Frosted Shadow - A Toni Diamond Mystery

by Nancy Warren

  He asked, “Did Nicole have a boyfriend?”

  “You asked Melody that this morning. She said no.”

  “Now I’m asking you. You see things other people miss.”

  She was absurdly flattered by the compliment, which seemed more sincere because of the casual way he said it. Like he was merely relating a fact.

  “I don’t think so. She got divorced a few years back and as far as I know her heart belonged to Lady Bianca.”

  “What about her body?”

  There was a silent ping in her mind as the obvious truth hit her. “She had sex the night she died, didn’t she?”

  “Why would you think that?” He watched her face.

  Once more her mind flipped back to finding the woman dead. She replayed the scene. Again. “She wasn’t wearing panty hose. I noticed when I pushed her knees and ankles together.” The sound of tinkling piano keys intruded. The nightly pianist was starting his first set off with The Girl from Ipanema. “And when I smoothed her skirt, I didn’t feel a panty line.” She gulped a little wine. “Do you think whoever she slept with killed her?”

  He shifted in his seat. “I think you should be careful about spreading these opinions of yours.”

  “I wouldn’t –”

  “And of getting too friendly with Mandeville.”

  “Mandeville? But he –”

  “How many men do you see around the hotel, Toni? It’s a sea of estrogen.”

  “Okay, Mandeville was sleeping with Amy Neuman.” At his look she rolled her eyes. “He told me. But he didn’t even know Nicole.”

  Luke popped another peanut in his mouth, his eyes steady on hers. “We only have his word for that. He likes to pick up women in bars.”

  “I turned him down.” And exactly why had she been so eager to tell him that?

  He glanced around the bar again and his face relaxed into a grin. He nodded in recognition to an extremely colorful older woman sitting at one of the round tables for four with a much more conventional looking senior. She raised her glass to him. Some amber-colored liquor. Scotch maybe.

  She spoke to her friend and then motioned them over. Luke glanced at her. “Do you mind if we join them?”

  Since when were she and Luke a we?

  He introduced her to the colorful woman whose name was Miss Barnes, “Call me Helen,” and her friend Betty Tait. The pair of them were with the mystery writers conference.

  “Helen, you were an English teacher I believe?”

  She nodded. “For forty years. Everything from remedial composition to advanced English lit.”

  “I’m interested in what you think of this wording in an email, hypothetically, of course.”

  “Of course.” She leaned forward. All three women did, in fact.

  He quoted, “A person like you doesn’t deserve to live.”

  Her brown eyes snapped to his and Toni immediately got that hot, sick feeling like she’d forgotten to do her homework and was about to be nailed. She even held a pencil in her hand and rolled it between her fingers as though getting ready to tear apart an essay. “That’s it? No salutation? No closing?”

  “That’s it.”

  She blinked slowly and the iridescent green shadow on her lids glinted like wrinkled opals. When she opened her eyes she said, “Interesting phrasing for a threat. Passive construction. Vague subject. Ends with an infinitive.” She swirled her drink and then took a sip. They all waited. “Back in the day, if a school kid had a problem with another kid he might scrawl, ‘You die’ on his locker. ‘I’ll get you’, and then refer to him by some vicious, socially-demeaning epithet. You know the ones.”

  “I can guess.”

  Her jaw worked up and down. “Angry, visceral, blunt nouns, active verbs. This is almost at a distance. Polite even. Certainly unusual. I’m no psychiatrist, though after forty years of teaching high school I feel like one. It could be this person’s a foreigner so their English is learned from a textbook. Or they are very uncomfortable with their anger, so they try and distance themselves from it. Passive aggressive.”

  Luke nodded.

  “I can’t even tell if it’s a male or a female. But when those types blow, they tend to make a big mess.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, Detective, is that your strongest clue?” Helen sounded worried as well she might. Toni noticed she was wearing one of the No, I don’t want a Lady Bianca makeover buttons on her forest green cardigan. Even so, Toni adored her on sight. She was like the funhouse mirror version of a sweet old lady. She smoked, based on the nicotine stains on her fingers and her teeth, she drank, she wore the most bizarre color palette of make up Toni’d ever seen, and she’d stuck a black bow in her red wig. “You won’t solve a murder with one email.”

