“Deputy Quinton Lightfoot,” he said, shaking her hand briefly. “We met at Elaine’s Pies the day after Ms. Honeycutt’s murder.”
Melanie didn’t even stutter. “I was just explaining to Josie how I need to gather all of Dixie’s jewelry so I can pass it along to her family, but I don’t know who that would be.” She smiled and tilted her head to one side.
“I believe that would be Ty Honeycutt, ma’am.”
She laughed. “Of course.” With a toss of her beautiful mane, she lowered her chin and smiled up at him through her lashes. “I guess I didn’t get enough sleep last night.” She fiddled with the key on her wrist and waited for him to make the next move.
Churning in my gut was a deep, perhaps unwarranted, suspicion that if Melanie was left to her own devices some of Dixie’s jewelry might come up missing or appear on eBay with someone else’s name listed as the seller. I was sorely tempted to tell on her, but I bit my tongue. I would bide my time. Everyone needed the opportunity to do the right thing, even Melanie.
With ill-concealed impatience, Lightfoot turned to me. “Don’t you have somewhere else to be?”
“Yes, I do.” I pointed at Patti. “But I’m with her.”
He cleared his throat. “Do you have an inventory list of the merchandise Ms. Honeycutt was selling in your establishment, ma’am?”
Melanie rolled her eyes as she twisted a wedding ring the size of Gibraltar round and round her finger. “There must be one somewhere. Last time I saw one it was on the computer, but that was so long ago.”
“I suggest you turn on the computer and print out the list for me, or I serve you a warrant for your computer and all your files.”
Like a tourist after a week on a dude ranch, Melanie’s face flamed tomato red. The woman seriously needed to work on her game face.
Maybe a nudge from me would help her do the right thing. “What if Melanie tried to find Dixie’s jewelry right now, while you’re here?”
He stared at me as if trying to figure out what I was up to, and then he shrugged as if he had nothing better to do. I wanted to know why he wasn’t asking her about her fight with Dixie. Or had he already covered that subject over pie?
Fixing me with a glare scary enough to frighten small children on Halloween, Melanie dropped her sickeningly sweet act and thrust out her chin. “I’ll wait for the warrant.”
“Suit yourself.” Slowly he placed the pad and pencil in his pocket, all the while shaking his head. He gave her a long stare, and when she remained silent, he pulled out his phone. “Pleasant, it’s me. Yeah. Find that warrant on my desk that I worked up for Where the Sun Sets and take it over to Judge Hawkins.” He listened for a moment. “Right, and then take it to Judge Hawkins. If he’s not available, try Mooney.” He shot a glance at Melanie, who was listening intently. “No, I’ll wait for you to bring it here.”
I had to give Lightfoot credit. After Ty’s confession from last night and the shoplifting incident at Patti’s place, the deputy had the good sense to realize that with no one else around to look after Dixie’s affairs, the sheriff’s department was going to have to step in and do the neighborly thing.
“I’ll take it from here, Miss Callahan. You and Miss Perez can go.”
I gave Melanie a big smile. “I’ll bring that other painting by later on. Is tomorrow soon enough?”
“There’s no hurry. It’s not as if I don’t trust you to do the right thing.” The corners of Melanie’s mouth lifted in a sketch of a smile, but the rest of her face told us in no uncertain terms where she wanted us to go.
With all the subtlety of a brick, Lightfoot walked to the door and held it open.
The door might not have hit me on the way out, but Melanie’s piercing laugh made me wish it had.
“Gotta love all that confidence,” Patti said as she slid behind the steering wheel.
She had a point.
* * *
Dodging pedestrians and out of state license plates, I parked in Milagro’s lot then hurried to the main stage at the end of the block. Though I hadn’t seen it up to that point, I’d heard it was a real humdinger, which meant a person would have to be blinder than a mole rat to miss it. The committee had rented a three-foot-high platform on wheels from an amusement company and secured the brakes on the thing so it wouldn’t roll. They’d managed to add a black velvet backdrop on the back and metallic streamers in red, white, and blue on the front. All in all, the performance space was about fifteen by eight, which was plenty of room unless your talent was tumbling or twirling fire batons.
On the street in front of the platform, the committee had set up metal folding chairs and a judge’s table dressed with red, white, and blue bunting from last year’s Fourth of July parade.
“Over here,” Hillary cried when I was still twenty yards away. She waved me over to the table and handed me a clipboard. “I already organized the entries last Saturday and emailed the contestants their place on the program.”
“Uh, thanks?” I was glad someone was taking this event seriously. I had so much falling off my tortilla as of late that organizing this event hadn’t made the menu.
She sighed. “Well, of course. We don’t want three singers followed by three high school rock bands. People would throw a hissy fit.”
I should have called Elaine personally and begged her to replace me with Ryan, no matter what the cost to my pride. Why couldn’t I have been chosen to judge the pies instead? What did it matter that the Burnetts owned a prize-winning pie shop conveniently located on Main Street in the center of town?
“The order of contestants is here.” Hillary pointed to the first page on the clipboard with a silver acrylic nail. “And the ballots for each contestant follow, with the performer’s name at the top.” Not trusting my hearing or ability to reason, she reached over and flipped through the pages.
