Polished Slick (Natural Beauty) Read online

  Nikki hadn’t been friends with anyone, really. She had been too wrapped up in dance, and everyone knew she had the talent to go pro. She hadn’t even given Charlie, the guy who’d end up being her husband, the time of day back then.

  Jerry had always assumed Nikki hadn’t paid much attention to him, but the longer he worked for her he the more he understood that Nikki noticed almost everything, even if she didn’t speak on it. In fact, at their commencement, she’d approached and quietly congratulated him on his admission to the university he’d eventually dropped out of, and then walked away, leaving his jaw flapping.

  He hadn’t announced it, but somehow she’d heard and filed the information away, perhaps thinking it’d be useful later. That’s how Nikki was.

  He rubbed his eyes, leaned the back of his neck against the top of his chair, set his gaze on the ceiling, and groaned. The late nights had caught up to him months ago, and now he’d entered the stage of exhaustion where even his well-honed autopilot was nearing the crash and burn stage.

  Back in college, he’d been one of those guys who could stay up all night playing video games in the dorms, then make it to eight a.m. classes like it was no big deal. At age thirty-two, however, staying up late to compile reports and fix bugs in the database were going to break him. Add to that all the social media tedium he had to stay on top of. He was in front of a keyboard all the time, and it was crazy-making.

  Damned shame. At the height of summer, he couldn’t shut down his computer to go surfing for a few hours. Well, maybe he could, but if he went, he’d probably have to respond to e-mails between waves.

  Things had to get better. If it meant increasing his exposure to that prudish little twit of a junior chemist for the short-term, so be it.

  Why do the cute ones have to be so fucking annoying?

  He rolled his head left to right, and worked out the cricks in his neck with a cringe. It’d been yet another night sleeping upright in his desk chair. Not that he’d complain. He appreciated the job—it was practically ideal for his skill set, even if the hours were burdensome. Freelancing had been great, but he wasn’t the hermit people made him out to be. He was tired of working from home all the time and liked being around people…at his leisure. If he didn’t, he wouldn’t let half the county drop by his place unannounced to play with his video game systems.

  When Nikki had offered him the job, it’d seemed like a win-win situation. He wouldn’t have to cut his hair or remove his piercings to go to work—which every other company in the area made his hiring contingent on—and Nikki got a smarter tech guy than she could otherwise afford. During his salary negotiations, since Nikki absolutely couldn’t come up any more on the dollars end, they agreed he’d only work from the office four days per week. What he didn’t know at the time was he would be working seven days per week. Nikki probably hadn’t expected that either. She usually shot straight from the hip, even if she had to slap on a sweet smile to administer the bullets.

  He’d hang in there and do his job, but that damned junior chemist strutting around like the crown princess of Naboo really had his hackles up. They’d been hired at about the same time, but Trinity thought because of the nature of her job she had seniority. He didn’t bother arguing with the little sprite, even if she was dead wrong. If it gave her self-confidence a boost to think she had some authority over him—he was okay with her thinking it. Girls liked that kind of shit. Still, she was getting bossier with each passing day, and had no reason to be. Even if she got a promotion, she still wouldn’t be his supervisor. No one supervised him, not even Nikki. It was kind of in his contract.

  “Another goddamned distraction,” he mumbled, shutting his laptop lid.

  The chair at his left scraped the concrete floor as some staff member pulled it back. He looked up, expecting to find Trinity nagging him with a red-hot poker at the ready or something, but instead watched Juan Garcia plop into the seat.

  Jerry had known Juan since back in the day when Juan was a migrant farm worker who spoke about seven words of English, and Jerry was a teenager who drove rather badly. He still drove badly, but on purpose, usually.

  His first time in Chowan County, Juan had been around twenty, and Jerry had nearly backed over him in the parking lot of Bear’s Stop and Go when he bent down to pick up a quarter.

