Hickory Smoked Homicide (16 page)

Poor Cherry, thought Lulu. For a second, she’d looked like her stomach hurt.

“I know it’s probably time to go get ready,” said Lulu. “Coco, honey, let’s go backstage, and I’ll give you a hand.”

“Uh, Lulu,” said Colleen with a whinnying laugh, “There’s a gentleman walking up to us with a determined look on his face—and I do believe he only has eyes for you!”

Lulu felt a sinking sensation and looked up to see Gordon making his way across the ballroom. “Yes, Gordon is a . . . um . . . food blogger. He’s new in town, and Ben asked me to show him around a little bit. He was real curious about pageants for some reason.”

Cherry said under her breath, “Isn’t that a little odd? Men and pageants, I mean? I just can’t see my Johnny all gung-ho to see teenagers in sparkly dresses singing ‘Dixie.’ Especially driving all the way out of town into the country on a nasty, rainy, windy day.” She gave Lulu a coy look. “Or maybe it’s true love, Lulu!”

Colleen looked a little hurt. “Cherry, I can’t believe you would say such a thing! Pageants are a lot more than that, like I was just telling you. Besides, many of our judges are men, and we couldn’t do all this without them.”

“I agree,” said Lulu quickly. She certainly didn’t need Colleen to start acting all cool around Cherry and her. “I think the mention of food also interested Gordon. He’s trying to discover real southern cuisine, or so he says.”

Gordon walked up to the group, and Lulu quickly introduced them. “I hate to leave,” said Lulu, “but I’ve got to get Miss Coco backstage or else she won’t be ready for the competition.”

“Yes,” said Colleen, “you better rush, since the little girls go up first.”

As Coco and Lulu walked out of the ballroom to the room next door that served as a backstage dressing area, Lulu heard Colleen completely in her element, giving Gordon and Cherry the lowdown on pageant talent, the different categories the girls would be judged in, and what might be inside the Crock-Pots along the back wall of the banquet hall. Colleen seemed to be tickled pink by Gordon and looked to be laughing at everything he said. Lulu was glad to have Colleen completely absorbed. She would have a chance to talk to Pansy in private for a few minutes without her mother hovering over her and editing everything that came out of her mouth.

Somehow, Lulu had thought that backstage would be a lot more organized and a lot less chaotic than what greeted her and Coco as they entered the big room that served as a dressing room for the pageant girls. There were bags of makeup everywhere—makeup in every conceivable color, too. There were dresses and shoes and bathing suits and curling irons . . . and lots and lots of hairspray. The girls all looked at themselves with fierce concentration in mirrors as they applied mascara, adjusted straps, and controlled wayward bits of hair.

“Let’s sit next to Pansy,” said Coco, clearly enamored with the older girl.

“Coco!” said Pansy sweetly and stood up to give her a hug and an air kiss. “Sorry, got my makeup on already. I didn’t know you were going to be here today. And with your grandma, too!” Pansy smiled prettily at Lulu.

“Is it okay if we sit beside you?” asked Lulu. “I don’t really know the ropes at all. Sara couldn’t bring her today, and Coco was dying to come, so I volunteered for the job. But now I don’t know what to do.”

Pansy nodded at Coco as she ran off to say hi to a friend. “You’re lucky then because Coco knows exactly what to do. She’s a real pro at this. Besides, she’s not doing the glitz competitions—Sara’s got her staying in the natural ones. So hardly any makeup or styling. Natural—but pretty. And she loves every minute of it.”

“I hope so,” said Lulu a little sadly, “This isn’t something I’d want her to do if she wasn’t crazy about it.”

Pansy’s mouth curved. “That’s what makes you a better stage parent than my mom. I had to compete in pageants, no matter what.”

Lulu frowned. “I thought you loved it! Your mama made me think that this was your favorite thing to do.”

Pansy shrugged. “It’s okay. But it wasn’t
my
choice. I started competing in pageants when I was only a baby—and nobody can ask a baby if that’s what she wants to do. When I was Coco’s age, I spent my backstage time playing Barbies on the floor with Steffi Pembroke while our moms got furious with us.” Pansy laughed.

“I didn’t know that Steffi was in pageants,” said Lulu slowly. She sure hadn’t won any, if that was the case. Bless her heart.

“No, Steffi wasn’t
in
the pageants. But her mom was there coaching girls or judging, so Steffi got dragged along.”

