Free Color Me a Crime by Tonya Kappes Page B

pants. He is one not to be trusted. I follow him into the Surplus. “Is Vive here?”
    “Nope.” He shrugs. “She didn’t tell me anything but to make sure that I lock the doors.”
    Without saying a word, I turn around and walk right back out the door, heading next door to The Coffee Shop. There is no reason to go in if Vive isn’t there. Salvatore will be hanging over my shoulder watching my every move if I try to use the computer. Or, he’ll call Joel in a heartbeat.
    The freshly ground coffee beans smell waifs out of the Coffee Shop and into the alley. According to my watch, I am just in time for the beginning of the mixer, which is the most important part.
    Buddy’s aura reaction when he sees the girls for the first time, is very important in getting the pairing just right. After a few minutes, they all begin to mingle, and his aura will settle down. That will be when his true aura reading can be done.
    “Where have you been?” Erin interrogates me as I walk in the kitchen entrance. “I have been texting you all day.”
    “I had some things to do.” Avoiding eye contact, I walk around her, but she stops me.
    “Have you been working the streets?” She looks me over with a critical eye.
    “Oh, shit!” I bend down and look at myself in one of the many stainless steel industrial coffee pots and wipe my hands down my face. I totally forgot about the plaster makeup the 4Play artist had smeared all over me. “Crap, crap, crap!”
    The mascara is clumped on my lashes, top and bottom, but the red rouge is a little more rubbed in.
    “Really, Olivia.” Erin brushes her bangs out of her eyes, lines creasing her forehead as her brows dip. “What have you been up to? How can I help you if you don’t tell me?”
    Over her shoulder, through the swinging kitchen door, I can see straight into the mixer that is taking place in the shop.
    “Is that...” My mouth drops open and I point into the direction of the brunette woman I know all too well…“Vive?”
    “I need more girls.” She shrugs and her voice turns sharp. “I’m not going to be able to ward off Joel much longer.”
    I strain to see around her head, but she continues to keep getting into my face.
    “First, you disappear.” She holds up a finger, and then a second one. “Then, you show up here with all this makeup on, when you don’t ever wear makeup. And…”
    “You can’t have Vive here!” I push my way around Erin and swing the kitchen door open, just in time for Vive to jump out of the way before the door hits her square in her Italian ass.
    “Olivia,” she has a wide mouth grin and continues to chomp on her gum, and pulls me back into the kitchen, “how was the interview?”
    “Interview?” Erin steps in between us. “What interview?”
    “What’s with all that makeup?” Vive circles her long, hot pink fingernail in front of my face. “Did they think you were interviewing for a sex scene?”
    “Sex scene?” Erin cries out and all the wait staff turns to see what all the fuss is about.
    I jerk around and head right back out the door into the alley, with Vive and Erin on my heels.
    “Listen,” I shut the door behind them, making sure that it is closed. With a deep breath, I continue to tell Erin everything that Vive already knows, “I’m trying to get a job at 4Play as a custodian so I can figure out who killed Felicia.”
    “Who is Felicia?” Vive snarls, while she checks out her nails.
    “What’s 4Play?” Erin’s eyebrows dip in a frown. “Olivia?”
    “Fine.” I wave off any concern. I turn toward Vive. “Linda Minx’s real name is Felicia Evans, remember?”
    “Oh, yeah. I Forgot.” Vive wraps her gum around her finger.
    Erin gives me a look that tells me that I might be getting in way over my head.
    “I went to apply for a job at 4Play, Linda’s production company, so I can figure out who else would want to kill her besides Buddy. They mistook me for a porn star and shoved me into a scene. Needless to say,