I glanced at Ramirez. He was glaring at Dirk as if assessing the breakability of his nose. I wasn't used to seeing this kind of reaction from Ramirez. It was flattering and a little scary. For Dirk. I put a calming hand on Ramirez's leg. "Dirk, I'd like you to meet my husband, Jack Ramirez."
Dirk's eyebrows shot upwards and disappeared under his shaggy pelt of blond hair. "This hombre's your husband? Hey, it's very cool to meet you, dude." He stuck out his hand.
"Dirk the surfer," Ramirez said, shaking it.
"That's me," Dirk agreed. "If you got the time, I got the waves. Come see me whenever."
"Yeah," Ramirez said, "I'll do that."
I shot him a frown that he ignored.
"Cool," Dirk said. "You guys all set with the libations?"
"We'll call you if we need you," Ramirez told him, and Dirk and his tray floated away, oblivious to Ramirez's irritation. Ramirez watched him leave through narrowed eyes. "I think you can toss that guy's card. I'm not sure he can find the ocean, let alone surf it."
"Already done," I said. I'd tossed it right into my bag last night, along with Detective Whatshisname's and Jeffries' signed photo. "So about this morning?"
Ramirez turned his attention back to his plate. "The autopsy report was in for Jennifer Oliver. She suffered blunt force trauma to the back of the head, most likely a lava rock taken from the landscaping near the pool. They found trace amounts of blood and hair on it."
My stomach twisted. I pushed my remaining fruit salad aside. "That's horrible."
"Murder always is," he said. He ate a fry. "There was something else. The M.E. found some sort of cheap emerald ring stuffed into her mouth. He thinks it happened post-mortem." He took a bite of his burger, chewed and swallowed. "Looks like someone was sending a message."
"An emerald ring?" My voice was faint.
Ramirez looked hard at me. "Yeah, that's what he said. Did you know about the ring?"
"It was hers," I said. "It was a promise ring."
"A promise ring," he repeated. "I thought that was a high school thing."
"In this case," I said, "it was a secret boyfriend thing."
"Xander Newport gave it to her?"
"Not that boyfriend." I shook my head, explaining about the mysterious lover with the green eyes. "And Mom and Mrs. Rosenblatt talked to some locals who said Xander had been partying and flirting with other women at a bar in town, the Curling Wave, the night Jennifer was killed," I finished.
Ramirez polished off his burger and shoved his plate aside. "Funny, I don't remember reading that in the report. It seems Mr. Newport omitted a few details in his statement."
I wasn't surprised. "He showed up at the hotel looking for a room after her body had been found," I said. "Making a commotion at the front desk like he'd just arrived on the island."
"Don't suppose you talked to him," Ramirez said.
I nodded reluctantly. "I caught him in the bar. He was sitting alone, acting like the grieving boyfriend. He told me he knew Jennifer had been seeing someone else. But he wanted to win her back."
"Or have her die trying," Ramirez said. He drained his beer. "I'll follow up with the detective in charge. See just how solid Newport's alibi is."
"It doesn't look good for him, does it?"
"No," he said. "It does not."
I fell silent as thoughts of Jennifer's secret lover flooded into my mind. Had he been the one to stuff the ring into Jennifer's mouth in a fit of jealous rage over her ex's efforts to reconcile with her? Or had it been Xander, the not so grieving boyfriend, out for revenge after she'd dumped him in favor of someone else?
But what reason could either of them have had to then kill Desi?
It seemed like the more I found out, the less I knew.
*
After lunch, Ramirez wanted to talk to some of the hotel staff to get an overview of what they might have seen and heard throughout the week, so I decided it would be a good time to call home to check on the kids. When I stepped off the elevator on the twelfth floor, I saw the housekeeping cart sitting across the hall from my room, outside of Maxine and Whitney's. Their door was propped. I slowed and took a peek inside. No sign of the maid. No sign of Whitney or Maxine, either. They were probably still doing their bathing suit walks for the judges. Which meant the room would be void of beauty queens for a while longer…
And would provide a perfect opportunity to look through one of my prime suspect's things.
