Frosted Shadow, a Toni Diamond Mystery: Toni Diamond Mysteries (3 page)

“Okay. Thanks for your help,” she said, with all the sweetness in her, while taking a quick visual sweep of the area.

A man in blue overalls knelt on the ground and sliced the carpet around a dark, greasy looking blood stain where the body had lain, and the fingerprint guy was spraying something on the walls. Otherwise, she was surprised how lacking in drama the scene looked. No broken glasses or overturned chairs. Apart from the blood stain and the crime tape, the room looked ready to hold a meeting.

In the end it didn’t take enormous powers of sleuthing to find Detective Henderson. He’d set up in Longhorn B, where he was interviewing a cleaner. Henderson was in his fifties with iron gray hair cut like a marine’s. A long, gaunt ribbon of a man, he had the lean and hungry look of someone who either runs marathons or has an eating disorder.

He scribbled in a notebook. She didn’t want to interrupt so she poured herself a glass of water from the ice water station in the corridor and stood sipping it. Not even in times of extreme stress did she neglect her eight glasses of water a day. She waited politely outside the open door, though the cleaner spoke clearly enough that she could hear every word.

The woman was Hispanic and her face was flushed either with anger or fear. Or maybe high blood pressure.

“You’re absolutely sure there was no one in the conference room, Longhorn C,” he glanced at his notes, “when you cleaned it at 9:20 p.m. last night?”

“I already told you. There wasn’t anybody.”

“Did you see anyone in the area?”

“No. Nobody.”

“Hear anything?”

She shook her head. “I had the vacuum going.”

“Before you went into the room, where were you?”

“In this room. I do Longhorn A, then B, then C.” Logical. Though Toni bet that if she had to clean hotels, she’d switch the order she cleaned rooms if only to make her routine a bit more interesting.

“And after you finished Longhorn C?”

The woman shrugged. “Then I went on my break. In the staff room downstairs.”

“Did you come back up later?”

“No. I was finished in this part of the hotel. I did the bathrooms on the main floor after my break. Then I went home.”

“Okay. Thank you for your help. If you remember anything, anything at all…”

“I got your card.”

The woman walked off with a heavy tread, like she spent all day on her feet and they were getting tired of it. The detective glanced at his watch and then scribbled some more.

“Excuse me? Detective Henderson?”

He turned to her. His eyes were so undecided between gray and blue that they were virtually colorless. “Yes?”

“My name is Toni Diamond. I’m with Lady Bianca Cosmetics.” She watched what little color was in his eyes leach out as though she not only didn’t deserve his attention, she didn’t deserve full ocular pigmentation.

“What can I do for you, ma’am?” Brisk. No time to waste.

“Detective Marciano asked me to have a look at the cosmetics you found on the…at the scene of the crime.”

The blankness vanished. If anything, he now looked at her with suspicion.

If there was one thing she’d learned in her years of selling it was that with some people less is more in the talking department. Detective Henderson, she’d guess, was of the less is more school. She let him think about her request uninterrupted while he pinned her with that unnerving stare. Then he gave a sharp nod and said, “This way.”

He led her back to Longhorn C and called over one of the technicians and asked for the make up samples. They all wore coverings over their shoes so even Henderson wasn’t going to go into that room without putting on special gear.

The technician was young enough that he still had a little acne on his forehead. “It’s been bagged and tagged.”

She got it. She wasn’t going to open the big baggie thing and apply the eye makeup, even if there hadn’t been a rusty red smudge in one corner of the Lady Bianca sampler pack that she didn’t even want to think about.

He held it at eye level and she squinted at the starter kit. Henderson stood beside her so quiet and still she barely noticed him, but she felt his gaze on her face while she inspected the kit.

“That’s odd,” she said.

“What’s odd?”

She turned sharply to find Detective Marciano at her elbow. She’d been so busy staring at the tiny case, trying to make sense of it that she hadn’t heard him approach. Or maybe creeping was one of his detective talents.

“These samples?”

“Yeah,” he sounded vaguely irritable. “Are they the same colors Jane Doe was wearing?”

“No. They aren’t even this year’s colors.” She turned to him. “We haven’t handed out those samples since last year.”

