Barbecue and a Murder

by Kathleen Suzette

  “I haven’t qualified for it yet,” she said with a chuckle. “But I know I will. I have a couple more state-level pageants to win, and then I’ll be in. I can hardly wait. I’m going to be Miss America!” She beamed her best pageant smile at me and I thought she might have a chance at doing just that. She was breathtaking with her auburn hair, creamy skin, and blue eyes.

  Then she gave me a more demure beauty pageant smile and tilted her head as if allowing me to get a glimpse of how she could charm the pageant judges. I could see why she had won so many pageants. But even so, it seemed like it was common knowledge around Sparrow that Pamela North had been the more likely candidate to compete in Miss America.

  “That’s so exciting!” I said enthusiastically. “Wasn’t Pamela North going to compete in those state pageants as well?”

  A shadow crossed her face, and she frowned. “I heard she died two days ago in a car wreck. It’s a shame, she was only a year older than I am. Not that it makes any difference, because I would have won Miss America anyway. My mother has bought me the most beautiful pageant gown for the state competition. I’ve never had a gown as beautiful as this one is, and regardless of whether Pamela was in the pageant or not, I would have won.” She looked at me, nodding her head.

  “I did hear about Pamela,” I said sadly. “It’s a terrible tragedy, isn’t it? I can’t imagine what happened, but I did hear there’s a very good chance that it wasn’t an accident.”

  She frowned again. “I heard a rumor about that, and it doesn’t surprise me if you want to know the truth. Pamela North was a savage pageant competitor and she would stop at nothing to win, including sabotaging other contestants. That’s how she won so many of the titles she did if you want to know the truth. So I guess in the end, if she was murdered, she kind of got what she deserved.” A small smile crossed her lips as she said the last part, and then it was gone.

  “She sabotaged the other contestants?” I said, considering this. “Do you know that for a fact? Did she ever do anything to you?”

  Her mouth formed a hard line. “She did. A couple of years ago she sneaked into my dressing room and cut a chunk of hair out of the wig I was going to wear. I had to scramble to find someone to help me with my real hair and it didn’t look anywhere near as nice as the wig did. Then another time, the top to my talent outfit went missing. Other things have gone missing from other competitors over the years. Everyone knew Pamela was behind it, but the judges wouldn’t do anything about her.”

  “That’s terrible that somebody had to resort to that sort of thing in order to win,” I said, clucking my tongue. “Still, murder is pretty serious. I just don’t know who would have been fed up enough with Pamela’s shenanigans to do something like that.”

  “I do,” she said and glanced over at the other customer in the store.

  “You do?” I asked softly. “Who?” I hoped she would spill it. She seemed to be in a talking mood.

  “It wasn’t a beauty contestant,” she said leaning in toward me. “I’m quite certain it was her best friend, Amber Woods. She was jealous of Pamela.”

  “Her best friend?” I asked, trying to place the name, but coming up blank.

  She nodded. “Amber pretended to be Pamela’s best friend, but anyone could see how jealous she was of Pamela. Amber didn’t have the money or the looks to be a pageant competitor, so she killed her out of jealousy.”

  “Do you have any proof that she killed her?” I asked her and glanced over my shoulder to see where Natalie was. She was all the way across the shop and out of earshot, so I turned back to Chrissy. “Did someone say she did it?”

  “No, but if you knew Amber, and if you knew Pamela the way I know them both you would know it was true. You have to be around people sometimes to know what their true character is. Amber also had a crush on Pamela’s boyfriend, Ryan Sparks. It wouldn’t surprise me one bit if she thought that if she killed Pamela, Ryan would be free and she could make her move.”

  She seemed so confident of what she was saying that it made me wonder. “Do you think Ryan was attracted to Amber?” I asked her, and picked up a turquoise bead necklace from a display on top of the glass display case, holding it up.

  She snorted. “Like I said, Amber was too plain to be a beauty contestant, and I seriously doubt Ryan would have given her the time of day. If anything, Amber was just fantasizing about it.”

