Dee Dee looked up when the bell rang as Lulu walked in the store. She frowned but then quickly mustered a more pleasant expression. Lulu guessed that’s because she was by herself, with no redheaded, motorcycle-riding, time-sucking friends along with her.
“You doing all right, Lulu?” asked Dee Dee in a loud voice.
It did grate on Lulu’s nerves that Dee Dee was determined to believe that she was hard of hearing. As if she was that much older than Dee Dee! Why, there probably were only nine years between them. Lulu managed to swallow her irritation, though. “Doing fine, Dee Dee, doing fine. And I did want to tell you I was so terribly sorry about the other day. Honestly, I don’t know what got into Cherry. She told me she wanted a whole new wardrobe to go along with her new soul. I guess change is harder than we think.”
“I guess so,” said Dee Dee in a doubtful voice. “Well, what can I do for you today, Lulu? You’re shopping for yourself?”
“Yes I am. I think I’m probably good with dresses, but I was thinking I could use a pair of slacks—really casual ones. Black, maybe?”
Dee Dee and Lulu started going through the racks. “You know, Dee Dee, I’ve been shopping here for years, but somehow I didn’t know exactly how connected you were with the pageant world! It sounds like you’re the go-to shop for pageant clothes.”
Dee Dee looked pleased. “I’ve worked hard on it, yes. And the business has really built up over the years. It wasn’t an overnight success, but over time, things have definitely come together. The pageants have been really good for the boutique. I couldn’t have stayed afloat all these years by selling separates and dresses to the Lulu Taylors of the world.”
Lulu wasn’t sure if she should be insulted or not but decided to give it a pass. “I guess I’m just unaware of the pageant world altogether. Sara has been filling me in, since she’s been involved in it for a while because of Coco. She and I were talking about poor Tristan’s
tragic
death, and Sara mentioned to me that Tristan was very involved in pageants. I guess you must have seen a lot of Tristan? She sent some customers your way?” Lulu asked.
“She did,” said Dee Dee, pushing some clothes down the rack a little roughly. “She was a pageant coach—the girls’ mothers hired her to help them figure out what to wear, and what their talent should be, and how to walk—that kind of thing. She was good to recommend that her girls visit me for dress fittings—that’s really where the shop’s pageant side started to take off.”
Lulu looked sympathetically at Dee Dee. “It must have been hard for you, Tristan’s death. Such a terrible shock!”
Dee Dee gave her hoarse, cigarette-smoking laugh. “It wasn’t a shock at all, Lulu. Tristan did help me out, but she rubbed a whole lot of people the wrong way. Look at the argument we overheard at the party between Steffi and Tristan! And that was only one example of many.”
“I did hear,” Lulu said, fingering a pair of black slacks, “that Colleen blamed Tristan that her daughter lost the Miss Memphis crown.”
Dee Dee rolled her eyes. “In Colleen’s head, Pansy was already doing the Miss America walk and wave. That’s one reason Colleen’s head is all messed up.”
“Pansy didn’t have that much of a shot at it, then?”
“Didn’t have a shot in . . . uh. She didn’t have a shot,” said Dee Dee, censoring herself with effort. She apparently thought Lulu had delicate ears as well as deaf ones. “Don’t get me wrong—she’s a pretty girl. And she wore
my
dresses, which means she made the most of her looks for the pageants. But her talent is just so-so at best. She can sing . . . sort of. She can play a fiddle pretty well. And she does some great parlor-game kind of stuff. But she doesn’t have the kind of talent or interview capabilities that would put a Miss America crown on her head—or even a Miss Memphis one.”
Lulu frowned. “But Colleen sounded like she was certain Tristan had damaged her dress. And stolen her shoes? I know it made the news really big, too.”
“The national media loves
any
story about beauty-pageant girls being ugly to each other. They eat those backstage-antic stories up with a spoon. People love hearing about that kind of stuff. So it
did
get picked up on the newswire but not because there was a single bit of truth to the story at all. And I can’t imagine Tristan Pembroke doing anything to sabotage Pansy. The girl just wasn’t that much of a threat to her client. I can tell you one thing, though—the other girls in the pageants never like Pansy. I’ve heard them talking about her right here in the store, and they really talked when she made the national news like that. Pansy always wants to be the one in the spotlight, and that’s not the way to make friends. Besides, those kinds of things happen at beauty pageants all the time—the girls get upset with each other. Maybe Pansy got someone upset and she was getting back at her.”
