Murder of a Botoxed Blonde (19 page)

“Like, so far it’s okay? Ms. Margot’s been talking to me about learning to do manicures and stuff, but my dad wants me to quit because of the murder and all.”

“Did you know the police have a confession?”

“Duh. Like, otherwise I wouldn’t be here right now.” Farrah glanced pointedly at the wall clock. “So, what would you like to eat?”

“Sorry, I didn’t realize it was so late. I hate to keep you. What’s the easiest thing on the menu?”

“One chopped salad coming up.” Farrah wrote it down. “Would you like something to drink?”

“Water will be fine.” If she couldn’t have Diet Coke, she’d stick to H
₂
O.

When Farrah returned with lunch, Skye asked, “Can you sit down a minute and keep me company?”

Skye noticed an odd expression in the girl’s eyes, but Farrah said, “Okay, but I can’t for long.”

“Sure.” Skye forked some salad into her mouth, chewed, and swallowed. “So, you and the cook were together when the murder took place?”

“Yes. She’s teaching me to knit when we have free time, but we need to keep an eye out for Ms. Margot. She doesn’t like us to sit around, even when we haven’t got anything else to do.”

“Did you know Esmé at all?”

“No. She thought she was too good to talk to the help.” Farrah absentmindedly started to pile the items from the table onto her tray.

“Are the other guests like that?”

“Not this weekend, since most of you are from town.”

Skye nodded, noting the young woman had stopped using the word “like” when she was answering questions. “Have you heard anyone say anything negative about Esmé, either before or after the murder?”

“No.” Farrah stood, cleared the rest of the table, and said
as she left, “Now if it had been Ms. Margot, there’d be plenty of suspects. She sure has rubbed a lot of people wrong.”

After Farrah left, Skye sat for a moment pondering what the girl had said. Margot’s name kept coming up, and Mar-got and Esmé did look an awful lot alike, especially from the back. Had the killer murdered the wrong woman?

Margot’s seminar was held in one of two meeting rooms that had been carved out of the former ballroom. This one could hold up to fifty and the other two hundred, but today there were only seven women present. Two of the attendees surprised Skye—Bunny and Whitney. Skye would have thought family issues would have kept both from attending. On the other hand, perhaps Whitney needed a diversion, and maybe Bunny and Spike needed some time apart to regroup.

Tiny gilt chairs and petite tea tables were set in rows. Bunny sat in the first row, and gestured for Skye to join her. Skye nodded, then excused herself to the already seated women until she reached the front. She gingerly eased into the delicate chair next to Bunny. It was a tight fit, and she was afraid that one false move and the chair would shatter into toothpicks. On the table lay a small notepad and miniature gold pen.

Bunny greeted Skye, but before she could say anything more, Margot came out on a small stage next to a large white screen. The spa owner wore an animal-print skirt with gold sequined trim and a tight white tank top with a sequined sunburst across the chest. Skye frowned. Hadn’t she seen Esmé wearing that same outfit at breakfast yesterday? Either Margot had bought the same clothes as her friend, or she was already raiding the dead woman’s closet.

Margot waited a few minutes for everyone to get settled, then began, “Good afternoon, ladies. First, I’d like to thank you all for staying. Esmé’s death is a tragedy and we are all saddened by the loss, but the police have already apprehended the killer.”

She paused for a breath, and Skye scanned the faces in
the room. Most had the solemn look people don when hearing bad news that really doesn’t involve them, but Whitney’s expression was hard to read. Although Skye would have bet money that Whitney and Esmé didn’t have a loving relationship, maybe Whitney didn’t like to see her stepmother’s death dismissed in a couple of sentences, and then business as usual.

Margot continued, “Just to make you all feel even safer, I’ve hired a security firm from Chicago to make sure only those authorized will get past the lobby. There’s also a man at the gate keeping the media out.”

