Dial 'M' for Mascara

Dial ‘M’ for Mascara

By

C.L. Bevill

Dial ‘M’ for Mascara

Published by C.L. Bevill at Smashwords

Copyright 2010 Caren L. Bevill

Chapter One – Friday, June 17th

One must only apply black mascara for evening events and times when one will appear in shadows or in the boudoir during hot monkey loving, in which case water-proof mascara is essential. – Aunt Piadora’s Beauty Hints

Murder could be…well…murder.

It was much easier to think of murder in terms of slang. Mur-diddly-erded. Being hit. Someone going postal. Getting Kevorked. Being OJ-ed. Popped. Capped. Scrapped. Smoked. Done away with in a manner most foul.

Yes. Just a mild, insignificant, trivial case of little old murder.

At least that was what Mary Grace Castilla thought at the moment she found out that someone was trying to murder her. It was, to say the least, lots better than thinking of the alternative. Murder was such an awful utterance. The implication of it was down-right horrifying. The planning of such a vicious event was abhorrent. But the honest to god, actual occurrence was absolute abomination. Just considering the consequences brought about a modern day question: Why murder anyone in today’s society? Get a divorce. Move to Guam. Win the lottery. Walk away. Sue the sorry individual who’s the object of the declaration.

You know, get over it.

More hard-boiled synonyms inanely popped into Mary Grace’s head. Blipped off. Blowing somebody down. Snuffed. Whacked. Bopped. Bumped off. Sleeping with the fishes. Rubbed off. Chilled. Croaked. Iced. Zotzed off. Pushing up daisies. Doing a zydeco slide with the gators. An improvement of the general gene pool.

I’ve been reading way too much Dashiell Hammitt, Mary Grace observed idly, gazing at the red and blue spasmodic lights of five, count-em, five police cruisers parked in her immediate vicinity. Not only was murder murder but how many people could say they had been saved from the dreadful fate by a tube of expensive mascara? And more specifically, it was not just any mascara but an eyelash plumping, eyelash lengthening, waterproof container of instantaneous eye beauty and one for which Mary Grace had paid too much.

Mary Grace leaned back about three inches to observe her reflection in the rear-view mirror of the police cruiser that she sat inside. She’d looked at herself before. Most certainly she had many times, but never before as the object of someone’s inexplicable desire to commit homicide. Long black hair. Blue eyes. Pale skin that was paler than normal. A reddened scrape that would transform into an ugly bruise covered most of her left cheek bone.

Mary Grace pursed her lips into a crimson bow and tried to see what someone else was seeing. Her delicately shaped eyebrows arched questioningly. She had been told more than once that she was pretty. Boyfriends usually called her cute. Then they broke up with her and said they wanted to be just friends.

The small mirror didn’t reflect the rest of Mary Grace, all five-foot six inches of her and one hundred and well, let’s just say she wasn’t going to be mistaken for anyone anorexic anytime soon. However, she had good boobs. Ex-boyfriends always like her boobs. Full and perky at twenty-eight years old, Mother Nature hadn’t cursed her with the inevitable blight of gravity. She also had fairly long legs, a nicely trimmed waist, due to the persistence of daily crunches, and a nice rounded butt. It was true; Mary Grace had always liked her butt.

Cute. Perky. Big-boobed. Good butt. On the side where God put check marks for the eventual entrance into heaven, Mary Grace liked little dogs and sometimes mowed the yard for her elderly neighbors. Her mother had raised her right. Sociable and outgoing, she also got along with most people she met. She was still friends with her very first boyfriend. As a matter of fact, she had been one of the bridesmaids at his wedding three years before. Even her ex-first-boyfriend’s wife liked Mary Grace.

On the side of personal responsibility, she paid her taxes on February 1st, sometimes the 2nd depending on how the calendar fell. The IRS would have gleefully sent her a commendation for her attention to detail, if she had needed a reference. Concerning her spiritual accountability, she occasionally attended church on Sundays. And even Mary Grace knew that Father Patrick didn’t hold her occasional lapses against her. (She tithed and that was always on time.) She worked as a graphic artist, liked her job, got along well with her boss, and even competitive co-workers thought well of her.

