Lavender Lipstick Lies: A Mystery of Makeup & Mayhem (4 page)

Chapter 9

“Your outfit and makeup say that
you’re ready to party,” Emma announced when I joined them in the living room.
“But the look on your face is screaming sad, sad, sad!”

She followed the comment with a
chorus of high-pitched laughter, but the words hit home. I turned and looked at
my reflection in a gilt-framed mirror hanging on the wall. Emma was right; I
needed to shake it off if we were really going to have a blast. The longer I
stared at myself, the more I realized it was time to stop fretting. We were on
a protected floor. The hotel’s security director was working to identify the
intruder from earlier. And we’d be surrounded by thousands of people when we
went downstairs to the casino.

“Are you sure you’re up for it?”
asked Emma caringly. “We could also just order room service and watch a movie.”

I shook my head and jokingly
stomped one foot. “There is absolutely no way I’m going to spend our first
night in Vegas in the room!” I did a little dance and waved both arms in the
air. “I want good food, good music and a few good cocktails!”

Bree surrounded me in a warm hug
and Emma snapped her fingers and spun around. “I’m ready,” she exclaimed. “
Laissez
les bons temps rouler
!”

“Isn’t that what they say in New
Orleans?” Bree asked.

Emma laughed. “Yeah, but you can
say it anywhere,” she cheered. “
Laissez les bons temps rouler
! Let the
good times roll!”

“Good times,” I said, giving Emma a
high five. “And hot dice! Tonight’s gonna be our night, ladies! And the first
round of drinks and dinner are on me!”

After gathering our purses and
passkeys, we stepped into the hallway.

“Let’s triple check to make sure
the room is locked,” Bree suggested, tugging on the doorknob. “I do not want to
come back up here in a few hours and find another freaky message scrawled on
the mirror.”

“
Laissez les bons temps rouler
!”
Emma sang as she led the way to the elevator. “Let’s get this party started!”

When the elevator doors opened onto
the lobby a few seconds later, we stepped into a whirlwind of hotel guests,
tourists, resort employees and Splendora consultants. I waved at a few women
that I recognized from previous conferences, and said hello to one of the
senior executives from the company’s management team. She’d served as my mentor
when I was first getting started as an image consultant.

“You look stunning, Abby,” she said
cheerfully. “Everything must be going really well for you.”

I kept the smile on my face and
nodded. “Everything’s great, Kathleen. I’ll be starting my sixth year with
Splendora in a couple of months.”

“And you’re nominated for Achiever
of the Year,” she said, raising one eyebrow. “I heard it was a very close
margin between your total sales volume and a couple of other consultants.”

I shrugged and bit my lower lip.
“I’m just grateful for all of my loyal clients,” I said, not wanting to engage
in a discussion about the competition. “And for the amazing support you offer
to everyone throughout the year.”

“I like that attitude,” she said.
“Gracious and thoughtful and humble. I knew the minute we first met that you’d
have a winning career with Splendora, Abby. And it’s really nice to see things
are going so beautifully for you.”

After chatting with Kathleen about
new products that had recently been introduced, I turned to find Emma and Bree.
It took a few seconds, but I eventually spotted Emma standing near the entrance
to the casino talking with two brawny guys dressed in skin-tight polo shirts,
faded jeans and cowboy boots. From the look on her face, I could tell she was
enjoying the attention. When she caught my eye, I waved and she motioned for me
to join them. I had to wait while a surge of hotel guests came streaming from
one of the elevators. The last few people were nearly past me when someone
suddenly reached around and covered both of my eyes with their hands.

I instinctively screamed at the top
of my lungs, causing the crowd in the lobby to momentarily stop what they were
doing to look over.

“Abby!” a voice said in my ear. “I
didn’t mean to frighten you!”

When I spun around and got my
bearings, I saw Bree smiling with a look of shock and concern on her face.

“Why did you do that?” I demanded.
“Don’t you know how jumpy I am after everything that’s happened today?”

She gave me a long hug, whispering
an apology in my ear. When she loosened the embrace and stepped back, I was
surprised to see tears in her eyes.

“I just want us to have fun,” she
said quietly. “I want you to forget all about Robert and those stupid notes.
Somebody’s just trying to get under your skin, Abby.”

“Get under my skin?” I said
breathlessly. “Well, they succeeded quite handsomely, Bree. They’ve got me
freaked out beyond belief.”

“I know,” she said, carefully
taking one of my hands and guiding me into the mass of guests and revelers.
“Let’s go find Em. Then we’ll see what we can do to get your mind off of the
bad stuff and concentrate on having fun!”

“I suppose,” I said, following her
across the packed lobby. “I’ll do my best.”

Chapter 10

It was a few minutes after midnight when we finally returned to our suite. We’d enjoyed an incredible gourmet dinner
in the resort’s exclusive French bistro before playing a few games in the
casino. As promised, Emma tried her hand at roulette for the first time,
winning and losing until she finally announced that her curiosity had been
fully satisfied when she garnered a sizeable amount on her final wager.

