Authors: Nancy Warren
Tags: #A Toni Diamond Comic Murder Mystery, #Book 2
Ultimate Concealer, A Toni Diamond Mystery: A Toni Diamond Mystery (Toni Diamond Mysteries)
Ultimate Concealer
A Toni Diamond Mystery
Book Two
By
Nancy Warren
Ultimate Concealer
A Toni Diamond Mystery: Book Two
Copyright © 2014 Nancy Weatherley Warren
All rights reserved
Discover other titles by Nancy Warren at
These stories are works of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Cover Design by Kim Killion
Contents
Dedication
Ultimate Concealer
is dedicated to my dear friend and fellow writer Gordon Kirkland. Gordon and I bonded over cream puff swans and really, it’s gone downhill from there. His crazy wit and devious plot ideas have saved me on many occasions. Including this one. You wouldn’t be reading
Ultimate Concealer
if Gordon hadn’t come up with the genius plot twist that I, of course, will take credit for.
Thanks for everything, old friend. Since I began this book, Gordon’s faced death, received a last minute liver transplant, and is now unstoppable. You can’t keep a good man down.
Thanks also to Colleen Collins and her husband Shaun for insights into the PI biz and Nevada law. They are a class act and the duo behind The Zen Man series. Finally, thanks to Belinda Wilson an Independent Beauty Consultant who gave me some makeup pointers and to Judy deVries for her excellent proof reading. I’m also grateful to my street team for being AMAZING. I’m grateful every day for your support and help. Thank you, all.
Nancy
Chapter One
“There are no ugly women; only lazy ones.”
— Helena Rubinstein
“If I put on enough makeup, I feel like I’m someone else,” Donna Ray Atkins said. “But then, when you work on a pig farm, you usually want to look like someone else.”
Donna Ray’s smiling face came through on Toni Diamond’s computer screen along with the faces of the other five members of her top tier sales team. As Independent Beauty Consultants for the Lady Bianca line of cosmetics, each of these women was as important to Toni’s business success as she was to theirs.
She loved the video conferencing technology that allowed her to talk to her team each week from the comforts of their own homes. She used this time to pump up the team, to strategize ways to boost sales and to hang out with women she liked.
“I feel like I am showing the best me I can be,” Suzanne Mireille said, the slight French lilt in her voice adding drama to her words.
Toni wrote the comments down in her notebook, thinking she might make up some slogan cards for her girls.
“I put my Lady Bianca makeup on in the morning, then I look at my face in the mirror and I see success!” Ruth Collier chimed in. A retired school teacher, Ruth was making more money in her second career than she had in her first.
“I love that,” Toni said. “You are so right.” She sat in the home office of the house she’d bought herself thanks to her success selling cosmetics for Lady Bianca. “And speaking of success,” she said as she leaned forward, closer to the screen. “The monthly sales report is in.” She pumped her fist in the air. “We beat our sales targets for the month, sold a higher volume than last month. Once again, we are the top sales team in Texas.”
Toni didn’t think of herself as a ruthless woman, but rather that success floated all boats. And the better other sales teams performed, the more inspired she and her sales associates became, spurred on to offer a few more free facials and makeovers to their friends, family, colleagues and women in the grocery store. However, she wasn’t above a little fist pumping in the privacy of her own office and with her own team.
She also wasn’t above using the fresh information as inspiration to her girls, the sales recruits she’d brought into the business. She loved every one of them, and she loved their success. Of course, each tube of lipstick and each pot of face cream that they sold not only netted them a commission, but also brought Toni a tiny scoop of the gravy as their sales director. A lot of small commissions could certainly add up.
When she finished the conference, she sent an immediate email blast to every sales rep in her region. “Hey, girls! We are slicker than this season’s Berry Parfait Lip Gloss. Our team is number one again this month. Congrats to all of you for your hard work. I love you! Toni.”
“I love you? You have got to be kidding,” a bored and cynical teenage voice drawled behind her right shoulder.
Toni’s perfectly manicured hand flapped to her chest, a flash of sparkle from the diamond rings on her fingers sparkling in her peripheral vision. “Oh, my goodness, Tiff, you startled me.” She turned to glance at her sixteen-year-old daughter, filled as always with a combination of love and exasperation at so much youth and beauty hidden under the scowl and black, shapeless clothing.
“Sorry, just needed to check that my gag reflex was still working.”
“I do love them,” she said. “Some of those women were struggling single moms like I used to be. I helped them find a way to look better, help other women and make money. I am proud of every one of them.”
“Yeah, yeah. I’ve heard it all before.”
Tiffany slouched to the big pink corkboard where Toni hung inspirational quotations, lists of ideas and her weekly, monthly and yearly sales targets. In the center of the board was an article she’d cut out of
Texas Today
magazine. The article was a profile of successful Texas business women. Toni was interviewed about direct selling techniques. Tiffany took one of Toni’s fake diamond-headed push pins in her black-manicured fingers and attached her own notice to the board.
