Die Smiling

by Linda Ladd

  Apparently she hadn’t recognized the crazy who’d dressed her up in pageant regalia, severed her lips, and left a Shakespearean-inspired warning stuck to her bare skin. Not soon enough, anyway. This information complicated my investigation and could open it up to countless suspects hundreds of miles away, whose names I’d never know. I jotted down most of what Brianna said in my notepad, giving myself time to think. Bud and Brianna said nothing. I had a feeling Bud was shocked by what he’d heard. I know I was.

  “Do you think she might’ve gone out partying this week after she got here and picked up somebody?” That was pretty ugly sounding, too. But necessary.

  Brianna looked pained, but she was honest. “It’s possible, I guess. She liked to meet new people, but it seemed to me she’d calmed down some since she broke it off with Carlos. She said she still cared about him.” She looked at me. “Are you absolutely sure that person you found is her? Neither of you have met her. Maybe it’s somebody that looks like her but isn’t really her?”

  “We found lots of pictures of her in the condo, Bri. One was recent, from her win in Kansas City. I’m sorry.”

  That pretty much extinguished any hope left inside her eyes. She closed them. Her lashes were long and black and formed a half moon against her flushed cheeks.

  “I brought along her calendar and address book. Do you think you might be up to taking a quick look and telling us how these people are associated with Hilde?”

  “I’ll try.”

  I handed her the appointment book first. She turned the pages slowly and touched each name in turn with an elegant French-manicured fingertip. “Most of these women are other models that she knows. Carole Lomberger runs a New York modeling agency. Carole’s her personal agent, one of the best in the country, too. Eric Dixson is a top-notch photographer who follows the circuit around from city to city and contracts with pageant coordinators. He takes portfolio pictures for the regulars, too. He’s really great. He did both our portfolios. He’s here now to shoot the Cedar Bend thing.”

  I wrote that name down. I noticed Hilde had an appointment with him three days ago, and I was interested to see if she had kept it and what he thought of her behavior and state of mind when he shot her pictures.

  “Mr. Race’s number is in here. She’s been to him before, too. He used to have a place in South Beach, did you know that?”

  No, I didn’t know that, but found it highly interesting, not to mention suspicious. Bud thought so, too, by his expression. He was saying very little, which was probably a good thing. Brianna wouldn’t be able to blame him for dragging her sister’s personal foibles through the proverbial mud hole.

  “Were he and Hilde friends, or lovers, maybe, when he was in South Beach?”

  That brought Brianna’s head up, a startled expression on her face. “Oh, Claire, surely you had to notice that he’s gay.”

  Yeah, I noticed. A blind person would notice. “Gay men kill, too. For all kinds of reasons.”

  That shocked her, probably just the realization again that her sister was dead. More tears oozed and rolled, but she grabbed another tissue and somehow got through the appointment book before Bud decided Brianna had done enough.

  “How about we end this for now, Claire? Finish up tomorrow after Bri’s gotten some sleep?”

  “Sure, fine. I’ll say again, Brianna, I’m really sorry about what happened, and please know that Bud and I will do everything in our power to catch this guy. I promise you that. I will not stop until we get him.”

  Brianna looked grateful, and I gave her a brief hug, then skulked out, feeling about two inches tall for putting my friend through such a painful ordeal. But now I knew that Hilde Swensen had led a very dangerous lifestyle with very dangerous people, and that made my job solving this case a lot harder than I had expected it to be. But, hey, what’s new about that?

  Sisterly Love

  When Momma went backstage with Sissy later that morning to await her turn to dance, the older one threaded her way unnoticed through a crowd of anxious mothers, grandmothers, and other relatives of the contestants. Some families had on T-shirts with pictures of their entrant on the front. She was glad Momma didn’t make her wear a stupid shirt with Sissy’s picture on it. She hoped she never had to. She wished she never had to see Sissy again.

