As the hush of a deep winter’s night settles over the Giant W, the cheerful opening notes of “Jingle Bells” blast from the sound system. Before I can get the words “Brace yourself” past my lips, the sleigh takes off.
“Whoa!” Shanelle yelps.
“This thing should have seat belts!” Trixie cries as the sleigh zooms heavenward and we three are slammed back.
Just that suddenly the sleigh jerks to a stop. I catapult forward, barely able to prevent myself from launching. I have a devil of a time keeping my Santa cap on my head, my meta-grip bobby pins, which perform so well on pageant night, stretched to their limit by this monster of a ride.
“Happy!” Trixie cries. I’m sure her panicked vibrato carries to the front of the store. It might have carried all the way to Lake Winona. Ingrid will not be amused.
I manage to return my butt to the bench a nanosecond before the sleigh takes off again. We three queens clutch one another for dear life. I knew I was right to be worried about this thing!
Finally the abominable conveyance plummets to floor level and lurches to a stop behind the dais, just past the 30-foot-tall silver Christmas tree that soon will be ceremoniously lit. Trixie doesn’t so much jump out of the sleigh as pitch out. Shanelle and I follow on unsteady legs, her elf and my Santa cap seriously awry. Ingrid glares at us but my whiplashed neck and I are past caring.
Seconds later Trixie bursts into the Giant W holiday song:
W, W, bargains every day!
Oh, what fun it is to fill my shopping cart this way, hey!
W, W, discounts every day!
Oh, what fun it is to bring a bargain home today!
Dashing through the aisles,
A coupon in my hand …
As Trixie masterfully whips through the refrain, Shanelle and I clap to the beat. A photog from the Winona Post captures the moment for posterity. I catch my breath and Pop’s eye. Like everybody else in the crowd he’s bundled in his winter coat. I note that both his and Maggie’s Christmas tree hats are now unlit. Ingrid probably made them turn them off so they wouldn’t draw attention from her speech. Pop winks at me like he’s done a million times before as I stood on one Ohio stage or another competing in some rinky-dink pageant. He’s been such a good dad. I just wish he and Mom were still together. Their divorce is this year’s lousiest development. Heck, I’d give back my Ms. America title to see them reunited.
Trixie sings the chorus one last time, giving the final phrase “bargain home today” a special flourish. Shanelle and I cheer along with the crowd and then our trio relocates to the back of the dais, right in front of the Christmas tree.
No surprise, Ingrid kicks off the proceedings. “Happy holidays, fellow citizens of Winona!” she brays. “I’m so glad you could join us this evening to celebrate the opening of the Giant W in our fair city! Of course as soon as I heard— ”
As Shanelle predicted, Ingrid takes credit for luring Giant W to Winona. There are two men on the dais with her—the mayor and a store executive—but it takes forever for her to cede the mic and retreat to the rear of the dais to stand in front of the sleigh. The suit kicks off with a lame joke about a reindeer in a bar before detailing the Giant W’s many charms.
Finally the mayor takes control. “What do you say we light the Christmas tree?” he calls, and as the crowd roars its approval the overhead fluorescents switch off and the Giant W is plunged into darkness. Indeed it is a dramatic moment, and as Ingrid ordained I remain as silent as Santa creeping down a chimney.
I keep expecting the tree’s lights to blaze on—I know from this morning’s run-through it’s decorated with about a thousand strings of multicolored W’s—but they never do. In the distance a train’s lonely horn pierces the evening quiet. The crowd inside the Giant W begins to shuffle and murmur. Then several feet to my right, where Ingrid is standing, I hear a sharp popping sound.
I gasp. Trixie clutches my arm. “What in the world is that?” she whimpers. I’m afraid I know but I don’t dare say it aloud. A few screams rise to the ceiling while I hear a thump, like a heavy sack dropping. Then the sleigh noisily whirrs into life.
“Turn on the lights!” the mayor hollers and none too soon we are once again bathed in their fluorescent glow.
Now it’s Shanelle grabbing me. “Where the heck is Ingrid?”
She’s not on the dais with us anymore. The mayor and the suit still are, but not her.
