Chapter 1
"Cassidi, are those sex dolls in Santa's sleigh?" Amy Spannagel gawked at the second-floor rooftop of the three-story Victorian mansion where I lived and ran my beauty salon, The Clip and Sip.
My eyes darted to the display. The fake sacks of toys had been replaced with three very real, very adult blow-up dolls. I put my hand over my mouth, which was frozen in an O. "Surely they're life-sized Barbies?"
My stepcousin Gia Di Mitri walked up and crossed her arms against her sexy Mrs. Claus sweater. "Well, ho, ho, ho." Her tone was as dry as the winter air. "Looks like a wild ride."
That wasn't the answer I'd been looking for.
Amy gave me a playful jab. "I guess that clatter on the roof was high heels, not reindeer hooves."
I shot her a Scrooge-style stare.
She coughed and looked back at the holiday harlots.
I spun on my cousin. "Who would pull a stunt like this on our open house night?"
Gia's gaze held a get-a-clue glare. "Who do you think?"
The Christmas culprit could've been anyone, but I knew who she thought had done it. "Just because Ivy owns a rival salon doesn't mean she's behind this."
"Doesn't it?" She flipped her Cher hair. "That snake's been hell-bent on putting us out of business ever since she slithered in from LA."
She had a point, but no proof. "That doesn't mean she vandalized our Santa."
"She's already one-upped our free drink offer and our business name. Do you really think she'd stop at slutting up our sleigh?"
I chewed a Frosty-adorned fingernail and thought about Styles and Spirits' free glasses of champagne. "Probably not."
Amy pushed her black-rimmed glasses high on her Roman nose. "Why is that one doll upside down?"
Gia arched a red-glittered brow. "The one between Santa's legs?"
It dawned on me what was going down in that sleigh, and my jaw wanted to drop. But I wouldn't let it because I didn't want to look like one of the dolls.
"Wait a sec." Gia flailed her arm toward the roof. "One's a blonde, like you, and one has my fab hair."
A flash of anger warmed my chest, but not like the hot toddy I'd had earlier. And I didn't know if I was madder at the display denigrator or my conceited cousin. "Then Ivy didn't do this, because she wouldn't know about the sex scandals."
"C'mon, Cass." Gia threw up her hands like she'd tossed a pizza. "Everyone in Danger Cove knows this place used to be a brothel. It's about to be a freakin' stop on the Gold Rush History Tour."
Amy looked at me over the rim of her glasses. "Not to mention that half the women in town and their husbands know your uncle was a lecher."
I rose up on her like the abominable Bumble on Rudolph. "Is that really what you want to say about my late uncle?"
"That, and may God rest Vinnie's soul." She crossed herself even though I was sure she wasn't Catholic.
The ice left my eyes. "He was kind enough to leave his salon to me, and I've worked hard to rehab its image. For his sake and mine, I'm not about to let anyone ruin it."
I looked at my phone. It was 6:45 p.m., so I had fifteen minutes to do something before my open house got underway. "Our guests will be here soon, and the Christmas lights tour is about to start. You two stay out front and create a distraction." I set off toward the toolshed. "I'll take care of Santa's strumpets."
Amy flat-footed it ahead of me, flat out ignoring my request, and went around the side of the house.
And Gia hauled booty beside me on the balls of her boots. "You got dizzy just looking at the rock-climbing wall in Girl Scouts. How are you going to make it onto the roof?"
My fingers curled into fists. Fourteen years had passed, and I was still mad I hadn't earned that badge. "I'll use the ladder."
"No you won't." Amy pointed to the shed. "Because it's gone."
I stopped and stared at the empty wall where I kept the ladder.
"It was fate," Amy said.
"Or maybe the saboteur?" Gia's question was no suggestion.
My confidence was giving way to panic. "Now what're we going to do?"
Amy snapped her fingers. "I know. We could blast 'I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus' on the stereo, and then people would think you put the doll that way on purpose."
"Really? That's your solution?" My tone verged on hysterical. "Because I doubt Mommy was kissing Santa Claus down there."
A car door slammed, and I turned to see Donatello Stallone stepping from his squad car with a sack of ice over his shoulder.