“That’s right,” said Lulu, nodding. “I remember now that your mom mentioned that y’all had hung out at the pageants together.”

“Steffi and her mom would have gotten along a lot better if Steffi
had
been able to be in pageants. But Steffi wasn’t really pageant material.” Pansy said this in a very matter-of-fact voice. “It ended up making for some big problems between Tristan and Steffi.”

A very thin woman with her hair pulled tightly back walked briskly up to Pansy. “Pansy, hon, you don’t look like you’re on your game today. You’re not ready. You’re white as a sheet—you definitely need some more self-tanner.” The woman, who Lulu assumed was Pansy’s coach, Tina, looked closely at Pansy. “Did you put that hemorrhoid medication under your eyes last night, like I told you?’Cause you’re looking like you’ve got some bags there.” Tina rummaged through Pansy’s makeup bag. “Here—put some Vaseline on your teeth so your lips won’t stick onto your teeth.”

Pansy rolled her eyes. “Mrs. Taylor, this is Tina—my coach.”

“Don’t get exasperated with me, young lady. I’m trying to make you the very best Pansy you can be. Now remember, when you’re doing your walk out there, I want you to act like you’ve got that huge crown on your head already. Got that? Just keep your head up like you’re balancing the crown up there. Look those judges right in the eye.... Be confident!” And as quickly as she’d come, she dodged back out again.

Coco came back and started expertly brushing her hair. Pansy looked at herself in the mirror and sighed.

“Wouldn’t your mother let you quit now if you wanted to?” asked Lulu.

“Now I really
can’t
quit,” said Pansy, sounding a little bitter. “I missed so much school by attending pageants that I fell behind and never really got caught up. What I want to do the most is become an actress. I have a shot at it, too—I’ve had acting classes, I can sing pretty well, and I can act. But the performing-arts college that I want to go to is pretty expensive . . . and I’ve booted myself out of the running for an academic scholarship. So now all I can count on are some pageant scholarships.”

Lulu said, “Your mama was telling me a while back that she thought you were totally cheated out of the Miss Memphis crown. She was upset because that was supposed to have some great scholarships.”

“Not only that, but then I would have been able to be in the Miss Tennessee pageant. If I’d won
that
, then I could have gotten
those
scholarships. Then, of course, is Miss America. And this is all much bigger money. Without this pageant money, I don’t have a hope in . . .” she edited herself, looking over at Coco, “I don’t have a hope to go to that school.”

“She said it was Tristan who was responsible.”

“Tristan ruined my dress and stole my shoes. She was bound and determined that the girl she was coaching won the pageant. And she did! As soon as I was out of the running, her girl was the clear choice to win Miss Memphis. And she knew it. Tristan was right there backstage, and my hanging bag and shoes were right next to her girl’s stuff. She had plenty of time to mess with it while I was onstage for the casual-wear part of the competition.” Pansy stopped putting makeup on and looked at herself broodingly in the mirror.

“Granny Lulu, can I have some quarters for the drink machine?” asked Coco in a pleading voice. Lulu fished around in her pocketbook for some loose change, grateful for the chance to ask some questions about the murder without having Coco listen in.

Lulu cleared her throat. “I didn’t know Tristan very well, but it sounds like she was the kind of person who made a lot of enemies. Do you have any idea who might have done her in?”

Pansy shrugged a thin shoulder. “Plenty of people. Everybody was always talking about her—even the girls she coached. She was just a mean person. She was always nosing around for dirt on pageant people . . . and there were lots of pageant people at the party. So I heard, anyway,” she finished quickly.

“Pansy, were you actually at the party that night? I have to ask because somebody I know was sure she saw you. But I didn’t think you or your mother were there.”

Pansy flushed and looked around Lulu real quick to make sure no one was close enough to listen in. “Mother doesn’t want anyone to know we were there,” she said in a hushed voice. “I did go—I was furious with Tristan, and Steffi had told me she was having a party. Tristan had been treating Steffi like a dog again, and I was sick of it. I wrote something on my Facebook page about Tristan, and I guess one of her girls told her about it. So she called me up and was insulting me and my mom—said I couldn’t act and I wasn’t pretty enough to win pageants and I was wasting my and my mom’s time. And she was planning to block me from any pageant wins she could.”

