Ms America and the Offing on Oahu

by Dempsey, Diana

  “Oh my God.” The color drains from Liz Beth’s face.

  Mario hustles over to prop her up because she looks like she’s about to hit the deck. “Let’s not worry too much about that. But we should be super prudent from now on.” He raises his voice to address all the girls. “That means, ladies, when the authorities release you, go straight back to your rooms, don’t let anybody in that you don’t know, and don’t talk to strangers.”

  Those were pretty much the pre-homicide pageant rules, and now I don’t think anybody will offer much argument.

  We remain in huddle mode for some time while cops traipse hither and yon across the stage, strewing yellow crime tape around everything that won’t move and one thing that will. Not surprisingly, the isolation booth commands a great deal of their attention.

  I find it all deeply compelling. I don’t know if it’s because I’m the daughter of Lou Przybyszewski, retired from Lakewood PD, but I have long harbored a certain fascination with matters homicidal.

  It is creepy, though, watching the medical team come in to collect Tiffany. Even after they lift her onto the gurney and pull a sheet over her blonde head, I half expect her to sit up and cackle, Fooled you!—or some such crazy thing. But it doesn’t happen. For once Ms. California is silent. I think that’s when I know she is really, truly dead. We all draw back a few inches when she’s rolled past us to points unknown.

  By this point the cops are letting the judges and most audience members go, after jotting down information about them. The auditorium is emptying even of the reporters who descended en masse when they heard a contestant snuffed. We watch as one cop disentangles himself from the posse near the isolation booth and heads in our direction. Clearly this is the homicide investigator, because he’s in plainclothes. In fact, he’s wearing a Hawaiian shirt, which passes in these parts for business attire.

  He and his paunch stop directly in front of me. He looks like Don Ho’s chubby cousin. He flashes his badge and eyes my Ms. Ohio sash. “Are you Happy Pennington?” he asks.

  I feel many eyes settle on my face. Usually I’m enough of a ham to enjoy being the center of attention. Not this time. “I am.”

  “You were the last contestant to exit the isolation booth before Ms. Amber, is that correct?”

  Not much in that I can deny, either. “It is.” I realize I’m answering as if I’m already on the witness stand but I can’t seem to help myself.

  “Then follow me,” he directs, and after one desperate sideways glance at Trixie, I find myself being separated from my fellow contenders and led across the stage to a distant locale whose advantage is, I gather, that no one can overhear us. Except for the female cop who joins our duo.

  The cop who found me flips to a new page in his little notebook. “I’m Detective Momoa and this is Detective Jenkins.”

  Jenkins is a heavyset blonde woman. I nod at her. She says nothing. Maybe she specializes in peering intently as I feel her eyes bore into me like nobody’s business.

  Detective Momoa speaks again, his pen poised over a clean page. “Would you spell your name for me, please?”

  “Do you mean Happy Pennington or my legal name?”

  “What is your legal name?”

  “Happy Przybyszewski.”

  That gets his attention. He looks up from the notebook. “Excuse me?”

  “Przybyszewski.” It sounds like shih-buh-CHEF-ski. I’ve always been inordinately proud of the fact that it has only two vowels and you have to get nine letters in to hit the first one. “It’s Polish,” I explain, though I think he might have already gotten that part. I spell it out. “Years ago, when my mom started entering me into pageants, she decided I needed a simpler name so she came up with Pennington. I think she thought it sounded” —I hesitate, suddenly embarrassed—“upscale.”

  “And the name Happy?” Jenkins pipes up. “Is that real?”

  I don’t appreciate the snideness I detect in her tone. “Yes.”

  She snickers. “Did your mother think that sounded upscale, too?”

  By now I’m feeling a tad huffy. “She named me that because it’s cheerful.” I let it go at that. If the woman needed a little joy in her life at that point in time, that’s her business.

  Momoa moves on to dull particulars like my vital stats and what we contestants did during the two weeks of preliminary competition, that sort of thing. Then he homes in on the final moments of tonight’s festivities. “What transpired in the isolation booth?”