I hesitated, fingering the keycard in my pocket. Every instinct was telling me that snooping through Whitney's stuff was a bad idea. At the very least it was an invasion of privacy. It might even be illegal.
What would Ramirez do?
I shook my head. Unfair question. Ramirez was a cop, and cops operated under a different set of rules. Cops had probable cause and search warrants.
I had an open door.
As I stood there trying to talk myself either out of or into the idea, the maid appeared in the doorway lugging an armful of plush bath towels, which she deposited in the laundry bag on her cart. I nodded and smiled at her while I pretended to be listening to the voicemail on my cell phone. She was preoccupied enough with her work that she barely seemed to notice me, which was just what I'd hoped for. If she barely noticed me, she couldn't describe me later. She took her time gathering fresh towels before going back into the room to restock the supply.
Immediately I stuffed my phone into my pocket, slipped into Whitney's room behind the maid and ducked into the closet. It was a large closet with two doors and enough room to park a Fiat. That is, if it hadn't already been stuffed with enough clothes to fill a small department store. Just my luck, either or both of the queens were gross over-packers. Judging by how little room I had to maneuver, they'd brought their entire wardrobes. All sorts of fashion flotsam was underfoot: pumps, flats, wedges, belts that had slipped from hangers, two laundry bags in differing stages of fullness. Then there were the clothes on hangers, many of them covered in drycleaners' plastic: cocktail dresses and gowns and skirts and jackets and tailored walking shorts. There was too much of everything, but at least the clothes provided cover. I knelt down behind a seafoam green gown with a chiffon train—I sure hoped it didn't belong to Maxine, considering her tendency to trip—and waited for the maid to finish up her duties.
After she'd given the vacuum a perfunctory push across the floor a few times, the maid packed up her cart and moved off down the hall. I emerged from the closet, careful not to disturb whatever organizational system Maxine and Whitney had going on in there. I took a moment to survey the room, deciding where to start. I knew I had a limited amount of time, but I hoped to find some proof that Whitney had it in for her fellow contestants. Specifically Jennifer's stolen bikini top. I had my doubts about Whitney, and while not finding the bikini top wouldn't dispel them, finding it would definitely confirm them.
I started with the dresser, quickly figuring out that the girls had divvied up the drawers evenly, two apiece, but that was where their compatibility ended. These two were the Odd Couple of the beauty pageant circuit. Whitney was as precise as a surgeon in her placement of items in the drawers. All the items that could be folded were folded. Everything else was rolled into balls or cylinders. Colors were coordinated. Like purpose went with like purpose. Even her cosmetics were carefully arranged into categories on top of the dresser: eye and brow makeup separate from foundation and blusher separate from lipsticks and lip stains. Hair care off to the left. Skin care to the right. I lingered at the skin care products for a second, taking note of the labels on the various jars and tubes. A girl could always improve her skin, right?
Unfortunately, along with the name of a good moisturizing serum, the only thing I learned was that Whitney was not hoarding Jennifer's bikini top. At least not anymore. She could have stolen it and immediately thrown it away. I had no way of knowing.
I bit my lip and looked at the remaining two drawers. Maxine's drawers. There was really no need to continue with my search
. I'd done what I'd set out to do and come up empty. There wasn't much point in subjecting myself to Maxine's chaos theory method of unpacking. Not even the maid could have made order out of this mess, and she was paid to try.
Still, I didn't like to leave a job half done. My plan had been to search the room, and Maxine's belongings were in the room.
That was enough to convince me to open the first drawer. And almost recoil from the horror show inside. Maxine had none of Whitney's freakish neatness. Her personal items were shoved randomly into the space provided, rolled into lumpy balls where possible, stretched into wrinkled planes if need be. As far as I could tell, there was little order to any of it. What couldn't be squished into the dresser was in a tangled leaning pile on top, with a random blouse sleeve and a single leg from a pair of pantyhose sprouting from the pile and hanging toward the floor. I did a small shudder on behalf of her clothes. Even bargain brassieres didn't deserve to be treated that way.
