Ms America and the Whoopsie in Winona (8 page)

“That’s one of their bestsellers,” Pop says. “The maple long john.”

One bite makes me think it was made in heaven, not Winona.

“They still fry them in lard,” Maggie assures me, “like they did ninety years ago.”

Make that an extra long run.

Trixie and Shanelle join us in short order. Shanelle goes for a traditional glazed and Trixie a chocolate-cake donut. “I’m getting a head start on my holiday weight gain this year,” she mumbles, her mouth half full.

When my mother appears, she’s already made up and dressed in navy slacks and a cute blue paisley blouse with turned-up cuffs.

“I hope you slept well in the maid’s room,” Maggie says.

My mother produces a beatific smile as she selects her usual jelly donut. “I always sleep like a baby, don’t I, Lou? Nothing on
my
conscience.”

Meow. “So what’s on the docket for everybody today?” I ask.

“Well, the funeral’s not till tomorrow,” Trixie murmurs, and Maggie spins toward my father. “I think they should read the will here at the house.”

I get a brainstorm. “Excellent idea! How about in the library?”

From behind Maggie, Shanelle winks at me. She knows about the secret room right off the library so she can guess what I’m up to.

“That should work,” Maggie agrees. “I’ll call the lawyer.”

Since I’m on a roll, I keep going. “You two are thinking of driving to Minneapolis today, right?” As I say that, I realize that with my mom here it will be difficult to search the house. I know from experience that I can’t count on her to keep her mouth shut.

“Can she do that?” my mom asks me, gesturing toward Maggie. “The cops will let her leave town?”

Maggie frowns at my mother. “Why wouldn’t they?” She turns to my father. “What have you been saying, Lou?”

Interesting. Maybe Pop
has
been pestering her to explain her whereabouts when Ingrid was gunned down.

Before Pop can answer Maggie bursts into tears. “I had nothing to do with Ingrid getting shot!”

“So where were you when it happened?” I ask. As soon as the words pop out of my mouth, I realize they sound pretty accusatory. Still, I do want that question answered.

Maggie keeps sobbing. “I can’t believe you’re asking me that! What do you have against me? I got you this opportunity here in Winona, didn’t I?”

She makes it sound like she lined me up at Carnegie Hall. “It’s a perfectly reasonable question. One you should have no trouble answering.”

She keeps crying for a while, and I note with interest that Pop doesn’t try to comfort her. Eventually, since I don’t let her off the hook, she comes out with it. “Fine! You’re so desperate to know? I wanted one of those inflatable fruitcakes.”

“Why didn’t you just say so?” Pop hollers.

My mother throws out her arms. “What in tarnation is an inflatable fruitcake?”

“Hey, hold on a minute.” Pop frowns at Maggie. “Are you saying you
stole
it? While we were all standing there in the dark?”

She starts crying harder and I start wondering if her tears are a ploy to make us back off. Finally, “They were expensive!” she wails. “I don’t have the kind of money the rest of you people have.”

Boy, will my mom make hay with this! Suspected sister killer
and
tchotchke thief. I see the triumphant glint in my mom’s eye. “What in the world would anybody want with an inflatable fruitcake?” she wants to know.

Maggie struggles to explain. “It’s so you can put fruitcake on the holiday table but nobody has to eat it. Because nobody ever wants to eat fruitcake.”

Pop and I meet each other’s eyes. That is so not true.

“People only eat it to be polite,” Maggie insists. “Everybody knows that.”

Pop shuffles his feet. “Well, truth be told, Hazel here has been known to bake a darn good fruitcake.”

My mother bows her head in a false show of modesty. I know her heart is soaring.

I chime in. “In fact, Mom’s fruitcake is so good that we have neighbors call us in early December just to make sure their names are still on her gift list.”

“I don’t believe it.” Maggie sets her jaw. “There’s no such thing as good fruitcake. You’re both making this up.”

“There’s only one way to prove it.” My mother produces such a sweet smile I nearly go into insulin shock. “How about you and I have a fruitcake bake-off?”

“Now
that’s
the way to get the season started!” Pop bellows. “Hazel’s fruitcake!”

Maggie throws out her arms. “Seriously? You expect me to bake a fruitcake? Well, fine. I’ll do it. But not until after the funeral. Some of us are in mourning.”

