Ms America and the Offing on Oahu (Beauty Queen Mysteries No. 1)

by Dempsey, Diana

“Uh … just some stuff.” I set the box down in the narrow space between my bed and the wall. I then throw my beach bag on top of it, aiming for the shipping label that spells out in big block letters MR. TONY POSTAGINO.

  She rises from the bed and hobbles closer, undeterred by her fresh pedicure and the toe-separating thingie that’s protecting it. She’s looking at me the way mothers look at their children when they know said children are up to something of which the mother will not approve. Unless I want to wrestle her to the floor and thereby ruin her new polish, I cannot stop her from doing what she does next: picking up my beach bag and reading the label on the box.

  Her eyes move slowly to my face. “I will ask you again. What you got there?”

  “How much time do you have?”

  She sits on my bed. “Start from the top.”

  The story does sound fairly preposterous when I hear it aloud. When I finish, Shanelle has this to say. “You’re in deep, girl.”

  I don’t like how serious that sounds.

  She goes on. “Have you lost your mind? You just won the title of Ms. America and a quarter million dollars. That would all go bye-bye if anybody found out about this. And the cops do have some idea how to do their job. Even if they don’t, it’s not your business. Tiffany was no friend of yours.” Somewhere in there she rises to her feet and puts her hands on her hips. “So what is this really all about?”

  That is a good question, given everything that’s on the line. “Part of it,” I say, “is that I’ve kind of got this in the blood. Investigation, I mean. My dad’s a cop.”

  “So he’s a pro.”

  The phrase unlike you hangs in the air. “There’s something else, too. I’m under suspicion myself since I was the last one in the isolation booth with Tiffany.” I tell her about Momoa questioning me, and that it was he who showed up at our door at 5 the morning after the finale. “It’s better for me if I can figure out who killed Tiffany. If Momoa keeps sniffing around me, it might make Cantwell decide I shouldn’t wear the crown. He might give it to somebody else in the top five.” I’m suddenly inspired. “Like Sherry Phillips.” I know Shanelle’s opinion of Ms. Wyoming.

  Sure enough, Shanelle scrunches up her face as if a foul odor were pervading our room. “He wouldn’t dare. Half the synapses on that girl don’t fire.”

  “But she could be in third position.” I’ve had another inspiring idea since we’ve been talking. “You know what? You could help me investigate. You work in information technology, right?”

  “I manage the I.T. department at a bank.” Her eyes narrow. “Why do you ask?”

  “Guess what I might have in that box. Tiffany’s laptop.”

  “Are you telling me we could read her email?”

  “If you can figure out how to get into her computer.”

  I have never seen Shanelle move faster. She pushes past me and hoists the box on my bed, using her manicure scissors to slice through the shipping tape. In seconds we’re inside. And soon we’re fist-bumping each other.

  “There’s her laptop bag!” I singsong. I was right that it wouldn’t be in one of Tiffany’s suitcases.

  I’m lifting the bag out when Shanelle grabs my arm. “This is unchristian.”

  “There is nothing wrong with doing our level best to bring a homicidal maniac to justice.”

  “Well, when you put it that way.”

  We relocate to the desk, where we push the vase of yellow roses out of the way. Shanelle, by the way, was highly entertained hearing who they came from. She begins to boot up the laptop. Soon we’re asked for a password.

  “I was afraid this would happen,” I say.

  Shanelle’s fingers hover over the keys. “Usually it’s a telephone number or a birth date or a kid’s name or a wedding date.”

  “Hmmm. I use my daughter’s birth date.”

  Shanelle glances at me. “Don’t we have a list of the contestants and their contact information?”

  “That has home addresses and phone numbers. And email addresses.” I go in search of the paperwork, meanwhile trying to remember what Trixie told me Tiffany’s daughters’ names are. I read off Tiffany’s phone number.

  Shanelle types it in. “Nope.”

  “Try the work number.” That gets us nowhere. “How about her street address?”

  Shanelle tries a couple variations. “Nope.”

  “Try Ava.” The name of one daughter.

  She shakes her head.

  “Madison.”

  “No go. I’m glad this isn’t configured to lock down after a lot of mistakes.”