Her cosmetics weren't any better. Everything was jumbled together, some of the jars and lipsticks left uncapped. Hairspray cans mingling with mascara tubes. It was a miracle that Maxine managed to pull herself together so well.
I bit my lip as I opened the bottom drawer. I expected more of the same, and I got it. I did a quick search through bra and panty sets and Spanx—what in the world would a tiny thing like Maxine need with Spanx?—and swimsuits, trying not to feel like a perv and failing miserably.
My search was so quick that I almost missed the one bikini top that had no matching bottom. I tugged at it gingerly, pulling it from beneath the layers so I could take a better look. Definitely too small for Maxine. I thought back to Desi's description of Jennifer's pilfered bikini top: white bandeau style with a seashell embellishment. And that's exactly what I'd found. But what was it doing among Maxine's things? That made no sense. Maybe it was Maxine's, mistakenly purchased in the wrong size and discarded in favor of another. But what were the chances that two contestants in the same pageant would own the same unique suit?
I put it back where I'd found it, buried beneath a rumpled pile of undergarments, and slid the drawer shut, my mind racing. I'd honestly expected to find it in Whitney's possession, if I found it at all. Did I have Maxine all wrong?
I was lost so deeply in thought that I almost didn't hear the female voice on the other side of the door. "I'll just be a minute," someone called out.
I gasped. It was Maxine's voice.
"It was so silly of me to forget my earrings. I really appreciate your coming up with me. I get so nervous…"
She hadn't yet finished her sentence when the door began to open.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
I swung a panicked look around the room. I'd never make it back over to the closet in time. The bathroom was out of the question. That left only one option. I dove under one of the beds, wriggling forward on my belly to pull my feet completely out of sight. A colony of dust bunnies billowed up into my face, and I pinched my nose to stifle the sneeze that rose in my throat. It was clear that the maids at the Royal Waikiki didn't live for their jobs.
I peeked out from beneath the bed skirt and caught sight of a killer pair of Gucci stiletto sandals, nude suede with crystal embellishment. Maxine might be a train wreck in the grace department, but she had impeccable taste when it came to footwear, I had to give her that.
After a few minutes of muttering to herself and clomping around in search of her earrings, Maxine found them and hurriedly left the room again. I gave her two minutes' lead time in case she'd grabbed the wrong earrings. When she didn't come back, I hauled myself out from under the bed and across the hall into my own room. That had been much too close for comfort, and it had served me right. I shouldn't have been in Maxine's room in the first place. Even though I had found Jennifer's stolen bikini top and gotten a great idea for a new shoe design.
I slapped the dust off of my clothes, splashed some cool water onto my face, and stood on the balcony looking at the ocean until my heart stopped pounding and I felt like myself again. I wasn't sure what I'd accomplished across the hall, other than to further muddy the waters by adding yet another suspect to a list that already seemed to include most of the people in the hotel. And I knew Ramirez would not be happy about my methods. With any luck, he wouldn't have to know about it for a while. Tonight was the final night before the pageant, and it was being celebrated with a private luau on the beach. Tomorrow I'd be tied up with the pageant itself. If Ramirez took his time interviewing hotel staff, I might be able to avert full disclosure until we were on the plane heading home.
I turned away from the ocean with a sigh and noticed the alert light blinking on my cell. I picked it up and saw I had a voicemail from Ramirez. He was going back to the police station to accompany Detective Whatshisname to check out Xander Newport's alibi.
I placed a quick call home to check on Livvie and Max and assure Mama Ramirez that everything was perfectly fine in paradise, before heading down to the auditorium for my afternoon of scheduled fittings. With the televised pageant set for tomorrow, it was a whirlwind of stilettos and slingbacks as I quickly fit in the last of the remaining forty-nine ladies. Though, the fact that Laforge had decided to cut out the talent portion of the competition to compensate for the lack of rehearsal time did cut down on the number of shoes per girl. I was just finishing my last one, Miss Wyoming, when I heard a text message coming through. I grabbed my cell phone, hoping it was Ramirez with some news for the police station. No such luck. Instead, it was Dana, letting me know the judging session was over, and she wanted to recover with a drink. That sounded like music to my ears, so I grabbed my purse and headed up the escalator.
