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  A BLUSH WITH DEATH

  – A Bath and Body Novel –

  – Book 2 –

  YASMINE GALENORN

  A Nightqueen Enterprises LLC Publication

  Published by Yasmine Galenorn

  PO Box 2037, Kirkland WA 98083-2037

  A BLUSH WITH DEATH

  A Bath and Body Novel

  Copyright © 2017 by Yasmine Galenorn

  Second Electronic Printing: 2017 Nightqueen Enterprises LLC

  Second Print Edition: 2017 Nightqueen Enterprises

  Cover Art & Design: Earthly Charms

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED No part of this book may be reproduced or distributed in any format, be it print or electronic or audio, without permission. Please prevent piracy by purchasing only authorized versions of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, or places is entirely coincidental and not to be construed as representative or an endorsement of any living/ existing group, person, place, or business.

  A Nightqueen Enterprises LLC Publication

  Published in the United States of America

  Table of Contents

  Cover Page

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Table of Contents

  Welcome to Venus Envy

  Acknowledgments

  Foreword

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  From the Pages of Persia’s Journal: Evening in Summer Oil

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  From the Pages of Persia’s Journal: Peace & Clarity Potpourri

  Biography

  Welcome to Venus Envy

  There's only one #1...

  There's a new makeover maven in town, and she spells big trouble for everyone at Venus Envy. Bebe Wilcox has just unveiled her own boutique, and she won't stop until her shop has put everyone else out of business. Nothing is out of bounds, from stealing fragrance recipes to computer hacking and sabotaging supplies. But when one of Bebe's pushy saleswomen ends up dead, the stakes become much more dangerous. Staging a public falling out with her Auntie, Persia gets hired at Bebe's Boutique and begins snooping for evidence of wrongdoing. But can she find the goods before the killer decides to find her?

  Acknowledgments

  When I first wrote the Bath and Body books, I was asked to use a pen name and so I did. The publisher had some reason for asking, and me getting the contract was contingent on the fact that I had to use a pen name. I chose India Ink for several reasons, but honestly—using a pen name made the books feel separate from me. I was never comfortable with doing so. Now that I have the rights back to these books, I’m releasing them again under my own name. As should have been done in the first place.

  I only wrote three of Bath and Body books—I’m very proud of these books, but I learned quickly that, unless it has a paranormal element, I’m not comfortable writing it. So the series stopped at three books and that’s where it will remain. But they can be read in any order, and they aren’t dependent on each other to make sense.

  As always, I owe so much to my beloved Samwise, who, through the years, has proved a stalwart, loving, and faithful friend and husband, giving me the best encouragement that I could hope for. I love you, don’t you ever forget that. Love to my cats, as always, And thank you to all friends who have encouraged and supported my efforts.

  And lest I forget, thank you and a gentle nod to Aphrodite and Venus, who embody the essence of Beauty and all that it encompasses. And as always, to my beloved Mielikki, Tapio, Rauni, and Ukko, and to Lady Brighid, my Muse.

  To my readers: I hope you enjoy these books. They’re a rare look into my writing that isn’t colored with the paranormal. As always, you can reach me via my Web site: Galenorn.com and I highly suggest you sign up for my newsletter to keep abreast of all my work!

  ~ The Painted Panther~

  Yasmine Galenorn

  Foreword

  The recipes in this book are my own concoctions. I’ve spent many years blending magical oils, and here I give you—perhaps not magical recipes—but ones to heighten your senses, to bring new experiences into your lives.

  Essential oils can be expensive, so yes, you may use synthetics if you can’t afford the pure ones, but bear in mind that the fragrance may end up differing slightly. However, this should not be a significant problem. Also, some oils may irritate the skin, so if I make a note to the effect of Do not get on your skin, I mean it. Cinnamon can irritate the skin. Black pepper and other oils can burn delicate tissue.

  The oil and other bath recipes are obviously not for consumption, but I am stating it here to clear up any potential miscommunications: Don’t eat them or drink them. They’re meant to be used as fragrances, for dreaming pillows, sachets, potpourris, and the like.

  “Opportunity makes a thief.”

  —Francis Bacon, 1561-1626

  Prologue

  My name is Persia Vanderbilt, and I bill myself as a sensory specialist. I blend custom fragrances at Venus Envy and generally help my aunt Florence run the shop.

  Ever since I was a little girl, I’ve understood the subtle language of flowers and their scents. I can feel them talking, whispering, growing, can sense which essence might help lift depression or heighten self-esteem, and I use my talents to blend oils that bring these qualities to the surface. With my heightened sense of smell, I fine-tune each fragrance until it’s just right. It’s a far cry from professional perfumery, but I consider it an art in its own right.

  In addition to working for Venus Envy, I oversee our gardens at Moss Rose Cottage, the thirty-acre estate and three-story, hundred-year-old Victorian mansion my aunt bought when I turned ten. With hydrangea gardens and lilac groves and bluebell thickets, with rose gardens and wildflower glades, Moss Rose Cottage is a veritable faerieland of flowers and paths.

