Cece frowned in thought. It took her a moment, but then I could read on her face that she had come up with an idea.
“The crown! She was wearing that stupid thing all the time. I haven’t seen it in here. Have you?”
“Nope,” I confirmed. “And it wasn’t with the body either.”
“Did you check the safe?”
Without waiting for an answer she’d already swung the closet door across to open the other side of it, revealing the plain black safe with a silver rotating dial on the front. It was unlocked, and the door was slowly swinging on its hinges, disturbed by the opening of the closet door.
“Guess we’re checking now.” I pulled its door open all the way and we both peered inside. It didn’t look like there was much in there, but I put my hand in and took out what I could.
“Passport,” I said, holding it up, “and her ticket. That’s it.”
“But it was open. Someone went through it. What do you think was inside?”
“I bet her crown was in there.”
“Yep,” said Cece with a nod of conviction. “I bet it was. So, Detective Adrienne, what do we know?”
Sitting down on the bed behind me, I racked my brain, trying to put everything together to see if we’d got any further in solving the mystery of Diana’s death.
“She was killed with her own sash, and her crown and bracelet have been stolen. I think Rolf may have had the bracelet.”
“Anything else?”
Half-standing up, I dug my hand into my pocket and pulled out the little disc that we thought came from a shoe.
“Hold on. Let’s see if this matches any of the shoes here.”
Diana’s considerable collection of shoes that she had brought with her on the trip was lined up on shelves inside the closet. I found a dark blue pair that seemed to match the fabric on the outside of heel disc and pulled it out.
Holding both of the shoes upside down so that the heels were next to each other, I lifted them so that they were directly in front of our faces.
“What do you think?”
Cece reached out, took one of the shoes, and pulled off the small rubber stopper that was at the end of one of the heels. She took the disc from my hand, and placed it on top of the heel.
“Looks like we’ve got a match,” she declared with a nod. “But I bet this isn’t the only one.”
She had, after all, found a whole box of the little discs in Kimberly’s trash. We began examining the other shoes in Diana’s wardrobe, pulling them out one after the other and removing the stoppers on the ends of them where we could.
“Look at this one,” said Cece, shaking her head. She held up a heel and pointed about half way down it. There was a thin line there. I gave her a questioning look.
“This pair didn’t have a stopper on the end. She’s sawed through it, removed a section, and then stuck it back together!”
“It’s almost unbelievable. Why would anyone go to so much trouble?”
“I guess Kimberly wasn’t the biggest fan of Diana Penn.”
It was hard to imagine taking the time and sheer effort to get at someone like this. The pageant world was truly alien to me.
“What are we going to do about it?” asked Cece.
“We’re going to put everything back where we found it. I think it’s time I had a word with Kimberly Dawson about shoes.”
Cece smirked. “Try and take a picture when you do. I want to see the look on her face when she finds out you’ve busted her.”
I laughed. “I’ll try. But if I do, I don’t think it’ll be going out on the social media feeds.”
“Yeah, you best not,” said Cece with a wicked smile. “Though it might get you a few more followers.”
Carefully, we began to put everything back just as messily as we had found it.
When we were done, we hugged goodbye outside of the cabin.
“Wish me luck,” I said to Cece by way of farewell.
“No way. You don’t need it. Now go get me a picture of Kimberly looking shocked. It’ll make up for all the towels I’ve been delivering to her.”
Chapter 15
A fter I’d dropped Cece off back at her cleaning cart, I returned to the conference suite to see if Kimberly was still around.
Not only was she absent, but so was everyone else. It looked like the interviews were over and everyone had gone.
I pulled out my phone to check what was next on the schedule Kelly had shared with us, but before I could pull it up, I saw that I’d already received a message from her.
At the climbing wall! Good pics here! Hurry up!
Then there was a follow-up message.
Got to go. Too much to do. Enjoy climbing!