“I promised myself that I’d walk
away a winner,” she said, doing a little dance on her impossibly high heels.
“It’s like that old song, right? ‘Know when to hold ’em and know when to fold
’em.’”

“That’s what my mama always used to
say about the laundry,” Bree giggled. “Probably because I used to pitch a fit
every time she’d make me help wash my older brother’s BVDs!”

With her winnings from roulette,
Emma treated us to a bottle of champagne in one of the resort’s lounges. We
sipped and talked and watched the jam-packed dance floor sway and bounce. When
a tall, bearded guy asked Bree to dance, she accepted his offer, returning to
our table twenty minutes later with a frown on her face.

“His name must be Mr. Hands,” she
said. “I felt like I was getting searched by the cops or something!”

Emma snickered. “What did you
expect, sweetie? He’d been watching you for the last half hour.”

Bree’s face shuddered with shock.
“He had! Why didn’t you say anything?”

“And spoil the fun?” Emma answered.

“Fun for you, maybe,” scoffed Bree.
“But it wasn’t for me.”

After the bottle of champagne was
gone, Emma suggested we celebrate our first night with a decadent room service
order of more bubbly along with chocolate-dipped strawberries, but I was
exhausted.

“Can we do that tomorrow night?” I
asked as we returned to our suite. “We’ve been on the go since before dawn.
With the time difference, I think we’ve been up for almost twenty hours!”

Bree flopped onto one of the plush
sofas. “You’re right, Abby. Now that we’re back upstairs, my whole body is
screaming in agony. I think I’m going to soak in a hot bubble bath for a while
before calling it a night.”

Emma conceded that we probably
should get some rest. “I don’t want to fall asleep during the presentations
tomorrow,” she said. “That would look really bad, especially since I’ll be
sitting next to the Achiever of the Year!” She walked over and gave me a quick
hug. “I just know you’re going to win, Abs! I can feel it in my bones.”

Even though Bree joined Emma in
predicting that I would take home the top honor from the conference, there was
something in her eyes that made me think she was less than enthusiastic. It was
just a gut feeling. And I quickly dismissed it as a combination of fatigue and
too much rich food at dinner. But when I finally said good night and went into
my room, there was a lingering doubt about Bree’s sincerity.

“Could she be involved in
whatever’s going on?” I asked my bleary-eyed reflection as I removed my makeup.
“I’d hate to think it could be true, but there’s something odd about how she’s
behaving tonight.”

After washing my face and applying
Splendora’s Nourishing Nite Nectar, I changed into my favorite oversized
T-shirt and climbed into bed. The sumptuous linens felt like a soft, safe
feathery nest as I turned off the bedside lamp, closed my eyes and drifted into
what I hoped would be hours of deep, soothing sleep.

Chapter 11

“Good morning, Splendora family!”
boomed a perky female voice through the Grand Ballroom. “Our meeting will begin
in exactly ten minutes.”

I was sandwiched between Bree and
Emma as we inched our way toward the middle of the crowded room. Between the
chattering voices, loud music blaring from the speakers and the press of
smartly dressed women, I felt like a sardine in a very large, very glamorous
tin can. Attendance at the meeting was predicted to be nearly six hundred image
consultants along with another fifty executive and administrative associates
from the company headquarters in Dallas.

“How about this one?” Emma asked.

I nodded without even glancing at
the table she was talking about. After a restless night cleaved by eerie dreams
about strangers in my room and menacing words written on the mirror, I was really
looking forward to something normal: the opening session of the conference; the
special guest speakers talking about business plans and new Splendora products;
and a lighthearted presentation about independent women pursing their dreams.

“Abby?” Bree’s voice filtered
through the foggy thoughts in my mind.

I blinked and turned toward her.
“Yes?”

“Are you okay?”

“Sure,” I said, pulling out a chair
and sitting between my two friends. “Just a little tired.”

Emma reached for the silver carafe
in the middle of the table. She poured coffee in our cups and offered the
decanter to the woman beside her.

“I’m exhausted, too,” Bree agreed.
“I never sleep very well when I’m away from home.”

“Amen to that,” Emma chimed in.
“The bed’s too hard, the sheets are too starchy and there’s nobody to cuddle
with.”

Bree laughed lightly. “Well, that
guy in the casino would’ve been happy to help you out with that last part.”

Emma’s face flushed a pale pink.
“Which one—the short guy with the beard?”

Bree shook her head. “Nope, I’m
talking about the tall drink of water with the huge pecs and the Semper Fi tattoo
on his arm.”

The pale pink on Emma’s face
brightened to cherry red. “Oh,
him
!” she gushed. “Now there’s a flawless
specimen of manliness! If I wasn’t married, I would’ve climbed that tree all
night!”