“What’s that, honey?”
“An article I found on the Greenpeace website about how the chemicals in makeup are poisoning the earth.”
“You know, every month where sales are as good as this one means more money in your college fund.”
“Not going to college, Mom.”
Since Toni strongly suspected that this statement, like the Greenpeace article, was an attempt to irritate her, she bit her tongue and counted to ten. Then eleven. Twelve. At thirteen she felt calm enough to open her mouth without screaming, “Of course you’re going to college. You’re too smart and too talented not to.” Tiffany could claim she wasn’t going to college, but her grade point average argued otherwise.
Instead she said, “Well, if you don’t go to college, I can use the money to redecorate your room. I’ll turn it into a boudoir where I’ll throw home parties and recruit new Lady Bianca reps. Yep, we’ll destroy the earth, one Fiesta Mocha eye shadow at a time.”
“Oh, Mother.”
Toni swiveled away from the computer. “Why don’t you and I go shopping? We haven’t gone for ages. We could check out the new summer fashions. Maybe get your hair cut?”
“Can’t. I’m meeting Tish and Jenn. We’re doing a project for the enviro club. Can I borrow the car?”
“The car?” Toni opened her eyes so wide her mascara-coated lashes poked her upper eyelids. “What about global warming?”
Her daughter’s voice dripped disdain. “We’re, like, carpooling.”
Toni knew her daughter had been well-trained behind the wheel. She’d paid for the driver’s ed courses. But it was still difficult for her to hand over the sparkly key chain without a pang. “Drive carefully, okay? Don’t let those girls talk you into anything foolish.”
“Nah. We won’t get wasted until after the meeting.” Then she cracked the grin that always melted Toni’s heart, and left.
Toni brewed herself a cup of coffee in the single-brew machine she’d won for hitting the top sales mark in her region last quarter. She knew herbal tea was better for her health and her skin, but she’d accepted long ago that she was never going to be perfect. She was doing the best she could.
She carried the hot, steaming brew up to her office and resettled herself at her desk. She took another moment to stare lovingly at the excellent sales numbers. When she checked her email she wasn’t at all surprised to find that most of her team had responded to her message with enthusiastic congratulations and excitement. Of course, the fact that they’d all answered their emails so fast suggested that they were also working on a sunny Saturday, one of the reasons why her team did so well.
Knowing that if she spent too long gloating over last month’s results she’d waste this month, she closed the window and began strategizing on ways to market the newest line of lip glosses. It seemed to Toni that these would interest young mothers. “Little League,” she mumbled as she made some notes for herself. “Must infiltrate Little League.”
Her phone rang.
Immediately, before picking up, Toni swiped fresh lipstick over her mouth, inhaled positive energy and smiled. Whoever was on the other end of her phone could without doubt use a makeover, would like to host a home party, or, even better, wanted to sell Lady Bianca cosmetics.
“Hello,” she said in her most welcoming tone. “Toni Diamond speaking.”
“And don’t you sound as pretty as a summer’s day,” a deep, sexy male voice replied.
Her smile fell off her face and dread clenched her stomach. “Who is this?”
“Oh, honey, don’t you know?”
She did, of course, but she willed the caller to be a telephone marketer, a politician fishing for votes, an obscene caller. Anyone but—
“Your own husband?” His voice was still warm and sexy. A woman could lose herself in Dwayne Diamond’s voice — and many a woman had — only to find herself abandoned when something newer and shinier came along.
“You haven’t been my husband for sixteen years, Dwayne.” He’d left her shortly after their daughter was born. Besides their daughter, the only thing he’d left her with was his fancy last name.
In a second she was plunged back to those early months after he’d left. She’d had no money, no skills. Barely more than a child herself, she’d had to figure out how to raise a baby on her own, keep some kind of roof over their heads and pay for food. She’d done it, too. Stubborn pride and a desperate need to keep her baby safe and healthy had driven her. Her mother had helped out where she could, but Toni had refused to become that sad cliché, the teenaged single mom living in her own mother’s basement. Besides, her mom didn’t have a basement. She lived in a trailer.
When a well-dressed woman had offered the young Toni a makeover while she picked over bruised apples in a discount supermarket, she couldn’t have known then that she was Toni’s fairy godmother, but so it had turned out.
Toni had embraced Lady Bianca and home sales with an energy that came partly from need and partly from discovering that she was a natural born saleswoman. She loved people, she loved makeup and she really, really loved watching her income increase from a few dollars that first month to more than a hundred the second month.
She was on her way.
“Doesn’t mean I don’t still care about you.”
And no two-bit charmer was going to hurt her now. “What do you want, Dwayne?”
“I wanted to congratulate you, honey. I got this here glossy magazine in front of me, and it says you’re a real successful business woman.” Her smile might have dropped to the floor but his was plastered all over his face. She could hear it oozing over the phone line, as fake as his protestations of love had been.