Skye glanced around, wondering why Margot was repeating what everyone already knew—after all, it had been announced that morning to the men. Maybe the spa owner didn’t realize just how fast news traveled. Finally, after a minute of silence to remember Esmé, Margot started the class.

Her first question was, “Who here thinks what I’m wearing is sexy?”

Bunny and a couple of the other Scumble River women raised their hands. Skye thought the model looked a little like a hooker on safari and kept her arm down.

Margot shook her finger at those with their hands in the air. “Wrong. Flashy isn’t necessarily sexy.”

Skye studied the spa owner. Was Margot really cutting down her dead friend’s taste in clothes?

Margot pressed a button and a woman’s foot appeared on the screen. “Study this shoe and be prepared to tell me what about it is sexy.”

Skye examined the shoe as Margot disappeared behind the screen. It was a black sandal with a four-inch heel, and bands across the toe and around the ankle. Gold rings held the straps together and a tassel of gold chains with onyx beads on the ends cascaded from the ankle ring to the sole. She recognized the designer as Gucci, and remembered seeing it in one of those oversized magazines she leafed through when she got her hair cut.

While Margot was gone, Bunny stage whispered to Skye,
“So now that you know that Sonny Boy wasn’t cheating on you, are you taking him back?”

“We’re discussing it tonight.”

“What’s to talk about? Either you forgive him or you don’t.”

Skye didn’t want to have this conversation right now, and especially not in public, but ended up saying. “I’m not sure I can trust a man who has a sister he doesn’t tell me about. How can I be sure how he feels about me, if he’s keeping such huge parts of his life secret?”

“Honey.” Bunny shook her head. “Men only have two emotions—hungry and horny. If you see one without an erection, make him a sandwich.”

Thankfully, before Skye could respond, Margot reappeared, this time wearing a red and cream patterned dress. It had an empire waist, spaghetti straps, and knee length skirt. Skye thought the outfit was better suited to someone under twenty-five, but maybe that was supposed to be the attraction—women as baby dolls.

As soon as she had everyone’s attention, Margot asked, “Who can tell me why the shoe on the screen is sexy?”

Several answers were shouted out. “The high heel makes your leg look longer.” “The thin black strap accents your ankle.” “It showcases your pedicure.”

Margot shook her head. “Anyone else? How about you, Skye?”

Skye raised an eyebrow. “It makes women look helpless, because they can’t really move in this kind of shoe.”

“Interesting perspective.” Margot’s voice was icy. “But the real reason is—”

Whitney cut her off. “The real reason is mat the shoe cost seven hundred dollars, and spending that kind of money always makes a woman feel sexy.”

For a split second, Margot narrowed her eyes, then nodded benignly. “Close, Whitney. It’s the confidence engendered by wearing such an exquisite design, not the cost.”

After that piece of wisdom, Skye’s thoughts drifted off to what she would do about Simon, Wally, and the murderer. Most of the rest of the class was about recognizing and buying
designer clothing, nearly all of which was either too tight or too short for Skye’s curvaceous figure, even if she had that kind of money to spend on clothes.

Toward the end, a tussle between Bunny and Margot brought Skye’s attention back to the front of the room. Bunny jumped out of her seat and stood nose-to-nose with Margot, both women wearing low-cut jeans and a shirt with high heeled sandals. Margot’s top was a brown glitter-trimmed camisole that matched the brown suede laces running up the side of her jeans. Bunny wore a black and gold beaded backless camisole held together by ties across her back and black LYCRA jeans woven with gold threads. Bunny was poking Margot’s shoulder with her right index finger and shouting, “What do you mean, this isn’t a sexy outfit?”

Margot was trying to get away from the irate redhead by inching back and stuttering, “Now, Bunny, you took what I said the wrong way.”

Bunny moved forward, “You compared our two outfits
and said mine looked cheap.”

“Well, what I meant was, ah, less expensive.” Margot edged back a little more.

“So, you admit it’s a sexy outfit?” Bunny continued to poke the spa owner.