Mary Grace could tick off point after point and she still couldn’t figure out why someone might want to kill her. Oh, she could understand if it was one of those stranger kind of serial killer things. She wouldn’t condone it, of course. If a passing psychopath saw Mary Grace, decided she looked exactly like his twisted aunt who had stuck bamboo shoots under his nails as a child, and decided to eliminate her from the face of the earth, then there was a reason. Maybe it was not logical or even remotely sane, but a reason. Likewise, if she had been attacked in a robbery attempt, there was a reason for it.

There were several typical reasons for murder. Greed, revenge, anger, and because someone else paid some jerk to do it for him or her for the before-mentioned reasons.

I just don’t get it, she thought, studying the blackened smudge on her forehead. Mary Grace just didn’t get it at all.

Even so, Mary Grace still would have thought it all a bizarre accident or weird case of severely mistaken identity, if it hadn’t happened twice before. Someone hadn’t tried to kill her once, not even twice, but THREE times, and Lord, she was getting tired of it.

The first time could have easily been mistaken for an accident. As a matter of fact, Mary Grace had done just that. On her commute to work she drove the same route daily. West on I-20, off on 360, off on Garden Grove Road to the business district of Arlington, Texas. Not a big deal, except that on the Friday before last, Mary Grace had driven her Ford Explorer west on I-20 and gotten as far as a large hill that led the interstate down into a gradual valley. The valley was the basis for two man made lakes on either side. Joe Pool Lake stretched southward. Mountain Creek Lake was an older reservoir on the northern side, grayish blue and murky. To the south, Joe Pool Lake could only be seen as a lengthy line of an earthen dam and a tower that regulated the release of water into Mountain Creek.

Mary Grace wouldn’t have cared much about these details except that the interstate went right down one of the few steep hills in the area that someone could drive down. She normally didn’t look at the lakes much. However, when she drove to work on that Friday, she found herself gazing off into the distance at Mountain Creek Lake as her brakes failed midway down the hill. An eighteen wheeler pulled in front of her and she put her foot on the brake and found that it sank to the floor as if it had been made out of microwaved butter. She swerved around the trucker and received a one-figured salute as a reward for avoiding him.

Traffic had been light, which had been good. Mary Grace had been going too fast, which had been bad. The people in the vehicles around her seemed to sense impending doom and quickly gotten out of her way, which had been good. Mary Grace had been inexplicably fixated on the view of the lake, which had been bad. She had a vision of driving straight down the hill into the swampy water of the tributary that connected the two reservoirs and being unable to open her electronic windows. Very, very bad. Especially for Mary Grace.

Abruptly, Mary Grace had yanked on her emergency lights and pushed on her horn until she thought her hand would fracture. She had literally bumped into another eighteen wheeler. The driver of said eighteen wheeler hadn’t noticed that he had been damaged until he had stopped at a seedy truck stop in Abilene, some 185 miles to the west. However, the bump had slowed Mary Grace’s speed from eighty mph to fifty mph and allowed her to glide to the bottom of the hill with only an exploded air bag, a bloody nose, and a ruptured radiator to show for it. Later that day she was speaking to her auto mechanic, Billy, when he mentioned that the brake line had been cut. Maybe someone had crawled under her SUV with a sharp knife, a big fat motive, and a diagram. Billy was prone to watching too many soap operas.

Of course, it couldn’t really be true. Mary Grace chalked it up to an innocent mistake on Billy’s part. The insurance company, relying on her sterling previous driving record, no car accidents and no tickets for ten years, settled up and would be covering everything but her deductible. They even got her a rental car. She upgraded it to a Beamer because she needed to pamper herself.

The local police weren’t interested. One patrol officer came out and looked at the pool of brake oil where her Explorer normally parked and shrugged as if he were late to a vice raid. Kids, he’d said, eyeing her small 1940s era cottage with disdain. Anyone you know might want to see you out of action? he’d asked, almost as an afterthought.