I scanned the list of contestants: five children under the age of thirteen, eight teen acts, and seven adults unless you considered that one of the adult acts was really a dancing poodle named Hercules.
“All you have to do is fill out the ballot and write the total score at the bottom. I’ll tally them up as we go.”
I could have made a wisecrack about her math skills, but I refrained. If she wanted to drive the ship, I’d give her the wheel.
After the first three acts had finished, to the exuberant applause of their families and friends, I knew I was going to have to plumb the depths of my coping skills to get through the morning without grinding my teeth down to nubs. Hillary insisted on giving me her opinion of how I should score each one, at least until I moved my chair over as far as it would go and turned it so that my legs were between us.
Between an oboe solo of “The Eyes of Texas” and a cowboy that yodeled the national anthem, I was hit by a bolt of inspiration. The editor of the Broken Boot Bugle had been bugging me to write an article about Hillary and her new job at the college. Why not kill two birds with the proverbial stone? I could use the setup time between acts to interview the beauty queen about her job and earn brownie points with the paper.
While the volunteer stagehands cleared the stage for the poodle, I scooted over next to Hillary. “I hope you don’t mind me asking, but I’d love to interview you for that piece in the Bugle while we’re sitting here.”
Hillary cast an officious glance at the program and another at the slow progress of the stage crew.
“Frank Wilson said he mentioned it to you?” I pulled out my phone and snapped a quick photo before she could complain, or brush her hair. “It was his idea.”
“Hey, you have to ask my permission before you take my picture, got it?”
Wrinkling my forehead in confusion, I played dumb. “But you gave your permission for the article, right?” I resisted the urge to scratch my head. I didn’t want her to catch on to my passive-aggressive dramatics. “Did you change your mind?”<
br />
She narrowed her eyes for a moment before plastering on her perfect smile. “Now is as good a time as any,” she said magnanimously, straightening her golden locks with her fingers.
Scrambling for my phone, I opened up my notepad app and fired the first volley. “Tell me about your position at West Texas.”
She dutifully filled me in on the minutiae of her classes and her role as mentor. “Our newspaper staff is brilliant. They challenge me as much as I challenge them.”
Nodding as if she hadn’t spouted yet another brand of beauty queen speak, I asked the obvious question, “What do they think of your celebrity status?”
Was she blushing? “They don’t ask.” She studied her hands. “And I don’t tell.” She shrugged one shoulder. “We pretend I’m just like them.”
It was her use of the word pretend that egged me on. “How are you coping with us peons now that your pageant days are long gone?”
Like a lemonade Popsicle on a summer day, her smile evaporated, leaving a tight line of pink lipstick where her mouth should have been. “I’m calling Frank.”
I leaned back and crossed my legs. “Go ahead. I’ve got time.”
She started searching through the contacts on her cell phone, but before she could dial, the emcee introduced the dancing poodle and his owner. In a fit of pique, she stomped one of her expensive boots.
And that stomp started me thinking. One of our busboys had admitted to me, rather sheepishly, to spilling the grease in the alley on the night of Dixie’s death, but he’d laughed when I’d asked if he wore a size nine and a half, proudly showing off his size elevens.
“Where’d you get your boots?” I asked, playing nice.
“Why? You running out of things to make fun of?”
As the poodle and his dance partner made their way to the center of the stage, I whispered, “I’ve been meaning to buy me a pair like those, but they’re awfully expensive.”
She rolled her eyes and huffed. “I’ll tell you if you give me Frank’s number.”
We lifted our pens to our ballots only to have the poodle’s accompaniment fail to play. During the emcee’s impromptu stand-up routine, I continued trying to make nice with Hillary.
I thumbed to the contact and turned the screen toward her. “Here you go.” I pulled it out of reach at the last minute. “Let me try on your boots and I’ll give it to you.”
“Are you crazy?”
“Please?” I waggled the phone back and forth. The boot print could have been made by a man or a woman. Why not Hillary?
“Fine, but only one.” She tossed her left turquoise and silver boot at me. Hillary was tall, which meant she had man hands and big feet, the better to balance her big head.
I tried it on. “Ooh, nice.” I stood up and said a silent hallelujah. It was too big for me, which meant it could have left the print the night of the murder.
“Give it back, you’re grossing me out. Take your foot out of my boot.”
“You’re an eleven, right?”
“No.” She sniffed. “Sometimes I wear a nine and a half.”
I slid it off, but before I handed it back I found the size. Ten and a half. Inside I was doing somersaults. Once I explained to Sheriff Wallace about the boot print I’d found at the scene of Dixie’s murder, he would have grounds to bring Hillary in for questioning. True to my word, I tossed it back and gave her the editor’s office number.
She left a curt message for Frank to call and turned to me with a tight smile. “Let’s wrap up the questions about the university. What the Bugle’s readers would love to know is that I’ve got The Kitchen booked for a four o’clock session on Monday.”
I hated to bite, but I was dying of curiosity. “What’s that? A cooking class or a hair salon?”
