Holden’s sense went on high alert, as while McDougal didn’t appear to have any connection with the previous pageants and murders, he was an anomaly. Two of the committee members, the Spanish teacher and Selina Barnes Colton, had been involved with at least one if not both of the ill-fated pageants and while they were automatic suspects, the outliers had to be examined, too.
“Certainly.” Bella beamed. If she noticed Derek’s leer she didn’t show it. “As most of you know, I’m a lifelong Mustang Valley resident. I’ve been lucky enough to go to college, where I received my bachelor’s in journalism. It’s there on my résumé.” She nodded at her application packet, which was being passed down the row of seven pageant board members. “I’ve fallen on hard financial times lately. I’d use the scholarship to MVCC to begin a new career that would have a more reliable income than freelance writing.”
“But you’re employed by the Mustang Valley Gabber, aren’t you?” another board member called out. Holden made a mental note to check up on Bella’s supposed dire straits, but all thoughts screeched to a halt. Wait—Bella Colton was a reporter? His gut twisted and he knew his mouth probably did, too.
Holden had nothing more than disgust for reporters. Not for the usual reasons he knew other agents detested the media. Holden’s distrust of reporters was very personal in origin, thanks to his last girlfriend, someone he’d thought might be with him for the long haul. Nicole, his ex, turned out to be dating him because she’d hoped to glean confidential information about the Coltons from him. This was last summer, when he’d investigated a crime in Roaring Springs, Colorado during its annual film festival. By the time the last film premiered, Nicole admitted her motive for wanting to wait all day in the hotel room for Holden. They were through. In the two years since, he’d dated on and off, but never anyone serious. And the bad taste in his mouth from being duped by a reporter had never washed away.
“I still work at the Gabber, but it’s a modest wage, supplemented by freelance work that’s also been drying up. It’s time for me to face facts—I’ve got to find another type of job or starve.” Bella smiled as she continued the interview. Her entire face lit up and dang it, it ignited something deep inside his chest. Holden’s breath caught at the exquisite shade of peach on her cheekbones, the bright hue of her irises. But her green eyes didn’t sparkle to match the dazzling of her white smile. Instead, Holden had the oddest sensation that Bella Colton was in the midst of a huge act. And the board was her audience. But why?
“With the scholarship to MVCC, I’d be able to become a nurse.”
“The medical industry? A Colton?” Maeve Murphy, who’d worked as the school nurse for decades, spoke up.
Bella’s foot began to shake at the end of her long, shapely leg, but her smile never faded, her chin remained uplifted. Holden gave her ten points for composure and the pageant had yet to begin, her application yet to be accepted.
“I’m not clear on what being a Colton has to do with a career choice.” He heard the challenge in her tone even as she delivered her response so sweetly. It only served to make him admire her more. He really didn’t need to admire anyone right now, though, and definitely not a journalist. He was here to find a serial killer.
You still have to live.
Maeve’s plump face turned red. “It’s just that, you’re from a family of lucrative businesspeople. Why medicine, why now?”
Bella leaned forward, never breaking eye contact with Maeve. “I’m sorry—I think you’re mistaking me for one of the other line of Coltons, the ones who own Rattlesnake Ridge Ranch and run Colton Oil. My brothers and I are from a different part of the family. In fact, I don’t even know most of my Colton cousins very well.” Her voice had turned to ice and Holden watched both her and the pageant committee’s expressions. Most of the people on the board were career educators, including Maeve, an RN. If Bella was in her late twenties, maybe early thirties, she, Spencer and Jarvis must have gone to school here while Maeve and the others were on staff. They had to know her and her brothers. He’d read that Mustang Valley had a population of ten thousand. In short, Maeve knew Bella and her brothers.
And for some inexplicable reason, he was relieved to receive confirmation she wasn’t familiar with the larger branch of her family.
A woman with pouffed-out brunette hair and large dangling earrings raised her heavily braceleted arm, waving at Maeve. “I can personally vouch for Bella and her desire to make something of herself. She’s a lifelong resident, as she’s stated, and her aunt raised her and her brothers after her parents’ deaths in an auto accident. Tragic, I tell you. Yet you’ve survived the odds and are here to present yourself as a contestant. And, may I add, Bella was the brightest student of her class when I had her. Brava.” Hannah Rosenstein nodded in encouragement toward Bella. Hannah was the school Spanish teacher and Holden had witnessed her vouch for exactly one other contestant, also a former student. If she said Bella was solid, he suspected the board would accept her application.
“Muchas gracias, Señora Rosenstein.” Bella responded in a decent accent.
Senora Rosenstein grinned. “De nada. It’s heartwarming to see you’ve remembered your Spanish.”
