Ms America and the Offing on Oahu (Beauty Queen Mysteries No. 1)

by Dempsey, Diana

  Don’t hold back, Magnolia: tell me what you really think. “I’m just saying that I understand that whole thing had to be upsetting. And, you know, I’m Ms. America now and maybe I should try to patch things up between you two.”

  “Why bother? Once we leave Hawaii, I’m never going to see that bitch again.”

  “She might compete in the next Ms. America pageant.” Some girls compete year after year in an effort to win. Good for them. But if Misty does, and succeeds next time, I’ll be the one who has to pin the tiara on her arrogant head. Yuk.

  “If I have to work with that pointy-chinned witch again, I’ll quit,” Magnolia declares. “If I still have a job to quit.” She hangs up.

  She’s a tougher nut to crack than Keola. What a surprise.

  I put down the in-room phone and pick up my cell. Time to make another call. A few seconds later this one gets answered, too. “Hi, Pop,” I say.

  “My beautiful girl!” he booms. “How are you?”

  “Fine. It’s kinda wild around here, you know, with details emerging about Tiffany Amber’s life.” Some of which I’ve ferreted out on my own, using, shall we say, unorthodox techniques.

  “The girl who died? Well, that’s how it goes.”

  “I guess so. Turns out she was into foreign-exchange trading. Isn’t that weird? I wonder if maybe it was a money thing that got her killed?”

  “Oh, sweetheart, you shouldn’t be filling up your head with that. Think about what my beautiful girl just achieved! You’re Ms. America now!”

  “I know, but—”

  “Don’t you have appearances to plan?”

  “Not really. Everything’s kind of on hold until Tiffany Amber’s death is explained.” I should be reading the material in the 3-ring binder Magnolia gave me but I’m not even doing that.

  “Everybody around here is asking me if this means you’ll compete in an international pageant down the road.”

  “Ms. World, right, but—”

  “That’s what you should be focusing on, my beauty.”

  I sigh. He doesn’t want me to investigate. I already knew that.

  “You make me so proud, sweetheart.”

  “Thanks, Pop.” I hear a knock on the door. “Mom’s here. I gotta go.”

  The mere mention of his ex-wife is enough to clear my father off the line. I answer the door with my cell still in my hand.

  My mom glances at it as she enters my room. She’s in a cute shorts and top set we picked out at Chico’s. “You’d rather make a phone call than talk to your mother who’s here in the flesh?”

  “I’m just finishing a call.”

  “With Rachel?”

  “No, she and I talked this morning. Pop.” My mother’s face somehow manages both to crumple and light up at the same time. “He’s fine,” I tell her.

  “Did you hear me ask how he was?” She looks away. “What he does, how he is, it’s no longer any of my concern.”

  You may have gathered by now that their divorce is fairly fresh. It happened only four and a half months ago, after 49 years together. And no, it was not her choice.

  “Mom.” Maybe here, so far away from home, she’ll be more willing to talk about it. I sit down on my bed and pat the coverlet. She settles beside me, with obvious reluctance. She knows what’s coming. “You don’t have to pretend with me,” I say. “You can tell me how you really feel. I want you to.”

  She’s staring out the sliding doors to the balcony as if there’s something fascinating out there. Her lips set in a thin line. She’s silent for a long time. Then, “I think enough has been said,” she pushes out. “By everyone concerned.”

  “I really think you’ll feel better if you talk about it.” She seems to spring from the generation that believes it’s not right to discuss these things. Even among family.

  “What’s to talk about?” She turns her head to look at me. It breaks my heart to see so much pain in those light blue eyes of hers. “You give a man your whole life, everything you’ve got, and he takes it as if it’s his God-given right, and then one day he comes home and tells you he doesn’t want you anymore. And what does he leave you with, after you’ve given him everything? Nothing, that’s what.”

  I wish she appreciated the good years they had together. Maybe after a divorce that’s too much to hope for. At least this soon. “It’s not true that you have nothing.” I pat her leg. “You’ve got me. And Rachel.”