  Chrissy’s words made me wonder about her now. If Amber was just fantasizing about Ryan, how would Chrissy know anything about it? Something in her voice made my ears perk up.

  “Why do you think Amber thought Ryan wanted to be free of Pamela? I mean, if she did kill Pamela, there would be no guarantee that Ryan would fall for her if he hadn’t given her at least a hint that he was interested,” I asked, wondering how much of this was Chrissy’s own imagination at work here, or if she knew something specific.

  She rolled her eyes and picked up a turquoise bead bracelet that matched the necklace I was holding and put it back into the display case. “When we were in high school, someone stole Amber’s notebook and on the inside cover, she had written her first name along with Ryan’s last name all over it. She also wrote her name with his last name hyphenated with her last name, like she was trying out which name looked best with her first name. It got photocopied and handed around the school,” she said with a smirk. “If you ask me, Pamela did it just to teach her a lesson.”

  “Wow. That’s a heck of a terrible best friend if Pamela did that to her,” I said. It shocked me how mean girls could be to one another, and if Pamela had done that to Amber, I could see where the resentment could have built up over time.

  “That was Pamela for you. She was just plain mean.”

  I nodded slowly taking this all in. “I hope for Amber’s sake that she didn’t kill her, but jealousy or humiliation can make a person do terrible things.”

  “I’ve seen a lot of both in pageants,” she said as the other customer in the shop walked up to us holding up a dress.

  “Do you have this in a size six?” she asked.

  “Excuse me,” Chrissy said to me and headed over to a rack to see if she could find the dress for the customer.

  I watched as Chrissy walked away, and I wondered if it was her jealousy that killed Pamela and not Amber’s. There was something in her voice that made me wonder if she was the one that actually wanted Ryan. But, if Pamela was as cruel as Chrissy said she was, and she really did pass around copies of Amber’s notebook, then I could see where Amber might want to get revenge. I just couldn’t imagine why she had waited so long to do it. They were a year ahead of Natalie and Chrissy. Amber could have gone her separate way, not having to see her every day like she had in high school.

  I didn’t know Amber, but I was sure Natalie probably did and I would have to find out everything I could about her.

  Chapter Seven

  “I sure do appreciate you picking me up for work this way, Rainey,” Luanne said as she peered into her compact mirror and reapplied her lipstick.

  “It’s no problem Luanne, I don’t mind at all.” And I didn’t. Luanne only lived half a mile from me and most of the time we worked the same shift at Sam’s Diner. “Did the garage say when they’d have your car done?”

  “I talked to George, the owner of the garage,” Luanne said replacing the top on her lipstick and dropping it into her purse. “He says his nighttime mechanic is going to work on my car, but he hasn’t had a chance to look at it yet because it’s summer and they’ve got a lot more business from the tourists.”

  “Make sense that they’re busyier with the summer tourists visiting the Snake River,” I said. “I bet a lot of cars break down after driving long distances to get here.”

  “That’s exactly what he said,” she agreed, pulling a bottle of perfume out of her purse and spritzing herself with it. “When people break down at the river and campsites, they have a tow truck bring their cars in to the garage for repair.”

  Her perfume tickled m
y nose, and I sneezed. “That’s a lot of perfume, Luanne.”

  “Don’t you just love it? I bought it down at Macy’s in Boise and I just love it. Anyway, I asked George if they could please have my car ready by the end of the week and he said he would try. It probably would have been done earlier I guess, but I couldn’t drop it off until early Monday morning. Friday night when I stopped by to leave my car, the garage was all locked up. I guess the nighttime mechanic had the night off.”

  “What is the nighttime mechanic’s name?” I asked her.

  She thought about it for a moment. “Ryan something or other. He’s a young kid, but he seems really nice.”

  I glanced at her. Ryan? His name had been tossed around by both Sharon North and Chrissy Jones. I still needed to pay him a visit. My mind went over what Sharon and Chrissy had told me about Ryan and it seemed like he might make a good suspect or, at least have an idea about what might have happened to Pamela.