  Juan went back to Mexico after the harvest season that year, and came back the following spring to stay for good. He’d met Edenton’s resident Latina spitfire, Mercedes, and spent the entire winter hoarding scratch to get back to her. Good thing, too, because he managed to knock her up in that short time he’d been around the first time. That was fifteen years ago. Juan hung out at Jerry’s place a lot when he needed time away from his kids. They were cute, but loud. Nikki hired Juan as a favor to Mercedes and hadn’t regretted it yet. He handled all of the shipping and deliveries of N-by-N products, sometimes driving as far as Asheville to personally deliver large orders.

  “I know that look on your face, Commandant Rouse.” Juan propped his chin up on his fist and wore his cheesiest grin.

  Jerry cringed. “Commandant Rouse” had been one of his gamer names. He’d had to change it after some kids who disagreed with one of his online reviews ganged up and took him down in an MMORPG. They depleted his life force so severely that he couldn’t play again for about ten days. That had been the only game he’d ever played where the characters were capable of real-time comas. He’d panned it fantastically in his review, calling it an “epic waste of money and brain cells.”

  “What look?”

  Juan made a waffling motion with his hand. “The I am plotting a diabolical plan look. I have seen that several times before. Each time ended in el caos.”

  “Look, I said I was sorry about the powerboat thing. You never told me you couldn’t swim, or I wouldn’t have let you put on the skis. You grew up on the coast. How the fuck is it you can’t swim?”

  Juan rolled his dark eyes and groaned. “I forgot about that one. I still want to learn to surf, though.”

  Jerry forced out a breath through his clenched teeth. “If I ever get out to the beach again, I’ll let you know. Really, I swear, I’m not plotting anything this time. I’m just thinking about this nail polish craziness and how it’s going to further sap the life force out of me. I’m running out of steam, man. Between the work and my mother…”

  “Yeah.” Juan leaned back in his chair and looked up at the ceiling. He rubbed the sparse stubble on his chin for a moment, and then said, “You know, it’s kinda strange to me that anyone around here would want Nikki to fail. More jobs here means more money all around.”

  “I’m following you.”

  “So, it’s unlikely the saboteur is a full-time employee. We’ve been here the longest. We have the most to lose.”

  Jerry scanned the massive barn, and itemized the small staff. There was Trinity at her bench, preparing a new batch of insect repellant. She cut her eyes at them in a warning then looked away.

  Nikki’s grandmother—Gramma Stacy—sat on one of the overstuffed sofas. She hummed as she plastered labels onto make-up remover bottles. She’d put her Lumberton house on the rental market and moved up to Tyner to help Nikki. She wasn’t likely to screw things up, unless she was just that kind of masochist.

  Francine and Daisy were a mother-daughter contract worker team hoping to get hired on permanently. The duo came from a long line of soap makers, and soap was something new for Nikki. Their pay was pretty much dependent on how many pieces the company sold, and soap was all Francine and Daisy knew. Didn’t seem likely they’d be there to spy, given they’d tried selling the soap by themselves in the past, but didn’t have the marketing power.

  Next, in a cubicle near the kitchen, was Erin—the phone support person. She worked between noon and four Monday through Friday. She was a student at the community college in Edenton, and worked after class. She was part-time and absolutely replaceable. Jerry didn’t know much about her, even though she’d been on the tea
m for six months, so she made it onto his suspect list. Something about the way she whispered when she answered the phone didn’t sit right with him.

  The rest of the N-by-N employees weren’t in the building at the moment, but they didn’t make good suspects for a variety of reasons, anyway.

  “You’re probably right,” he said, picking up his laptop and spinning his chair toward his cubicle. Before he could get to his feet, however, a sotto alto said from the bench, “Imagine how productive we’d all be if we actually worked during working hours.”

  Somehow, he squashed down the urge to fling his cell phone in the direction of the bratty voice, and instead ground his teeth. He wasn’t a violent guy. He was just so damned tired. Short-tempered. Everything was setting him on edge.