  Transpired is one of those verbs that stops you short. “Well,” I say, “I guess what surprised me was how mean Tiffany was. Usually the girls don’t talk much but when they do they say nice things. To encourage one another.”

  “But that wasn’t true tonight?” Momoa prods.

  “No. Tiffany was snarky. You know, derogatory. Making insulting comments.”

  The cops exchange a glance. I can’t put my finger on quite why but I get the impression they think trash talk is standard beauty-pageant fare.

  “Did anybody respond in kind?” Momoa asks.

  “Well …” This is mildly tricky. “Not really.”

  “Everybody just took it?”

  I remain silent and shift my weight to my other stiletto.

  “Even in the heat of competition, everybody remained silent?”

  All right, he wore me down. “I suppose I told her off a little.”

  Momoa narrows his eyes at me. “So you and she had a pointed altercation?”

  Another big word. “I would call it more of a spat. I just don’t think it’s right that somebody should deliberately try and unnerve their fellow contestants right before the scariest part of the competition.” I glance at Jenkins, though why I think she’ll be supportive I have no idea. “Lots of girls think the swimsuit competition is the scariest, because you have to parade around in front of millions of people wearing nothing but an eighth of an inch of Lycra, but personally I’ve always thought it was the final interview.”

  They appear to digest this pageant truism. Then Momoa resumes his line of questioning, which I must say is putting me rather on the defensive. “Ms. Pennington, did you bear animosity toward Ms. Amber?”

  That five-syllable behemoth blares CAUTION! in my brain. “I would describe it more as disappointment that Tiffany chose not to adhere to the highest standards of pageant competition.”

  He harrumphs. I feel like I dodged a trap. Though his next question makes me worry I’m about to stumble into another one. “Did anything unusual happen while you and Ms. Amber were alone in the isolation booth?”

  “Not really,” I say, then, “though I suppose there was one thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “She had a lipstick and a compact taped to her thigh. Under her gown.”

  Momoa’s pen stops moving. “You saw them?”

  “She lifted her skirt and there they were. She told me she always did a last-minute touchup to, and I quote, look more exquisite for her close-up.” I add that detail to highlight Tiffany’s arrogance but that’s not what Momoa seizes on.

  “Did you see her apply the lipstick?”

  “No. I just saw her rip off the tape to get it loose.”

  Jenkins pipes up. “Isn’t it strange for her to have had tape in her possession?”

  “Not at all,” I say, before I realize this might require a semi-humiliating explanation. You see, as I may have mentioned previously, we queens all want to make the most of our assets on pageant night. The favored technique is like a poor girl’s boob job: cut precisely fourteen inches of tape, bend forward at the waist, and tape from one side to the other. A finer lift you’ll never see without going under a scalpel.

  Jenkins continues to look perplexed.

  I feel obliged to expound. “If a beauty contestant wants to, shall we say, enhance her looks, she uses tape. Post office tape. Like to seal boxes for shipping.”

  I watch her eyes drop to my boobs. Her stare is more penetrating than ever. She is clearly tryin
g to assess whether my own perkiness springs from natural causes.

  “Never, never duct tape,” I add. Many a queen has learned that lesson the hard way.

  Momoa caps his pen. “That’s all for now, Ms. Pennington. Be aware that until further notice, you and your fellow contestants will be required to remain on the island.”

  I know why. We’re all under suspicion. No one’s mouthed it but one word is hanging in the air. It has only two syllables but it’s extremely potent nonetheless.

  Since it’s the end of the interrogation, I feel emboldened to pose a question of my own. “Are you working on the assumption that Tiffany Amber was murdered?”

  Momoa and his sidekick have started to walk away but he halts to glance back at me. “We’re not at liberty to discuss that.” Then he turns and keeps going.

  I don’t have to be a cop’s daughter to know that’s an affirmative.

  CHAPTER THREE

  “Were those policemen mean to you?” Trixie wants to know. She raced across the stage in my direction when she saw that I’d been sprung by Momoa and Company.

  “Except for the part where they half accused me of murdering Tiffany, not really.”

  Beneath her bangs, her auburn eyes widen. “Did they really?”

