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

by Dempsey, Diana

  I feel something in my chest that might be what my mother calls palpitations. “Oh my God. Because maybe that’s who murdered Tiffany.”

  “To get her out of the way. So she could be with her one true love. Tony Postagino.” Trixie gets excited. “Maybe it’s another contestant. Somebody we haven’t even thought about.”

  “Or maybe a woman who wasn’t in the pageant. Tiffany’s husband wouldn’t necessarily know any other beauty queens.”

  “True. Rhett doesn’t know any except me.” She looks worried all of a sudden. “At least I hope not.”

  “And,” I go on, “it’s completely possible that nobody noticed this woman backstage. She could have slipped in and out without anybody really seeing her.”

  Trixie’s eyes are as big as oranges. “I cannot believe that you figured out that the photo and the video were shot at the same place. That’s a perfect example of what Deepak Chopra is always talking about.” She lowers her voice to a dramatic whisper. “Synchrodestiny.”

  The counter girl returns. “Sorry, but we ran out of wheat germ and I need to get more. Do you mind waiting a few minutes?”

  “No, that’s fine.” I look at Trixie. “In the meanwhile I’ll go find Magnolia and ask her where the B&B is.”

  “So you can go there and ask if they remember who Tiffany’s husband was there with.” Her face falls. “That doesn’t seem likely, though, does it? They must have a million people stay there.”

  “True. But who knows? Maybe it’s really small with only a couple of rooms and they’ll remember. I might luck out.”

  “You’ll need to show them his photo.”

  “You’re right. I’ll have to print it off the computer.”

  “You can do that in the hotel business center.” Trixie scribbles her signature and room number on her bill. “I’ll come with you.”

  I call out to the counter girl. “Just leave my drink on the counter and put the bill on my tab, okay? I’ll be back in a few to pick it up.” Because I’ve got other business to attend to at the moment. This queen is on a mission.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Armed with the photo of Tony Postagino, I make a few phone calls and ascertain that Magnolia is in the hotel’s babysitting center. Trixie and I head in that direction.

  “What could she be doing there?” Trixie asks me.

  “I don’t know.” I pull open the center’s glass door and wave Trixie in ahead of me. “I just hope the kids survive her.”

  Truer words were never spoken, I realize, as Trixie and I stop dead in the foyer. In front of us stands Magnolia, dressed in her usual supertight shorts and tee shirt, wearing a dazed expression and splotches of paint all up and down her arms and legs. Around her toddle about twenty kids, none of them older than three. Five of them are crying, at least that many are screaming, and some of them are taking a stab at finger-painting. One boy is standing by the floor-to-ceiling window swinging a toy truck in a wide arc. I suspect he’s plotting to break the glass and escape.

  I stop one little girl from shoving her paint brush up her nose while Trixie breaks up a fight between a couple of boys. The one who nearly got beat up sets up a wail even though he’s just been rescued. Trixie scoops him up in her arms.

  “Magnolia?” I move toward her. She doesn’t even register me. “Magnolia!” This time I shout.

  Slowly her head turns in my direction. “Yeah?”

  I’m not even sure she recognizes me. “What are you doing here?”

  She thinks a moment. Then, “Babysitting.”

  Out of the corner of my eye I see two little girls carefully upend a jar of water that had been holding used brushes. They giggle and watch with delight as the murky water puddles on the floor.

  Trixie approaches, still holding the sobbing boy. “What’s wrong with you, Magnolia?” She raises her voice and snaps her fingers in front of Magnolia’s face. “Snap out of it!”

  Magnolia yawns, not bothering to cover her mouth. “I’m exhausted.”

  “You’re catatonic,” I say. “Why are you even here?”

  “Cantwell sent me. He’s punishing me, obviously. He told the hotel I’d help out.”

  Trixie looks around her in shock. “Bad idea. These parents would sue in a heartbeat if they got a whiff of what was going on in here.”

  I sense activity at knee level and bend down just in time to remove a tray of paint colors from a little boy’s hands. “We don’t lick those, honey,” I tell him. I straighten and face Magnolia. “So what happened to the regular babysitter?”