No, Mary Grace had answered honestly. She didn’t have a mountain of money. She hadn’t pissed anyone off lately. Maybe the brake lines had been faulty to begin with, but her mechanic couldn’t say conclusively and Mary Grace simply let it go. A bloody nose wasn’t such a big deal and her deductible was only $250. So for the next several days she checked under the Beamer for an oil pool and found zippola. Finding nothing meant the incident had been nothing. An accident. A coincidence. An act of Detroit as opposed to an act of God (bad brake lines.) Nada. Consequently, it was nothing to worry about. Mary Grace hadn’t even mentioned it to her mother on her weekly phone update. Ma would have asked if Mary Grace needed rhinoplasty in a perfectly condescending manner.

Life went on. The Beamer had been an improvement over the Explorer. Mary Grace’s nose only hurt for two days. The following Thursday was the 9th of June, precisely six days after Mary Grace’s first little accident. She had gotten up and taken a mile long masochistic jog that left her long black hair in wet dog-like straggles down her back, her cheeks as pink as cotton candy, and her lungs signaling a 9-1-1 emergency to any and all oxygen available. Then she had showered and dressed in her favorite knock-off Chanel dress (black with bold white stripes.) She had stepped out of her door, locked it, and had wondered for the fiftieth time that summer if there was such a thing as humidity proof makeup and how long it would take her to go back to college to get a degree in chemistry in order to invent it and make billions in the state of Texas alone. At eight in the morning it had already been 86 degrees and the humidity had been close to 100 percent. She had been drenched before she finished locking her front door.

Mary Grace particularly remembered the moment she brightened up. The borrowed Beamer had wonderful air conditioning. If she were creative she could arrange the air vents to blow simultaneously on her face, chest, and in between her legs. She knew that an inventive woman had a part in the creation of the Beamer’s air conditioning systems. Also she had a key fob with a remote start. She had discovered that if she started the car from the door, then it was chillingly cool by the time she slid into the leather seat. Yee-haw.

Pushing the remote start button on the fob was pretty much the last thing Mary Grace remembered for that Thursday morning. Apparently, the Beamer exploded into a million little expensive bits and pieces. As a matter of fact, there was still a BMW insignia embedded into the frame of her front door. Luckily for all involved, one of the elderly neighbors, Mr. Poteet, had a steady supply of fire extinguishers and was willing to use them in order to save his regular and free lawn mowing person, that being Mary Grace. The cottage had been singed. The oleanders and the crepe myrtles had been a complete loss. Unfortunately for Mrs. Frasier, another neighbor, the explosion set her poodle’s tail on fire and Mr. Poteet was unable to save the tail. The poodle, innocuously named Attila, was just fine, although Mrs. Frasier maintained that the poodle’s tail would never grow back.

That was murder attempt numero Dos. Two. Double ones. On Friday the tenth, Detective Frederick Brogan of the Dallas Police Department came to ask Mary Grace a few questions. Tall, forty-ish, flat-nosed, and as interested in the explosion as a rock was interested in getting plastered on Alabama Slammers, Brogan stared mostly at Mary Grace’s breasts and asked the same tired questions. Is there anyone upset with you? Are you involved in drugs? Do you have a license for those boobs? Anyone take out a large insurance policy on you lately? Do you or your parents have affiliations to mafia, Triads, Martians, or psychopathic cults?

More unwanted phrases for getting dead flitted into Mary Grace’s head as she recalled the conversation. Didn’t have the pulse of a pitchfork, coyote bait, morgue-aged, on a stony lonesome, shaking hands with eternity, pushing up bluebonnets, like an armadillo on a long stretch of highway. But she had still answered in her most helpful manner. No, no, except aspirin and definitely Midol at that time of the month. Do I need a license for my boobs? No. No, no, my parents are Catholics.

Boyfriends? Brogan had asked next.

Mary Grace had counted them off. Brad is married and has baby twin girls. He doesn’t have time for attempted murder. My second ex-boyfriend, Tony, is a hairdresser in Key West. When he visits we go shopping together. He has great taste. Dominic moved to California to be with his mother, who has a lot more money in her dresser drawer than I will have in my entire life. He told me in his last email that Mother picked out a very nice Jewish girl for him and they’re getting along tremendously. Maybe if he tried to murder his mother? No, well, and finally, Ivan decided that he wanted to have many girlfriends. Very, very plural. I declined to be one of the herd and he went along his way to propagate the world with little Ivans in his extraordinary way. He calls every couple months to tell me about all his children. At last count he has three under the age of two by three different women and two who are pregnant.