  Her hair was still damp from being dunked in the bathtub, the scent of gardenias clinging to her skin. She hated that fragrance now and hoped she’d never have to smell it again. The pageant was being held at a high school gymnasium, and she headed for the bleachers farthest away from the stage. She was going underneath the seats where she could hide and be alone and not have to watch Sissy win another stupid tiara.

  When she reached the far end of the basketball court, she made sure no one was watching, then bent over and walked down underneath the bleachers almost to the half-court line. People sitting above her were talking and laughing, and she could see their feet, but none of them could see her. That’s the way she liked it. She liked to be alone. She hated everybody.

  When she found a dark place where she could lean her back up against the wall, she sat down and drew her legs up against her chest. She put her forehead on her knees and sobbed as loud as she wanted to because she knew the sounds of the crowd and music on stage would drown out her pain.

  “What’re you doin’ under here?”

  The older one jerked up her tear-streaked face. A boy had squatted down about a yard away. He was a couple of years older than she was. She knew him because he went to her school. Once or twice during the school year, he’d sat down beside her on the school bus.

  She sniffed and quickly wiped her tears on the end of her T-shirt. “None of your business. Why don’t you just get outta here?”

  “Why’re you crying?”

  “None of your business, I said.”

  The boy had on one of those stupid T-shirts. His had a picture of two little girls that looked like twins, each with long curly blond hair. She remembered then that they were his little sisters. Their momma always alternated entering them in the kiddie pageants, but both girls always lost to Sissy.

  “I want to sit under here with you. It’s pretty neat.”

  “No, go away, I like being alone.”

  “Me, too. I hate everybody.”

  The older one examined him with more interest. She watched him move closer and sit down beside her. When he leaned his head back against the wall, she scooted away from him.

  He said, “You smell good.”

  “No, I don’t. This smell stinks. I hate it, and I always will.”

  He laughed at that, and then he said, “Why’s your hair all wet? Your mom forget the hair dryer?”

  “None of your business.”

  He said nothing else for a moment, just stared at her silently, then he said, “This T-shirt sucks. My mom makes me wear it.”

  “Yeah, it sure does.”

  He laughed again. “You’re pretty funny.”

  “No, I’m not.”

  He kept up with the grinning, and she saw he had on braces, the clear kind that didn’t show so much. She thought his front teeth looked pretty good and wished she could get braces because she had a crooked tooth right in front that Sissy said made her look like a goofy vampire.

  The boy got himself comfortable, stretched out his legs and crossed his ankles. “Bet you’re tired of these stupid pageants, aren’t you? And all the crap goin’ on around here, too. I’ve seen you hanging around at most of them. You always look sad. Did you know that?”

  “I hate them.”

  “I do, too.”

  “I hate my little sister, even worse.”

  “I hate mine, too, both of ’em.”

  Surprised again, she stared at him out of narrowed eyes, and then she smiled. “Do you really? I thought I was the only one around here who hated my own sister.”

  “Nah, everybody who’s got a sister in these stupid things hates them. They’re all little spoiled brats.”

&nbs
p; “Yeah, brats. And I hate Sissy’s smile, too. Everybody says it makes her look like an angel, but she’s not, at all. She’s really mean.”

  “Yeah, like ‘Smile, and smile, and be a villain.’”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means somebody’s actin’ real nice and smilin’ all pretty, like nothing’s wrong, but underneath that big smile they’re planning to do you in. A guy named Shakespeare wrote that in one of his plays. Hamlet’s the name of it. My English teacher’s husband’s an actor and she had him come in and do a scene outta that play for us. It takes place in Denmark.”

  “Who’s Shakespeare?”

  “Just a guy who wrote up a bunch of plays and things back in the old days.” The boy grinned some more. The older one watched him, and she couldn’t help but think he was sort of cute with his dark hair that was long enough to curl up around his ears. He had a ring in his left ear, a tiny gold hoop with some kind of odd medallion hanging off it. She didn’t get to have pierced ears, but Sissy got to, so she could wear Momma’s dangling rhinestone earrings at competitions.

