Slay Bells and Satchels (Haley Randolph Mystery Series) by Dorothy Howell Page B

me.”
    “She didn’t pay you? Not at all?”
    “Bitch,” Jasmine muttered.
    She pulled her cell phone from her pocket and began fiddling with it.
    “Do you think McKenna’s family might make it right?” I asked, trying to bring her back to our conversation.
    “I doubt it,” she said, glancing up from the phone. She shook her head. “And I was close—so close—to getting the cash from McKenna.”
    “She got a job?” I asked.
    “She got struck by lightning,” Jasmine said, turning back to her phone. “A role in a sitcom. Prime time. A major network. Starting at twenty grand an episode.”
    “Twenty thousand dollars? Every week?” I might have yelled that.
    “Don’t ask me how, but she got it,” Jasmine said.
    “So what the heck was she doing working as an elf at Holt’s?” I asked.
    I mean, jeez, if I had a job pulling down twenty big ones a week I wouldn’t even drive past a Holt’s store, let alone go inside.
    “Production hadn’t started yet. She needed money. But mostly, I think she liked being around the rest of us so she could brag,” Jasmine said. She turned back to her phone, then said, “Hang on a second. I have to submit for this audition.”
    I leaned forward a bit to try and see what she was doing, and asked, “You can get an audition on the Internet?”
    “If you don’t have an agent,” Jasmine said, working her phone.
    “Like Extra Extra?” I asked.
    “Not exactly,” she said. “A lot of productions will take actors who aren’t in the Screen Actors Guild yet. They post casting notices. I signed up for this service so I can submit my headshot and acting résumé directly to the casting director, and try to get an audition.”
    “Did McKenna do that, too?” I asked.
    Jasmine huffed and said, “Look, McKenna was a bitch. She treated me like trash. She treated everybody like trash. She skipped out on me and moved in with this guy who had the serious hots for her—not because she cared about him. She didn’t. She just used him because she needed a place to live.”
    I didn’t know what to say to that, which was just as well since Jasmine kept talking.
    “And when she got her big break, that sitcom role, she became an even bigger bitch,” Jasmine said. “Throwing it in everybody’s face about how she was going to hire a personal assistant, buy a condo on the beach, vacation in Europe, start doing movies. She went on and on about what she’d wear to all the award shows, about how great her life was—when the rest of us are lucky if we eat three times a day.”
    Jasmine looked angry—and I can’t say that I blamed her. Still, what better time to push her for a little more info?
    “So if you needed money so bad, why did you cancel on the elf thing at Holt’s?” I asked.
    Jasmine fumed, bouncing her fist off her thigh, staring off at nothing like she was remembering every bad thing McKenna had ever done to her.
    “Did you come to the store that morning at all?” I asked.
    A few more seconds passed, then Jasmine sat back on the couch.
    “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have gone off like that about McKenna,” she said. “It’s just that I want this so bad. I want to act. It’s like some crazy passion that I can’t control. Did you ever feel that way about something?”
    Did designer handbags count?
    “And my mom.” Jasmine’s emotions spun up again. “She’s ragging me big-time to give up on trying to make it as an actress and move back home. To Scottsdale.”
    “Ugh,” I said. Scottsdale was probably a really nice place, but not if your dream was to become an actress.
    “Yeah. And she keeps talking to me about this guy I went to high school with who’s going to inherit his dad’s Kia dealership in like fifty years, or something, like that’s going to lure me back home.”
    “Oh my God,” I said.
    “Look at this.”
    Jasmine launched off the couch, and pulled a gift box from under a stack of magazines on the floor beside the TV.
    I recognized the