  He decided then and there to do two things. First, make time for pleasure even if it meant he had a backlog of work because of it. Second, tame that little shrew. He’d done it before. Wasn’t hard, and sometimes they kept up the “nice” after he was through.

  Juan got in front of him, studied his face, and doubled over in uproarious laughter. Shaking his head, he backed toward the boxing area, and whispered, “Take some advice from your old friend Juanito. Don’t argue. The women—they like that. Seems to charge their batteries. You’re better off just letting her have the last word.”

  “Nope.”

  Jerry couldn’t resist. He cast a glower at the owner of the smug voice. Unfortunately, she wasn’t looking at him at the moment.

  Her head was down, expression impassive as she measured ingredients from cryptically labeled canisters, so he squinted at her hair, and tried to figure out what was different about it.

  “Ah.” The color at tips of her pixie cut was missing. Trinity let Mercedes cut her hair, and Mercedes liked to experiment. The last application had been blue. Trinity must have opted out during the last cut. Not too many women could pull off a style that short, but she had a heart-shaped face and delicate features, unmistakably feminine. She would have been beautiful even if she were bald.

  As if she felt his gaze, she glanced up from the oil she was pouring to find him staring. Any other time he would have indulged her in a contest, but for once, he did the punk-ass thing and rolled away in his seat. He’d save the fight for another day.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Jerry left the barn at five as always, but like every other day, leaving the barn didn’t mean getting away from work. Thoughts of sabotage at N-by-N filled his head, and no matter how loudly he sang along to some Panic! At the Disco anthem, he couldn’t stop thinking.

  Overthinking.

  Eventually, he took to drumming rhythmically, and loudly, on his Jeep’s steering wheel while he traversed the country roads. That bit of motion helped some.

  No amount of mood enhancement could prepare him for his mother being on his trailer’s porch when he turned down the long driveway. Her arms were crossed over her silk shell, and her lips pursed—evident even at that distance. She was obviously ready for confrontation.

  He’d give her one.

  “You picked a bad day, woman,” he mumbled, and cut the ignition.

  His mother made her way down the steps as he fetched his laptop case from the back seat.

  “Why didn’t she just wait on her own porch?”

  Kate had picked across the yard in her little dainty espadrilles to his front bumper by the time he slammed the back door.

  He anticipated her question, and responded to it, before she could even get the words out of her mouth. “Soon,” he said. He took a wide berth around her.

  “Um.” She jogged to catch up. She’d never talk to a man’s back, especially not this one’s. “How soon, Jeremiah? Next week? Next month? When?” Popping an eyebrow up, she tucked a swatch of light brown hair behind her ear, exposing the moon-sized diamond in her lobe.

  When he didn’t answer immediately, she cleared her throat.

  “Jesus.” He gritted his teeth and sidled around her, holding his door key out in front of him like some kind of sword while she trailed at his heels.

  She was quick when she had a motive.

  “I don’t know. I work a lot of hours, and moving is disruptive.” He jammed the key into the lock and gave it a frantic jiggle while she yapped.

  She wouldn’t follow him in. Fact. The farthest she ever went was the threshold, where she stopped as if some force field prevented her entry. In truth, she believed the trailer had the taint of Satan. She’d said as much. Vocally, and often.

  Unfortunately, he didn’t have the luxury of discouraging her visits, because although the trailer was his, the property it was parked on belonged to his father.

  Kate had kicked Jerry out of the main house about five years ago because she honestly believed that with his first piercing, he’d opened himself up to possession. Since then, he’d become more and more in league with the demonic with each stud, expander, and barbell he got. He let her think what she wanted.

  His parents had let him park his trailer in the side yard of the Rouse property as a temporary thing, but Kate had wanted him to move so she could expand her garden. Her garden was nowhere near where Jerry was parked, but he didn’t want to be where he wasn’t wanted.

  If he could leave now, he would, but some things took more time to do the right way. Most people wouldn’t know it, but he was the kind of guy who strived to do things perfectly on his first attempt.