  A few months after I turned sixteen and graduated from high school, I left the thriving little community of Gull Harbor on Port Samanish Island for the big-city lights of Seattle. I gave the city fifteen years of my life and loved most of it until late last year when I went through a bad breakup with my long-term boyfriend Elliot, who turned out to be an embezzler, and after my job at the Alternative Life Center went belly-up. Discouraged and afraid Elliot’s thug friends might come after me to pay him back for turning state’s evidence, I called Auntie, who opened her arms and her home to me. And so I returned to island life. Now, both adults, Auntie and I’ve become friends as well as family.

  Along with my custom blends, Venus Envy sells several lines of lotions, bath salts, oils, bulk herbs, crystals, scarves, and handmade jewelry from local artists. Aunt Florence offers facials, pedicures, manicures, and skin consultations by appointment.

  The shop is thriving—a real success. Or rather, it was until Bebe’s Boutique moved in a couple months ago. Bebe Wilcox is out to become the number-one beauty maven in town, and her concerted effort to force us out of business is having an effect on the books. A bad effect. And neither Auntie nor I are sure just what we’re going to do.

  Chapter 1

  THE BOOKWICH WAS hopping, every table jammed with summer tourists looking for a little local flavor. I spied Barbara in a back booth and maneuvered my way through the crowded café, skirting the waitresses as
they scurried back and forth from the kitchen carrying platters of fish and chips, sandwiches, burgers, and a plethora of other goodies whose smells made my stomach rumble.

  Barbara had sounded frantic on the phone when she called, begging me to meet her for lunch. The hint of panic in her voice had spurred me to cancel one of my appointments. If Barb was in trouble, I wanted to be there. As I slid into the booth, I immediately saw what her problem was. Barb had been the victim of a cut-and-run, and the results weren’t pretty.

  “What the hell happened to you?” I blurted out. “Nightmare on Scissors Street?”

  Barbara Konstantinos, my best friend, was exceptionally pretty and petite. Standing next to her, I felt like the Jolly Green Giant because Barb barely topped five feet and wouldn’t rock the scales at one hundred pounds unless she had just finished a seven course meal. I, on the other hand, stood five ten and weighed one fifty. Granted, I was lean and muscled, but still, I towered over her. Whether in her baker’s uniform or a slip dress, Barb was one of those women who always looked pulled together and ready to go. Her copper-colored bob exquisitely grazed her chin, with not a hair out of place. Or it had, until today.

  Her sassy European cut had been butchered into short, jagged spikes, the color transformed into a brash calico of brassy reds and tarnished blondes. To make matters worse, the hairdresser hadn’t even bothered to try to create an interesting pattern—say, tiger stripes, for example. No, instead, blotchy patches dappled her hair, making her look like she had a bizarre case of ringworm.

  My face must have belied my feelings, because she moaned and rubbed her temples. “Oh, God, Persia. It’s bad, isn’t it? I knew it! When they told me it was hip and cutting-edge, I knew they were bullshitting me.” She grimaced, and I could tell a migraine was incoming. Barb’s brow was pinched in that particular way that she had a few hours before the blinding headaches struck. I winced, wishing there was something she could do about them.

  “Who did this to you?” I asked, unable to tear my gaze away from the train wreck that passed for her hair.

  She fidgeted with her napkin. “I tried a new stylist,” she mumbled. Then, tears springing to her eyes, she said, “Please don’t yell at me for going there! Venus Envy doesn’t cut hair, and I wanted to try something new, so I dropped in there on an impulse, but I didn’t buy anything except the haircut. I really thought everything would be okay.”

  My aunt’s shop, Venus Envy, catered to Gull Harbor’s yuppie set with herbal facials and soothing pedicures and manicures, as well as being one of the best-stocked bath and beauty shops in the county, but we didn’t offer haircuts, massages, or steam baths.

  “Why on earth do you think I’m going to yell at you?” But even as I spoke, I flashed on why she thought I might be mad at her. There was only one place in town she could have gone that would piss me off. “Okay, spill it. You went to Bebe’s, didn’t you?”

  She nodded, shamefaced. “Yes, I went to Bebe’s Boutique,” she whispered.

  Nailed, right on the head. I sighed. “Barb, you do know they’re trying to run us out of business, don’t you? I can’t believe you still went there. What kind of friend are you?”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t realize things were that bad with Venus Envy.”

  She looked so contrite that I relented. She’d paid dearly for her indiscretion with that hideous haircut. I picked up one of the breadsticks and bit off the end. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to yell. Don’t worry. Your hair will grow fast, and you can have it dyed back to normal. Until then, maybe Auntie will let your borrow her hat.” That cajoled a smile from her. She knew what Auntie’s hat looked like. Everybody in town knew the fuchsia wonder my aunt wore, with the stuffed bird perched on the side—a real stuffed bird.

  Though I managed to remain calm on the outside, inside I was fuming. When Bebe’s Boutique had opened up on the other side of town a few months ago, it was soon apparent that they were hell-bent on putting us out of business. But their products were inferior, their sales techniques annoying, and their ethics nonexistent. They were aiming at regional domination, and we were their first target.

