Ms America and the Brouhaha on Broadway (37 page)

Violet Honeycutt fixes her steely eyes on my face. “Do it. Or I leave this instant.”

“Yes, that’s perfect. You can fill in.” This comes from the minion with the bun, who apparently followed me to my seat to find out just how peeved Violet Honeycutt might be. “You might be old, but you look pretty good. And you’re thin.”

“Yes, that about describes her.” Senior chortles. Clearly he’s finding this chance to humiliate and terrify me all at the same time extremely amusing. Well, what does everybody say? Revenge is sweet. He turns to the minion. “She’s won pageants, you know.”

The minion’s eyes light up. Now she’s really thinking I’m a live one.

“And this is swimwear, did you say?” he goes on. “Right up her alley.”

The old letch. I could kick him in the shins.

“I haven’t been trained for this runway,” I say. “It’s highly technical.”

“You underestimate yourself.” Senior shoves me toward the minion. “Besides, what’s the worst that could happen?”

I could fall in the water and get my toes nibbled off by baby sharks. They could miscalculate and bite my nose instead. Then when I start bleeding, all five of them could swarm me in a feeding frenzy.

Violet Honeycutt sits back down. “Why are we still discussing this? I already told her to do it. And if the show doesn’t start in two minutes, I will leave.”

Her Greatness has spoken. And as if to illustrate her resolve to depart, she glances at her watch, which even in my frazzled state I note is a Patek Philippe made of white gold and fully set with diamonds. Maybe if I owned that, I wouldn’t have a moment to spare, either.

The minion grabs my arm and pulls. “Please,” she whispers, “Hugh’s career will tank if Violet Honeycutt walks out of his show,” and before I know it I’m allowing myself to be dragged backstage into a gaggle of bikinied females. If they weren’t half my age and wearing outrageous neon-colored makeup, it would be a lot like pageant night. As it is, these girls look even more unnerved than the usual run of contestants. And I can explain that with one five-letter word: S-H-A-R-K.

A towering young man with a bleached blond crew cut materializes in front of me. “Here’s our thirteenth model,” the minion informs him, and I realize this is Hugh White. “Violet Honeycutt threatened to walk out,” she adds, “if we don’t start immediately.”

He goes a shade even whiter, which is saying something since the man rivals Conan O’Brien in the paleness department. He gives me a quick onceover. “Get her into the crocheted one-piece,” he orders the minion, and with a wave of his hand I am pulled deeper backstage. “Go, go!” I hear him cry and the music ramps up into an even faster beat. The models screech before scrambling to get in line.

The fashion show is starting. And I’m in it. Model Number Thirteen. That may be a lucky number for Hugh White, but I’m not sure it is for me, especially with how Fate is toying with me here in New York City.

I can’t believe it! So much for enjoying this spectacle from the front row, fully clothed and in a prime position to overhear Violet Honeycutt’s no doubt catty observations. Now I must strut the needle-thin catwalk with no practice whatsoever while wearing a highly revealing swimsuit that might or might not fit, all while hoping I don’t become shark food.

“The other models are going twice, but you only have to go once,” the minion informs me. “And you’re last.”

So I’m bringing up the rear. I hope Hugh White isn’t making a snide comment on my aging behind. I am handed the crocheted one-piece, a white halter-style which fortunately is less skimpy than it might be. I’m forced to get into it out in the open—neither pageants nor fashion shows allow for modesty—but I am delighted to see that butt glue is as much a thing here as it is in pageant competition. The last thing I want is my one-piece riding up my cheeks.

More bad news comes when I’m prodded into backless sky-high nude stilettos that only sort of fit. As models go out onto the runway and come back, yelping exuberantly when they return still dry, I hear something alarming. I grab the minion’s arm. “What are they talking about, the runway’s getting higher?”

“It’s on a hydraulic system,” she tells me. “After each model makes her run, it rises an inch or so.”

“What? Are you kidding me?” I run to the launch area to see for myself, the minion, hairdresser, and makeup girl in my wake. “Oh. My. God,” I breathe, for yes, this nightmarish rumor is true.

