Derby Divas (Zoe Donovan Mystery) (14 page)

“No
. He was sharing with Crusher,” Boomer answered.

“But Crusher was
n’t at the party in your room?” I verified.

“No, but neither was Zelda
, so I’m thinking they were hooking up.”

“Okay, so the room might have been unoccupied and
Dezee and Pepper might have gone back there to be alone. I think one of you should talk to Crusher and have a look around the room to see if you can find anything that might give us a clue as to whether Pepper and Dezee were in the room, and where they might have gone after they left.”

“Okay,
” Boomer and Pandora agreed.

“I
’m going to call Zak to see if he’ll come home to do a Web search for us. I want to know everything there is to know about Stella Worthington. Do we know Dezee’s real name?”

Pandora and Boomer looked at each other and shrugged.

“I’ll check with Willa. I’m pretty sure the contestants must have drivers’ licenses on file in order to participate in the parade. Maybe I can track down his family to see if they’ve heard from him. Call me if you find anything significant; otherwise let’s all meet up in the morning to plan our next move.”

I called Zak, who left Scooter with Ellie before meeting Levi and me at his house. A very enthusiastic Charlie greeted me as I walked through the front door. Charlie had been having fun with Zak, Scooter, and Bella the past couple of days, but I knew he missed me as well. The two of us actually spend very little time apart. The fact that he is a certified therapy dog allows me to take him pretty much everywhere I go, so we aren’t used to spending significant stretches away from each other.

“I’
ve got a couple of desktops all set up to go,” Zak informed me after kissing me hello. “The search engine is a lot faster than anything I have on any of my laptops. I figure if we find anything you want to look at, I can keep searching while you read. Where do we start?”

“Let’s start with Pepper. According to Salinger
, she’s actually heiress Stella Worthington of the Worthington Aeronautics family.”

Zak typed in a command and several photos popped up. It was definitely her.
I looked at the photos while Levi checked the score of the baseball game on his phone. I knew he cared about what happened to Pepper and Dezee, but he tended to have a short attention span when it came to computer work.

There were dozens
if not hundreds of photos of Pepper: competing in equestrian competitions, attending benefits, and accompanying her parents to exotic locations all over the world. According to the accompanying news articles, she was the only child of the wealthy couple and therefore the sole heir to a vast fortune.

I scanned through a sampling of photos of her as a child. She was beautiful
, with a huge smile and dancing eyes. Based on the photos I’d accessed, it looked like she’d been happy, with a fabulous childhood, but as she got older, her enthusiastic smile morphed into a frown and the light in her eyes was replaced with a look of despair. I had to wonder what had occurred to bring on such a big change.

“Here
’s an article about when she fell and dislocated her shoulder,” I said, bringing to an end any doubts I might have had as to her parents’ insistence that the body in the morgue couldn’t be their daughter.

I studied a photo of Pepper’s thirteenth birthday. The smile was still firmly in place
, so whatever occurred in her life to cause her to leave everything behind most likely had occurred after that point.

“Wow, she was raised like royalty,” I commented as I continued to look through the photos. “She went to the best school
s, had important friends, and traveled the world.”

“Why would anyone leave that behind?” Levi wondered.

“I suppose that the saying that money can’t buy happiness is probably true.”

I looked at Zak
, who just winked at me. I was pretty sure I knew what brought him happiness and it wasn’t money.

“Look at this
.” I sat back so that Zak and Levi could see the photo I was looking at. “Here’s a photo of Pepper at her Sweet Sixteen party. Do you see that girl standing next to her?”

“Yeah. So?” Levi asked.

“It says her name is Isabelle Stanford, but she looks familiar to me.”

Levi frowned. “Maybe she has one of those faces that looks like someone
else.”

“Maybe.”

I continued to look through the photos until I found a photo of Pepper’s graduation from a very exclusive girls’ school. Isabelle was standing off to the side and behind her rather than next to her, as in several of the other photos. Neither girl was smiling. The series of photos I studied, which had to have been taken between Stella’s sixteenth birthday and her high school graduation, featured several girls who were included in all of the photos. I’m not sure why I focused in on Isabelle rather than the other girls who must have been close to Pepper when she was growing up. The more I stared at Isabelle, the more certain I was that I’d seen her somewhere before. Could she have attended one of the events I’d been to this week? It made sense that she might, if she was friends with Pepper.

I found a couple
of other photos after graduation, all of which featured an unsmiling Pepper. Isabelle seemed to have disappeared after graduation. At least she was no longer part of the crowd surrounding Pepper. Perhaps they’d had a falling-out? Could the reason for the falling-out be the catalyst that had caused Pepper’s beautiful smile to fade?

“Do we know when Pepper joined up with Pandora?” I asked.

“Pandora said something about three years,” Levi answered.

“And do we know how old she is?”

“According to her driver’s license, she’s twenty-two,” Zak informed me.

“So if we assume she graduated high school at eighteen and joined the
divas three years ago, she must have joined them about a year after she graduated high school, which is about the time the photos of her stopped.”

“So?” Levi asked.

Yeah, so? I realized the fact that I was beginning to establish a timeline and a possible motive for Pepper leaving her family didn’t help us find her. It also didn’t help us identify the body in the morgue or figure out who drugged Pandora or rigged her car. I’d tried to get Willa on the phone to ask about Dezee’s driver’s license in an attempt to learn his real name, but she hadn’t answered or returned my calls. I realized she was busy with the events in town.