Only a honker of a sneeze keeps me from disputing that assertion.

The doorbell rings. “I’ll get it,” I offer, and without thinking twice I run to the front door in my ancient PJs with my hair in a pile on top of my head and my nose red from non-stop blowing and half of a maple long john donut in one hand and a snot-filled Kleenex in the other and who is standing there but Mario Suave.

“Happy,” he says, “just the woman I’ve been looking for,” and he cracks that trademark dimple-flashing smile that appears on his
America’s Scariest Ghost Stories
posters and you know what? It doesn’t matter that I look like hell on wheels.

He looks fantastic, of course, his skin tanned from L.A. sun and his dark hair perfectly imperfect and his musky cologne breaking through my congestion to assail my nostrils. He’s dressed in sleek black trousers and a camel-colored overcoat that must have cashmere in it because it feels so darn soft. I know how soft it is because I’m hugging him. I’m hugging him for a little too long, I realize.

I back away and tell a lie. “I can’t believe you came to Winona!”

He winks at me. “Didn’t I tell you there are ghosts in Minnesota?”

I hear commotion behind me. Everyone is coming into the foyer from the kitchen. Delighted shouts and cries are ringing out.

Mario lowers his voice. “Ghosts … and angels.”

I get a few minutes to collect myself as Mario is greeted and hugged and backslapped and escorted to the kitchen for coffee and a Bloedow’s donut. We have a moment of solemnity when he offers Maggie his condolences. She seems so undone by his celebrity that she can’t speak, no matter the topic. All she can do is stare.

“Maybe you can share some local knowledge with me,” Mario suggests to her at one point. I can tell he’s trying to cheer her up, which goes to show how considerate he is. “That’s always a great way to improve the show.”

She clears her throat. “So you’ll be working on your show here in Winona?”

“Why else would I be here?” He gives me a sly wink and nobody says a word. Mario may have had a good cover in Vegas and Miami but we all know why he really came to Winona: Mom knows, and Trixie and Shanelle and me and even Pop.

If Jason knew Mario had shown up here, he’d know why, too.

“I’ve got a shoot this afternoon,” Mario goes on, “on Cummings Street on the west side of town. It’s said to be haunted by a very lively spirit.” He shivers dramatically and we all chuckle.

“How is Mariela?” Trixie wants to know. “Mariela is Mario’s 16-year-old daughter, who lives in Miami,” she adds for Maggie’s benefit.

“She’s just fine. Shopping constantly and trying to make me believe it’s for Christmas gifts.”

“How did her audition go?” Shanelle asks. We all know Mario pulled a string or two so his drop-dead-gorgeous daughter could try out for a new teen TV drama.

“She got a callback but then she flubbed her lines.” He meets my gaze. “She didn’t practice enough. Just like for the pageant.”

Mariela was a shoo-in to win Teen Princess of the Everglades but then in the finale not only tripped over her evening gown but delivered a catastrophic answer to the final question. She placed fifth and was not happy about it.

“It could’ve just been nerves,” Trixie suggests, charitable as ever.

“Nerves aren’t her problem.” Mario finishes his coffee. “Failing to prepare is.”

Pop pipes up. “And how is Consuela doing?” He’s much higher on Mariela’s mother than we three queens are.

Mario chuckles and shakes his head. “Prepare yourselves, ladies! She’s talking about entering Ms. Florida.”

“But she has to be married to compete!” Trixie cries.

The Ms. America pageant of which I am the proud title-holder is the nation’s foremost pageant for married women.

“I think she’s got that part well in hand,” Mario replies.

I detect chagrin in his voice. “Do you mean, with Hector?” I’m referring to the married man with whom Consuela was catting around as recently as last month. Maybe she finally succeeded in prodding him to leave his wife.

Mario shakes his head. I’ll have to get that story later.

I take a deep breath. This is potentially big news, on a few levels. For one thing, Consuela getting married presumably means she’ll stop making a play for Mario. I shouldn’t care but I do.

From a pageant point-of-view, this is potentially alarming. Consuela is a total bombshell. If she becomes a contestant—and is smart enough to do one of her amazing pole-dancing routines as her talent—she could well win her state. Meaning I’d encounter her again at the national competition, where I will crown my successor.

