CHAPTER THREE
Reporters and TV camera crews are swooping down on Shanelle and me like vultures on carcasses. I guess that even in Sin City, where outrageous things happen 24/7, a murder during a wedding is still a story.
I’m a little thrown off by all the media, I’ll tell you. It’s part of my role as the Ms. America titleholder to interact with the press and I take it seriously. I don’t want to be one of those beauty queens who make headlines by sounding like a ninny. So I always prepare in advance and keep in mind the Two Cardinal Rules: Stay on Message and Don’t Say Anything Controversial.
The latter is why beauty queens so often declare that their greatest heart’s desire is World Peace.
This time I can’t prepare, though. The reporters are already in our faces, one TV-camera lens so close the cameraman can count my pores.
“You on the right, aren’t you the beauty queen whose pic is up on the bride’s web site?” shouts a male reporter from the rear of the crowd.
“I am.” After I won the Ms. America crown, I put an endorsement on the Crowning Glory Pageant Shoppe web site to try to make up for some bad press Sally Anne never deserved.
“So you’re the one who solved that murder in Hawaii,” the reporter goes on.
This, I find quite gratifying. I’m nodding assent when a nearby bottle blonde pipes up.
“So whodunit this time?”
This reporter appears on the impatient side. I right my ostrich feathers and proceed to deliver a few cautious insights. “The homicide investigators have only begun to sift through the evidence. I expect it will be some time before they pinpoint a suspect.” I notice a cameraman attempting to edge behind us and so I pull Shanelle back with me against the wall to prevent him shooting close-ups of our thong-clad rear ends.
“Somebody must’ve looked suspicious in there,” the blonde persists. “If you’re such a sleuth, shouldn’t you have noticed
something
?”
I’m not sure I like her tone. But I cannot reveal any of the things I did find suspicious for fear I’ll jeopardize the investigation.
Because, truth is, I want Detective Perelli to think highly of me. In fact, I’m even hoping she’ll let me assist with the investigation, given my proximity to the homicidal event and my killer-nabbing experience.
“There were a few anomalies.” I’m choosing my words so carefully I’m sounding like a cop. “But I do not feel at liberty to discuss them at this time.”
“Admit it, you didn’t notice a thing, sweet cheeks,” the first male reporter opines. Chuckles, even a guffaw or two, ensue. “That so-called crime-solving you did in Hawaii was nothing more than a publicity stunt,” he adds then pulls his cameraman away.
“Maybe she just plays a detective on TV,” somebody else says as the media mob I’d bemoaned seconds before besets a new target, leaving me and my trounced ego bereft.
Shanelle pulls me away from the chapel. “Forget those losers. It is high time we procure ourselves a cocktail.”
I am more than ready for an adult libation but that does not keep me from stopping dead in my stilettoed tracks. “Sometimes I do wonder if it was just a fluke.”
She shakes her head so vigorously she has to grab hold of her plumage to keep it from launching off her head. “That was no fluke. And don’t you let anybody tell you otherwise.”
It’s proof how well Shanelle and I understand each other that she immediately grasps what I’m referring to. In all modesty, it is true that I had a great deal to do with pinpointing the killer of Ms. California Tiffany Amber, who was murdered on Oahu when all us queens were assembled for the Ms. America pageant. I was honored to take home the crown, which probably would not have happened if Tiffany hadn’t been offed, which is why Honolulu PD had me pegged as Suspect Number One. (That, and I was alone with Tiffany in the isolation booth right before she died.) Anyway, I was highly motivated to clear my name and retain my title by zeroing in on the perpetrator, and sometimes even I have to wonder if my success was nothing more than a lucky break.
After all, I am a high school dropout who was dumb enough to get pregnant at 17, and all these years later, between raising Rachel and trying to be a good wife to Jason and working full-time as a personal assistant, I’m still taking night classes to earn my B.A. I’m no Einstein. So how is it that my brain cells lined up just right that one time?
I don’t have a good answer to that question. So even though the number one beauty queen mantra is
Keep A Winning Attitude!
