CHAPTER TWENTY
Indeed I am right. It’s Magnolia Flatt.
“Hey, Magnolia,” I say.
She grunts. She’s sweeping, and doesn’t look happy about it. She’s sporting plaid shorts that are two sizes too small and six inches too short. Her makeup has been applied with her usual bricklayer’s finesse. Her eyeliner looks about as thick as the stripes painted on the expressways back home.
“How are you doing?” I ask her.
“How does it look like I’m doing?”
“Doesn’t the hotel have people to do that?”
“Tell that to Cantwell.”
“Ah.” Now she’s making a half-assed attempt to sweep the dirt into a dustpan. “Is he kind of mad at you right now?”
“What gave you that idea, Einstein?”
Not only is her ineptness painful to watch, I decide I have an opportunity here. I grab the dustpan. “Let me help you.”
She eyes me and snickers. “In that get-up? I don’t think so. Cantwell will only blame me if you get dirty.”
“I won’t get dirty. Plus we’re done with the shoot anyway and this gown has to get dry cleaned when I get home.” I bend down and hold the dustpan. “Come on.”
We work in silence since I can’t think of an opening gambit. Eventually I plunge right in. “You know, I spoke with Misty about the whole videotaping thing.”
“So?”
“So there’s one thing I still don’t understand.”
“That’s your problem, queenie, not mine.”
“Listen, Magnolia.” I grab the broom and force her to look at me. “Do you or do you not want to keep your job with the Ms. America organization?”
She hems and haws a few times but finally answers. “Yeah, I want to keep it.”
“Okay, then. Maybe I can help you. I’m the new title-holder and so I have some yank with Mr. Cantwell.” If that’s true, it’s not because I’m the title-holder. It’s because I know he surreptitiously entertained murder victim Tiffany Amber in his penthouse suite. “I could intercede with him on your behalf. But I’m not going to if you keep being snarky and unhelpful.”
She rolls her eyes. “All right. Whaddaya wanna know?”
“I want to know what Misty meant when she said you didn’t get her the videotape she needed. What videotape was that?”
“You really wanna know?” She puts her hand on her hip. “All right, I’ll tell you. Videotape of Tiffany Amber and that torch guy Keola. Doing you know what. Or as close to them doing you know what as I could get.”
“Why would you agree to get that for her?”
“Because she said that if I didn’t, she’d go to Cantwell.”
“And tell him that you were trying to get damning video of one of the contestants to put up on YouTube.”
“And for sure he’d can my ass.”
“For sure he would.”
He still may
, is what I’m thinking. “So Misty must have been pretty ticked off that you couldn’t get the video of Tiffany and Keola.”
“Oh, I got it,” Magnolia says. “Only problem is, Tiffany saw me.”
“You’re kidding! What did she do?”
“She scared the bejesus out of me. I thought she was gonna rip me a new one.”
Boy, I wish I’d been a lizard on the lanai wall for that confrontation. It gives me the willies to imagine how livid uber competitive Tiffany Amber must have been on seeing her chance of winning the pageant about to evaporate. “You can’t be surprised she went ballistic.”
“Let’s just say she had no trouble prying out of me that Misty put me up to it.”
Knowing that her chief rival was behind the plot would’ve made Tiffany even more enraged. “Did she smack you or something?” I for one would put my money behind Tiffany in a cat fight.
“She grabbed the camera out of my hand and ripped out the memory card.”
I wonder what happened to the memory card. Maybe the cops found it in Tiffany’s hotel room. Maybe that, and not the smell of citronella, led them to Keola the morning after the finale.
“Then that Keola guy laughed,” Magnolia says, “and said Tiffany should do the exact same thing Misty did. Get me to videotape Misty and that chopper pilot guy and put that up on YouTube.”
Turnabout is fair play. And of course Keola knew about Dirk and Misty. I note that the more I learn about Keola, the more conniving he appears.
“Keola even knew where I could catch the two of them,” Magnolia says.
“Really? Where?”
