Agent Dillon looked crisp and almost cool in a short-sleeved shirt and chinos. His navy eyes scanned me and a slight smile curved his lips.
“Casual Thursday?” I asked as he approached.
“Qualifying on the range,” he said. “I heard you were involved in the excitement out at Happy Meadows this morning.”
“ ‘Involved’ is a strong word. I was there.”
“I was hoping you’d tell me what happened.”
“I told the officer who interviewed me what I saw—nothing. Other than the three judges throwing up.”
“I know. I read the reports. I’m after the intangibles you wouldn’t mention to the cops—your impressions of the people who were there, of the events. I trust your instincts.”
I was pleased but didn’t want to show it. “Here, make yourself useful. Hold the bag open,” I said, thrusting it at him. His hands were strong and work-roughened, with long fingers and nails trimmed short. For a brief second, I imagined what they’d feel like against my skin, then jerked my mind back into line. I told him as much as I could remember while scooping armfuls of branches into the bag.
He was quiet for a moment when I’d finished, yanking the tie closed around the bag’s neck. “What about the protestors who came in? Did you see them anywhere near the cooler with the drinks?”
I thought about it. “No. They came into the dayroom and sat beside a woman she said was her grandmother.”
“She wasn’t,” he said.
No surprise there. “So you think someone poisoned the stuff in the cooler? That means Darryl is in the clear, right?”
“Ipecac,” he said. “Someone doctored the water bottles with ipecac—the berry and papaya flavors hid the taste. Easy to get, impossible to trace. Problem is, they came from the fridge in the judges’ room at the theater—anyone with access to the theater could’ve put the ipecac in any time during the past week, which leaves Michaelson squarely in the picture.” He hoisted the yard bag to his shoulder. “Where do you want this?”
I led him around the side of the house to the garbage cans in the back. He put the bag into a galvanized aluminum can and clanged on the lid. “I keep meaning to start a compost heap,” I said, “but somehow I never get around to it.”
He smiled, his teeth very white against his tanned skin. “If you get one going, I can let you have some manure.”
I wondered where he boarded his horses. “You really know how to wow a girl with gifts, don’t you?”
“Flowers and candy are so commonplace,” he said. “I like to be original.” His smile grew and the look in his eyes made my tummy flutter. “Why don’t you come out to the stables with me Sunday afternoon? We can ride, then stop for dinner on the way back. I know an inn that doesn’t mind if we smell like horses.”
My mouth opened slightly. He was asking me for a date. And I surprised myself with how much I wanted to go. Then I remembered. “Marty’s coming this weekend,” I said. My tummy twisted in the kind of knots it hadn’t experienced since Jeff Albright asked me to the prom my junior year after I’d already told Hank I’d go with him—our first date. I sometimes wondered how things might have turned out if Jeff had asked first. Maybe Hank and I would never have ended up as a couple. No way to know.
Dillon froze for a moment, then said lightly, “Ah. Well, maybe another time.”
“He’s replacing Ted Gaines as a pageant judge.” Why was I trying to make it seem like Marty wasn’t coming to see me?
“Tell him to be careful,” Dillon said.
I hadn’t even thought about Marty being in danger as a judge. I was a world-class idiot.
Agent Dillon started back around the house. I trotted after him. “Is it true that Audrey was pregnant?” I asked as we stopped by his car.
He banged his palm on the hood. “Damn it! Where did you hear that?” His eyes were the cold blue of the deepest sea now, not the sun-flecked navy of earlier. He waited for my answer.
“Around.” I didn’t want to get Mrs. Jones’s niece in trouble.
A muscle in his jaw worked but he didn’t pursue it. “Don’t repeat it,” he said. “We’re trying to keep that piece of information confidential.”
“Was it Darryl’s?” My voice came out as a whisper.
“We’re running DNA tests,” he said.
His tone said they wouldn’t be sharing the results with nosy civilians. I wanted to ask if he really thought Darryl was guilty. I wanted to ask for a rain check on the horseback riding. I wanted the easy camaraderie of just a few moments earlier that had disappeared with my question about the pregnancy. I wanted . . . I didn’t know exactly what I wanted. The grim set of his mouth intimidated me. “Thanks for helping with the yard,” I said feebly.
