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“Just let him know I have some information about the Jeffrey Sellers murder investigation.”
She made a clicking sound with her tongue, and told me she needed to put me on hold for a minute. Less than thirty seconds later, Henry’s voice came through my iPhone’s speaker.
“What’s this about, Selena?”
“I think I might have cracked the case,” I said. “You need to stay on the phone and listen, and then decide if you need to intervene.”
“‘Intervene’?” he repeated, sounding incredulous. “What are you talking about?”
“Just listen,” I told him. “But don’t say anything, or you’re going to blow the whole thing.”
After delivering that command, I slid the phone into my skirt pocket rather than returning it to my purse, since I figured the lightweight fabric of my skirt wouldn’t muffle my conversation with Melanie the way hiding in a compartment in my purse might. Doing my best to act calm, I got out of my car, locked it, and then came in through the little back lobby and into Once in a Blue Moon.
Everything seemed quiet enough, with only the faint New Age music I always had playing in the store’s background to break up the stillness. If there were any customers, they must have been silently browsing rather than asking Melanie for help.
In fact, when I moved past the door to the stockroom and the bathroom, it was to find the shop completely empty except for my assistant, who was scrolling through something on her phone.
Irritation stabbed through me. How typical that she’d be on her phone as soon as I wasn’t around to supervise.
Almost immediately, I told myself not to be an idiot, that Melanie’s job performance was pretty far down the list of things I needed to be worrying about right now.
As I stared at her, though, I realized she looked different. About a second later, my brain cells kicked in, and I knew exactly why.
I was seeing her aura.
It was a murky brownish red, like soil soaked with blood. Here and there were flashes of brighter red and an extremely unpleasant dark yellow that reminded me of the crust that formed on a mustard bottle when it hadn’t been wiped down properly.
If that wasn’t the aura of a woman who’d murdered a man in cold blood, I didn’t know what was.
I didn’t have time to wonder how or why my auras had come back — had my unborn child heard my plea and decided to take pity on me? — but I decided that didn’t matter.
What mattered was that Melanie’s aura was as much a sign of her guilt as any confession could be.
However, Henry Lewis needed evidence, not auras that only I could see.
She glanced up from her phone, and her eyes widened. “Selena?” she said. “Couldn’t you find the plunger?”
“No, I found it, Melanie,” I said, clearly stating her name so Henry would know exactly who I was speaking to. “And I already took it over to Victoria’s house. But I wanted to talk to you about something else I found.”
Melanie’s expression was almost blank, as if she was doing some rapid mental calculations in order to figure out if I could have seen something incriminating at the cottage. Obviously, she could have no idea that I’d already guessed — and gotten backup from the pendulum and my Tarot cards — that Jeffrey Sellers’ murderer was blonde, and therefore that the box of L’Óreal hair dye in her trash was a lot more suspicious than she could have known.
“I was in a rush when I left the house this morning,” she said. “So I didn’t have time to put my breakfast dishes away. I wasn’t aware Hazel had a problem with her guests not keeping everything perfect all the time.”
A definite snotty note had crept into Melanie’s tone, something I hadn’t yet heard from her. Of course not — she’d been pretending to be all sweetness and light, and would have worked very, very hard to keep me from learning anything about her true personality.
Honestly, I hadn’t even gone near the kitchen, so I couldn’t really comment on its cleanliness…or lack thereof.
“No, that’s not it,” I said. “It’s about that box of hair dye I found in the bathroom.”
“So?” she returned, the challenge clear in her voice. “I wasn’t aware it was against the law to color your hair.”
“It’s not,” I said coolly. “But it’s kind of a problem when you’re using it to hide your identity, to make sure no one would connect you with the blonde woman who was seen coming and going from Jeffrey Sellers’ apartment.”
For a long moment, Melanie just stared at me, her expression again almost too blank. Then she gave a forced laugh and responded, “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Selena. Are you feeling okay? Maybe you need to sit down.”
The condescension in her tone was clear. Obviously, she was trying to make me think I was some addled pregnant woman, someone who had so many hormones swirling around in her brain, she didn’t know what was going on.
Too bad she had no idea who she was dealing with.
