CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Maybe in ancient times, like 1980 or thereabouts, all a singer needed to be popular was a fantastic voice. Not anymore.
As my mom and I sit in the theater waiting for Ziana’s show to start, we watch her music videos play on a dozen ginormous screens all around us. In every one of them, her beauty-queen-perfect blond self executes a wildly complicated dance routine. Behind her, a bevy of drop-dead gorgeous 20-year-olds mimic her moves. The choreography makes the Sparklettes synchronized kick-line maneuvers, which have bedeviled me all week, look like child’s play.
“Will I know
any
of the songs?” my mother shouts at me. The music is so loud I’d never hear her otherwise. She is looking shockingly stylish in an animal-print jacket I gave her paired with a white top and trousers. Plus she’s sporting a face full of makeup, tastefully applied. Eddie Wozniak and his bowels must have been dazzled.
“If you listen to the radio, you’ll probably recognize a few songs,” I yell back.
“I don’t listen to no radio,” she hollers. “Except for the traffic reports.”
It is not news to me that my mother lives in a kind of bubble. Normally that’s not a problem. But employment—should it ever happen—will push her into regular interaction with the Real World. I’m not sure that either she or the world is ready.
The theater darkens and the music amps up even further. Like at the volcano I feel the beat pound through the soles of my metallic sandals. Whoops rise from the audience as colored spotlights rake us. When smoke envelops the stage, I get a tad panicky. I wonder how long it’ll be before I can see smoke billow without thinking of Sally Anne’s aborted wedding or Danny Richter’s murder.
Seconds later I hear the opening notes of one of Ziana’s blockbuster hits. A beam of light cuts across the theater to illuminate Ziana herself, suspended high above the crowd clinging to a thick white rope sparkling with glitter. She’s wearing a gold sequined catsuit with gaping cutouts. Her long blond hair is Brigitte Bardot wild and her makeup is Halloween dramatic. Our fellow show goers burst into whistles and shouts. She begins to sing as the rope carries her toward the stage, where her dancer posse—half-naked all—busts out moves, many of them obscene.
I glance at my mother, whose eyes are wide with astonishment. Well, Hazel Przybyszewski will get an eyeful this afternoon but that’s what a Vegas show is all about.
Seeing Ziana in the flesh with a few thousand of her rabid fans surrounding me, I can’t believe I got so close to her the prior afternoon at the recording studio. Travis Blakely must be backstage somewhere helping to make the magic happen. Thinking of him reminds me of the backstage passes in my handbag.
The production is an hour and a half of almost nonstop singing and dancing. I conclude that Ziana has admirable aerobic capacity. Every once in a while she pauses to laugh and joke with the audience and several times she disappears for costume changes. It’s really exciting when she performs the song I heard at the studio. It sounds exactly the same. I guess that’s what separates the amateurs from the professionals.
When it’s all over—including a couple of standing ovations and an encore—we stand up to file out. My mother grabs my arm. “I can’t hear myself think!” she hollers.
“Are you okay? Did you enjoy it?”
“I enjoyed it but I got a headache like you wouldn’t believe! I want to go back to the hotel and lie down.”
I’m not happy to hear that but it does make what I’d like to do next easier. “You sure you don’t want to go backstage with me? I snagged a few passes.”
“I need to go backstage like I need a hole in the head!” she informs me, at which point I escort her to the cab line. She raises no objection to my going backstage alone.
I’ve never been the groupie type and I don’t blend in with the Ziana groupies waiting at the venue’s alley exit—most of whom are Rachel’s age. My pass allows me to shoot past them all.
I stride through the backstage area as if I have some idea where I’m going. In fact I’m heading for the banging noises ahead of me. And wouldn’t you know it, before long who do I see but Travis.
He’s again in jeans but has foregone not only his cowboy hat but his plaid shirt. Instead he’s wearing a faded navy blue tee that demands in white letters: OBEY ME. I’M A ROADIE. He gapes when I heave into his line of sight. “You
again
? How did you get back here? Are you an effing stalker or what?”
“I have a backstage pass. I’d just like to talk to you.” I’m thinking Travis might have some insight into what was going on with Danny. After all, what do drinking buddies do besides drink? They talk. More to the point, they talk when alcohol has lowered their guard.
“You got nothing better to do? Like play the slots or go to the spa or something? Women like you go to spas.”
I don’t appreciate the stereotyping although he is right on the money. “As a matter of fact I go to the spa at the Cosmos Hotel. Maybe you know the guy who’s letting me into the cryogenic chamber all week? Frank Richter?”
“I don’t know any Frank Richter.”
“He’s Danny Richter’s uncle. Danny’s one of the friends we have in common.”
Travis narrows his eyes at me. “You know Danny?”
