Die Smiling (8 page)

A glance at my trusty old Timex told me that I'd have just enough time to hightail it to Cedar Bend Lodge and nose around the pageant before Black's helicopter set down. The traffic was terrible and my rotten mood devolved in graduated stages from horrible to foul to mad as hell by the time I drove through the great stone gate that heralded my honey's resort for the rich and neurotic. It was beautiful, of course; everything Nick owned was rated in the stratospheres with more stars than Colin Powell's epaulets. I passed through the smooth, impossibly green golf courses, and admired the flowers, flowers, and more flowers. You name it—baskets, giant decorative urns, manicured beds, Black's domain made Epcot Center look like the Mojave Desert. But the place smelled great when everything was blooming. Couldn't knock that.

As soon as I drove under a portico constructed of stacked rock pillars and braked at the massive cut-glass doors of the gargantuan lobby, a valet in his black-and-gold uniform was at my window ready to serve/sustain my every whim. My intimate relationship with the good doctor had gotten around among his employees, no doubt, and was I ever treated like royalty around this place. A decided perk that I wasn't exactly used to, but probably could get used to fast. Love, even.

The valet was a young high school kid named Rob that I'd seen a couple of times around the resort. He was tall, with dark hair and big cocoa-colored eyes, nice looking, pleasant, and always had a wide smile lighting up his face.

He said, “Good afternoon, Detective Morgan. Would you like me to park your car?”

See what I mean about pleasant? The description of the afternoon was debatable, however, considering the pair of butchered lips I'd encountered earlier in a drain and couldn't erase from my mind no matter how hard I tried, but my smile was gracious. My life wasn't this kid's fault. “Has Doctor Black made it in from California yet?”

“No, ma'am, but they're expectin' him out at the heliport any time now. Everybody's sure all stressed out about this pageant that's goin' on.”

“Yeah, must be bad for you, having to take care of all these gorgeous bathing beauties pulling their cars up out here.”

“Yeah, breaks my heart. I dreaded this all week long.” He grinned. Yep, he was a real hottie close up. He looked about sixteen or seventeen, and now I could see the waves in his hair and that his eyes were more the color of burnt cinnamon toast, which was the kind I usually make. He was still talking. “I skipped school today so I'd get to see these beauty contestants up close and personal. Some of them are models, too. I never did meet a real live model till today. They tip good, too.”

I smiled and wished they all really were alive as I watched him drive off in my mud-splattered Explorer. Then I strode cross the lobby in search of the pageant-festive ballroom. It turned out the glorious festivities would be held in the Ozark Ballroom, the biggest and most crystal chandeliered of the three, all of which were magnificently appointed, of course. Ozark just won the glitz and glamour prize, is all.

Down long hallways, elegantly carpeted in black and tan, I trod until I finally saw half a dozen identical, black velvet–draped double doors, with workers scurrying in and out like ants on a honey spill. At one end of the gigantic room, a team of carpenters hammered like crazy on a stage and an attached fifty-foot runway, all under the screechy supervision of a young woman, tall and thin enough to be Twiggy's progeny. By her shrilly intoned instructions, however, I decided she was the pageant coordinator and made a beeline straight to her vicinity.

“Pardon me, ma'am. Are you Patricia Cardamon?”

The lady turned and looked me over with every intention of dismissing me pronto and ASAP; she had the haughty superiority that only a recently retired, ex-runway model could carry off. “Yes, I am she. May I help you?”

She might as well as tacked on at the end of her question,
You unworthy little pissant.
I had the time, so yeah, I looked her over, too. Up and down, even. She appeared to be mid-thirties, slender in an unhealthy, anorexic way but with good skin, good hair, good nails, good just about everything. Well, okay, good-looking seemed to be the word of the day. Sometimes I got downright suspicious that it couldn't be a coincidence that
all
Black's employees looked straight out of the pages of
GQ
and
Glamour
, all just as sleek and glossy, too. Maybe that was on Black's Cedar Bend employment application:
Please check the following that most describes your physical appearance: Drop-dead gorgeous, Beautiful, Pretty, Okay, Fair, Ugly, Butt-ugly. The last six need not apply.
Or maybe they just kept the ugly people in the basement.

