Polished Off (24 page)

“I think you’ll be able to handle it,” I said drily.

Leading the way up the steps, I pushed through the doors and into the foyer. Rhythmic sounds of something rasping against wood filtered from the auditorium.

“What the hell is that?” Marty asked as I bumped open the door with my hip. He crowded behind me to see over my shoulder.

Marv, the theater owner, hunched on all fours on the stage, his right arm scrubbing back and forth. He looked up at the sounds we made or the light we let in.

“Come on in,” he called. “I’m almost done.” He stood and let something thud to the floor.

As we got closer to the stage, I saw that the tool he had dropped was a sanding block. A fine grit coated the stage for several feet around Marv, who wore rubber gloves, pads around the knees of his faded jeans, and a paper face mask, which he pulled down.

He followed the direction of my glance. “The whole stage needs refinishing,” he said. “Maybe this will get me motivated.”

I gathered that by “this” he meant having to clean up after Barnes’s murder. “Aren’t there companies that do this sort of thing? Biohazard cleanup and stuff?” I asked.

“They cost money,” he said simply. He looked at Marty and I introduced them. “You wouldn’t happen to want to buy a theater, would you?” he asked.

“Sorry, no,” Marty said, clearly tickled by Marv’s lugubriousness. “Not my line.”

“Not mine, either,” Marv said glumly. “It’s a goddamned millstone around my neck.”

“Burn it down for the insurance,” Marty suggested.

I punched his arm. “Not funny.”

“I think Aunt Nan tried that back in the eighties, but the only thing that burned before the fire department got here was the set for a production of
Mame
. Kitty Carlisle was going to be in it. Remember her from
What’s My Line
? The investigator said there was a short in the lighting, so maybe Aunt Nan didn’t really have anything to do with it. I’m around if you need me. A couple of the contestants are here, doing something with their gowns.” He wandered offstage, stripping off his gloves as he went.

“Is it kosher for me to meet the contestants?” Marty asked as we followed Marv.

“I don’t know why not. The other judges have been hanging out with them at photo shoots and whatnot all week.”

“Lead on, then.”

As we rounded the corner near the Green Room, angry voices bounced off the walls.

“I don’t effing believe this! You’re trying to sabotage me because you know I’m going to win.”

“I didn’t do it! You so need to get over yourself. There are other girls in this pageant, you know.”

Marty and I exchanged a look and hurried toward the Green Room. We paused on the threshold to see Tabitha and Rachel glaring at each other, a cloud of white chiffon on the floor between them.

“Look what she did to my dress!” Tabitha said, swinging around to face us. She wore low-cut jeans that fit like skin and a cropped top that displayed her tanned and toned abdomen. I noticed Marty noticing.

“She’s, like, off her meds,” Rachel said, looking as angry as I’d ever seen her. “Someone cut up my dress, too.” She held up a handful of blue taffeta, fluffing it out to show where quarter-sized holes and bigger gouges rent the material. Either a moth on speed or a very disturbed person with scissors had had a field day.

“Are they all like this?” Marty asked.

“I don’t know. We didn’t check,” Rachel said. She crossed to the rack that held plastic-swathed evening gowns and lifted the plastic away from a red number. “Yep. This one’s chopped up, too,” she said. “It’s Brooke’s, I think.”

Marty and I watched as she and Tabitha inspected the other girls’ dresses. “All of them,” Tabitha said, frowning.

“You might say ‘sorry,’ ” Rachel prompted the other girl.

“Hmph.”

I didn’t get the feeling that “sorry” was a word Tabitha bothered with often. “Someone didn’t want you to see the damage until it was too late,” I said. “That’s why she put the plastic back over them and cleaned up all the fabric bits.” I gestured at the clean floor.

Marty nodded. “Yeah. If you’d come in to dress for the competition tonight and found the gowns like this, it would’ve been too late to do anything about it.”

“Why ‘she’?” Rachel asked.

I knit my brows. “I don’t know why I said that. It just feels like something a woman would do, cut bits and pieces out. But it could’ve been a man.”

