Die Smiling

by Linda Ladd

  They moved down the hall to his room, and when he opened the door, she gasped in surprise.

  “Wow,” was all she could think to say at first.

  “Like it?”

  “It’s a little scary.”

  “Nah. It’s just movie posters and stuff. I like this game, too, called Dungeons and Dragons. You heard about it?”

  “Uh-uh.”

  “It’s fun. You know you can be a knight or a wizard, or a princess, stuff like that, and go on missions, and things.”

  “Like King Arthur?”

  “Sort of. Wanna play while that stuff gets absorbed in your skin?”

  “Okay, I guess.”

  His bedroom was large and painted dark blue and had all sorts of posters and pictures of dragons and castles and sword-wielding knights hanging around everywhere. But there were even more posters advertising horror films, like Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th and Halloween. When she saw that he had a Freddy Krueger costume, she smiled and remembered her vow to kill Sissy.

  “Did you dress up like Freddy at Halloween?”

  “Yeah, Mom and Dad had a big Halloween party for all their friends, and they got that for me to wear. I love it. Here, look at the glove with the blades for fingers.”

  She picked it up. “These are real knives, aren’t they?”

  “Yeah. But I’m not going to use them on you.”

  They laughed together.

  “Have you ever seen Nightmare on Elm Street?”

  “Yeah. Sometimes my stepdad watches those kind of shows late at night, and I hide on the stairs and watch them, too.”

  “I’ve got all of them on tapes. We can watch them anytime you want. I love those slasher movies, you know, with all that blood and gore and stuff.”

  There was an IBM computer sitting on a big desk and a large color TV that was on with the sound turned down. He also had a fancy stereo set and dozens of music cassettes. He had just about everything the older one had ever wanted.

  “Man, your parents must have lots of money.”

  “Yeah, Mom and Dad get us pretty much whatever we want.”

  He walked over to a rack on the wall that held ball caps of every color. He tossed a green one to her that said FLORIDA GATORS in yellow letters. “Here, and you can just keep it. My sister brought me that last summer from Florida. She’s gone over to Europe for a few months now to do some modeling. That’s what Mom wants my little sisters to do, too. Be big supermodels.”

  “You’re really rich, aren’t you?”

  “Yeah, my Dad inherited a lot of money from his grandparents down in Miami, and now he’s a doctor and makes a fortune in stocks, and stuff, too. That’s why my Mom married him, ’cause he’s so rich. He married her because she’s so pretty. I’ve heard them say so but they laugh afterward, so I guess they’re just joking one another. I’m gonna be rich someday, too. Me and my sisters will inherit all this, like my dad did.”

  “We’re not rich at all. My momma couldn’t even buy me a Christmas present. Stepdaddy bought the other kids stuff, but not me.”

  That got his full attention. “Damn. That’s a bummer. Not even at Christmas, huh? I got that Dungeons and Dragons game for Christmas. I haven’t messed with it much yet. Want to learn how to play it with me?”

  There was a round table by the windows with four swivel chairs, and he sat down in one of them and she pulled up the one next to him. He took out the board and explained a little about how to play, and she listened, but she was really more interested in how long it would take to get rid of her freckles.

  “You think any of my freckles will go away today?”

  “Who knows? I doubt if it’ll work that fast, but Mom just kept applying it until my sisters’ faded away. We can meet here every Saturday when Mom’s gone with the girls until you got it just the way you want it. We’ll play games and listen to music and then you have to let me kiss you once in a while, too. That’s payment for me getting you this stuff free of charge, but it won’t be so bad, you’ll see. Maybe we can be friends, and everything. Maybe you’ll even like kissing and stuff. Okay?”

  She watched his fingers turning pages on the game’s instruction book, and she thought about the strange, sweet stirring she had felt inside when he touched her chest. She wondered again if she’d be as pretty as Sissy when she got rid of her freckles and if other boys would want to touch her like he did. Then she said, “Okay, I’ll come here, but you can’t tell anyone. You have to swear.”

  “And you’ll kiss me once in a while?”

  She nodded, and he smiled and looked very pleased.

