However, that’s the moment Sally finally chimed in. “Don’t talk like that, Margot! She’s dead, for God’s sake,” she warned with a fierce tone, her green eyes flashing disapproval. “Talking like that is a great way to get in deeper with the cops.”
Margot rolled her eyes at Sally and made a face. “Mitzy, Mitzy, Mitzy, y’all! I’m sick to death of hearin’ her name! Even dead she’s still torturing me. She was a horrible person, and you know it, Sally. Look at what she did to you!”
Sally crossed her arms over her chest, her chin-length bob swinging forward. “Oh, I know what she allegedly did to me, Margot. Believe me, I know. It was all over the YT for months. But that’s not the point, girl. She can’t do those things anymore because she’s dead. Dead! And you’d better stop going around living in your truth or you’re going to need bail money!” she hollered into the chilly night so loud, the bouncers looked over at us.
Margot crossed her arms over her chest in a defensive gesture. “Oh, please. It’s not like I could lie, Sally. They have all the emails between me and Mitzy. The one where I told her I hated her ugly, mean guts and I couldn’t wait until my contract with her was up this summer. The one where I called her a tyrant for making me come in to work after I’d been up all night with Kenny.”
“Kenny?” I asked without meaning to, rubbing my arms because I, too, was beginning to get cold.
Sally looked at me, her small eyes and piercing gaze glittering. “That’s one of her cats. Her cat got sick, and she had to take him into an emergency vet. Margot had been there all night long and she was bone tired. But Mitzy didn’t care. She had prize winners’ packages that she claimed had to go out that day no matter what. Mitzy was awful, for sure. She was a horrible boss, but she didn’t deserve to die, Margot.”
Margot ran a hand through her shiny hair. “I didn’t say she deserved to die, bless her heart. I said I hated her and I couldn’t wait to get away from her. But I foolishly signed a contract, and my parole hearing wasn’t until summer.”
“Parole?” Julie squeaked, her eyes going wide.
“It’s a metaphor, Julie,” Margot remarked dryly, pushing her hair behind her shoulder in a huff. “I felt like I was in prison because my contract wasn’t done until this summer. But now I’m free as a bird.”
Mitzy was sounding more and more like a real treat to work for. There hadn’t been a fond memory from anyone at this point. Surely Tansy saw that? They had more motive for murder than motive had motive.
Tucking my purse under my arm, I decided it was now or never. “How did you come to work for Mitzy, Margot?”
“We went to college for a coupla semesters together. Neither one of us knew what we wanted to do, but we both loved makeup. We used to watch YouTube videos all the time instead of attending classes—something I sorely regret now, because who’s gonna hire an assistant with only makeup and lip gloss on her pathetic resume? Anyway, she was always better at it ‘n me, so she used me as her guinea pig to practice.”
I nodded my head in understanding. “So, I suppose you were fans of Alma and some of the older gurus? Someone told me Alma was the OG on the YT, and Mitzy sort of usurped her.” (Phew. Look at me use the lingo. Stand back and watch me work.)
Her snort was sardonic, her gaze faraway as she appeared to stare at the trees across the street, bending in the wind. “We sure were, and she sure did. It was just before she became a limelight monster. Well, before she became a monster to me, anyway. She was never very nice to other people unless she needed somethin’, and I didn’t realize that until I found out what she needed me for.”
“Meaning?”
“Tech,” she said quite plainly. “I had somethin’ she wanted. I might not be as gifted at makeup, but I knew how to make a decent enough video and upload it, create graphics…you name it, I did it. Anyway, she left college and took me with her to LA with a bunch of bogus promises and we’ve been doing this ever since. And with every single month, with every sponsorship she nabbed, with every million-dollar deal she made, the more egotistical she got…the more arrogant, greedier, until I couldn’t take it anymore, y’all. Swear, I thought my head would explode.
“So I sent her an email and told her to stuff it right up the wazoo and the second my contract was up, I was out. I’m goin’ back to Nashville where my family lives. Where real people with real lives and my real friends live. I hate phony LA, and I hated Mitzy, and there’s no point in lyin’ about it now.”
Wow. I sure hadn’t planned on hearing that.
“And you told the police about all this?” I asked, adding as much disbelief as I could to my tone of voice.
Margot popped her icy-pink lips. “Yep. Like I said, what was the point of lyin’? They were gonna check her emails. I’m sure of it. People in the industry knew she treated me like her handmaid. They’d heard us argue all the time. So what was the point in not tellin’ them? If they were going to pin this on me, at least I told them everything before they found it themselves. I’m an open book.”
“So the police think she was murdered?” I said on a gasp I summoned from deep within.
Margot shook her head and stubbed out her cigarette with a shrug of her shoulders. “I don’t know. All they did was question me until my eyes crossed, and I did what I should have done. I
