“Why don’t you surprise me? I’ll just be hanging around the manor tonight.”
“So it’s still open?” She hikes an amused brow as she gets right to work on me.
“Oh yes. Opal, the woman who owns the manor, insisted that the show must go on. You know, she figured it’d be good for the town’s morale.” And her pocketbook, but I leave that fiscally sound bit of truth out of it for now.
“That’s good, I guess. Last night was pretty scary, in a whole other way.”
“It sure was,” I say as she gets right to work applying a pale base of foundation over my face. “Did you know Hazel well?”
She grunts as soon as I say her name, “No, not really. I’m more friends with Miggy than I am with the other girls.”
“How did you and Miggy meet?”
“She was the party planner of a really ritzy birthday party last summer, and I was hired to paint faces. It was an adult party, but they wanted a nostalgic feel. They had pin-the-cufflinks-on-the-billionaire, a piñata filled with jewelry, the whole nine twisted yards. The rich really aren’t like the rest of us.”
Opal comes to mind, as does my old life when I was rolling around in the mob’s stolen money.
“Tell me about it.” I sigh. “And the two of you hit it off?”
“We sure did. We found out we had a shared love of literature, and the rest was history. She invited me out to one of her coffee klatch book clubs, and we had a blast.”
“And that’s where you met Hazel?” And her boyfriend, I want to add but think better of it.
She makes a face. “Well, yes and no. I had already been hanging out at the Graveyard Shift, my boyfriend Jack’s nightclub a few doors down. Hazel used to come around—she and Jack were dating first—and they’d argue for all to see. They really put on a show. She was classically codependent on him. A real clinger who needed him for all of her emotional needs.” She shrugs.
“Is that why they broke up?”
“That’s exactly why they broke up. Hazel actually initiated it, according to Jack. She thought he was cheating with me, which wasn’t true. I was simply hanging out at the club. But she was used to seeing me at the coffee klatch and didn’t like me sniffing around her man. Jack said he felt a sense of relief once they parted ways. And, well, I happened to be there to cheer him up when she stopped coming around. He’s a looker. He’s pretty nice, but he’s got a wild side, too. And the good Lord knows I need a man with a kick.”
She rubs and dabs my face with the color palette in her hands, and a part of me is hoping I’ll come away from this looking like a work of art. But I’m not holding my breath.
“Wild?” I lift a brow. “He’s not a future crazy ex, is he?” After that argument I witnessed between him and the deceased, the jury is still out on him.
“Nah. He’s harmless. Jack couldn’t hurt a fly. He’s all bark and no bite. Unless you’re in the bedroom, if you know what I mean.”
Tilly huffs, “A man who bites is hard to come by. You hold on to that one.”
“Amen, sister.” Carrie nods her way. “I plan on it.”
I tilt my face her way. “So did Hazel want him back once she saw he found someone else to spend time with? I bet it killed her to see him with you.”
Carrie rolls her eyes at the thought. “At first, she was practically throwing me his way. During one of our book club meetings, I asked if they were really over because I didn’t want to step on her toes, and she said I could have him if I could stand him. But her tune changed once she saw we were serious. She started accusing me of stealing him, if you can believe it. She went as far as threatening me to stay away from him.”
“She threatened you?” I jerk and she nearly puts an eye out as she tries to adhere a pair of falsies to my eyelid.
“Hold still.” She leans in. “Yup, turns out, Hazel wasn’t playing dress-up last night. She really was a witch. I know it’s not nice to speak ill of the dead, but that woman went to my mother’s garden club and accused me of being a boyfriend snatcher.”
Steph sits up, straight as a pin. “She tracked down your mother and ratted you out? Now, there’s something to consider.”
Back in Hastings, a stunt like that could pull a lot of weight, mostly because our mothers ruled the wicked roost. Here in Vermont, I’m betting not so much.
Carrie shakes her head. “I wouldn’t have done it. My mother and I already had a rocky relationship. When I was a senior in high school, she and my stepfather had a kid and decided I needed to stay home with their bouncing baby boy while they went out and partied. Of course, I wasn’t about to stand for it. I was a kid myself. I was the one who needed to party. She kicked me out when I didn’t agree to their terms, and it’s been fifteen years of trying to rebuild what was left of our tattered relationship ever since. Needless to say, when that witch Hazel came a knockin’, my mother believed Hazel.” Her demeanor grows somber. “My own mother was so quick to believe a lie about me. It infuriates me to this day. I just wanted to kill Hazel for trying to take me down like that. Not that I did.”
Stephanie cocks her ear toward Carrie. “Sounds like someone beat you to it.”
“Agree.” I bat my newly extended lashes up at her. “Who do you think killed her?”
Carrie shrugs. “Beats me. I know Annabelle has some chip on her shoulder—something to do with Miggy’s party-planning company, Thoroughly Modern Miggy. Hazel was always razzing Annabelle about something. I can tell she genuinely didn’t like her. But I’m not really privy to the history between them.”
“So they argued?”
“I don’t know if you’d call it arguing. Annabelle was more of an eye roller and barbed comeback kind of a girl. Miggy was pretty good at wrangling them during our book chats, though. Anything that had to do with Hazel, I generally stayed away from. Unless, of course, you count her ex. And I can tell you right now, Hazel Newton wasn’t getting that boy back. Especially not after what she did to my family.” She pulls and tugs at my hair. “Nothing like a couple of pigtails to finish up the effect.”
“Pigtails?”
“Voila.” Carrie steps back. “You girls enjoy. I’ve got to make sure the rest of the crew is looking just as good,” she says as she takes off.
Steph and I look at one another and scream in unison.
Her hair has gone white, it’s teased up in a beehive, and there’s a black widow crawling over the top. Her face is white, her lips are black, and it looks as if she hasn’t slept in twelve weeks.
I snatch a handheld mirror off the table in front of me and scream at my reflection.
True to Carrie’s word, my hair is up in pigtails, but that’s the least of my worries. My face is pale as a ghost, I’ve got pink and black triangles above and below my eyes, metallic blue eyelashes as long as my fingers, and my lips are painted a dark shade of fuchsia and outlined in black liner that extends across half my cheeks, giving me the appearance of a garish grimace. I’m a clown—a horrifying, been-to-hell-and-back—literally—balloon-wielding terror.
Tilly pops out of her chair, looking every bit the sexy zombie with her day-glow purple lips, her face painted a pale shade of blue, and her eyes sporting that sultry smoky look to them.