—I doubt myself. It doesn’t help that I encounter skepticism about my mental prowess wherever I go.
Shanelle sets her hands on her hips. “That runt of a reporter individual simply cannot believe that a woman who looks as stupendous as you can also possess the IQ of a crime-solver. Do not allow him to shake your confidence. That type we can eat for breakfast and digest by dinner.”
“So you think I should suggest to Detective Perelli that I help with the investigation?” I cannot keep a hopeful note from creeping into my voice.
“I wouldn’t go that far.” Shanelle grabs my arm to force me to resume forward motion. We join the thronging horde moving toward the elevators that will transport us to the hotel rooms above. “I am simply making the obvious point,” Shanelle goes on, “that you would be injecting yourself where you are not necessarily wanted. Your reputation has preceded you. So if Perelli wants your help, she’ll ask for it.”
Sadly, that sounds both sensible and like Shanelle’s last word. Minutes later, she and I repair to our separate hotel rooms on the eighteenth floor to change from showgirl to cocktail attire. I’m sharing my room with my mother, who I find sitting on her bed not only watching TV but engaging in her second favorite activity: clipping coupons. If there were such a sport as Olympic Coupon Clipping, my mother would medal.
“Thank the heavens above!” she shouts when she sees me. “Just so you know, if I thought for one second you were dead or anything close to it, I would never have walked out of that ridiculous excuse for a chapel.”
“I know, mom.” I kiss the top of her head. Her red hair’s a little sparse up there, but once a week her stylist poufs it to maximum effect, adding a few much needed inches to her height. “I’m just glad you got back up here on your own.” The hotel is so big, she’s gotten lost twice already. I sink next to her on the bed. “I cannot believe this. Another murder.”
She cocks her chin at the TV. “Looks like it.”
I see she’s watching local news. A picture of Danny Richter wearing a bow tie and a shiny paisley vest fills the screen. I learn from the graphics that he was employed as a blackjack dealer at this very hotel.
My mind skips to a possible motive for murder. I wonder if Danny was skimming money or doing something else sketchy at his job and that’s what caught up with him. I glance at my mom. “How much did you see of what happened?”
“I saw everything I needed to see.” She points her scissors at me to emphasize her next pronouncement. “From the moment I laid eyes on that character Sally Anne was intending to marry, with that best man of his who looked like a thug, I said to myself, that man is a shyster. I would have told Sally Anne so myself if she had asked me.”
I do not doubt that. I begin to remove the bobby pins tethering my headdress to my hair. “We don’t know that Frank did it, Mom.”
“
You
may not know he did it.”
I force myself to my feet. “Whoever did it, I feel so bad for Sally Anne. She’s waited so long for her big day.”
“Her age, she should know better.” My mother squints at the coupon insert. Seconds later, her scissors are in motion. “I can give this one to the nuns,” she says, and I smile. I am a fan of all harmless activities that keep my mother happy and occupied.
Hazel Przybyszewski—pronounced shih-buh-CHEF-ski for those of you not fortunate enough to be of Polish descent—has had three great devotions in her life: me, the Church, and Pop. I fear we have all disappointed her. Me by my teenage pregnancy and shotgun wedding; you can probably guess the Church’s shortcomings if you put your mind to it; but the big kahuna is Pop walking out after 49 years of marriage. And once she gets wind of what he’s up to now …
I’m going to play like Scarlett O’Hara and refuse to think about it.
I toss the ostrich feathers on my bed. “Clip one more coupon, Mom, then get ready for cocktails and dinner. Shanelle and I are taking you out.”
I ignore her protests—which are feeble by her standards—and switch the showgirl outfit for a trapeze dress in a black floral print with multicolored beading accenting the yoke collar and front keyhole. I slip high-heeled sandals with braided straps onto my feet, grab a black patent leather clutch, and I’m good to go.
That is, after I make an abortive attempt at a phone call. Jason’s cell goes straight to voicemail, for the third time that day, and I realize it’s 10 PM in North Carolina—where he’s attending pit school—and we haven’t chatted all day.
