CHAPTER FOUR
I’m a tad distracted remembering the
other
key card I have in my possession when the door is flung open.
“Girl,
again
you can’t make that thing work?” Standing there in a long Bob Marley tee shirt, her hair held back by a headband and her face slathered with a cream mask, is my roommate, Ms. Mississippi, Shanelle Walker.
She grabs the key card from my hand and shoves it in the slot. Not surprisingly, she too gets the little red light. Her eyebrows, devoid of cream, fly skyward. She hands me back the card. “Guess the magnetic strip died. Just like Tiffany Amber.” She gives me a wicked smile, then slams the door shut behind me, probably waking half the floor. She touches my arm with her index finger and makes a sizzling sound. “Oooh, you hot, girl!” She cackles and claps her hands. “You Ms. America now!”
“I am not.” I throw my stuff on my double bed.
“Yes, you are! With Tiffany cold as ice, it’s just a formality at this point. Since those dang judges didn’t have the good sense to put me in the top five, the only other one in that group with half a chance is Trixie Barnett and we all know Congeniality never takes the big prize.” She sets her hands on her hips. “I expect I know what the answer will be but I’ll ask anyhow. You didn’t poison Tiffany in that isolation booth, did you?”
“Of course I didn’t poison Tiffany! Is that what people are saying?”
“Not you per se but the poison part, yes, ma’am.” I see then that Shanelle’s been on her laptop scanning the same headlines Rachel is probably reading back home. “It’s only speculation but the experts all agree. Something like
cyanide
.” She hisses the word.
I take in that detail as I whip the Ohio sash off over my head. I can certainly see how cyanide might mess with a girl’s appearance. That could explain why Tiffany looked particularly nasty to the dancer who turned her over and ended up fainting.
“And how will they ever figure out whodunit?” Shanelle goes on. “That girl had more enemies than Tupac Shakur. And any one of us could’ve slipped something vile into her makeup bag while it was backstage. That’s what everybody’s speculating, too. And that’s why the cops won’t let us go home. Not that I’m in any rush.”
Given my last-to-see-alive status with regard to Tiffany Amber, I’m pleased to hear I have lots of company on the suspect list. I reach behind my back and start trying to unzip my gown. Shanelle gets behind me to help. Another thought comes to me. “Didn’t Misty Delgado room with Tiffany?”
“Till she couldn’t take it no more and moved out.” Shanelle harrumphs. “Now that’s somebody I’d examine very closely if I was Oahu PD.”
“It is suspicious how the two of them couldn’t get along and then that video of Misty shows up on YouTube.”
“Right before the finale! And then during the finale Tiffany winds up dead.” Shanelle backs away, the zipper undone. “You wanna use some of my tea tree face mask? I’ll leave the jar out for you. Does wonders for your pores, girl.”
At the moment it’s not my pores I’m focused on. With Shanelle in the bathroom and my gown only half on, I dig out the paperwork the pageant people gave us when we arrived. There it is, the sheet I was looking for. I lay it on the bedspread and run my finger down the list of names and numbers.
Shanelle comes back into the bedroom. “I’d get some shuteye if I was you. You need to be fresh for tomorrow when they make the announcement.”
I’m still hunched over the sheet. “What announcement?”
“That you won!” She clucks and gets into her bed, the one nearer the sliding glass doors that lead to the balcony, then rolls away from me. “You’re the least enthusiastic beauty pageant winner I’ve ever met.”
“That’s because I haven’t won any beauty pageants lately.” Although I have been lucky now in one regard. I’ve found exactly the information I was looking for.
I disassemble the pageant version of myself—gown, helmet hair, pancake makeup—and dutifully get into bed, but end up passing the next hours in an agony of waiting. I know it is highly unwise to embark on my mission until the wee hours. And despite how exhausted I am, I can’t bring myself to get a wink of shuteye in the meanwhile. I toss and turn so much I yank the sheet off the mattress.
