Polished Off
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Acknowledgements
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
Chapter Thirty-two
Chapter Thirty-three
Chapter Thirty-four
Chapter Thirty-five
Organic Skin-Care Recipes
Praise for
Tressed to Kill
“Fans of the themed cozy will rejoice as new talent Dare debuts her Southern Beauty Shop series … Dare turns this off-the-rack concept into a tightly plotted, suspenseful mystery, and readers will love the pretty, plucky, smart, slightly damaged heroine and the rest of the charming cast.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Humor, heart, and a first-class whodunit … Readers will be anxious to make the return trip to St. Elizabeth, Georgia, to check in on the adventures of the girls from Violetta’s.”
—Casey Daniels, author of Tomb with a View
“Tressed to Kill sparkles … Stylish, swift-paced, and charming.”
—Carolyn Hart, author of Laughed ’Til He Died
“Enticing and eccentric Southern characters combined with suspenseful tension and twists.”
—Linda O. Johnston, author of Feline Fatale
“This first in a new series will certainly charm readers with its close-knit group of beauticians who work together to solve this nicely plotted and well-executed mystery. With its uniquely Southern setting and snappy characters, this mystery is an exceptionally good addition to the cozy genre.”
—Romantic Times (4 ½ stars)
Berkley Prime Crime titles by Lila Dare
TRESSED TO KILL
POLISHED OFF
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
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POLISHED OFF
A Berkley Prime Crime Book / published by arrangement with the author
PRINTING HISTORY
Berkley Prime Crime mass-market edition / February 2011
Copyright © 2011 by Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
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eISBN : 978-1-101-47712-0
BERKLEY® PRIME CRIME
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For Don and Dolores, people of conviction. Rest in peace.
[ACKNOWLEDGMENTS]
If I said “it takes a village” to nurture a book from idea to manuscript to publication, my husband would gag, so I’ll just say thank you to the many, many friends, colleagues, and publishing professionals who improved Polished Off, especially my critique group buddies—Amy, Lin, Marie; my agent, Paige Wheeler; my editor, Michelle Vega and all the wonderful people at Berkley Prime Crime; Greg Gillis and Ellory Gillis-McGinnis, amazing web designers of www.LilaDare.com; and Joan Hankins, my first reader and dearest friend. To my husband and daughters—thanks for the love and support and the grand adventure that is our family life together.
Chapter One
[Tuesday]
THE DAY GOT OFF TO A ROCKY START WHEN A HYSTERICAL bride-to-be pitched a hissy in the salon. We all have bad hair days, but brides tend to look at lank locks, or humidity frizz, or a dye job that’s more flaming idiot than Flaming Auburn, as a catastrophe on par with a mud slide burying their reception site. And this bride, twenty-year-old Penny Williams, had a real problem: she’d tried to iron her hair straight and toasted it.
“Look at it,” she wailed from Mom’s styling chair. She was a tiny thing—barely topping five feet—with long hair and brown cocker spaniel eyes, currently reddened by crying. She grabbed a hank of light brown hair and waved it. “I can’t get married now … I look hideous. Jarrett will want his ring back.” She waved her left hand, sparking a twinkle off the diamond chip embedded in fourteen-carat gold.
“Jarrett loves you, Penny,” Mom said soothingly, patting the distraught girl’s shoulder. The sun streaming through the wooden blinds made a halo of Mom’s short, spiky salt-and-pepper hair and glinted off the lenses of her rimless glasses. Sixty years old, she still had smooth, relatively unlined skin and deep periwinkle eyes. Her figure was comfortably rounded and she favored practical clothes when working: washable cotton-knit or linen pants, sneakers, and blouses with pockets to hold clips and combs.
“But the wedding’s Saturday!” Penny said despairingly. “It’ll never grow out by then. I need to call my mom so she can cancel the flowers. And the photographer. And the—” She dug through her purse and came up with her cell phone.
Mom drew her fingers through Penny’s hair. “Look, hon, it’s just the ends that got a bit … crispy. I can trim those off in a jiff, do a bit of layering around your face, and you’ll be a radiant bride.”
“You think?” She hiccupped at her reflection in the mirror. A half-hopeful look flitted across her face.
“I know,” Mom said firmly. “Let’s get you shampooed.”
