Deadly in High Heels (11 page)

Within a half hour, the auditorium was a churning sea of police officers and crime scene techs, each following their own specific choreography. The pageant personnel were corralled into the rear seating area, far from the stage, and one by one called to the front to give statements and hair samples. I waited my turn, trying not to look at Desi's crumpled form up on the stage, a pool of blood beside her head as she lay just inside the wings where she'd been shadowed until Maxine's unfortunate discovery. My mind whirled with the new and horrifying possibility that Jennifer had never been a specific target at all. Was someone out to get the pageant girls in general? As far as I knew, Jennifer and Desi's only link beyond the pageant itself was that they'd met with someone on the beach and, shortly after, been found murdered. But who would possibly want to kill beauty queens?

I let my gaze slide over the group and fall on Whitney, sitting silently beside her roommate, Maxine. Both looked pale and unnerved. Whether or not that reaction was genuine, I couldn't say, since this turn of events held a silver lining for Miss Delaware. After all, now that Desi was out of the picture, Whitney would vault right back to the front-runner position. I wondered if she had known of the judges' directive to pad Desi's scores. Did this competition mean enough to Whitney to kill off her competition one by one?

Laforge left his seat to follow Detective Whatshisname to the front of the auditorium, and my eyes followed them. It was easier to believe that Laforge would harbor a grudge about possibly being edged out and seek revenge of some sort against the Hawaiian Paradise organization. It was clear he had a mean streak. But did he have a homicidal one?

I settled back, chewing on my lip while watching Laforge talk to the police detective. His arms were crossed in a defensive posture, but he looked unsettled, and he ran the backs of his hands across his eyes a few times as he spoke. I was no body language expert, but he seemed genuinely upset to me. Whether that was because of Desi's murder or because his last chance pageant was evaporating in front of him was another question.

Then it occurred to me. Maybe I'd been looking in the wrong direction. Maybe it was someone not involved in the competition at all, but someone who felt strongly enough against pageants and beauty queens in general that they might try to do away with the whole affair by eliminating its participants. A crazy idea, but was it any crazier than standing outside in a
Fashion Kills
T-shirt looking to douse people with a bucket of red paint like our friendly neighborhood protester, Don? It seemed worthwhile to do some checking into her background, and I decided with the pageant once again looking like it was on hold, now might be the perfect time.

"Maddison Springer." Detective Whatshisname stood at the end of my row, notebook in hand, Bic at the ready. "Follow me, please."

I left my seat and followed a respectful distance behind, even though I'll admit I was curious to see what he'd written in his notebook after speaking to the others. While a crime scene tech went about taking my hair sample, the detective assessed me with tired eyes. The lines on his face seemed more pronounced, as if etched more deeply by worry. I was sure the two dead beauty queens were weighing as heavily on him as on the rest of us.

"Tell me what you know about the deceased," he said.

"She's Desi—Desiree DeMarco," I said. "Miss New Mexico. But you already knew that, right?"

He didn't say anything. He just looked at me in that inscrutable way that cops had. I'd seen that look from Ramirez more times than I cared to remember.

"She was Jennifer's roommate," I added. "Miss Montana. The first…" My voice trailed off.

"Victim," the detective finished for me.

I nodded, careful to avoid the natural inclination to glance at Desi's lifeless body.

He jotted something in his notebook. "How was Miss DeMarco doing in the competition?"

I considered how to answer that. "I'm not a judge," I said carefully, "but I'd heard rumors that she was doing well." Or would have been, as soon as the padded scores were registered.

"Just like Miss Oliver," he said, but it wasn't a question so I didn't reply. "Did you happen to hear any other rumors?"

I shook my head.

He flipped back through his notes. "And if I remember right, your room is on the twelfth floor, the same floor as the contestants. Did you see or hear anything there you think might be pertinent?"

My first impulse was to say no, since all I saw was Desi's back as she got into the elevator. After all, for all I knew, she might have been going down to the bar for a drink or to the lobby to pick up a message. But in hindsight, I knew better. I knew she'd been going to her mysterious meeting on the beach. So while I wasn't ready to admit to lurking in the bushes in an unsuccessful attempt to eavesdrop, my conscience wouldn't allow me to withhold any more than that.

"I heard a door close," I told him, "and when I got up to look, I saw Desi getting into the elevator at the end of the hall."

"Was she alone?"

"As far as I could tell," I said. "I didn't see anyone else."

"And what time was this?"

"Just past midnight. I was just going to sleep, and the sound woke me up." I shrugged. "They're heavy doors."

He studied me for a moment. "Can you think of anything else you want to tell me?"

The thought crossed my mind to suggest he look into the source of Protestor Don's hostility, but it didn't feel right to drag her into the investigation without real cause. Not when I could drag her into it myself. "Not right now," I hedged. "Is it okay if I go back to my room?"

He closed his notebook with a nod. "I'm sure I don't have to tell you to watch your back."

He sure didn't. After two murders in the span of a week, I planned to watch my back and everyone else's too.

*

I meant to go up to my room, but along the way I ran into Dana and Marco sitting in the lobby having cocktails under the shade of the towering palm trees, the fronds dappled with sunlight. Because the contestants had only been rehearsing rather than competing in a scored activity, the judges hadn't been present when Desi had been found. But from the way Dana's hands were shaking, I could tell she'd been in the lobby long enough to see the army of police officers swarm the hotel. If I knew Marco, he was trying to distract her from the grim reality, but I didn't think he was having much luck. He seemed grateful when I sat down.

I filled them in on what had happened.

