Authors: Linda Ladd
“Tell Brianna we're gonna nail this guy to the wall, that's what you can tell her. Look around, Bud. This guy was sloppy in here. Maybe he missed something in the bathroom or maybe that's his blood out there on the deck. If it's here, Buck's gonna find it. And my gut's telling me this isn't the least bit random, but personal, like you said. For some reason, this guy hated Hilde.” I picked up the pocket calendar again. “I'm betting his name is right here in this book somewhere.”
“I've gotta go tell Bri.”
“Yeah. We'll finish up here and tell her together. You want me to do it?”
“No, I've gotta do it.”
“Okay, let's get this over with.”
There were lots of personal belongings to go through and we delved through a couple of scrapbooks she'd tucked into her luggage, bulging with pageant programs, pressed roses, and newspaper articles. There were a dozen or more videos of pageants, and I put them in evidence bags to check in and then view as soon as I had time.
I perked up considerably when I found a picture of Hilde sitting on the lap of some dark-haired, muscled-up, Hispanic-looking guy, who was holding on to her like he owned her and wanted everybody to know it. He was handsome in a swarthy, macho kinda way, and her boyfriend, no doubt. I memorized his face for future reference, then tucked the photograph in an evidence bag and stuck it in my purse. I'd ask Brianna to identify him as soon as she was up to it.
There were all kinds of photographs of Hilde and Brianna together, too, but most looked recent. They were always holding hands or posed with their arms around each other. They were obviously close in both age and friendship. I wondered about their background, where they came from, what kind of family they'd had.
I'd only met Brianna a few months back, actually the same day Bud had, when we'd gone into the fancy women's store where she worked to buy me a dress for a New Year's Eve gala. She and Bud hit it off big-time from the very beginning and had been an item ever since. I liked her right off the bat, too, but neither of us knew much about where she'd been before she'd landed here at the lake.
“You know much about Bri's past, Bud?”
“Not much. I know she lived in south Florida before she came here, some little beach place north of Miami. Said she competed on the pageant circuit with Hilde for a while, but didn't like it as much as Hilde did, so she dropped out.”
“What about her family?”
“I don't know. We never discussed her family much.”
“Did she seem reluctant to discuss them?”
“No, it just didn't come up.”
I frowned when I heard a car pull up and stop out front. I wondered if Buckeye had called Shaggy in on this thing, and hoped so as I walked to the front door. But it wasn't Shag. It was Brianna, getting out of her red Corvette and staring wide-eyed at the crime scene tape. She looked terrified.
“Oh, crap, it's Bri, Bud. Better intercept her quick. You sure don't want her coming in here.”
Bud wasted no time getting out the door and meeting Brianna before she had time to duck under the tape. I watched him take her arm and walk her away from the house and around to the back side of her car. He was holding her by her upper arms now, and she was trying to pull away and run toward the house. She probably already knew Hilde was in big trouble, but it was pretty damn clear when Bud told her Hilde's fate because her legs went rubbery and she collapsed to her knees. Bud went down with her and tried to hold her, but she kept fighting him. I could hear her screaming Hilde's name, but after a couple of seconds, those cries turned into a long, terrible, heartbroken wail. Lana looked over at me and shook her head.
Unable to listen any longer to Brianna's grief-stricken cries, I walked through the living room and into the back of the house. Because I knew exactly what she was going through. I had fallen on my knees once a long time ago, too, made the same kind of inhuman keening sound when I held my little boy's lifeless body in my arms. I still made those sounds sometimes, when no one was around to hear me.
It was nearly half past three when I left Buck and his team to finish processing the crime scene and remove the body for autopsy. I wanted to talk to Brianna, find out what she knewâbetter yet, who she suspected could have hated Hilde enough to do something this godawful to her. I didn't want to push her too soon or too hard, or Bud, either, so I gave him an exploratory call as I pulled out of the Royal Bungalows, turned west onto the lake road, and headed back to Camdenton. It took him two rings to pick up.
“Yeah? Claire?”
“How's she doing?”
“Better than I expected her to, that's for damn sure. She's calmed down a little, anyway.”
“Enough for me to ask her some questions?”
“Maybe. She's still pretty much in denial, I think, but she says she wants to help us, if she can.”
“How about now?”
“Yeah, I guess so. Better to get it over with so she can take something that'll make her sleep.”
Brianna Swensen lived in a house off Highway 54 in a little town with the unlikely and, yes, even unsavory name, of Roach, Missouri. It was about five miles southwest of Camdenton and I drove past the sheriff's department on my way there without stopping. I'd already reported in by phone to my boss, Sheriff Charlie Ramsay, and he was less than pleased that another sensational murder had come down at the lake so soon after the last one. He didn't blame me out loud but I wondered if that's what he was thinking. Hell, it was what I was thinking.
Brianna's house set atop a ridge about two miles down a winding blacktop road. Her Vette was parked out front. Bud had been at the wheel when they'd left Hilde's place, and he probably hadn't wanted to take time to put it in the garage. I pulled up beside it in the graveled semicircle driveway and killed my engine.
