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

by Dempsey, Diana

  “I notice you talk about Misty in the past tense,” I say. It’s oddly intimate having a conversation over the headset, almost like the other person is whispering in your ear. “Are you trying to tell me that you and she are no longer an item?”

  “And if we’re not? Are you trying to tell me you’re interested?”

  I flash the rings on my left hand. “I’m not exactly available.”

  “For what I’m thinking of, you are.”

  One thing you have to say about Dirk Ventura: he’s upfront about his intentions. I make my voice flirtatious. “So I could be your Ms. Right Now?”

  “You sure could if I can get us to my sister’s B&B fast enough.” He kind of chokes out the last words.

  I glance at him. “You okay?”

  “Wow.” He shakes his head once, then twice. The chopper dips a little to the left. Instantly he rights it.

  I watch him rub his forehead. His chest begins to rise and fall quicker than usual. Suddenly he’s panting. The chopper jerks to the right.

  “Dirk!”

  He straightens out the chopper, then raises his left hand to rub his forehead while the right remains on the joystick-like thingie he uses to fly the aircraft. “Sorry,” he gasps. “It’s just … wow.”

  “You feeling okay?” I ask him again. In my opinion, at this moment there’s only one right answer to that question. But Dirk doesn’t deliver it. In fact, he doesn’t say anything. Instead his breathing gets even more frenzied and his face grows more and more flushed.

  I have the funniest feeling I’m getting my answer. But it’s not the one I want to hear.

  I can’t believe it. For the second time today I’ve apparently pushed somebody into cardiac arrest, this time a 30-something fit male. And Dirk’s attack is a lot worse than Sally Anne’s because he’s not in a hospital bed hooked up to heart monitors. In fact, he and I are in a tin can pitching through the air at a thousand feet above terra firma.

  I’m getting a little panicky, as you might imagine. “What do you say we bring this baby down?” I try to keep my voice playful, as if there’s nothing really wrong. “We can go up another time to get an aerial view of your sister’s B&B. In the meanwhile—” I reach into the footwell for my tote. I have aspirin in my cosmetics bag. My mind races. Isn’t that what you’re supposed to give somebody in the throes of a heart attack? It settles the old ticker right down. Or so I hope.

  Next to me Dirk is wheezing. “Something … something’s wrong.”

  “Yeah, I got that part.” I don’t bother trying to sound calm this time. “I’m going to give you some … Dirk!”

  The chopper lurches downward this time. Dirk brings the nose back up. At least he can still manage that. I don’t let myself think about what might happen if we get to the point where he can’t.

  “I’m giving you some aspirin,” I say. “I think you’re having a heart attack.”

  He shakes his head. “That drink—”

  I find the mini aspirin bottle in my tote. My trembling hands attempt to shake out a pill or two. “Focus on the flying. Now is not the time to think about—”

  My hands still. Oh, damn. Oh, no. It can’t be. It absolutely cannot be …

  Did somebody put something in my drink? While it was sitting for who knows how long on the counter in the casual café? Something like … poison?

  I’m suddenly convinced that Misty decided the macaw attack didn’t go far enough. Enough with the warnings, she’s thinking. Let’s get cracking.

  And what did Jason tell me, just last night? That going after murderers is dangerous? And what did I do? Ignore him? Maybe people are right that beauty queens don’t have two brain cells to rub together.

  Dirk lolls back in the pilot seat. His hand releases from the joystick thing between us. The chopper takes a plunge and shudders to the left at the same time. I shriek. My insides take flight. I feel like I might throw up but I don’t have time to because if I don’t get Dirk to buck up, we’ll both be food for the fishies. At least what’s left of us.

  I reach left across the cabin and punch his arm. “Don’t you die on me! Wake the hell up! Pronto!”

  He comes to, sort of. I grab his hand and return it to the joystick. We level out, sort of. I note with some consternation that we’re not nearly as high now as we used to be. True, I want to be reunited with Mother Earth. But tenderly, on my terms.

  “Do not take your hand off that thing again, do you hear me?” I scream at him. “I don’t care how you feel!”