Detectives Marciano and Henderson seemed a tad underwhelmed at the news that the woman had died with last year’s sampler pack. Of course, to them it wouldn’t mean anything.

“It’s against the rules. Once the colors change the sales rep is required to give out the new sampler packs.”

They both nodded politely. “Thank you for your help, ma’am,” Marciano said. This time he didn’t even add the ‘if you think of anything call us,’ routine. Clearly, they didn’t think she had much of value to offer the investigation.

If Toni were a believer in omens, she’d have to say that seeing a murder victim on the first morning of the annual conference wasn’t a good one. She felt pretty shaken up by the experience, but she didn’t have time to waste in self-indulgent moaning.

She needed to stop whoever was giving out old sampler packs and the most efficient way she could think of to do that was to get hold of Orin Shellenbach and get him to send a reminder email to all the reps. Hopefully, he’d also find a way to reinforce the message to everyone who was right here at the conference.

She headed down the escalator to the main level and noticed that registration was still backed up. Lady Bianca associates had been registering for two days now and still the procession of women waiting to be checked in snaked like the world’s slowest conga line.

No hotel they’d ever found could smoothly register several thousand woman all arriving at once.

The reception desk, even fully staffed, couldn’t hope to get through this many women in less than a couple of hours. But then the consultants were used to that. There they stood in long, curling lines. They’d come from every state in the union as well as Mexico and Canada. Some had flown and others had driven hours, even days to get here. And yet every one of them looked professionally turned out. Their hair was neat, their clothes businesslike. They wore hose and closed toed shoes, various recognition pins and jewelry. And, of course, their makeup was flawless.

Even though they were standing with their luggage and the lineups were barely inching forward, there was more excitement and happiness in this crowd than she’d seen – well, since last year’s conference.

And the noise! The gals gossiped, giggled, traded war stories, introduced each other and inched toward the eight harried desk clerks.

Of course, no cohort of thousands is without its bad apples and as she hit the main level and stepped off the escalator, she saw one particularly moldy Golden Delicious coming toward her. The lobby was so crowded with women waiting to check in that only a narrow corridor was left to pass from one end to the other so it was impossible for her to avoid the only person in Lady Bianca she truly despised.

Nicole Freedman never met a corner she couldn’t cut. If there was something she wanted, she’d lie, cheat and push out a few crocodile tears if necessary. Unfortunately, she and Toni were chief rivals for this year’s top sales division prize. Not for the first time.

Toni donned a smile as fake as the diamonds on her suit buttons and said, “Well, hello, Nicole. You’re looking wonderful.” In fact, she’d gone a shade too dark in the hair dye on her sleek bob. With her pale complexion and the raven’s wing hair she reminded Toni of a much older version of Tiffany and her friends. Mom Goth – yeah, that was a trend that was going to be big.

As usual, Nicole was surrounded by a couple of groupies. Melody Feckler, her confidante, right hand and dog’s body, had taken to dying her hair the same shade as her mentor, Toni noted. It wasn’t much of a surprise since Melody tended to copy everything Nicole did. They wore similar suits, shoes and bags, but it was clear that Nicole spent a lot more money on herself. Melody was like one of those magazine layouts where they show the designer runway model and then recreate the look with cheap imitations from TJ Maxx and Penney’s. Melody had a sweet face and candid blue eyes, but with the black hair she looked like Snow White’s older, overweight cousin.

Stacy Krump was a newer recruit. An intense, quiet woman who looked like the type of girl in high school who cried if she didn’t get an A. From the number of recognition pins on her chest, she was still getting straight A’s.

Nicole registered almost as much phony delight at seeing Toni as she’d been accorded.

“Why, honey, you look better every time I see you. And you are obviously using the new highlighter shades to minimize your nose. Really, in this light, it hardly looks prominent at all.”

Every woman has her vulnerable spot. Her thighs are too big, her breasts too small, her teeth too crooked. Toni’s thing was her nose. She had a big nose. Not Cyrano de Bergerac get-a-nose-job-and-get-on-with-your-life big, but her nose was the dominant feature on Toni’s face.