Finally, at 3:48 AM, I allow myself to get up. Shanelle is either the best fake snorer in the western world or she truly is asleep. As quietly as I know how, I dress in my lime green Juicy Couture tracksuit and coordinating floral-print Keds and creep across our darkened bedroom, illuminated by only a slit of light between the pulled drapes, to grab both the key cards I have in my possession. One goes in one pocket, one in the other, so their magnetic strips don’t conk out right when I need them.
I encounter no one on the elevator trip down to the third floor and no one in the corridor leading to number 328. No security guard is hulking outside the door, which I half expected. I walk past to suss out the situation. I don’t know what I think I’ll see. Yellow crime tape crisscrossing the door? None of that. But sure as day there is the telltale dust of fingerprinting all over the door handle.
That will not faze your plucky heroine, who has planned ahead.
I pull from my pocket both the relevant card key and a Kleenex tissue. I deploy the latter carefully across the door handle so it will be ready should I need it.
Will I?
The key card slips into the slot. A moment later a green light flashes and the lock releases. I twist the Kleenexed handle and presto!—I am inside the private lair of the late, unlamented Tiffany Amber.
Now, lest you think I am a scofflaw or an idiot, allow me to disabuse you of both notions. Not only do I consider myself an upstanding citizen, I am one. As a cop’s daughter, I have the utmost respect for the law. What I’ve decided in this case is that I’m not breaking any laws. I am simply taking advantage of the opportunity presented by my auspicious discovery of the key card. Until it opened Tiffany’s door, I didn’t know for certain that it had been hers. True, given where I found it, I had my suspicions. And that’s why I’m taking this risk: should I need to deflect suspicion from myself, as Trixie put it, maybe a little preparatory sleuthing will yield a clue I can use to point the cops in another, more profitable direction.
Not to mention that I’m damn curious, which is harder to rationalize.
I stand in the dark and ponder how to proceed. Of course, I haven’t the slightest idea what I’m looking for. I guess the closest I can pinpoint it is: something weird. As I ruminate on what that might constitute, I notice an odd smell. It’s subtle but it’s there. I move forward a few inches, my nostrils working as furiously as any beagle’s. What is that? I’ve smelled it before but never in hotel rooms. More like in back yards. Is it … citronella? Like those candles people burn to keep mosquitoes away? Why in the world would Tiffany’s room smell of citronella?
Okay. That qualifies as weird.
Buoyed by that discovery, I move further into the room. I realize as my eyes adjust that this room is exactly like Shanelle’s and mine, no surprise. The drapes to the balcony have been left open and I’m not touching them. I’m leaving everything just the way I find it. So no lamps can go on. As it is, I’m getting some illumination from the moonlight through the sliding glass doors.
One thing I ascertain immediately: Tiffany Amber was a pig. Clothes, makeup, magazines are strewn everywhere. Some of the mess can no doubt be blamed on the cops but I don’t think all of it can. For example, the bedclothes are totally rumpled, as if she had some hell of an afternoon nap.
I glance at the items dispersed on the credenza near the flat-screen TV: empty water bottles, a tabloid or two, a few wilted leis, squeezed tubes of sunscreen, Oahu tourist brochures, newspapers. I see one newspaper has been folded open and something circled. I peer at it. It’s the foreign-exchange rates and Tiffany, or somebody, circled the Japanese yen. I wonder if she and her husband were planning to continue on to Japan from here. Makes sense; they’re already partway across the Pacific.
Further on I come across a few items I expect all the contestants imported to Oahu: Firm Grip and B-vitamin complex. Firm Grip is like hair spray for the derriere. You spray it on your behind and it makes your swimsuit cling to your skin so you can avoid the embarrassing spectacle of spandex creeping up your butt cheeks during competition. No doubt Tiffany had one can in her makeup bag and a spare left here. And as for the vitamins, it’s been drummed into all of us that B complex with added B6 counteracts bloating, the bane of swimsuit competition.
Yet … what is that I see in the trash bin underneath the desk?
Potato chips
? A ginormous bag of them, bigger than would even fit in the minibar? I reel backward. I find it impossible to believe that Tiffany Amber was downing potato chips. Given the calorie count and how sodium contributes to water retention? No way.