  “Right,” he chokes out. “Right.”

  “Just bring this thing down! No more discussion! Anywhere but in the water,” I add as an afterthought, because that’s what we’re over now. It’s safe to say we have not been following a straight line the last few minutes. “Go that way.” I point helpfully at the coastline.

  To his credit, he gets the chopper moving successfully in that direction. Until …

  “Oh my God,” he says, and starts to huff and puff like he’s trying to blow the whole house down. The chopper jolts with every hectic breath he draws. Up, down, left, right … I feel like I’m riding a bucking bronco.

  I hear wild screaming in my ears and realize that it’s coming from me. I try to shut up but can’t until I hold both hands over my mouth. I never thought it would come to this. I never even took a helicopter ride until I came to this godforsaken island. And now I’m going to meet my Maker in this damn chopper, although the Almighty will barely recognize me because I’ll be all smashed to pulp … Of course, He’s got to be used to meeting people at the pearly gates who aren’t exactly looking their best.

  “Can’t I do something to help?” I shriek at him. “Like hold your hand on this joystick thingie?”

  I do it even though I’m not sure whether it’s helping or not. I’m waiting for my life to flash before my eyes when I realize that actually we’re over land now, some grassy area or park or something, and we’re not that high anymore, and even though we’re still jerking around, we’re also kind of circling like we’re going to land, and …

  Ka-boom! We do land. It won’t go in the record books as Dirk’s best ever; in fact we kind of go down nose first, then tail, which I don’t think is exactly textbook, but in my personal record book it’s an all-time best because I’m not dead. Dirk’s not dead and I’m not dead and we’re both on the ground.

  I hear sobbing and it takes me some time to realize it’s coming from me. I manage to shut up and then I turn to look at Dirk.

  Uh oh.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Maybe I concluded too quickly that Dirk’s not dead. Because he’s not looking too sprightly at the moment. His tongue is hanging out and I see no sign of breathing.

  Oops, now I do see one. His chest just rose and fell. Then it repeats the performance. These signs of life snap me into action. I reach for my cell to call 911. I don’t get far, though, because just as I clutch my phone in my trembling hands I hear a rap on the chopper’s front window.

  I look up to see a pudgy red-faced man with wispy white hair brandishing a golf club. “You ruined my tee shot!” he yells. “You got some nerve landing in the middle of the goddamn eighth fairway!”

  “Listen, Buster!” I scream back. “This was an emergency landing! Look at this guy next to me! He could be dying! So get an effing grip!”

  “I paid three hundred bucks for this round,” he informs me, “and now I’ll have to take a mulligan!”

  I have no idea what that means. “Shove your golf ball where the sun don’t shine!” I shout back. You will not be surprised to hear that suggestion falls on deaf ears. He goes on hollering but I ignore him, except for the time I scream that some people need to get a little perspective. Eventually he stomps away. His compadres, beefy bullies all, give me scornful looks, like Dirk and I planned this explicitly to ruin their round.

  In the midst of all this I punch in 911. Matters do not improve when I attempt to relay my tale to the dispatcher. Yes, I think the chopper p
ilot was poisoned. No, I cannot tell her where we are, except that we’re in the middle of the eighth fairway of a golf course south of Waikiki where rounds cost three hundred smackers. Yes, I’m the new Ms. America and yes, we had a previous poisoning and yes, this time I ingested some of the suspicious substance, too.

  I am feeling a tad nauseous but that could just be from nearly snuffing it. That sort of thing has been known to cause stomach upset.

  Despite my inability to pinpoint my location, in short order the paramedics find us and Dirk is transported to the hospital. So am I. I’m resting in the ER when who shows up to see me but your friend and mine, Detective Momoa.

  He pulls shut the curtains that delineate my area. “Ms. Pennington. How surprising to find you mixed up in yet another calamity.”

  I sit up straighter. “Calamity? Are you saying that Dirk—”

  “Mr. Ventura is in critical condition but he is expected to survive. No thanks to you.”