  “Well, they kind of fixated on the fact that I argued with her in the isolation booth.” By this point it has occurred to me that I’m the last person to have seen Tiffany Amber alive, apart from the center stage twitching sequence witnessed by millions. That makes me, I know only too well, a “person of interest.”

  Trixie and I amble toward the abandoned tiers. Mario’s disappeared along with the judges, the audience, and most of the girls. Only cops are still around in any number. “What’s been going on out here?” I ask Trixie.

  “The policemen had to give smelling salts to the dancer who tried to turn Tiffany over. When they were talking to him, he fainted.”

  “Wow. I wonder what spooked him so bad. I mean, apart from her being dead and all.”

  Trixie edges closer. “I think there was something really awful about how her face looked. I mean really awful.”

  “Like, grotesque?” I imagine being dead is never a good look but apparently there was more to it than that.

  Trixie turns around to face the emptying auditorium. “They wouldn’t let her husband see her. He asked to. He said he wanted to say goodbye.”

  I turn to follow Trixie’s gaze. Hunched over in the empty front row is a dark-haired man in a pinstripe suit. I take that to be him.

  “They have two daughters,” Trixie says. “Three and five.”

  “Oh, no.”

  “Ava and Madison. They’re not here, thank the Lord.”

  “Such little girls. That is so sad.”

  Trixie’s eyes haven’t budged from the tableau before us. “Rex has been trying to comfort Tiffany’s husband but he keeps shooing him away.”

  Rex Rexford is pacing the narrow space between the stage and the front row. In his customary white suit and pastel shirt, with his bouffant blond hair teased especially high for tonight’s festivities, he cuts quite a figure.

  “He must be pretty broken up,” I observe.

  “I wonder how long he was Tiffany’s pageant consultant?”

  “I didn’t know till I saw him here with her that he’d gotten back in the business.”

  “Speaking of being in the business …”

  Trixie’s voice trails off but I know who she’s eyeing now. Sally Anne Gibbons is cruising the aisles, purveyor of pageant wear and sometime consultant herself. Maybe she’s gone native in the last two weeks because she’s outfitted in a muumuu. In fact, she’s filling it nearly to bursting. Like Rex, her coppery red hair has been arranged into a high-rise helmet-like coif for the occasion.

  Trixie speaks again. “Do you think the policemen know how mad Sally Anne was with Tiffany about that gown mix-up?”

  “I don’t know. I’m sure not going to be the one to tell them.” I’ve had quite enough of their piercing stares and probing inquiries, thank you very much.

  Trixie leans closer. “Are you sure you don’t want to? It might deflect suspicion from you.”

  I’m taken aback by that. “I don’t know that any deflection is necessary.”

  “Oh, probably not, you’re right.” Trixie immediately backs off but I’m left a trifle alarmed. “Anyhoo,” she goes on, clearly trying to change the subject, “I’d love a beer and a burger but I don’t know if I dare risk it. What if we have to get back in our swimsuits tomorrow?”

  “God, I hope not.” And so much for making the top five. I can’t imagine I’d pull that off again in a re-do. “What do you say we call it a night?”

  Trixie needs no further encouragement to head backstage, where all us girls did our quick changes during the competition. Each of us has a little area, complete with lighted mirror, where we stash our outfits and cosmetics.

  Trixie lowers her voice. “I have to admit I’m having an uncharitable thought.”

  “It can’t be worse than any of mine.”

  Her tone gets even more confiding. “Even after all this, I still kind of care who wins this thing. Isn’t that awful?”

  “No. So do I.” Sure, having a corpse on stage put a damper on my competitive spunk, but it didn’t erase it entirely. Particularly since the stiff was Tiffany Amber.

  “It makes me feel so selfish. Somebody’s dead, a mother of two no less, and I’m thinking about myself.”

  We’re backstage now and pause to watch the cops huddled in Tiffany’s area. I can see they’ve already dusted for prints and bagged her items in clear plastic.

  Trixie shudders. “This gives me the willies. I think I’ll go get my stuff.”

  I nod, too distracted to answer. I can’t tear my eyes from what the cops are doing.

