Polished Slick (Natural Beauty) Read Online Free Page A

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.
    Ginger was the one who’d come forward and suggested Trinity stay with her. She’d thought it was time for the girl to stay put for a while, and she could provide her with the kind of stability she’d never had. Ginger had promised to give her back after Trinity’s dad returned from his deployment, but by then, no one would dare separate them. No one saw the sense in uprooting Trinity, so she stayed another year…then another…and another…then she went to college. Now she was nearly twenty-five and living with her great-aunt yet again.
    Trinity was digging into her German potato salad with gusto when Ginger nudged her under the table with her foot. She looked up and met Ginger’s mischievous gaze. “Hmm?”
    Ginger leaned over across the small four-top, nearly plopping the reading glasses dangling from her neck chain into her dinner. She cupped her left hand beside her mouth as if to shield her words from nearby patrons, although