“Yes, ma'am. My name is Claire Morgan, detective with the Canton County Sheriff's Department. We talked briefly on the telephone about twenty minutes ago.”

“Oh, yes, now I think I remember.”

Great. Patricia thought she remembered. One of the smart models. And she didn't seem pleased about it, either. I said, “As I told you on the telephone, I'm going to need a list of your contestants, as well as anyone else who has any kind of connection with this pageant.”

“Well, I must say, Detective, that this will certainly be an inconvenience at the moment. You do realize that this contest will be held day after tomorrow, not to mention the full dress rehearsal tomorrow morning. Really, you are asking a lot.”

Okay, the woman doesn't know about Hilde's terrible demise and can't know until I notify Black, so be nice, understanding, and benevolent. Coddle the nasty vixen. “Yes, ma'am, I understand that. However, you can rest assured that I do have a very good reason to inconvenience you this way. Official police business, in fact.”

Ms. Cardamon gave me the slight raised-eyebrow treatment, designed to cower me, I suppose, or she had raised it as much as she could manage with at least thirty-five Botox injections keeping her all smoothed out and wrinkle-less. “What do you mean by official police business? I assume Dr. Black has been informed of this request.” Did I mention the word haughty? Arrogant? Disdainful? Side effects of Botox poisoning? I do not know.

“That's precisely why I'm here today, Ms. Cardamon. To speak with Dr. Black about this situation. I understand he's due in about now.”

“Perhaps if you tell me what police business you're talking about and exactly what you need from Dr. Black, I could pass the word along to him. He's a good friend of mine, and a very busy man, as well. You will probably need to make an appointment with his personal assistant.”

Oookay, now Pattycakes was beginning to get on my nerves. What few I had left. Apparently she didn't know I was a pretty good amiga of the good doctor, too, hot and heavy, well past the mutual groping level, in fact, and going on for almost a year now, to be precise. I made a note to watch her face crumple when he showed her how much he liked me, too, even more than her, I suspect. But hell, I could be polite until then. I wouldn't cuss or kick her off her pointy-toed high heels, or even sneer at her.

“I'm acquainted with Dr. Black as well, and I'm afraid this will require a private audience with him. Thank you for offering to intercede.”

See how nice I can be when pushed to it? She nodded and somehow managed to re-arch that eyebrow into the frozen reaches of her forehead. I started to tell a joke to see if her face moved when she laughed, but decided I was behaving badly. Hateful, almost. “Now, if you could arrange to give me that list, I'd appreciate it. It would help as well if you would notify everybody involved that I'll be conducting interviews tomorrow, before, during and after the rehearsal. They need to schedule time to speak to me or to my partner, Bud Davis.”

“Oh, dear, that will just wreck my time schedule. Couldn't you do it the day after the pageant?”

Sure. Or maybe next Christmas Eve would do. I gave her a dead, unblinking stare until I got her undivided, if superiority-tinged, attention. “I'm not playing games here, Ms. Cardamon. I'll repeat this again. I'm here on official police business, and we'll need your complete cooperation.”

She made a sound closely akin to an old maid spinster's
harumph
. Couldn't say I'd ever heard anybody else do that, not to my face, anyway.

She said, “All right, Officer. I'll see what I can do.”

“See what you can do right now, why don't you?”

Ms. Cardamon stalked off in a huff and yelled at one of her assistants, who looked downright startled. Displaced aggression, oh yeah. Can't yell at the pushy policewoman? Abuse your helper; it'll make you feel oh, so much better. Good thing her Chihuahua was safe at home.

