Ms America and the Mayhem in Miami (Beauty Queen Mysteries No. 3)

by Dempsey, Diana

  Consuela’s eyes fly open as if she can’t believe I’ve even heard of Diego’s. Of course I never would have if not for a certain weatherman I consider a person of interest. “If you’re with Mario and me, they might let you in there,” she allows.

  “Diego’s is great,” Mario says. “Why there in particular?”

  Since I don’t care to discuss my sleuthing objectives in front of Consuela, I decide to be evasive. “I’ve just heard good things about it.”

  “I bet I know why you want to go there!” Trixie cries. “For your investigation!”

  Fabulous. Here we go.

  “What investigation?” Consuela wants to know.

  “Not that again!” Pop shouts, having returned just in time to share his views.

  Mario looks at me as he answers. “Happy is a budding amateur sleuth. She’s solved a murder or two.”

  “It’ll be three when she figures out who killed poor Peppi,” Trixie says.

  “How bizarre is that?” Consuela is frowning. “What business do you have involving yourself in police matters?”

  “You’re telling me,” Pop says, finding the one thing on which he and Consuela Machado could possibly agree.

  “I think it’s fantastic,” Rachel puts in. “It’s a lot more worthwhile than all that pageant stuff.”

  “That’s enough, Rachel.” I am in no mood for another catfight between her and Mariela. “Besides, that ‘pageant stuff’ will pay for your college education.”

  “What makes you think this Alfonso Ramos is the one who murdered Ms. Lopez?” Mariela asks.

  “Who is he, anyway?” Consuela demands.

  There’s no avoiding it now. “He’s the other weatherman at Peppi’s TV station. He did the weather for her last night.”

  “And you think that gives him a reason to kill her?” Consuela could not sound more incredulous.

  “Wouldn’t it be a promotion for him, Mario?” I ask. “To get Peppi’s job and do the news at night rather than in the morning? It’s a very competitive business,” I add, trying to make my reasoning sound less pathetic.

  “It would be a promotion,” Mario agrees, “though that’s not much of a motive for murder.”

  Great. Now I feel really lame. Which Consuela swiftly picks up on. “It’s no motive at all,” she opines. “Who knows who killed that girl but she must have done something to get herself into so much trouble.”

  There’s Consuela for you. Full of compassion. Like daughter, like mother.

  “I don’t know if you’re interested in a career change, Happy,” Mario says, “but if you are, TV news is something you should consider. You’d be great at it.”

  I remain silent though I appreciate Mario trying to make me feel better. I’d feel better still if he said I should become a private detective when my reign is over.

  “TV news! That would be a good career for Happy,” Pop says.

  “At her age I don’t think it’s practical to start,” Consuela puts in. She slides her eyes to me. “You’re married, am I right? What does your husband think about this investigating of yours?”

  I’m framing a reply when Pop pipes up. “He doesn’t like it any more than I do.”

  “Then he should man up and tell you to stop,” Consuela concludes, managing in one fell swoop to dis both Jason and me.

  “That doesn’t work with her,” Pop says. “I’ve tried.”

  Consuela leans toward Mario and points toward me. “See? She’s stubborn.”

  I must look like I’m ready to throttle Consuela because Shanelle abruptly rises and starts clearing plates. “We’ll have to tell your housekeeper that paella was fantastic, Mario. Now let’s clean up so we can go dancing. This girl is ready to get her groove on!” She busts out an impressive move as she heads to the kitchen.

  In the end we have no time for a movie because it takes so long for Consuela to “pop” home to change clothes for dancing. I’m forced to admit that she returns looking sensational in a chili-pepper-red sequin sheath dress with skinny straps, a dangerously low V neck, and a mid-thigh hem.

  Astonishing events continue as Mariela apparently forgives Rachel’s latest slam of pageants and invites her to make popcorn and watch a romantic comedy on the huge flat screen. I catch up with Pop in his room, where he escaped with a beer. “Are you okay with staying in tonight?” I ask him.

  “I’m happy as can be.” He mutes the sound on the Heat game—his bedroom also has a flat-screen TV—as I perch next to him on the bed. “You’ve got real nice friends,” he tells me.

