Here Today, Gone Tamale (20 page)

“What are you doing with her jewelry?” Patti asked, pointing to the file cabinet.

This time Melanie drew in a deep breath and smiled. “Wouldn't that be just like some clever thief to steal all her jewelry and sell it on the black market once she's famous? I'm going to hide it until this all blows over.”

“What about Ty? He should have a say,” I said.

“He'll have a say once her will goes to probate and the attorneys sort out her affairs. How do I know who her next of kin was? Or if she wanted them to have the proceeds from her jewelry sales?”

Liar, liar, pants on fire. Most likely, Melanie had been planning on selling it for more than a few pretty pennies.

“Holy crap,” Melanie muttered, glancing out the window.

Deputy Lightfoot had arrived.

Lightfoot was out of his cruiser and walking up the sidewalk like a man on a mission. I was torn, for I wanted nothing more than to stick around to hear his conversation with Melanie, but I had only fifteen minutes to get to the stage where the talent show was being held.

“Be right back,” Melanie said, slamming the door at our backs.

It didn't take a mind reader to figure out she was hiding those trays of jewelry. A crystal bell rang as the front door opened.

“Good afternoon,” Patti said with a big smile.

When Lightfoot saw Patti and me standing there, his mouth fell open. He looked at her, and then he looked at me. It was the first time I remembered seeing the confident deputy even slightly rattled. “What are you two doing here?”

“Well, hey,” I said, interjecting a note of surprise. “What are you doing here?”

“I'm doing what Big Bend County pays me to do, which is more than I can say for you.” Without taking his eyes off
of me, he pulled a small spiral notebook and pen from his breast pocket. “Where's Melanie Burnett?” He walked to the doorway of the room on the left. Not seeing Melanie, he crossed the gallery to check in the room to the right.

“We were just discussing Dixie Honeycutt's jewelry.”

“That right?” he asked, thumping his spiral against his palm.

“Yes, that's right.” Melanie said. She was posed in the archway that led to the gallery from her office. “You must be new.” She sauntered over to the deputy and extended her hand. “I don't think we've met. I'm Melanie Pratt.” She extended her hand, causing her gold bangles to clink.

“Deputy Quinton Lightfoot,” he said, shaking her hand briefly. “We met at Elaine's Pies the day after Ms. Honeycutt's murder.”

Melanie didn't even stutter. “I was just explaining to Josie how I need to gather all of Dixie's jewelry so I can pass it along to her family, but I don't know who that would be.” She smiled and tilted her head to one side.

“I believe that would be Ty Honeycutt, ma'am.”

She laughed. “Of course.” With a toss of her beautiful mane, she lowered her chin and smiled up at him through her lashes. “I guess I didn't get enough sleep last night.” She fiddled with the key on her wrist and waited for him to make the next move.

Churning in my gut was a deep, perhaps unwarranted, suspicion that if Melanie was left to her own devices some of Dixie's jewelry might come up missing or appear on eBay with someone else's name listed as the seller. I was sorely tempted to tell on her, but I bit my tongue. I would bide my time. Everyone needed the opportunity to do the right thing, even Melanie.

With ill-concealed impatience, Lightfoot turned to me. “Don't you have somewhere else to be?”

“Yes, I do.” I pointed at Patti. “But I'm with her.”

He cleared his throat. “Do you have an inventory list of
the merchandise Ms. Honeycutt was selling in your establishment, ma'am?”

Melanie rolled her eyes as she twisted a wedding ring the size of Gibraltar round and round her finger. “There must be one somewhere. Last time I saw one it was on the computer, but that was so long ago.”

“I suggest you turn on the computer and print out the list for me, or I serve you a warrant for your computer and all your files.”

Like a tourist after a week on a dude ranch, Melanie's face flamed tomato red. The woman seriously needed to work on her game face.

Maybe a nudge from me would help her do the right thing. “What if Melanie tried to find Dixie's jewelry right now, while you're here?”