  Her eyes, done up as usual with her Nefertiti-style eyeliner, drift toward the door. “Beats me. I lost track of her. I’ve been here since like 6 AM. I’m so zonked I can’t see straight anymore.”

  Trixie shakes her head in disgust, then her eyes widen. She races toward the floor-to-ceiling window where the little boy is swinging a toy truck and grabs it just before it smashes into the glass.

  “Okay, Magnolia,” I say. “I’ll see if I can get you some help in here, but before I do, I want you to answer me a question. Where is that B&B where you videotaped Misty and Dirk?”

  “B&B?” she repeats.

  “Yes. The one you said was half an hour from here. What’s the name of it?”

  She blinks. “I said there was a B&B?”

  I take a deep breath. “Magnolia, you videotaped Misty and Dirk at a bed and breakfast that Dirk’s sister owns. Remember?”

  She shakes her head. “Damned if I can remember my own name right now,” she says, then steps away from me.

  I grab her arm but she pulls away. “Magnolia, come on,” I call but am forced to watch as she droops to the side of the room and slumps into a tiny plastic chair. Her head lolls back against the wall and I swear in two seconds she’s asleep.

  “It’s no use,” Trixie calls to me from the window. She’s made progress, I see. The sobbing and the swinging boys are now sitting calmly on the floor putting paint on paper. “You’re not going to get anything out of her. You’re going to have to ask Dirk.”

  I sigh. “You’re right. He would certainly know.” Though it may be challenging to pry the information out of him. He’s not exactly Mr. Talkative.

  “I’m staying here,” Trixie says. “I can’t leave these kids.”

  “You want me to stay with you?”

  “No, you go. Hey!” she shouts at the bully boy who started the earlier fight and is about to incite another. “You lay one finger on that girl, you got me to answer to!”

  The boy pulls his hands back from the little girl as if he’s just been caught in the headlights of a cop car.

  “I’ve got it under control here,” Trixie says, which I can plainly see. “You go do what you have to do and then come tell me what you find out.”

  I cannot believe it given the racket but Magnolia is indeed sleeping when I turn to go. Maybe Deepak Chopra is right with his whole synchrodestiny thing, because otherwise I don’t know what trick of fate sent Trixie and me to that babysitting center. All I know is I’m glad it did. For the kids’ sake.

  I grab my breakfast drink from the café and head for the hotel’s courtesy shuttle, which zooms around Waikiki all day and all night dropping off and retrieving us Royal Hibiscans. This particular bus is standing room only. I drop my drink in my new white drawstring leather tote and clutch a pole for the ride’s duration.

  I note when I arrive at Ventura Aerial Tours’ location that a chopper is returning to the helipad. I stand behind the Cyclone fence and watch it land. It’s noisy and generates a lot of wind and blowing dirt. A minute after it touches down, a handful of tourists tumble from its open door and in various groupings pose for pictures below the slowing rotary blades. Dirk Ventura himself emerges and is petitioned to pose as well. He doesn’t look happy about it. His aviator sunglasses stay on and I don’t see much of a smile on his lips.

  I watch him. For all that I detest what I have learned about Dirk Ventura’s behavior toward women—female tourists in partic
ular—I do recognize he has a compelling aura. There’s the tall, dark, handsome bit, sure; but there’s also the man of few words, masterful-chopper-pilot thing going on. I can see why Misty found him attractive.

  I find him a little scary, too. He seems mysterious, somehow, hard to read. None of this is inconsistent with how I think of murderers, I must say. But unless Dirk Ventura fell totally in love with Misty and so killed Tiffany in order to improve Misty’s chances of taking the Ms. America title, I don’t see a motive for murder. Plus there’s no way he could have snuck around backstage and remained unseen.

  Unless, of course, Dirk and Misty were in cahoots. He might have handled some phase of the operation—like getting the poison—while Misty laced Tiffany’s lipstick while she was backstage. Again, that presupposes a serious love affair between the two, which had to have developed very quickly.

  I wonder what’s happened to it since?