He hesitated a moment, as if he wanted to say something, but then nodded and climbed into the car. I watched until he was out of sight.
I WALKED OVER TO MOM’S A FEW MINUTES BEFORE six, letting myself into the kitchen. Balsamic vinegar and olive oil scented the air. Peach cobbler cooled on the counter. Mom had set the kitchen table for five with a white tablecloth patterned with deep red picnickers in rural scenes and white cloth napkins. She was pulling a cookie sheet with two loaves of French bread from the oven when I came in. Her cheeks were flushed and a hint of perspiration fogged her glasses.
“You’ve been working too hard,” I said, shutting the oven door.
“I wanted Althea to know I’d made an effort,” she said. Wearing pale blue linen slacks, a striped shirt, and sandals with seashells glued to the straps, she looked attractive and pulled together. Her gray and white hair spiked softly around her head and she’d put on a bit more makeup than usual. She was going all-out to impress Althea’s new guy. I’d done my best by putting on a halter-neck sundress patterned with leaves and pulling my blond-highlighted hair back from my face with a sparkly comb.
“Am I early, Miss Violetta?” Walter Highsmith came through the door carrying a bottle of wine. “Good evening, Grace.”
“Right on time.” Mom smiled and he kissed her cheek, stepping back quickly as if afraid he’d been presumptuous. A short, plump man with a goatee and a mustache waxed into loops, Walter usually wore a Confederate uniform, especially when working in his Civil War memorabilia shop. Tonight, though, he had on tan slacks and a short-sleeved yellow shirt. In a weird way, the modern clothes seemed out of place on him with his courtly airs and formal speech patterns. The tip of his nose quivered as he sniffed the air. “Smells heavenly,” he said. “The pinot grigio I brought should enhance the flavors nicely.”
A pro forma knock heralded the entrance of Althea and Kwasi Yarrow. She wore a cream-colored caftan embroidered with brown, and wooden bangles on both arms. He was dressed in a tunic-style top and baggy pants in a roughwoven green cotton. He had one of those pillbox sort of hats on his head, green with a band of gold and cream fabric. Cultural statement or bald spot cover-up? He carried a bouquet of grasses and seed pods with one large, red bloom I didn’t recognize and handed them to my mother. Kind of classy.
“Thank you for inviting me this evening, Violetta,” he said as Althea performed the introductions. “Althea has told me so much about you and your daughter that I was anxious to meet you.”
“We’ve already met, sort of,” I said, extending my hand. “Grace.”
“Yes. Outside the theater. Perhaps you will let me explain why beauty pageants are so objectionable? I am quite certain that you would not lend your talents to one if you understood the evil they do.” His light brown eyes fixed on mine and I could see how he convinced college students to participate in the protests: he had a faint shimmer of charisma. He wasn’t JFK or Princess Di, but he had something.
What could I say? He was a guest in my mother’s house. “Uh, sure. I’d like to hear your position.”
“Would you like something to drink?” Mom asked. “Beer, wine?”
“I don’t drink alcohol,” Kwasi said. “Perhaps just a glass of water?”
It’s fine with me if someone doesn’t drink—I prefer tea or diet root beer to alcohol more often than not—but there was just a hint of rebuke in Kwasi’s voice that ruffled my feathers. Walter put down the bottle he’d brought with a crestfallen air.
“Just water for me, too, Vi,” Althea said.
I stared at her. Althea loved wine. I studied her from under my lashes for a moment. She seemed unusually subdued; she’d hardly said anything. Normally by now she’d have insulted me at least twice and had us laughing or arguing so hard we forgot all about food. I let Walter pour me a glass of his wine and fetched waters for Althea and Kwasi. Mom already had a beer going.
“I’ll help you put those in water, Vi,” Althea said. She tugged the bouquet from Mom’s grasp. “You two go out on the veranda. We’ll call when dinner’s ready. We don’t need you underfoot while we’re trying to get food on the table.” She made shooing motions, looking and sounding much more like the pre-Kwasi Althea.
“Walter, will you help me with the rice?” Mom asked her friend, sparing him the need to decide which group to join.
“We’ve got our marching orders,” I told Kwasi, gesturing toward the door that would lead us through the salon to the veranda.
