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

by Dempsey, Diana

  “Somebody stop that man!” I scream, dodging an elderly couple toting a painting of a sailing ship on a black velvet background. “He’s a menace!” I get no takers.

  Rex caroms into a table loaded with seashell jewelry, staggers briefly, but keeps going. I just avoid a slow-moving Asian woman carrying a peach-colored cymbidium.

  “Watch it, you bimbo!” she screams after me.

  Ooh, them’s fightin’ words! I so want to stop and give her a piece of my mind—and yes, I would have enough left—but I don’t dare. I’m in hot pursuit of the murderer in front of me—and if he’s not a murderer, why the heck is he running?—so I can’t waste my breath on educating the yahoos in the crowd.

  Something besides sheer adrenaline is pushing me forward. Pride. Take that, Detective Momoa! Let’s see who’s right about this murder thing now …

  Ahead I spy trouble. The walkway for pedestrians gets narrow and one of the TAKE A RIDE! donkeys is blocking the way. It’s a mild-looking gray and white beast being led by a brunette in jeans and a gingham shirt who appears to be doing her best Mary Ann from Gilligan’s Island imitation. To make matters even more exciting, the burro has a toddler on its back.

  Uh oh.

  When Rex gets close to the donkey, he tries to push its rump aside so he can squeeze past. The burro’s having none of it. It starts braying. The toddler starts shrieking. The brunette’s sweet-as-can-be expression disappears in a nanosecond. “Get your hands off my ass!” she hollers.

  Rex is unfazed. He leaps over the donkey like he’s a gymnast competing in the pommel horse. The beast must have a healthy fear of dotty women, though, because it sees me coming and moves just enough out of the way.

  I am impressed by Rex’s speed, I must say. The man has to be pushing fifty but he is booking.

  We come to an intersection, all four ways closed to traffic, and Rex surprises me by veering to the left to head off into side streets and leave the street fair behind. I watch him cut between a booth selling hip hop tee shirts and another whose sign says it offers paperweights made with real insect specimens.

  Ewww!

  Another block and we’ve left the fair well behind. We’re into a residential neighborhood now, and not the nicest one I’ve ever seen. This must be Waikiki’s seamy underbelly, full of three and four-story apartment buildings that look like they might never have seen better days. Peeling paint, bars on the windows, browned-out lawns or just dirt where browned-out lawns used to be. A few unsavory characters are roaming around and they’re giving me the eye. These aren’t the tourist types or cheerful locals that are still enjoying themselves at the fair. Speaking of which, its raucous noise sounds pretty distant now. And did I mention that it’s dark out? It’s dark out. And many of the street lights here aren’t working.

  It’s hard to see but I can make out Rex veering right at the intersection ahead. I’m about half a block behind, slightly further back than I used to be.

  I glance back over my shoulder. Is that somebody behind me? I can’t tell. Just what I need.

  The part of me that’s rational is starting to wonder if I should call this chase thing off. Especially since it’s not going so well anymore. And what do I really expect to get out of it?

  I arrive at the intersection where Rex turned and I stop, panting. I look in the direction he went and I don’t see him. I look in all four directions. I don’t see him. Shoot. I guess I lost—

  Slam! I find myself grabbed from behind and picked up and carried to the sidewalk, where I’m pitched forward onto the pavement like a sack of garbage. My hands scrape, my elbows, I’m just glad my head doesn’t crash into the concrete. I twist around and who do I see looming over me but Rex Rexford, hands on hips, chest heaving, shaking his head back and forth, back and forth.

  “You made me do that, Happy,” he says. He’s sucking wind as hard as I am. “It’s your fault. So don’t you blame me.”

  “What in the world are you talking about? Rex—” I try to get to my feet. He lurches forward and pushes me back down. I scream. He gets around behind me again, fast as can be, and slaps his hand over my mouth. “Shut … up,” he says. “Now.”

  I shut up. I really, truly shut up because now I am really, truly scared. Rex is quite a bit bigger than me, which I’ve always known but which is only coming home to me now, and besides that I have just learned that he is both damn buff and damn strong. His hair may be mired in the past but Rex is totally up-to-date when it comes to fitness level.

