“Hold on to your weave there, queen,” Alma Zon drawled in her southern accent as she, too, leapt from her chair and held up a long-fingered hand under Susie’s nose. “It’s not like y’all were BFFs, girl. So, please. Stop. You hated Mitzy. In fact, wasn’t it you who just the other night told me you hated her so much, you wished both her and her obnoxious squee would fall off the face of the Earth? I mean, she did steal your man, didn’t she? And now look. She’s dead. Irony much?” Alma cocked her head and popped her lips for emphasis.
Which only made Susie angrier. She looked around at the restaurant’s few patrons, her cheeks flaming bright red, rivaling the color of her lipstick.
“Shut up, Alma! You’re old news, you stage-five clinger!” she seethed, before she grabbed her clutch and ran from the restaurant on very high heels with red bottoms.
Everyone at the table, sat very still, no one saying a word.
I know this is going to sound horrible, because Susie was in quite a state, but if I was going to do this, now was the time. I had to figure this out for Coop. I had to know if Mitzy had been murdered. It was enough that Coop was disillusioned, I didn’t want her to forever wonder if there was a killer on the loose that remained at large, free to live their life without punishment.
Tapping Higgs’s arm, I motioned for him to let me out. “I’m going to see if I can catch up with Susie. I won’t be long, but for Coop’s sake, I can’t let this go. Don’t eat my fries, mister.”
Higgs jumped up, and I slipped out of the booth and virtually ran as fast as I could to catch up with Susie, to see her pushing her way into the ladies’ room.
Taking a deep breath, I stared at the white oak door before I pushed my way in, too, only to find her hovering over the pristine gold sink, crying.
Crying so hard, her shoulders shook and fat droplets of water fell to the counter beneath her hands.
Well, dang it all. How could I possibly wiggle info out of her when she was so miserable?
No one appeared to be in the five or so wood-faced stalls. The room was quiet but for the hum of the globe lights above the wall of mirrors and Susie’s sobs.
Pulling my purse from around my neck, I dug into it for some soft tissues. Susie didn’t appear to notice I’d entered, so I leaned up against the counter and said, “Can I offer you a tissue? The bathrooms in hotels aren’t exactly known for their luxury paper products.”
She looked up for only a minute, her makeup streaked under her eyes (obviously, she didn’t prime!), to take the tissues, and then she looked away in clear embarrassment, pressing the wad of tissues to her nose.
“Tha…thank you,” she said on a shuddered breath, tucking her gorgeous mane of hair back from her face.
Looking at her flawless reflection in the mirror, I asked, “Are you all right? Should I get someone for you?”
When she finally focused her eyes on me, she blew out a breath. “You’re the lady from the restaurant, right?”
Caught.
I think I blanched a little, at least the mirror I was staring into said as much. There was no point in lying, so I confessed. “I am.”
“I’m really sorry that sniveling brat interrupted your meal.”
I thought it odd she considered Ames a sniveling brat, a term mostly used to describe someone much younger than yourself. She didn’t appear much older than Ames, and I thought Coop told me he was only twenty-one. Susie didn’t look a day over twenty-five herself, but it made me wonder how old she truly was.
“He’d had quite a bit to drink. I’m not surprised he was behaving poorly,” I soothed. “Alcohol doesn’t always bring out the best in everyone.”
Susie snorted with derision, flipping the bronzed tap on. “The booze doesn’t matter in his case. Sober or not, he always behaves badly because he can and no one tells him he can’t. He does it because it looks good on Snapchat, and TikTok, and his Insta page. But your insanely gorgeous friend was right. He’s an entitled, spoiled brat who seems to think everyone should bow down to him because he’s a YouTube sensation. What he fails to realize is real live adults, people who live in the real live world, don’t always have cameras stuck up their noses and most of them have no clue who he is.”
“But he’s not as big a sensation as Mitzy? Is that maybe a reason for his discontent?”
Her eyes went wide, then narrowed in suspicion. “So you do know who we are?” Then she huffed. “That sounds ridiculously pretentious, doesn’t it? God, even I sound full of myself. Ugh! It’s disgusting. I hate it, and I hate them!” She wiped at her arms as though she’d somehow be able to wipe away her self-loathing.
I kept my voice calm and my face as unreadable and nonreactive as possible. “I was at the event the night Mitzy died, and I helped the police once they arrived. I was there with my friend, attending Mitzy’s meet and greet. So yes, I do know who you are, Susie, and it doesn’t sound pretentious at all. Though, I confess, I only know more about you all than the average Joe because that gorgeous creature you mentioned, who held Ames hostage, is a huge fan of you and Mitzy and your world.”
Susie’s face distorted in disgust as she rolled her big brown eyes. “She shouldn’t be a fan of any of us. We’re horrible people who stab each other in the back over eyeshadow. Eyeshadow. Does it get any shallower than that?”
To diffuse her mounting hysteria, I stuck my hand