He looked with interest at the salon as we passed through it. “I very much admire your mother for making a success of this business when her husband died,” he said, running a hand over the glass brick half wall separating the shampoo sink from the styling stations.
“Althea played a big part,” I said.
He nodded. “When I was in Kenya and Rwanda last year, I was interested to see how many women are starting cottage industries, not even on this scale, to earn some money. They get micro-loans and purchase a loom or a sewing machine. They are quite successful with textiles. I try to support them by purchasing as much of my clothing as is practical from them, including my kufi.” He patted the hat.
“Mom started out with just a chair and some shears in her kitchen,” I said. “Do you get to Africa often?”
We pushed through the door to the veranda. I indicated the Adirondack chairs, but he wandered to the rail and stood looking out at the yard and the street beyond, where a fair number of tourists still wandered, looking for predinner watering holes. He took a swallow of water and the ice clinked. “Since I first went there with the Peace Corps just after college, I try to get back at least every other year.”
“You were with the Peace Corps?”
He nodded. “Before I became interested in the politics of oppression, I got a degree in civil engineering. It came in most useful in small villages without indoor plumbing or sewage-treatment facilities.”
Despite myself, I found a lot to admire in what Kwasi had accomplished. “Did you get your CE degree from Berkeley, or is that where you went for your PhD?” Maybe he and Audrey
had
been students together if he’d gone back to grad school some years after his Peace Corps experiences.
He stilled. “What makes you think I went to Berkeley?”
“You didn’t?”
“As it happens, that’s where I got my PhD. I was just curious how you knew.” His voice was insistent and I knew he wouldn’t let me duck the question.
“I heard someone mention it. Maybe one of your students? It caught my attention because that’s where Audrey Faye went, too. And Sam Barnes.”
“Really? I wonder if we ever crossed paths? I hope they were not killed by someone with a vendetta against Berkeley grads. Perhaps even now an assassin has me in his scope.” He threw his arms wide as if to embrace a bullet.
Now, there was a new thought. I dismissed it after a nanosecond. Audrey and Barnes weren’t killed by a Berkeley hater. “Don’t you think it’s more likely they died because of something to do with the pageant?” I asked. I noticed he hadn’t denied knowing either Audrey or Barnes.
“Absolutely.” He set his glass on the railing and turned to face me. “Beauty contests proliferate evil in many different ways—in undermining self-esteem, in promoting unrealistic images of women, in encouraging eating disorders, yes, even in killing.”
I slapped at a mosquito on my neck. “I think you’d have to admit that deaths related to beauty pageants are pretty rare,” I said skeptically.
Steepling his fingers together, he pressed them against his pursed lips. “Not so rare as you might assume. Especially not if one extends the definition of ‘beauty contest’ to such activities as cheerleading, modeling, and other socalled sports or careers that exploit a woman’s appearance. There was that cheerleading murder in Texas and a woman died competing in the Miss Magnolia Blossom pageant just three or four years ago.”
“I heard about that—she had a heart attack. That’s hardly the pageant’s fault.”
Kwasi shook his head as if I were a slow student missing the point. “Her name was Leda Wissing. She was twenty. Yes, the official cause of death was a heart attack, but who knows how she might have abused diet pills or over-exercised in her drive to win. The unrealistic standard of beauty propagated in this society is what killed her.”
“How sad.”
“Exactly,” Kwasi said in a softer voice. “It’s tragic. And everyone who promotes a pageant or participates in one in any way, or spectates at one, contributes to the tragedy.”
I expected him to level a forefinger at me and proclaim: “You, Grace Terhune, are guilty!”
I preempted him by asking, “Do the students know before they sign up for your class that they’ll be protesting at beauty pageants? How does that work into their grades?”
He looked at me like I’d lost my mind. “Protesting is not a matter of grades; it’s a matter of conscience. I don’t prearrange protests for the students. As the conversation develops in the classroom, sometimes one or another of the students will speak up and suggest we protest a particular event or organization. Only those students whose consciences push them to it participate. This is the first time someone’s suggested protesting at a pageant.”
An ambulance siren
whee-whoo
ed in the distance and a heron glided overhead. I was about to ask him which student had suggested protesting at the Miss Magnolia Blossom pageant when Althea appeared at the door and told us dinner was ready and to get our butts to the table before it got cold.