She’d inherited it from her father and on a six-foot-two rodeo rider it looked fine. On Toni it looked like there’d been a bit of a glitch on the genetic assembly line. Her grandmother, the Pentecostal preacher’s wife, who’d never been known for diplomacy or keeping her thoughts to herself used to say that it was God’s punishment to Toni for being so nosy.

Of course, Toni grew into her nose as she grew older and she’d learned how to play up her good features, her eyes and mouth, so she’d didn’t worry about it much any more, but back in the early days when they’d been friends, she’d foolishly confided in Nicole about her Achilles nose.

There were a lot of rejoinders Toni could make, most of which included the term undead, but she tried to model good behavior, especially in front of sales associates, so she let the jibe pass, merely saying, “the colors this season are fantastic.”

She turned to Melody Feckler. “Can you believe that line up? I hope you checked in early.”

“The great thing is we’ve been here a couple days already. Nicole wanted us to have some team bonding time. How about you?”

“I checked in yesterday morning. I always come early to get myself organized and avoid this,” she gestured to the barely moving crowd. “It will be midnight before everybody gets their room. Are you and Stacy rooming together this year?”

Most attendees bunked in with one to three roommates to share costs. Nicole never shared a room at conference. Toni didn’t either now she could afford to have her privacy, but most of the sales reps shared.

Melody shook her head looking awfully pleased with herself. “My husband works for this hotel chain back home in Oklahoma City. He’s on the front desk.” She leaned closer and whispered, “I’m not supposed to spread it around, but he was able to get me a room here for next to nothing. It means I don’t have to have a roommate.” She leaned even closer. “He might even come visit me. With both of us working so hard we almost never get any time away at a hotel.”

“That’s great,” she said warmly. “Of course I’ll keep it to myself.”

“Looks like we’re in fierce competition again for the top sales division prize,” Nicole reminded her, as though she could possibly have forgotten.

“That’s right. It’s so exciting that the final orders don’t close until the end of the month. Right in the middle of conference. Should be a nail-biter.”

Or, in Nicole’s case, a backstabber.

Chapter Four

Look your best--who said love is blind? —
Mae West

Naturally, the talk at lunch was all about the murder. The poor luncheon speaker was going to have to give the equivalent of the Gettysburg Address to get any attention.

Toni and her top sales people had met in advance so they could sit together and as the doors opened and the women filed in for lunch, they reached a table that still had plenty of seats at the same moment that Melody Feckler cried, “Here’s three together.”

Nicole and Toni gave each other another fake smile and made the most of sharing the table. If you didn’t grab groups of seats when you saw them, another team would scoop them from under you. Rather like musical chairs without the music.

Toni ended up sitting beside Stacy Krump who flanked Nicole’s right while Melody sat to her left. Beside Toni was Ruth Collier, a retired school teacher who ran her skin care classes as though there’d be a test at the end, but had a true gift for sales, and Suzanne Mireille, a half-Cuban half-French-Canadian woman whose café con leche- colored skin was a glowing billboard for Lady Bianca’s Luminescence line. She’d come to Dallas with her pilot husband and was busy raising three boys and a girl while selling makeup on a part time basis. Her native tongue was French but she was equally comfortable in English or Spanish, a definite asset.

Four other women completed the table. Donna Ray Atkins, whose family owned a pig farm in Kansas and three others from her region.

As the scant details of the morning’s death were being chewed over as thoroughly as the salads Toni had seen in the kitchen, Melody Feckler leaned forward and said, “I heard that there was blood everywhere.”

“There would be,” Donna Ray agreed, nodding. She had the breadbasket in her hand and was in the act of choosing between the seeded wholewheat rolls and the small white crusty ones. “It’s the same when we gut the pigs on the farm. We stick ‘em right over a drain and the blood still gets all over us, the walls, the floor…blood everywhere.” She held the basket aloft. “Would anyone like a bread roll?”

No one did, so she put the basket down and proceeded to split and butter the white roll. “A grown woman or man would have about as much blood to spill, I expect. Was an artery cut do you know? ‘Cause that’ll really cause the blood to spurt. I’m not kidding. It’s like you turned on the garden hose and then put your thumb over the end.” She demonstrated and made a noise that Toni assumed was an approximation of the sound of water spraying from a hose. Or blood from an open artery.