Overhead, near the furthest cash registers, the fast-moving sleigh jerks to one of its famous stops. To my astonishment I see that it’s not empty. Nor does its cargo remain inside.
Ingrid Svendsen, snazzy red holiday dress and all, pitches headfirst from the sleigh like a duffel bag being tossed onto an airplane’s conveyor belt. I thought I heard a gunshot and now I know I did, because there’s no mistaking the bloody wound on Ingrid’s chest. The crowd shrieks in horror. We all watch in morbid fascination as the hostess of the evening’s festivities belly flops onto the linoleum floor of Winona’s brand-new Giant W, narrowly missing a register and upending a display of Christmas sweater wine-bottle covers.
On cranks the P.A. system one last time. “Ceremony’s over! Clean-up at register five!”
CHAPTER TWO
We beauty queens know life is full of challenges and it is best to meet each one head-on with optimism and good cheer. But I must say that the sight of Ingrid’s ladylike corpse, now splayed amid a widening pool of blood, does not produce in me a fierce determination to pinpoint her killer.
It just makes me tired.
Trixie grabs my arm. “Let’s secure the crime scene! Make sure nobody leaves the building! Keep everybody away from the body! Hey, you!” she cries and makes a beeline for the Winona Post photographer, who’s next to Ingrid’s prostrate form preparing to snap his first shot. Not if Trixie has anything to say about it.
As the mayor barks orders to corral the fractious crowd, I hear the Giant W executive on his cell phone calling 911. I admit I’m relieved: for this murder at least I don’t have to be the grownup taking charge.
I shoulder my way through the pulsing mob at the front of the store to find Pop, who’s moved from where he was standing. He finds me before I find him and grabs me in a hug. His face is red and he’s breathing hard. “You all right, my beauty?”
“I’m okay, Pop. You don’t look too good, though.” Which surprises me. My father retired from police work a few years back. He never made it to homicide detective but he saw a murder or two in his time.
“I don’t know where Maggie is!” He sounds panicked. I realize he’s clutching both Christmas tree hats in his hand. “She was right next to me and then she was gone!”
“She can’t have gone—” I start to say when he cranes his neck to look behind me.
“Maggie!” He barrels in her direction and wraps his arms around her. I see she’s wearing a stunned expression.
It hits me like a stiletto heel in the gut. Poor Maggie! It was her sister who was murdered. For a moment it takes my breath away, the fragility of life. Minutes ago Ingrid was holding court on the dais. Then in a flash her work on this earth was done. I’m stepping away to grant Maggie some privacy when Shanelle takes my arm.
“You all right?” she asks.
“I cannot believe this is happening again, Shanelle!”
“Believe it, girl. Murder follows you like you got it on a leash.”
“I just don’t know if I’m up to another one of these. The last one took every brain cell I’ve got.”
“How do you know you’re gonna have to solve this one? Winona may not be as big as Vegas or Miami but for all we know it’s got a crack police force. After all, look how fast those black-and-whites got here.”
Through the store’s front windows I see cop cars rolling into the parking lot, sirens wailing and lights flashing. Cops with guns drawn soon stream into the Giant W, bringing with them frigid night air.
“You’re right.” After all Sheriff Andy Taylor solved every crime that
came his way and Mayberry was a lot smaller than Winona. I watch one of the cops stop Trixie from swatting at the photographer with her elf cap.
“We can do something to help out, though.” Shanelle pulls me toward a knot of teenagers, the youngest Giant W staff, clutching one another in a teary, trembling huddle. I remember how scared Rachel got when Peppi Lopez Famosa was murdered in Miami, and Rachel wasn’t even in the theater when it happened.
The P.A. system teen, a petite redhead, is among the group. “I don’t know what to do!” she wails as we join them. “I’m supposed to make announcements but—”
I rub her back. “You’ve made enough announcements for one day. Let’s just sit tight until the cops give us instructions.”
A lanky dark-haired boy named Kevin pipes up. “They’ll want to talk to me for sure. I just hope they don’t take my twenty bucks.”
“Why would the cops want your money?” Shanelle asks. “Hey, weren’t you working the lights? Why didn’t the Christmas tree light up?”