  She’s silent. Maybe she’s wishing they’d adopted more children, that they’d be a bulwark against this heartache. I don’t know whether they would or not. I do know there were many miscarriages before they adopted me. For all I know, there were some afterward.

  She shocks me with her next question. “Is there some floozy sniffing around him? Has he told you anything about that?”

  “No! Absolutely not. I really don’t think there is.” I watch her face relax a touch. I decide that’s enough deep talk for one conversation. I pat her knee again and stand up. “Let’s go get our mani/pedis. My treat.”

  She rises. “I’m not letting some stranger touch my feet.”

  “Just a manicure then? Sure.” I grab my purse. “Do you want to buy polish beforehand so you’ll have your own?”

  She looks astounded at the concept. “Why would I pay extra to do that?”

  We head out the door. “Some women do. They don’t like getting the polish from the same bottle that’s been used on other women.”

  We’re in the corridor now. She’s frowning in more earnest. “Is this place you’re taking me to unsanitary?”

  “No.” At least I hope not. It didn’t exactly come recommended; I just noticed it when the pageant bus drove past. I didn’t feel right asking the hotel where to go because their own salon provides the service. I just don’t want to pay those prices.

  After a short walk through Waikiki, we arrive at Nail Palace. It’s in a strip mall—even gorgeous Hawaii has those—and it’s pretty much like every other establishment of its kind that I’ve ever patronized. It has a few nice accoutrements, though, mostly of a floral nature: some lovely exotic orchids, and bromeliads that are actually blooming.

  After we check in, my mother sidles close to me, wearing yet another worried expression. “Everybody who works here is Oriental.”

  I’m glad this time she kept her voice down. “Mom, you should say Asian. And yes. I think they’re Vietnamese.”

  She looks dubious. It doesn’t help that several women choose that moment to look up from their clients to check us out and then make comments to one another that result in fits of laughter.

  I spot an In Touch Weekly and press it into her hand. “Here. Why don’t we pick colors and then you can catch up on the latest news.”

  I smile just looking at the racks of pretty bottles. I love this part. The array is truly dazzling. I was sort of forced into a pale pink for the pageant finale, as I had to match all my competition outfits, from my ladybug get-up for the parade of states—yes, you heard right—to my fuchsia evening gown to my turquoise swimsuit. Now I can be wilder. I throw caution to the wind and select a bright orange.

  My mother reacts to my choice with an arch of her brows. I eventually prod her into a dusty rose.

  We sit on the bench by the entry and wait to be summoned. Now that I think about it, I guess the ladybug did bring me good luck, as that fine beetle is reputed to do. The Ohio Ms. America brass demanded that I represent the state insect in the opening parade. I was not thrilled, I can tell you, especially by the antenna protruding from my shoulder straps, which thwacked me in the face every time I turned around. At least Ohioans from the deep dark past had the good sense not to pick the cockroach or some other truly repulsive bug as their state symbol. That I would have resisted with vigor.

  My mother gets called before me. Her manicurist tries to engage her in conversation but I can tell even from across the room that doesn’t go well. A short time later a spa chair frees up and I’m in. The woman who’s doing me says in ac
cented English that her name is Tia. She’s mid-twenties and very pretty.

  We get down to it, the mechanical massager in the spa chair working its magic. What with my nocturnal spying, I haven’t been sleeping enough lately. I doze off until we get to the callous-removal phase of the operation.

  Yes, I’m ticklish. I can’t keep myself from jerking my foot away. “I’m sorry,” I tell Tia. What I really don’t want to do is kick the poor girl in the face.

  “You sensitive,” she says, and eyes me more closely. “You here for the pageant?”

  “Yes.”

  “How you do?”

  “Well, to tell you the truth, I won.”

  Tia’s eyes fly open, then she squeals. She leaps off her stool and points at me, shrieking something that draws her coworkers like buzzards to a carcass. From the hand gestures and facial expressions I get an idea what they’re saying even though I can’t understand a word. This one won? Can you believe it? Isn’t she a little old? And wide in the rear? And look how those boobs sag!