He stared at me as if trying to figure out what I was up to, and then he shrugged as if he had nothing better to do. I wanted to know why he wasn't asking her about her fight with Dixie. Or had he already covered that subject over pie?

Fixing me with a glare scary enough to frighten small children on Halloween, Melanie dropped her sickeningly sweet act and thrust out her chin. “I'll wait for the warrant.”

“Suit yourself.” Slowly he placed the pad and pencil in his pocket, all the while shaking his head. He gave her a long stare, and when she remained silent, he pulled out his phone. “Pleasant, it's me. Yeah. Find that warrant on my desk that I worked up for Where the Sun Sets and take it over to Judge Hawkins.” He listened for a moment. “Right, and then take it to Judge Hawkins. If he's not available, try Mooney.” He shot a glance at Melanie, who was listening intently. “No, I'll wait for you to bring it here.”

I had to give Lightfoot credit. After Ty's confession from last night and the shoplifting incident at Patti's place, the deputy had the good sense to realize that with no one else around to look after Dixie's affairs, the sheriff's department was going to have to step in and do the neighborly thing.

“I'll take it from here, Miss Callahan. You and Miss Perez can go.”

I gave Melanie a big smile. “I'll bring that other painting by later on. Is tomorrow soon enough?”

“There's no hurry. It's not as if I don't trust you to do the right thing.” The corners of Melanie's mouth lifted in a sketch of a smile, but the rest of her face told us in no uncertain terms where she wanted us to go.

With all the subtlety of a brick, Lightfoot walked to the door and held it open.

The door might not have hit me on the way out, but Melanie's piercing laugh made me wish it had.

“Gotta love all that confidence,” Patti said as she slid behind the steering wheel.

She had a point.

*   *   *

Dodging pedestrians and out of state license plates, I parked in Milagro's lot then hurried to the main stage at the end of the block. Though I hadn't seen it up to that point, I'd heard it was a real humdinger, which meant a person would have to be blinder than a mole rat to miss it. The committee had rented a three-foot-high platform on wheels from an amusement company and secured the brakes on the thing so it wouldn't roll. They'd managed to add a black velvet backdrop on the back and metallic streamers in red, white, and blue on the front. All in all, the performance space was about fifteen by eight, which was plenty of room unless your talent was tumbling or twirling fire batons.

On the street in front of the platform, the committee had set up metal folding chairs and a judge's table dressed with red, white, and blue bunting from last year's Fourth of July parade.

“Over here,” Hillary cried when I was still twenty yards away. She waved me over to the table and handed me a
clipboard. “I already organized the entries last Saturday and emailed the contestants their place on the program.”

“Uh, thanks?” I was glad someone was taking this event seriously. I had so much falling off my tortilla as of late that organizing this event hadn't made the menu.

She sighed. “Well, of course. We don't want three singers followed by three high school rock bands. People would throw a hissy fit.”

I should have called Elaine personally and begged her to replace me with Ryan, no matter what the cost to my pride. Why couldn't I have been chosen to judge the pies instead? What did it matter that the Burnetts owned a prize-winning pie shop conveniently located on Main Street in the center of town?

“The order of contestants is here.” Hillary pointed to the first page on the clipboard with a silver acrylic nail. “And the ballots for each contestant follow, with the performer's name at the top.” Not trusting my hearing or ability to reason, she reached over and flipped through the pages.

I scanned the list of contestants: five children under the age of thirteen, eight teen acts, and seven adults unless you considered that one of the adult acts was really a dancing poodle named Hercules.

“All you have to do is fill out the ballot and write the total score at the bottom. I'll tally them up as we go.”

I could have made a wisecrack about her math skills, but I refrained. If she wanted to drive the ship, I'd give her the wheel.

After the first three acts had finished, to the exuberant applause of their families and friends, I knew I was going to have to plumb the depths of my coping skills to get through the morning without grinding my teeth down to nubs. Hillary insisted on giving me her opinion of how I should score each one, at least until I moved my chair over as far as it would go and turned it so that my legs were between us.