  The older one leaned her head back against the wall like he was doing and thought about what the boy had said, and she felt a little better after that, knowing that everybody hated all those stupid, pretty little girls strutting around on the stage and pretending they were grown-ups, but she didn’t say anything else to him. She felt strange being by herself with him. She had never been alone with a boy before. Momma hardly ever let them invite anyone else home to play.

  Suddenly the boy said the most shocking thing. “How come your mom doesn’t enter you in your age division? You’re pretty, too.”

  Eyes wide, heart hammering, she fixed her eyes on him, far too stunned to say a word.

  He frowned. “What? Why’re you lookin’ at me like that?”

  “You said I’m pretty.”

  “So? You are. I heard some older guys talking about you once in the locker room. They said you’re sexy already. They said you look a lot older than you are.”

  “Uh-uh.” The thought of boys talking about her was frightening, but somehow exciting, too, but she knew the older boys looked at her breasts sometimes. She’d seen them doing it. Momma told her she’d developed way too early for her age, and Stepdaddy made Momma buy her a training bra so she wouldn’t look so trampy. But the boy was surely lying about the pretty part.

  “Yes, they did. I heard ’em plain as day,” he insisted. He laughed softly. “They said you got some cute little titties.”

  “That’s so gross, shut up.”

  “Well, that’s what they said. I’m just telling you what I heard.”

  “Momma says my freckles make me ugly. And my hair’s ugly, too. She says Sissy’s the pretty one.”

  The boy nodded, gave a small shrug. “Yeah, Sissy looks pretty good, all right, but I like your hair the best. It’s a prettier color. And hell, you can get rid of those freckles any time you want to.”

  Very interested now, but skeptical, too, she studied his face, thinking maybe he was making fun of her. “No way. I was born with them, and that’s the way it’s gonna be all my life.”

  “Yes, you can,” he insisted. “My sisters had ’em, not as bad as you, but lots of ’em. My mom’s a dermatologist and she’s got all this bleaching stuff she uses on their skin. You should of seen it, their freckles just faded away and now it looks like they never did have any, ever. She uses it on my big sis, too, but she’s gone off to college down in Florida now. You know, that’s the state with the beaches way down south.”

  The older one wondered why his big sister hadn’t stayed in her own state to go to school, but she stared at him, more interested in the bleaching stuff, but not sure she believed him. “Really? You telling me the truth or is this some big, fat lie so you can laugh at me later?”

  “Aw, c’mon, why would I wanna make up something like that?”

  Her heart began to thud, excited to think she could get rid of her freckles and be pretty like Sissy.

  Beside her, the boy heaved a big sigh. “This sure as hell sucks, havin’ to go to these beauty pageants. My mom and sisters hate your mom and your sister. You know that?”

  “No.”

  “Yep, they sure do. They take turns entering because they’re the same age, but they don’t ever win because your sister always does. I guess they’re pretty jealous because they never get the tiaras. They usually just get third or fourth place, but sometimes they get second. I bet they’d like it just fine if Sissy dropped dead all of a sudden.”

  “I’d like that, too.”

  When he started laughing as if that was the funniest thing he’d ever heard, she began to laugh, too. She realized she rarely ever laughed, and it seemed sort of strange to be sitting down there in the dark and laughing with a boy. But she was beginning to like him.

  “You hungry?” he asked when they finally stopped laughing. “I got a Kit Kat bar that I’ll split with you.”

  “Okay.”

  They ate the candy and listened to the applause going on above them in the bleachers. When Sissy’s music came on for her Little Bo Peep dance, the older one covered her ears so she wouldn’t have to hear it. She’d heard it a million times at home, over and over, until she wanted to scream.

  After Sissy’s performance was done, the boy said, “You want some of that freckle-removin’ stuff?”

  “Yeah. Where do you get it?”

