Deadly in High Heels (15 page)

Oh boy.

I took shallow breaths but I couldn't keep the acrid scent out of my nostrils. My eyes were watering. On the plus side, my sinuses were completely clear. "What's going on here? What's that
smell
?"

"It's incense," Mom said cheerfully. "Welcome to your juju cleansing, dear!"

Mrs. Rosenblatt stepped forward, the rustle of her plus-sized grass skirt sounding like a hurricane blowing through the palm trees. "Here. Hold this." She thrust something into my hand.

I glanced down to see a tiny alligator head and immediately dropped it on the carpet.
That's
what they'd gone shopping for? No wonder they hadn't wanted me rooting through the bags. Eww! I wanted no part of this. Plus I was about thirty seconds from passing out from the stench.

"You shouldn't have done that," Mrs. Rosenblatt said sternly. "That's for protection."

"Don't worry, dear, it's not real," Mom added. "We couldn't find a real alligator head. So we bought a toy alligator and lopped him in two. But you can hold this instead." She handed me a little cloth bag tied with ribbon. Judging from its earthy scent, there were some kinds of potent herbs inside. "It's a mojo bag," she explained. "You keep it with you at all times."

I tried to give it back. "I really don't—"

"No, no, you mustn't let anyone else touch it!" She scurried backward, out of my reach and grazed a tiki idol with her foot. It rocked and fell over, its faux emerald eyes glittering up at us in accusation.

"That could be a problem," Mrs. Rosenblatt said, looking at it.

"No problem," Marco said. He seemed unusually happy. Maybe he'd inhaled too much incense. "I'll just stand the little guy back—ow!"

"Told you," Mrs. Rosenblatt said.

"The chicken bone jabbed me in the throat," Marco said, rubbing just above his collarbone.

I rolled my eyes.

"Shall we begin?" Mrs. Rosenblatt asked. "Betty, do you have the pre-sacrificed chicken ready?"

My mouth fell open. "The
what
?"

"Well, we weren't going to sacrifice one ourselves," Mrs. Rosenblatt said with great patience. "That would be strange."

Oh,
that
would be strange.

Mom turned her back, and I heard the crinkling of a plastic bag. When she turned around, she was holding a roasted Cornish game hen. "It's the best I could do," she said apologetically. "I got it at the supermarket. I couldn't find a Boston Market."

"It'll have to do," Mrs. Rosenblatt said in an aggrieved tone. "Set it in place."

Mom stepped carefully among the tikis on the floor, giving the emerald-eyed one a baleful look and a wide berth, and set the Cornish game hen in the center.

"Now we all join hands," Mrs. Rosenblatt instructed.

"What, with all this Cornish hen grease on me?" Mom shook her head. "I'd better go wash up. You never know when salmonella may become a problem. Does anyone have any sanitizer that I can—?"

"Go use the bathroom soap, Betty," Mrs. Rosenblatt said wearily.

Mom hurried off into the bathroom. We stood and listened to the water running and the slippery squishing sounds of hand washing and Mom humming
Black Magic Woman
, and then she was back, salmonella-free.

"Now we all join hands," Mrs. Rosenblatt said. "And
all
means
all
."

"Let me, let me," Mom implored her. She sounded like an excited six-year-old at Christmas. I didn't have the heart to dampen her enthusiasm, so I clasped hands with Marco on my left and Mom on my right.

"Do you remember the words?" Mrs. Rosenblatt asked her.

"Of course I remember the words," Mom said. "This isn't rocket science, Dorothy." She closed her eyes and took several deep breaths. Marco and Mrs. Rosenblatt closed their eyes, too. I didn't dare close my eyes on this bunch.

Then Mom began chanting, too low at first to be understood, then louder and louder. "
Laissez les bons temps rouler! Laissez les bons temps rouler
!"

Mrs. Rosenblatt's eyes snapped open. "Betty."

"
Laissez les
—"

"Betty!"

My mom's eyes flew open. "What? Did it work?"

