CHAPTER EIGHT
If ever a man needed to work on his cryogenic chamber bedside manner, that man is Frank Richter.
That said, I follow him into the inner chamber, which, I will tell you, is pretty darn frigid.
It is also black as night, and misty, and cramped. What little I can see reminds me of a sauna. Except that it is so freaking cold!
Frank shuts the door behind us. “Three minutes start now! Move! Do squats! Stamp your feet! Jump!”
With so little room, we keep slamming into each other like billiard balls on a half-size pool table. And boy, are our clogs noisy. It’s as if we’re performing a whacked-out version of “Riverdance.”
Every inch of skin that isn’t covered stings like hell. Steam rises from our bodies like nobody’s business. In short order I’m having as much trouble seeing in front of me as I was at Sally Anne and Frank’s wedding.
And look what happened there.
I’m getting close to a panic attack when the 3-minute warning goes off and Frank lets us out. It’s like the best alarm ever. We race like crazy women past the enormous steel door and start stripping off our anti-frostbite clothes before we even clear the anteroom. My thighs are so shiny and red, they look like they could be hanging from hooks in a meat locker.
Frank yells at us to keep moving but we don’t need him to. We are all jumping and shrieking and running around and giggling and then …
whoosh!
—all of a sudden I feel higher than a kite.
“Oh my gosh!” I screech. “I feel fabulous!”
“I do, too!” one of the other women yells.
“My name’s Happy but it should be Ecstatic!” No offense to Jason but I don’t think I’ve ever felt this good. It’s like the highest of highs has taken over my body and my mind, too. I feel on top of the world, maybe even better than on that life-changing night when I learned I was the new Ms. America.
Man, this cryotherapy thing could be addictive. I know my Polish ancestors are to be credited with such clever and useful inventions as the bulletproof vest and talking movies—plus I always think they must have had something to do with pickles—but they really helped come up with a winner this time.
“I’ll let you do it again,” Frank tells me after the other women have disappeared to have facials to build on the enhancement the cryogenic treatment has given them.
“Really? Would you?” Since I am exhibiting no evidence of frostbite and feel like a new queen from bow to stern, I am keen to repeat this experience.
“Sure. I’m running the thing all week. I can’t crank it up just for you but if we’re shy a body or two, I’ll slide you in.”
“Thank you, Frank, I really appreciate it.”
He lumbers away and I realize that the more I see of Frank Richter—apart from mysterious cash handoffs, that is—the more I like him. I need to keep that in check so I don’t hamper my investigation.
My workout is quick but intense, given the endorphins running riot in my system. I’m still quite jaunty when I meet up with Shanelle a few hours later to go to our first dance rehearsal with the Sparklettes, who are basically a sexed-up version of the famous Radio City Music Hall Rockettes.
“Your skin has never looked so good, girl,” Shanelle tells me.
I must agree. My face literally glows. I feel like a human moonbeam.
A few hours later, I realize how beneficial it was that I started out the rehearsal wildly energetic. I don’t know how I could have gotten through it otherwise.
On the very stage where we will perform Friday and Saturday nights, we meet the fifteen non-laid-up Sparklettes and their trainer, a retired member named Elaine Shreve. She has a little cap of brunette hair and must be the fittest woman I’ve ever seen on the rump side of fifty.
Everyone, including Shanelle and me, is wearing a spandex camisole with jazz pants or capris or a flounced skirt over leggings. Our dance wear is new because we had to race out to buy it. We’ve already been presented with our shoes, which are silver with a cushioned sole, a strap over the ankle, and a flared 3-inch heel. “The larger strike zone provides greater stability,” Elaine explained.
“Welcome, Happy and Shanelle!” Elaine now says. “We’re thrilled that the Ms. America organization has allowed you to join us this week and we’re looking forward to meeting Trixie tomorrow.”
The girls clap. The vibe is pageant-like minus the cattiness and hair spray.