"Whoa." He ogled the dolls. "I wish I'd known Santa delivered those kinds of toys."
My eyes narrowed along with my lips. A whole freezer of ice couldn't cool his Latin blood.
"Donny"—Gia batted her false eyelashes—"Santa didn't deliver them. A spoilsport did."
"Yeah, and Cassidi's trying to attract patrons, not perverts." Amy pushed him toward the porch. "So, you've got to get them off the roof before the open house starts."
His dark eyes lit up like LED lights. "With pleasure."
"But we don't have a ladder," I said.
Gia turned to him and stuck out her bosom in an un–Mrs. Claus–like manner. "You can go out my bedroom window on the second floor."
Donatello's chest expanded like that of his namesake Ninja Turtle. "Looks like Christmas came early."
Gia giggled, and he dashed up the steps to the salon.
Amy, an assistant librarian who had more book smarts than boy smarts, scratched her head. "What did he mean by that?"
"Never mind." I shoved my hands into the pockets of my coat. "Let's just hope he gets those dolls down before anyone else sees them."
Gia looked behind me at the street. "Too late. Here comes Woman Mouth."
My stomach dropped like the Times Square Ball on New Year's Eve, but without the ensuing enthusiasm. Woman Mouth was the translation of Donna Bocca, the undisputed diva of Danger Cove gossip. Thanks to her tattling tongue, The Clip and Sip scandal would be all over town faster than you could say "pa rum pum pum pum."
Donna trotted up in a bulky coat with fur trim, which did everything and nothing for her Pumbaa-shaped figure. "Hello, girls." Her voice was as hard as rock candy. "I see you've expanded your list of services to include the full body."
"Seriously, Donna?" I was done with jokes for the day. "This was obviously a prank."
Her wide-set eyes flitted from Gia's off-shoulder sweater to her black leather miniskirt. "Was it?"
Gia lunged at her but tripped, laying out Amy on the lawn.
"Cool it, cuz." I grabbed her by the scruff of her sweater and pulled. At five feet seven and one hundred thirty pounds, I had two inches and twenty pounds on her, which I needed to keep her in line. "My Christmas cheer has already been severely challenged."
Gia scowled at an unflinching Donna and adjusted her outfit. "Lucky for you we can't afford another scandal, or I would've flattened that pancake nose of yours to a crepe."
"Hey!" Amy, who'd lost her glasses in the grass, squinted at the sky. "What's Donatello doing with that broom?"
We all looked up.
While balancing on the peak of the front porch roof, he'd stuck a broom handle between the blonde doll's legs to lift her from the sleigh. "That's right, baby. Come to daddy."
I covered my eyes, dizzy from déjà vu. "This is like when I had Uncle Vinnie's racy statues removed from the salon."
"Maybe you'll get on the front page of the Cove Chronicles again." Amy sounded like a kid at Christmas. "Pornographic publicity is better than no publicity, right?"
I gave her the fisheye through my fingers. She'd found her glasses but was still blind to reality.
"Why, Cassidi," an elderly female voice said. "What a lovely display."
Stunned that anyone could find the lusty latex ladies lovely, I removed my hands and saw my client Mabel Henderson, a small but portly woman with a fondness for 1930s pin curls. She'd been the school crossing guard for Danger Cove Elementary for decades—until her eyesight got so bad that she escorted the principal into an open manhole. "Thanks, Mrs. Henderson. It's really…something."
She grabbed my hand and gave it a squeeze. "It's sweet that you included Santa's helpers in the sleigh, dear, but they're so tall." Her murky-looking eyes grew serious. "They're supposed to be elves, and elves are short."
"And they wear clothes too." Amy gave a know-it-all nod.
"Evening, everyone."
Zac Taylor's voice usually made my insides turn to rubber. But this time the rubbery feeling was pure embarrassment, thanks to the lewd rooftop scene. We'd only been dating for a few months.
He slid his arm around my waist and kissed my cheek. "What're you doing outside?"
"Uh…"
"Yo, Zac," Donatello called.
Zac glanced up and did a double take. "What the—"
Donatello had two dolls under one arm and held the other upright at his side. "It's like Mardi Gras up here!"