Mrs. Rosenblatt shook her head. "You got the words wrong! You said you remembered the words!"

My mom blinked. "What'd I say?"

"You said, 'Let the good times roll,'" Mrs. Rosenblatt told her.

"Oh, dahlings, I'm
all
about that," Marco said with a delighted smile. "I think she got the words just right.
Ow
!" He whipped his head around to look behind him. "My grass skirt just pinched me in my—"

"Okay," I said, dropping both hands and backing out of the circle of craziness. Tears were running down my cheeks from the incense. Or maybe suppressed laughter. "I'll leave you all to figure this out, and I'll be back later, alright? I just want to take care of something first." And I turned and bolted.

The last thing I heard as the door slammed shut behind me was, "
Laissez les bons temps rouler
!"

"What is that smell?" Ramirez asked a couple of hours later. We were at the Lost Aloha Shack, grabbing a quick bite to eat. Ramirez had a burger with the works while I'd gone with a simple tropical fruit salad. Truth was, I couldn't taste my food anyway. The odor of incense and candles was still clinging to the inside of my nose and, apparently, the outside of my body. We had a ring of empty tables around us, but probably that was just coincidence.

I opted for the casual approach in my answer. "It's incense. From the juju cleansing."

Ramirez froze mid-bite. "Come again?"

I popped a piece of papaya into my mouth. Nope, no taste. "Mom and Mrs. Rosenblatt thought my juju needed a good cleansing, and they convinced Marco to help. Although I doubt it took much convincing. He seemed pretty happy about the whole thing." I still hadn't figured out where he'd gotten the feathered headdress and the chicken bone necklace.

"Your juju," Ramirez repeated.

"Yeah, it's a whole thing." I shrugged. "Something to do with pre-sacrificed chickens and alligator—"

Ramirez held up his hand. "Stop right there. If I hear any more, I might have to arrest someone."

"Suit yourself." I tried a juicy piece of mango. Tasted like a lot of nothing. I sure hoped that was a short-term side effect. "Speaking of arresting someone, did you find out anything useful this morning?"

Surfer Dirk threaded his way among the tables in our direction, balancing a serving tray at shoulder level and moving in time to music that only he could hear. "Hey, chica, what's going on? The pageant dudes must be keeping you busy. Haven't seen you here lately." He lowered the tray and leaned in toward me. "I heard about Miss New Mexico. Major bummer, huh?"

I glanced at Ramirez. He was glaring at Dirk as if assessing the breakability of his nose. I wasn't used to seeing this kind of reaction from Ramirez. It was flattering and a little scary. For Dirk. I put a calming hand on Ramirez's leg. "Dirk, I'd like you to meet my husband, Jack Ramirez."

Dirk's eyebrows shot upwards and disappeared under his shaggy pelt of blond hair. "This hombre's your husband? Hey, it's very cool to meet you, dude." He stuck out his hand.

"Dirk the surfer," Ramirez said, shaking it.

"That's me," Dirk agreed. "If you got the time, I got the waves. Come see me whenever."

"Yeah," Ramirez said, "I'll do that."

I shot him a frown that he ignored.

"Cool," Dirk said. "You guys all set with the libations?"

"We'll call you if we need you," Ramirez told him, and Dirk and his tray floated away, oblivious to Ramirez's irritation. Ramirez watched him leave through narrowed eyes. "I think you can toss that guy's card. I'm not sure he can
find
the ocean, let alone surf it."

"Already done," I said. I'd tossed it right into my bag last night, along with Detective Whatshisname's and Jeffries' signed photo. "So about this morning?"

Ramirez turned his attention back to his plate. "The autopsy report was in for Jennifer Oliver. She suffered blunt force trauma to the back of the head, most likely a lava rock taken from the landscaping near the pool. They found trace amounts of blood and hair on it."

My stomach twisted. I pushed my remaining fruit salad aside. "That's horrible."

"Murder always is," he said. He ate a fry. "There was something else. The M.E. found some sort of cheap emerald ring stuffed into her mouth. He thinks it happened post-mortem." He took a bite of his burger, chewed and swallowed. "Looks like someone was sending a message."