  “No kidding. Hey, wait a minute.” A light has gone off in my head. I jog to the bathroom and dig into my makeup bag. Yup, it’s still there, the pad of paper I lifted from Tiffany’s hotel room, which has a series of numbers imprinted on the top sheet. “Write these down,” I tell Shanelle. “3 – 8 – 2 – 6 – 3 – 7.” I stare at the sequence. “You know what? I bet these are her measurements.”

  Shanelle harrumphs. “My ass.”

  “I’m serious.” I watch Shanelle’s hands drop into her lap. “Why aren’t you typing them in?”

  She shakes her head. “That girl was a 38 up top like I’m a 34 down below.”

  “Shanelle. Now is not the time to focus on whether or not Tiffany Amber was truthful about her bust size. Key them in.”

  “This is a travesty,” she declares, and just as the last word leaves her lips, we pass to a new screen.

  Our victory screams are short-lived as Shanelle’s cell phone rings. Her ring tone is “Back to Black” by Amy Winehouse. She pops up from the desk chair while I remember that somebody called me while I was stealing Tiffany’s shipment home. I pull my cell from my beach bag and turn it back on. I have two voicemails from reporters trying to score one-on-one interviews with me, which Cantwell told me were verboten until the investigation into Tiffany’s death concluded. No talking to the press, he instructed after the presser.

  Pop called, too, I see, and left a voicemail saying he was just checking in since we hadn’t talked since yesterday.

  I snap my cell shut. I am suddenly filled with humungous regret. My father would not approve of what I’m doing. No cop would. Nor would any evidence that I find in this manner be admissible in court. This misguided mail theft of mine would just back up what I know my father already thinks: that his daughter should stick to girly things and leave all the serious brain work to others.

  And the danger isn’t over, even if Shanelle and I don’t spend another second probing Tiffany’s computer. I still have to get the shipping box back into the mail room with no one seeing me. Otherwise its absence will be noted and the cops will be onto investigating that, too.

  I flop onto my bed. Shanelle glances at me but continues her conversation with her husband. Lamar did not come to Oahu like so many of the husbands because he couldn’t get off work.

  I am pondering my idiocy on the crime-busting front when Shanelle finishes her call and races back to the desk. “You ready?” she calls over her shoulder. “Lamar says hi, by the way.”

  “I’m having doubts,” I tell her.

  “I got no time for doubts.” She’s squinting at the screen. “We are about to read Tiffany Amber’s email and I am hoping to be entertained.”

  “I’m serious, Shanelle.” I sit up. “I’m now thinking it was a ginormous mistake to take that box.”

  “Well, it’d be even stupider to have the thing here and booted up and not peruse its contents. Let’s check it out for fifteen minutes and then you can box it back up. Besides, you got me into this, girl, and now I want a payoff.” Her voice trails away. Clearly she’s intent on reading something. She lets out a cackle.

  “Something good?” I ask her.

  “Nothing that gives any clues who snuffed her.”

  That draws me up and to my former position behind Shanelle, reading over her shoulder. I don’t know that my roommate, savvy as she is, shares my instincts when it comes to criminal behavior. There co
uld be something of value hidden in those emails that she’s not seeing.

  A while later, I conclude there isn’t. “I think we should see what programs she has installed,” I tell Shanelle.

  She closes Tiffany’s email, clucking her tongue. “I was expecting more from that girl. For somebody who probably got murdered, her email was deadly dull.” We’re back to Tiffany’s desktop. “Now this,” Shanelle murmurs, “is bizarre.” She points to an icon.

  “FX Trader? Maybe it has something to do with real estate. It doesn’t sound like it, though.”

  Shanelle opens the program.

  I frown. “Foreign-exchange trading?”

  “Should we log in?” Shanelle asks.

  “Let’s try. We probably know the password.”

  Indeed we do. And within seconds it becomes clear that Tiffany Amber has quite an impressive history of currency-trading transactions with FX Trader. Impressive in all respects but one.

  “She lost a buttload of money,” I say.

  “She had a lot to lose.” Shanelle points at the screen. “Look at the size of that deposit.”

  “Fifty grand. Wow.”