  I nod my head to reassure him that I do not intend to scream again. Truth be told I don’t, because I’m petrified what he’ll do to me if I do. And also because I have the funniest feeling that other people in this neighborhood have screamed and it hasn’t done them much good.

  Half a minute later his hand relaxes. “You’re going to be quiet now?”

  I nod again.

  He moves his hand away.

  “I’ll be quiet,” I whisper. We sit for a while, me splayed on the sidewalk, him crouching next to me. “What now?” I ask him.

  He lets out a breath. “I’m trying to figure that out. Darn it!” He slaps his forehead. “Why’d you do it, Happy? Why? You couldn’t leave well enough alone, could you?”

  “You are talking gibberish, Rex Rexford!” I hiss. “I should just ignore the fact that Tiffany Amber is dead? That Dirk Ventura and I almost snuffed today? That Sebastian Cantwell is in the slammer for things he didn’t do? That I’ve come under suspicion for things I didn’t do? Is that what you mean?”

  He frowns. “You came under suspicion? Why?”

  “Because I was the last one in the isolation booth with Tiffany! And because I got awarded the title afterward.”

  “Oh.” His face sort of crumples. “I’m sorry you had to go through that.” Then he seems to remember himself and jabs his finger at my face. “But you’ve got nothing on me, Happy Pennington!”

  “Rex, just be honest with me. Why did you kill Tiffany? So you could be with Tony Postagino? I know you two stayed together at the Plumeria B&B.”

  I don’t know whether or not to be amazed when he doesn’t immediately dispute my statement. We’re in an odd limbo now, he and I, squatting together in this insalubrious neighborhood. It’s dark. It’s late. Maybe he feels the same way I do, that something in the atmosphere is confessional.

  He hangs his head. For a long while he says nothing. Then, “You’re a married woman, Happy. I assume you’ve been in love?”

  “Yes, I have. And I love my daughter in a way I can’t even describe. I’d do absolutely anything for her.”

  “Well, see? That’s what I’m talking about.”

  “Did Tony put you up to it? To killing Tiffany?”

  “No. Absolutely not.” He shakes his head vigorously. “He had nothing to do with it.”

  “So you did it on your own? You killed Tiffany on your own?”

  He looks away. I was raised Catholic, and I know from my own time in the confessional that even when a wall with a latticed window separates you and the priest, it’s easier to look away from his profile when you ‘fess up.

  “It was that or lose him forever,” Rex says.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  I let out a breath. There it is. I was right that the killer isn’t Sebastian Cantwell. Of course at various times I thought it was Misty or Sally Anne or Magnolia or Keola or Dirk. But still. My instincts may not have been spot on but they weren’t awful.

  Take that, Detective Momoa!

  Fat lot of good Rex’s confession is going to do me, though. I, who am under suspicion, am the only person to have heard it. And I might end up dead.

  “With Tiffany in the picture, we could never really be together,” he goes on. “We could never have the lives we wanted. A home together. Serenity. Happiness.” He looks at me. “Isn’t that everybody’s right?”

  “Maybe. But why didn’t Tony just divorce Tiffany?”

  “He talked about it all the time. But there were huge risks in a div
orce. She would’ve taken half of what was left of his money, after already spending most of it. And with our being, you know, gay, she would have gotten custody of his daughters. And ruined his reputation.”

  “So she spent a lot of money?”

  “She spent like crazy! She was totally out of control. And then to try to make up for it she hatched this psychotic foreign-exchange trading scheme, which went to hell, which made everything even worse. She tried to get me to invest in it but I told her thanks but no thanks.”

  “She got Sally Anne to invest in it.”

  “Huge mistake on her part.”

  This time I jab my finger at him. “You told me, when I sat down with you when you were having dinner at the hotel, that you thought Sally Anne killed Tiffany.”

  “What did you expect me to say? That I did it?”

  “What about messing around with Sally Anne’s gown registry? Did Tiffany do that?”

  “Of course. She told me all about it.” Rex shakes his head. “Tiffany Amber was not a nice person.”