At the start, the runway rose perhaps six inches out of the water. Now the darn thing protrudes by a good two feet. I watch in amazement as a model in a boho-style fringed bikini exits the catwalk and the entire thing lifts.

“Why?” I wail. “The higher the catwalk, the scarier it is to walk it!”

“It’s exactly the same,” the minion blithely informs me. “Nothing changes but the height off the water.”

I want to wring her skinny neck. Saying it’s exactly the same is a load if I ever heard one. That beach bum Hugh White is heightening the drama by raising the runway and everybody knows it.

I squint at the crowd, my heart jigging in my chest. I can see Senior and Violet Honeycutt, both of whom appear riveted. But of course! Those two would love the tension. Will a model fall in the water? Maybe the one we sent out there? How fun would that be! What will the sharks do, I wonder?

“I have to leave her hair loose,” the hairdresser says. “I don’t have time to do anything else.”

“No time?” I cry.

“Only two more and then you’re up,” the minion says.

God help me.

“Let me pump up her lips,” the makeup artist says, and on goes a shade of hot magenta you could find in the dark. I’m sure the sharks will have no trouble homing in on it.

“Stand here,” the minion says, and I am pushed behind a blonde in a barely there nude bikini I thank the heavens I didn’t have to wear. Off she goes. I’m next.

I close my eyes and take a few deep breaths. Eventually a sort of fatalistic calm settles over me. What am I so worried about? I’ve done this sort of thing a hundred times. Smile, strut, turn, call it a day. Easy as pie, I tell myself. No way will I flub this and give that bombastic old coot Oliver Tripp Sr. the satisfaction.

It seems barely a moment before the blonde is back. She squeals as she races past me, high fiving the other models. Every single model has come back dry. And now so must I.

“Hold,” the minion orders, and I wait as the infernal catwalk elevates yet again. I swear that thing must be two and a half feet above the water by now. “Go,” the minion barks, and she shoves me onto the stage.

I throw back my shoulders, stretch my lips into my competition smile, and make for the runway. From here the crowd is bathed in darkness. All I can see are the white ribbon of the catwalk and the flashes of what seem like a million cameras. I step onto the catwalk and slow my pace just a trifle. Smile! Smile! I keep my chin up but am acutely conscious of placing my feet exactly in the middle of the runway. No hugging the edge for me. I try not to panic when a shark zooms past on my right and then another does the same on my left. Are they circling or what, the slithery predators? I bet they’re salivating by now. I hope somebody fed them breakfast.

After what seems an eternity, I make it to the runway’s horseshoe turn. Hurray! Another few strides and I’m halfway home! I’m celebrating that milestone when the catwalk suddenly jerks and then rises a bit. I halt, my heart pumping madly. The crowd gasps. I can’t help it; what with these stupid backless stilettos that don’t quite fit, I have to fling out my arms to keep my balance.

A second later, I take a deep breath, bring my arms back in, and giggle as if that was nothing. I earn applause and a few bravos and boy, do I deserve them. I venture another step. Then, wouldn’t you know it, the catwalk jerks again and this time it drops, shockingly fast, and I can’t help it, I’m flailing, and then I’m gone, gone, gone, falling sideways into the water like I’m a body being tossed overboard.

Splash! Bam! I hit the bottom fast. The water is shallow and salty and cold. I scramble to my feet, aware of pandemonium all around me, and find myself nose to nose with a shark. I know it’s only about three feet long but it might as well be twenty. I screech and manage to get my feet under me and then I see another shark coming from the other side. I’m about to be the meat in a shark sandwich! I kick at one and then the other—I’m probably screaming all the while, I’m not sure—and must hit pay dirt because I feel a shark’s sandpapery skin against my bare foot. Needless to say, those accursed stilettos are long gone.

