Bone Appétit (11 page)

Tinkie made a quick trip to see the lawyer, while I decided to find the county coroner, one Marlboro Tanner, also a preacher. In most Mississippi counties, coroners are elected and require no medical training. In cases of homicide, the state crime lab performs autopsies, and that’s where Janet’s body had been sent. Brook’s too, I supposed. But Marlboro Tanner would be a good place to get an idea of what evidence, if any, Janet’s body had revealed.

Marlboro’s appearance was in direct contrast to the image
of the tough cowboy his name brought to mind. The clean-cut young man with kind eyes was in the Church of Redemption office working on a sermon. He appeared to be no older than fifteen. When I told him my business, he waved me to a chair.

“This coroner’s position isn’t the job for me,” he said. “Those poor girls. What awful ways to die. Burning and then poison. I’ll never get that out of my head. The last coroner served four years and never sent a body to the crime lab.”

“You’re certain it was poison?” There’s no denying Brook’s fate, but it could have been accidental. That was a thought I intended to plant deeply in the young coroner’s subconscious.

“Chief Jansen says he can’t be certain about Miss Oniada. The autopsy isn’t back yet on her. Probably a couple of days, and more time for Miss Menton. The state lab is backlogged, from what I hear. Bodies are stacked on top of each other.”

Not exactly the kind of image one wanted floating about in one’s head. But it gave Tinkie and me time to find out what was really happening with the beauty contestants.

“Prior to Janet’s . . . death and Brook’s . . . accident, there was an incident with Babs Lafitte.”

“The pepper thing.” Marlboro leaned back in his chair and steepled his fingers, an appropriate gesture for a minister. “Chief Jansen said something about sending samples off to the lab. He did take some cooking things from the school for testing. But I have to say, what appears to be a practical joke, while unpleasant for Miss Lafitte, isn’t the chief’s highest priority right now.”

Good to know. I felt an obligation to tell the coroner, who appeared to be an open book, that Jansen wouldn’t appreciate his candidness with me. But why mess up a good source? “What do you think happened?”

“That young woman this morning . . .” He went to the window to look out over the churchyard, a vista of carefully clipped centipede grass highlighted with flowering shrubs. “I thought at first it was a heart attack. My mind doesn’t normally run to murder. But I do think poison killed her.”

“Could she have taken something? Not on purpose, but . . .”

He arched an eyebrow. “I guess that depends on what type of poison was used.”

“I mean, could she have been taking a prescription drug and had a negative reaction to it? There are a lot of ways to unintentionally kill oneself.” Doubt was the crop I was trying to harvest. The coroner in rural counties relied on the findings of the state crime lab, but he might raise some questions.

“Anything is possible,” he agreed. “But not likely. What’s interesting is the absence of her roommate, Miss Blackledge. Had she been in the room, she might have been able to get help for Janet in time to save her.”

That was an angle I hadn’t thought about. Had someone lured Hedy out of the room . . . but she’d left because she couldn’t sleep and wanted to play her violin? “It’s possible Hedy is alive only because she wasn’t in the room.” I gave it ten seconds to sink in. “Did Miss Menton eat anything before she died?”

“She ordered from room service around ten o’clock. And there were some pastries on the floor. I’m guessing she died shortly after midnight, but the state lab will be able to tell me more.”

“When you get the test results back on Brook and Janet, would you let me see them?”

He considered. “The fact you’re asking tells me Chief Jansen won’t want me to do that.”

While I can fudge the truth in almost all situations, I’m
not great at direct lies to a minister, especially one as decent as Marlboro. “Probably not. Jansen has already said Hedy is his primary suspect, and my partner and I are working on Hedy’s behalf. But the important thing here is the truth, don’t you think?”

He didn’t hesitate. “That’s true. The reports are factual. I don’t see the harm in giving you a copy, so I’m happy to do that.”

“Thank you, Reverend.” I simply couldn’t stop myself. “Were you named after the Marlboro man on the billboards?”

His response was a smile. “Everyone asks. The answer is yes, but the irony is neither of my parents smoked. They liked cowboys. I wish they’d named me Wyatt or Bat or even Marshal. But they liked the mountains, and every time they saw the billboard, the dream came to life for a little while. They said I was part of that dream, so they named me Marlboro.”

