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  “Now isn’t the time for this discussion.” My hand still covered the phone. I’d greatly upset my friend. Tears glittered in her eyes.

  “This can’t wait.” She got up and took the phone from my hand. “Hedy, we’re going to discuss this and call you back tomorrow.” She took down the phone number. When she finished, she replaced the receiver and climbed on the bed across from me. “Tell me what you’re thinking.”

  The truth was, I hadn’t thought. At all. I’d simply spoken, a habit that had gotten me into hot water more than once. Now, I didn’t know what I felt but I’d pried the lid off a can of worms and they were out and crawling. “I don’t know what I want to do,” I said.

  “But you’ve thought about quitting and you never mentioned it to me?”

  “Tinkie, I don’t know.” Frustration—at myself, not her—laced my voice. These two days in Greenwood were the first time I’d felt alive in weeks. It was like my body was awakening, little by little. Along with the tinglings of joy came jolts of pain.

  “I’m not angry,” Tinkie said softly. “But I need to know where you are, Sarah Booth. I know you’ll be spending a lot of time in Hollywood and on location with Graf and with your career, but I always thought we’d continue with the P.I. agency when you were home. I don’t want to let it go.”

  “If I hadn’t been working on a case, my baby would be alive.” There it was. The guilt gnawing at me in the darkness of my subconscious had finally strode into the light of day.

  I thought Tinkie would deny it, but she didn’t. Her hand gently rubbed my back. “What can I say to make it better?”

  How like her to do the perfect thing. Rationalization of guilt never works. Nor did she try to coddle me out of my feelings. My wise friend simply wanted to help and she was asking how.

  “Maybe this feeling will fade,” I said, helpless to control the depression that so easily slipped around me.

  “It probably will,” she said, kneading the tight spot between my shoulder blades. “Until it does, though, I’m here for you. No one judges you as harshly as you judge yourself, Sarah Booth. I could play psychologist and ask you, ‘If Coleman were injured in the line of duty, would you blame him?’ But that won’t help you now, will it?”

  “No, because I probably would blame him.” Coleman Peters, Sunflower County Sheriff and a man who held a special place in my heart, was often in the path of danger.

  Tinkie gave me a hug. “You’re a tough nut, but you’re my nut.”

  “What about Hedy?” I asked.

  Tinkie shrugged. “She probably won’t be charged with anything, but it makes me wonder why she’s jumping the gun like that. Hiring us would make her look guilty whether she is or not. Maybe it’s best if we don’t take the case, and as time passes, you’ll want to investigate again.”

  “Then you’ll tell her no?” Not only was I confused, but I’d also developed a huge yellow streak. I didn’t even want to turn down a potential client face-to-face.

  “In the morning,” Tinkie said. She assisted me under the covers. “Now get some sleep. Tomorrow our class is in main courses.”

  I feigned interest. “I’ve always wanted to learn to make cheeseburgers and fries. Or, better yet, chips and salsa.”

  “Ha. Ha. Very funny. One day, when you’ve got a couple of little rug rats clutching your ankles and you’re trying to cook dinner for Graf, you’ll appreciate all of this.”

  Her words were like an old wound. The pain of my loss flashed. “Right.”

  “It will happen, Sarah Booth. Nothing will replace what you lost, but you will have children and be happy. I have to believe that, and so do you.”

  She did her best to hide her worry, but I could see it. “I’ll be okay, Tinkie. It’s just going to take more time than I thought. Funny that my arm is almost healed and Doc says I won’t even know it was broken after a bit of therapy. But my heart . . .”

  “They say the heart is just a muscle, Sarah Booth, and everyone knows that muscle heals more slowly than bone.”

  “You’re the best friend ever.” I snuggled into the bed, suddenly exhausted, as if I’d run uphill for a long, long time. Whatever Tinkie replied, I never heard it. I was asleep before she finished talking.

  6

  I’d been asleep no more than six seconds when a loud pounding at the door startled me awake. Tinkie and I sat bolt upright like some 1940s choreographed comedy. The pounding came again, followed by a muffled plea.

  “Miss Delaney! Miss Richmond! Let me in, please.”