“It sounds like one of the other girls could just as easily have damaged Pansy’s dress to get back at her for being such a pill,” said Lulu thoughtfully. “Colleen sounded so
sure
, though.”
Dee Dee walked briskly over to a dressing room and hung a few pairs of slacks on the hook in one. “That’s because,” she said in her raspy voice as Lulu entered the dressing room, “Colleen
believes
her theory. And there’s no denying the bad blood between Tristan and Colleen—it dates back to their own pageant days as teens. But I know Tristan didn’t think Pansy was going to win the Miss Memphis pageant. She wouldn’t have worried a second over it. Maybe she could have destroyed Pansy’s chances in order to get back at Colleen.
Maybe.
But that’s the only reason I can see her doing it.”
“I think, especially after the whole spy mission and nearly having to buy a prissy dress, that I deserve a sidekick spot. At least just for
this
case, anyway.” Cherry and Lulu were on the front porch of Aunt Pat’s, and Cherry was rocking her chair back and forth with concentrated determination. “The next time a dead body turns up, you can reevaluate everything.”
“There won’t
be
any more dead bodies turning up,” said Lulu, in a voice with more conviction than she actually felt. “We’re already swimming in murder. But I do appreciate the sidekick offer, Cherry. As long as you’re not a suspect,” she added teasingly.
Cherry snorted. “I’ll have you know that I’ve been eliminated from the pool of suspects,” she said. “I may have had the motive, but I didn’t have the opportunity.”
“What was your motive again?” asked Lulu, squinting as if she was trying to see the memory from a far-off distance.
“The way Tristan blackballed me from joining the Memphis Women’s League,” said Cherry darkly. “The witch. But now I’ve decided I don’t want to be in it after all. Evelyn told me there was no barrier to my joining, and then she handed me the schedule of events and told me that they’d vote me in at the next meeting. But Lulu, that calendar was jammed full of fund-raising bake sales—and I don’t bake or want to start now.”
“Couldn’t you pick up something from the bakery to put out?” asked Lulu.
“Sneaky Lulu!” Cherry laughed. “I wouldn’t have expected a professional cook to say something like that. No, I’m not interested in doing that, either. It’s not just the bake sale—there are also dances. A spring dance and a fall one. And you’d have to put a gun to Johnny’s head to get him to even
go
to a dance. Even if you got him there, he’d be a total wallflower. He’d probably be hanging out in the parking lot and drinking.”
Lulu couldn’t imagine that the sight of Cherry’s husband with a bottle of beer in his hand would go over very well with the Women’s League. “So you’re not so interested in joining anymore. Although you
were
at the time, so I guess we can’t eliminate your motive.”
“No, to be perfectly honest, we can’t. We can eliminate my opportunity, though. Because I didn’t have a chance to even slip off to the restroom at that party. I was with people every single second, and it was all accounted for. There were tons of snobs there, but also a few people that I knew. We were jabbering about how bad the food was and talking about art—I didn’t have a minute to myself the whole time. I even found another Elvis aficionado at the party, and we talked forever about Elvis’s big comeback concert. The police triple-checked my alibi with the folks I talked with. So, my being a social butterfly really paid off—I think they’d have tried to pin it on me.”
Lulu blinked with surprise. “How did the police know about your motive, Cherry?”
“That Dee Dee,” said Cherry, knitting her brows. “Remember the day that Tristan was coming out of the dress shop while I was going in? I was complaining how mad I was with Tristan? Well Dee Dee, of course, had to spill all to the police. She makes me so mad! Now I’m pleased as punch that I wasted her time the other day with all that shopping for clothes I didn’t want.” Cherry looked mad enough to spit.
“Okay, Cherry, you’ve convinced me that you’re not a cold-blooded killer. And there
is
something I think you can do for me.”