  “No thanks to me? I don’t think so, Detective. You can’t blame me for this one.” I may be in a prostrate position but I have not lost my feistiness. “I’m pretty darn sure that somebody poisoned my breakfast drink. It’s not my fault that Dirk drank it.”

  “How convenient that he ingested it and not you.”

  “What planet do you live on, Detective Momoa? How in the world is it convenient to have your chopper pilot poisoned right before he takes you up? I don’t know how to fly that thing! I thought we were both going to die up there!”

  He doesn’t look convinced. “Why were you in his helicopter in the first place?”

  “I wanted to ask him a question and it was easier to talk inside the chopper than outside. Because it was hard to hear over the wind.”

  He ponders a moment. Then, “So, Ms. Pennington, you’re telling me that you didn’t expect to go flying with Mr. Ventura when you went to see him, is that correct?”

  “That’s exactly correct,” I say, before I realize where Momoa is going with this. His use of Ms. Pennington, which he trots out when he’s most suspicious of me, should have tipped me off. “But that doesn’t mean—”

  “What it means is that you believed you ran no risk of being injured yourself if Mr. Ventura drank the poisoned beverage because you had no expectation of his flying you anywhere. It didn’t matter to you how incapacitated he became.”

  I watch Momoa’s features settle into a smug expression. It’s pretty clear to me by now what Momoa thinks. He thinks I poisoned Dirk Ventura. That new conviction gives him even more reason to believe that I also poisoned Tiffany Amber.

  This is not good.

  “Tell me one thing,” I say. “Do you know for sure that my drink was poisoned? Or did something else happen to Dirk, like he had a heart attack or something?”

  “Oh, no,” Momoa says. “We’ve already had it confirmed that Mr. Ventura ingested poison. Cyanide, to be precise.”

  Cyanide. In my breakfast drink. Kind of gets me in the gut, hearing that. I sound a little breathy when I next open my mouth. “Was it cyanide that killed Tiffany Amber?”

  “The same.”

  In my mind’s eye, I replay it all again. Tiffany in her silver gown writhing on the stage, gasping for breath. Finally breathing her last, in front of all of us. That could have been me. This morning, that could have been me.

  I croak out another question. “Then how is it possible that Dirk will be okay?”

  “Because the dosage wasn’t large enough to kill him. This time”—he focuses his beady eyes on my face—“the killer miscalculated.”

  Maybe, maybe not, I’m thinking. Because I weigh considerably less than Dirk Ventura. The amount of cyanide might have been plenty enough to do me in.

  “You needn’t look so concerned,” Momoa goes on. “After all, look at you. You emerged unscathed.”

  “I am hardly unscathed. I am a psychological wreck.” I declare this before it occurs to me what hay Momoa might make of the remark. “I was beyond terrified in that chopper and now I am even more scared because it’s crystal clear that somebody is trying to kill me. Someone tried to kill me today after someone tried to injure me yesterday.”

  I hold up my condomed finger and relay the tale of my tangle with Cordelia. I finish with what Dirk told me. “He said that at last night’s luau, Misty Delgado confessed to him that she pushed me into the macaw. So what do you make of that?”

  Very little, from the look on Momoa’s face.

  “I am telling you,” I go on, “that Tiffany Amber’s murderer, quite possibly Misty Delgado, is trying to strike again. We’d both be better off if you focused on that.”

  “I promise you, Ms. Pennington, that all of my attention is directed at the behavior of the murderer.” He gives me a pointed glare. “Now why don’t you focus on explaining why Dirk Ventura drank your breakfast drink instead of you.”

  “I never had the chance to drink it! I picked it up right before I got on the Royal Hibiscus shuttle and it was standing room only and so I had to clutch the pole the entire ride. When I did finally taste the drink, it was awful. That’s why I barely got any of it down.”

  “If it was so awful, why did Mr. Ventura drink it?”

  “To impress me, I think. To show that he was willing to eat healthy for me despite how horrible the drink tasted.”