  He smiled at the extraordinarily colorful woman. “Miss Barnes. What I need is some help from your fictional friends.”

  She chuckled, a deep-chested sound that veered away from a coughing fit at the last second. “Holmes, or Lord Peter Whimsey or Miss Marple would have the mystery wrapped up by now, the killer confessed and the tea on to boil. You’re sadly behind schedule.”

  “But the author would obligingly leave a trail of clues for the plodding gumshoe to follow.”

  She shook her head and an aviary of bright birds hanging from her ears took flight. “Ah, don’t forget the absence of clues, Detective.”

  He narrowed his eyes. “Silver Blaze?”

  “Very good. The curious incident of the dog in the nighttime.” She nodded at him approvingly.

  “I feel like a toad in a dryer trying to figure out what you two are talking about,” Toni said, looking from one to the other.

  “Sherlock Holmes.” Helen Barnes explained in her English teacher way. Again with the Holmes. “One of his most famous cases. A vital clue was the dog that didn’t bark when it should have.”

  The other three at the table all had that reminiscent look people get when they share a memory. Toni figured she just looked confused. “Why didn’t it bark?”

  “Because the dog knew the villain. So it had no reason to bark. A vital clue and a famous one because, of course, sometimes what’s not present is as significant as what is.”

  “You mean, no clue can be a clue?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Wow. It’s kinda like one of my favorite sayings to my sales reps. ‘A No isn’t a No until the potential customer says that word. You’d be amazed at how rarely women say no. They’ll give excuses like “I’m too busy,” or “I don’t wear much make-up,” which are all great openers for a motivated sales person to turn that excuse into a sale. Imagine using that same technique to solve a murder.”

  “I’m saying No,” Helen said, pointing to the button on her sweater. But there was challenge in her tone.

  And Toni loved a challenge. “You’re not saying ‘No,’ Helen. You’re wearing that button hoping to stop a sales rep from approaching you. That’s not the same thing at all.”

  “All right then. Ask me if I want a makeover.”

  Toni sat back. It was so nice to be able to focus on something positive, like a sales challenge, than to obsess about death.

  She smiled. “I’m not a fool, Helen. Besides, I love your style. I wouldn’t change a thing.” She turned to Helen’s friend, Betty. “I love everything about your friend’s style. It’s unique to her. Of course, her skin is dry. And since she stopped smoking, it needs extra moisture. And we have a wonderful lip liner that stops the lipstick from bleeding. But that’s only going to improve what already works.”

  She pulled her chair back, “Well –”

  “How do you know I just quit smoking?”

  “You’ve got nicotine stains on your fingers but you don’t smell of smoke. You’re chewing gum and rolling that pencil where your cigarette used to be. My mama did the same thing when she quit. Only with an eyebrow pencil.”

  It wasn’t what you heard that mattered. It was what you didn’t hear. Her mind flashed back to Nicole and
tried to veer away, wimp that it was. But Toni found if she concentrated on trying to figure out who had killed her rival, the horror of finding the woman’s body moved to the back of her brain. She knew it was only in temporary storage, but right now she’d take any relief. All she knew was she had some thinking to do. So, she smiled at the eager mystery buffs and said, “You know, my brain feels thicker than candy floss right now. I didn’t get much sleep last night. I think I’ll go on up. Good night ladies. Night Luke.”

  “Night.”

  “Wait.”

  She turned back and Helen said, “This lip liner of yours, does it really work?”

  “You won’t believe the difference. The liner keeps the lipstick right where it belongs, on your lips.”

  “All right,” the gravelly voice said. “You’d better give me your card.” Then she looked fierce. “But I’m not having a makeover.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of it.” She took out her cards and handed one to each of the women. She didn’t even let her triumphant grin out until she’d turned once more toward the lobby and had started walking away.