  I see my mom looking over. All she knows is that the locals have discovered that her daughter won the pageant. Her face brightens with pride. She jabs her manicurist with her free hand and says something. Suddenly she’s a conversationalist, because now she has an opportunity to brag. I’m going to have to give her manicurist a serious tip.

  Tia sets her hands on her hips. “You know the girl who died?”

  “Yes, I knew her.”

  That produces another animated round of conversation. “You know Keola, too?”

  That’s a surprise. “I do know Keola. How did you know?”

  Tia translates for the group. They all roar. “Dirk, too, you know?”

  I frown. “The chopper pilot? Yes, I know him a little.”

  This time the laughter is deafening. Tia points a warning finger at me. “Don’t you talk to them,” she says. “Unless you want …” She makes an O with the thumb and index finger of her left hand and repeatedly pokes her right-hand finger into the circle created. This gesture appears to cross all national borders.

  “No!” I shriek.

  That denial seems to lessen my appeal as a source of entertainment. The other manicurists drift back to their clients. Tia resumes her position on the stool and shakes a bottle of clear polish. “We all know them. They bad. Keola go after that girl who died. Dirk even worse. He always go after the pretty ladies who come to the island. I think he training Keola to do same thing.”

  I lean forward. “Are you kidding me? Dirk and Keola are friends?”

  She nods placidly then bends over my toes to paint. “Sometimes they have bet.”

  “What? You mean a bet whether they can get a woman to sleep with them?”

  “Stop move.” Very lightly Tia slaps my calf. This revelation has gotten me so riled up that I can’t sit still. “My boyfriend tell me that if they get her to do it, they get drunk and tell everybody. At the bar down there.” She motions down the street.

  I’m flabbergasted. There I was thinking that Keola, while not exactly a saint for sleeping with a married woman, was kind of a nice guy. He certainly seemed to grieve Tiffany. Now I find out that he and Dirk have some vile bromance where they seduce unsuspecting female tourists for sport. Disgusting.

  Anger isn’t the only emotion coursing through me. Pity’s right alongside, for none other than Tiffany Amber. Like any woman, she would have been devastated to know she was the subject of this kind of revolting behavior.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  I’m so agitated I can barely sit through my manicure. When that’s dry enough for hightailing it from the salon, my mom and I embark on the walking tour of Waikiki I promised her. Then lunch. I’m beside myself by the time I finally drop her off at the Lotus Blossom and return to the Royal Hibiscus.

  Despite my fairly fresh pedicure I boldly stride onto the sandy beach and make for the rental hut, where tourists in better moods than me are procuring equipment for playing around in the pool and the Pacific. Yes, holding court there for his day job is Keola Kalakaua, wearing a floral wreath on his head, perhaps in honor of the royal blood he claims flows through his veins. He’s no prince in my book, I can tell you that.

  “I’ve got a bone to pick with you,” I say to him when a family renting boogie boards finally toddles away from the hut.

  He looks at me. He seems cagier than he did during our last encounter. Of course, I’m not exactly laying on the charm this time. “What’s up?” he inquires.

  “I heard something about you that’s not very flattering.”

  He shrugs.

  “Don’t you want to know what it is?”

  “Somebody talking stink about me, you’ll tell me soon enough what it is.”

  He does know something about women, at least those on the warpath. “I heard that you and Dirk Ventura are friends.”

  His brow arches. “That makes you mad?”

  “That depends. Do you and he ever make bets?”

  He can’t stop a smile from curling his lips. There’s my answer.

  “That’s lousy behavior,” I tell him. “Really crappy. Did you two have a bet about Tiffany Amber?”

  He doesn’t say a word. He busies himself with rearranging some surfboards that are just fine the way they are.

  “Aren’t you going to defend yourself?” I ask him.

  “Why should I?” His brown eyes drift to my face. “I didn’t do nothing wrong.”

  “What?” My decibel level ratchets up a notch. “You don’t think it’s slimy as hell seducing a woman just so you can win a bet with some guy?”

  “Not when she wants it.”

  I slap the beach hut counter. “You give men a bad name.” I turn away, crossing my arms over my chest. My hostility against those bearing a Y chromosome must be radiating pretty well, because a cute little boy who was approaching the hut abruptly halts in the sand when he sees my face. He turns around and runs away.