  The whole thing does sound pretty fishy when I say it out loud. I can see clearly that Momoa agrees with that assessment. Likely story, his eyes say. Likely story.

  “You’re wasting your time interrogating me,” I pronounce. “You should be at the casual café at the Royal Hibiscus talking to everybody who was there a few hours ago to see if anybody happened to notice somebody tampering with my drink.”

  “I’ll take that under advisement,” he informs me. Then another cop pulls the curtains apart and pokes his head inside my area. He and Momoa step away and huddle. The new arrival, a young and short Hawaiian man, peeks at me from time to time as if I’m the topic of their whispered tete-a-tete.

  I lay back against the pillows of my rolling bed. I’ve heard all my life, Count your blessings. It’s good advice so I take it. I’ve got four blessings straight off. I’m not dead. Dirk’s not dead. I’m back on solid ground. I’m still Ms. America.

  Those are the good points and they’re darn good. But the two bad points are kind of overwhelming. Someone’s trying to kill me. And Detective Momoa, Oahu PD, is more sure than ever that I’m a murderer.

  Momoa gives me one more meaningful glare before he and the other cop meander away. A minute or so later a nurse appears at my bedside.

  She’s fleshy and red-haired and cheerful-looking and somehow creates the comforting impression that she’s been at this nursing thing a long while. Her name tag reads Dorothy. She smiles and pats my arm. “How are we feeling?”

  “Fine. When are they going to let me out of here?”

  She clucks her tongue and shakes her head. “I’m surprised you’re in such a rush.”

  “Aren’t most people? I mean, I know you work here but the rest of us don’t really like being in the hospital.”

  Her face takes on a befuddled expression. “But you’re safe here. After what’s happened to you, I would think you’d never want to leave. At least not until they catch” —she hesitates—“you know.”

  “Until they catch who?”

  She looks even more perplexed. “The person who’s after you beauty queens. It’s all over the news again, like it was after that poor woman got poisoned. Now, after what you’ve just been through, with the poison again and the helicopter accident …” She sighs deeply, as if in amazement at the assaults humans perpetrate on one another. “It’s terrifying. Just horrible. But here”—she glances behind her, where I see, positioned a few feet behind the open curtain, the squat cop—“you’ve got police protection.”

  It’d be nice if that’s what it was. But I know something Dorothy doesn’t.

  It isn’t.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Once Dor
othy leaves and I am once again alone, I take stock of my situation. I am forced to admit that it is dire. Matters have indeed degenerated to a new low, so much so that I have the funniest feeling that if I stay put, I will be sprung from this rolling bed only to find myself on a like-sized cot in the Honolulu hoosegow, as my mother would call it.

  There’s only one thing to do. I must escape from this hospital.

  Granted, I don’t know what I’ll do then. I’ve never been on the run before and I don’t know that I’m really up to it, especially in my stacked sandals with their four-inch heels and one-inch platform. But a queen’s got to do what a queen’s got to do. I won’t lie here like a ninny waiting for Momoa to arrest me on two felony counts: one successful murder and one botched attempt.

  Now is not the time to thank Dirk for getting the chopper down safely, though I appreciate that big-time. Boy, was he heroic. Cyanide was coursing through his system but despite that he managed to save both our skins. He’s still got a few big black marks against him in my book but I have to say he’s gone up in my estimation.

  I realize now that it couldn’t have been Dirk who poisoned Tiffany Amber. After all, it must be the same person who poisoned her and tried to poison me. He never would have downed my breakfast drink if he’d known what was in it.

  But Misty … Misty’s still high on my suspects list. I have to get out of here and return to my investigation, the next step of which is finding out the name of Dirk’s sister’s B&B so I can ask the staff if they remember who Tony Postagino stayed there with. Maybe it was Misty. Then the puzzle might be solved.

  I look around me. One thing will make escape easier: I’m still in my clothes. No one forced me into a hospital gown. Dorothy pulled the curtain shut behind her but I can see in the one-foot space between the curtain and the linoleum floor the spit-and-polished black shoes worn by my supposed “police protector.” I can’t go out that way, clearly.