  “Hedy Lamarr Blackledge,” we said in unison. Startled awake and angry, I jettisoned myself from the bed.

  “It’s three in the morning,” Tinkie said, indignation growing in her voice. She flung back the covers and padded after me.

  “This had better be an emergency,” I said as I swung the door open. Hedy stood there in sweats and tennis shoes. Her hair was wild and her makeup was smeared. She looked like hell.

  “Janet Menton is dead.”

  “What?” Tinkie and I were perfectly synchronized. If we gave up P.I. work, maybe we could take up swimming.

  “I found her. She’s dead in our room.”

  I glanced at my partner. She gave a tiny frown that told me she didn’t completely believe Hedy. “Come inside.” Tinkie drew the young woman into the room and closed the door.

  “After everything that happened . . . so horrible . . . Brook catching on fire, I mean.” She actually flinched. “You’ve got to help me. There’s more at stake here than just a title or money or what happens to me.” Despite my doubts about my P.I. future, I felt sorry for her.

  “Tell us what happened. Slowly.” I steered her into a chair.

  She nodded, composing herself. “I left the auditorium and I was in a state. I didn’t trust myself to drive to Panther Holler, so I decided to stay in the hotel instead of going to my . . . relatives’. Janet is . . . was . . . my roommate.” Her voice got shakier, and she seemed to study the plush carpet. “We were both upset, but we went to bed. I couldn’t sleep. I knew that once the cops started investigating Brook . . . I called you, and then I went to the auditorium to play my violin. I do that sometimes when I’m having an anxiety attack. Janet couldn’t sleep, either. She said she was hungry.” Hedy took a deep breath. “Finally I calmed down, and I thought I could rest, so I went back to the room.” Her voice broke, but she drew a deep breath. “I found Janet on the floor.” She couldn’t hold it together any longer and started crying.

  Tinkie was beside her, always kinder and gentler than I could be. “It’s okay, Hedy,” she said. “What did the police say?”

  Hedy’s head snapped up. “I didn’t call them. I came here, to you. They’re going to think I killed Janet, too. You can tell them I wasn’t in the room. You can say I was with you, can’t you?”

  Tinkie slowly eased away. “We can’t do that, Hedy.”

  “You have to. Otherwise, I don’t have an alibi. They’ll assume I’m the killer.”

  “Not necessarily. Give us just a minute, Hedy.” Tinkie motioned me toward the bathroom. Once inside, she shut the door. “We have to call the police.”

  “We do.” I concurred wholeheartedly. Was Hedy playing me and Tinkie? Had she come to our room to get us to collude with her on a murder? Or was she naïve and simply afraid? I didn’t have the answer, and I could tell from Tinkie’s expression that she was as flummoxed as I was. But none of that mattered. Chief Jansen would have to be notified.

  “Do you think Hedy is killing the other contestants?”

  My gut reaction was no. Hedy simply didn’t strike me as a serial murderer. Not even for the title of Miss Viking. “We don’t have enough information. You talk Hedy into calling the cops. It’ll be much better for her if she does it herself.” Tinkie was far more persuasive than I. “I’m going to get dressed and go inspect Hedy’s room. Once the cops arrive, we won’t have a chance to examine the crime scene.”

  “Do you want me to help you?”

  “
No.” Tinkie would hold more sway with Hedy. “I’ll do it.”

  “Be careful and don’t touch anything.”

  I nodded as I stepped back into the room, where Hedy continued to sob. I grabbed some jeans and shoes. “I need your room key,” I told her.

  She gave it over without even a question. She was either very trusting or very good at acting. As I closed the room door behind me, I heard Tinkie talking with her in a calm, reasonable tone. In ten minutes Tinkie would convince Hedy to call the police.

  That meant I had about twenty minutes to examine the scene. Greenwood was a small town. Once the law was called, it wouldn’t take them long to arrive.

  Perhaps it was only my imagination, but the smell of carnations—funeral flowers—lingered in the hotel room where Janet Menton lay on the floor beside the bed. Her face, partially smushed into the carpet, was drawn into a rictus of suffering. Whatever killed her had hurt like hell.