I cringed so hard that I shrunk from Zac's embrace. "I'll explain later. Would you please get him and his, um, lady friends down before anyone else sees him?"
"On it." Zac headed for the porch.
"Here come some carolers." Amy singsonged her words.
"Oh, how nice." Mrs. Henderson clasped her hands together and looked in the wrong direction.
"Holy ravioli," Gia breathed. "It's Mr. Simkins and the middle school choir."
"And their parents," Amy said. "With Randall and Olivia Olcott too."
The presence of the Olcotts, a Danger Cove society couple in their early sixties, was almost more upsetting than the dolls.
"I've got to distract them. One critical word from Olivia could cancel my open houses for good." I waved at them with both hands to make sure they focused on me instead of the roof.
Randall avoided my welcome, but Olivia deigned a nod. When they reached the sidewalk to the salon, Mr. Simkins turned to the children and raised his arms. He paused for a beat, and his arms came down.
"Siiilent night—"
"Hoooly crap," Donatello shouted as he fell from the roof, clutching the blonde doll to his chest. The other two dolls landed on the lawn, but Donatello hit the porch on top of the blonde. They bounced and, with the doll serving as his sled, slid down the steps to the middle of the sidewalk and stopped a few feet away.
He was still holding the naked doll in what looked like a passionate embrace.
And then the night was indeed silent—but not holy.
Gia strut-ran to Donatello's side, and Zac climbed from a second-floor window. He looked over the edge of the roof. "You still alive?"
"Yeah, man. I got lucky." Donatello rolled off the doll and patted her bare boobs. "This girl was made for action."
A mother gasped and covered her young son's eyes.
Mr. Simpkins lowered his arms, trying to block the children's view.
My heart began to beat like it had hit a speed bump, and my lungs bottomed out of my chest. I put my hands on my thighs and started the 5-2-5 breathing technique I'd been taught to ease my anxiety.
"Don't stress, Cass." Amy patted my back. "Donatello's totally okay."
I pursed my lips à la the Grinch and was sure my heart shrunk three sizes too small. But when the carolers began to leave, I caught sight of the real Grinch.
Ivy Li.
And she was sitting in her red Lexus sport coupe, smiling like she'd just stolen Christmas.
* * *
Zac leaned against the doorframe of The Clip and Sip, looking at me from beneath thick lashes. "It's almost midnight. Why don't you try to get some sleep?" He brushed a lock of hair from my eyes. "You're not going to lose any clients over a stupid prank."
I glanced at my hands and noticed that I'd chipped Frosty's head off my thumbnail, which was hardly a good omen. "Only because I have so few left. Ivy's taken at least half our regulars and most of the walk-ins. And you saw yourself that only six people came to our open house tonight."
"So her salon is trendy," he said with a shrug. "It won't last. The LA vibe's all wrong for Danger Cove, so she doesn't have your business sense."
I mustered a semi-smile. Zac always seemed to believe in me, even when I didn't believe in myself.
"And don't forget Gia's marketing magic. She brought the salon back from the brink after Margaret Appleby's murder."
Gia's Egyptian-themed promotion had been pretty epic. "Maybe you're right."
"Of course I am." His hands framed my cheeks, and he looked into my eyes. "You've pulled the salon out of the red before. You'll do it again."
I nodded, feigning a confidence I didn't feel. Then his lips landed on mine, and my problems vanished—until a familiar knock brought them right back to me. I pulled away with a sigh.
"I take it Gia's still looking for your uncle's fabled cash stash?" He put his forehead on mine.
"I'd almost convinced her it didn't exist. But now that business is so bad, she's at it again." I raised my head and gave him a peck on the mouth. "I'd better go before she puts another hole in the sheetrock."
He brushed my face with his index finger. "Are we still on for the Lobster Pot tomorrow night?"
This time I flashed a full smile. "Nothing can ruin my love for lobster, Zac Taylor."
He flash-smiled back and went down the steps.
I double bolted the door behind him and rested my forehead on the jamb, welcoming the cool wood against my overheated skin. Zac did that to me with disconcerting frequency.
The whirring of a power drill interrupted my romantic meanderings.