“We need to call the other contestants,” Rachel said.

“I don’t have time,” Tabitha said breezily. “I’ve got to go shopping for a new dress.” She sashayed out, casting Marty a speculative look on her way.

“Witch,” Rachel muttered.

“I’ll help you make the calls,” I said. “And we should let Jodi know.”

“And the police,” Marty put in.

TWO HOURS LATER, I FOUND MYSELF ALONE WITH Rachel, the ruined dress draped over her lap. The police and other contestants had come and gone. Jodi had shown up, wrung her hands, implored the police or Marv to post a guard, and hustled Marty off for a “pageant briefing.”

“I can’t afford another evening dress,” Rachel said, looking forlorn. “I got this one at the Goodwill store for twenty-five bucks. Willow helped me pick it out.”

“Let me think.” I wished I had the cash on hand to buy Rachel a new gown, but I didn’t. I eyed Rachel closely. “You’re not too much shorter than Stella. I have an idea.”

I got hold of Stella at her mother’s house and explained the problem. “Maybe I can help,” she said. “Meet me at my house in fifteen minutes.”

Darryl answered the door when Rachel and I knocked. He looked bleary-eyed and surprised to see us. No more surprised than I was to see him; I’d forgotten he was staying there. “Stella asked us to meet her here,” I explained.

“Sure,” he said dully, pulling the door wider. “C’mon in. Is she coming over?” A flicker of hope lit his eyes.

Stella’s car pulling up answered his question. He stood at the door, watching her come up the sidewalk, hunger and remorse and hope roiling in his expression. He leaned forward as if to kiss Stella’s cheek when she reached the stoop, but she ducked away.

“We’ll just be here a minute, Darryl,” she said coolly. “We won’t bother you.”

“It’s no bother,” he said. “This is your home.”

Stella didn’t respond. She turned right down the hall and pushed open the door to a small bedroom. “In here,” she called. Rachel and I followed her. I, at least, felt the tension between Stella and Darryl like something that congealed the air, making it hard to reach the bedroom, a guest room with a double bed covered with a crazy quilt and a small chest of drawers. Stella was on tiptoe in front of a closet, hauling down a long, rectangular box.

“I haven’t looked at this in ages,” she said, laying it gently on the bed. At the puzzled look in Rachel’s eyes, she asked, “Didn’t Grace tell you? This is the evening gown I bought for my one and only pageant appearance. If we shorten it, I think it will work on you.” She lifted the lid and unfolded a layer of tissue paper. A pink dress with a sweetheart neckline and padded shoulders—very ’80s—shimmered in the box. Stella lifted it out and the satin skirt cascaded to the carpet. “We could maybe cut out the pads, too,” Stella said, “and make it look more ‘now.’ Want to try it on?”

Rachel nodded. I closed the door, catching a glimpse of Darryl still hovering in the foyer, and Rachel stripped down to bra and panties before slipping the dress over her head. Stella zipped it for her and stepped back.

“Oh, Rachel,” she breathed. “You look just lovely.”

She did look beautiful. The pink gave a pearly sheen to her skin and set off her dark hair dramatically. The expression on her face, though, detracted from the effect.

“What?” I asked.

She screwed up her face, staring at her reflection in the full-length mirror on the back of the door. “It’s awfully
sweet
.”

“It
is
sweet on you,” Stella said, apparently not understanding that Rachel didn’t mean it as a compliment. She dropped to her knees and fussed with the hem. “If you have a pair of three- or four-inch heels, I don’t even think we’ll need to hem it. Just be careful when you walk.”

Indecision clouded Rachel’s face and I could see she didn’t want to hurt Stella’s feelings by telling her she didn’t like the dress. But the way she tugged at the bodice and ran a finger under the sleeve where it ended at her wrist told me she wasn’t comfortable in it.

“I feel like Cinderella after the fairy godmother has, like, bippity-boppity-booed her,” she complained.

“Exactly!” Stella said, clasping her hands together and gazing up at Rachel with admiring eyes.