I have zero time to dwell on missing my husband as Shanelle appears at my door in an adorable purple slim-cut dress with allover pleating. Seconds later the elevator is whisking us down to the lobby, which I swear is the size of my subdivision back in Ohio.
What’s so wild about Vegas is that everything is crazy over the top but after a day or two it starts to seem normal. Casinos for miles in the lobby of every hotel, the slot machines endlessly pinging and whirring. People gambling and drinking and carousing nonstop. Spending every hour of the day and night indoors, not once venturing into the blistering sunshine, because you careen from hotel to restaurant to casino to subterranean shopping mall to revue to casino …
Whatever your vice—anonymous sex, alcohol, gambling, food—it’ll be catered to here. My personal weakness is exotic cocktails. Did I mention those? They’ve been a staple of our entertainment, and they are about to be again as Shanelle, my mom, and I deposit ourselves in a bar that is totally and completely white because it’s designed to look like a mojito. The only color comes from a strip of bright green neon that runs along the base of the bar, highlighting real mint leaves embedded inside.
There are so many tantalizing offerings it takes a while just to read the menu. Shanelle decides to go for a Spanish Trampoline, my mom surprises us by opting for a Zombie, and—no surprise in my current mood—I am drawn to a Killer’s Kiss, which features pink grapefruit vodka, lychee liqueur, and a dollop of pomegranate syrup.
I hesitate before taking my first sip. “I feel guilty for being out having a good time on the very night Sally Anne’s wedding got derailed by a murder. Of her groom’s nephew, no less.”
“Well, get out your cell phone and call her,” Shanelle says. “Invite her to join us. You wouldn’t mind, would you, Mrs. Przybyszewski?” She whips off those syllables like nobody’s business.
My mother emits a grudging “It’s okay with me” and I phone Sally Anne.
“Yeah?” she answers. She sounds as morose as one would expect.
“It’s Happy. We’re at that all-white bar on the lobby level and wonder if you’d like to join us. And Frank, too,” I add, though I’d rather it were just us girls.
“I’m in no mood. And Frank’s gone back to his apartment. He said he needed to clear his head.”
I frown. “Frank’s not with you?”
My mother slaps the bar. “What did I tell you?” she bleats, loud enough for every bar patron and Sally Anne to hear.
I mouth a silent ssshhh though I don’t like the sound of this, either. As far as I’m concerned, the two halves of this couple should be comforting one another on this tragic night. I do, however, try to be sympathetic. “He must be so broken up about Danny.”
Sally Anne grows animated. “Not to mention that that Perelli broad put him through the wringer! She’s got some nerve.”
I’m thinking Detective Perelli might be considering Frank Richter a person of interest. After all, he was right next to Danny when the murder occurred, and the two have years of perhaps tortured history.
“Appreciate the call, Happy,” Sally Anne goes on, “but I ain’t got it in me tonight,” and she hangs up.
“That’s the problem with some of these women, particularly late in life,” my mother asserts as I return my cell to my clutch. “They’re so desperate to get hitched, they’re willing to marry some bum they don’t know bubkis about.”
“My mother thinks Frank did it,” I inform Shanelle, “if you couldn’t tell.”
“He, what?” my mom goes on. “He gives massages for a living? How does that pay compared to Sally Anne who is the proprietor of her own pageant-wear business?”
“So you think he wants to marry her for her money?” Shanelle asks.
“Darn tootin’.” My mother hiccups. I’m thinking the rum in her Zombie is beginning to take effect.
I weigh in. “Even if Frank does want to marry Sally Anne for her money, that doesn’t mean he murdered his nephew. Why would he pick Danny to be his best man if he wanted to kill him?”
“To throw everybody off,” Shanelle suggests. “Or maybe their relationship just lately went sour. And Frank figured, if I ice him at the wedding, with a gazillion people around, the cops’ll have plenty of suspects. They won’t home in on me.”
It occurs to me that the murderer may not have had anything to do with the wedding. Anybody could have marched into that chapel and done the deed.
“How weird is it,” I ask, “that Danny had a black eye? Who gets a black eye right before they’re supposed to stand up at a wedding?”