Deadly in High Heels

by Gemma Halliday

  "Not that I can think of. Why?" he asked

  "Just curious," I quickly covered. "We heard she might have had a close friend here."

  My explanation seemed good enough for Bartender Dude, as he shrugged. "Yeah, sorry. Wish I could help you."

  I felt my shoulders droop. Then again if Jennifer had been having a secret affair with someone, chances were she would be trying to keep it secret.

  "But," Dirk added, "you know if I had to put my money on someone…"

  "Yes?" Marco and I leaned in closer as one.

  "I'd bet on that dude, right there." Dirk narrowed his eyes and pointed toward the loan drinker at the table near the ladies.

  "Jay Jeffries?" I asked.

  Dirk nodded. "That dude has totally been hitting on every woman who's come through here in the last week. Thinks he some sort of Don Juan 'cause he's on that soap."

  "But he's one of the judges!" Dana protested. "It's expressly forbidden for judges to have private personal contact with any of the contestants before the pageant is over."

  Dirk shrugged. "I don't know about all that, but I know this dude has had a lot of contact with those beauty pageant chicas. In fact, there were even rumors that he slept with one of the contestants a couple of years ago."

  Dana gasped beside me. "It can't be true. The pageant never would've asked him back."

  Dirk just shrugged again. "Hey, all I know is what I heard."

  As Dirk walked away, I turned to take a closer look at Jeffries. He'd been joined at his table by a tall blonde, who I recognized as Miss California. We were too far away to hear what they were saying over the ukulele music, but the body language was very telling. Jeffries: leaning both elbows on the table toward her, talking rapidly, eyebrows moving up and down in a suggestive pose. Miss California: leaning back, eyes darting for an escape, arms crossed over her chest in a protective pose. Clearly Jeffries was trying to make a move, and clearly the blonde was trying to make a move away from Jeffries.

  "Check out the eyes," Marco said, his gaze honed in on the same scene as mine. "Green."

  "Lots of people have green eyes," I pointed out.

  "I just can't believe a judge would be involved with the contestant," Dana said, still shaking her head. "Talk about impropriety."

  I watched as the blonde pulled out her cell, pointed to it, then got up and walked away, the look of relief unmistakable on her face. I had to giggle a little to myself. Back in my single days, there were times when I too had used the my-friend-just-sent-an-emergency-text excuse to get away from a smarmy guy in a bar.

  Only today I wanted an excuse to talk to the smarmy guy.

  "I'm going to talk to him," I said.

  Marco's face lit up like Christmas. "What are you going to say?"

  I shrugged. "I guess I'll just introduce myself. We haven't officially met yet."

  "Just be sure not to mention anything about our theory of Miss Montana having been the front-runner," Dana cautioned. "He still needs to be an impartial judge."

  I held up two fingers. "Scouts honor."

  I grabbed my Babbling Mermaid drink and threaded my way through the tables to Jeffries' lonely one. As I approached, he gave me a full head-to-toe once-over. I immediately felt like I needed a shower.

  "Jay Jeffries, right?" I asked, putting on my biggest, brightest smile.

  He nodded, his eyes resting on the fruits of my push-up bra.

  "That's right. It's Dr. Calvin Drake in the flesh."

  I blinked at him. "Huh?"

  Jeffries cleared his throat, a small flash of insecurity darting through his eyes. "From Island of Dreams. You are a fan, right?"

  "Oh, yeah. Right."

  The insecurity vanished, and Jeffries' smile widened again as he leaned back in his chair to get a better look at me. Or at least my breasts. "I know, it's a little intimidating meeting a famous television star in person. But I assure you, I'm just like any other guy."

  "That's great," I said, trying really hard to keep that bright smile on my face. "I'm Maddie Springer." I held out a hand.

  He grabbed it and shook, hanging onto it just a little too long for my comfort. Was it possible to get hand cooties?

  "Care to join me, Maddie Springer?" he offered. I noticed as he gestured to the seat beside him that his balance in his chair was wobbly. Along with his bloodshot eyes, it was a clue that the drink in front of him was not his first of the evening.