  Judging from the body position, she’d been trying to crawl to the bathroom when she died. I didn’t touch her, but she was scantily clad and there were no bullet holes, stab wounds, or blood. It was possible—highly unlikely, but possible—she’d died of natural causes. Heart attack, aneurysm, seizure. Healthy young people spontaneously die. On rare occasion they could even combust. Millie, my friend who ran a café in Zinnia, had hundreds of back copies of the tabloids that discussed such cases.

  But in this instance, “natural causes” was a far reach. If I had to guess, I’d say Janet Menton died from some type of poison. That wasn’t good for Hedy, who had more opportunity than most to poison her roommate.

  The police chief would expect to find Hedy’s fingerprints in her room, but the same could not be said of mine. Unless I wanted to become a suspect—and thank you very much, I’d already done that once and didn’t enjoy it—I had to be careful to leave no trace of my visit to the room. Pulling down my shirtsleeve to cover my hand, I opened the bathroom door.

  Holy cow. Beauty products were everywhere. The place looked as if a Clinique counter had exploded. Scrubs, brushes, pots of color, cakes of glittery stuff, jars, jugs, bars—the assortment was mind boggling. The crime lab in Leflore County would be a busy, busy place. If Janet was poisoned, and if she didn’t ingest the substance, it could have been placed in any of the hundreds of cosmetics. Contact poisons were tricky, but just as deadly. I’d learned this from bitter personal experience.

  With one ear listening for the wail of the police cars, I walked the scene. Hedy’s small overnight bag was against one wall, her violin beside it. The bed I took to be hers was barely mussed, supporting her story she’d tried to sleep and then left to play her fiddle.

  The room was cluttered with discarded clothes, some bearing designer labels. When I opened a dresser drawer I found vials of what I took to be ground spices. None were labeled, and they could have contained anything from basil to tobacco.

  I eased closer to the body. Bingo! Under the dowdy dress Janet wore for her monologue were several smushed pastries in a plain white bakery box.

  Without the benefits of someone who could truly analyze a crime scene, I couldn’t come to any solid conclusions, but at least I had an idea of the physical layout of the room and the body. Now it was time to skedaddle before Police Chief Jansen caught me and locked me up.

  On the way back to our room, I struggled with my own demons. It was clear Tinkie wanted to take this case. Was my reluctance borne of guilt or fear of being injured? Was dissolving the P.I. agency just one more way to punish myself? I didn’t know, and that was the most frustrating part.

  When I slipped inside the room, I found Hedy in a comfortable chair with a strong bourbon in her hand. Tinkie perched on the arm of the chair. “Chief Jansen is on the way. He asked me to keep Hedy here,” she said.

  “There’s no place else for me to go,” Hedy said morosely. “I knew this whole pageant thing was a foolish idea. I never wanted to do it to begin with.”

  “Then why did you?” I asked.

  She put her glass on the table beside the chair. “It’s a long story.”

  “You’ve got about five minutes.” I sounded cold and heartless, but I was a pussycat compared to what she’d face at the hands of the law. “Chief Jansen will be here, and my guess is that you’re right. He’s going to take you in for questioning. So if there’s a story here, spill it while you have the chance.”

  “I’m trying to get custody of my daughter.”

  Both Tinkie and I converged on Hedy. “Your daughter?” Tinkie said. Had Hedy revealed she was growing a second head, I wouldn’t have been more stunned.

  “Yes.” Hedy was grim.

  “Where is she?”

  “Here. In the Delta. Her father has her. That’s where I go after the pageant events. I park outside his home, so I can maybe catch a glimpse of her.”

  “Wait a minute.” I had to have misunderstood. “You have a child and you’re lurking around outside someone’s home trying to ‘catch a glimpse of her.’ This doesn’t make sense.”

  Hedy swallowed. “I gave away my rights to Vivian. I thought I was doing the best thing for her, but I made a big mistake. I want to be part of her life. I’m her mother, and she needs me.” Her throat worked again. “And I need her.”

  “How old is your daughter?” Tinkie asked.

  “Two.” She spoke so softly, I had to strain to hear.

  “When did you give her up?” I asked.

  “Just after she was born,” Hedy said in a whisper.

  “You haven’t seen your daughter for two years? Have you tried?” I asked. Tinkie cut me a hard look at my tone, but she didn’t say anything.