“Ladies, you already know we are a precision dance team. What our eighteen dancers aim to achieve in every performance is perfect synchronization, particularly in our signature kick line numbers.
“What you may not know is that our dancers perform approximately three hundred kicks per show, and it is not unusual to do several shows a day.”
My mind is reeling. Thank heaven for Frank Richter and the cryogenic chamber.
“The final dance in every performance, our real showstopper, concludes with 36 eye-high kicks. I will expect all of you”—Elaine looks at Shanelle and me—“to achieve that kick height. Otherwise the beauty of our line will be marred.”
Shanelle and I nod in acquiescence. I know that whatever it takes, all three of us queens will be up to the task.
“It requires enormous stamina to put on these performances,” Elaine goes on. “Needless to say, the rehearsals are strenuous, too. You must stretch at the beginning and end of each session and you will become more familiar than you ever thought you would be with ice baths.”
The girls laugh and groan. I’m thinking I got a lesson in extreme cold this morning and apparently I’ll get another one this afternoon.
“So without further ado,” Elaine concludes, “let us get stretching …” and she leads us through a 20-minute warm-up that begins with gentle yoga stretches and segues into crunches, push ups, squats, and lunges. “We’ll leave our barre work for later,” she calls out, “now let’s get in line,” and I’m already thinking that the first thing I should do after rehearsal is buy stock in Bengay.
I don’t know how many kicks, steps, struts, and ball changes it takes for Shanelle and me to be sprung.
“If we didn’t have dance experience,” I shout to Shanelle as we propel our exhausted bodies down the Strip toward our hotel, “we would never be able to do this.”
The Sparklettes people clearly grasped that most beauty queens at some point train in tap, ballet, jazz, or modern dance. Virtually every pageant includes a dance number in which every contestant participates. The routines aren’t all that complicated but they do require synchronization. We practice till we nail it.
“I thank God there is only one performance a night this weekend,” Shanelle yells as we maneuver around a group of tourists who are all wearing yellow tee shirts so they can find each other in the crowd. “I am already slammed and this is just day one.”
And now we have another potentially grueling experience to get through: Danny Richter’s wake. Shanelle has agreed to accompany me, and if Trixie’s flight arrives on time, we intend to rope her into it, too.
Fortunately, I had the presence of mind to include in my luggage a simple rayon dress in a timid pearl gray, with pleated folds that extend from curved side seams. It’s a trifle fitted for honoring the dead, but with black pumps, pearl studs in my earlobes, and hair restrained in a bun, I am wake-appropriate.
I hear giggling in the corridor outside my room before I hear a knock. I race to fling the door open and get just what I was hoping for.
“Happy!” Trixie Barnett shrieks.
“Trixie!” I grab her in a hug. We jump up and down a few times—Shanelle, too—which we can manage even without flared heels.
“I am so glad to see y’all!” Trixie follows me into the room and tosses her clutch on my bed. She looks cute as ever, what with her chin-length red hair and bright hazel eyes. Clearly she got the wake memo, because she is conservatively dressed in black trousers and a sleeveless white blouse with a sweet bowtie at the V neckline. Shanelle has selected a plum-colored sheath with a scalloped bodice and banded waist. “It feels like forever since we were on Oahu. And Ms. Happy Pennington”—Trixie gives me a playful poke in the arm—“I hope you finally believe in destiny because there is no other way to explain the Sparklettes booking. It is obvious that the fates have conspired to keep you in Las Vegas so you can solve the murder of the best man from Sally Anne’s wedding and burnish your reputation as the beauty-queen sleuth. Oh my word!” She pivots me toward the window so she can peer at my face in the strong afternoon sunlight. “What have you been doing to your skin? Your pores are as tiny as pinpricks!”
Cryotherapy strikes again. I explain how the treatment works while we make our way to the hotel cab line.
“Could you get Frank to let me try it, too?” Trixie wants to know.
“I can ask.” All three of us settle in a cab’s rear seat and I give the driver the address Sally Anne gave me. “What about you, Shanelle? You want to try it, too?”