  Helen Barnes was one of those old women who had no idea how far her voice carried. Or else she didn’t care. As Toni walked away from the table she clearly heard her say. “Speaking of dogs that don’t bark, Detective.”

  His reply was thankfully much softer but she thought he said, “Mind your own business, Helen.”

  Chapter Twenty

  The inmate of a house in which a mysterious murder had occurred was rather an interesting object.

  —Anna Katharine Green

  As Toni approached the elevator hall where a small crowd of Lady Bianca women waited, the conversation suddenly snuffed. She supposed she couldn’t blame them for gossiping about her and Nicole, and the gruesome death, but the heavy silence only added to the weight she already carried.

  And good for them -- these were the gals who had stayed. They were all back from socializing. The networking and sisterhood were an important part of the conference’s success and, decent women that they were, they soon began chattering about different subjects than the one on everybody’s mind.

  Two women began chatting quietly about their kids’ baseball teams, and another couple began sharing eBay success stories.

  The elevator arrived and the doors opened. The group filed in and, as the doors were about to close, Luke Marciano jogged into the elevator.

  He nodded politely to all of them. “Ladies.”

  “Which floor would you like?” one of the eBay sellers asked him.

  “It’s already lit up, thanks.”

  He seemed to quell all conversation as effectively as she had, so Toni never found out whether, with two out and the bases loaded, the Dynamos beat the Tigers, or what happened in the final, frenzied minutes of bidding for the vintage costume jewelry that had belonged to the eBay woman’s aunt.

  By the time the elevator reached her floor, there were only four of them left. Luke hadn’t said a word to her, or even glanced her way. In fact, he’d spent the entire ride watching the floor indicator light up as they rose.

  At the 14th floor, she stepped out. Surprise, surprise, he followed.

  After the elevator doors closed, he joined her.

  “You staying at the hotel?” she asked him.

  “Seeing you safely to your room.”

  For some reason, he didn’t make her feel entirely safe. Not that she felt unsafe, more unsettled, since she had no idea of his intentions, or her own feelings on the matter.

  They arrived at her room and he waited while she fished out her key. She glanced up at him, half amused and half irritated. “Are you going to come in and check under the bed?”

  “Yes.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Fine.”

  She opened her hotel room door and they both entered. She flipped on a light and the door shut behind them with a whisper.

  “Did you work on your 1949 truck last night?”

  He made a face. “Yeah. What did you do?”

  “Well, I didn’t sleep like a baby. I got out a notebook and made a list of people Nicole works with and people she’s pissed off. It’s quite a long list.”

  “I wouldn’t mind a copy.”

  “Sure. Any news on the knife that was…” She mimed a stabbing motion to her own chest. It was easier somehow than saying the words aloud. “Did she, um,” Toni didn’t even know how to phrase her question. “Was it quick? Her death?”

  Those espresso-dark eyes didn’t so much as flicker.

  He nodded once. “Knife pierced the heart and sliced the aorta. She’d have been dead in minutes.”

  “Some of the girls think there’s a serial killer.”

  “I know. Media are playing up the angle, too. Nicole Freedman wasn’t killed by some random psycho. We’re pretty sure her killer is still here. It is possible they’ll kill again.”

  She shivered. As she was sure he’d meant her to.

  “So you think it could be a woman?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Don’t you have to be pretty strong to kill someone with a knife?”

  “Both murder weapons came from the hotel kitchen,” he said. “They were razor sharp and made for chopping big cuts of meat. A frail old lady probably couldn’t manage the deed but a reasonably fit woman, sure.”

  “Oh, how awful. Were there any fingerprints or anything?”

  He shook his head.

  “But, the knife we found in the kitchen that day, when Lucy was having a fit, was the one used on Amy Nueman. The killer dumped it in the industrial dishwasher, presumably on his way out after killing Amy Neuman.”

