“Are there customers in here?” I asked.
Beth turned and peered down the aisles from where she stood at the register. “A few down in the travel section. Why?”
I walked toward her. “I need your help.” I set my things on the counter, dug into the plastic bag, and held up a bottle of concealer. “I don’t know how to put this on.”
Beth eyed the makeup with a glimmer of distain. “Do I look like the sort of old broad who wears concealer? I worked for these age spots.”
“Just help me,” I protested. “My face is bruised and I want to cover it.”
She snatched the bottle. “This is about half a dozen shades too dark for your complexion, Sebby.”
“What?”
“And to cover a bruise, you’ll need more than—” She shook her head when she paused to stare at the makeup again. “A $4.99 bottle of CVS brand liquid concealer. Good grief.” She took the plastic bag and looked inside. “Is that the only one you bought?” Beth removed a box of condoms and tin of cinnamon mints. She held them both up and gave me the hairy eyeball. “Really?”
“Calvin’s almost out of mints,” I replied.
She jiggled the condom box.
“Please stop waving that around.”
Beth rolled her eyes and shoved them back into the bag. “Your priorities are something else.”
I snatched the concealer and stared hard at it. “So this won’t work?”
“No. Unless you want a giant brown smudge on your face and makeup-caked whiskers.”
“Great.”
Beth tossed the bottle into the waste bin for me. “Been sleuthing, have you?”
“Not really.”
“Liar.”
“Only a little. But it’s regarding that film from Tuesday, so I’m not meddling in police business.”
“Then why have there been cops outside your store all day?”
“The window got shot out,” I said, maybe a bit too calmly.
“That was next door?” she protested. “Holy hell! I thought it came from down the street!”
I shook my head.
“So…why?” Beth put her hands on the counter and leaned forward.
“Someone—” I looked over my shoulder to make sure the future vacationers hadn’t moved close enough to overhear. “Someone stole that footage from my shop and a teenager was found dead in our dumpster. I think whoever did those acts tried to scare me this morning into handing over more footage.”
“D-did you?” Beth asked, stumbling over her words.
“I didn’t have anythingtohand over,” I replied. “But afterward—”
Wait a minute.
Wait a damn minute.
Calvin might have been right. Fuck!