  Awesome. Liquor loosened lips faster than a jar of Vaseline on a beauty queen.

  "Thanks," I said settling into the chair beside him.

  "You know something, young lady, you are in luck today," he said, his voice dripping with innuendos I couldn't—or didn't want to!—put my finger on.

  "I am?"

  "Yes you are, honey," he said, still holding onto my hand. (Ick!)

  "Because I just happen to have one autographed picture left tonight, and I'm going to personalize it just for you." He gave me a wink and finally let go of my hand, reaching into a small black case at his feet. He emerged with a 4 x 6 postcard sporting a glossy photo of himself as his alter ego soap star doctor. Though, if I had to guess, the picture was at least a few years old and had undergone extensive Photoshopping. Jeffries pulled a pen from his case as well and began scrolling something across the bottom of the picture.

  "Wow, that's very generous of you," I said trying to sound appropriately enthused.

  Jeffries finished, slid the autograph across to me, and gave me another wink.

  I looked down. He had written his name, cell number, and room number at the resort, followed by the phrase Let's play doctor. Ew.

  I was still trying to get my gag reflex under control as Jeffries addressed me over the rim of his olive and onion martini. "So what brings you to the paradise of the islands, Miss Springer?"

  "Actually, I'm with the pageant," I told him, attempting that bright smile again.

  "Not a contestant?" Jeffries scoffed.

  My smile dialed down about twenty watts at the disbelief in his voice.

  "No," I ground out through what I feared was quickly becoming a grimace, "I'm providing the footwear for the contestants. I'm a shoe designer."

  "Oh, right. Wonderful to have you on board, Miss Springer."

  "Actually it's Mrs. Springer," I enunciated very clearly, pointing to the wedding band on my left hand.

  Jeffries nodded but waved his hand as if glossing over the fact. I had a feeling something as simple as a little wedding band had never stopped him in the past.

  "Did you just arrive on the island?" he asked, signaling to our friend behind the bar for another drink.

  I nodded. "Yesterday. In fact I was just starting to settle in when I found…" I paused, trailing off for effect.

  It took Jeffries' vodka-soaked brain a moment to catch up. "Oh, God, you're the one who found Jennifer, right?"

  Again I nodded, this time casting my eyes downwards. I didn't have to fake the emotion backing up behind them. Miss Montana's body was a sight I would not soon forget.

  "Tragic incident." Jeffries shook his head, clucking between his teeth. "Of course my character, Dr. Calvin Drake, is around death all the time. But I suppose that's not exactly the same, is it?"

  "Not exactly." In fact it wasn't the same at all. "Did you know her well?" I asked. "Miss Montana?"

  "Of course," he said, pausing to take a sip of his new martini as it arrived. "I make it a point to get to personally know every one of the contestants. I believe that the winner of a beauty pageant should be just as much about personality as it is about her outer beauty, don't you think?"

  I nodded, though I was pretty sure he was full of more baloney than the Spam lunch buffet. "I'm so sorry," I said. "Were you two close?"

  "Well, you know, as close as any judge can get to a contestant. I mean we're not really supposed to fraternize with the girls." He paused. "But the professionals involved in behind-the-scenes, say, dressing those girls, well that's a different story, now isn't it Miss Spri
nger?"

  "Mrs.," I said again.

  This time he completely ignored me. This was getting old. Time to go in with the big guns.

  "Do you have any ideas who might have wanted to see Miss Montana dead?"

  Jeffries' head snapped up. "What you mean? Are you saying you think she was murdered?"

  I didn't think I had to point out to him that most healthy, twenty-year-old girls didn't just drop dead of natural causes in a chaise lounge by a pool in the middle of the night. "I think it's very likely."

  Jeffries shook his head. "No, there's no way. Jennifer was such a sweet girl. So…well, she was perfect. She wouldn't hurt a soul."

  That seemed to be the consensus. Of course somebody didn't think she was such a fantastic girl, or she wouldn't have been poolside getting the sunburn of her life. I decided to take the same road that Miss New Mexico had pointed out. "I find it hard to believe somebody can be so active in the pageant circuit without making a few enemies?"

  "Look, you want to talk enemies—then you should take a look at that Laforge."