  Eventually the tourists file through the gate in the fence and return to their rental cars. Ventura perches half in and half out of the chopper scanning paperwork. I call him a few times from the gate but either he can’t hear me or doesn’t choose to, as he doesn’t acknowledge me in the slightest. Eventually I ignore the DO NOT ENTER: AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY sign and approach the chopper.

  He doesn’t raise his head to look at me until I’m about ten yards away. Then, I note, his eyes travel nowhere else.

  I do look kind of cute, I will tell you, in my True Religion stretch denim cuffed shorts—which I’m amazed I can still cram myself into given my dietary habits of late—and lapis-colored jersey halter top with beaded pintucks. The chunky stacked sandals don’t hurt, either, I bet. They have four inch heels and a one-inch platform so I’m tall and leggy if nothing else.

  “Hi, Dirk,” I yell when I’m within earshot. Even with the chopper’s blades no longer rotating, the wind in this area is so relentless it’s impossible to hear.

  He leans out of the chopper. “You’re in the mood to break the rules today, I see.”

  “Oh.” For a moment I’m flummoxed. Then, “Oh, you mean the sign?”

  He nods. His eyes never leave my face.

  “Sorry about that. I just wanted to ask you a question.”

  He cups his ear as if he can’t hear me.

  “I just wanted to ask you a question,” I shout.

  He gives me a once-over. From my long blown-dry brunette hair to my bright orange toenails and back again. “What’ll you give me if I answer?” he asks.

  I put my hand on my hip. “Dirk Ventura, are you flirting with me?”

  I watch a smile form on his lips. That’s an achievement by itself. He exits the chopper, walks around to the other side, gets in there, and gestures to me to take the seat he’s just cleared.

  I stand there like a moron. “You want me to get in?”

  “It’ll be easier to talk,” he tells me.

  Probably so, but I’m not convinced that’s the reason Dirk Ventura issued the invitation. I suspect he considers himself a more skilled practitioner of the seducer’s art when he’s in his chopper’s pilot seat. I hoist myself up and assume the position Misty was in when it all began between her and Dirk. There I have an even stronger feeling that Misty’s and mine are only two in a long line of female butts to have ridden shotgun with Dirk Ventura.

  But I have to conclude this is a positive development. After all, I want information out of him. I’m more likely to get it if he’s thinking he might get something out of me.

  He shuts both chopper doors and immediately it gets quieter.

  I scan his face, then bat my eyes. “You don’t look any the worse for wear after that punch you took from Misty Delgado’s husband,” I tell him.

  He shrugs and looks out the chopper’s front window. “I guess he had to get it out of his system. Especially after—” He stops.

  “After what?”

  It takes him a while to answer. Then, “After he got wind of what I told the cops.”

  “You spoke with them?” I ask breathlessly. I’m embarrassingly good at Brunette Bimbo. “What did you tell them?”

  He turns back to me. “That Misty Delgado isn’t worth killing somebody over.”

  “Oh my God!” I give him my best Valley Girl. “Are you telling me the cops asked you flat out if you killed Tiffany Amber?”

  “They did. And I told them they were out of their minds if they thought I’d commit homicide for Misty Delgado.”

  I slap him playfully on the arm. “That’s not a very nice thing to say about the woman you’re supposed to be in love with.” I follow the line with a giggle.

  He looks at me. Since he’s still wearing his reflective aviator sunglasses I can’t see his eyes. But again I have the funniest feeling that he’s regarding me with, shall we say, heightened interest. “Let’s just say that what I felt for Misty can be described with a different four-letter word than love.”

  I pretend to be shocked. “Do you mean … lust?”

  He gives me a piercing stare, as piercing as it can be through polycarbonate. “Over time, I’ve come to see that Misty isn’t all I first thought her to be.”

  I guess his opinion was higher when all he knew of her was that she’d cheat on her husband in a heartbeat.

  “For example,” he goes on, “I don’t like what she did to you last night.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  The man speaks in riddles. “What Misty did to me?” I ask.

  He reaches across my lap and very gently takes the hand with the condomed finger. “How’s the bite today? Any better?”

  “It’s quite a bit better.” Realization dawns. “Are you kidding me? Are you telling me that Misty—”

  “She pushed you into the macaw.”

