Model Mystery Trilogy 01: Model Crime (9 page)

“O
h, I’m so sorry!” I cried as I stopped myself from falling by grabbing on to Candy. In the process, the cupcake I was holding ended up smeared all over her long, white silk gloves.

“Hey!” Candy exclaimed, staggering backward and almost falling herself. Then she glanced at her gloves and her eyes widened. “Oh no, look what you did! They’re ruined!”

“I’m so sorry,” I said again. “It’s all my fault. Please, let me take those gloves—I’ll have them dry-cleaned for you. I’m sure the chocolate will come out.”

Candy pulled her arms in toward herself. “Never mind, it’s okay,” she said. “No big deal—it was just an accident, right?”

“Please, I insist,” I said, making no effort to keep my voice down. By now some of the other partygoers were drifting toward us, looking curious.

“Oh, dear.” Ellie hurried forward for a look. “That’s quite a mess. But Nancy is right—a good dry cleaner can set them right again.”

I nodded earnestly. “If you give them to me right now, I can run them right over to New Street—the dry cleaning shop there does a fabulous job. They’ll probably be good as new before the end of the party.”

Candy shook her head, her cheeks going pink. “I told you, it’s fine,” she said. “I can probably wipe most of it off with a napkin.”

“But then the stain might set,” I said cheerfully. “Really, it’s no trouble to run them over to the cleaners. It’s the least I can do.”

By now Sydney and Akinyi has joined the growing crowd around us. “Go ahead, Candy,” Akinyi said, rolling her eyes. “Don’t be such a drama queen. Just let her clean the gloves.”

“It’s really not necessary,” Candy said with a frown. “Anyway, the outfit wouldn’t be the same without the gloves. I prefer to keep them on.”

I shot Bess and George a look. They seemed confused. For my part, I was getting tired of this game.

“No, really,” I said. “I insist.”

With that, I reached over and grabbed the edge of one of the gloves. Giving a good yank, I pulled it off her arm.

Candy gasped. So did several of the onlookers. Her whole arm was covered in big, splotchy red patches!

“Oh, wow!” Pandora exclaimed. “What’s the matter? Did you hurt yourself?”

“It’s nothing,” Candy said quickly. “Just, uh, an allergy to some moisturizing cream. I have sensitive skin, you know.”

“Yes, just like your fellow redhead Sydney,” I put in. “And it looks like those ant bites swelled up just as much as hers did.”

“Ant bites?” Sydney looked perplexed as she glanced down at her own carefully covered chest and arms.

“They’re not ant bites!” Candy protested.

“Really?” Akinyi grabbed her arm and peered at it. “Hmm, they do look a lot like Syd’s bites now that you mention it. But we didn’t get anywhere near those ants while they were biting Syd—you were too busy freaking out over how much you hate the creepy-crawlies. So how…?”

“All right, all right!” Candy cried, yanking her arm free and bursting into tears. “You’re right, they’re ant bites, okay?” She spun and glared at Sydney. “But I wouldn’t have had to do any of this if you hadn’t stolen Vic from me!”

“What?” Sydney blurted out.

There were gasps from all around and a flurry of exclamations and questions. But I stayed focused on Candy.

“You’re the one who’s been sabotaging this wedding all along, aren’t you?” I said firmly.

She was crying harder than ever. “I met him first,” she sobbed. “He was supposed to end up with me! That’s why I
had
that stupid dinner party!”

“Hang on.” Akinyi pointed one long finger at Candy. “So if I’m following this, you wanted Vic for yourself—which you never told us, by the way—and so you decided to ruin Syd’s wedding by doing all this crazy stuff?”

Candy shrugged and dabbed at her eyes with her remaining glove, clearly trying to regain control of herself. “Well, most of it.” She shot a look at Sydney. “It seems like Miss Perfect is having her share of bad luck for once too.”

Sydney looked ready to cry herself by now. “Candy, how could you?” she exclaimed.

Meanwhile Bess and George made their way over to me. “Nicely done, Nance,” George said as Sydney, Akinyi, and Candy all started talking at once and Ellie yelled at the cameramen to stop filming. “But how’d you know?”

“Yeah,” Bess said. “Last we heard, there was a huge list of suspects and Candy wasn’t really even on it.”

“I know. Sorry I didn’t have time to fill you in, but I didn’t want to lose my chance to bust her,” I said. “Once those ant bites faded, it would have been a lot harder to prove it was her.”

“But how did you know?” George repeated.

Her words happened to fall into a moment of relative quiet. All eyes turned toward me.

“Yes, Nancy.” Sydney took a step in my direction. “How did you know it was Candy?”

“It was something Akinyi said a few minutes ago,” I explained. “She told that she and Candy were just about the only ones who knew about MrSilhouette.”

Most of the onlookers were obviously confused. But Sydney traded a glance with her mother and Akinyi. “Yes?” she prompted.

“That reminded me of something else. The other day Akinyi and Candy helped my friends and me get into the stadium shoot. When we all walked in, Candy looked over at Vic.”

Bess gasped. “And Akinyi said something about her always spotting him first!”

Akinyi looked sheepish. “Just a little joke. I sometimes tease her about letting a guy like Vic slip through her fingers. But I swear, I didn’t know she actually liked him!”

I nodded. “I didn’t think much of the comment at the time, but today it made me wonder if there might be a love triangle going on here.” I shot a quick glance at Pandora, who was watching along with everyone else. “One we didn’t even know about.”

