’re rummaging through the dumpsters and you know it, but if you must, please wear the sterile gloves we gave you, throw them out when you’re done, and take a shower afterward. Don’t touch anything until you at least wash your hands.”

  He saluted me, clicking the heels of his feet together. “Aye-aye, Captain!”

  “And don’t forget we have a doctor’s appointment in two weeks!” I called after him with a wag of my finger as he made a hasty escape.

  Sighing at how hard it was to keep track of Solomon, I watched as Coop pulled her phone from her back pocket, her intent clear. She was going to take pictures of the purse’s contents so we’d have them when Tansy came to collect evidence.

  “Wait! Get some gloves, Coop. Don’t disturb anything without them.”

  She handed me her phone and set the purse on the break room table. Grabbing gloves from a nearby cabinet drawer, she slipped them on her slender hands.

  As we peered inside, we were very careful not to disturb much. I used the handle of a spoon to root around, pushing a lipstick out of the way to take a picture.

  A thought struck me then. “Do you think the lipstick had peanut dust on it? Certainly that would be problematic, but she probably had her lipstick on long before she ever came to the stage, right? And even if she applied it right before going onstage, from what I’ve read about a peanut allergy that deadly, the reaction is almost instantaneous. She would have fallen from the stage
almost from the second she walked onto it.”

  Suggesting to me that it happened while she was onstage. But how?

  “But she did take a break, if you’ll recall. It was approximately five minutes long. Then she returned to the stage and almost immediately afterward, she fell off and died,” Coop reminded me.

  “So likely someone backstage touched her? I mean, she didn’t look at all flustered when she came back on, did she? Which could mean she knew her killer. Or did someone touch her when she returned?”

  I needed to find out who could have been backstage during her break. I also needed to see some video footage of those few minutes after she returned.

  Coop paused in thought. “I couldn’t tell, if I’m truthful. One minute she was up and the next she was down. That’s what stands out in my mind, but not so much how she looked.”

  I was thinking out loud at this point, forgetting Coop’s deep attachment to Mitzy. “I’ll tell you this, it sure feels like murder. If she really had an allergic reaction after specific instructions that no one bring peanuts and the EpiPens were missing, it just makes sense.”

  “That’s a good point, Trixie Lavender. But murder is a big word. I’m not sure I’m ready to call it that yet because Mitzy was so nice. I can’t understand why anyone would want to murder her.”

  When you’re at the height of your idolization, you aren’t always willing to admit your idol had faults. Mitzy definitely had her faults, as we all do, and she incited a great deal of the Twitter arguments without help from anyone. That someone might want to murder her for them felt like a stretch, but stranger things had been known to happen.

  Still, Coop wasn’t ready to acknowledge Mitzy’s part in all those clapbacks (see me use hip words) and pot-stirring comments on Instagram and Twitter. She still loved her, and with that love came romanticizing her memory rather than seeing it without her rose-colored glasses.

  I gave her a light nudge. “Hey, how come you didn’t tell me about the peanut allergy thing? What if I’d had peanut butter and jelly for lunch? Or a Snickers bar?”