So how did those get in here?
I turn again toward the bed, its bedclothes so tumbled the comforter is dragging on the carpet. Who makes a mess with a bed and also eats potato chips? Sometimes at one and the same time?
A man, that’s who.
I wonder. Maybe Tiffany broke the no-man-in-the-room pageant prohibition. Maybe she was mattress dancing with her hubby this very afternoon, just prior to the finale. Somehow the notion that Tiffany flouted the rules does not shock me. She seems the type
—
arrogant, uber confident, snotty.
I edge closer to the desk. Anything of interest? No sirree. A memo pad near the phone with nothing written on it. But my beady little eyes detect that it has the imprint of writing. My morals being in a weakened state at the moment, I slip it into the waistband of my sweatpants.
The rest of my investigation yields nothing. I also note that by now it’s 4:49 AM. Type A’s will be out in force soon, getting in their jogs before dawn, right next to jetlagged travelers in search of java.
It’s time to skedaddle.
I redeploy the Kleenex to exit Tiffany’s room in case the cops get the urge for another bout of fingerprinting, then sprint away from her doorway the moment I’m in the empty corridor and slow to a respectable pace as I point toward the elevator bank. My heart is jumping like a drop of water on a hot skillet but I must say I am proud of my amateur sleuthing, despite the fact that it hasn’t exactly provided clarity on who sent Tiffany to the great beyond. I am basking in the glow of my flawless performance when I turn a corner in the corridor and sideswipe … Trixie Barnett.
She’s in a tracksuit, too, and her chin-length copper-colored hair is held back by a headband.
“What are you doing here?” I manage.
“What are you doing here?” she parrots.
We stare at one another.
She caves first. “This is my floor. I’m in 351.”
I deliver my prepared line, though I feel like a real schmuck lying to Trixie. “I’m on my way to the gym.”
Trixie giggles. “You are not. You’re going back and forth past the door to Tiffany’s room. I’ve done it a bunch of times myself. Am I right?”
Yes, I could lie to Trixie again. But somehow it feels wrong. Plus I’d really love to talk to somebody about the tidbits I’ve gleaned. And Trixie is the most trustworthy soul among my island acquaintance.
It comes out in a gush. “Well, I admit, I did go past. A few times. And then”
—b
rief hesitation
—“
I went in.”
She shrieks. “You
what
? How did you get in?”
“Ssshh!” I drag her behind a potted palm and explain while Trixie oohs and aahs, exhibiting not a scintilla of disapproval of what some people might consider breaking and entering. Indeed she appears awestruck at my investigative prowess.
That’s why she’s Ms. Congeniality, I decide. She makes everyone around her feel fabulous regardless of the transgressions they recently committed.
“My Lord, you’re like Nancy Drew!” she says when I pause to take a breath. “I adore Nancy Drew. That’s why I couldn’t sleep and walked past Tiffany’s room a gazillion times. Well, go on, tell me what you found in there.”
By this point I’m spilling all, like a repentant sinner. Trixie’s eyes bulge when I get to my theory about Tiffany and her chip-eating husband doing the nasty pre-pageant.
“But it couldn’t have been him,” she says. “He didn’t get here till after the pageant started. He even missed the parade of states.”
“How do you know?”
“I overheard the policemen talking about it after they interviewed him.”
We stare at one another. No words are necessary. We both know the implications that follow this revelation: Tiffany had a chip-eating man who wasn’t her husband in her hotel room with her. And not just in her room, either. In her
bed
.
Even more damning. And bedeviling.
“What about her laptop?” Trixie asks.
I shake my head. “What laptop?”
“She was on it constantly. That’s partly what made Misty Delgado move out. She said the clicking of the keys got on her last nerve. Truthfully, I think there was more to it than that.”
“There wasn’t a laptop in there. The cops probably confiscated it. There could be tons of valuable information on her hard drive.”
“Clues,” Trixie breathes.
Exactly, I’m thinking. Which is why I am most peeved that the laptop is beyond my reach.