  Seven

  Early the next morning, Black and I got into his big, luxurious Cobalt 360 and sped across the lake toward Cedar Bend Lodge. He was in his element at the wheel, smiling at the sheer pleasure of operating such a big, massive machine, cold wind blowing his black hair, aviator shades deflecting the bright sun. He got that same look when he was piloting his helicopter or tooling around in his giant Humvee. I stood beside him and didn’t share his chipper mood. Oh, yeah, birds were singing, sky was blue, flowers smelled good, but Hilde was still dead. When we hit the Lodge’s private marina and Black eased the boat into its slip, Bud was waiting on the spotless planks of the dock.

  “So how’s Brianna?” I asked Bud as I stepped out.

  “Sleepin’. She’s got enough drugs in her to keep her conked out for a week.”

  “That’s probably for the best.”

  Black spoke and strode off ahead of us, rested and ready for business and lookin’ good, and for some reason, I elected not to accompany him upstairs to meet the Queen of the Runway a.k.a. Wife of the Before Me. Not that I thought anything was going on between them. I didn’t. Black had made that a pretty nondebatable issue last night in bed in a myriad of inventive ways. Yes, he’s quite the genius in the bedroom, I do have to admit. Even better, he’s probably too exhausted to take on another woman this morning, even the perfect Ms. Jude. Do I sound jealous? Me? No way. It’s just having all these perfect-looking women hanging around me all the time is beginning to grate on my nerves.

  Back to Brianna. I said to Bud, “I hated to put her through that so soon. I really thought she wouldn’t be able to talk to us.”

  “You and me both. She’s a gutsy lady, more than people think. What about Buck? Does he know anything yet?”

  “Nothing yet. Maybe today, hopefully this morning.”

  “Nick can’t be thrilled the pageant’s involved.”

  “Nope, he’s not thrilled. He’s trying to decide whether to postpone.”

  Bud nodded, stopped for a second at the entrance to the hotel, and took a deep breath. “Okay, let’s just get this done.”

  “Black ordered the pageant coordinator to line up people for us to interview. The lady’s name is Patricia Cardamon. Let’s split up the girls and interview them separately. It takes longer, but we can probably eliminate most of them quick enough.”

  “Okay. Whatever.”

  Truth was, Bud was a little out of it, and who could blame him? His eyes were red rimmed, bleary, and bloodshot, and he had a little tiny wrinkle in the cuff of his crisp dress shirt. That just didn’t happen. Otherwise, he was immaculate in the white shirt, navy slacks, and the yellow silk tie I’d gotten him for Christmas. Hey, but my T-shirt and jeans were clean and smelled like Bounce, so I didn’t feel too bad. We were both relieved that Charlie hadn’t ordered him off the case yet, and highly surprised, too. He’d done it before at the mere hint of a close relationship between one of his detectives and a suspect, even to me, when I got a little too close to a former suspect. Black, actually, a misstep I should regret but don’t.

  Inside the aforementioned massive and glittering Ozark Ballroom a great deal of shock and confusion reigned. Small knots of beauties sat together, hugged each other, and looked even more dazed than usual. Sniffling was rampant. Looked like Hilde really had been popular with the girls, after all.

  Normally, Bud would be in hog he
aven at the mere suggestion that he got to interview a bevy of beautiful women. However, he was not smiling at the prospect today, nor would he smile for some time to come, if I was any judge. Like me, visions of Hilde’s butchered mouth popped into his mind every time anybody smiled. Most contestants, to their credit, had little desire to smile, either. None of them, however, were weeping openly and with the heartfelt urgency of Mr. Race. He approached us like a bleak and rumbling, runaway thunderstorm.

  “Oh, Gawd, this’s awful, unbelievable. Poor little Hil. Poor Bri. Both of them are so precious, absolutely they are, utter shining dears.” I handed him a tissue from a industrial-sized box of Puffs, one treated with aloe so as not to damage the delicate skin around the eyes of said beauties, no doubt. One provided early on, and graciously, by my newly eager-to-please friend, Ms. Cardamon. She was truly helpful this morning and right off the bat, too. Probably had found out by now that Nicholas Black liked me better than her.