“Well, I’m sure for a certain type of gentleman,” Margot stammered, still trying to get away from the gleaming red nail being driven into her shoulder.

“
Most
gentlemen.” Bunny emphasized her point with an extra jab. “This mare may have a few years on her, but she can still make nearly any stallion jump over to her side of the fence.”

Margot nodded while taking one more step away from Bunny, but it was one too many—she had reached the end of the stage. The last thing Skye saw as the blonde toppled backward, her five-hundred-dollar high heel shoes pointed toward the ceiling, was her designer jeans sliding down, exposing both her derrière and her baby blue La Perla thong.

Bunny turned her back on the fallen star and dusted off her hands. She rested a hand on the hip she had thrust forward, and said to the women gasping in front of her, “People who get too big for their britches are usually exposed in the end.”

A
fter Margot’s ignominious display at the “Dress for Sexcess” seminar, Skye wasn’t surprised that the spa owner refused to talk to her. Margot claimed she had a migraine and couldn’t understand why Skye wanted to discuss a murder that had already been solved. Knowing there was no way to force the woman to answer her questions, Skye let Margot go, then whipped out the spa schedule and checked to see which staff member she could see next.

As she skimmed the list, her heart sank. The only activity scheduled for four o’clock that she could get into without an appointment was Frisco’s exercise class. It was listed as a “Taste of Fitness” and included a sampling of yoga, dancercise, fuerza, and kick ball. What in the heck was fuerza, and why would a bunch of grown women play kick ball, a game most ten-year-olds found boring?

Skye wasn’t exactly a workout neophyte, but her two previous experiences had not proven encouraging. Her mother had forced Skye to go to what was at that time referred to as an exercise salon when she was in sixth grade. The salon was filled with middle-aged women who repeatedly informed Skye that she would never get a boyfriend as long as she was chubby. They scared her so much, she went on a diet of only eight hundred calories a day until she shed the extra pounds.

She suffered this deprivation for over fifteen years, at which time she had an epiphany and decided that celery was rabbit food, JELL-O was a salad not a dessert, and chocolate was one of the seven basic food groups. She still tried to eat healthfully and swim at least five days a week, but her life no longer revolved around how small a size jeans she could squeeze into and still breathe.

Furthermore, the exercise salon ladies had been wrong. Her problem wasn’t hooking men, it was figuring out which were the keepers and which she should throw back into the lake.

Skye’s second foray into a health club had taken place only two months ago, when she was on the trail of her contractor’s killer. This time no one had scared her, but she had become trapped on one of the machines, breaking a fingernail and tearing the knee out of her sweatpants.

Still, maybe the third time would be the charm; she really had no choice. She had to talk to Frisco. She needed to confirm he had seen Whitney at the pool.

Skye looked at her watch and then reread the program. Attendees were asked to wear appropriate exercise clothing and be in the gym fifteen minutes before the session started, which left Skye less than fifteen minutes to get to her room, change, and find the gym.

Housekeeping had been through, and Skye’s room was spotless. The beds were made, the bathroom cleaned and restocked with towels, and the trash cans emptied. Such service was one of the few good things about staying at the spa.

While she changed into her tights and leotard, Skye briefly wondered if she could take one of the housekeepers home with her when she left. It would be so nice to return after a long day at school and find her house looking this pristine.

She could certainly understand why Wally would employ Dorothy Snyder. Come to think of it, Simon had a woman who came in twice a week to clean, too. Uncle Charlie hired a cleaning crew for the motor court that took care of his cottage. And May cleaned Vince’s apartment once a week.

What was wrong with this picture? Skye stopped, bent
over, one leg halfway inserted into her tights. Why did the single men in town all have household help when Skye had the biggest house and struggled to keep it up herself?

Did the men make more money, even though she was the one with the graduate degree, or did the men value their time more highly than she valued her own? Something to think about after she caught Esmé’s killer.