  I’d heard through the grapevine that they were trying some pretty underhanded tactics to steal our business, such as telling people we used synthetic ingredients when we actually used as many natural products as possible, and a particularly onerous accusation—that my aunt didn’t keep Venus Envy’s day spa up to Gull Harbor’s health code regulations. We could prove that one wrong, but who was going to bother to go down to City Hall to find out?

  “What did they say when you complained?”

  Barb squirmed a little, looking miserable. “The girl told me it was edgy…hip…. I wanted to believe her because I couldn’t believe she’d butcher my hair on purpose. So I didn’t—”

  “You didn’t say anything. Good God, they really tried to convince you that style is the hottest trend? Have they seen a copy of Vogue lately?”

  She blushed. “I feel so stupid. I’m ashamed to say that I actually paid them. I should have argued, but the stylist was so young…I didn’t…”

  Barb’s self-esteem had been on the chopping block the past few months. She was forty-one and convinced she was losing her edge, which she wasn’t. But I could easily see her paying without complaint in a desperate attempt to keep some snot-nosed young punk from thinking she was old-fashioned and stodgy.

  I held up my hand. “We all make mistakes. You were probably in so much shock from what they did to you that you weren’t thinking straight.” I had a nasty feeling that Barb had paid through the nose for that cut. The words “edgy” and “hip” guaranteed a high price tag in the worlds of fashion and cosmetics. But I wasn’t about to put her on the spot by asking. “So, make an appointment with your regular stylist and get it dyed back to your normal color.”

  “I can’t.” Barb bit her lip and stared at the table. “Not for a week or so. I already consulted her and, fashion emergency or not, she’s booked solid. I know she’s pissed that I went somewhere else. I don’t blame her.”

  Oops. Never good to make your hair stylist angry. “What did she say? Did she yell at you?”

  “Not really, but she read me the riot act about going someplace else without finding out about their reputation first. I feel like a world-class heel. Anyway, after she was done lecturing me about fly-by-night operations, as she called them, she took a look at my hair and said that it’s going to be awhile before it’s back to normal. That little tart fried it, and the damage is pretty bad.”

  “So you’re stuck?” I cringed, hoping she wouldn’t have to live with the cut and color for much longer. Barb was meticulous about her appearance, and there’s no way she could turn that mess into “classy.”

  “Not only do we have to re-dye it, but Theresa wants to cut it super short in order to allow the new growth to come in without frizzled ends. I can’t believe I have to go out in public looking like this for over a week and then spend several months sporting a buzz cut!” She let out what was either a sob or a laugh, or possibly both.

  “That must have been some powerful bleach.” I shuddered, fingering my own waist-length braid. Thick and jet black, my hair was naturally wavy. I’d been blessed with good genes. Not a gray hair yet, and I was thirty-one. “Well, hell. I guess we’ll have to keep you stocked with turbans for a few months.”

  “That about sums it up.” She shrugged. “I deserve it, though, for sneaking around behind your back. And Theresa’s. Believe me, I’ve learned my lesson. I’ll never darken their door again, and I’m going to tell everybody just what they did to me.”

  Tilda dropped off our menus. “Sorry we’re slow on the uptake today, girls,” she said. “The place is so packed that we can’t keep up with the rush.” She did a double take when she saw Barb’s hair but wisely kept silent.

  I picked up my menu. Aunt Florence was supposed to meet us with some sort of news, but I was hungry and ready to order.

>   As if reading my mind, Barb said, “Let’s talk about something else. You said your aunt is joining us?”

  I nodded. “Yeah, she’s got something up her sleeve. I can always tell. So, how’s Dorian?” It seemed like ages since we’d gotten a chance to sit down and dish. Barb and I worked in adjoining shops, but the summer tourist rush had left us both scrambling for a moment to breathe, and we hadn’t had time to duck out for a quick lunch in days.

  She waited to answer until Tilda had taken our orders. I asked for a deluxe hamburger, a side salad, bag of chips, and a glass of iced tea. Barb ordered a bowl of gazpacho, grilled cheese sandwich, and a Diet Coke. Tilda returned with our drinks and then rushed off to another table.

  “At least the BookWich and your bakery are doing good business. We’ve had a lot of customers, but they aren’t spending as much.” As I sipped my iced tea, a thought occurred to me. “Barb, why did you want a new hairstyle? You love the one you’ve got. Or, rather, the one you had.”

  Barb shrugged. “I guess I’m restless. Dorian and I got into an argument the other night because I wanted to go out to a movie and he wanted to sit at home and watch some stupid baseball game. We haven’t gone out in over three weeks. I hate always staying at home.”

  Dorian and Barb were a wonderful couple with two exceptions: his mother was the MIL from hell, and Dorian liked to stay home and putter. Otherwise, he and Barb matched. Maybe too well. Sometimes I wondered, if couples didn’t have any differences, what did they talk about?