  “I really do. I’m very lucky.”

  “I’m taking more of a shine to that Consuela.”

  I sigh. “Did you and Rachel have a good time today?”

  “We always do. They’re going to pick her for that overseas program, you know.” He pats my leg. “She’s like her mom. She can do anything she sets her mind to.”

  “Oh, Pop.” I give him a hug.

  “That doesn’t mean I’m behind you looking into that murder.” He shakes his head. “That’s not for you, my beauty. Besides, you’re Ms. America now. That’s a big responsibility. That’s what you should be thinking about.”

  As thrilled as I am being Ms. America—and believe me, I am—Jason was right when he said it’s not enough for me. Partly because there will come a day when I’m not Ms. America anymore. And partly because Happy Pennington wants to be known for doing more with her life than strapping on a sash and pinning on a tiara.

  But that’s too big a topic to bite off tonight. “I’ll leave you to your game. By the way I chatted with Mom today. She’s doing fine.”

  His gaze returns to the TV. “That’s good.”

  My mom is a topic he doesn’t want to engage on. Since politeness requires I ask after his girlfriend, I do. “How’s Maggie?”

  “Fine. Busy.”

  Okay. Topic covered. I kiss his head. “Let’s go to church together in the morning. Not too early a Mass.”

  That gets a smile out of him. “You’ve got a date.”

  “And please check on Rachel a time or two.” I don’t want her and Mariela suddenly becoming besties and going out on the town together.

  “I’ll keep an eye on them.”

  I’m in a contemplative mood as I return to my room to refresh my lipstick. Pop and I may disagree on a few things but we’ve never had the friction I’ve had with my mom. For one thing we never fought about Jason. Of course Pop could’ve killed him for getting me pregnant in high school, but from the day Jason said he wanted us to get married Pop has given him credit for “doing the right thing.” My mom would rather have had every tooth in her head extracted without Novocain than have Jason as a permanent member of the family.

  We have to take Consuela’s Mercedes to South Beach since we can’t all five fit in Mario’s Z8. Consuela insists he drive, of course rides shotgun, and touches his arm at 1-minute intervals whether she’s making a point or not.

  South Beach at night is dazzling: eighty degrees, little white lights glittering in the palm trees, mannequins in shop windows replaced by live half-naked humans gyrating to a primal beat. On this Saturday night it’s as crowded as it was at noon.

  There’s a huge line outside Diego’s but the bouncer takes one look at our quintet, slaps Mario’s back, and waves us inside. The interior is pitch black and raked by colored strobe lights. My senses are assaulted by the pounding music and the pulsing mob. I grab Trixie’s hand to keep her behind me as I try to follow Mario, who’s being pulled deep inside by Consuela. No doubt she’s trying to lose us, and would probably succeed if Mario didn’t twist around a time or two to make sure we were still behind him.

  Somehow we score a booth—another perk of Mario’s celebrity, I presume—and in short order a bottle of champagne appears, complete with a sparkler on top as if it were a firecracker and tonight the 4th of July. Our faces glow in the crackling circle of light.

  Mario pours. “What shall we toast to?”

  “Leaving
our inhibitions at home!” Consuela cries, and one sip of bubbly later she drags Mario from the booth to points unknown.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  “Dance first or look for Alfonso Ramos first?” I ask Trixie and Shanelle.

  “We can do both at the same time,” Shanelle says.

  As usual she’s right. After I check his tweets to confirm he’s arrived on the premises, we three queens carve out some space on the dance floor.

  It’s like that Dixie Chicks song “Some Days You Gotta Dance”: “Live it up when you get the chance / When the world doesn’t make no sense / And you’re feeling just a little too tense / Gotta loosen up those chains and dance.”

  I don’t know if our pageant training is to thank for it but all three of us can bust a move. And we’re not too shabby in the looks department, either. So before long we’ve got more male partners than we know what to do with and are having one heck of a fine time, Mario Suave or no Mario Suave.

  “Do you think we’ll see Mario again tonight?” Trixie asks at one point.

  I can honestly answer that I don’t know and I don’t care.

  Well, half honestly.