Holden sat still until Bella’s interview was finished and she was released to leave the building. Only after she exited the auditorium’s back door did he stand and head for the back of the stage to begin his last inspection of the building before he locked it up for the night. Until next week, when the contestants would be called in to start the pageant prep.
A movement on the other side of the stage caught his attention. A tall figure in dark clothing, his face covered with the shadow from the brim of a baseball cap, the man wasn’t anyone Holden had allowed in the building. Holden had memorized the exact number of people who should be here—board members, contestants, plus Bella, who had left the building by now—in the high school. This was a stranger, an interloper.
Holden drew his weapon from its hidden place in an ankle holster and deliberately made his way to the back passage behind the stage, to avoid detection by the suspect. No one was going to be hurt—not on his watch.
Chapter 2
Offstage, Be
lla quickly slipped out of the espadrilles and shoved them into her oversize tote. Her feet made no sound on the old, highly waxed corridor floor that had borne thousands of teenaged feet through the years.
Looking over her shoulder, she made sure that the way-too-intense security guard hadn’t followed her, but he’d been pretty settled in his chair on the stage, observing the pageant committee’s discussion. The members had been deep in conversation as she and the other contestants exited. Bella had made to leave with the group, then peeled off as the last of the women exited through the main door.
The memory of his gaze on her made her skin heat and her anger rise. Did he think she couldn’t see him as the pageant committee grilled her? And what was his job here, exactly? She thought security guards just manned doors and entrances.
Memories swiped at her focus as she ran to the teachers’ conference room. She’d been in several musicals during middle and high school, all performed in this very building, on the same stage where she was going to have to pretend to compete for Ms. Mustang Valley. Bella knew these corridors and rooms as well as the house she’d grown up in until their parents had died. Some buildings were imprinted on a heart as firmly as the memories that were created in them. She sighed. Even the not-so-great memories—the ones of Aunt Amelia, who had single-handedly raised Bella and her brothers after the accident—were here. Bella recalled Aunt Amelia at back-to-school nights, frazzled as she found getting to three different class sessions impossible. She’d taken it out on the triplets later, complaining about how her life could have been so much easier if Bella’s parents had lived.
Bella hoped that tomorrow she’d be asked to report back to participate in the pageant. She knew it depended on the interview, the personal essays, answers to a total of five written questions that covered her views on charity, community and personal excellence, and her “contestant resume.” The resume had to include current contributions to Mustang Valley, her service hours outside of work, and her place of employment. She’d cringed at the glamour portion of the submission package, which required a headshot as well as an “athletic pose.” Bella used her tripod to take the photo of herself in yoga pants and workout bra. But it’d all be worth it if she made the cut. She’d learn more about the selection process and any “advice” doled out by the committee that might include starving oneself. She was looking for this kind of evidence against the pageant, but Bella needed more proof that this pageant in particular encouraged the women to be as thin as possible, or any other trigger that would have set off Gio’s issues. Gio had mentioned Señora Rosenstein as being particularly snide in her comments about any plus-size contestants, forcing them to weigh in each day, sometimes twice per day. As the pageant’s self-appointed volunteer choreographer, Selina had made nasty, derogatory comments to Gio and other contestants more than once, and Gio told her there were transcripts of the actual pageants where Selina cut contestants for such subjective transgressions as not being “dancer-like.” Gio’s claims weren’t enough to write an investigative report with, however. Bella needed to establish a pattern of wrongdoing for as far back as it existed, if possible.
The records of the previous pageants were reportedly stored in a single, locked file cabinet in the corner of the teaching-staff room which doubled as a group dressing room. Gio had gone over all of it with her as she lay dying, her spent body nearing its end on the hospital bed.
Gio’s last smile to her had belied her wasted state, and Gio’s spirit buoyed her with each step closer to the staff room. Reaching the steel door, she peered through the small, high window, but it had been papered over from the inside. Probably a security move due to the ever-present threat of school shootings. It was a harsh reality Bella’s generation had only begun to come to grips with. She sucked in air as quietly as she could, listening for anyone else in the area. It was impossible to tell if someone was in the room until she entered, and she had no idea how much time she had to find what she wanted.
Holding her breath, Bella opened the door and pasted a smile on her face. If anyone was here, she’d make up a stupid excuse and skedaddle.
No one was in the room and she scanned it with her reporter’s-eye view. The worn furniture and wood-paneled walls had been replaced with contemporary ergonometric chairs, sofas and laptop desks. The walls were a pale shade of lime, the white trim of the huge picture windows creating a crisp, clean, calming effect. If she weren’t a Mustang Valley native, she’d be stunned by the unparalleled view of the Mustang Valley Mountains.