Even Brogan had been impressed. And these women know about each other?

Mary Grace had nodded. Mostly they don’t have a problem with it.

Brogan wanted Ivan’s number, but somehow Mary Grace thought it was not related to who had tried to blow her up into little, itty-bitty Mary Grace bits. Besides which, even Brogan wasn’t completely sure that the Beamer had been intentionally blown up. He’d mumbled something about the site testing positive for incendiary materials but then any car had a lot of oil and gasoline on it.

Where’s CSI when I need them? Mary Grace had muttered ungratefully and settled into recovering. Three friends caught the tail end of the experience on the news. Her mother had not, fortunately for all involved, seen the footage in Florida. The emergency room had released her promptly, citing bruises and bumps, but nothing worth complaining about. Surprisingly, her boss, Jack Covington, had even showed up at her house on Saturday, presenting the latest Tom Clancy novel in hardback and a dozen yellow roses.

Jack had said, From the group. Then he’d looked around and muttered incoherently at the site of the BMW insignia still embedded in her door’s frame. He’d offered to clean up but Mary Grace already had a gardener/handyman who had agreed to pile everything up for the garbage clean up. Jack had left without saying much and presented a card to her with his private number on it. Call me, if you need something.

Mary Grace thought that was a little strange. Jack was about a half-foot taller than her, and a half-dozen years older. He had dark brown hair and expressive green eyes. He was handsome in a boyish way, but Mary Grace didn’t really think of him like that. The secretary’s at work drooled over him and said that since his divorce was final, he was available. Not just available, but available.

Available, Mary Grace thought. I didn’t know he was getting divorced. After all, she had been in the last throes of her relationship with Ivan. Ivan had kept the titillating details of his master plan to himself until they were more settled into their relationship. While Mary Grace hadn’t been certain that Ivan was her true love, she had been hurt at the thought that she had been so off the mark about his character. Charming, arrogant, and adorable, yes. Husbandly monogamist, hell, no.

Then there was this murder thing. The first two times had been possible accidents. Freak at worst. The third time wasn’t an accident and it pretty much indicated that the first two incidents weren’t accidents either.

Mary Grace had been working late. She was the only one left in the office. She had been so wrapped up in the details of her latest presentation that she had skipped dinner. God knew, it took a lot for Mary Grace to skip a meal. When she had finally dragged her head out of her work, she looked up and saw that it was pitch black outside.

Being Friday and all, Mary Grace had cursed fluently in Italian, learned from her father trying to build a tree house for her at age ten. No date. No life. No car. She was supposed to have arranged for a ride home since the car rental place had become reluctant to rent her another vehicle.

Groaning with the effort of it all, Mary Grace had called for a cab. Somehow, somewhere, someone was going to whisper in her mother’s ear about all the goings on at Mary Grace’s house. Then her mother was going to call some of her old friends and ask if they would keep an eye on her daughter. Then they would tell her mother about exploding Beamers. Then her mother would get on a plane and come to visit.

The devil would be coming back to Texas via Southwest airlines.

Mary Grace had gone outside to wait for the cab. While she had been checking her wallet to see how much money she had, she stepped into the deep shadows of the looming buildings of the meandering business district. Something tumbled out of her purse and she realized that it was her container of Diorshow Mascara. Just as she bent down to scramble for it, there was a loud noise. Truly, she hadn’t been paying attention and the noise caused her to stand straight up. That was followed by someone slugging her. The ensuing and instantly recognizable sound of a gun being cocked had been bone chilling. But it was what the person said that clinched the whole deal. Just before the person had fired the weapon at her again, she heard a vicious declaration. Die, Mary Grace, you little bitch.