  “He put the knife in the dishwasher, like he’d finished carving the Sunday roast?” Somehow that detail, and the casual attitude the killer showed to his victim, added a touch of evil to an already gruesome deed. “How do you know it was the murder weapon if it went through the dishwasher?”

  He walked past the bed. “We won’t know about DNA evidence until next week, but the hilt made a mark on Amy’s body and the boning knife matches. Blade’s the right width and there’s a slice mark on one of the ribs that matches the blade. Bottom line, the Medical Examiner is 90 percent certain it’s the murder weapon.”

  “And the knife that killed Nicole?”

  “A carving knife that went missing some time after dinner last night.”

  He walked into the bathroom, flipped on the light and checked the room, even behind the shower curtain. His thorough search of her room was both reassuring and terrifying.

  She tried to imagine walking into a hotel kitchen, taking a knife and stabbing someone with it. “The curious incident of the dog in the nighttime,” she said.

  His gaze settled on her face as he came out of the bathroom. “I thought you didn’t read Sherlock Holmes.”

  “I was thinking about what your mystery reading lady friend said about the absence of clues. No dog barking. This is sort of the same, isn’t it?” She set her conference bag down beside the desk.

  “Not following.”

  “Well, any old person can’t walk into a hotel kitchen and borrow a chef’s knife, right? How come nobody noticed or said anything?”

  The coins started jingling in his pocket, a clear sign he was thinking.

  “In Silver Blaze the dog doesn’t bark because he knows the villain.”

  “So, maybe your killer works in the kitchen, or had a good reason to be in there. Like waiters, busboys, dishwashers. They must hire a ton of casual staff during the big conferences.”

  “Sure, but it’s an easy area to get in and out of. And lots of conventions have food committees. I bumped into you there.”

  She nodded, reluctantly. “We hire a company to organize the convention for us, but there are always a few reps helping organize the food. I served on it once. You would not believe how many food allergies people have. Then there are the vegetarians, the vegans, the diabetics, the low salt diets. It’s a nightmare. But it still seems strange to me
that no one noticed someone walk in and take a knife. Particularly after the first murder.”

  “Sure. Could be a connection to the kitchen. Or maybe the killer waited until nobody was around. Lady Bianca’s still the closest connection between the two victims.”

  She thought back to the first murder. “Pretty bold, walking into the kitchen with a bloody knife.”

  “This killer is definitely bold. Or desperate.”

  “But not hiding in my room.”

  His eyes crinkled in a half smile. “No. But you and Nicole had a lot in common. You don’t go anywhere alone. Make sure you have your flunkies around, people you trust. And watch your back. I mean it.” He walked to the door.

  She followed.

  “Do you always take such good care of your suspects?”

  The smile still lurked deep in his eyes. He had great eyes -- liquid, sexy dark chocolate. “You’re not a suspect.”

  Then he pulled her to him and kissed her. Not long, or hard, or passionately, but soft and swift. A tease and a promise.

  “Lock up behind me.”

  She was so stunned she could only nod.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  False coins have often lustre, though they want weight. —Samuel Johnson

  Everybody lies. Luke had thrown the statement out carelessly enough, but she felt as though he’d given her the key to the maze in which she found herself.

  Well, if not a key, at least a hint as to which was the correct path.

  She sat up in bed, gripping her knees, sleepless again. Of course people lied, they lied all the time. Not always with evil intent. People lied to protect themselves, someone else, the hearer’s feelings. They lied to make themselves seem more successful, wealthier, more attractive. But whatever the motive, lies hid the truth.

  Toni had no way of knowing who was lying about what or why, but if she believed only what was absolutely provable then perhaps she might see through the fog of deception she felt all around her.

  She, of all people, should have understood that from the beginning. Her profession depended upon covering the truth with illusion. Shaving years off a face with the right cream, hiding blemishes with concealer that mimicked perfect skin, lip liners and glosses that lied about the shape and plumpness of a mouth, why, with the right palette, she could change the appearance of a client’s eye color.