Bounding up the stairs at the back of the salon, I stopped at Gia's bedroom door.
But it wasn't because of the drilling.
Gia had draped Arabic-arch-patterned fabric from ceiling to floor, and the walls were lined with red, pink, and gold cushions. "I was going to ask if you were drilling for treasure in your bedroom, but apparently you're in Morocco, so never mind."
She switched off the drill and pulled a pink veil from her face. "I'm putting the finishing touches on my I Dream of Jeannie bottle."
Given the evening's events, I rued her recent discovery of the 1960s series on Netflix because I much preferred wall holes to the harem theme. "I don't want to tell you what to do with your space, but I'm sensitive to anything that smacks of sex right now."
She put the drill on her purple velvet bedspread. "You going to let Ivy's antics get to you?"
I avoided her eyes and took a seat on a cushion beside her dresser. "Do you really think she was behind the sleigh sabotage?"
Gia put her hands on her harem-panted hips. "You saw her in the Devil Car outside the salon, and she certainly wasn't here for our open house."
I picked at headless Frosty's torso and pondered other possible culprits. "Maybe it was the client you made up like David Bowie on the day of her wedding."
"Don't be ridiculous. Thanks to me that bride-to-be left the salon looking like a woman." She picked up a bottle of peppermint vodka from her dresser and poured herself a shot. "Ivy's the one who dolled up our salon, and we've got to doll her up back."
"That's the worst thing we could do. We need to focus on getting our clients to return."
"Judging from the low turnout tonight," she said, stirring her vodka with a candy cane, "that's going to take a Christmas miracle." She raised her glass to me and swallowed her shot.
The enormity of the task was too much to contemplate at eleven forty-five on a Saturday night. "Let's brainstorm this tomorrow." I rose to my feet. "If I know you, you'll figure out a way to superhero-save the day."
"I'll try, but we might need a real genie to get us out of this mess." She flopped onto her bed and grabbed something from a box on her nightstand.
My eyes narrowed as I recognized one of the snowball cookies I'd ordered from Cinnamon Sugar Bakery. "Weren't we supposed to serve those at the open house tonight?"
She popped a cookie into her mouth and brushed powdered sugar from her hands. "We were, but like the majority of our clients, the cookies couldn't make it." She turned back toward the box and stared at her closet door, which was ajar. "Did you borrow something?"
It was common knowledge that Gia kept her clothes under lock and key. It was also widely known—and glaringly apparent—that her style was straight up Jersey Girl, whereas mine was more Girl Next Door. "When would that ever happen?"
"The day you finally get some fashion sense." Her tone was low, like the jab. Then she leapt off the bed and picked up the drill, aiming it like a gun at the closet, and opened the door with her foot.
No one was inside, not to my surprise. But I could see Gia wasn't satisfied. She had a photographic memory where her closet was concerned, and she could tell if so much as a moth had touched her stuff.
She scanned the rows of clothes and shoes. Next, she zeroed in on the shelves.
My stomach seized when she pulled out a three-ring binder I knew all too well.
Gia flipped open the cover, and her perky pout turned into a flat-out frown. "Someone ripped out some of the pages."
"Which ones?" I whispered, even though I already knew the answer.
Her eyes met mine. "The ones with Vinnie's clients' names, except for the last page."
When she mentioned my uncle's clients, she wasn't talking about his salon regulars. She was referring to local men who'd bought his counterfeit Viagra. "Why would someone want to steal that kind of information? Blackmail?"
She snapped the cover shut. "Well, it's because they wanted to invite the dudes to a party."
I took the binder and looked inside. Sure enough, only one of the six pages she'd photocopied from my uncle's little black book remained. "Do you think one of our guests did it?"
"No one left the salon that I saw." She sunk onto the side of the bed. "What about you?"
I shook my head. "It's not like we had a full house, and you know as well as I do that no one stayed more than twenty minutes."
She pinched her bottom lip. "Then it must've happened when we were outside looking at the display."
My stomach was no longer seizing. It was lurching—like I was riding in a one-horse open sleigh. Was that the reason for the adult dolls? Were they supposed to distract us while someone swiped the list? And if so, what in the name of jolly old Saint Nick did they plan to do with it?
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