“What if Cinderella wanted a black dress?” Rachel asked.

“She knew better than to look a gift horse in the mouth,” I said warningly. I appreciated Rachel’s dilemma, but it was giving Stella pleasure to do something kind for the girl and to relive her own pageant days. Stella needed a lift, and I didn’t think it would kill Rachel to pretend she loved the dress.

“You don’t like it?” Stella asked, hurt crumpling her face.

“It’s fab,” Rachel said quickly. “I just, like, needed to get used to all the pink. I can absolutely win in this dress.”

Stella’s face cleared and I gave Rachel an approving nod. She shrugged and gave me a half smile. “You’re a good kid,” I whispered as I unzipped the dress.

We carefully refolded the gown and put it in the box. “Be careful when you iron it, or you might want to hang it in a steamy bathroom for a bit,” Stella suggested as we trooped back down the hall.

Darryl appeared from the direction of the kitchen; he’d clearly been listening for us. He wiped his hands down his jeaned thighs. “Stel, can we talk?”

“I don’t think so,” she said with a brittle smile. “I promised my mom I’d do the grocery shopping while she was gone and then I’ve got to get over to the theater.”

“We need to talk,” he said, an edge creeping into his voice.

“Actions speak louder than words,” she said sadly. She held up a hand to cut him off when he would have responded. “I’ve got to go. Come on, Rach, Grace.” She shepherded us out the door, carrying the dress box as if it were full of Ming dynasty porcelain.

 

 

I PICKED UP MARTY OUTSIDE THE OGLETHORPE and drove to The Pirate for lunch. At the far south end of the boardwalk, The Roving Pirate had a deck with beautiful sea views and the marsh stretching out behind it. It’s too far from the center of town to be a real tourist haunt, so locals tend to congregate there. At one o’clock on a Friday afternoon, we had the place to ourselves except for two men in work clothes and boots watching a Braves game at the bar.

We sat by the windows—it was way too hot to eat on the deck—and I ordered a tuna salad sandwich while Marty got crab patties.

“So, what did you think?” I asked around a mouthful of sandwich.

“About?”

“The pageant. Jodi. Everything.”

He watched a pair of gulls wheeling outside the window. “That Jodi’s a piece of work. Talk about organized! But she is wound way too tight over this pageant—she seems to think that if anything bad happens on her watch—”

“Like more murders?”

“—that her career with the Miss American Blossom organization will be kaput. She’s bound and determined to earn a spot on the national board. If I were the prankster—whoever it is ripping up gowns and leaving roadkill around—I’d be watching my back. I get the feeling Ms. Jodi Keen takes no prisoners when it comes to climbing the career ladder.” He ripped a bite from his crab patty and chewed, possibly to demonstrate what would happen to anyone who got in Jodi’s way.

“You said ‘prankster,’ not murderer. You don’t think they’re the same person?”

He shook his head, still chewing. “Hell, no,” he mumbled.

I waited, thinking about it, until he swallowed. “Audrey’s murder is way out of line in terms of seriousness with the sabotage incidents, isn’t it?” I asked. “There was the screwup with the advertising materials, then the sprinkler ruining a few dresses, then Kiley’s mats being cut.”

“I just can’t see someone leaping from those penny-ante acts to murder,” Marty agreed.

“Unless maybe Audrey caught whoever in the act? And he or she overreacted and stabbed her with Stella’s file?”

“I suppose that’s possible, but then why go back to tricks like booby-trapping the swimsuit—pun intended—and hacking up the dresses? Personally, if I’d murdered someone without meaning to, I’d be lying low. Like in Honduras, say.”

“It’d be even hotter and muggier there than it is here. If I become a fugitive, I’m heading north.”

“Noted.” He grinned and leaned over the table to wipe a crumb from the corner of my mouth.

His touch distracted me for a moment, but I got back on track. “So, maybe what we’re dealing with is a saboteur who has a grudge against beauty pageants and a murderer with a grudge against Audrey Faye.”