  The evening takes another turn for the better when it occurs to me that I can ask a server to point out Alfonso Ramos. After all, he is a local celebrity and judging from his tweets comes to this club all the time. It turns out the weatherman in question is fairly close at hand doing a spectacular salsa. He’s so amazing that people have stepped back to watch.

  He’s in his early thirties, I’d guess, and in the attractive rather than hot category. He looks smaller than he did on TV but is wearing pretty much the same thing: dark pants and a pastel slim-cut shirt with French cuffs. Enough buttons are undone on his shirt to reveal a gold chain around his neck.

  His partner knows what she’s doing, too. When the crowd thins out and I edge closer, Alfonso sees me watching. In short order he swings his partner away and holds out his hand to me.

  Now I’m no Julianne Hough but I dance in a fairly abandoned manner and am pretty good at mimicking what I see in front of me. (See pageant training above.) So after he busts out a salsa move I bust one back. I’m not nearly as good as the woman he was dancing with before but I’m not pathetic. I can keep up. Sort of.

  An exhilarating minute or two later we swirl to a stop. He leads me off the floor and produces two flutes of champagne. Alfonso Ramos may appear on Spanish-language TV but he is speaking my language.

  We introduce ourselves. “You must dance all the time!” I cry. “You’re fantastic.”

  “That’s why I like living in South Beach. Lots of clubs.” He eyes me. “You’re not a bad dancer yourself.”

  “Well, I’m not terrible.”

  “You’re better than that. And I know a way you can improve and get into all the best parties.” He hands me a business card.

  I’m about to say I’m not interested in salsa lessons when I see from the card that he himself is the instructor. “You teach salsa?”

  “On the side. Mostly I do the weather on TV.”

  “Really? How exciting!” I make my eyes go wide. “But I hope you don’t work for that station where the weathergirl was killed?”

  He nods.

  “Oh, how terrible!” I suck in a melodramatic breath. “Did you know her really well? You must feel awful!”

  He edges close enough to whisper in my ear. “Between you and me, the way she treated some people this was bound to happen someday.”

  “No! I can’t believe it! On the news all people can talk about is what a nice person she was.”

  “They didn’t know her like I did. What do you do?” he wants to know.

  “I’m an executive assistant.” I decide to be miserly with the personal details.

  “I’m surprised you’re not on TV.” He gives me another penetrating look then cocks his chin at the business card in my hand. “Call me. I’ll give you a lesson on the house. It’ll be worth your while.”

  “I would love that,” I say, and that’s no lie. I know an investigative opportunity when I see one.

  Alfonso spins away. I find Trixie and Shanelle at our booth and spill the latest.

  “Wow!” Trixie cries. “Investigating while doing salsa!”

  “I wonder what he meant by ‘worth your while,’ ” Shanelle says.

  “I wonder what he meant when he said Peppi Lopez was bound to be murdered someday.” Clearly Alfonso Ramos is not one of Peppi’s fanboys. Which puts him in the same category as Jasmine Dobbs.

  “Do you think he wants to pick you up?” Trixie wants to know.

  “I didn’t get that vibe from him. He wants something from me but I don’t know what.” So maybe he and I are starting out on an even playing field: we both have a secret agenda. “Ladies, I have a confession to make. It was really fun coming here but I’m ready to go home, check on Rachel, and kick off these stilettos.”

  “I’m with you,” Trixie says. “Plus we haven’t had dessert yet.”

  “I saw ice cream in the freezer,” Shanelle says. “When I went looking for it.”

  We find Mario and Consuela together on the dance floor. At the rate Consuela is going I’d be amazed if she let Mario go to the men’s room on his own. As we say our good nights, I realize I fully expect to run into her in Mario’s kitchen in the morning.

  Oh, well. That shouldn’t bother me and I’ll try not to let it.

  When the cab gets us home, we find Rachel in bed snoozing and the light in Pop’s bedroom out. We three queens change into PJs and have our way with the ice cream. It doesn’t escape me as I climb into bed beside my daughter that it’s not Mario I miss.

  It’s Jason.

  The next morning I wake at dawn even though I went to bed late. I can’t help but feel a little anxious. It’s partly from staying in Mario’s house and partly from being so darn eager to dig deeper into Peppi’s murder.