I sidled around a while, remaining inconspicuous while I watched the people still laboring on the elaborate set and lighting created to make all the girls look ten years younger. That would put some of the competing tots back in the womb, no doubt. There weren't any contestants present that I could tell. Not unless they were disguised as overweight carpenters and various and sundry handymen dressed in denim overalls and wearing John Deere caps. Probably all still over at Mr. Race's fisticuffing it out with Corkie for appointments. It took about fifteen minutes for Ms. Prissy Pants to get back to me with copies of her lists. I thanked her politely. She flounced off, no doubt to check the red carpet's walkability in spike heels factor.

Sinking down in a chair on the back row, I went over the names, thinking it was going to take us a whole bunch of time to check out all the people involved in putting on a show of this magnitude. Bud and I might have to enlist help from our colleagues at the station. They probably wouldn't mind; most of them were males. The
thut-thut
of an approaching helicopter sent my heart all a-twitter at approximately the same rotation velocity of the rotor blades. Embarrassed at my eager anticipation of Black's return to the fold, meaning me, I didn't even deign to glance out the big plate-glass windows facing the lake as his chopper glided by in all its black-and-tan magnificence. Well, okay, I did give it a quick sidelong glance, but it was too far away to see if Nick was piloting. Double embarrassed at how much I had missed him, I forced myself to sit still. I'd give him time to disembark and get upstairs to his penthouse office/apartment/utopia. There would be titillating advantages in showing up there right after he got home from a lengthy absence. Even with some very bad news in tow.

It took me a while to wend my way through the huge, sprawling resort anyway, but I had a card key to his ultra private, exclusive elevator. See how special I am? Myself and room service was about it as far as extra keys to the master's penthouse were concerned. He wouldn't be expecting me to be here, either. I could surprise him for once. He sure as the devil had surprised me enough times, not that I was complaining, they were usually off-the-chart good surprises.

The elevator whisked me up with a quiet whisper and whoosh and opened with silent efficiency into a lushly carpeted hallway sporting another huge expanse of plate-glass windows overlooking a glittering lake vista, a view to die for, oh yeah. When Black got home, he usually headed straight for the office wing, so I turned in that direction. Imagine my surprise when I saw a tall, raven-haired woman standing at his guest room door, her Gucci luggage all around her like adoring subjects. She turned around and believe me, I knew at once that this was no bellhop dropping off the guru's luggage.

“Oh, hello there,” she said.

Oh, hello there? That's when I recognized her. She looked just as good as she did on all her magazine covers, only ten times better. Bud had met her once in New York. He'd told me she was unbelievably gorgeous in person, with flawless skin and black-silk hair, but now I
really
believed him. Oh, yeah, it was Jude of the one name, all right. Black's famous ex-wife supermodel, a Venus de Milo blessed with both arms, and by the quizzical way she was looking at me, he hadn't mentioned me to her.

“Did I forget to tip you?”

Oh, man, did that ever smart. But I smiled, and real friendly like, too, not a grimace in sight.

“No need. Police officers aren't allowed.”

Recognition flared then inside those big, expertly defined, mascara-drenched, almond-shaped green eyes. “Oh, my goodness. You're Claire Morgan, aren't you? I recognize you now from all the newspaper photos. Nicky didn't tell me you were going to be here.”

No, I suspect he forgot to mention me at all. And
Nicky
, huh? Okay, Claire, be the adult you've always wanted to be. She's probably very nice or Black wouldn't have married her. Wouldn't have divorced her, either.

“Actually, I was at the hotel on official business and heard the chopper.” I sure was using the word
official
a lot of late. Even I noticed it.

“Well, good. I was hoping I'd get to meet you this week. Nicky told me all about you. You must be quite a woman to have him so ga-ga over you.”

Ga-ga? Now that made me want to gag-gag. And that's a hard question she posed, right? Let's see, should I say yes or no to being quite a woman? A quandary, to be sure. So I said, “It's nice to meet you, too, Jude.” I stuck out my hand. I could be a real gent when called for.