by Amity Allen
Dimples hugged her back then some of the helpers Bruce had enlisted tried to settle two- and three-foot crowns atop their heads. The openings of the things literally swallowed the girls and would have settled on their shoulders, so the helpers stood behind them holding the crowns in the air above their heads so photos could be taken.
“Oh my goodness! My baby! I’m so proud of you!” The voice of Tippy Bradshaw carried across the room.
In contrast, Brittany Gustavez grabbed Allessandra by the hand and yanked her off the stage, muttering, “Come on. Let’s get out of here.”
I found myself feeling sorry for the kid. Two minutes earlier Allessandra had been smiling and enjoying the pageant, giggling with her friend, congratulating Dimples. I could see it written all over her face that she felt like a failure because her mother was disappointed in her results. I wanted to say something to her, but there was no time.
As I was gathering my things to leave, I heard a mom say, “I told you this pageant was rigged.”
I stiffened. I wasn’t sure about Bruce Martindale’s part in it, but as far as I knew we judges did what we were supposed to do. And surely if our stand-in director had rigged the competition, he would have done it for his little sugarplum Anna Beth to win. Not Dimples.
What could I say? Dimples had star power. She deserved to win.
But, as I walked to my car, something about the woman’s accusation made me feel like I was missing something.
A few hours later, back at the B&B, I ran into Brittany and Allessandra in the downstairs hallway.
“Hi there. Congratulations!” I was mostly speaking to Allessandra.
“Thank you,” she said robotically.
“Allessandra wanted me to ask if you would mind taking a selfie with her. For her Instagram.” Brittany offered me a rare smile.
“Sure.” I put an arm around her and we grinned at Brittany’s cell phone camera.
“Good one,” Brittany enthused.
“Mommy, can I play on my tablet?”
Brittany looked undecided. “In a minute.”
“Um, before you go, there’s something I’d like to ask you about.”
“What’s that?”
“I think I heard you talking about Heather on the phone the other night.”
Brittany’s eyes widened. “Why? What were you doing listening, Miss Nosy Britches?” Her voice was as sharp as the pruning shears we kept at The Flower Shoppe.
“I didn’t mean to eavesdrop, I was just coming up to bed, and you were in the hallway. You were kinda loud.”
Brittany frowned.
“Sorry. I didn’t hear what you said exactly, but I thought it might be about Heather.” I tried to play it off casually, but Brittany wasn’t having any part of it.
“Really? You should give your guests privacy.”
“Technically, I’m a guest too . . . Just here until I can get my own place.”
She put her hands on her hips, spreading her elbows wide, taking up the entire space of the hallway and reminding me of the scene in Jurassic Park where the velociraptors spread their wings in an early indicator they are about to feast on their prey. “You really should mind your own business. You know that?”
I shifted nervously from one foot to the other. “I’m sorry. It’s just I’m so new to the pageant world.” I sniffed, pretending to hold back tears. “And I was so looking forward to being a judge. Heather gave me my first shot, and now that she’s gone, I’m feeling rather lost.”
It was true, I was feeling a bit lost, but it had nothing to do with pageants. However, Brittany didn’t need to know that.
She eyed me suspiciously. “You want to be a pageant judge?”
I nodded and gave her my best impression of “forlorn.”
Dropping her hands to her sides, she reluctantly touched my shoulder. “You poor thing.”
Who knew being a teen actress would come in this handy?
“Here, sit down.” Brittany sank onto the nearby stairs, patting the spot next to her. I planted my bottom and waited to hear what she had to say. In the back of my mind I was thinking the whole time, what in the world am I going to do if she confesses to murdering Heather Morgan right here, right now?
I should have remembered to turn on the video or audio recorder on my phone. If I pulled it out now and did it, she’d clam up for sure, so I gave up on that plan and gave her my undivided attention.
“Yes?” I asked, praying she’d have a guilty conscience and simple prompts like that would open the floodgates to her telling me all about how she’d murdered Heather. I surmised by her previous conversation that she thought Heather “had it coming to her.” Maybe Brittany had taken it upon herself to dole out her own brand of justice.
“Mommy, can I please play on my tablet?” Allessandra pleaded.
“Yes, just go sit down in there and do it.” Brittany pointed at the living room.
Allessandra’s face lit up as she dragged the device out of her mom’s purse and skipped into the other room.
“If you want to be a judge, I could possibly put in a good word for you with my friend Marissa Stangel,” Brittany said, turning back to me.
“Marissa Stangel? Who’s she?”
“Only the pageant director of Who’s Zoo.”
I stared at her blankly.
“You don’t know what Who’s Zoo is, do you?” She stared at me the way teenagers stare at their parents who are hopelessly out of touch with the world.
I bristled. It wasn’t that long ago that I was a teenager. A teenager on TV—a part of popular culture. The definition of au courant. Hip. Cool. Dope. Da bomb.
Not according to Brittany.
She shook her head like I had special needs, and she wasn’t sure how to proceed with me.
I remained silent until she took a deep breath and began to explain it to me in a voice so patronizing, it would have offended the Pope. “Poppy honey, we’re in the South. It’s the biggest pageant in the nation and it’s held here in the Southern region.”