  Bud and I took chairs from the row in front of Race and turned them around to face him. We sat. He cried some more. I handed him another tissue and said, “I understand that you had a shop in the South Beach area at one time. I didn’t know that.”

  He nodded. Bud and I watched him mop up his tears. “Yes. That’s where I met them both.”

  “How long ago was that?”

  “I’ve had my shop here almost five years, this summer, in August. I tried for a while to keep both shops up and running, but never could find anybody to manage the one down in Florida, not that I truly trusted, so I just shut it down and concentrated my energies here at the lake. It was exciting down there, and all that, but there were scads of crimes and breakins, all that kind of stuff, so I liked it better here. But now look what happened. Nobody’s safe, not anywhere, not anymore.”

  “So you were already settled at the lake before Brianna decided to move here.”

  He nodded, pretty much in control now, lucky for us. “She was a client in South Beach, too, the sweetheart.” He turned to Bud. “She’s just mad about you, Buddy. You’re lucky, you know. She’s a real catch. So was Hilde.”

  I’d never in my life heard anybody call Bud Buddy, not even his mom. I looked at Bud to see if he was going to belt him, but Bud just nodded and looked away. He was definitely not himself since the murder.

  I said, “Women have a tendency to open up to their stylists, don’t they, Mr. Race? Confide in them about their personal life and problems they’re dealing with.”

  “Oh, sure, absolutely they do. I know things going on around here that you simply could not imagine.”

  Oh, yes, I could. After yesterday, I’d believe anything inhumanly possible could go down here at the lake. “Did Hilde ever give you any reason to think she was afraid of anyone? Or that she was being stalked or harassed?”

  Race took a deep breath, then nodded. “She told me about a stalker once. A real nut job was bothering her. You think he came back and did this to her?”

  “I don’t know yet. What can you tell us about this guy?”

  “Not much, really. I recall she never knew his name, but she did say he seemed to know her every movement, even before she did. She never even saw him, that was the real spooky thing, let me tell you. He’d send her all these gifts, too, that were actually sorta sweet, really, like pink stationery with her initial on it, an H, and once a nosegay of posies tied with a pink velvet ribbon. We decided then that he knew her favorite color was pink, well, it was mauve, actually.”

  Posies? Where the hell do you get posies? In fact, what the hell are posies?

  Race wasn’t finished. “And he sent her some notes, too, where he mentioned all these things about her, everything, and I mean everything, little things, like where she’d been for lunch, what she’d eaten, down to the salad dressing, even. He knew when she came in for me to do her hair, too. I tell you, I was creeped out and looking over my shoulder before he up and left her alone.”

  Bud said, “Did she file a police report?”

  “Oh, yeah. With the Miami police. They questioned me, as if I was the one doing it, which was highly offensive to me, I will tell you. But Hilde told them right off that no way was I capable of such a thing. I believe they put a tap on her phone, too, but that didn’t come to anything, either. They never caught the guy. He just quit messing with her. I don’t know, maybe he found another girl to follow around.”

  “Do you remember how long this lasted and how it ended?”

  “The last note he typed, and he always typed them, too, sometimes on sticky notes and name tags, believe it or not. You know, with those old kind of typewriters before they invented computers, the kind without cut and paste, I guess.”

  Bud and I looked at each other, as Race went on, “It just said stuff like this was good-bye and there was something to the effect that he might end it all, or take his life, or something like that. Hilde and I didn’t believe he was going to do that for one second, of course. He was just working on her sympathy. She was a good person, and you know what? She did feel sorry for him. She told me so. Said she wished she could help him, that he must be a very sad, miserable person to resort to sending love notes to a stranger. I told her not to waste her sympathy on some psychopath like him.”

  “So she never responded to him in any way or did anything that might’ve encouraged him?”

  “Certainly not that I know of. I told her to ignore it all and certainly not acknowledge anything, that it would just spur him on.”

  “Did this man contact her when she was out of town? I mean, when she was participating in pageants or modeling gigs in states other than Florida?”