  “Foreclosures or not, I guess the real-estate business wasn’t all bad.”

  “Maybe her husband won some big court case and they invested the proceeds in this.”

  “Bad idea.”

  We trace Tiffany’s trading history. She started small, made money, put in more money, made more, and then her luck changed.

  “She should’ve stopped when she was ahead,” I say.

  Shanelle turns to me. “I saw something about this on the Today show. About Japanese housewives speculating in currencies to make cash on the side. It’s called arbitrage, I think.”

  Shanelle’s mention of Japanese housewives reminds me of the newspaper in Tiffany’s hotel room that had the yen/dollar exchange rate circled. Now I know Tiffany wasn’t keen on currencies because she and her husband were planning to travel abroad.

  I haven’t confessed the hotel-room breakin to Shanelle, though, and I don’t intend to, so this tidbit will remain my secret. “This is a pretty high-risk way to make extra money,” I say. “Because you could lose it all, too. Why would Tiffany do that?”

  “Since she had the rich lawyer husband, you mean.”

  I look over Shanelle’s shoulder at the columns of numbers on the screen, all representing actual cash dollars. Up, down, up, down. “You know what? I think this is like gambling. Maybe Tiffany had a gambling problem.”

  “An addiction. Coulda been her fix.” Shanelle arches her brows. “And maybe when she lost too much, it caught up with her.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  “Enough of being a spy.” Shanelle shuts down Tiffany’s laptop. “I’m ready for a drink.”

  I glance at my watch. “It’s getting to be that time.”

  On Oahu, things go from wonderful to magnificent as the sun descends each evening into the sea. The Royal Hibiscus does it up in style, what with His Highness Keola Kalakaua making his half-naked torch-lighting run while guests gather at the lobby lounge to nurse a cold one and watch the sky turn glorious shades of purple, orange and pink.

  “I need to shower,” I tell Shanelle. I’m still in my bikini cover-up and my skin is tacky from my 30 SPF sunblock.

  “Make it quick.”

  I dutifully run to the bathroom. “By the way, my mom is coming over.”

  “She’s a card, your mom. What about Jason?”

  “He met some other guy who’s into NASCAR and they’re going out for a beer.”

  In twenty minutes I’m showered and wearing a tropical print strapless dress with a sweetheart neckline and an Empire waist with a sparkly row of sequin trim. My feet slide into my best strappy sandals and I tie my hair into a damp chignon. I do a ten-minute makeup and I’m good to go. Since by beauty-queen standards I’ve been fast, Shanelle’s happy. She’s wearing an adorable cocoa-colored halter-style tiered dress with a deep V neck and a low-cut back.

  By the time my mom appears, we’ve repacked Tiffany’s laptop and hidden the shipping box. My mom is wearing white polyester pants and a daisy-print blouse. Her earrings are two porcelain clip-on daisies. And as always, she is in what she calls comfortable shoes, code for ugly. I dread the day my aging feet demand I give up heels.

  We hug. “It’s nice to see you,” she says. “It’s hard to believe we’ve been on the same island these last few days.”

  “Hello, Mrs. Przybyszewski!” Shanelle whips off those four syllables as if they were her own. She pushes past me to hug my mom. “And don’t you go making Happy feel bad for being busy. You know what it’s gonna be like now that she’s Ms. America.”

  Judging from the last few days, it will involve breaking the law, downing cocktails, and soaking up the sun. No wonder so many women enter this pageant.

  “I suppose so.” My mom’s tone is grudging. She’s just inside the room when she spies the yellow roses on the desk. She makes a beeline, then gives the bouquet a thorough inspection. I suspect she’s trying to locate the note card. “Gorgeous,” she pronounces, then she glances at Shanelle. “From your husband?”

  “No, they’re Happy’s.”

  My mother’s glance drifts toward me. “Sure as the day is long, these did not come from your husband.”

  I start to protest but Shanelle interrupts. “They’re from Mario Suave.” She has a mischievous glint in her eye.

  My mother arches her brows. “He’s a little dark-skinned but he’s a good-looking Latin man.”

  Shanelle whoops.