I found Dana at the Lost Aloha Shack, getting a head start on the drinks. Considering her sagging shoulders and drooping head, I guessed the last couple of hours hadn't gone so well for her. I slid onto the stool beside her and noticed that in addition to the libations, she had what looked like a slice of chocolate cake (not carob or soy product but actual chocolate!) in front of her. Whoa. Things must really not be going well. "Tough day at the office?"
She dredged up a dramatic sigh. "Hey, Mads. I swear, I don't know what I'm doing here."
I eyed her half-empty Lava Pit and had some idea.
"This was just supposed to be a fun little pageant," she went on. "Judge some beauty queens in the usual categories, admire some evening gowns, blah, blah, blah. There's nothing fun about it. There's nothing real about it."
I saw Dirk headed our way and warded him off with a tiny head shake. He lifted his chin in acknowledgment and veered off to take care of a group in duck shirts farther down the bar.
"Have the judges gotten any more instructions about how to score it?" I asked her.
She shook her head. "And we probably won't. As things stand now, Whitney is clearly the front-runner. That's what everyone wants, right?"
I didn't know about everyone, but it seemed that it was what someone wanted.
"For this I gave up two weeks with Ricky?" Dana slurped some of her drink through a straw. "I don't know what I was thinking. I'm never getting involved in a pageant again. I don't want to be asked. I don't even want to get an invitation to attend one."
"Well, it's almost over," I told her. "The telecast is tomorrow. And then we can all go back to our regular lives." All except for Jennifer and Desi, that is.
Dana removed the straw, lifted her glass, and motioned to Dirk for a refill. "So what's going on in your corner of paradise?" she asked me.
I gave her a rundown of the latest developments, glossing over the juju cleansing fiasco and focusing on my suspicions about Xander and the discovery of Jennifer's stolen bikini top, though I remained sketchy on the details of exactly how I'd come to be in the room in the first place. Dana had enough problems. I wanted to give her plausible deniability. She remained quiet, but that might have been because the couple of drinks had left her a little sleepy.
"I knew there was something about Xander," she said when I was through
.
"We don't know anything for sure," I hedged. "Ramirez is looking into his alibi."
She stared moodily into her fresh drink. "The only thing is, why would Xander want to kill Desi?"
While I disagreed it was the only thing, it was a big thing.
"I can't find any connection between Jennifer and Desi," I admitted.
"Except for Miss Hawaiian Paradise," Dana said. I nodded. "That's a lot," she said. "But then maybe it isn't."
"Exactly." I eyed her Lava Pit, which was already half gone again.
"None of it makes any sense. The only thing they had in common is they're both dead." She sucked another quarter inch through the straw. "I'm sorry—I'm just in a lousy mood. I think I'm going to go grab a nap before dinner. Maybe everything will look better after some sleep." She stood. "You'll be at the luau tonight, right?"
I nodded as I watched her wind her way along the path toward the hotel lobby, and I couldn't help but think this pageant couldn't end soon enough for everyone.
*
With a couple of hours before dinner, I decided to enjoy my last days in paradise poolside. I texted Marco to see if he wanted to join me, but he said he was busy with "a project." Considering his last project involved chicken bones and juju war paint, I didn't ask. Instead, I'm proud to say I managed to conquer my skittishness about being in the vicinity of the pool all by myself. Mostly. I still avoided the chaise where I'd found Jennifer's lifeless body. It almost seemed like the experience had left an unpleasant imprint in that precise spot, and to even look in the direction conjured up the image all over again. Luckily, it seemed a number of families were at the pool today, and the energy and boisterousness of the splashing kids playing Marco Polo left me feeling relaxed and safe. If I closed my eyes, I could pretend I was listening to Max and Livvie at play. That happy thought, coupled with the warm sun on my skin (slathered in sunscreen) and the gentle, soothing breeze, soon lulled me to sleep.
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