  There is a certain irony here. Rex Rexford, nearly a double murderer himself, casting aspersions on one of his victims.

  Suddenly in the distance I hear a succession of sharp cracking sounds. I grab Rex. “My God, what was that? Gunshots?”

  “Geez Louise, I don’t know.” He’s holding on to me, too. I have the fleeting thought that he’s as scared as I am. “In this neighborhood it could be.”

  A few seconds later, when it’s all quiet again, I release him. He stands up. I do, too. He looks at me. “I can’t let you, you know, just go.”

  “Of course you can.” I try to sound as matter-of-fact as possible. I brush the dirt off my sweatpants and straighten my baseball cap.

  “You’re not going to tell anybody what I told you?”

  It takes me a beat too long to open my mouth to say, No, of course not!—and in that nanosecond he says, “I guess I’m going to have to finish what I started.”

  I take a stab at running away but in like two steps he’s got me by the arm. I try to shake him off but he holds on. “You can’t kill me, Rex!” I shriek. “How stupid would that be? A zillion people just saw me chasing you through the street fair! Think of the lady with the ass. You don’t think she’d remember your face? Or the masseuse? She’d recognize you in a heartbeat. No, it’s beyond stupid to murder me.”

  He manhandles me closer. “I can’t think about that now. I’m a desperate man.”

  “You’re desperate?” I try to wriggle out of his grasp before he can get his hands around my throat, which is what I think he’s angling to do. “You’re going to kill me with your bare hands, Rex? I don’t think so! That is so not your style.”

  I hear another popping sound and this time it’s incredibly close. I scream. Then I hear a male voice shout.

  “Get your hands off her, Rexford! And put ‘em up!”

  I look to my right. Who’s standing there in one of those wide-legged shoot-‘em-up poses but Mario Suave. Wielding a gun. Which I believe he just fired. And now he’s pointing it straight at Rex and me. “I heard what you said, Rexford! Every word! So let her go!” With his free hand Mario pulls a wallet type thingie out of the pocket of his cargo shorts and lets it drop open. I see that it contains a badge. “Now, Rexford! FBI!”

  Rex doesn’t budge. But I see my opportunity. I twist in Rex’s grasp and jerk my knee up into his groin.

  “Uggg,” he grunts and lets me go. I scamper away but don’t get far because I trip—how embarrassing—and before long am back on my hands and knees on the sidewalk.

  By the time I look up, Mario is standing between me and Rex, his gun aimed at Rex’s chest. I scramble to my feet. Mario is shouting things at Rex and now Rex is obeying, kneeling down, holding his hands behind him, getting them cuffed with the handcuffs Mario apparently had on his person. His body is shaking, Rex’s that is. I think he’s sobbing.

  How can I possibly feel bad for him? He killed one person. He tried to kill me. He almost killed Dirk Ventura because Dirk got in the way. But still I have a warm spot in my heart for him. I must be a sentimental fool.

  Or maybe I’m all warm and fuzzy because once again I’m not dead. And at long last, the perpetrator has been caught. By me.

  Well, sort of by me. Mario Suave certainly played a role.

  The police come and take Rex in. He doesn’t even look at me as he’s led past. I’ll have to grow a thicker skin because part of me actually feels guilty that because of me he’s on his way to the pokey. And he won’t be out any time soon.

  This doesn’t make any sense either, but once Rex is gone I start trembling again.

  “It’s all right,” Mario says. He leans down and looks into my eyes. “You’re all right now.”

  I know that, I know it, but I can’t stop shaking.

  Mario gets one of the cops to take us back to the Royal Hibiscus. The fair is still going on, which kind of stuns me. How can something so ordinary be continuing as normal when I just survived whatever the heck I just survived? Mario insists I get checked out at the hotel clinic, even though I tell him repeatedly there’s nothing wrong with me apart from the twitching, and wouldn’t you know it, it’s the same doctor on duty who treated me after the macaw bite.

  “You’re having an eventful stay,” she says to me, dabbing antiseptic on my scrapes, but she doesn’t make any further pithy observations. I think that’s because Mario pulls her aside at one point and whispers something in her ear. Her eyes grow wide at whatever he tells her. I think in that second her respect for me grows. I become more than just an unusually incident-prone hotel guest.