  Race thought for a moment, crossed and recrossed his legs, fiddled with his hair, fluffed the back of it with his fingertips. “I remember her getting notes and flowers and stuff at other pageants, yes.”

  “Which ones?”

  “Some anonymous admirer sent her a bouquet of yellow daisies and white orchids when she competed in Houston. I remember that because I thought it was a strange choice of arrangements. Hilde wasn’t a daisies kinda girl, know what I mean? She was elegant and poised, lilies or roses or gardenias, maybe, but daisies? Never.”

  Well, okay. “Can you think of anything else that might help us, Mr. Race?”

  “No. I just know I’m going to miss her like crazy.”

  “Were you ever involved with her?”

  “Oh, no, never. Just friends. Like with Brianna. Of course, I’m closer to Brianna now that we both live here. Before that, I knew Hilde better. She came in more often and I saw her out at the clubs more than Bri. Brianna likes the quiet life. She’s a nature-loving kind of girl. I bet she even goes hiking and stuff like that. She told me once that she bought herself some of those hideously unattractive hiking boots with leather laces. Yuck. But she loves it here.”

  “Did you know Hilde’s boyfriend down in South Beach?”

  “Carlos Vasquez, you mean? What a jerk. A player, really. He used to push her around some, tried to control her until she got fed up and moved out. I mean, he told her what to eat, what to wear, what to think. Brianna and I were both relieved when Hilde dumped him.”

  “Do you know if he tried to contact her after she left?”

  “I think so. I think it’s fair to say he had a real obsession with her, especially after she left him. That’s the way those kind are, you know. I had someone do that to me once, too, the tacky bastard.”

  “Right. Did she meet Vasquez before or after she had that stalker?”

  “After, I believe. Yes, it wasn’t long after, either, because I thought at the time that, good, he could protect her if the stalker came back. He’s pretty buff. You should see his six-pack. I have to admit he’s got a lovely body, but why wouldn’t he? He’s a personal trainer at his own club and works out all day every day with his clients. Too bad he’s so possessive.”

  I hesitated, but I needed to know. “What kind of lifestyle would you say Hilde Swensen led?”

  Race almost bristled, a
t least, shivered a bit. He donned an annoyed expression. “She was a good kid. Okay, she slept around some, but she usually only hooked up when she got high. And she was sober most of the time, you can believe that or not, but sometimes she just needed to vent, party a little, get rid of the stresses of the circuit for a while. Everybody always thinks these fabulous-looking women are so lucky, but they’ve got just as many problems as other people, just different kinds. I know, they tell me their woes all the time.”

  And I always thought it was just what color eye shadow to wear. “What sort of problems do you mean?”

  “Guys went after them for their looks, tried to get them in bed, you get the picture, don’t you? Notches on the belt. But I know so many gorgeous girls, who just have zero self-esteem, and I mean, minus zero.”

  “How do you account for that?”

  He shrugged one shoulder. “Who knows? I guess they thought beauty was all they had going for them. That was true, sure, for some of them, but others, like Hilde and Bri, they have brains, too. They just never needed them to get ahead. Why do you think I’m making money hand over fist? Looks are everything nowadays, look at Hollywood. Good looks and youth. You can’t get a job out there if you’re over twenty-five and weigh more than a hundred ten. Unless you’re Diane Keaton and want to play the neurotic mother, of course. She’s real good at that.”

  “Well, okay, Mr. Race, I guess that just about does it for now. Thank you for your time.”

  “No problem, honey. I want you to find the beast who did this.”

  “We will. If you think of anything else pertinent to this investigation, please give us a call.”

  “Okay. Do you guys think the pageant will go on? Has Dr. Black made a decision?” He looked at me, waxed eyebrows arched with questions.

  “Don’t know yet. He’ll probably make a decision in the next few hours. Do you think it should?”

  “Yes. Hilde would want it to. I know that for a fact.”

  “A fact? Why do you say that?”

  “Because this other girl was killed once, just before a pageant, and everyone agreed it should go on. It did, and everyone dedicated it to her.”