“Anyone want to go to the chili cook
-off?” I asked.

By the time we returned to town
, the walkways along Main Street were packed with spectators waiting to cheer on the classic cars as they cruised by to the music of the fifties and sixties. Levi and I saved a place in front of Rosie’s Café while Zak went to fetch Scooter from Ellie. We’d decided to leave the dogs at home because of the crowds that were expected to descend on our little town by the time the park lit up with the thousands of twinkle lights volunteers had strung onto every tree they could reach.

“Y
ou made it.” Mom kissed me and then handed Harper over to me as she and my dad squeezed in beside us.

“Couldn’t miss the parade.” I kissed Harper on the cheek. She was dressed in an adorable pink skirt with a white poodle stitched
on the front and a white cardigan sweater over a pink onesie. Ankle socks and white leather shoes rounded out the outfit. I was certain there had never been a cuter baby in the history of all babies anywhere.

“Harper looks adorable. Where did you find this outfit?”

“From a retro baby store online,” Mom answered. “I thought you were going to dress up?”

“Long day
, no time or energy,” I answered. “You guys look cute.”

Mom had on lim
e green capris and a bright yellow top and my dad was wearing blue jeans with the cuffs rolled up and a white T-shirt with the sleeves folded over what I suspected was a deck of cards because he didn’t smoke. He also wore white tube socks with black dress shoes, giving him a retro if not dorky look. I loved it.

“Thanks,
” Mom answered. “I just love the bright colors of the sixties, and your dad looks so handsome in his Levi’s. Where’s Zak?”

“He went to get Scooter
, who’s been hanging out with Ellie for the past couple of hours. He should be here any minute. Are you going to the chili cook-off?”

“Wouldn’t miss it,
” Mom answered. “I had lunch with Ava from our birthing class last week, and she told me that she was entering a vegetarian black bean version that sounds delicious.”

“How is Jasmine doing?”

Jasmine is Ava’s baby, who’s about three weeks older than Harper. It seemed like Mom and Ava were developing a close friendship, even though Ava was at least ten years younger than her. I was happy to see Mom putting down roots. In my own mind, with every friend she made or group she joined, she was just a bit less likely to pack up and leave, as she had so many times before.

“She’s doing really
well, considering the rough start she had.”

Jasmine had been born six weeks premature
, weighing less than five pounds.

“She’s almost caught up to Harper in terms of weight. Ava has decided that she feels secure enough to leave her for a few hours a week
, so we hired a friend of Hazel’s to watch the girls and have started volunteering at the library two afternoons a week during the children’s reading hour. I didn’t think I’d like spending
that
much time with
that
many kids, but Ava persuaded me to give it a try and I love it.”

“That’s wonderful
.” I smiled. “Are you still doing the spin class on Tuesday and Thursday evenings?”

“As often as I can. I think I’m pretty close to talking Ava into doing it with me
, now that her husband got his hours switched from swing to days and is home in the evenings to watch Jasmine. By the way, how did the derby go?”

“Surprisingly well
, considering. Pandora, Boomer, Jaqui, Masher, Zelda, and Crusher are all in the finals. It should be a really good contest.”

“Heard any more a
bout the accident?” Dad joined the conversation.

“Some
, but I really can’t discuss it right now. Maybe I can stop by the house tomorrow, where we can talk in private?”

“Come for breakfast,”
Mom invited.

“I’d love to
, but I have a seven a.m. meeting. Dad does as well.”

“Oh
, that’s right. I’d forgotten. Just come by whenever you can get away.”

I turned to watch the long row of cars slowly drive by. There were a variety of makes and models in a rainbow of colors. Most
of the cars originally had been manufactured in the sixties and seventies, but there were several from the fifties and a few from the thirties and forties. My favorites were the large sedans from the fifties and sixties.

“Now there’s a car with solid bones
.” Dad whistled as a ’57 Chevy Bel Air Sport Sedan, red with a white top, slowly drove by. The car had been meticulously restored and maintained.

“It really is a beautiful
car,” I commented. “I bet it cost a pretty penny to restore.”

“
And worth every penny. They don’t make them like that anymore. Your pappy had one just like that when I was a kid. He got it new and kept it until after I’d graduated high school and left home.”

“What happened to it?” I
asked.

“He sold it to pay for th
e European vacation he took your grandma on for their anniversary. He said it was her dream, and he wanted to be sure she was able to fulfill it before they were both too old to enjoy it.”

I looked around as a stepside truck from the mid-fifties rolled by.

“Where is Pappy anyway? I thought he might come with you.”

“Nick entered the chili contest and Pappy is helping him,” Dad informed me.
“They’re doing a version with shredded beef and just a bit of a kick. I had a small taste earlier and it was fantastic.”

If my dad said it had
“a bit of a kick,” that most likely meant it was so hot it was inedible to most. Dad and I like our chili spicy.

“I can’t wait to try it.
” The chili cook-off was my dad’s baby, so I asked him how it was going.

“Good
,” he said. “We have eight entrants. The judging has already taken place, although the winner won’t be announced until later. The chili is available for purchase if you’re hungry. All the proceeds go to the library this year.”

“Actually, I’m starving.”

I waved at Zak, who was pushing his way through the crowd with Scooter on his shoulders. Scooter had the biggest smile I’d ever seen. He was obviously enjoying his time with Zak, and based on Zak’s own grin, I’d say he was having a wonderful time as well.