  I’m scaring small children. That takes the wind out of my sails.

  I pivot back to face Keola, who’s now wiping sand off goggles. “So that’s what you’re saying? That since Tiffany was willing to sleep with you, you’re off the hook?”

  “She wasn’t just willing, she wanted it, okay? She told me she wanted to get even with her husband. He was having an affair, she said.”

  “So that makes what you did A-OK?”

  “Listen, I fell for her. I had feelings. Deep feelings.”

  “Here we go. Bring out the violins.”

  “I’m not kidding. I got hurt. Because I don’t know if she cared for me like I cared for her.”

  “Yeah, right. I’m sure you’re all torn up inside worrying about that.”

  “I am. Because now I’ll go to my grave wondering if she cared. Because I only asked her for one thing, one thing, and she wouldn’t give it to me.”

  “What’d you ask for? Her prize money if she won?”

  His eyes fly open. He looks as stunned as if I’d announced that I’m the Madonna come to the Hawaiian islands.

  I slap the hut counter a second time. “Are you kidding me? Is that seriously what you asked for?”

  “My mom’s sick, all right? My family could really use the money. And everybody staying at this hotel is loaded or they wouldn’t be here.”

  “I’m not loaded and I’m here!”

  He turns away. “It’s none of your business anyway.”

  I can’t believe I guessed what he asked for, my first try. I don’t know if I believe his story about his mom. At any rate, I’ve had enough of His Highness for now.

  I walk away trying to lighten my mood by assessing what I learned. One: that Keola and Dirk are friends. Two: that Keola and Dirk had a bet about whether Keola could seduce Tiffany. Three: that Keola asked Tiffany for her prize money, which she said she wouldn’t give him, since she may have been a bitch but she wasn’t an airhead.

  What else did I learn? That Tiffany thought her husband was having an affair. Then again, maybe s
he just told Keola that to justify her sexual wanderlust. Or maybe Keola made it up to justify his own behavior.

  I step from the beach onto the oceanside walkway and stand in line to rinse the sand off my feet. After a few moments admiring my new bright orange pedicure, which survived this ill-advised foray, I head for the lobby.

  I haven’t considered Keola much of a suspect in Tiffany’s murder because I just don’t think he’s smart enough to have pulled it off. Nothing he said today convinces me otherwise. And I haven’t seen a motive.

  Though now I have to wonder: could Keola have been so mad at Tiffany for refusing to give him her prize money that he offed her for spite? That doesn’t seem likely but I shouldn’t judge too quickly.

  I enter the open-air lobby and sigh. This is all so confusing.

  “Hey, Ms. Serious Babe-i-tude!” calls a male voice behind me.

  I turn around to see the perennially sunburned hotel employee to whom I reported Shanelle and my electrical short this morning. “Hey, Neil, how you doing? Got any surfing in today?”

  “Yeah, it was boss. Kamikaze waves, for sure.” The man may be pink as a roast pig but he has a megawatt smile. “Power back on in your room?”

  “Yes, thank you. My roommate and I appreciate it.”

  “Right on.” All of a sudden his expression darkens. I follow the line of his eyes.

  Sebastian Cantwell is crossing the lobby with Detective Momoa. They appear to be deep in conversation. Cantwell looks like he’s about to set sail on the British version of The Love Boat. He’s wearing white trousers, a white dress shirt, a navy blue jacket, and, yes, a red silk scarf around his throat. At least he hasn’t tied it around his ponytail.

  I lean closer to Neil, whose gaze is fixed on the pair. “Who is it you don’t like? The cop or my new boss?”

  “Got nothin’ against the fuzz.” Neil’s eyes snap to mine. “Can you keep a secret?”

  No, but I’m not going to tell him that. I lean closer. “Tell me.”

  It takes him only a second to start babbling. “I always kind of thought that pageant guy was a tool but I didn’t remember this till yesterday. Then it came back to me, who else I took up to his suite. Besides you and that yuckbabe Magnolia.”