“So who did you call when you borrowed my phone earlier?” George asked.

“The modeling agency,” I said. “I wanted to talk to the receptionist who sent out the bridesmaids’ dresses. She was off today since it’s Saturday, but I convinced the answering service to give me her home number. When I talked to her, she confirmed my hunch—when the dresses came in last week, Candy offered to take the package with Akinyi’s dress in it down to the mailroom.”

Candy sniffled loudly. “Okay, you caught me,” she said heavily. “I switched out my dress with Akinyi’s. I knew Kinnie would spaz out and call Sydney when the dress didn’t fit.”

Akinyi glared at her. “Very nice,” she spat out. “You wanted us both to be upset!”

“Right,” I said. “So with that prank accounted for—at least circumstantially—most of the rest clicked into place. Candy knew exactly what Sydney’s RSVP cards looked like, so I guessed she’d sent that fake one.” I shot a look at Candy, who didn’t bother to deny it. “She knew that silhouette thing would freak Syd out and could have easily slipped the unmarked gift into the pile.”

At that, Candy just shrugged. “I thought that one was pretty clever, actually,” she muttered, more to herself than anyone else.

“Of course, she could have contacted the police and the bakery and the flower shop as easily as anyone else,” I said. “And sent those threatening e-mails, too.”

“Threatening e-mails?” Candy put in. “I didn’t send any threatening e-mails. Wait, do you mean that text I just sent?”

Sydney shook her head. “She’s talking about those horrible e-mails from last month,” she said accusingly. “I can’t believe you did that!”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Candy said. “I didn’t send any e-mails.”

Deciding the e-mails were the least of the issue, I plowed on. “Then there was the hair-gel incident, of course,” I said. “Candy was around that day too, so I guessed she’d sneaked in and switched out Vic’s gel, then slipped back later and switched them back before anyone thought to check.”

Sydney gasped. “You mean you
purposely
let him put that flammable stuff in his hair, knowing the risks?” she cried in horror.

“Get real,” Candy snapped. “With all those medics around there was no way he’d really get hurt. I just figured it might scare him a little. Maybe even teach him a lesson about rushing ahead with this wedding.”

Shuddering slightly at the idea that anyone could think that way, I continued. “And of course, we can all see that she placed those biting ants, knowing that Sydney had sensitive skin just like her own.”

“Yeah. Rotten little things swarmed me while I was trying to get them out of the jar onto that lei,” Candy muttered.

I turned to her. “There’s still one thing I can’t figure out, though,” I said. “During the airport party, when did you have time to sneak out and dump that jet fuel in the punch? And how’d you know where to find it, since you’d just arrived in town?”

Sydney gasped, both slim hands flying to her face. “You did
that
?” she cried, sounding on the verge of hysteria as she stared at Candy. “But you could have killed Vic!”

“Yeah, and some of the rest of us, too,” Pandora put in.

There was a moment of uproar. “Wait!” Candy yelled over the ruckus. “Listen! I had nothing to do with that, I swear! What, do you think I’m crazy? I definitely didn’t want to hurt Vic—I just wanted to show him that his stupid relationship with Syd was moving way too fast!”

Sydney was crying by now. “If you didn’t do it, then who did?” she wailed. “That stuff didn’t pour itself in there!”

“How should I know?” Candy snapped, clearly on the edge of tears again herself. “Maybe the caterers hate reality TV.”

George gritted her teeth, but I nudged her before she could respond. “Let it go,” I said softly. “She probably realizes that’s the prank that could get her in real trouble. Even if we can’t get her to confess, I’m sure the police will take care of it.”

“So what did Tonya say?” Bess looked up from scrubbing a tray clean in the soapy sink as I hung up the phone.

It was a few hours later. My friends and I were still at Sydney’s parents’ house helping clean up after the shower. Deb and Vic’s mother were helping too, but the two of them were out in the living room packing up the gifts. Sydney, Ellie, and Akinyi had gone along when the cops had arrived to take Candy down to the police station, and I’d just called in to see what was happening.

“Sydney and the others are on their way home,” I reported. “Tonya told me that Candy confessed to most of the stuff, but she still won’t admit to the jet fuel thing. Or the e-mails Sydney got back in New York, either.”

“Forget the e-mails.” George had been drying a pan Bess had just finished washing, but she set it down and hurried toward me. “How are we going to prove she tried to poison Vic?”

I shrugged. “Not sure we can,” I said, feeling troubled. “I asked around earlier before everyone left, and it seems like Candy has an alibi for the whole time of the party. She was with Akinyi or Syd or both pretty much the entire time after they disembarked from the jet, though Akinyi did remember her stepping to the back of the plane to make a phone call right after they landed. At the time Candy claimed she was calling their modeling agency, but today she admitted she was actually making that false tip to the police.”

“So she has an alibi for most of the party, and then she was outside with Sydney when the PowerUp thing went down?” Bess said.

George looked confused. “So then who did it? Who poisoned the PowerUp? What does this mean?”

Before I could answer, the kitchen door slammed open. Sydney rushed in, face pale and drawn, clutching her PDA.

“Syd!” Bess exclaimed. “Are you all right?”

Sydney didn’t answer. She held up the PDA so I could see. “This just came,” she blurted out hoarsely.

There was a text message blinking on the screen:

I shook my head grimly and finally answered George’s question. “It means this isn’t over.”