I sat there a couple of minutes, listening to the motor tick and watching leaves on the hedge along the house rustle in a gentle April breeze, not exactly eager to barge inside and torture Brianna some more, which pretty much was what I was going to do. It was imperative to interview her, however, and better me to question her than Bud. Let him hold her hand, put his arm around her, and be the good guy. Actually, he was the good guy. I climbed out, beeped my door locked, and walked up the L-shaped sidewalk to the front door, which was painted a cerulean blue. I knocked softly, ignoring the brass doorbell. Brianna's nerves were probably jangled enough. Seconds later, Bud opened the door, looking a little worse for wear. Actually, a lot worse for wear.
“Still okay to come in?”
“Yeah, she took a Darvocet a while ago. She wants to talk to you.”
I followed him down a short entry hall, painted beige and hung with a black-and-white photograph of an old barn framed in white and then out into a living area that faced the back of the house. The whole place smelled good, like oranges and lemons. I wondered how Bri got it to do that. My house sure never smelled this good. A kitchen was visible off to the left with a short bar and ceiling-hung cabinets separating it from the living room. A pair of multipaned white French doors revealed an exceptional view of the wooded hills around Camdenton, but not quite as breathtaking a panorama as the one from Hilde's bungalow. I could just barely glimpse a little half-moon sliver of the lake on the distant horizon.
Brianna sat on a red-and-blue plaid couch facing a white brick fireplace alive with gas logs. They were dancing around and warming the room. Her face was unnaturally flushed, her eyes swollen from several hours of crying. She still looked beautiful, believe it or not. She was sniffling into a wadded-up pink Kleenex, almost as if she couldn't quite summon up the strength to wail any more.
I put down my leather handbag and squatted in front of her. I put my hand over hers. “Brianna, I am so sorry about your sister.”
She nodded, and more tears leaked down her cheeks. She dabbed at them with the same soggy tissue that she nervously squeezed in her hand. I glanced at Bud, and he motioned with his head for me to sit down in the matching plaid chair that directly faced her. I did so while he took a seat on the couch close beside her and held her hand.
“Brianna, I really hate to put you through this right now, but we've got to ask you some questions, okay? I wish we didn't, I wish it could wait, but it really can't, not if you're up to it at all.”
Brianna nodded, looked at Bud, and welled up again when he squeezed her shoulders. I waited a second or two, then started out as gently as I knew how. This was not going to be easy. I wondered if Bud had told her the grisly details yet. I had a feeling he hadn't. I wasn't going to, either.
“Do you have any idea why somebody might've done this to Hilde?”
Brianna sobbed aloud, jerked a fresh Kleenex from the box in front of her, and shook her head. She had pinned her long blond hair up into a bun like the one Hilde wore at the time of her death. Some strands had fallen around her face, too, just like Hilde's had, and she kept pushing them behind her ears. She licked her lips, and I made the mistake of thinking of Hilde's lips. I swallowed hard, tried not to show my revulsion at that image.
“No, oh, God, no, Hilde's really nice, you know, kind to people, just a good person, really. Even the other girls, the ones she competed against, didn't seem too awfully jealous that she won so much.” She stopped talking, swallowed hard, dabbed some more tears, but all that mascara and eyeliner was not running in rampant manner down her cheeks. Actually, wasn't even smudged. Waterproof, I guess.
“And that's highly unusual around this kind of circuit, too,” she continued, all muffled and weepy. “It's really cutthroat and intense, you know, every girl for herself. But Hilde made friends, and they all seemed to like her, respect her for her hard work, you know, and everything. And she did work hard, really hard. She's getting older now⦔
Brianna remembered that Hilde wasn't getting older now and wouldn't ever get older again, and began to weep in earnest. While she recovered, I took my little notepad out of my handbag and wrote down the pertinent details of her remarks, but I was pretty sure that Bri was looking at all this and her sister through a pair of very rose-tinted glasses. I couldn't imagine the other contestants being quite so jolly about usually losing to Hilde Swensen. It didn't fit the stereotypical, bitchy beauty contestant profile entrenched in my mind, but maybe I was wrong about the beauties and bitches of the world. On the other hand, I'd never been within three hundred yards of a beauty pageant, made sure of it, in fact, so what did I know? That, however, and unfortunately, was about to change.
“Did she have any enemies that you know of? People who were jealous of her? Anybody who threatened her or accosted her verbally? I understand that sometimes happens to beautiful women. Other women don't give them a chance, you know, just decide to hate them at first sight?” Yeah, me, for instance, I plead guilty, 'fraid so.
Brianna nodded as if she knew exactly what I was talking about, as if it happened to her every day, and it probably did. My first impression when I'd seen her was that she was a haughty mannequin type with missing posters nailed up on bulletin boards concerning the frontal lobes of her brain. It turned out I was wrong about her, too, and me, a trained detective, at that. I guess it's true what they say about not judging a book, and all that rot.