  “Oh, I’ve tried. But I don’t have a weapon to fight the Wellington money. He convinced me to sign the papers giving him total parental rights, and now he won’t even let me spend an hour with Vivian.”

  “The Wellingtons of Panther Holler?” Tinkie and I spoke as one.

  Hedy nodded. “You know the family, so you know what I’m talking about.”

  And I did. The Wellingtons were perhaps the wealthiest family in the state. They had money, power, political influence—everything to convince a judge to see a custody battle their way. Of course I didn’t know Hedy or her background, and she’d voluntarily signed away her rights.

  “Marcus is the child’s father?” Tinkie asked.

  There were several generations of Wellingtons to pick from. The fertilizer of wealth had grown an extended family tree. I figured the father to be Marcus or maybe his father, Gilliard. There were uncles and cousins, too. The Wellingtons were known for the Midas touch and heroic sperm.

  “Yes, Marcus,” Hedy said. “I met him at the Gulf one summer. He was so charming. And he seemed so nice.”

  “And he was filthy rich,” I threw in. “Money is the most potent aphrodisiac, isn’t it?”

  “That’s not the way it was.” Hedy wasn’t combative; she was defeated. “He pursued me. I was working at the Dauphin Island Sea Lab, planning a career in botany and marine science. I was a good student and graduated high school early. I was in my sophomore year of college and had a full scholarship to finish my degree. I had no intention of falling in love with anyone. I was only nineteen.”

  She was, for all practical purposes, a child at the time. I knew Marcus and I traveled in some circles where he was a regular. He was a handsome man with polished manners and an easy self-deprecation about his family status. While Marcus seemed pleasant enough on the surface, his family was known to be ruthless in the pursuit of what they wanted. There had been talk about Marcus, too. He was one of the most eligible bachelors in the Delta, and he’d broken the hearts of more than a dozen Delta belles. Hedy, a naïve young woman of nineteen, might easily have been swept off her feet by Marcus.

  “But you fell in love,” Tinkie said, “and you got pregnant.”

  “I never planned on having a child. My dream was to work to save marine life and vegetation, to make a difference for the planet. When I found out I wa
s pregnant, I was upset, of course. My family . . . my mother was young when she had me. She raised me alone. I was determined to break the cur . . .” She took a breath and looked at the floor. “The curse of repetitive mistakes. Anyway, Marcus offered to marry me. He even took me to his home in Panther Holler to meet his family.”

  A red flush climbed her cheeks, and I could imagine how the Wellingtons had treated this pregnant girl who’d tagged onto the family fortune by “trapping” Marcus. “And did he follow through on the marriage?”

  She shook her head. “As I got bigger and bigger, he came up with one excuse after another. Finally, Marcus wouldn’t take my calls. I couldn’t go home. I just couldn’t. For the sake of my daughter, I—” She swallowed and regained her composure. “I was on my own. That’s the simplest way to put it.”

  My cold, cold heart was melting, even though I fought it. Hedy’s story certainly wasn’t original, but it was heart-wrenching. Young girl seduced by wealthy, experienced man, impregnated, and dumped. Where this got interesting was that Marcus had returned for the child.

  Her mouth worked as she struggled to contain her emotion. “Marcus showed up just after she was born. I was working at one of the casinos. Dealing blackjack was the only job I could get.” She looked at Tinkie and then me. “I was so stupid. I thought he wanted to do right by his daughter.”

  “And?”

  “He’d hired this fabulous nanny. She stayed with me a week, and I could see she was competent and attentive to Vivian’s needs. Then Marcus started working on me. He forced me to see how much better Vivian’s life would be with him and his family than what I could provide for her.” She wiped a tear from her cheek. “Marcus has had her ever since.”

  “Couldn’t you hire a lawyer?” Tinkie asked.

  “With what money? I did talk to ten firms. They weren’t interested in taking my case because I didn’t have money to fight with and I’d voluntarily signed away my rights. They told me that realistically the Wellingtons had the resources to keep me in court until Vivian was eighteen, and that the whole time they would be poisoning my daughter against me. They were correct. Marcus won’t even let me see Vivian. I haven’t held my own baby in two years.”