“How do you think I got the twenty bucks?” His tone is snarky. “The note said to keep all the lights off for at least a minute. That I’d get another twenty if I did it right.” He looks away and kicks at the floor. “Now I’m thinking maybe I shouldn’t have done it.”
Shanelle and I exchange a look. And, I confess, this first clue in the murder of Ingrid Svendsen does goose me from an investigative point-of-view. I extend my hand toward Kevin. “Cough it up. The note and the twenty.”
Kevin grumbles as he digs in the pocket of his cords even though he predicted this would happen. “I threw out the note. In the garbage can in the break room.”
“Take me there.” This I want to see, even if it requires digging through trash.
Going to the break room requires us to pass within a few yards of the deceased. As I nod at the officer standing guard, I sneeze. And not one of those dainty, genteel sneezes, either. More like a huge honker.
Kevin guffaws. “You probably contaminated the whole store.”
“Put a sock in it, Kevin.” Out of desperation I wipe my nose on the sleeve of my Santa minidress and pretend I haven’t been feeling a tickle in my throat all day. “How’d you get the note, anyway?”
He’s explaining how it was mailed to his house when we arrive at the break room. Kevin gestures to a tall gray garbage bin. “Hope you Dumpster dive in your spare time.”
I ignore the sarcasm and kick off the proceedings with a delicate inspection of the top few inches of the garbage. “How long ago did you throw out the note?”
“When I got in. Around noon.”
More than six hours ago. Fabulous.
I roll up my already germ-laden sleeves. “You’re helping me,” I inform Kevin, and before long we are plowing past burrito wrappers, more corn dog sticks than I care to count, and innumerable paper plates bearing half-eaten pizza. “You Giant W workers need a crash course in healthy nutrition,” I mumble. “Hey, is this it?” I extract a small white sheet of paper with typewriting on it. Unfortunately it is soaked not only with used coffee grounds but other even less desirable lubricants.
“That’s it,” Kevin confirms.
While he’s off getting a plastic bag to hold it in, I peruse this pathetic piece of evidence. Its typewritten contents are as Kevin described. “I can’t believe you did this no questions asked,” I tell him as we exit the break room.
“A twenty’s a twenty.”
Can’t argue with that. We’re walking up aisle twelve to make our way back to the front of the store when we pass a rack of hanging calendars and what do I see? Men of NASCAR Pit Crews, featuring my husband on the cover.
Yes, the cameraman who took the test shots was right. Not only did Jason make the calendar cut: he scored the cover.
He’s standing shirtless next to a race car, in the hot sun, showing off the sort of 6-pack abs you’d expect of a cover boy. He’s shooting water from a bottle into his mouth but most of it is running down his torso to disappear into his tight, slightly undone jeans. With his longish dark hair, olive-tone skin, and bad-boy demeanor, he looks dangerous, sexy, and hot, hot, hot.
Kevin watches me drool over the calendar. “You look good, lady, but you’re weird.”
I put the calendar back. I guess the Giant W’s wares aren’t all bad. Between this and the discount kielbasa, if I were a local I’d shop here all the time. “That guy on the cover is my husband,” I tell Kevin.
“Yeah, right.”
We arrive at the front of the store and I’m about to repeat my assertion when I notice a short gray-haired lady standing over Ingrid Svendsen’s corpse, so close she must be someone official. She’s wearing low-heeled ankle boots, a camel-colored walker coat with a faux fur collar, and a matching brimmed hat. She must’ve just arrived, as a light dusting of snow still clings to her hat. She lowers her head, clasps her hands, and closes her eyes.
“Is she praying?” Kevin sounds incredulous.
“Looks like it. And you know what? It’s not a bad idea.”
He shrugs and joins his teen coworkers. Shanelle and Trixie join me. “That’s the homicide detective,” Trixie whispers.
I’m surprised. And pleased, when I think about it. A Miss Marple who’s a real-life cop.
“You find the note?” Shanelle wants to know.
I hold up the plastic bag and explain the latest to Trixie. “Whoever killed Ingrid,” I whisper, “had to know exactly how the opening ceremony would go down.”