Without hesitation Mary Grace had clocked the person with her Prada purse and the gunshot missed, causing a chunk of pavement to explode upward. The person violently shoved her and she tumbled to the ground. Then someone else had yelled, Hey! Mary Grace had seen a black dressed figure running away, before she put her head back down on the pavement and waited for the other shoe to drop. Someone really was trying to murder her. Not someone who looked like her, or that she reminded them of someone else, but her, Mary Grace Castilla.

Undeniably. Irrefutably. Absolutely. Murder was murder.

Chapter Two – Friday, June 17th – Saturday, June 18th

Using slices of cucumbers over the eyes at night will reduce wrinkles and are a delicious nighttime snack. – Aunt Piadora’s Beauty Hints

Someone had most definitely yelled, and then while Mary Grace was lying on the ground, wondering if her Prada handbag had been irreplaceably damaged, a dark shape loomed over her. The looming had most undeniably been menacing. Or maybe she perceived the looming as menacing because someone had just shot at her, threatened her with a gun, and commanded that she, yes, Mary Grace herself, should die, followed by a very not nice name. Finally, Mary Grace had drummed up what was left of her courage and stated emphatically to the ominous loomer, I’m wearing a pair of Jimmy Choo pumps and I’m not afraid to use them.

Jack Covington said, What, you’ll bean me with your shoes?

Suddenly, an alarm started to blare and Mary Grace realized that it was coming from a nearby business. They’re cream dotted leather pumps, Jack, she said wrathfully. A gift from my Aunt Maria in New York and she’s the only one in my family who’s allowed to buy me any kind of clothing. They’re lethal at five feet. You should hear the horror stories about men killed with deadly shoes. They’re not pretty.

You want me to help you up? Jack said, with an underlying tone of amusement readily apparent. The amusement was mixed with something Mary Grace couldn’t identify. You don’t sound like you’ve been shot, he added helpfully.

I could be bleeding to death and you’re probably worried about liability, she snarled.

Not really, Jack said oddly. Then he’d helped her up and Mary Grace got a feel of his biceps under the oxford shirt he was wearing and was mildly surprised herself. Lots of firm bulging muscle there. He let her stand there and whipped out a cell phone to call the police. However, above the incessant whine of the nearby security alarm, she could already hear sirens rapidly approaching.

Someone else rushed up in the shadows and said, Christ all mighty, did you hear that? It wasn’t a car backfire, Jack, it was…oh, hey, Mary Grace.

Mary Grace saw that the other person was Trey Kennebrew, one of the other graphic artists for the company. He was young, incredibly cute, and seemed hopelessly naïve. He whipped blonde hair out of his ever so blue eyes and peered at Mary Grace. She doesn’t look too bad, he said to Jack. Trey’s eyes dipped down to her feet. Your Jimmy Choos are scuffed.

Did you call the police? Jack asked.

Nope, Trey said. "The bullet must have ricocheted. It got a car window and then went into another building. You know that big window that the auto restoration specialist has? Well, had, anyway. The windows gone and their alarm system is going off like a motherfu-uh. Well, it’s very loud. I think he’s going to be really pissed about the hole in his ’68 Camero."

Another person appeared. She said, What in God’s name is going on around here? Was that a gun I heard? Her name was Lolita Lewis, the owner of a dry cleaning business two doors down from Pictographs. Tall, lithe and a shoulder length bob of caramel colored hair, she was also undeniably gorgeous.

Not particularly caring about windows, alarms, or ’68 Cameros, Mary Grace later found herself sitting in the seat of a police cruiser, contemplating her life and the way she looked in the mirror. Dog poo, she thought. My life has turned into dog poo. And that might be insulting dogs. And maybe their poo, too.

Over her shoulder she saw Jack talking to a plain clothes detective and Trey was hitting on a shapely blonde patrol officer. Lolita was chatting to a fireman. None of them had volunteered their reasons for their presence on a Friday night, but Mary Grace bet the detective was asking.

If she looked down she could have seen her Prada handbag, abysmally torn on one handle. Not only that if she looked further down, she could have seen that her Jimmy Choo’s were indeed scuffed and weren’t magically getting un-scuffed anytime soon. Crème dotted leather pumps didn’t ‘do’ scuffs.

Mary Grace summed it up. Scrape on my face, nose still aches