As I sipped my coffee and listened
to my friends banter about the previous evening, I thought about Robert. Since
the day we met at one of Emma’s Super Bowl parties, he’d been my best friend,
my knight in shining armor, my sounding board for decisions both big and small.
The shock of seeing him the day before with a stranger dressed in slinky
lingerie had rocked my foundation. But the more I thought about the startling
images, the more I also reflected on his voice during our brief phone call the night
before. He’d sounded like the man I loved, the man I trusted, the man I
believed with all my heart. The jarring conflict between the inexplicable scene
I’d witnessed in our living room and the loving man I’d heard on the phone made
my head spin even more.

“Penny for your thoughts,” Bree
said, leaning in and lowering her voice. “Are you thinking about what I think
you’re thinking about?”

I turned and smiled. “What else?”

She put one hand on my arm. “It’s
going to be okay, Abby. Your heart will guide you in the right direction.”

“I hope so,” I said hesitantly.
“It’s the first time in our marriage that I’ve had any doubts about Robert.”

Her face brightened with a wide
smile. “That’s a good sign,” she said.

I shook my head. “A good sign?”

“At least I think it is,” she said.
“I mean, you guys have been married for six years, right?”

I nodded silently.

“And you were engaged for a year
before that?”

I answered with another nod.

“Well, if whatever happened
yesterday was the first time Robert…” Her face froze for a brief moment as she
tried to think of what should follow. “Uh, the first time he did anything like
that,” she continued, “then maybe you can forgive him.”

“Forgive him?”

Bree squeezed my arm. “Yeah,
forgive and forget, right?”

“But it was such a shock,” I protested.
“And the look on that woman’s face was cold and calculating.”

Bree sampled her coffee and dabbed
her lips with a napkin. “Well, whatever they were planning to do,” she said,
“you put an end to it.”

“I suppose so.”

“Have you talked to him since then?”

I smiled. “He called yesterday
before we went to dinner.”

She raised one eyebrow. “And? What
did he have to say for himself?”

“He told me that he’d never seen
the blonde before. He claimed she just showed up unannounced, rang the bell and
pushed her way into the house after he answered the door.”

“Do you believe him?”

I thought about the question. I’d
been asking myself the same thing for hours.
How could my loving husband
cheat on me? Who was the blonde stranger in the scanty outfit? And why did she
glare at me as if she had a vendetta to settle?

“Abby?”

Bree’s voice cut into my muddled
thoughts. I pressed my lips into a smile and locked my eyes on her. “Sorry
about that,” I offered.

She gave my arm another squeeze. “You’re
not going to enjoy the weekend if you keep drifting in and out of worrying
about Robert.”

“I know. But it’s hard not to.”

“They’re going to start in a couple
of minutes,” Emma said, leaning in. “What are you two whispering about?”

“What else?” I said, rolling my
eyes. “My cheating husband and the blonde strumpet.”

“Forgot about those two losers!”
Emma chimed in a silly voice. “You’re here with us now, baby! And we’re not
going to let anything bad happen to you!”

I smirked. “Don’t you mean anything
else
bad? Did you forget about the threats I received yesterday?”

The cheerful expression on her face
quivered and she blinked away the gaffe. “Of course, Abs. I didn’t forget. I’m
just trying to help.”

The sudden flash of anger and
disappointment that I’d felt melted away when I saw the look of remorse on her
face. Even though my heart was now skittering in my chest again, I forced a
smile and apologized to Emma for the outburst.

“It’s okay,” she murmured. “You’re
under a lot of unexpected stress after the thing with Robert and the creepy threats.”

Bree echoed the sentiment. “Lots of
stress,” she said quietly. “And we both get it, Abs. We know what it’s like to
have a lot on the line and feel that the whole world is caving in.”

The comment seemed misplaced.
Unless they’d both been hiding something, I’d never heard Emma or Bree confess
that their husbands had been unfaithful—or even come as close to it as Robert
did in our living room the previous morning.

“What are you talking about?” I
asked.

Bree frowned. “We’re on your side,
Abby. Don’t get so defensive.”

“I’m not,” I said. “I just don’t
know how you two can pretend you’ve been through anything like this before. I
mean, your marriages are perfect, right? Aren’t both of your husbands truthful
and loyal?”

Emma leaned forward and nodded at
Bree. Then she put one arm around my shoulders.

“Take a deep breath, Abs,” she said
softly. “We’re not the enemy. We’re your friends.”

Between the warm hug and the kind
words, I suddenly realized how ridiculous I sounded. We’d been closer than
sisters for years, and I felt silly to be lashing out at the very moment they
were offering support and encouragement.

“I’m sorry you guys,” I said in a
shaky voice. “I guess this whole thing has got me more rattled than I knew.”

Emma tightened her hug and Bree
took my hand.

“Remember what I always say,” Bree
whispered in my ear. “Together forever—through thick and thin!”