“Here? In Fairhope?”
“No, but it’s in Atlanta, so it’s not too far. Anyway, that’s what I was talking about when you overheard me.”
“Oh. What about it?”
“Well,” her voice lowered to just above a whisper and the conversation took on a gossipy turn, “Marissa and Heather were long-time rivals. They were in the same sorority in college and the two of them were always competing for something. Who was going to be the president of their chapter, who was going to get the boy they both liked, that sort of thing.”
“Who usually won?”
“Heather. She’s super competitive.” Brittany bit her lip. “I mean was. She was always super competitive.”
Coming from this pageant mom, that was saying something. I’d seen her practically pull another mom’s hair out over a makeup artist.
Hmm. There was a lot of drama in this whole pageant world that I wasn’t privy to. No real surprise there, and as much as I hated to ask, I felt like I had to. “So what were you saying about Marissa and Heather?”
“Well, Heather and Marissa both run pageants now. Marissa’s is bigger because it’s in Atlanta and has a much wider draw. So next year Marissa booked her pageant at the same time as this one.”
“So there’s a date conflict? You don’t mean . . .?”
“Yeah. It means that Marissa was planning to put Heather and her little Bloomin’ Belles pageant out of business.”
I wondered if this Marissa had an alibi for yesterday. “So was it Marissa you were talking to on the phone?”
“Yeah. She’s in New York. One of the girls she used to coach is up there this weekend competing in the state pageant.”
“So, is that what you meant when you said, next year was going to be different?”
Brittany nodded.
“You had no idea someone planned to kill Heather Morgan?”
“Heavens no! Is that what you thought?”
I shrugged. “It seemed susp
icious.”
Brittany frowned. “I would have never thought of that,” she mused, and I could almost see devilish thoughts forming in her head.
“Well, don’t think of it now!” I said in alarm.
She punched me on the shoulder. “I’m not. Go on, girl.” She laughed as if we both knew she’d been joking the whole time, but I wasn’t at all sure she had been.
“What was that you were saying about her having a bodyguard?”
“Oh, her husband is an ex-Army Ranger. Big, burly guy. Goes with her everywhere. I was talking about him. Boy, you haven’t missed a thing I’ve been saying, have you? Y’all might need to post a warning sign. Let guests know y’all are listening.”
I forced a fake laugh. When murder was involved, it felt like guests’ privacy in common rooms seemed a less important concern.
“Well, I’m really glad I had a chance to meet you and Allessandra. She’s a very talented and lovely young lady. How did she get to be so flexible?”
Brittany beamed. “She is, isn’t she? I’ve been stretching her every day since she was an infant. Hey, you wouldn’t happen to know any casting agents in Hollywood who might be interested, would you?”
I hesitated. I knew from experience the life of a child star could be difficult. In many ways I hated to foist something like that on a child like Allessandra, who I could tell had a kind, gentle heart. But then it occurred to me that her mother had forced a life in the spotlight on her anyway, and there was nothing I could do about it. The best thing for me to do was help the kid out.
“Sure. I can put you in touch with someone.”
“Great. I asked that lady who was filming the TV show over at the pageant, but after Heather shut her down, she wasn’t all that receptive.”
“What do you mean, ‘Heather shut her down’?”
“Oh, well, Saturday morning, Heather told her she was no longer allowed to film at her pageant.”
“She can’t really do that, can she?”
Brittany shrugged. “Legally, I’m not sure, but she asked Liz to leave and sent the word around that any girls of moms who cooperated with her would be disqualified. That shut everybody up real quick.”
“I’ll bet that didn’t go over well with Liz. She had a whole crew here.”
“Exactly. And they had done all this filming beforehand with some of the contestants. They came to Dallas and filmed Allessandra. I think they went to Las Vegas and filmed Anna Beth too. And Dimples. Maybe some of the other girls too.”
Wow. That was a big investment to be shut down from filming at the last minute. I could only imagine Liz would be furious.
“Do you know why Heather would do that?” I asked.
“No idea. Nobody could figure it out.”
Then it hit me. Liz had asked to interview me while Heather was still alive. Why would she have done that if she knew she’d been shut down and wasn’t allowed to film?
Unless she knew Heather would soon be dead, and there would be no one to stop her.
That night, my head was so filled with thoughts from the pageant and everything that had gone on there that I was ready to put my mind on something else, so after dinner I crept up to the attic where Aunt Cricket had unearthed several of my mother’s old magic books and piled them onto an old wooden table in the middle of the room. Each tome was five inches thick and weighed at least ten pounds. Good thing I’d eaten a good dinner. I was going to need some energy to get through these babies.
The floorboards below creaked when I sat down in my chair, and the musty smell that plagued old spaces permeated the air. The pages gave off a unique, moldy odor each time I turned them. Living this close to the water, the wet air affected everything, from rendering saltine crackers stale within hours to corroding anything metal in record time. Newcomers couldn’t believe the effects the wet air had, but down here, we were used to it. I considered opening a window with its crank handle, but it was so damp outside I decided it wouldn’t help.