  “Well, you have to get it from my mom at her office, you know, with a prescription, but mom keeps all kinds of it at home. She’d never know if I take some for you. Why don’t you come over next Saturday, and we’ll try some out on your face and see what happens?”

  “I don’t know if I can. Where do you live?”

  “Just a couple of blocks over from your house, through that big patch of woods behind your barn. Remember how the bus picks me and my sisters up right in front of our front gate? Mom’s taking them both to town Saturday afternoon at two for piano lessons. And Dad’s going out of town to a doctors’ conference this weekend. He’s a plastic surgeon.”

  “Both your parents are doctors?”

  “Yeah, but different kinds. So what’d you say? Come on over, and we’ll try some of that cream out on you. And don’t bring that stuck-up little sister of yours, either, or it’s a no go. I can’t stand her.”

  The older one smiled at that and thought that finally, finally somebody didn’t like Sissy the best. “Okay, I will, but you gotta promise not to tell. Momma won’t like me coming over there. She hates your mother. Says she’s a stuck-up snob.”

  “Yeah, she is, sometimes, but all the moms around here hate each other.”

  They both laughed, and she said, “Promise you won’t tell anybody that I’m coming?”

  “Who am I gonna tell? But we can meet someplace else if it’s gonna get you in trouble.”

  “No, no, there isn’t anywhere else. I’ll come over, but I’ll sneak down that alley behind your house so nobody’ll see me. Momma doesn’t like me to go off our property.”

  “Just unlatch the gate and come in. It’s the tall one that’s painted red and has some fancy black hinges shaped like lions. I’ll be waiting on the back porch for you.”

  Five

  A glance at my trusty old Timex told me that I’d have just enough time to hightail it to Cedar Bend Lodge and nose around the pageant before Black’s helicopter set down. The traffic was terrible and my rotten mood devolved in graduated stages from horrible to foul to mad as hell by the time I drove through the great stone gate that heralded my honey’s resort for the rich and neurotic. It was beautiful, of course; everything Nick owned was rated in the stratospheres with more stars than Colin Powell’s epaulets. I passed through the smooth, impossibly green golf courses, and admired the flowers, flowers, and more flowers. You name it—baskets, giant decorative urns, manicured beds, Black’s domain made Epcot Center look like the Mojave Desert. But the place smelled great when everything was blooming. Coul
dn’t knock that.

  As soon as I drove under a portico constructed of stacked rock pillars and braked at the massive cut-glass doors of the gargantuan lobby, a valet in his black-and-gold uniform was at my window ready to serve/sustain my every whim. My intimate relationship with the good doctor had gotten around among his employees, no doubt, and was I ever treated like royalty around this place. A decided perk that I wasn’t exactly used to, but probably could get used to fast. Love, even.

  The valet was a young high school kid named Rob that I’d seen a couple of times around the resort. He was tall, with dark hair and big cocoa-colored eyes, nice looking, pleasant, and always had a wide smile lighting up his face.

  He said, “Good afternoon, Detective Morgan. Would you like me to park your car?”

  See what I mean about pleasant? The description of the afternoon was debatable, however, considering the pair of butchered lips I’d encountered earlier in a drain and couldn’t erase from my mind no matter how hard I tried, but my smile was gracious. My life wasn’t this kid’s fault. “Has Doctor Black made it in from California yet?”

  “No, ma’am, but they’re expectin’ him out at the heliport any time now. Everybody’s sure all stressed out about this pageant that’s goin’ on.”

  “Yeah, must be bad for you, having to take care of all these gorgeous bathing beauties pulling their cars up out here.”

  “Yeah, breaks my heart. I dreaded this all week long.” He grinned. Yep, he was a real hottie close up. He looked about sixteen or seventeen, and now I could see the waves in his hair and that his eyes were more the color of burnt cinnamon toast, which was the kind I usually make. He was still talking. “I skipped school today so I’d get to see these beauty contestants up close and personal. Some of them are models, too. I never did meet a real live model till today. They tip good, too.”