  As I pad down the hallway in my pink fleece pajama bottoms and gray rib-knit Henley top, I’m amazed to smell coffee. Somebody got up even earlier than me. It’s Mario I find in the slowly brightening kitchen, sitting alone at the island with a mug in his hand.

  His face breaks into a lazy smile. I’ve never seen him like this before—unshaven, hair mussed, in faded jeans and tee shirt that look like battered old friends. This is the sort of intimacy you get from staying at somebody’s house, I think as he wordlessly pours coffee and milk into a mug and presses it into my hands. The barriers drop in the late night and early morning when sleep is just a suggestion away.

  I join him at the island. If Consuela is on the premises, it will be but an instant before she heaves into view. Judging from her behavior last night, she’d leave no non-geriatric woman alone with Mario for longer than it takes to slide down her pole.

  “Did you have a good time at Diego’s?” Mario asks me.

  “Really fun. Thanks for getting us in there.”

  “We didn’t have a chance to dance together.” No kidding, I’m thinking, when he chuckles and goes on. “Not that Consuela ever wants to get off the dance floor.”

  “You two seem to get along pretty well.”

  “She can come on a little strong but she’s got a good heart.”

  I bite my tongue. As he eyes me, I realize Mario has never seen me like this before, either. Only half awake, not a speck of makeup on, the sunlight peeping through the window probably revealing those pesky little lines I’ve started to notice.

  But the expression I catch in his eyes is admiring. I can only stare back for a few seconds before I have to turn away.

  “You weren’t hurting for dance partners,” he says. “Not that I’m surprised.”

  “One of them was Alfonso Ramos. The weatherman who worked with Peppi? He offered to give me salsa lessons.”

  “Nice work. Be careful, though. Remember what happened last time.”

  And the time before, I add silently.

  “In fact the more I think about it,” he goes on, “the more I’m not
sure your sleuthing is such a good idea. You’ve been really, really good at it,” he adds, no doubt seeing the dismay on my face, “but Consuela has a point. It is a police matter.”

  “Mario—” I can hardly form words, I’m so surprised to hear this coming out of him. “It’s very important to me to do this. Most people think all I’m capable of is sashaying across a stage and saying I want world peace. I love being a beauty queen but this proves I’m so much more!”

  “I know. But Consuela’s right—”

  “I don’t care what Consuela thinks!” That slips out before I can stop it. “I’m sorry. What I mean is, she doesn’t understand. There’s a whole side to your life she doesn’t know about—”

  “She knows I do some work for the FBI.”

  “She does?”

  “Of course she does, Happy. She’s Mariela’s mother. I trust her.”

  Wow. I look into his dark eyes and realize that he does. I guess he and I are different that way.

  I guess this also means there’s no way Mario would consider the possibility that Consuela might have taken a break from her pole-dancing maneuvers to strangle Peppi over the alleged anti-Mariela top five list.

  “You know,” Mario goes on, “for Consuela and me, it’s like for you and Jason. We’ve got a daughter together. And a lot of history.”

  I restrain myself from pointing out one gigantic difference: that Jason and I have been married all the while we’ve been raising our daughter.

  “I didn’t want to bring this up,” he says, “but I can see you’re not a big fan of Consuela’s. And so something else she said last night has me a little worried. She told me she thinks you’ve got a bias against Mariela.”

  I can’t believe I’m hearing this from him, too. “Why would she think that?”

  “Because of what you said about not being able to give Mariela pointers. And, I guess, what she perceives as your general attitude. And she’s worried that since you and Shanelle are so close, you’ll affect her thinking, too. Which means there might be two judges’ votes Mariela loses before the pageant even begins.”

  I have to clutch my coffee mug to keep from screaming. “Mario, let me assure you I have no bias against your daughter. But I have to be super careful not to favor her. I mean, imagine what Shanelle and me staying here at your house would look like to the other contestants?” That did occur to me once the glow of being in Mario’s orbit dimmed a bit. “Shanelle and I can’t give Mariela any special consideration. But I know I speak for both of us when I say that absolutely we will point your daughter fairly.”