Lavender Lipstick Lies: A Mystery of Makeup & Mayhem Read Free Page B

dinner. But as the tips of my fingers touched the soft cotton towel, the bathroom
lights suddenly clicked off and the door slammed shut.
    I was plunged into a jet-black
nothingness that was completely—and terrifyingly—impenetrable. I had closed the
heavy room-darkening drapes beside the bed earlier to prepare for my nap. I
couldn’t see a thing, and the sudden plunge into darkness sent a chill through
my body.
    “Hello?” I called hesitantly.
“Emma? Bree?”
    There was no reply, so I slowly
groped my way to where I remembered seeing one of the hotel’s guest robes
hanging from a hook on the bathroom wall.
    Quickly slipping into the plush
white terrycloth dressing gown, I kept my hand on the glass enclosure to
maintain my balance and gingerly placed one foot on the cool marble floor just
outside the shower.
    “Is this some kind of joke?” I said
loudly.
    As I listened for one of my friends
to respond, I heard a muted sound in the bedroom. It was squelchy and high-pitched,
like balloons being twisted or markers writing on an erasable board.
    “Em?”
    The sound repeated.
    “Bree?”
    Narrowing my eyes desperately to
try and detect even a slender slip of light under the door, I moved cautiously
forward in the murky gloom. I pressed one hand against the wall and held the
other directly in front of my face. I had a fairly good idea of the bathroom’s
layout, but it wasn’t something I knew as intimately as my own space at home.
    When I finally reached the door, I
quickly turned the knob and walked into my room. It was as dark and foreboding
as a tomb, and I paused briefly to try and get my bearings. As I squinted into
the shadows, I heard a muffled rustle of fabric to my right.
    Swiveling my head toward the sound,
I gasped audibly as the door to my room lurched open and a tall figure wearing
a floppy red hat and billowing floral caftan disappeared into the hallway.

Chapter 5
     
     
    A swarm of fretful thoughts whirled
in my mind. Call security! Who was that? Are Emma and Bree okay?
    Although I wasn’t a world-class
traveler, I’d been on enough trips for my Splendora business to know that
hotels were ripe settings for burglaries and theft. Perhaps someone had entered
our suite with a master passkey to search for jewelry and other valuables.
    The longer I stood like a frozen
statue, the more I felt the knot of dread growing in my throat. Move, Abby! roared
the voice in my head. Do something!
    After gulping in a breath, I inched
my way forward to the bed. When I felt the supple velvet duvet cover against my
legs, I shifted to my left until I found the bedside table. Switching on the
lamp, I quickly scanned the room. My suitcase was still unopened on the luggage
rack near the closet. My purse, phone and laptop bag were untouched on the bed.
    But as I turned to the dressing
table on the far side of the room, a bolt of sheer terror ricocheted through
me. Scrawled on the gold-framed mirror hanging above the table was another
message written in lavender lipstick:
     
    Withdraw from the Achiever
competition—
    Or else!!!
     
    The scream that hurtled out of my
mouth was razor-sharp and impossibly loud. It shattered the silence and echoed
through the room as I stared at the ominous warning scrawled on the ornate
mirror.
    “Abby!” a voice called from behind
the closed door. “Are you okay?”
    I opened my mouth to speak, but
nothing came out. I swallowed and tried again, but the result was a lifeless
whimper.
    The door suddenly flew open and
Bree rushed into my room. From the half-finished makeup and tousled hair, it
was obvious she was in the middle of getting ready when she heard my cry for
help.
    “Abby?” Her face was contorted with
worry. “Why did you scream?”
    Emma appeared in the door a split
second later. Her hair was dripping wet and she was draped in one of the
hotel’s pale peach bath sheets.
    “I was in the shower,” she offered
breathlessly. “It sounded like somebody was being murdered in