“I met him through Frank. I stood up at Frank’s wedding. Or what should’ve been his wedding.”
Travis grabs me by the elbow and pulls me aside as a few guys roll past with sizable aluminum trunks that I imagine contain concert gear.
“I know you were a friend of Danny’s, too,” I go on. “Cassidy Flanagan told me. I’m really sorry about what happened to both of them.”
“You know her, too?”
“Not very well. Were you and Danny friends for a long time?”
“Every once in a while we grabbed a beer. That’s it.”
“Do you know if he had any enemies? Was there anything going on in his life that—”
“I got no clue what was up with him. It’s a shame and all but in a big city these things happen.” He eyes me. “What’d you say your name was? Happy something?”
“Happy Pennington.”
“I got a piece of advice for you. Keep your nose out of what isn’t your business.”
“Don’t you want to know what happened to them?”
“We weren’t that close and it’s none of my business.” He grabs me by the elbow again and this time propels me back the way I came. “I got work to do. Time for you to go.” He hands me off to a security guard. “Have a nice day.”
So much for getting information out of Travis Blakely. I make for the cab line, powering my cell phone back on as I do. I see I have two voicemails from Jason. He’s arrived in Vegas.
So much for my investigating.
I’ll make a confession. Excited as I am to have my husband in town, it’s tinged with regret. Not that there was much hope for it but now I’ll never figure out who killed Danny or Cassidy. Jason made clear on Oahu that he does not approve of my investigating. And who can blame him? It does get me into trouble. It is dangerous. I am untrained. I have no backup. And it distracts me from what should be the primary focus of my professional life: being the best Ms. America titleholder I can possibly be.
I’ll let you in on a little secret, though. I’m one of those people who don’t like being told what they can and cannot do.
Back at the Cosmos, I go straight to Jason’s room. As I knock, I hear ESPN blaring inside. I know what I’ll soon see: that Jason’s been on the bed watching the tube, nursing a beer, and downing potato chips.
The door opens. My beaming husband greets me shirtless and in running shorts, dark hair damp, sweat gleaming on a torso that, I will tell you, looks notably leaner than when I last set eyes on it mere weeks ago.
“I’m too gnarly to hug you, babe.” He gives me a gonzo smooch instead. “Where the heck were you? I hope you weren’t snooping around that best man’s murder.” He leads me into the room and turns off the TV.
I realize Jason knows only about Danny Richter’s murder and not about Cassidy Flanagan’s. He’d be even less happy to hear about my investigating if he knew a second person had been killed.
I’m not going to tell him about that right now. “I’m sorry I’m getting back so late,” I say instead. “I took Mom to a Ziana show.”
He throws back his head and guffaws. “Did she freak?”
“She was okay but it gave her a monster headache.” I eye Jason. He’s always been hot but in recent years he’s let himself go a bit. Suddenly I’m getting the idea that trend is reversing. He’s thinner. His olive-toned skin is tanned and his dark eyes sparkle. His bad-boy thing is still going, mostly from the hair he keeps on the longish side the way it was back in his glory high school days when he was on the football team. He hasn’t looked this good in years. I hope it’s not because he’s away from me. “What have you been up to?”
“I went for a run.” He lies down on the floor and starts doing stomach crunches. “Up and down the Strip.”
“Not the
whole
Strip.”
“Half of it.” Crunch. “Four miles round trip.” Crunch.
“Wow! And it’s like ninety degrees out!”
“I’m trying to get back to my all-time best time.” Crunch. “Remember that 5K I ran back in high school at six minutes twenty-nine seconds a mile? I’m at like eight and a half minutes now so it’s gonna take a while.”
What with the Sparklettes rehearsals all week, I have been putting my own body through the paces. But at the moment I feel like a couch potato compared to Jason. That’s new. “Is this because of pit school?”
“Yup. I need to get back to peak physical condition. My stamina’s not what it used to be.” He winks at me during another crunch. “At least, not in everything.”
“Well, I’m glad to see you’re liking it as much as you are.” I knew he would. That’s why I pushed him to go. And thanks to my Ms. America winnings, we can actually afford it. I want Jason to be able to pursue his dreams the way I’ve been able to pursue mine.
“We need to talk about
after
the training,” he tells me. Crunch. “You won’t believe what the guys make who are on a team.” He changes position to do pushups and gets a lift / grunt sequence going.
“Do you mean a job on a pit crew?”
“Exactly.” Grunt. “It depends on who the driver is and how much sponsorship money he pulls in. On a major team you can make up to ninety grand a year. On a smaller one it’s more like thirty or forty.”
Which is what he makes now as a mechanic. Which is what I make, too, as a personal assistant. “But you can’t be on a pit crew in Cleveland,” I point out.
“Exactly.” He sounds completely matter-of-fact. “Which is what we need to talk about.”