CHAPTER TWO
Honestly, I don’t think even Bert Parks would know how to handle this. As it is, Mario Suave does himself credit.
With great care, he lays Tiffany’s arm back on the stage floor. Then he straightens and steps away from the inert silver mound no one can stop eyeballing. “Ladies and gentlemen, a tragedy has befallen us here at the Ms. America pageant.” Not a quaver in his voice or a tremble of his lips. He even reins in his dimples. “Please return to your seats and remain calm. The authorities will instruct us how to proceed.”
I can guess what Tiffany would say if she were still alive:
As if
. The crowd is having none of either seats or calmness. People are making a frenzied break for the exits as if Tiffany succumbed to something that might bump them off in short order. I guess the idea isn’t crazy. None of us has a clue what did Tiffany in.
And it couldn’t have happened to a nicer gal.
As you might imagine, I’m keeping that observation to myself. Trixie squeaks again in my ear. “This makes the Misty Delgado YouTube thing look like
nothing
.”
“You’re not kidding.” I turn around. The six-foot-tall Ms. Arizona hasn’t budged from her tier. Actually, no one has. Instructions have not yet come down from on high.
But it appears they’re about to. Mario steps in front of us finalists and motions the rest of the girls down to stage level. “We’re off the air. We’ve gone to billboard.”
“What does that mean?” Sherry from Wyoming might be a pretty redhead but she’s a few diamonds short of a tiara.
Trixie pitches in. “It means they put the sign thingie up on the TV that says Ms. America Pageant, stay tuned or whatever.”
“Stay tuned for what?” Liz Beth Wong wants to know. “Are they gonna announce who won?”
I shake my head. Sometimes. “Liz Beth, now is not the time to bring that up.”
“Well, can we go back to our rooms then?” This pearl, too, from Sherry.
“I don’t think so,” I say. “This is a crime scene now. The cops won’t let anyone go anywhere. Look.” I point at the exits, all now blocked by security guards but still mobbed by audience members who won’t take no for an answer. I wonder if my mom and Jason are in that pulsing horde. Probably. For the sake of the guards’ heads, I hope my mom isn’t sporting one of her double-wide handbags this evening.
“You’re exactly right, Happy.” Mario nods gravely in my direction. I feel like preening, even in the face of disaster.
Or semi-disaster, given my low opinion of one Tiffany Amber.
Then something else occurs to me, which I make the mistake of voicing aloud. “I hope nothing else happens. What if there’s a psycho out there targeting beauty queens?”
“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 trying 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.