  ***

  “Sam, I need another short stack of pancakes,” I said, placing my order on the stainless steele order holder.

  “You got it Rainey,” he said glancing over me. He was standing at the grill frying sausage patties and they sizzled in the frying pan. “What are you going to be making for us this week?” Sam’s medium brown hair was growing in fast from his last hair cut and he would need another one soon.

  “I don’t know, I think I need to work on an entrée, but I haven’t decided on anything yet. Any suggestions?”

  “How about barbecue spareribs?” he answered. “I do love good barbecue spareribs.”

  I thought about it. “That’s not a bad idea. I may have to look into that.”

  Spareribs sounded as American as you could get and would fit right in with the theme. Maybe I could come up with a recipe for a sweet hickory honey barbecue sauce to put on them. My mouth watered just thinking about it. Barbecue anything would be a great addition to the cookbook.

  I headed back out to the diner floor just as Cade Starkey walked through the door. I smiled at him as he headed for a seat at the front counter. I needed to talk to him.

  “Good morning, Rainey,” he said, taking a seat. “How are things with you?”

  I got him a coffee cup and the carafe of coffee and set the cup in front of him. “I’ve been asking around,” I whispered as I poured coffee into the cup. “I talked to Pamela’s stepmother and her beauty pageant competition, Chrissy Jones. It seems Pamela North was not as sweet as the personna she tried to project.”

  “Doesn’t surprise me,” he said. “I might be profiling here, but she was a spoiled rich girl, beautiful, a pageant queen, and used to getting everything she wanted. What did they say?”

  “Her stepmother, Sharon North, said she had probably given a lot of people reason to kill her. She pointed at Chrissy Jones because the two were stiff competition on the pageant circuit. There was lots of jealousy,” I said glancing toward the customers seated in the booths.

  “I can see that happening,” he mused, stirring a packet of sugar into his coffee.

  I nodded. “And Chrissy said Pamela liked to sabotage other competitors in the pageants and that might be a motive for murder by one of them. She also said Amber Woods was Pamela’s best friend and was extremely jealous of her and may have wanted to date Pamela’s boyfriend. According to Chrissy, Amber wrote her first name along with Ryan’s last name over and over in her notebook and Pamela made photocopies and handed it around the school to teach Amber a lesson.”

  His eyebrows raised. “I guess all those things are a reason for a lot of people to want her dead. But, a lot of people are nasty and mean and they don’t wind up getting murdered.”

  I nodded again. “It seems like there was a lot of meanness and jealousy surrounding Pamela.”

  “Some people have trouble making friends,” he said with a grin. “The autopsy still hasn’t been done yet, but I don’t think there’ll be a lot that’s surprising there. Hopefully, it will give us some clues to go on.”

  I sighed. “Do you have any new clues or ideas?”

  He shook his head and took a sip of his coffee. He grimaced at the bitterness and reached for another packet of sugar. “Nothing other than the fact that there was very little damage done to her car when it struck the trees, so it couldn’t have been going at a very high rate of speed. The impact obviously wasn’t enough to kill her. The bead bracelet is interesting, but the beads are far too small to pick up fingerprints.”

  “Makes you wonder what the significance of that is,” I said.

  “Sharon North didn’t recognize the bracelet,” he said, taking another sip of his coffee and adding yet another packet of sugar.

  “Was anything of significance found in the car?” I asked him, wondering if anything had survived the fire.

  “It appears Pamela was going camping. She had some gear in the trunk of her car, completely unscathed by the fire.”

  My eyebrows furrowed. “Really? She doesn’t strike me as the kind of girl that enjoyed camping. How would she keep her nails from breaking? Or what if she rubbed up against a bush and got scratches on her legs right before a pageant?” Camping just didn’t make sense to me.

  He chuckled. “I didn’t think about that, but you’ve got a point. I don’t see a girl like Pamela camping and roughing it in the woods. No indoor plumbing, and no nice soft bed to fall into at night.”

  “Does Ryan Sparks like to camp? Maybe they planned a romantic getaway,” I suggested.