  "Laforge?" I asked, my ears perking up. "Why is that?"

  "Because that man is singing his swansong as director of this pageant."

  "Meaning he's leaving the Miss Hawaiian Paradise Pageant?"

  Jeffries snorted. "Meaning he's being replaced."

  While I hadn't personally seen anything amiss with Laforge's direction of the pageant, except possibly the heavy hand when it came to scolding the less coordinated contestants, I was having a hard time connecting the dots. "And you think this has something to do with Miss Montana's death?"

  "I didn't say that," Jeffries said, throwing both hands up in an innocent surrender gesture. Though I noticed neither hand was very steady. The man was quickly going from inebriated to totally sauced. "I just said if anybody had a grudge against Jennifer's camp, it would be Laforge."

  "Because…?" I asked.

  "Because guess who is replacing our dear director?"

  I shrugged, waiting.

  "Ashton Dempsy."

  It must've been the blank look on my face that caused Jeffries to continue with a, "Jennifer's pageant coach."

  I raised one eyebrow his way. "So you think Laforge had it in for Miss Montana, in order to keep her coach from taking over his job?"

  Jeffries gave me a condescending smile. "Honey, Hawaiian Paradise is a family corporation," he said, slurring his words together. "You can bet that the bad publicity of having a pageant contestant die on their watch is just about killing them. There is nothing on God's green earth that's going to make them put said contestant's coach on national television now, donchathink?"

  While it was clear that Jeffries was half in the tank at this point, he might have also had half a point. The entire purpose of the pageant was to put a bright, shiny face on the Hawaiian Paradise sunscreen brand. If it was true that Miss Montana's coach had been about to replace Laforge, I was sure the corporation was giving serious pause to that decision now.

  I glanced over at Laforge, who was still deep in conversation with Ruth Marie. Though in all honesty, it looked like Ruth Marie was doing most of the talking. After my earlier conversation with the aging judge, I knew how much was at stake for the contestants in the pageant. I wondered just how much was at stake for the director. And just what he might do to continue being the director.

  *

  After filling Dana and Marco in on my conversation with Jeffries over a plate of teriyaki and one more Babbling Mermaid, I decided to call it a night. I was definitely feeling the effects being in the middle of my own CSI, Hawaiian Paradise episode. I left Dana and Marco debating the merits of piña coladas versus mai tais and headed for my hotel room. I swapped my linen pants and wrap top for a pair of pink pajamas with cute little boy-short bottoms and made a quick call home to update Ramirez on my day of getting a pedicure, having drinks at the Lost Aloha tiki bar, and matching shoes with pageant outfits. All true. All carefully avoiding any actions that might possibly be construed as sticking my nose into anyone's investigations. Then I grabbed my tablet and pulled up a relaxing book as I went to sleep.

  I was just getting into a fun beach read by one of my favorite authors when my tablet started making pinging noises and a window popped up signaling a Skype call was coming in. I didn't recognize the avatar of a grumpy looking cat, but the name next to it said Mom.

  I raised an eyebrow. As far as I knew, my mom had only recently mastered the ability to initiate a phone call via Bluetooth in her car. (And even then, she had accidentally dialed me while singing song lyrics to her radio more often than on purpose.) Generally Mom and technology went together like peanut butter and dill pickles, but I hit the "accept" button anyway. Immediately her face filled my screen, her baby blue eye shadow circa 1985 and hot pink lipstick clashing in 252 pixels per inch brilliant color. Love my mother as I did, her sense of style had paused somewhere in the mid-eighties like a broken Betamax player.

  "I don't think she's in there," I could hear Mom saying. "Maddie? Maddie, pick up the computer. It's your mother," she shouted.

  I grinned. "Hi, Mom."

  "Oh my word, I think I heard her. Maddie, is that you? I don't see anything." She squinted at the computer, her features contorting as they moved in toward her webcam.

  "Mom, I'm here. Click the video icon," I told her.

  "Did you get Maddie to pick up the computer?" I heard my stepfather's voice in the background.

  "I don't know, Ralph. I can hear her, but my screen is still showing Candy Crush."