  “And he’s done very well for himself,” my mother goes on. “He came from poor beginnings but pulled himself up by his bootstraps. More of those immigrants who come to this country should take a page from his book.”

  I grab my white envelope clutch with its faux tortoiseshell details. “Since when did you become an expert on Mario Suave?”

  “I read,” she says smugly. I note she doesn’t specify what she reads. She’s not exactly a New Yorker subscriber. More like People and In Touch Weekly. “He did have a child out of wedlock but I suppose we’ve all had to deal with that problem at one time or another.”

  Shanelle and I exchange a glance. I remain silent until I process what my mom said. “Really? Mario’s a dad?”

  “He has a daughter named Mariela who lives with her mother Consuela in Miami.”

  “How old is his daughter?” Shanelle asks.

  “Sixteen,” my mother answers.

  A teenager like Rachel. “Are he and Consuela married?” I try to sound casual but I’m not sure I succeed.

  “Not to my knowledge,” my mother says.

  I’m trying to picture Mario’s ring finger on his left hand. I’m not seeing a gold band there. That doesn’t necessarily mean anything, though.

  Nor does it mean anything that he sent me roses, I’m sure. I bet he considered it part of his duties as emcee.

  “If he’s not married, he’s ripe for the picking,” Shanelle says.

  “Not for me,” I say primly. “I’m married.”

  “That can be easily remedied,” my mother points out.

  Shanelle claps her hands. “You’re full of piss and vinegar today! Let’s go put a cocktail in you.”

  I make a move for the door. “I hope we can still get seats.”

  My mother grimaces. “Will it be crowded down there? You know how crowds give me headaches.”

  “It’ll be just enough people to be interesting,” Shanelle opines, and she turns out to be right.

  There isn’t so much of a horde that we can’t get seated, and at the Royal Hibiscus the service is mainland quick. I get a Bing Cherry Daiquiri, Shanelle a Banana Colada, and my mom a Bee’s Knees. We order a coconut shrimp appetizer and settle into our overstuffed chairs to watch the sun go down and the sky get painted a myriad of colors.

  “If I keep eating like this,” Shanelle says, double-dipping in the tamarind ginger sauce, “my hips will be as wide as Pearl Ha
rbor.”

  “It’s okay, we’re on vacation,” I proclaim.

  “Vacation?” My mother’s expression darkens. “What about all that work you’re doing for the pageant?”

  “It’s always vacation in Hawaii,” Shanelle says, “whether you’re working or not. Look who’s coming.” She raises a shrimp in the direction of the lobby. My mother and I peer over our shoulders to see.

  “You remember Sally Anne Gibbons,” I tell my mom. “She owns the Crowning Glory Pageant Shoppe in Las Vegas.” Why Sally Anne needs an extra P and an extra E in her store name, I cannot tell you. Maybe it’s in tribute to the extra E in Anne.

  Shanelle mimics Sally Anne’s cigarette-ravaged voice. “Crowning Glory is the only full-service pageant boutique west of the Mississippi.”

  We both giggle and watch Sally drop her heft into a wicker chaise positioned in front of the giant open windows that front the ocean.

  “She’s blocking my view of the sunset,” my mother says.

  Shanelle and I shush her in unison.

  “I think Sally Anne’s already had a few,” Shanelle murmurs a few seconds later, sipping from her own adult beverage.

  There is certainly evidence to that effect. For example, Sally Anne is not exactly sitting up straight. She’s sprawled, and her face is red in a way that looks more booze-induced than sun-kissed. Her copper hair, which is usually arranged into a sort of hairsprayed dome, is slightly askew this evening. None of this, however, stops her from raising her finger to summon a server. A minute later a Mai Tai is in her hand. Another minute later, the glass is empty. Again her finger rises in the air.

  “That woman drinks like a fish,” my mother says.

  “Mom, lower your voice.”

  “What, I can’t call a spade a spade?”

  “Just do it quietly.”

  By now Sally Anne has been served her second cocktail, at least by our count. It disappears down her gullet as fast as the first one did.

  “She’s not going to be able to walk out of here,” my mother says. “She better be wearing sensible shoes.”

  She appears to be. Given Sally’s recumbent state, we have a full view of her footgear.