  “You saw her do it?”

  “She told me she did it. At the barbecue, before I had my own”—he hesitates—“falling out.”

  My heart is dancing a mad jig. Does that mean it was Misty who killed Tiffany? And so tried to scare me out of asking any more questions? Maybe Shanelle’s been right all along.

  I look at my hand, lying in Dirk’s. Was Misty in league with Dirk? Am I at this very moment holding hands with a murderer? “Why in the world would Misty push me into Cordelia?” My voice sounds high-pitched and squeaky.

  “You have to ask?” He squeezes my fingers. “She hates you because you’re the new Ms. America.” Just like she hated Tiffany when she thought Tiffany would be Ms. America instead of her. “Is all this talk of murder frightening you?” he asks softly.

  I guess my growing panic is telegraphing itself somehow. “Not at all,” I lie.

  “You shouldn’t be,” he says. “You’re safe with me.”

  I highly doubt that, even though Dirk might not at this moment be plotting to slip poison into my system. I think of a pretext for extracting my hand from his and reach into my tote to pull out my breakfast drink. “I’m suddenly very thirsty,” I declare. I try to pull back the opening tab on the lid but given the state I’m in, I can’t manage it.

  Dirk takes the drink from my hand. “Here.” In one second it’s open. He hands me back the drink. He’s staring at me nonstop. “I’m making you nervous,” he murmurs and chuckles.

  I am nervous but not for the reason he thinks. I sip the drink and get another surprise. “Yuck.”

  “Is something wrong with it?”

  “I’ll say. It doesn’t taste at all like normal.”

  He takes it from my hand and drinks some himself. “That is repulsive. But it’s healthy, right?”

  “Sure. But that’s not the only reason I drink it. Usually it tastes good, too.”

  He holds it out toward me.

  “No, thanks. The girl must’ve made it wrong today.”

  He shrugs, then throws back his head and pours the drink down his throat. I watch his Adam’s apple work. He finishes the drink and smacks his lips. “See? You’re already making a better man out of me. For you I’ll eat healthy.” He stashes the empty cu
p. “What did you want to ask me, anyway?”

  “Oh.” I almost forgot. The Misty macaw revelation pushed that right out of my mind. “I understand your sister owns a B&B here on Oahu.”

  “That’s right.”

  “What’s it called?”

  He cocks his head. “You’ve had enough of the Royal Hibiscus?”

  “No. I’m just planning for my next trip out here. When it’s on my own dime and I won’t be paying Royal Hibiscus prices.”

  He eyes me for a second longer, then straightens in his chair. “Buckle up.”

  “Why?”

  He pushes a few buttons. I hear the rotary blades overhead start to spin. “I’ll do better than tell you where it is,” he says. “I’ll show you.”

  “No, that’s really not—”

  But the chopper’s engine is rumbling, the rotary blades are picking up speed, and the cabin is beginning to shudder. Dirk puts on his headset and hand me another. Either I fling myself out of the chopper this very second or I’m going for a ride. I feel the tail of the chopper rise. I guess I’m going for a ride.

  It is fun, there’s no doubt about that, and being in the front seat offers a different perspective. We nose along the ground briefly and then gain altitude. In front of us is Waikiki’s skyline, one white skyscraper jostling with another for space in the wild blue yonder. A few cottonball clouds are gathering over the mountains. Dirk executes a slow 180 above a boat harbor and we hug the coast heading for Diamond Head. The ocean water is various gorgeous shades of blue and so transparent I see coral reefs in the shallower depths. I am awestruck when we fly over Diamond Head’s massive crater, which dominates the south end of Waikiki Beach.

  “Have you hiked to the top?” Dirk asks me over the headset.

  “No, but I hear it’s not that hard to do.”

  “Takes about an hour and a half. Misty liked the tunnel better than the hike. Especially at sunset.”

  I bet she did. After walking through a few hundred feet of pitch-black World War Two-era tunnel, you emerge to behold a drop-dead view of the west side of Oahu. That is, if you make it to the end. I imagine Dirk and Misty might have gotten waylaid, so to speak, before getting that far.