Pansy shrugged. “I really just went there to bug her. I wanted to see if she was going to throw me out or not—if I could force her to make a big scene at her fancy party. But then Mother showed up pretty fast, yelled at me for being there, and I took off for the house to see if I could at least show my face to make Tristan mad. Mother wouldn’t even go in, so she waited for me outside. I wasn’t in there long because I didn’t see Tristan. Mother was furious with me—she hated Tristan as much as I did, but she always said we couldn’t confront her or else she’d be sure to slam me if she was judging one of my competitions.”

“What I don’t understand,” said Lulu, “is how Tristan could be a coach
and
a judge. That’s a huge conflict of interest.”

“She only judged when she didn’t have a girl in the pageant. But she’d hold a grudge against certain girls, so it still wasn’t fair. She wasn’t impartial.” Pansy started putting another layer of mascara on her eyelashes. “And Steffi says she cheated, too, by getting information from Dee Dee on what the other girls were doing.”

Lulu said, “So you think pageant people at the party might have been upset enough with Tristan to kill her.”

Pansy shrugged again. “It’s possible. Plus, Dee Dee was there. I don’t think she liked Tristan much. But you know who else I saw before Mother pulled me out? That guy Loren and his wife, Pepper.” She paused with the mascara application and looked seriously at Lulu.

“And they would have wanted to kill her?”

“There’s this whole crazy history with them. Loren is creepy. I guess Pepper was there trying to keep an eye on her husband.” Pansy saw Coco walking up with her drink, and she said quickly, “Ask my mom about it. She can tell you.”

“Pansy?” asked Coco. “Can you help me with my dress? I always have trouble tying my sash.”

“Sure, sweetie,” said Pansy. And she and Coco walked off to a changing area with hanging bags everywhere.

“Psst!”

Lulu looked around, bewildered. Then she heard it again and saw that a young teenager, probably only fourteen, was trying to quietly get her attention.

Lulu pretended to be studying Coco’s bag very closely, since stealth seemed to be in order. “Is there something you wanted to tell me?” she asked, without looking in the girl’s direction.

The girl, very thin and blond, said quietly, “I heard what Pansy was telling you, and it’s a bunch of hooey. Tristan didn’t have anything to do with Pansy’s dress being ruined and her shoes missing. I was at that pageant with my cousin and was hanging out backstage. I saw Pansy mess up her own dress with the lipstick. I guess she did the same thing with her shoes, too.”

“
Pansy
did it?” Lulu’s voice rose with surprise, and she spoke more quietly. “Why would Pansy do something like that? It messed up her chances to win the Miss Memphis pageant and to get that scholarship money she was looking for.”

The girl said in a derisive voice, “Pansy wasn’t going to win that crown. She’s not that good! Not that pretty, even, compared to the other girls. She was hoping the judges would feel sorry for her or think she was being really brave by going out there with a ruined dress and borrowed shoes that didn’t fit and
give
her the crown.” She snorted. “She knew she was going to lose, so she decided to go for the pity votes.”

“Did her mother know about this?” asked Lulu, looking to make sure that Pansy was still totally focused on tying Coco’s sash.

“I don’t know. Probably not, though. Pansy’s mom wouldn’t understand why she’d do something like that, since she thinks Pansy is perfect.”

Suddenly, the girl snapped her mouth shut and started curling her hair with a curling iron with intense concentration. Lulu turned to see Pansy and Coco walking over and Cherry coming over to join both of them.

“Pansy? Just who I wanted to see!” said Cherry, with a big smile. “Your mama said you can give me the scoop on coaching and pageants and everything else I needed to know about.”

“Cherry is planning to become a pageant coach,” explained Lulu. Pansy must have thought this explanation was just as confusing because her brow stayed wrinkled.

“And Coco, maybe you can show me what you need me to do to get you all prepped. That’s something else I need to learn about,” said Cherry. Coco looked troubled that this process needed any kind of explanation.

“I’ll slip back out to the audience so I won’t be underfoot back here,” said Lulu. “Good luck learning the ropes!”

“Thanks!” said Cherry. But Lulu thought her perky smile looked like it was starting to fade.

Colleen was a fidgety mess, decided Lulu. She couldn’t seem to sit still. She’d perch on the edge of her seat, then she’d jump up and talk to someone, then she’d sit down again and start texting on her phone. She looked like she wanted desperately to be backstage instead of sitting with Lulu.