“The chopper guy’s sister owns a bed and breakfast. This funky joint about half an hour away. That one afternoon when you all had off, I went there with the camcorder. And I caught them.”
“But I gather that unlike Tiffany, Misty didn’t see you.”
Magnolia smirks. “Let’s just say she was otherwise engaged.”
“I can guess why you agreed to videotape Misty and Dirk. Because otherwise Tiffany would go to Cantwell. Boy, you got it coming and going.”
Magnolia rephrases in her own unique way. “Both those bitches blackmailed my ass.”
But only one survived to tell the story.
I eye Magnolia, who’s scuffing the floor with her shoe. She is one resentful character. “Why do you hate beauty queens so much?” I ask her.
She looks up. “You’re all so fake. There’s this whole pretense about how all-American and apple pie you are but half of you are skanky as hell.”
“Hardly.”
She shrugs. “I just think the world should know that it’s a big giant fraud.”
“I still don’t get it. If you find the pageant world so disgusting, why do you want to keep the job?”
“What else am I gonna do?”
Magnolia Flatt is so negative. But even someone with a better attitude would be damn eager to get back at both Misty and Tiffany. Given all this, Magnolia has to be considered a suspect. She did have backstage access as well.
And does this ever explain Misty’s outrage toward Tiffany! Misty’s blackmailing scheme backfired big time, since it was Misty and not Tiffany who ended up on YouTube exposed as the philandering wife unworthy of the Ms. America crown.
Magnolia goes back to her desultory sweeping and I wander away. Is there someone else I should be considering as a possible suspect? Dirk Ventura comes to mind. If he cared for Misty, he might want to take Tiffany out. After all, Tiffany did wrong Misty, though much of it was Misty’s own doing. But then again, maybe Ventura was in it only for the sex. That jibes better with the only other thing I know about him, that he lays bets with other guys about who he can seduce.
I’m about to go back to my front-row seat in the empty auditorium when I hear footsteps behind me in the backstage area. These are way too purposeful to be made by Magnolia. Then I hear voices. It’s Cantwell and somebody else. I sidle up against the wall and listen.
“—before and I’ll say it again. You’re barmy if you think whoever killed that woman is part of the pageant! I tell you, man, look outside this organization.”
Cantwell said the same thing to me the morning after the finale. It’s his enduring refrain. Whoever he’s talking to, a man apparently, mumbles something I can’t make out. Is it Momoa?
Cantwell again. “And for God’s sake, put some welly into the damn investigation! Keeping all these women here so you can trundle along at your snail’s pace is costing me a bloody fortune. This goes on one day longer, I’ll have my barristers draw up a suit.”
If it’s not Momoa he’s talking to, it’s somebody else from Oahu PD. And as it occurred to me last night, Cantwell does not like having to pay to keep us all here on the island, rich as he is.
The footsteps get closer. I realize I’d better reveal myself or it’ll be clear I’m eavesdropping. I stride toward center stage as if to head down to the auditorium floor when Cantwell calls my name. I spin around. “Yes, sir?” I see then that it is Momoa with Cantwell.
Cantwell frowns at me. “The detective has something to discuss with you.”
Fabulous. But especially in Cantwell’s presence, I’m required to be gracious. “How can I help you, Detective?”
He holds something up. A videotape. Initially I get excited. The one of Misty and Dirk, I think? Or of Tiffany and Keola? Maybe Momoa wants to ask me about them, involve me in the investigation.
Then no, I realize, that can’t be one of those videotapes. Magnolia’s camcorder recorded via memory card. That’s what she told me Tiffany ripped out of her camera.
Momoa solves the mystery for me soon enough. “This,” he declares portentously, “is a recording drawn from one of this hotel’s surveillance cameras. Specifically, from one positioned on the basement level of this hotel.”
My stomach drops. I half expect it to land on the stage floor beneath my billowing fuchsia satin.
“Ohio,” Cantwell thunders, “what do you have to say for yourself?”