I’d never wanted to be a real witch. Being one on TV was fun, but the witches on my show were always getting in trouble and having to fight demons and other things with evil powers. Honestly, if that were my real life, the whole thing would be pretty exhausting. I was much more cerebral.
As soon as I started having an inkling that I had supernatural powers for real, I asked my co-stars Tia and Jess if they had ever experienced anything like that. I’d say things like, “Hey, wouldn’t it be fun if we could do these things in our real lives?” Tiptoe around it a little bit.
Then I’d watch their faces to see if there was any recognition, or a gleam of understanding. But nope, there never was. They would just get wide-eyed and laugh, “Yeah, that would be so cool.”
And then they’d launch into talking about all the things they would do with their powers if they had them. Jess wanted to pick winning lottery tickets, while Tia yearned to cast love spells over an unsuspecting boy she had a crush on. Every time I brought it up, I felt more and more alone. If the three of us had all started to have real powers then we would have each other to work it through with, but it seemed it was only me.
Aunt Cricket was trying to be helpful, but she had basically told me that magic was my mother’s domain. And that only made me miss my mother more. It was hard to miss someone you’ve never met before, but for as long as I could remember I had a sense of emptiness and loss that overwhelmed me at times
I knew I should be grateful for my blessings and not pout over what I lacked. I mean, my Aunt Cricket was great and I was super lucky to have her, but there had always been a hole in my heart in that place that belonged to my mother. I doubted that magic could fill that void, but I felt I had to know more about it to be sure.
I opened up the books in front of me and flipped through them. They mostly seemed like gobbledygook, the words long and many of them ones I was unfamiliar with. The ones I did recognize seemed incomprehensible when strung together with other huge words. It felt like trying to read a medical school textbook when you were in first grade. I could pick out some of it, but for the most part I felt like I was reading another language.
This was starting to feel like school all over again and my thoughts began to wander.
How was I going to keep my powers a secret from Mads and Skylar? It wasn’t that I didn’t trust them, but at this point I didn’t understand what was happening to me well enough to explain it to them. I hoped, as things progressed, I would have a better grasp of it all and maybe I could tell them all about it.
With a sigh, I closed the big book I had been going through, and a cloud of dust rose into the air.
I sneezed. Achoo!
I hoisted another book onto the table. This one was teal in color and had a gold medallion of some sort on the front. I’m sure it was a symbol for something, but of what, I had no idea.
To my relief, this book actually had a table of contents. It had a list of headings and then underneath it a bunch of words I couldn’t understand but at least the headings seemed to be in English and something I could work with.
The more I flipped through it, the better handle I began to get on its structure. It appeared to be a book of spells, and there were different categories. One was for health, one for love, and one for revenge. There was also one for altering objects. Some were more self-explanatory than others, and I wondered about the one on altering things.
Then I got to a section on witches developing severe headaches and visual disturbances on occasion when their powers were the strongest. Now that sounded familiar.
But just when I really began to delve into it, I heard someone downstairs calling to me.
“Poppy!”
“Yes?” I yelled down.
“Honey, I hate to bother you, but I need your help with something,” Aunt Cricket called.
“What is it?”
“There’s a spider in one of the guest rooms. The woman who’s staying in there is deathly afraid of them, and you know I am too.” Her voice was tentati
ve, and I know she hated to bother me, but ever since I was a kid I’d been the head bug hunter at the Mulberry Lane B&B. I wasn’t sure what Cricket had done while I’d been in California and an insect invaded, but it was nice to be needed.
“Be right down,” I said.
I’d have to get back to my craft another time, I thought as I closed the books and headed down the ladder to save them from whatever big, bad spider had invaded our turf.
Monday morning at The Flower Shoppe it was business as usual, which meant Mads sitting behind the counter with her tablet and a stylus pen, drawing one of her numerous amazing creations, and Skylar applying a new lipstick using a compact mirror from her bag.
“Hello ladies,” I said in greeting.
“Poppy!” they cried in unison.
“I wasn’t sure if you were going to be here today,” Mads said.
Madison and Skylar were fraternal twins, and while they both had brown hair and brown eyes, they couldn’t have been more different. Where Skylar’s features were bold, Mads’ were delicate with a smattering of freckles dotting the bridge of her nose and cheeks. While Skylar was as extraverted as they come, Mads was an introvert. And whereas Skylar wanted the world to notice her, Mads’ desire to remain incognito was so strong that she’d grown her thick mane of hair almost to her waist, mostly so she could hide behind it.
“Why wouldn’t I be here? I’m a partner now. I guess you’d call this my day job,” I said.
“What’s your night job?” Skylar asked, but Mads and I ignored her.
“Oh, I’m glad you’re here. You’ll probably do more work than that one.” Mads hooked a thumb at her sister, who had picked up a nail file and was now going to work on her middle finger. “I just wasn’t sure, with everything that had been going on with the pageant and everything.”
“You mean the murder?” I asked.
“Yeah. There probably hasn’t been a murder here in ten years, and you come back to town, judge a beauty pageant and what happens? Old Heather Morgan drops dead in her soup.”
“It was potato salad,” Skylar corrected her twin.