And I said as much, maybe a little too defensively. “While I do love a good mystery, I don’t want you thinking I’m sitting around just hoping for someone to kick the bucket so I can fumble my way through a murder investigation only to find myself in a precarious position while I’m held at gunpoint.”
Higgs chuckled and leaned into me, his cologne light and fresh. “Aw, c’mon. You didn’t fumble. I think faltered is a better word. And listen, I’m an ex-cop and I still didn’t figure it out. I mean, I was trained to figure stuff like that out, and I didn’t figure it out.”
I snorted and grinned. “I like your version of the story better. And all joking aside…I don’t know that there’s any other explanation for what happened to Mitzy. If it’s not murder then it’s sure a lot of coincidences rolled into a package that looks very much like murder.”
Higgs held out his arm and smiled that heart-stopping smile of his. “Then let’s go investigate a maybe-murder, Sister Trixie.”
Chapter 4
The next day, I sat at my desk at the shop and yawned as I looked through old tweets from Alma, Margot, Mitzy, Ames, and Octavia, and that was only the beginning of the list of people who weren’t too fond of Mitzy and had been involved in a Twitter war of some kind with her.
We’d gotten in at three in the morning once all the questioning was over (after Nikki’s outburst, no one would talk to me, as hard as I tried to convince them I had no authority to arrest anyone), and everyone had packed up and gone home. But Coop had refused to leave until she saw Mitzy’s body respectfully taken from the hall and sent off to the coroner’s.
Poor Coop. She’d been so torn up over Mitzy’s death, there was no way I was going to leave her there alone, but these days, I’m finding I need a solid eight hours of shuteye or I’m a little cranky. I’d offered to give Coop the day off, but she’d shook her head in firm negative fashion.
She said there was no way she was going to disappoint her clients just because she’d been out until the cows came home. That wasn’t how a responsible working girl behaved. I had to admire her grit because I wished I’d given myself the day off.
I was having trouble keeping my eyes open as I scrolled timelines and tried to decipher what some of the words they used meant.
“Aye, what are they sayin’ on the Twitters, Trixie?” Livingston asked from his perch above my desk as he rolled his head, his glassy eyes focused on my laptop. “And what in the Emerald Isle does clapback mean, and why are they doing it on the Twitter?”
Leaning on the heel of my hand, I shook my head in confusion. “I have no clue, my friend. What I can tell you is, a lot of people hashtag stan Mitzy and far less people hashtag stan Alma with this particular argument they had back in November over a poor review Mitzy gave to yet another makeup guru’s eyeshadow palette. Um, the recipient of the poor review is Mixin’ Vixen, a.k.a Sally Mixon, and her palette called Viva La Vixen. Apparently, Mitzy didn’t like it.” I fought another loud yawn. “What do you suppose stan means, Livingston?”
He twittered on his perch, his feathers ruffling, and clucked his tongue. “I tell ya, Trixie doll, I don’ understand a ting the kids say these days on the social medias. But I did know a Stan once. Fine fella, he was. Dated my sister—”
“It means they’re obsessed with a person, Trixie,” Jeff said from his dog bed on the floor beside my desk. I was babysitting today while Higgs took some of the men from the shelter to a transitioning seminar.
I scrunched up my face in confusion. “Obsessed? As in, these fans with the hashtag ‘stan Mitzy’ are obsessed with her choice to say she didn’t like the palette?”
What?
Jeff stretched his paws upward and repositioned himself in his fluffy bed. “Uh, yup. Sort of. It’s kind of like ride or die, but really it’s just slang for someone who’s basically overenthusiastic about a celebrity and everything that celebrity does is golden as far as they’re concerned. Wicked, right?”
I chewed on the tip of my pen. “It makes no sense to be obsessed and consider that some kind of support, but okay. I’ll take your word for it. So there were several arguments and thousands of tweets from fans who stan—or is it stanned?—Mitzy. Then Mixin’ Vixen got involved and told her fans it was okay if Mitzy didn’t like her palette, and that everyone was entitled to their opinion, even if it was wrong. Which is very adult of her, compared to some of these tweets. But that only made Mitzy’s fans come harder for Mixin’ Vixen.” I paused a moment as my eyes widened. “And holy crow, some of the GIFs attached to the tweets are just dreadful.”
The Internet was a scary place where you couldn’t see your foe and they could say whatever they wanted without fear of face-to-face confrontation.
I looked up the word stan and, according to Google, it was a combination of stalker and fan, and Jeff was right. It did mean someone who was overly obsessed with a celebrity.
Jeff sat up and looked at me, cocking his sweet ears. “Why are you even lookin’ at all that, Trixie? You said no one called that lady’s death a murder yet. Maybe you’re puttin’ the cart before the horse here?” he asked with his light Bostonian accent, which Higgs was still trying to acclimate to.
We’d left the hall last night defeated, with no answers to any of our questions. For instance, who’d locked Mitzy’s volunteers in what we’d found out was indeed a janitor’s closet? Who’d stolen the
