CHAPTER THIRTY
No wonder that smarmy excuse for a homicide detective told me to wait two hours before showing up at Serenata’s! He didn’t want me to witness him enjoying a boozy repast with the pole-dancing vixen he’s supposed to be investigating for murder.
And boozy repast it most assuredly is. Half empty margarita glasses perch on the table next to the basket of tortilla chips and bowl of salsa.
Consuela stops flirting and glances out the window. I enjoy the expression of astonishment that overtakes her perfect features. I watch her lipsticked mouth shriek the words
Happy Pennington!
After which Detective Dez’s blond head whips in my direction. His blue-tint contact lenses nearly pop off his eyeballs when he sees me.
Never one to be shy, I prance inside Serenata’s. “Fancy meeting you here,” I say to Consuela. She is gorgeously turned out in a black and white stripe pencil skirt and a skinny white knit tee much like my own.
She ignores me and turns to Detective Dez. “What do I have to do to get a restraining order? Because this woman is stalking me.”
He laughs uncomfortably. “Now, now—”
“And after I charge her with stalking I am going to charge her with whatever you charge people with when they go around saying bad things about you.”
I’m guessing she means slander.
“She is so
loca
,” Consuela goes on, “she is telling everybody that
I
am the one who killed Peppi Lopez!”
“If anybody around here is going to get charged with anything, it’s you,” I inform Consuela. “There’s a very good chance you did kill Peppi. You had motive, means, and opportunity. Which would make you a suspect in the mind of any homicide detective who was remotely competent.”
Which leaves
you
out, Detective Dez,
I add silently.
“That is a crazy accusation,” Consuela says, “as Detective Monaco well knows.” She throws me a look of triumph.
Detective Dez clears his throat. “Ms. Machado has made me aware of several key facts such that I am now redirecting my investigation toward Peppi Lopez’s coworker, Alfonso Ramos.”
“Really?” I say, though I too have Alfonso on my suspects list. “And what key facts might those be?”
“That Alfonso Ramos stands to gain a valuable promotion from Peppi Lopez’s death.”
I look at Consuela. “You certainly changed your tune. When
I
was the one saying that gave Alfonso a motive to kill Peppi, you laughed so hard you almost split your skin-tight skirt.” And in truth I myself now think that’s a pretty lame motive.
“I don’t remember you saying anything like that,” Consuela lies through her pearly whites. “And by the way, Detective Monaco is not going to check into any of that silly stuff you want him to check into at the Hotel Roca.”
It is amazing. Clearly this minx needed only a few minutes with our friend the oversexed investigator to deflect suspicion away from herself and her lover. Not only that, she got him to divulge the tactics he was employing to investigate them.
Beauty queens have long understood the persuasive power of charm and beauty. There can be no doubt that Consuela Machado does, too. I think for a moment, then whip out my phone and snap a photo of this cozy tête-à-tête between suspect and investigator.
“What did you do that for?” Detective Dez sputters.
“I want to have proof of this lunch in case I go to the chief of police and list for him all the many reasons why you are not equipped to handle this investigation.”
Consuela makes a good show of pretending not to care by cackling uproariously. But Detective Dez pales under his spray tan. “We should all just take a step back and talk about this.”
“I’m not surprised to hear you say that. You’re probably already in trouble because of how long your investigation is taking. And now you’re consorting with suspects instead of investigating them? That’s the last thing the chief wants to hear.”
“Consorting,” Consuela snickers. “What a fancy word.”
“Don’t say I didn’t warn you, too, Consuela. My guess is Detective Dez will be off this case by dinnertime and his replacement won’t take the same view of it that he does.” I turn to her lunch companion. “If you want to rethink your investigative strategy, give me a call. If I’m not chatting with the chief of police, I’ll pick up.”
I spin on my stilettos and take my leave. And dear reader, I will have you know that was not merely a show of bravado. Even though I find it hard to believe Miami’s chief of police would give me the time of day, I bet that threat scared Detective Dez. Maybe now he’ll get off his duff and start doing some genuine detective work.
And none too soon. It’s Wednesday, pageant preps resume tomorrow, my ticket home says Sunday, and the two of us have a murder to solve.
As I’m driving back to Mario’s—I decided to take my thinking party back there rather than hold it at Starbucks—I get more and more angry over Detective Dez. How did he get that job? It’s such an important position. I find it deeply upsetting that my wonderful father was never promoted to homicide investigator and yet this miserable excuse for a cop was. It is yet another reminder that life is rarely fair.
At Mario’s, I head immediately for the kitchen. I am one hungry beauty queen. I’m foraging in the fridge when I hear footsteps overhead.
I still. There’s somebody on the second floor. I thought I was alone in the house but clearly I’m not.
I creep back to my room and slide my pepper spray out of my handbag. Already I have a use for it! Thus armed, I slip off my stilettos and silently mount the stairs.
I pause when I arrive on the second floor. Someone is clattering around in Mariela’s bathroom, which is across the hall from her bedroom. Did she come home from school early? If her Fiat is in the garage I wouldn’t have seen it. The wench! I doubt she’s sick.
I’m deciding that must be what happened when her bathroom door opens. But it’s not Mariela who emerges and streaks across the hall to her bedroom. It’s a teenage boy. A teenage boy clad in nothing but black Calvin Klein boxer briefs.
He shuts the bedroom door behind him. Mariela’s 16-year-old self must be in there. I clutch my pepper spray with one hand and the banister with the other. Oh. My. God. What am I going to do?