While Mom led Penny to the shampoo sink that sits behind a half wall of glass bricks, I called Jarrett Noblitt, the groom-to-be. It struck me that a little reassurance from her beloved might help Penny put the hair fiasco in perspective.
“I’ll be right over,” he said. “Thanks, Grace.”
I hung up smiling. Sometimes being part of a small deep-South community can be a blessing. Having lifelong friends and neighbors who care about you and know your business can be a huge help. Of course, having those same friends and neighbors meddle in your life can also prove frustrating and embarrassing. There’s a thin line, I’d noted years ago, between caring and meddling. Like when your marriage ends up on the rocks and everyone has a theory about what went wrong. Or, worse, they want to fix you up with their friend/cousin/nephew/coworker who will be “just perfect for you.” Since I’d returned to St. Elizabeth from Atlanta after my divorce, I’d fended off offers of blind dates from well-wishers ranging from clients to my landlady.
Heavy footsteps thudding up the stairs and across the veranda cut across my thoughts. Jarrett Noblitt burst through the door into the salon, which is the front half of my mom’s Victorian home. Usually it seemed cozy, with a chintz love seat and chairs in the waiting area, two styling stations, and a shampoo sink separated by a half wall of glass bricks, wooden blinds canted to let the sun stream across heart-of-pine floorboards, and a profusion of violets and ferns. The womanly figurehead from the wreck of the Santa Elisabeta, a galleon that went down off our coast in the 1500s, provided benevolent supervision from a wall behind the counter. But Jarrett made the salon feel cramped. He was six and a half feet of former high school point guard turned welder.
Stella Michaelson, our manicurist, caught my eye and bit back a smile as she readied her polishes for the day. Her white Persian cat, Beauty, sat on a purple satin pillow beneath Stella’s station in the Nail Nook, whisking her tail back and forth.
The groom rushed to Penny, who was now sitting in Mom’s chair with her hair turbaned in a violet towel. He gave her a crushing hug that knocked the towel askew.
“Jarrett!” She got wide-eyed. “What are you doing here?”
“I just stopped by to tell you I love you in sickness and in health, with hair or without hair.”
“That’ll come in handy if I ever go completely bald,” she said with a watery chuckle.
He frowned. “Why’d you go and try to iron out your curls, anyway? I like ’em. They’re part of you.”
“Oh, Jarrett.”
They kissed.
“It’s romantic, the way he came rushing over here.” Stella had come up behind me and whispered in my ear.
I faced her, noting a wistful look in her eyes. Even at forty-one, her pale complexion usually had the sheen of a magnolia blossom, but today she looked pasty. She’d secured her auburn hair at the nape of her neck with two enameled chopsticks, but one lock escaped to straggle across her cheek. Strain was visible in the lines around her eyes.
“It’s sweet. Young love.” I fluttered my lashes in an exaggerated way. I remembered when Hank and I felt that way about each other. High school, maybe. I hoped I wasn’t too old at thirty to fall in love like that again.
Stella’s eyes brimmed with tears and she rushed toward the bathroom.
Before I could decide whether or not to follow her and ask what was wrong, the door opened to frame a woman on the threshold. She paused a moment, like the diva in an opera making sure the audience notices her entrance, before gliding into the salon. With russet hair and a sharp nose in a heart-shaped face, she reminded me of a fox. She was petite, maybe three inches shorter than my own five-six, but she wore heels and a tailored teal dress that made her seem taller. Her businesslike air suggested she wasn’t one of the tourists that flocked to St. Elizabeth, Georgia, in the summer, enchanted with our Southern hospitality, white-sand beach, and antebellum mansions.
“Violetta Terhune?” Her drawl, honey dripping from each drawn-out word, told me she grew up around here. She looked from me to Mom, waxed and plucked brows arched.
“That’s me,” Mom said, leaving her station and the still smooching couple to shake her hand. “How can I help you?”
“I’m Audrey Faye,” the woman said. “My friend Simone DuBois recommended you.”
Mom had been accused of murdering Simone’s mother, Constance DuBois, at the start of the summer. We had found the real murderer and kept him from doing away with Simone in the bargain, so she felt she owed us.