Aha. That was it. I remembered now. The girls had been scheduled for an afternoon in the activity center. While they weren’t officially being judged there—officially, it was just an afternoon of fun—they were always being unofficially examined. While they had fun, Rolf, Martin, and Autumn would no doubt be keeping a watchful eye on them all.
The activity center was located right in the center of the ship and took up several interior levels with its high ceilings. As well as squash and tennis courts, there was the piece de resistance of the center: a climbing wall that towered four stories high.
When I arrived, all the girls were milling around as they waited for their chance to tackle the rocky climb or chatting afterward. For the first time since I’d met them, they didn’t look like painted dolls in frilly dresses. Due to the nature of the activity, they had been forced to swap their dresses for pants and jeans and their high heels for sneakers.
They looked oddly uncomfortable in comfortable clothing, and this put a smile on my face. For once, I didn’t look too out of place among them. Apart from the fact they all had on about ten times as much makeup as me. Although they had to sacrifice their wardrobes for this activity, that hadn’t extended to their warpaint. Now they were painted dolls in jeans and designer sweats.
The climbing wall was a dark gray color, and from a distance looked like real rock. Along its face, there were little silver anchors, to which could be attached ropes and harnesses and whatever else. My knowledge of climbing walls was hazy at best.
There were two instructors in front of the wall, and they were holding the ropes for two girls who were already halfway up.
I scanned the room, figuring out where Kimberly was and when I was going to approach her.
“Hey there,” said Clarissa Jones when she saw me near the door. “Are you here to do some climbing too?”
“Haha, maybe. I’m mostly here to get some pictures and talk to people. How are you doing? Are you learning a lot?”
Clarissa was a bit of an odd one out among the pageant crowd. As Martin’s so-called protégé, she wasn’t competing, but she was spending all her time with the pageant girls and I guessed learning the tricks of the trade.
“Oh, I sure am,” she drawled slowly. “They’re all just so sweet.” Clarissa gave me a sweet smile of her own, as if to emphasize that she was just like them.
Clarissa reached into her pocket and pulled out a hair tie.
“Excuse me a moment,” Clarissa bent over, letting all her hair fall straight down, and gathered it together. As she did so, I noticed a small star-shaped birthmark on the back of her neck. For a moment I thought it was a tattoo, but as I peered closer, I realized it was natural. Clarissa quickly fit her hair through the hairband, and then doubled and tripled it up, standing up straight again with her hair in a tight ponytail.
“I feel like such a hobo,” she said in a tone which I figured was supposed to be self-deprecating. But to me it sounded like she was fishing for compliments. Since it wouldn’t cost me anything, I decided to oblige her.
“If you were, you’d be the prettiest hobo I’d ever seen.”
Clarissa gave me a sideways look and I realized my compliment wasn’t perhaps quite as great as it had sounded in my head. A pretty hobo was still a hobo after all
.
Awkwardly, I turned my attention back to the climbing wall.
“Watch how she does it,” said Clarissa, pointing at a helmeted figure in front of the wall. Although her head was covered and I was only seeing her from behind, I was pretty sure who it was I could see.
“Is that Kimberly?” I asked nonchalantly.
“Yep. And watch...”
Clarissa folded her arms across her chest and I found myself doing the same as we both kept our eyes on the young beauty queen-wannabe. She looked up at the wall, then down at her feet, and then—she was off.
Like a monkey, she seemed to leap up the wall. As her foot landed on one hold, it immediately seemed to bounce her upward so that her other foot landed almost immediately, before springing her up even further. Her arms moved even faster, seeming to help her up the wall with effortless ease. It seemed that climbing was a lot easier than I thought. Even I could probably give it a go.
“Wow,” I said as she reached the half-way point. “She’s so graceful.”
“She sure is now,” said Clarissa. By the time she’d finished drawling out the comment Kimberly was three-quarters of the way up.
“She makes it look so easy, like even I could do it,” I said, fishing for a compliment of my own.