  When the doctor lets me go, Mario leads me to the lobby lounge. We sit in two overstuffed chairs and he orders two brandies. Even though I’m almost too jittery to hold my snifter, I manage. And that first sip goes down way easy.

  “What in the world happened back there?” I ask Mario.

  He leans forward, his snifter resting in his cupped hands. “Thanks to you, Rex Rexford was arrested for the murder of Tiffany Amber.”

  “Not that part. The part where you suddenly appeared and saved the day.”

  “Let’s get something straight, Happy.” His tone is very earnest. “I’m not the one who saved the day. You did that. All I did was help out.”

  “Well, at kind of a crucial moment. Like when Rex was about to kill me.”

  He nods his head as if to acquiesce. “I was following you. I saw you running through the fair after Rex and I followed you. It was clear that something was going down.”

  “You took me by surprise. First with the gun. Then with the badge.”

  “Yeah. That.” He hangs his head.

  “I don’t think most pageant emcees have one of those.”

  He raises his eyes to meet mine. He actually looks sheepish. “I’m hoping we can keep that our little secret.”

  “What, that you’re a spook?”

  He glances around us and leans closer. He speaks very softly. “Happy, the FBI recruited me years ago to help ferret out illegal accounting practices in the entertainment industry. I’m in a unique position where I can find certain things out.”

  This man has secret talents even my mother didn’t guess at. “You know accounting? I thought you started your career in Spanish soaps!”

  He smiles. “I did. But my mother wanted me to have a fallback. And it’s led to this.” His smile fades. “But Happy, my show business career would come to a screeching halt if my sideline became known. You understand why.”

  Sure. Who would hire a spook who wants to spend his break time analyzing the books? Where pretty often in showbiz the numbers don’t add up? “I’m happy to keep this to myself,” I say.

  “I’d appreciate it. I really would.”

  He stares at me. I stare at him. Then I look down into my brandy snifter, where I see my pensive reflection in the amber liquid.

  How different this day is ending from the way it began. And not just for me. For Rex Rexford. For
Tony Postagino, if he knows what just happened. For Dirk Ventura. And for Sebastian Cantwell.

  I raise my eyes to Mario. “I wonder if Mr. Cantwell’s already been released. Any second now we might see him walk across this lobby.” Boy, is he going to love me after this. Not only did his new Ms. America not kill his almost Ms. America, she figured out who did! And got him sprung from the big house.

  Mario cocks his head. “I wouldn’t hold my breath.”

  “Why not? If Rex Rexford—”

  “Cantwell wasn’t arrested for Tiffany Amber’s murder. Or for the attempt on you.”

  “Then what was he arrested for?”

  “Tax fraud. He created false losses in the pageant to dodge taxes on his other businesses.”

  “That’s bad enough to get arrested for?”

  “Sure is. It’s a felony.”

  This is amazing information. “No wonder he kept telling Momoa to look for Tiffany’s killer outside the pageant! He didn’t want the organization scrutinized. Did he have any idea what you were up to?”

  “I don’t think he knows my role even now.”

  “Damn!” I just thought of something. “Does this mean I’ll never see my prize money?” The second the words leave my mouth, I wish I could haul them back in. I am such a dunce! What a self-absorbed thing to say! And to Mario Suave, too.

  I realize a second later that my husband overheard it, too.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  This situation may not look quite right to Jason.

  Although it is totally innocent. Totally.

  “Jason,” I say. I gesture to the other overstuffed chair in our little grouping. “Sit down and join us. This is Mario Suave.” That is a needless introduction. It’s obvious Jason knows who Mario Suave is, given that he’s such a celebrity and the pageant emcee to boot. Introducing Mario to Jason is, however, necessary.

  Jason shakes Mario’s hand but doesn’t really smile at him. He gives him more of an assessing look.

  Mario stands up. “I’ll leave you two alone.” He sets down his snifter. “Happy, just so you know, what we talked about is not yet public information. But don’t worry, you don’t have anything to worry about. Everything will work out just fine for you.”