The story touched me more than I wanted to show.

He extended his hand. “I hope you and the chief get to the bottom of this. And soon.”

The logical next step was to look into the past of each girl. Both deaths had been extreme and awful. That implied a personal touch—someone who’d constructed painful deaths deliberately. Had Brook and Janet shared some place or person or event? Babs, who was still alive and kicking, might be my best source.

I turned Tinkie’s Caddy back toward the hotel. Perhaps I could catch Babs before she got all involved with preparing for the next leg of competition.

After checking at the desk, I went straight to Babs’s room. After the pepper incident, she’d opted for a private room,
and she answered my knock on her door. The tallest of the contestants at nearly six feet, Babs was a striking redhead—or she had been. Now her hair clumped in dull tufts that brought to mind Bozo the Clown.

“Welcome to Bedlam.” She waved me into the room.

Clothes, shoes, at least twenty bald Styrofoam wig heads, suitcases, and what appeared to be small dead, red creatures littered the room. Babs took a seat at a specially lit vanity and picked up a wig styled in a long shag. A half-empty bottle of Jack Daniel’s rested beside her elbow, along with more small vials filled with crushed herbs and spices.

“The judges voted unanimously to allow me to wear a hairpiece,” she said, watching my reaction in the mirror.

I wanted to say, “Thank god for that because your head looks like a Chernobyl site,” but I only nodded. “That’s good.”

“What do you think of this one? It’s called Candy.” She fluffed out the long, red tresses.

“Too . . . whorish.” I couldn’t think of another way to say it.

She pulled off the wig and tossed it on the floor by the other rejected styles. “You’re right. I just wanted to see if you’d tell the truth or not.” She batted the empty wig head with the back of her hand and it sailed across the room, crashing against the wall and then into a heap on top of two dozen others.

“Mostly I do. Tell the truth. Sometimes I don’t.” I picked up a short black wig and handed it to her. “As fascinating as hair choices are, I need to talk to you about the two dead women.”

“Brook was nice but naïve. Janet”—she pulled the dark wig on—“I don’t really have a read on her. She stayed to herself and she was rooming with that creepy goth Blackledge gal. Speaking of goth, this hair color doesn’t work for me at all. I look like a vampire.”

She was correct. The black wig with her fair coloring made her look dead. It even changed the contours of her face.

“Yuck!” she said, flinging it into the reject pile.

“Why do you believe Hedy Blackledge is goth?”

She waved me toward a chair. “Let’s see, could it be that she never wears anything but black, she plays funeral dirges on her violin, she wears red lipstick, and her skin hasn’t seen sunlight in the last twenty years. Her family has some weird voodoo connection, and she plays to that. She enjoys being dark. That pretty much puts her in the goth category for me.”

Everything she said about Hedy was true, up to a point. She had translucent pale skin, wore red lipstick and black clothes, and the violin pieces I’d heard were hauntingly sad. But that didn’t make her a goth. “How did you know about Hedy’s family?” I was sure Hedy hadn’t told her.

She thought a moment. “One of the other girls was talking about her.”

“Which one?”

She hesitated. “I can’t be sure.”

“Karrie?”

Amusement crossed her face. “Good guess, but I think it was Crystal Belle. I don’t think she meant any harm by it, just a bit of gossip.”

Motives were seldom that pure, but I let it go. “Of all the contestants, why do you think someone would go after Brook and Janet?”

Babs swung her legs around to face me. “Rumor has it that Brook, Janet, Karrie, Hedy, Amanda, and
moi
are the front-runners. Most of the girls thought Brook and Janet went into the talent competition as the top two contenders based on academics and originality in cooking.”

She poured herself a straight shot of Jack. “Now that they’re out of the way . . .” She remembered her manners and
poured a drink for me without even asking. “I’m dying to have a cigarette,” she said, glancing around the hotel room. “Do you think they’ll be able to tell if I smoke in here?”

“There’s a courtyard outside.” If she lit up, I might have to join her. I’d quit smoking, but the temptation was on me hard.

“And if we go into the courtyard, it’ll be just my luck a judge will walk by and catch me smoking. I hate this eighth-grade shit. You know, it would be better to have leprosy than to be a smoker these days.”