Between an oboe solo of “The Eyes of Texas” and a cowboy that yodeled the national anthem, I was hit by a bolt of inspiration. The editor of the
Broken Boot Bugle
had been bugging me to write an article about Hillary and her new job at the college. Why not kill two birds with the proverbial stone? I could use the setup time between acts to interview the beauty queen about her job and earn brownie points with the paper.

While the volunteer stagehands cleared the stage for the poodle, I scooted over next to Hillary. “I hope you don't mind me asking, but I'd love to interview you for that piece in the
Bugle
while we're sitting here.”

Hillary cast an officious glance at the program and another at the slow progress of the stage crew.

“Frank Wilson said he mentioned it to you?” I pulled out my phone and snapped a quick photo before she could complain, or brush her hair. “It was his idea.”

“Hey, you have to ask my permission before you take my picture, got it?”

Wrinkling my forehead in confusion, I played dumb. “But you gave your permission for the article, right?” I resisted the urge to scratch my head. I didn't want her to catch on to my passive-aggressive dramatics. “Did you change your mind?”

She narrowed her eyes for a moment before plastering on her perfect smile. “Now is as good a time as any,” she said magnanimously, straightening her golden locks with her fingers.

Scrambling for my phone, I opened up my notepad app and fired the first volley. “Tell me about your position at West Texas.”

She dutifully filled me in on the minutiae of her classes and her role as mentor. “Our newspaper staff is brilliant. They challenge me as much as I challenge them.”

Nodding as if she hadn't spouted yet another brand of beauty queen speak, I asked the obvious question, “What do they think of your celebrity status?”

Was she blushing? “They don't ask.” She studied her hands. “And I don't tell.” She shrugged one shoulder. “We pretend I'm just like them.”

It was her use of the word
pretend
that egged me on. “How are you coping with us peons now that your pageant days are long gone?”

Like a lemonade Popsicle on a summer day, her smile evaporated, leaving a tight line of pink lipstick where her mouth should have been. “I'm calling Frank.”

I leaned back and crossed my legs. “Go ahead. I've got time.”

She started searching through the contacts on her cell phone, but before she could dial, the emcee introduced the dancing poodle and his owner. In a fit of pique, she stomped one of her expensive boots.

And that stomp started me thinking. One of our busboys had admitted to me, rather sheepishly, to spilling the grease in the alley on the night of Dixie's death, but he'd laughed when I'd asked if he wore a size nine and a half, proudly showing off his size elevens.

“Where'd you get your boots?” I asked, playing nice.

“Why? You running out of things to make fun of?”

As the poodle and his dance partner made their way to the center of the stage, I whispered, “I've been meaning to buy me a pair like those, but they're awfully expensive.”

She rolled her eyes and huffed. “I'll tell you if you give me Frank's number.”

We lifted our pens to our ballots only to have the poodle's accompaniment fail to play. During the emcee's impromptu stand-up routine, I continued trying to make nice with Hillary.

I thumbed to the contact and turned the screen toward her. “Here you go.” I pulled it out of reach at the last minute. “Let me try on your boots and I'll give it to you.”

“Are you crazy?”

“Please?” I waggled the phone back and forth. The boot
print could have been made by a man or a woman. Why not Hillary?

“Fine, but only one.” She tossed her left turquoise and silver boot at me. Hillary was tall, which meant she had man hands and big feet, the better to balance her big head.

I tried it on. “Ooh, nice.” I stood up and said a silent hallelujah. It was too big for me, which meant it could have left the print the night of the murder.

“Give it back, you're grossing me out. Take your foot out of my boot.”

“You're an eleven, right?”

“No.” She sniffed. “Sometimes I wear a nine and a half.”

I slid it off, but before I handed it back I found the size. Ten and a half. Inside I was doing somersaults. Once I explained to Sheriff Wallace about the boot print I'd found at the scene of Dixie's murder, he would have grounds to bring Hillary in for questioning. True to my word, I tossed it back and gave her the editor's office number.