  “That’s a possibility,” he said.

  It was something to consider. Pamela didn’t strike me as the kind of person who enjoyed outdoor activities, unless someone had talked her into it.

  “What else was in the trunk? What kind of gear?”

  “A small pup tent, big enough for two, a small green hibachi grill, beach towels, a pink swimsuit, size four, and a pair of purple flip-flops, size six. Nothing out of the ordinary.”

  I sighed and leaned against the front counter. “So do you think someone else ran her car into the trees? And if so why was she in the driver’s seat?” I asked, pondering out loud.

  He glanced over his shoulder and then back at me. “There was a brick on the floor of the car on the driver’s side.”

  “A brick?” I said thoughtfully. “You mean someone put a brick on the gas pedal to make the car crash into the trees?”

  “Looks that way,” he said.

  “It sounds kind of juvenile to me, don’t you think?” I said.

  “It does. Or someone that didn’t think things through. Which also means Pamela may have been unconscious, or already dead when the car hit the trees.”

  “Interesting,” I said, thinking it over. “Is a brick heavy enough to make the car accelerate at a rate of speed sufficient to crash the car?”

  “Well, I’ve never tried it before but there may not have been enough room for the car to pick up speed, or the brick slipped off the gas pedal,” he said with a shrug. “At any rate, it’s too early to come to any solid conclusions. We need more information.”

  “What about fingerprints on the car?” I asked, trying to think of everything that could possibly be investigated.

  He grinned. “It’s a car. It’s a given it will have a lot of fingerprints, but yes, we’re having someone process them.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Smarty.”

  “Are you going to talk to anyone else? What about this Amber? And are you keeping things quiet?” he asked, getting serious again.

  I nodded. “Of course I’m keeping things quiet. I don’t think I know Amber, but my niece Natalie told me she and Pamela North were inseparable. Amber’s family didn’t seem to have the money to put her in pageants and Chrissy said she really wasn’t the beauty pageant type, anyway.”

  “Okay, you talk to Amber and I’ll check with the coroner to see if he has anything new today. Can I get an order of scrambled eggs with white toast and hash browns?”

  “You bet,” I said pulling my order pad from my apron pock
et. I scribbled down his order and headed back to the kitchen to give it to Sam.

  I was thrilled Cade was allowing me to get involved with this investigation. I had begun to enjoy piecing together the puzzle of a murder. On previous cases, he was adamant about me not getting involved, and sticking my nose into other people’s business, as he put it. But I was glad that we were getting along better even though he hadn’t brought up the subject of going out on a date. The more time that passed, the more I thought that I might want to go out with him.

  I dropped the order off to Sam and as I headed back out onto the diner floor, the door opened and my ex-husband, Craig Strong, walked through it. He stopped and looked at me and smiled. It took everything I had not to roll my eyes or tell him to get out. I was tired of reliving the past, and every time he showed up, that was exactly what I did. He had made my life miserable during our divorce, and I had no desire to have him back in my life. Him showing up in Sparrow several weeks earlier was almost more than I could take. The fact that he was dying didn’t make me feel much kinder toward him.

  “Hi Rainey,” he said and his eyes went to Cade sitting at the front counter. Cade turned halfway around in his seat and looked at Craig, then slowly turned back and looked at me. I looked from Cade to Craig, frowning.

  “Craig, what are you doing here?” I asked him.

  “I just wanted to get some breakfast. That’s okay isn’t it?” he asked and took a seat at the other end of the front counter. I sighed and took my order pad out of my apron pocket again and walked over to where he was sitting.

  “There are other restaurants in town.”

  “I like the food here,” he said, trying to suppress a grin.

  I rolled my eyes. “What can I get you?”

  “I think I’m going to go with the pancakes again, a tall stack,” he said, barely glancing at the menu.

  I quickly wrote down his order and turned away without saying anything else. I just wanted him out of my life. Don’t misunderstand me, I did kind of feel sorry for him because he was dying. But with him around, I found it difficult to let go of the past and move forward with my life.