"This is beyond awful." Dana stared into her drink. "I can't believe this is happening."

"Did you talk to the police?" Marco asked me.

I nodded. "I didn't have much to tell them. But I do have an idea." I shared my plan to talk to Don the protester.

"Dahling, I'm in," Marco said, fanning himself with his hand. "All this R&R is making my brain as sharp as a cotton ball. I
need
to put myself to good use."

"I saw you putting yourself to good use this morning," I told him. "At the yogurt bar."

"Oh, that." He flapped his hand. "It was all in good fun. I
was
fabs though, wasn't I?" He sipped from his drink, batting his impossibly long lashes at me over the rim of the glass.

"I just can't believe it," Dana said. "First Jennifer and now Desi? What's going on around here? Do you really think this Don person could have something to do with it?"

I shrugged. "It's a place to look. I can't stand the thought of doing nothing. Any ideas where to start?"

"We could check the peaceful protest permits that have been issued recently," Dana suggested. "I'm sure they're available to the public."

"We could do that," Marco agreed. "Or we could do this." He put down his cocktail and made a beeline for the front desk. Dana and I exchanged glances and followed him. "I'd like to speak to the manager, please," he told the desk clerk.

The chubby clerk seemed dismayed by the request, as if he'd personally breached the hotel's code of conduct. "Is there anything I can help you with, sir?"

"Let's see," Marco said. "Are you familiar with the tragically ungroomed person who stands on your grounds every day protesting from sunrise to sunset?"

The clerk nodded immediately. "That's Don."

"Right. Don." Marco glanced back at us. We nodded, too, as if this was something new to us. "And Don's last name would be…?" Marco's eyebrows arched in anticipation.

"Oh. Um…" The clerk frowned, thought a moment, turned, and called out, "James, do you know Don's last name?"

Another clerk appeared from the office area, a lanky twenty-something with a Beatles mop of black hair. "Don from Housekeeping?"

"Don with the signs," the clerk said.

"And the unplucked eyebrows," Marco added.

"And the bad attitude," I put in.

"Oh." James nodded. "That's Don Curcio. I think she lives over in Honolulu. Did she harass you or do something to damage your property? Because I can have Security remove her from the grounds."

Having seen her in action, I figured she'd probably harassed everybody, but I didn't want to cause her any undeserved trouble.

"I'm not sure," Marco said. "The stain may come out. In the meantime, I know a complimentary pitcher of daiquiris will soothe my hurt feelings."

Dana and I exchanged a glance, and barely contained eye-rolls.

"Of course, sir. I'll arrange that for you right away." The clerk snatched up a pen. "Your room number?"

Marco turned to Dana and me. "Ladies, where shall we take this little adventure?"

"My room," I said immediately, and gave the clerk the room number.

"I'll have a pitcher sent right up," the clerk assured us. "I'm terribly sorry for the…" He hesitated, probably because he didn't know what he was terribly sorry for.

Marco stepped smoothly into the hesitation. "As long as it doesn't happen again. You've been very helpful." He turned to Dana and me. "Ladies? Shall we head on up to the room?"

"Very nice," I told him on the way to the elevator. "And completely shameless."

"Thank you," he said with a smile.

*

"I don't believe it," Marco said a little while later.

"I never would have thought it," Dana said.

"I didn't see
that
coming," I said.

We were in my room, sharing the pitcher of banana daiquiris that the front desk had sent up, staring at a photo of Donatella Curcio we'd found in an Internet search. Not Don, the fashion train wreck, but Donatella, the former beauty queen. Which was surprising in itself. More surprising was that she had actually been gorgeous once upon a time, right down to the shining hair and Vaseline'd smile.

Marco snatched the tablet from me and gaped at it. "This cannot be her," he said. "Look at that hair. Those eyes." He blinked at it. "Those eyebrows. There are
two
."

Dana looked at her own tablet, where she'd pulled up some biographical information. "This says she competed in a half dozen national pageants, although she never won any of them."

"Always the bridesmaid," I mused.

Marco nodded. "I know that might do it for me. I don't handle rejection well." He looked at Don's picture again. "Wonder what the winners looked like."

Dana read further. "Get this. She actually competed in the Miss Hawaiian Paradise competition two years ago!"

Marco squealed. "She did all that damage to herself in only two years?"

"Two years?" I repeated. Jennifer and Desi had each been competing for more than two years. The pageant universe was a small one. They'd probably known Don in her former life, possibly even competed against her. Maybe even beat her. And from what I'd seen so far, Don wouldn't take that gracefully.

"Who won that year?" Marco asked.

Dana's eyes scanned the page. "Huh."

"'Huh' what?" I asked.

"Well, it looks like Don might have had a chance of winning this one. If," she added, "she hadn't been disqualified."

I leaned over her shoulder. "Why? What happened?"

"She was disqualified for trying to gain an unfair competitive advantage." Dana looked up from the screen. The corner of her mouth twitched. "Seems she was known among insiders as the Cupcake Peddler."

That didn't sound so bad. I could think of worse things than cupcakes. "What does
that
mean?"

This time Dana did smile. "It means she made daily trips to the bakery and plied all her competitors with cupcakes in the hopes they'd gain enough weight to make
her
look good."

"Oh, that's dirty," Marco said. "But delicious. Were they red velvet?"

Dana rolled her eyes. "It doesn't say."

"Does it say double fudge chocolate?" he asked.

She gave him a look.

He shrugged. "Just asking. I know if
I
was going to fatten up the competition, I'd go with double fudge chocolate."