“And... she’s done,” said Clarissa as Kimberly reached the top. She turned back to me. “I’m sure you’d be just fine. Just a little extra weight to heave.”
I did not have ‘extra weight to heave!’ Sure I wasn’t exactly a, well, beauty queen, but I wasn’t deserving of that comment either.
“It would be hard to get up there as smoothly as her,” I conceded.
“Wanna hear something funny?” Clarissa leaned in to me as she said it, like she was about to tell me a secret.
And I definitely wanted to hear about Kimberly’s secrets.
“I would love to.”
“According to Martin, she wasn’t always that graceful. Calamity Kimberly, they used to call her.”
I tilted my head at her curiously. “Really? Her?” It was hard to imagine Kimberly being called ‘calamity.’
“Sure. Or sometimes just Clumsy Kimberly. And sometimes Clumsy Calamity Kimberly, and even Kimberly the Clumsy Calamity. But she worked on it, and now her balance is one of her strong points.”
“Huh. Just goes to show what you can achieve if you put your mind to it.”
“It surely does,” said Clarissa, slowly running her eyes over me, like she was imagining what I could achieve if I ‘put my mind to it.’ All of these beauty pageant people seemed to do the same thing: analyze everyone they saw and judge them. I shrugged it off. Well, mostly, anyway. I knew the constant looks I was getting were going to eat away at me for months.
“It nearly cost Calamity her career,” said Clarissa.
“Oh?” Now we were getting somewhere.
“Yep. Y’know, she actually used to be represented by none other than our,” Clarissa lowered her voice and cast her eyes down before continuing, “dearly departed Diana Penn.”
“Oh?”
This was getting more and more intriguing. A further connection between Diana and Kimberly could prove revelatory.
“Yep. But then she toppled and fell right off a stage. Clumsy ol’ Kimberly,” said Clarissa shaking her head. “And Diana was done with her.”
“How awful! Was she okay?”
“I think she hurt her ears.”
“Her ears?” I asked, incredulous. That didn’t make any sense.
“Yep. The whole audience, and all the other girls on the stage, were laughing so hard I think it nearly deafened her. The judges too. Right into their mics and over the PA.”
I stared at her, open-mouthed and wide-eyed. Then I saw the corners of her mouth turn up. It was a joke. At least about the deafening anyway.
We both broke into laughter, though it was a little forced on my part. I felt terrible for the past Kimberly who’d had to suffer such awful treatment from her peers.
“And of course Diana didn’t want to represent her after that. Kicked her right out of her stable of girls.”
“How awful.” At the wall, Kimberly was now being lowered back to the floor by the instructor holding her rope. She actually seemed to be slower coming down than she had been flying up under her own power.
“Yep. But she got a new coach and worked hard. Now look at her. If it wasn’t for her thick ol’ thunder thighs, she could be a ballerina.”
I could not see ‘thunder thighs’ on the poor girl. If she had thick thighs, I couldn’t imagine what most of the rest of us had.
“As you said before, you can do anything if you put your mind to it,” I said brightly.
“Except her becoming a ballerina,” said Clarissa with a little chuckle.
Man, these girls were mean to each other. Then I had a particularly horrible thought—what had they said about me when I wasn’t there to listen?
“It’s a terrible shame what happened,” I said quietly. “I’m sure Diana would have been proud to see how well Kimberly’s doing now.”
Very inappropriately, Clarissa let out a high-pitched, snorting laugh. Since I hadn’t been making a joke it threw me for a loop.
“What?” I asked somewhat testily.
“Kimberly hated Diana after what all happened to her. In fact, that’s why I think she carried on competing.”
“What do you mean?” I was puzzled. If something like that had happened to me, I would have quit immediately and taken up cross-stitch or something.
“I think Kimberly would have quit pageants for good if she hadn’t been so upset at Diana kickin’ her out on her tush. Word is she only stayed around to stick it to Diana. She wanted to win this competition and rub it in her face.”
