Free Frosted Shadow, a Toni Diamond Mystery: Toni Diamond Mysteries by Nancy Warren

was the living proof.”
    “It’s hard to picture you dirt poor.”
    “I was a kid in the 1980s. The biggest shows on television were Dallas and Dynasty and we didn’t have a TV. I used to sneak to my friend Jo-Jo’s house and watch that life I knew I wanted. I fell in love right then and there with glamorous people and clothes and I vowed to myself that I was gonna be one of ‘em. Them.” She shook her head. “I get talking about the old days and I start talking white trash which was the official language of my childhood.”
    “Looks like you got your wish.”
    “Yes, sir, I did. I got it by working hard and selling a product I believe in. I’ve also helped a goodly number of women set up their own independent businesses. I’m real proud of my team.”
    “You’re selling me all right. But everybody in your organization isn’t as ethical as you are. I checked out some websites.”
    The look she sent him was far from apologetic. “Lady Bianca is a big organization. Sometimes the wrong people join up. Are you going to tell me that every police officer in the country is perfect, law abiding and honest?”
    His face registered surprise as he glanced at her. It was a look she’d been getting since she’d first grown breasts and dyed her hair blond. The kind of look Marilyn Monroe might have received if she’d opened her mouth and expounded a new theory of quantum physics.
    “I take your point.”
    She accelerated smoothly around a U-haul truck. “I help women look better and that makes them feel good about themselves. If you ask me, happy people have less reason to commit crime.”
    “Oh, come on.”
    “Look, I’m not pretending I can cure cancer or solve world hunger or fix that whole global warming thing. But if I make someone feel better about themselves maybe that gives them a little more confidence to get out there and do those things. We are also a very green company,” she told him. “I’m sure you noticed the minimal packaging, no extra boxes or cellophane and every one of our containers is recyclable. And, as I keep telling Tiffany, we also use natural ingredients grown and harvested in a sustainable manner.”
    “It would be greener if everybody stopped wearing make up.”
    She glanced at him from under her lashes. “Now you’re just being silly.”

Chapter Nine
     
    I have always a sacred veneration for anyone I observe to be a little out of repair in his person, as supposing him either a poet or a philosopher. — Jonathon Swift
     
     
    “Well, I’ll be damned,” Luke said as they walked into the hotel to find the day’s electronic message board had changed. The Lady Bianca convention still held top billing, but the area toastmasters were gone. In their place were two new groups -- a medical equipment sales seminar in the Getty Ballroom and, lo and behold, Mystery Readers of America registration and opening banquet in the Cactus room.
    Toni paused beside him. “A mystery readers’ convention. What do you bet Violet was here to attend that?” Satisfaction spiked like a tiny fist punching the air, Yes!
    He nodded, still staring at the board.
    “It makes sense that she was a bookworm. She looked like a teacher or librarian, didn’t she? The clothes, the Birkenstocks, the ink between her fingers. And she named herself after a Holmes character.”
    He stuck his hand in his pocket and jingled the change in there. “Then the bookworm had a makeover. She said because she had a date.”
    “Which suggests she was trying to impress. First date, maybe.”
    She cast her mind back to the image of the woman’s dead body on the gurney and the picture came through as clear as though she’d snapped a photo.
    “She wasn’t wearing a wedding ring, unless that Celtic design was one, which I doubt.”
    “Think I’ll check out the Cactus Ballroom.”
    “Sorry you wasted your time today,” she said, feeling anything but sorry. She was still sad the poor woman had been murdered but it was nice