Free Polished Off by Lila Dare

talk about.” Her gaze fixed on Beauty, who was stalking the shadow of a leaf skipping across the wood floor as the breeze swayed the tree limbs outside the salon.
    I didn’t doubt that, but I did doubt her story. I didn’t want to—I’d known Stella for almost fifteen years, ever since she came to work for my mom—but something about her airy tone and the way she wasn’t meeting our eyes made me wonder if she was telling the whole truth. I let it go, but part of me couldn’t help wondering who she was protecting—herself or Darryl?

Chapter Eight

    MOM TOOK STELLA INTO THE KITCHEN AT THE BACK of the house for another cup of tea and a tête à tête, as my favorite author, Georgette Heyer, would have said. As best as I could gather, that meant a quiet one-on-one conversation. Left alone with Althea, I finished sweeping and got to work dusting the wooden blinds. Althea rearranged the display of skin-care products, Althea’s Organic Skin Solutions, moisturizers, masks, and cleansers from her family’s recipes that she’d used for years as an aesthetician but had only gotten around to packaging and marketing last month. Setting the last violet-capped bottle in place, she turned to me with her hands on her hips.
    “I assume you’re going to nose around, find out who really killed this Faye woman?”
    “It’s a police—”
    “Fah. Don’t try to pull the wool over my eyes, baby-girl. You know and I know that you could no more leave Stella swinging in the wind than you could design a rocket ship. What are we going to do first?”
    “We?”
    She looked down her nose at me and I caved. She was right: I had been thinking about doing a bit of investigating, not so much because I didn’t trust the GBI to find the killer but because of the rumors that would spread while they plodded through their procedures. If word got around that Stella was a murder suspect, people would remember that a long time past when the real killer was convicted and stowed in a jail cell.
    “All right, all right. Since I’m working at the beauty pageant anyway, I thought I’d talk to some of the girls, find out if they saw anything. And I also want to follow up on some of the incidents Audrey talked about. Maybe her assistant, Jodi, knows more about that. If you get a chance, maybe after work, you could hook up with the protestors and find out what they’re all about.”
    Althea didn’t respond and I turned to look at her. She looked uncharacteristically unsure of herself, pulling at a fraying thread on her cuff. “I don’t know if I can do that,” she said finally.
    “Well, okay,” I said, puzzled. “Maybe you could talk—”
    “It’s because of Kwasi.”
    “Your boyfriend? You don’t think he’d like you hanging out with the protestors? They don’t seem violent or anything.”
    “Of course he’s not violent,” she snapped.
    “ He’s not—” I stopped. Dr. Yarrow was Kwasi. Her boyfriend was the protestors’ ringleader. No wonder she’d gotten all stiff and huffy and run off immediately after the protestors invaded the pageant. I wondered if she’d known he’d be there. It didn’t seem like it. I couldn’t think what to say so I blurted the first thing that came to mind. Always a mistake. “I didn’t think he’d be so young.”
    Her brown eyes darkened as she glared at me. “I’m too old for him, is that what you’re saying?”
    “No,” I said. “I just didn’t know—” I stopped before I could say something else stupid. The age difference had startled me, although he was probably only six or eight years younger than Althea. A moment’s reflection told me my reaction was hypocritical; if he were older than Althea I wouldn’t have blinked an eye. “He seems very . . . committed to his cause,” I offered.
    Althea’s glare faded. “He’s a passionate man,” she agreed. A slight smile played around her lips and I got the feeling she was referring to more than his political opinions. I knew