Her response was delayed while an eight-year-old sang “Your Cheatin’ Heart.” Once more we listened with earmuffs of kindness and marked our ballots accordingly.
Hillary picked up the conversation right where we left off. “I’m recording a CD.”
Of course she was. “Country?”
“I’ve sung so many country songs,” she said with a groan, “I should own stock in the Grand Ole Opry.” She dropped her gaze pointedly to where my hands lay idle on my phone. I typed a few random sentences, making sure to include her words: I should own stock in the Grand Ole Opry.
I pitched Hillary a nice, fat softball. “What kind of music then?”
“Rhythm and blues.”
“Like Beyoncé?”
“Exactly.”
If I gave the slightest hint of my story angle, she’d edit what she was saying. And I didn’t want her to change a thing. “Are you doing Beyoncé covers?”
“One or two, but I’m also covering Lena Horne, Roberta Flack, and Gladys Knight and the Pips.”
The Pips. “Huh. Who’s going to sing the Pips part?”
She frowned.
“So how do you like living back in Broken Boot?”
She shrugged, her mouth twisted in disdain. “It’s nice and all. The scenery’s gorgeous.” Beyond the stage lay the mountains and desert and the big Texas sky.
“So you like to hike, rock climb, and those kinds of things?”
Wrinkling her nose, she corrected me. “I’m more of an art connoisseur, but Ryan and I do enjoy driving to Austin regularly for live music.”
Her shot bounced off my skin like a drop of water on a hot iron skillet. Ryan and I were simply friends. “Isn’t he on the road a lot scouting next year’s team?”
“He’s hired a scout this year so he can spend more time at home.” She smiled sweetly.
“Right. What would you say is the thing you like most about Broken Boot?”
She screwed up her mouth. “The people, the food . . .” Her face brightened. “And the football.”
Maybe they were the perfect couple, or maybe she was full of it.
She leaned forward in her chair. “What’s going on at the crime scene restaurant?” She made quotation marks in the air as she said this.
“What do you mean?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Someone was murdered in your parking lot.”
I played it cool. “You almost sound as if you know something worth telling.” I met her eyes, pretending to be skeptical.
“Ha,” she said triumphantly. “I know I saw Ty Honeycutt’s black truck squeal out of the parking lot that night as we were leaving.”
“You need to get your eyes checked. Ty was driving an El Camino that night.” I shook my head in disgust. “What you probably saw was Bubba’s Tacoma.”
That shut her up for a good ten seconds. I didn’t know what she’d seen, but I was secretly thankful for another bread crumb to follow. She reloaded. “What are you going to do when Elaine sues your family for nearly choking her to death?”
I shot to my feet. “That was an accident.”
With a glance at her watch, she continued as if she hadn’t heard. “And Sheriff Wallace told me they’re going to follow every lead.” If looks could kill, I would’ve been six feet under. “Like the fact that Senora Mari’s done hard time.”
“I didn’t know you and the sheriff were such good friends.” Why would Wallace give her the inside track unless he was enchanted by her so-called beauty?
“I know who’s responsible for Dixie Honeycutt’s death, and it wasn’t a man.”
The emcee announced a ten-minute intermission.
“Oh, give it a rest,” I muttered.
“Were you or were you not trying to get Ty to pick up Dixie that night?”
“She was too drunk to drive,” I continued.
“Is that why you offered her another margarita when you knew she was clearly over the limit?”
Without warning, Ryan joined us. “Have you finished—uh, hi?”
My cheeks g
rew hot. He’d nearly walked in on me giving his girlfriend a bloody nose. I’d never punched anyone, but the urge to try was overwhelming.
“That drink was mostly water and lime juice,” I said. “I don’t remember you and her speaking to each other that night.”
“Oh, we did. I followed her outside, and we had quite the chat before she passed out.”
“What about?”
Hillary raised her hands and gazed at Ryan with a perplexed look. “Why, about whether she was okay or not.” She stood up and took Ryan’s arm. “I didn’t want her dying of alcohol poisoning.”
“Did you see her outside?” I asked Ryan, my eyes dropping to his orange socks and blue Nikes. He might not be wearing boots now, but he’d worn them the night of the tamalada.
He looked away, clenching his jaw. “No. I went out front and started up the truck.”
“Guess you weren’t concerned enough to say no, were you?” Hillary asked, clobbering me with another accusation. “Or did that call for too much backbone?”
Chapter 18
“That’s enough,” Ryan said through clenched teeth.
“Nothing hurts worse than the truth.” Hillary nodded in mock sorrow.
“You have no right to talk to Josie that way.”
I placed a hand on his arm. “Don’t worry. She’ll get what’s coming to her.” I cast my eyes toward heaven. “Now that you’re here, I’m going to leave the judging to the dynamic duo. I have a million things to do to get ready for tonight.”
After my weak parting shot, I gathered my things and scurried away like a lizard that’d lost his tail. And as for that article for the Bugle, I would write that article on the beauty queen from h-e-double toothpicks when that same place froze over.
I took a quick shower, drank a banana and kale smoothie, and felt my resilient nature rise to the top. Hillary wasn’t going to get my goat. I was going to solve this crime.
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