Chapter 10
Cherry’s face brightened. “More skulduggery? I just love being devious. I almost died laughing when we were tricking Dee Dee at her Dah-ling Dress Shoppe. She looked so bent out of shape and frowsy, trying to get me in and out of all those dresses and then lie about how cute I looked. And all the time you were reading her secret notebook!” She paused a second. “Hey! Wait a minute—you never told me what you saw in that notebook! I got so carried away by the mission and our narrow escape and my almost having to buy a wardrobe of sweet little dresses that I never asked you what you found out.”
“It was mostly her notes about what dresses each girl was wearing and their talent. But it also looked like she’d made some notes about gossip that the girls had mentioned. I think she was feeding all that information to Tristan as sort of insider knowledge that Tristan paid her for.”
Cherry made a face. “It couldn’t be
that
important. Who cares what each girl was wearing?”
“Tristan might even have paid Dee Dee to make sure a few of the girls in a particular pageant were wearing the same color or the same style dress so that her contestant really stood out. Something like that. It could have been a
very
big deal, as far as pageants were concerned.”
Cherry looked disappointed. “I thought it was going to be something a lot more exciting than that.”
Lulu said, “Well, there
were
more than just the pageant notes. There also looked to be some notes about other gossip—stuff that didn’t have anything to do with pageants. It made me wonder if Dee Dee was a blackmailer as well as a pageant double agent. She’d actually jotted down in that notebook that Tristan was having an affair. And there was a picture in there of Tristan with some man, but I couldn’t tell who he was.”
“Now we’re getting somewhere!” Cherry rubbed her hands together. “Let’s say Dee Dee was blackmailing someone. Blackmailing and murder always go hand in hand in those TV cop shows.”
“But that’s because it’s the
blackmailer
who gets murdered,” said Lulu. “Why would Tristan get murdered if it’s Dee Dee doing the blackmailing?”
“Maybe Tristan wouldn’t pay. She doesn’t seem like the kind of person who really gives a rip what people think of her. Maybe she even told Dee Dee
she
was going to expose
her
—and tell people that she was in the pageant-espionage business. If everyone thought she was a blabbermouth, it would take Dee Dee off the pageant gravy train really quickly.”
Lulu tried to follow her logic. “So you think that Dee Dee was actually more of a blackmail
victim
of Tristan’s. It sounded friendly enough that day at the shop, though. Dee Dee gave Tristan some information. Tristan paid Dee Dee.” But then Lulu remembered something. “But you know, Dee Dee did make some kind of reference to money. Like she thought maybe they needed to renegotiate fees or something. At the time I didn’t know what she was talking about, but it makes more sense now.”
Cherry rocked triumphantly in the chair. “Like I was saying—Dee Dee had a motive, too. And I bet Dee Dee cared a whole lot more about keeping her shop open and chock-full of pageant contestants than Tristan cared about losing face as a coach. Heck, it would probably make Tristan an even more popular coach—she gets down and dirty in the quest to have her girls win! Now tell me what the new mission is because I’m thinking it has nothing to do with Dee Dee. Especially since Dee Dee probably isn’t speaking to me after the shopping incident.”
“I’d like to talk to your neighbor, Pepper. I hadn’t told you this yet, but Pepper really had a to-do with Tristan at the party that night.”
Cherry’s green eyes widened. “Pepper was at the party? And had a blowup with Tristan? When did that happen?”
“Remember when I went looking for some seasoning for all that bland food? Well, Pepper’s husband, Loren, and Tristan were having a scene in the kitchen while I was there. Loren was all lovey-dovey, and Tristan wanted nothing to do with him. When Tristan was finally pulling away from him, Pepper saw them together and really lost it. Threw some wine all over Tristan’s dress. So Pepper knew that Tristan was having an affair with her husband.”
Cherry gave a low whistle. “I bet she blew her top—she’s got a huge temper on her. She was a lot madder than I was about the whole Tristan blackballing incident, too. Loren’s affair with Tristan is probably like rubbing salt in her wounds. I didn’t know anything about Tristan and Loren being an item. So Pepper had a
lot
of motive to kill Tristan.
She
was even more upset about getting blackballed from the club than I was. Plus the fact that Tristan had an affair with her husband on top of it all!”
Lulu nodded. “That’s a whole lot of motive right there. Revenge and jealousy are powerful stuff!” She thought for a second. “Are you and Pepper pretty good friends? I don’t want to mess up a close friendship between y’all or anything.”