Prompt: Lipstick, mascara, nail polish

The Lieutenant called out instructions to Trixie.  “Belden! You inventory the cosmetics.  Be sure you identify them by name, use, color and where they were found at the crime scene. See if there are any lipsticks that match the note.”

Trixie shot a startled look to Captain Molinson, a look that clearly said, “Are you kidding me?”  In her thoughts she shuddered, thinking, “Have you ever known me to willingly wear cosmetics?”

However, the Captain only smirked at her, so she knew there was no help from that quarter.

Trixie looked at the pile of cosmetics and medications on the table.  She used a pencil to gently sort the foundations, powders, eye-shadows, mascaras, and lipsticks into categories.  Trixie considered pulling out her cell-phone to call Moms.

“I bet Moms could help.   I love her, but unfortunately for her, fairies must have left me under the bush by the porch.  She always wanted a girly girl that she could play make-up with, but she got me instead.  She would be able to walk me through this land-mine mess of cosmetics but no, I can’t do that.  It would be foolish to bring a civilian into a police investigation.”

Trixie continued to mutter to herself, “Look at all these bottles of nail polish.  There are pinks, basic reds, peaches, white and clear.  Even I know that most of these look like polishes that would be more appropriate for a ‘tween’.  But then there are the bright or dark greens, blues and purples, bright or dark pinks and reds that should only be worn by someone with the sophistication to carry off the boldness of the colors.”

Trixie laughed under her breath, “Ok, most of these seem to be China Glaze products.  There is one bottle each and the names are really weird.  Colors like I’m with the lifeguard green, Hang Ten-Toes pink, Flirty Tankini orange, Love’s a Beach pink, Ride the Waves blue and Beach Cruise-r purple.  No, make that violet.  Oh heck,  I don’t have a built in color wheel.  I imagine that Diana could tell me the name of the actual color. Gleeps!  What was with this lady?  Did she have a Beach Boys obsession?”  

Trixie continued to search through the pile and looked closely at the lipsticks.  She made marks of each lipstick on evidence cards and listed the brand, lipstick name, and color number.  She grimaced when her fist smudged one of the marks.  She started to make a new evidence card, but stopped suddenly.

Trixie called over to her superior.  “Hey Lieutenant?   Can I look at that note again?” She put on plastic evidence gloves and took the note out of the bag. She held the note up to the light, and then laid it flat on her palm so she could look across the flat plane of the page. Finally, she brought the page close to her face.  Without touching her nose to the paper, she sniffed once and then again.

“Sir, I don’t want to mess up the evidence on the note, but are we sure that is a lipstick print?  There is no scent to the lipstick mark like is on the evidence cards.  All the lipsticks on the vanity have some sort of fruity, sweet scent.  And if you look at the flat plane of these evidence cards, you can see that the lipstick marks leave a three dimensional residue that doesn’t show up on the note.  And since the note was originally folded, it would have smudged if it were real lipstick. I think that the note actually used a lipstick font instead of the real thing.  In fact, now that I look at it again,  I think the writing may be in that Comic Sans-serif font, especially since there is no scent but printer ink, or copier chemical.

She continued, “And didn’t you say that her missing shoe hasn’t been found? There are too many bottles of nail polish here.  I don't think this lady used a professional to do her mani-pedi’s. We need to look for the  friends that she hung out with that encouraged this nail polish behavior.  They will likely know more about her relationships than just about any other witness.  The big clue is,

when I looked at the body, the toenails looked like they were freshly painted, and that doesn’t make sense because she has ‘Dr. Scholl’s Ingrown Toenail Pain Reliever’ on the vanity.

I have a couple of friends who are really into getting mani-pedi’s and to them, it is all about making themselves feel good. If either one of them ever had an ingrown toenail, I would lay odds that they would stop with the pedicures until the toe was healed.  So I don’t think the victim would be painting her toe-nails if she was fighting an ingrown toenail infection.  

I would lay you odds that, the perp has a shoe or foot fetish, and after he or she committed murder, they took the shoe and left the fake suicide note to throw us off the trail.”

Thanks to jstar8 for editing. However, any errors are and always will be, mine.

Also thanks to McRuth for letting me take the words out of her mouth.