Trixie nods, hazel eyes wide. “An inside job.”
“That should narrow the field,” Shanelle says.
“Maybe,” I say. “But there’s a schedule, remember?” All three of us have copies. “Any number of people could’ve gotten their hands on that.”
“But the killer had to know stuff that’s not on the schedule,” Shanelle points out. “For example that Kevin was in charge of the lights.”
“They had to know his home address, too,” Trixie points out, “to mail him the note and the twenty.”
I ponder that truth as I watch the detective work the crime scene. Now she’s examining the sleigh.
“It takes brass to kill somebody in plain sight,” Shanelle puts in. “Even though it was so dark nobody could see a thing.”
It’s similar to what happened in Vegas. In that case, thick pink smoke did the job of pitch darkness. “The surveillance cameras won’t be any use at all.”
“The ones outside in the parking lot might be,” Trixie points out. “They’d show the people who bolted right after the shooting.”
“Some people sure as heck did,” Shanelle says. “I almost did myself.”
I’d lay odds the killer was smart enough not to draw attention to him or herself by making that mistake. Meaning they remained among us until they could leave without attracting notice. “I wonder if the cops will check everybody here for gunshot residue.”
“They already started doing that,” Trixie reports.
One cop calls out to the homicide detective and my ears perk up. “Did you hear him say Dembek?” I say. “I went to school with a Nadine Dembek! This detective is probably Polish!” Since my last name is Przybyszewski—Pennington is the pageant name my mom came up with—I find that possibility deeply meaningful.
I don’t talk about it much—in fact I don’t talk about it at all—but lately I’ve been harboring the fantasy of becoming a homicide detective in my post Ms. America life. I know, I know, I’d have to go to cop school and be a regular cop first, probably for ages, maybe forever, but the idea that I might, might eventually trade my tiara, scepter, and sash for a gun, badge, and holster is pretty darn thrilling. So it gives me a boost to see a Polish female like myself achieve that dream.
We three are tested for gunshot residue but it seems an eternity before it’s our turn to be interviewed by the good detective. By then she’s already spoken with Pop and a shell-shocked Maggie, whose hands she held warmly in her own. I watch my father escort Maggie outside, his arm ar
ound her shoulder. She’s so lucky to have him. As we’re introduced to Detective Rita Dembek, I probe our ethnic connection and discover that indeed it is real.
“Winona has a sizable Polish community,” she tells us. “Now you ladies tell me what your roles were in today’s ceremony.”
We share every detail we can think of. I’m proud to hand over the plastic bag bearing Kevin’s note and the twenty.
“So Ingrid Svendsen drove you here to the store in her Mercedes,” she confirms. “We’ll need to examine that. I’ll ask an officer to drive you back to Damsgard.”
I’m surprised the detective knows both the name of Ingrid’s house and the make of her car. Apparently Trixie is, too. “Was Mrs. Svendsen well-known here in Winona?”
“Oh, yes, dear. One of our most prominent citizens.” She glances down at her notebook, filled with spidery writing. Her granny glasses slip down her nose and her hand flutters as she turns to a new page. She bites her lip as she examines her notes.
I watch her. Then, “If you don’t mind my asking, how many murders do you have here in Winona?”
“Not many at all. One every two years, I’d say. Very often it’s a murder suicide involving a husband and wife. That can’t be the case here.”
“No,” I agree. “Ingrid Svendsen was a widow.”
Detective Dembek nods solemnly. “I remember a case years ago when a man named Donald Howard was released early from custody. He was supposed to be in for life for hiring a hit man to shoot his wife but they let him go after twenty years. The day he was sprung, so many people called each other up to share the news that the phone system jammed and you couldn’t get a free line.”
We three nod in understanding. That wouldn’t happen in a big city. It goes to show what big news a homicide is in Winona.
“Did you grow up here in Winona?” I ask.
“Born and raised. On 4th Street over by St. Stan’s.”
“Did you always want to be a detective?” I feel Shanelle’s eyes on me as I pose the question.
Ms America and the Whoopsie in Winona Page 2