“I can fit you in after I do Penny,” Mom said. “Or Grace can take you now.”
“Oh, I don’t need a haircut,” Audrey said, flicking the idea away with a wave of her hand. “I’m the coordinator of the Miss Magnolia Blossom pageant, which, as I’m sure you know, is being held right here in St. Elizabeth this week.” She beamed. “Girls from across the region are competing for the chance to wear the crown and move up to the Miss Georgia Blossom contest next month. And then … Miss American Blossom.”
She breathed it in the awestruck tones my Catholic roommate at UGA used when talking about meeting the Pope.
“I’m not sure—” Mom started, looking confused.
“I want to hire two of your staff to do the girls’ hair and nails,” Audrey Faye interrupted.
I got the feeling she interrupted a lot. She came across as one of those women who wanted to be the bride at every wedding and the corpse at every funeral, as my Granny Terhune used to say. She probably still said it, but she’d moved to Maryland with my Uncle Graham’s family and I didn’t see her often.
“This is my first year as pageant director and I can tell you I’m making some changes in the way we do things. Some long-overdue changes.” She shot a sideways glance at her image in the mirror and brushed a speck of mascara off her cheek. “It helps to have a real beauty queen directing a pageant, don’t you think?”
Mom nodded, although I was sure she’d never given it a thought.
“I was Miss American Blossom once, you know; it seems like yesterday.” A reminiscent smile curved her full lips.
Since she was clearly in her mid-thirties, “yesterday” probably meant “fifteen years ago.” Meow, I chastised myself, unsure why I felt so catty about the woman.
“It’s like being queen for a whole year. I like to think I accomplished a lot during my reign.”
I didn’t think wearing a rhinestone crown and going to supermarket openings put her in the same league as Marie Curie or Eleanor Roosevelt on the accomplishments front. I put the brakes on my uncharitable thoughts; maybe she’d done good work with literacy or raising money for a disease. Just because she came across as a tad superficial didn’t mean she was ungenerous.
Audrey Faye took a deep breath. “Anyway, some of the contestants are old pros at the pageant thing, but several are neophytes. I want to level the playing field”—she smoothed the air with beautifully manicured hands—“so we can send the best woman to Atlanta. Isn’t that a brilliant idea? I’m determined that our Miss Magnolia Blossom will win the Miss Georgia Blossom crown this year.” Her lips tightened. “That’ll show them.”
That would show who what? She’d lost me. “Show who?”
She looked at me, apparently surprised I’d spoken. “The state pageant directors who don’t think we have a rigorous enough program here on the coast to compete successfully for Miss Georgia Blossom.”
“Well … what did you have in mind?” Mom asked.
“Today’s Tuesday. The finals are Saturday night. I need a stylist and a manicurist to do the contestants’ hair and nails for their appearances and th
e competitions. Talent tonight, swimsuit tomorrow, local appearances on Thursday, semifinals Friday, and the crowning on Saturday.” She ticked the events off on her fingers. “I’m running it just like one of the national pageants. Isn’t that brilliant? I’m paying three hundred a day. Each.”
Mom cast me a questioning look.
“I’m not too busy this week,” I told her, turning the pages of the appointment book. August was our slowest month as many of our customers fled the sweltering heat of coastal Georgia for cooler holidays in the Carolina or Tennessee mountains. I turned to Mom. “You could take my clients, couldn’t you?”
It sounded fun. I’d never been closer to a beauty pageant than a televised broadcast and I could use the extra money. I’d decided it was time to buy a house—I was thirty, after all—and was saving for a down payment. I was pretty sure Stella and Darryl could use the money, too. I looked around for Stella, but she was still in the bathroom.
Mom nodded. “If you want to, Grace. Althea can put in a few more hours.”
Althea Jenkins, Mom’s best friend, was our part-time aesthetician. She was a good stylist, too, but didn’t much like cutting hair. Still, she could fill in.
“Super,” Audrey said, taking Mom’s comment as agreement. “We’re at that old theater on Pecan Street. We’re sharing it with a community theater group doing Phantom . The stage is perfect. I can just see our Miss Magnolia Blossom, wearing her new crown, crying, waving to the audience …” She gave a royal wave, hand cupped, and hummed a snatch of the familiar Miss American Blossom theme song.