  “It needs to be soon, Jeremiah, or so help me I’ll cut your electric and make sure you can’t get mail here.” She waggled an index finger at him.

  “Fine, Mom.” The door gave way and he strode over the threshold, pushing the knob even as Kate put her head into the gap to speak.

  “You really don’t want to do that.” He sounded pissy and didn’t care. She was doing the equivalent of putting her head in a lion’s mouth.

  She backed up a pace, eyes narrowed.

  “How does Dad feel about you rushing me off the family property, anyway? Haven’t seen him in weeks. He still alive?” He already knew the answer to the first question. He just wanted to hear her newest spin on it.

  Her nostrils flared. “Louis and I discuss everything.”

  “That wasn’t the question.”

  “Rude. Must you be the ever-present thorn in my side?” She sighed and flicked a dismissive hand at him before stomping down the stairs. “You take it up with your daddy when he gets back from God-knows-where. I can’t even keep up with his schedule.” She stopped and pointed at his face. “I’m warning you, Jeremiah, you can fluff up your fur all you want, but you will respect me.”

  “When?”

  She grunted in a most unladylike fashion and threw her hands in the air.

  He laughed at the misguided woman’s expense, finally feeling his blood pressure decrease to a healthy level.

  After more than thirty years of antagonism, nothing that woman could say could stress him out any more than he already was.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Trinity had a plan, and she was damned proud of it.

  All the nail polish tampering was occurring at night. Therefore, it made sense the shenanigans were being enacted by someone with easy access to the barn. Whoever it was had to have a key or access to one. Nikki had dispensed keys to all the staff members as a matter of practicality, because sometimes certain core staff members, like Juan and Jerry, had weekend tasks. Nikki wasn’t always there to let them in.

  If someone’s key was stolen or copied, it’d be easy enough for some saboteur to shimmy inside for a bit of thuggery. There wasn’t an alarm. They were in the friggin’ boonies, for crying out loud. Nobody was dumb enough to tiptoe around a farm in the dead of night. Everyone knew Charlie Mitchell had a big gun, and wasn’t afraid to use it.

  Trinity decided the only thing to do for it was have a bit of a stakeout. She’d get this problem wrapped up in twenty-four hours or less, and the thought of it made her beam all the way through the rest of Monday’s workday, and longer during the drive home
to Edenton.

  It was so simple! Name the culprit, and that promotion she was gunning for would be in the bag. Maybe.

  She was still grinning when she met her Aunt Ginger at Christine’s Tavern in town. Christine’s was part of their Monday night tradition, and had been since Trinity had moved back home from college.

  Ginger operated the only pediatric dentistry practice in the tri-county area, and tried to help parents out a little by staying open past five p.m. She closed on Saturday afternoons, Sundays, and Mondays, but was pretty much chugging away non-stop the rest of the week as the sole dentist in the clinic.

  Monday nights were Beer-and-Brats nights at Christine’s, and they sat at their usual table with cold pints of hefeweizen and sausage sandwiches piled high with their usual accoutrement. The combination of sauerkraut, sweet mustard, and banana peppers had been Trinity’s creation. For Ginger, it’d been an acquired taste. Ginger had grown used to making concessions to Trinity. Their relationship had always been that way, even when Trinity had been a precocious four-year-old demanding Ginger change the channel. Trinity didn’t like cartoons. Ginger had taken the bossy tot’s demands in stride, even laughing at the spunk the kid had. Years later, when Trinity moved in with Ginger, the older woman already knew what she was getting into.

  What had started for Ginger as a week of babysitting while her niece and nephew-in-law vacationed on the Outer Banks, ended with nine-year-old Trinity’s enrollment in school in Edenton. Trinity’s father had gotten orders to be stationed overseas for two years. That itself wasn’t a huge inconvenience for the family. They’d endured separations before. What made the situation pricklier was Trinity’s mother being informed that after five years of fighting for a promotion, she’d gotten it…and it would require their relocation to the Silicon Valley.