“No way. I do not believe black people are meant to get that cold.”
Mood-boosting though I have found cryotherapy to be, my spirits sink as we arrive at the Desert Paradise Funeral Home, a drab low-slung structure that seems an unlikely gateway to eternal bliss. And while wakes are depressing even if they’re crowded, they are downright wretched if almost nobody shows up. Yet, sadly, that is the case for Danny Richter, whose near and dear apparently number in the single digits.
The mourners include Frank and Sally Anne and a 50-something woman I learn is Danny’s mother. My heart breaks for her as I watch her sob quietly into a Kleenex. There is no Cassidy in sight.
We offer our condolences and glide past the casket. I note the embalmer has taken care that Danny will not go to his reward with a black eye. It’s been hidden under several layers of the sort of foundation I slather on for pageant competition.
As our trio moves further afield from the deceased, I realize anew that solving murders is not just about showing how clever you are. It’s about delivering justice to the victim. Danny deserves that as much as anyone.
We accept coffee and shortbread cookies from a portly man in a dark suit whom I take to be the funeral director and contemplate the would-be bride and groom from a distance. I detect a chill between them. More than once Sally Anne murmurs something to Frank only to have him turn away without reply.
“What is going on between those two?” Trixie whispers.
“I for one do not foresee a second attempt at a wedding,” Shanelle mutters. “The bloom seems off that rose.”
I down my cookie. “I’m going to work the room,” I murmur, and set off to engage a few of the assembled in conversation. In short order I learn that several of Danny’s casino coworkers are in attendance, as well as a friend or two from high school.
The low attendance is a definite negative investigation-wise. I’d hoped I’d encounter someone who would generate a lead I could follow. No one I’ve spoken to either seems to have a killer gene or has spilled any useful information about Danny’s life. Unfortunately, that means this queen is flummoxed.
The event does perk up when Cassidy breezes in. Though she’s wearing neither short shorts nor a corset, I do not judge her attire to be appropriate for the occasion. She is squeezed into a leopard-print mini dress paired with over-the-knee boots. She throws a glance at me, another at Frank and Sally Anne, then sashays over to the casket. Knowing what I do of Cassidy, I would not expect wailing and gnashing of teeth. Nevertheless I am surprised when she pauses for about two seconds before making a beeline for the guestbook. She scribbles something and bolts.
I go after her. “Cassidy, I know it’s not really my business—”
“No, it’s not.” She keeps moving.
I follow her out to the parking lot and buttonhole her next to her beat-up Corolla. “You know, Danny’s mother is in there. It would be nice for you to say something comforting to her about her son.”
“Oh, please.” Cassidy spins around to face me. “I got nothing against the woman but I got nothing to say to her, either. Danny and I weren’t the loves of each other’s lives, okay? And this whole funeral thing spooks me. I’ll mourn Danny in my own way. Besides, it’s my day off and I got things I gotta do.”
“Like what?”
“Like meet a friend for a drink at Brutus’s Palace, okay? So give it a rest.” Cassidy gets in her car and revs the engine. She’s gone faster than a snowflake in the desert.
I head back into the funeral home and am about to re-enter the viewing room when I detect a movement down the corridor to my left and realize that Detective Perelli is half-hidden behind a potted palm. She must be on the same fruitless investigative mission that I am. I move in her direction.
She’s wearing a menswear-inspired suit in a charcoal gray that she’s livened up with a fuchsia tee shirt and a striking bib necklace with multicolored stones.
“Kind of a small turnout,” I observe. “Are you making progress with the investigation?” I don’t expect her to tell me anything really juicy but it can’t hurt to ask.
She stops chewing her gum. I get a whiff of cotton candy and guess that’s the flavor. “So you trying to solve this murder like you did the one on Oahu?”
I am of the mind that honesty is almost always the best policy. “I don’t know that I’ll enjoy that kind of success again but I have been snooping around a bit.”