All I want is out and I don’t care how I get there. Those sharks must be pissed by now and they probably sent an SOS to their slimy brethren. The only way I can get back onto the runway is to hoist one leg up and then lever the rest of myself up, too. It’s not the most graceful maneuver I’ve ever made and I am not happy that a couple hundred people are watching. I escape the water just as the rest of the shark posse arrives. I lay on the catwalk on my belly, dripping and panting but out of reach of the sharks, which are now thrashing about in a fairly frantic manner. It’s then that I realize how many cameras are pointed at me, me with my wet, bedraggled hair and streaming mascara and 35-year-old butt.

Okay. Showtime. I get myself into a kneeling position and then rise to my feet. Applause breaks out, and catcalls and whoops. Even though I’m trembling from cold and fear and my body is covered with goosebumps, I wave jauntily to the crowd before jutting my chin and striding barefoot along the catwalk to the stage, where that shark-crazy maniac Hugh White stands waiting, clapping with the rest. I feel like kicking him in the you-know-what. Let’s see
him
navigate the catwalk in backless stilettos! He grabs my arm and raises it in the air as if I’m a prizefighter. Right now Model Number Thirteen does feel as if she just went ten rounds.

Later, Shanelle and Trixie ask me what happened after that and I couldn’t really tell them. It’s kind of a blur. Somehow I dried off, got dressed, and reunited with Senior. The moment I got back in the limo, the driver—the same nice man who procured Italian food for Senior and me Sunday night—showed me on his phone that I was trending on Twitter. Unfortunately, not dry, self-possessed, upright me, but wet, panicked, lying-on-the-catwalk me.

Needless to say, this is not the re-posting I was hoping for.

“There
is
video of you waving and looking very calm,” Trixie tells me back at the apartment. I’m showered and wearing a robe and all three of us are at the table eating crackers and soup. “Lots of people are tweeting that you were amazing kicking at those sharks.”

“I bet that’ll be the part that goes viral,” Shanelle says. “Anyway, did you find out why the runway went haywire in the first place?”

“Hugh White swore it was a malfunction,” I say. “But I have to wonder if he torpedoed me so I’d fall in the water. He doesn’t have any loyalty to me, after all. I’m not one of his models.”

“He is getting a lot of buzz out of all this,” Trixie says. “His swimwear’s going to fly off the shelves now.”

I glance at Shanelle, who’s staring at her phone and frowning. “What now?”

She shakes her head and hands me her phone. “I might as well show you. You’ll see it soon enough.”

It’s a tweet from Sherry Phillips. About, you guessed it, Sebastian Cantwell. “They’re in a photo looking thick as thieves,” I tell Trixie. “Apparently he invited her to his country home in the Cotswolds next month after she attends, wait for it, London Fashion Week.” I suppose this day could get worse. I can’t imagine how, though. I hand Trixie Shanelle’s phone so she can see this abomination, too. “Sherry’s testimonial must have made Mr. Cantwell sound like a saint,” I add.

I watch Shanelle and Trixie struggle to think of something reassuring to say. “Listen, girl,” Shanelle offers eventually. “This could be a good thing. Cantwell could get fed up with her pretty darn fast. Because when it comes to Sherry Phillips, I am here to tell you that less is more.”

“Maybe. All I know is that all of a sudden he’s taking quite an interest in my runner-up.”

“All right. Enough of that.” Trixie reaches over to rub my arm, but her voice is stern. “You’re forgetting the key to triumphing over your rivals. Being the best you can possibly be. Don’t think about Sherry. Think about yourself. That’s the only person you can control, anyway.”

“Good advice, girl,” Shanelle says.

“So here’s what you do now,” Trixie says. “Solve Lisette’s murder.”

I don’t know how Trixie managed it, but she came up with something that might be even tougher than fending off sharks. “Here’s problem number one with that plan,” I say. “We’re leaving Thursday. That gives me only forty-eight hours to figure out who killed Lisette.”

“No problem,” Trixie declares. “You’re always fast.”

“I wish. Anyway, problem number two. My suspects are dropping like flies. Oliver’s father told me that Violet Honeycutt told him that the Belfer told her that the apartment would never go to Lisette. The other residents wouldn’t stand for it, basically. Lisette’s reputation preceded her.”

“So you’re saying Violet Honeycutt had no motive for murder,” Shanelle says.