Read Ultimate Concealer, A Toni Diamond Mystery: A Toni Diamond Mystery (Toni Diamond Mysteries) for Free Online Page B

younger.
    “Oh, Tiff,” she said, hugging back fiercely. “I’m so glad you’re all right.”
    “You gave us quite a scare, honey.”
    “Gran!” And then Tiff was hugging her grandmother. “Come on in.”
    She was going to ask where Dwayne was when she stepped into the house and glanced around. Her senses were immediately overloaded. All she could say was, “Oh, my.”
    Tiffany giggled. “I know. It’s like you walk into the world’s most boring looking house and step into the Arabian Nights or something.”
    A tart’s boudoir was the term on Toni’s tongue but she kept her mouth shut. The wall colors were vibrant jewel tones and when Tiffany led them into the living room off the front hall, she almost expected to see Mae West reclining on the red velvet chaise that held pride of place in the room, asking some young man to peel her a grape.
    The walls were purple with gold molding framing the ceilings, and the arm chairs and sofas were upholstered in rich damask. The walls were covered with movie scenes and advertising from the ‘20s and ‘30s. A rich white shag rug covered the floor, but as though a big area of white were too dull, huge red and gold silk cushions offered extra seating.
    “I think my eyeballs need a nap,” Linda said, after glancing around.
    “And your father lives here?” Toni asked.
    “He says it’s temporary. But the owner’s really nice. You’ll like him.”
    “Where is your father?” Toni asked, refusing to be sidetracked.
    Tiffany put a fingernail to her mouth, a habit she’d broken a couple of years earlier. Toni noticed that her black nail polish was nearly all scraped off. She took her hand away from her mouth before she got to chewing her nails. “He had to get his car fixed,” she said.
    “You didn’t call me in a panic because your dad’s car needed a tune-up. What’s going on?”
    “I don’t know, but I think he’s in trouble.”
    “Now there’s a shocker,” Linda said, seating herself on the divan. With her platinum ringlets and cleavage-baring red shirt, the black trousers and gold heels, she fit right in.
    “Sit down and tell me about it,” Toni said, drawing her daughter to the couch.
    “These guys crashed into Dad’s car yesterday afternoon.” She wrapped her arms around herself and leaned forward, almost unconsciously assuming the crash position on an airplane. “Then two of them came over and punched him.”
    “Hmm. Now the jealous husbands are buddying up.”
    “Mother!”
    “Sorry.” And Linda made a lip-zipping motion.
    “Were you there?”
    A miserable nod.
    “Oh, honey, were you hurt? Do you have whiplash? Have you seen a doctor?”
    “No. It wasn’t a big crash, it was more like they wanted to scare him.”
    “With his daughter in the car?” Toni wanted to scare her ex-husband a little herself. With her bare hands.
    “They didn’t know I was his daughter. Obviously.” Anyway, when he got back in the car, he was pretty shaken, but he said it was a misunderstanding, and then he had to perform last night.” Tiffany glanced up at her mother’s face and then down at the glass and gold coffee table as though riveted by the copy of Glamour that lay atop it. Toni noticed that the Texas Today magazine that had caused Dwayne to call her out of the blue was tucked beneath Glamour .
    “Did he take you with him?” She could imagine Dwayne wanting to show off for his daughter, but the thought of him letting a sixteen-year-old girl sit in the audience unattended was enough to get her chewing her own nails. Fake diamonds and all.
    “No. He wanted to, but Brent, he’s the guy who owns the house, he said you have to be twenty-one.”
    And thank you, Brent, Toni thought to herself.
    “I sat home last night and watched TV, but then this morning I heard Dad talking on the phone. He said . . .” She swallowed before continuing. “He said, um, he said he thought his life was in danger. And I thought, since you solved those murders at the