I couldn’t argue that, so I didn’t try. “I wouldn’t smoke in the room.”

She sighed and took a big swallow of her Jack. “I can’t wait until they start fining people for eating potato chips. They’ll call it a health penalty. Soon only elegant people wearing the right designer labels will be allowed out in the daylight.”

I pulled her attention back to the task at hand. “If you had to name someone who might want to harm Brook and Janet, who would it be?”

“None of the contestants really like each other. We all want to win, so we haven’t bothered pretending to be perky and impressed with each other like we did back in our younger days.”

Babs was twenty-five. It was peculiar to hear her talk about her “younger days.”

“Was there anything about Brook or Janet that would make someone personally dislike them? Enough to harm them?”

She’d picked up a short, auburn wig and adjusted it on her head. Staring at herself in the mirror, she answered, “To me, they were two of the least objectionable contestants. If I were going to take anyone out, it would be that bitch Karrie Kompton.”

Karrie had no dearth of folks who didn’t like her, but acting like a horrible human being didn’t make her a killer. “Do you know who sent the chocolate-covered roaches to Karrie?”

She shifted so that our gazes didn’t meet in the mirror. She knew.

“Was it you?” I asked.

She busied herself putting on shoes.

“I’m not going to tell anyone, Babs. There’ve been a lot of strange incidents at this competition. I need to know who’s behind what.”

“I sent Karrie the flowers and the roaches.” Her chin lifted in defiance. “She deserved a whole lot worse. And she got even by peppering my hair spray. At least my prank didn’t do any permanent damage.” She pointed at her hair. “This will take months to grow out.”

“How do you know Karrie was behind the pepper incident?”

“She saw a chance to ruin me and frame Hedy, and let me say she hates Hedy even more than she hates the rest of us.”

“Go on.”

“Hedy prepared a delicious dish using spices, specifically habanero peppers. Some of the peppers were left over, and the next morning, they’d disappeared from the countertop. Hedy assumed the cleanup crew had thrown them away, but I’d seen Karrie hovering around them. They were there, and then they were gone.”

“But would Karrie call such attention to herself if she planned to use the peppers to harm you?” Karrie was egocentric, but she was also smart.

Babs tapped her long, elegant fingers on the vanity top. “Karrie is capable of anything.” She shrugged.

“How did she get the peppers into your hair spray?”

“I use a pump bottle and the top unscrews. You know, environmental issues and all. Every little thing counts, and if a judge is eco-friendly and sees that in my dressing room . . .”

“So you leave your makeup and stuff in the dressing room?”

She nodded. “We all do.”

“Even Brook?”

“Her too. That was awful. She practiced her fire baton routine every day. Who would have thought her costume would catch on fire like it had been doused in kerosene? And the way she just stood there, rooted to the spot, and didn’t even run or scream or try to save herself.” She tried on another wig.

“The last one looked better,” I said.

“Ah, the Cassandra, as it’s called. I agree.” She switched wigs again. As she pulled a few curls to frame her face, she said, “Do you really believe Brook and Janet were murdered?”

“The autopsy reports aren’t in yet. It won’t officially be murder until a cause of death is established.”

Babs took one last look at herself in the mirror. The Cassandra was a good choice. “I’m sorry to rush you out, but I really have to prepare for the cooking event. Tonight is family barbecue. We’re demonstrating the versatility of the different cooking ranges and our personal recipes for sauce. I’m going to take top honors on this.”

She showed me to the door, and I was halfway down the hall when she called out, “I heard Hedy was arrested. Is she out of the competition?”

“She wasn’t charged. She’ll be there tonight.”

“Too bad.” Babs laughed. “Killing the competition is rather extreme, but it wouldn’t hurt my feelings if several of the contestants ended up in jail until the winner is declared.”

Walking the quiet corridor of the hotel, I almost jumped when my cell phone rang—Tinkie summoning me. “Yes, ma’am,” I said as I punched the elevator button to go down to the lobby.

“Don’t dawdle. Hurry,” she said.

I pushed the up button. Tinkie was not bossy. Far from it. But when she issued an edict, she expected obedience. I wondered what tricks Oscar performed, and the thought put a smile on my face.