I know I’m getting way ahead of myself but my stomach drops when I imagine the horror of Consuela Machado winning the crown and succeeding me as Ms. America. How in the world could I relinquish my beloved tiara to her? And be forced to smile the entire time as if I were thrilled to do so?

I can’t let myself think about that. It’s too appalling a scenario. With everything else going on in my life, I’m frazzled enough.

Mario takes his leave vowing to return in an hour to go running with me. He claims he could use the exercise. The man is as well muscled as a Ford Mustang.

“Normally I wouldn’t approve of you running around in these temperatures with a head cold,” my mother tells me. “But I’m for anything to get you closer to that Mario. You’re healthy. You’d get over the flu.”

After Pop and Maggie leave for their day trip to Minneapolis, I place a call to Detective Dembek to inquire if the department found anything of interest at Damsgard. She tells me they’re still combing through Ingrid’s computer and desk files.

“We’ll return Mrs. Svendsen’s Mercedes later today,” she says. “And I let her sister know that we released the body to the funeral home last night.”

So the burial won’t be delayed, nor the reading of the will. Maggie will be pleased on that count. “Anything good from the surveillance cameras outside the Giant W?” I ask.

“We’ve identified almost all the people who ran outside right after the shot was fired. Naturally we’re talking to them. We haven’t turned up anything of value yet. Nor were there any fingerprints on the note sent to that boy Kevin.”

That’s no surprise. “Maybe the shots taken by the
Winona Post
photographer would be useful.” I remember Trixie swatting at the man with her elf cap when he attempted to photograph Ingrid’s bleeding corpse. “He was taking pictures of the crowd before the ceremony began.”

“Yes, analyzing those photos is another way to confirm that we did GSR tests on everyone who was present.”

I’m now enough of an aficionado that I know GSR stands for “gunshot residue.”

“I’ve also begun to talk with some committee friends of Mrs. Svendsen,” Detective Dembek goes on. “Unfortunately neither Mayor Chambers nor Mr. Fitch from the Giant W have been able to shed any light on the matter.”

I’ve already concluded that neither of them could be guilty. They were in enough proximity to Ingrid to have shot her but the killer disposed of the gun and surgical gloves in aisle fourteen while the lights were still out. I was standing behind both the mayor and the suit so I know they were on the dais the entire time. I suppose they could have handed off the gun and gloves to an accomplice but that would’ve been hard to pull off.

Even though Detective Dembek thinks her homicide investigation skills are rusty, I’d say she’s doing a fine job. I bring her up to speed on the visits from Priscilla Pembroke and Peter Svendsen and explain why I’m suspicious of them both. Finally, even though I’m conflicted about it, and even though my father would go ballistic if he knew, I share my concerns about Maggie. “She doesn’t really seem like the type and I know it’s shocking even to consider that she might have killed her own sister—”

“Murderers are so often next of kin.”

I have heard that sad fact. “She might say something revealing during tomorrow’s reading of the will. Maybe you should be there.” I know I’ll be in attendance, at least in a manner of speaking. I’ll be eavesdropping from the secret room. I can’t wait.

We chat for a bit longer then end the call. Trixie waylays me as I’m about to dress for my run. “I found a great place to take your mom to get her out of the house,” she whispers. We duck into my room for a confab. “The Polish Cultural Institute and Museum.”

“They have one of those here?”

“Can you believe it? Detective Dembek said there’s a large Polish community in Winona and there must be. Anyway, with all the exhibits and the gift shop I can keep her there for hours. But they close at 3.”

“So I’ve got to get cracking with the search as soon as Mario and I are done with the run.” If I were a lesser beauty queen, I’d skip the run. But given the calories I’ve been ingesting, I have to exercise. I want to maximize lots of things in my life but not my blimp potential.

“What are you wearing to go running?” Trixie wants to know.

I show off my triple-waistband black capris—which streamline the hips and minimize the booty—and my lightweight hot pink performance jacket.

“I love that shirring on the front,” Trixie purrs. “Very feminine. What about to hold back your hair?”

I produce my plum-colored chunky-knit headband with the rear button detail.

“I want one!” she cries, the best reaction you can get from a fellow fashionista.