"An emerald ring?" My voice was faint.

Ramirez looked hard at me. "Yeah, that's what he said. Did you know about the ring?"

"It was hers," I said. "It was a promise ring."

"A promise ring," he repeated. "I thought that was a high school thing."

"In this case," I said, "it was a secret boyfriend thing."

"Xander Newport gave it to her?"

"Not that boyfriend." I shook my head, explaining about the mysterious lover with the green eyes. "And Mom and Mrs. Rosenblatt talked to some locals who said Xander had been partying and flirting with other women at a bar in town, the Curling Wave, the night Jennifer was killed," I finished.

Ramirez polished off his burger and shoved his plate aside. "Funny, I don't remember reading that in the report. It seems Mr. Newport omitted a few details in his statement."

I wasn't surprised. "He showed up at the hotel looking for a room after her body had been found," I said. "Making a commotion at the front desk like he'd just arrived on the island."

"Don't suppose you talked to him," Ramirez said.

I nodded reluctantly. "I caught him in the bar. He was sitting alone, acting like the grieving boyfriend. He told me he knew Jennifer had been seeing someone else. But he wanted to win her back."

"Or have her die trying," Ramirez said. He drained his beer. "I'll follow up with the detective in charge. See just how solid Newport's alibi is."

"It doesn't look good for him, does it?"

"No," he said. "It does not."

I fell silent as thoughts of Jennifer's secret lover flooded into my mind. Had he been the one to stuff the ring into Jennifer's mouth in a fit of jealous rage over her ex's efforts to reconcile with her? Or had it been Xander, the not so grieving boyfriend, out for revenge after she'd dumped him in favor of someone else?

But what reason could either of them have had to then kill Desi?

It seemed like the more I found out, the less I knew.

*

After lunch, Ramirez wanted to talk to some of the hotel staff to get an overview of what they might have seen and heard throughout the week, so I decided it would be a good time to call home to check on the kids. When I stepped off the elevator on the twelfth floor, I saw the housekeeping cart sitting across the hall from my room, outside of Maxine and Whitney's. Their door was propped. I slowed and took a peek inside. No sign of the maid. No sign of Whitney or Maxine, either. They were probably still doing their bathing suit walks for the judges. Which meant the room would be void of beauty queens for a while longer…

And would provide a perfect opportunity to look through one of my prime suspect's things.

I hesitated, fingering the keycard in my pocket. Every instinct was telling me that snooping through Whitney's stuff was a bad idea. At the very least it was an invasion of privacy. It might even be illegal.

What would Ramirez do?

I shook my head. Unfair question. Ramirez was a cop, and cops operated under a different set of rules. Cops had probable cause and search warrants.

I had an open door.

As I stood there trying to talk myself either out of or into the idea, the maid appeared in the doorway lugging an armful of plush bath towels, which she deposited in the laundry bag on her cart. I nodded and smiled at her while I pretended to be listening to the voicemail on my cell phone. She was preoccupied enough with her work that she barely seemed to notice me, which was just what I'd hoped for. If she barely noticed me, she couldn't describe me later. She took her time gathering fresh towels before going back into the room to restock the supply.

Immediately I stuffed my phone into my pocket, slipped into Whitney's room behind the maid and ducked into the closet. It was a large closet with two doors and enough room to park a Fiat. That is, if it hadn't already been stuffed with enough clothes to fill a small department store. Just my luck, either or both of the queens were gross over-packers. Judging by how little room I had to maneuver, they'd brought their entire wardrobes. All sorts of fashion flotsam was underfoot: pumps, flats, wedges, belts that had slipped from hangers, two laundry bags in differing stages of fullness. Then there were the clothes on hangers, many of them covered in drycleaners' plastic: cocktail dresses and gowns and skirts and jackets and tailored walking shorts. There was too much of everything, but at least the clothes provided cover. I knelt down behind a seafoam green gown with a chiffon train—I sure hoped it didn't belong to Maxine, considering her tendency to trip—and waited for the maid to finish up her duties.