What any parent would do.
I stomp to Mariela’s door, pound on it, and screech: “I’m coming in!” Then I open the door.
Mariela, who’s on her bed propped against the pillows—wearing only her bra and panties—screams. The boy whirls around and gapes in horror.
“What in the world are you doing?” I cry, which is a rhetorical question if ever I’ve asked one. It’s perfectly obvious what they’re doing. They’re about to have sex and film it. A camcorder mounted on a tripod is pointing toward the bed. “So
that’s
what you wanted the camcorder for! Oh my God!”
“It’s none of your business!” Mariela shrieks.
“Who the hell are you?” the boy demands.
“It doesn’t matter who I am! Put your clothes on! Both of you.”
Scrambling ensues. I march over to the camcorder and spring it from the tripod.
“That is not yours!” Mariela yells.
“You’ll get it back eventually.” If she were my daughter, she might not. And no way I’m handing it over until the memory is erased.
“We’re supposed to make a tape,” the boy says. Now that he’s got his jeans on, he’s getting more defiant. I will add that he is exceptionally good-looking, kind of the male equivalent of Mariela.
“You’re not making any tapes while I’m around,” I declare.
“You are not the boss of me!” Mariela is getting saucier now, too. “Lots of celebrities have sex tapes. Kim Kardashian, Paris Hilton—”
“Pamela Anderson,” the boy adds.
“Exactly!” Mariela cries. “How do you think they got started?”
Wow. This tape wasn’t even meant just for their own use. Mariela wanted it to go viral.
“It doesn’t matter anyway,” the boy says. Now he sounds surly. “You were never gonna do it,” he tells Mariela.
“I was so!” she insists. “I just had to find my character first.”
The two of them are revving up to fight when a ruckus erupts downstairs. A second later I hear chatter and realize Trixie and Shanelle have returned.
“I can’t stand all these people in my house!” Mariela screams.
I go to the head of stairs. “I’ll be right down,” I call, noting that shopping bags full of tangerine and seafoam outfits are piled in the foyer. “Uh oh. Why are you guys back so soon?”
“Paloma kicked Trixie and me out,” Shanelle reports, looking up from below. “Not Rachel. She’s still in Paloma’s good graces.”
Trixie appears beside Shanelle. “When I tried to tell Paloma how good you are at solving murders, she lost it. She said if you were really good you would’ve already proved that Hector did it.”
The boy pushes past me. “I’m bouncing.”
“Don’t go, Theo!” Mariela cries, racing after him barefooted but partly dressed.
We three queens watch them disappear out the front door, then Shanelle spins back around and fixes her eyes on the camcorder in my hand. “Is that what I think it is?”
“They were going to make a tape.” I lower my voice to a whisper. “Of the two of them having sex.”
“No!” Shanelle and Trixie cry.
“Yes!”
“Isn’t she only 16?” Trixie cries.
“Yes!”
We have a moment of silence. Then, “It’s good you were here, girl,” Shanelle says. “Otherwise …”
We all shake our heads. “I know,” I say. “I don’t think they got very far.”
“Thank the Lord for that,” Trixie says. Then she brightens. “Anyhoo, I’m starving. Anybody else ready for lunch?”
“I certainly am.” I pad down the stairs. Now that the crisis is over my focus is once again on my stomach.
“I want my leftover mac and cheese from Alice’s restaurant.” Trixie heads for the kitchen with Shanelle and me in her wake. “She might be lying about how she was friends with Peppi but she is a really good chef.”
We warm our leftovers while I bring Trixie and Shanelle up to speed on the morning’s adventures. “Let’s eat by the pool,” Shanelle says. “I can’t believe we have to leave here tomorrow.”
“The pageant hotel isn’t nearly this nice,” Trixie tells Shanelle as we settle at a table sheltered from the sun by a gargantuan white umbrella. “Happy, what are you going to do about Mariela?”
I glance at the camcorder, which I’m carrying around so the teen queen in question can’t get her hands on it. A few minutes ago she came into the kitchen to scream that I’m ruining her life, then stomped upstairs to her room and slammed the door. “I have to call Consuela or Mario. I have to tell them.”
“Call Consuela,” Shanelle says. “She’s the one in town.”
Consuela answers immediately. “You’re
loca
if you think I’m going to talk to you!” Click.
“I guess I have to call Mario,” I conclude. His cell goes straight to voicemail. I leave a message saying Mariela is fine but something has happened and he needs to hear about it. “I don’t feel like I’m watching her very well,” I add before biting into some fried chicken.
“Consuela’s supposed to be watching her,” Trixie points out. “Boy, I love this fancy mac and cheese.”
I sip my Diet Coke. “I kept insisting to Mario that I’d be able to judge Mariela fairly in the pageant but especially after this fiasco that’s going to be hard.”
“Think of it this way,” Shanelle says. “It’s an accident we found out about this. If we weren’t living with that girl we never would’ve known. For all we know any of the contestants might’ve tried to do the exact same thing. So all we can think about in judging Mariela or anybody else is how she performs in the preliminaries and on pageant night. Nothing else counts.”
“I guess.”
“What are you going to investigate this afternoon?” Trixie wants to know. “While Shanelle and I are sewing? Thank the Lord we never returned those rental sewing machines.”
“For sure I want the two of you to go with me tonight to that slimy party Alfonso told me about. He may have tried to rope Peppi into that scheme of his.”
“Yes,” Trixie breathes, her eyes widening. “And maybe she wouldn’t cooperate and so he killed her.”