  The show ends in short order, though, as they disperse and take Tiffany’s belongings with them. I gather my own things. Trixie calls goodbye to me from across the way and toddles out with the last few girls. I realize I’m alone backstage.

  I’m not aware of deciding to go there but before long I find myself standing in what had been Tiffany’s area. It’s kind of a sty now, what with the dusting for prints. I see myself reflected in her mirror, all done up in my halter-style fuchsia gown with beaded bodice, my Ms. Ohio sash cutting across my body, every strand of my long brunette hair lacquered into place. Just hours before, Tiffany stood in that exact same spot, scanning herself for any imperfection. Yet in mere minutes she’d be dead. It gives me an eerie feeling to realize she had no idea.

  Or did she? Who knows what was going on with her? Something had to be, something big, because tonight somebody killed her. I know it’s possible there’s some beauty-queen stalker out there who just happened to pick Tiffany as his first victim but somehow I don’t think that’s the case. I do know one thing for absolutely sure: Tiffany didn’t kill herself. If a girl like that got really depressed and wanted to end it all, she’d never do it like this. She’d wash her hair and polish her nails and get all dressed up and write a heartrending note on scented stationery and then down a bottle of pills, all in the privacy of her own bedroom. She’d never submit herself to that humiliating exhibition. And I am sure that Tiffany Amber wanted to win the Ms. America title tonight, and in that isolation booth she was doing her damnedest to make it happen. But something, someone, got in the way.

  That undeniable truth gives me a sudden attack of the willies. I back away fast from Tiffany’s area and crash smack dab into a rolling clothes rack that hours before had been laden with evening gowns, no doubt one of them Tiffany’s silver number.

  “Shoot.” I bend down to rub my foot, which slammed right into one of the rack’s low bars. That’s the last thing my stilettoed foot needed after hours of being stood on. I’m wincing and rubbing, rubbing and wincing, when I notice a hotel room card key lying on the floor next to the rack.

  It’s not mine, I know that. Mine’s in my cosmetics bag; I just ch
ecked. I don’t know whose this one is. I wonder about that. And then I pick it up.

  From backstage I wend my way out of the auditorium toward the main hotel building. It’s some distance away, along winding paths lined by hibiscus and birds of paradise and illuminated by a waxing moon and the tiki torches that are lit aflame every evening at dusk by a Hawaiian hunk wearing only a loincloth. He makes for a good show, too, I can tell you. The air is warm and sweet and I hear the surf pounding. It’s so late nobody is out. I pass only one couple, honeymooners by the looks of them, who are feeding bits of bread to the fat white and gold and orange koi in the stone-edged pond.

  They look really happy. The couple, not the fish, I mean, though the latter appear reasonably cheerful, too.

  Then a sound like a macaw shrieking pierces the night air.

  Oh God. Here we go.

  “Happy! Happy Pennington!”

  I’ve barely turned around when my mother grabs me in a hug. She’s a tiny bird-like woman, Hazel Przybyszewski, but when she’s inspired she can lay on quite a grip. “That damn husband of yours told me you were all right but I didn’t believe him.” She pulls back a few inches and peers up at my face so intently that I’m thinking she could teach Detective Jenkins a thing or two. “I guess for once he was right.”

  “I am fine, Mom, really I am.”

  She lets me go, then fishes for a tissue up the sleeve of her floral dress. She’s a petite redhead, her hair so thin on top I can see her skull. Watching her, I realize she’s trembling. And for all her bravado, there’s a tear in her pale blue eyes. That’s when it hits me: tonight was hell for her. A mysterious death, a panicked crowd, her only child inches from mortal danger—it must have brought home to her in one agonizing rush all she suffered those long years as a cop’s wife.

  I seize her in a hug of my own. She clutches me briefly then pulls away. “I’m okay, I’m okay.” A deep breath and a swipe of the nose later and she’s more composed.

  In fact, I note with some regret that she’s totally back to normal.

  She throws out her arms. “I thought you were going to wear the strapless white chiffon gown! What’s with the hot pink? You know I don’t like those neon colors, even for the so-called”—she draws quotation marks in the air—“ ‘sexy’ pageants.”