I stared at the distant figure of Kimberly. Did she really have that much hate in her heart that would dedicate her life to beauty pageants just for revenge? And if she’d go that far, what else might she do?
“Thanks for keeping me company, Clarissa. I think I’d better mingle before the other girls get jealous!”
Her tiny little eyebrows slightly raised.
“Jealous? Of what?” My cheeks had begun to flush before Clarissa realized I’d been making a little joke. “Oh, yes. Very funny. Bye now.”
I ’m not entirely sure how I got roped into being roped up, but a few minutes later I found myself casually standing next to Kimberly, my legs already through a harness, while an activities coordinator called Jill tightened and fixed everything up.
Kimberly said, “When we get to the top, you go up above me, and take a photo of me above all the other girls, okay darlin’?”
“Yes, I’ll do my best.” I peered up nervously. The four-story-high wall hadn’t seemed all that high when I’d been standing with Clarissa, but it was dizzying up close.
Kimberly thought a picture of her smiling face way above all the other contestants below would make her look suitably regal. She’d already mentioned that I should tag it #queenofthewall #queenofqueens #wallqueen and #bestbeautyqueen. She wanted to use my position as social media manager to advance her own campaign for the crown.
But if she was going to use me, I was going to use her too. By mining her for information.
“What happened must have been a big shock to you.” While I spoke, Jill was checking and fixing Kimberley’s harnesses with the quick but methodical skill of a professional.
“Oh, it was a big shock for all of us.” Kimberly began flexing her hands in front of her, using first one hand then the other to really stretch them.
“But for you particularly, what with her being your former coach and all.”
Kimberly stretched her arms up above her, and then out to the side before she answered.
“Oh, that was ages ago,” she said nonchalantly. “We change coaches all the time.”
She seemed a bit too blasé about it in my opinion. If one of my former teachers or professors had been murdered, I didn’t think I would be anywhere near as casual
about it at all. Even if they had dumped me.
“But still, it must have been a horrible shock.”
“Yeah, for all of us. But the show must go on, as we say in the pageant world! It doesn’t matter how big the disaster—a broken nail, even a forgotten outfit—we just buckle down and keep on goin’.”
Or a murder?
Jill finished checking our equipment and stepped backward, handing over the ropes that would support us if we fell to two of her colleagues who would be in charge of holding on to them and paying them out as we climbed.
“You can begin to climb when you’re ready!”
Kimberly stood still for a moment, her eyes scanning the wall like she was planning out a route. I tried to do the same but it just looked like a bunch of rocks to me. I’d wing it. Instead, I dug into my pocket and pulled out the little disc I had been carrying around.
We’d see how nonchalant she would remain after seeing that.
“Hey, Kimberly, know anything about this?” I held out my palm, the disc sitting in the middle.
She flicked her eyes away from the wall to look at my hand, then did a double take. Her cheeks paled.
“I don’t know what that is,” she said quietly, immediately stepping forward to the wall. “Let’s go.”
Before I could push her on the matter, she’d begun to ascend. I quickly stuffed the piece of high heel back into my pocket and tried to follow her.
Cece had been pushing me and Sam to start frequenting the staff gym with her, but we’d never quite managed the time to get to it. As soon as I began to climb, my arms and legs began to ache and I regretted not making the time for more exercise.
Next time, I promised, I’d join Cece in the gym.
Kimberly seemed to be going up at a slower pace than when I’d watched her before, but from glancing up I realized it was because she was deliberately taking a more difficult route. She was really stretching out her arms and legs to reach for distant holds, and I think I even saw her dangling from a single arm at one point as she swung a leg over to reach a distant rock.
With growing confidence, I made my own way up the wall. I wasn’t moving like Kimberly, but I was putting one hand up after the other, stepping on the most prominent and forgiving rocky outcrops to make my own way up the wall.
Cruise Ship Cozy Mysteries 04 - Beauty Queens and Cruises Page 10