  "Maybe you got her voicemail. Can you leave a voicemail?"

  I rolled my eyes. No need not to. Apparently they couldn't see me.

  "Mom, it's me. It's not a voicemail. Click the video icon. It looks like a little movie projector."

  But no one was paying attention to me.

  "Do we need to be plugged into the phone line, Ralph?" Mom asked. "Where's the modem line?"

  "Try adjusting the screen," my stepfather yelled. "Maybe you need to zoom in."

  I suddenly got an up-close-and-personal view of my stepfather's nasal hairs as he moved in.

  "Don't zoom!" I pleaded. "I can see you fine."

  "I don't see myself," said Mom.

  "You don't need to see yourself. I see you. You see me."

  "Maybe we should turn the monitor around, Ralph," Mom suggested.

  Good grief.

  "Did you call for a reason, Mom?"

  "Maddie, we're worried about you. Are. You. Okay?" My Mom shouted as if actually trying to get me to hear her from an ocean away. "We just heard on the news about that poor girl from your pageant."

  Oh, boy. I don't know why I had hoped that the death of a beauty queen would remain local news. I should've known it would be inevitable that it would get back to my family on the mainland.

  "I'm fine, Mom."

  "Are you sure, honey? I don't think that hotel is safe. They said on the news that someone is killing beauty queens."

  "Singular. One beauty queen died."

  "Honey, I think maybe you should come home. Does the hotel have adequate security? I saw on 20/20 that traveling to foreign places is not safe right now."

  "Hawaii is not a foreign country, Mother."

  "You know what I mean. Some of those places just don't have the modern security we do here."

  I glanced up from my tablet at the flat screen television, minibar filled with imported bottled water, and high-speed Internet access in my luxury hotel room. "It's pretty modern here. I think I'm fine."

  "I think I've almost got it!" I heard my stepfather say. "It's got to be this cable. I think maybe we need to put it in the monitor. Do we need to hook the monitor up to the phone? I think maybe if we just hook this cable up like this—"

  My screen went suddenly blank. Then Skype told me I had lost the call.

  Thank God for small favors.

  I closed Skype and went back to my book.

  Several chapters later, my lids finally started t
o feel heavy again, and I shut my tablet off, laying my head down on the soft feather pillows. I was just starting to drift off to dreamland when I heard a noise outside in the hall.

  I opened my eyes and glanced at my bedside clock. 12:43. Way past curfew for any of the pageant contestants in this wing.

  Despite the drowsiness settling in, I couldn't help my curiosity winning out. I tiptoed to my door and opened it a crack.

  Just in time to see the back of a beauty queen, scarf tied over her head and wearing a long, black coat, slip into the elevators before the doors slid closed behind her.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Thanks to an exhausting day, I was happy to say that the next morning I awoke perfectly acclimated to Hawaii time. I showered and blow-dried my hair, then did a mascara and lip gloss thing, adding a little extra concealer under my eyes as a concession to said exhausting day. I threw on a pair of white capri pants, hot pink strappy sandals with a mid-rise heel, and a flowing, sleeveless top in a pink floral print that was very on trend for spring. Then I quickly made my way downstairs toward the Tropical Tryst breakfast buffet.

  As the elevator opened onto the lobby I could see that just outside the front doors our friendly neighborhood fashion protester was already hard at work. She was wearing dingy gray Birkenstocks, gray linen pants at least one size too large, and a black T-shirt that looked like it had seen one too many washings. She was holding up a big sign that read I Am Not A Slave To Fashion.

  I hated to tell her, but in that outfit, the sign was redundant.

  I made my way across the lobby to the Tropical Tryst where a long counter filled with pastries and tropical fruits took up one wall. Along another, a buffet table was filled with chafing dishes of sausage, bacon, pancakes, eggs, and other types of traditional American breakfast foods simultaneously calling my name. I spotted Marco at the made-to-order omelet station and joined him, plate in hand.

  "Good morning, dahling," he said, giving me a big bright smile as he waited for his egg white omelet.

  "So far it's better than yesterday," I agreed. "Spinach?" I asked, gesturing to the pile of greens being stirred into his omelet mixture.