Brianna said, “No, not that I'm aware of. She got some guys now and then who wanted to go out with her, date her and stuff like that, but she usually didn't go in for men who liked her just because she was cute and won a bunch of titles. You know, men who dated her so they'd have a trophy on their arm when they went into restaurants or clubs. If she got any hint that's what they were after, she'd drop them.”
“Does she have a boyfriend right now that you know about? Somebody steady?”
“Well, kind of, I guess. Back in Florida. From when she lived at South Beach. His name is Carlos Vasquez. He owns this fancy gym down there, and he's a personal trainer, too. It's well known, a spa, where lots of celebrities go, you know, people like Gianni Versace. He was a regular there before that guy shot him.”
I dug out the photo I'd found at Hilde's condo. “Is this him?”
Brianna took it. She nodded. “Yes, that's Carlos. I looks like it might've been taken a couple of months ago. He's sort of a camera buff.”
“What's the name of Carlos's spa?”
“The Ocean Club.”
“Did she live with this man?”
“She moved into his beach house for a while, but he ended up getting too possessive, so she moved out last Christmas. Actually, it was New Year's Eve. I remember because that's the day I met Bud.”
Brianna smiled tearfully at Bud, and he smiled back, but when his eyes met mine, I knew he was thinking the same thing I was. “Was this Carlos guy ever violent with her, you know, slap her around, push her, yell at her?”
“I was pretty sure a couple of times that he might've slapped her around some and I know he used to yell at her, but Hilde said he didn't, that she never would've stood for anything like that. She's got a lot of pride and self-respect, and she's strong. She works out on weights every day and runs three miles.” I was watching her face and saw the exact moment that the fact hit her that her sister hadn't been strong enough to fight off her killer. She burst into fresh tears and buried her face in her palms. This was not going well.
Bud draped an arm around her and pulled her head against his shoulder. I could barely stand the pained expression on his face. This was tearing him up. I went on, but tried to be gentle. “Do you have Carlos Vasquez's address and telephone number?”
“I think it's the same as it was when she lived with him. She's the one who packed up and moved out when they split. The two of us own a nice little beach house up the coast near Hollywood, pretty far away from all that stuff going on in South Beach. She's been living there alone since I moved up here.”
“Okay.” I thought about things for a minute or two. “Was she down there recently? Before the Kansas City gig, the last one she won?”
Brianna nodded. “She always scheduled a week or two off between pageants. She was in San Diego earlier this month, then spent a week at home in Florida, I think, before she flew to Kansas City. The only reason she entered the pageant here was so we could spend time together. We'd grown apart the last few years. She thought it was kind of rinky-dink after the big-city ones. I encouraged her to come early so she could meet Bud, so I guess this is all my fault!”
She dissolved into a torrent again and I sat mutely and watched Bud soothe her. He was doing a pretty good job of it, and I felt like an interloper in a private, intimate moment and wished I could get up and leave, but I couldn't. I hated interviewing friends, especially distraught friends. I gave her some more time to calm down, and she eventually did.
I said, “Did Hilde have any other boyfriends, other than this Carlos guy?”
“No. There were others in her past, of course, but I don't think she's kept in touch with any of them.”
“Were they down in Florida, too?”
“Uh-huh, yeah. Some were. Hilde and I both moved down to Miami for college. You know, the beaches drew us. We both went to the University of Florida.”
“Where did you live before moving to Florida?”
She hesitated. “Maine. A little bitty place near the Canadian border.”
Bud seemed interested in this direction of questioning, so I suspected he was learning stuff he didn't know about Brianna's background.
“I understand that the two of you were close?”
“Oh, yes. We were always together, lived together and everything, until the last few years when I moved up here.”
“Why did you move up here, Bri?”
Again, a bit of hesitancy. “I don't know, really. I didn't like the humidity in south Florida. It made my hair kink up. And it was too crowded for me, way too many people everywhere you went. I came up here once for a fashion seminar over at Cedar Bend Lodge and just fell in love with the lake. It was so quiet and peaceful with all these pretty views. It reminded me of the place where we were born.”
“Why didn't you go back there if you missed it so much?”
Bud was frowning, like he didn't like where I was taking this, but Bri's past was pretty much Hilde's, too. And pretty murky, at that. I wanted to know who and why and what and where. I'm pushy that way.
“I guess because both my parents are gone now. Nobody's left up there on the farm. It's been closed up for years and is even more out in the sticks than this is.” She stopped, coughed a little, and delicately moistened dry lips some more. “Bud, would you mind getting me a bottle of Evian? It's in the fridge.”
“Sure, babe.”
I watched him walk into the kitchen. He returned with the water and handed it to her, then I said, “Bud mentioned this morning that you said Hilde had a stalker a few years back. Do you remember his name?”
“Oh, no, she never found out who he was. The harassment just stopped one day, and he's left her alone ever since.”
“What kinds of things did he do?”