After she'd given the vacuum a perfunctory push across the floor a few times, the maid packed up her cart and moved off down the hall. I emerged from the closet, careful not to disturb whatever organizational system Maxine and Whitney had going on in there. I took a moment to survey the room, deciding where to start. I knew I had a limited amount of time, but I hoped to find some proof that Whitney had it in for her fellow contestants. Specifically Jennifer's stolen bikini top. I had my doubts about Whitney, and while not finding the bikini top wouldn't dispel them, finding it would definitely confirm them.

I started with the dresser, quickly figuring out that the girls had divvied up the drawers evenly, two apiece, but that was where their compatibility ended. These two were the Odd Couple of the beauty pageant circuit. Whitney was as precise as a surgeon in her placement of items in the drawers. All the items that could be folded were folded. Everything else was rolled into balls or cylinders. Colors were coordinated. Like purpose went with like purpose. Even her cosmetics were carefully arranged into categories on top of the dresser: eye and brow makeup separate from foundation and blusher separate from lipsticks and lip stains. Hair care off to the left. Skin care to the right. I lingered at the skin care products for a second, taking note of the labels on the various jars and tubes. A girl could always improve her skin, right?

Unfortunately, along with the name of a good moisturizing serum, the only thing I learned was that Whitney was not hoarding Jennifer's bikini top. At least not anymore. She could have stolen it and immediately thrown it away. I had no way of knowing.

I bit my lip and looked at the remaining two drawers. Maxine's drawers. There was really no need to continue with my search. I'd done what I'd set out to do and come up empty. There wasn't much point in subjecting myself to Maxine's chaos theory method of unpacking. Not even the maid could have made order out of this mess, and she was paid to try.

Still, I didn't like to leave a job half done. My plan had been to search the room, and Maxine's belongings were in the room.

That was enough to convince me to open the first drawer. And almost recoil from the horror show inside. Maxine had none of Whitney's freakish neatness. Her personal items were shoved randomly into the space provided, rolled into lumpy balls where possible, stretched into wrinkled planes if need be. As far as I could tell, there was little order to any of it. What couldn't be squished into the dresser was in a tangled leaning pile on top, with a random blouse sleeve and a single leg from a pair of pantyhose sprouting from the pile and hanging toward the floor. I did a small shudder on behalf of her clothes. Even bargain brassieres didn't deserve to be treated that way.

Her cosmetics weren't any better. Everything was jumbled together, some of the jars and lipsticks left uncapped. Hairspray cans mingling with mascara tubes. It was a miracle that Maxine managed to pull herself together so well.

I bit my lip as I opened the bottom drawer. I expected more of the same, and I got it. I did a quick search through bra and panty sets and Spanx—what in the world would a tiny thing like Maxine need with Spanx?—and swimsuits, trying not to feel like a perv and failing miserably.

My search was so quick that I almost missed the one bikini top that had no matching bottom. I tugged at it gingerly, pulling it from beneath the layers so I could take a better look. Definitely too small for Maxine. I thought back to Desi's description of Jennifer's pilfered bikini top: white bandeau style with a seashell embellishment. And that's exactly what I'd found. But what was it doing among
Maxine
's things? That made no sense. Maybe it was Maxine's, mistakenly purchased in the wrong size and discarded in favor of another. But what were the chances that two contestants in the same pageant would own the same unique suit?

I put it back where I'd found it, buried beneath a rumpled pile of undergarments, and slid the drawer shut, my mind racing. I'd honestly expected to find it in Whitney's possession, if I found it at all. Did I have Maxine all wrong?

I was lost so deeply in thought that I almost didn't hear the female voice on the other side of the door. "I'll just be a minute," someone called out.

I gasped. It was Maxine's voice.

"It was so silly of me to forget my earrings. I really appreciate your coming up with me. I get so nervous…"

She hadn't yet finished her sentence when the door began to open.