Beauty Queen

City every year went unsolved. This was something that the police knew, but the general public did not know. However, in the case of a public figure like Colter, the pressure to find the killer would be tremendous, and the police would not rest until they had canvassed the whole state and followed every lead.
    She knew that she would be questioned. The police would know that she had been at the scene, ostensibly as Jeannie's bodyguard. The police would also eventually discover that she knew Armando, and that she was gay, and it might come out that she had been laid off from the force because she was a lesbian, and they would see that she had a clear motive for wanting to get Colter. Her only safety lay in the fact that Armando had an even more compelling motive—a dead lover. And Armando would have the murder weapon, and it would be covered with his fingerprints. The tire tracks of his car would be found at the scene, he would have a clear shot at Colter, and the opportunity to make a getaway while Mary Ellen ran to Reverend Irving's house and called the police. Above all, Armando would confess. As long as Armando confessed, she was safe.
    And how likely was Armando to keep his promise to confess? Very likely, she felt.
    But there was always the off-chance that something would get screwed up somewhere—that Reverend Irving would come over unexpectedly from his house, or that some other undesirable witness would come on the scene at the wrong moment.
    The part of her that seethed with hate and anger warred with the part of her that wanted only to live quietly, to love Liv, to work at something meaningful, to be free.
    And still another part of her mind had begun saying quietly that there must be another way to get Colter—another way besides pulling the trigger of the Beretta.
    Jeannie Colter had impressed her as a human being whose nerves were stretched to the breaking point. The woman had a problem marriage, problem children, and—it seemed—a problem squaring her domineering personality with the strictures of her religion. On top of that, she was running for governor. The strain would be too much. If left to herself, Jeannie Colter might just harmlessly self-destruct.
    As Mary Ellen fell into restless sleep, she would be telling herself all these things.
    But the next day, when she would get up and rejoin the staff for the day's work at Windfall, she would hear or see some mind-blowing bit of anti-gay prejudice from someone at the place, and she would feel disposed to use that gun that still lay padlocked in her father's chest, awaiting its moment.
    One day she was idly glancing at a copy of one of the national tabloids laying around the Colter office. Jeannie had given them an interview.
    Mary Ellen read the article, and thought she'd vomit.
    The headline read: JEANNIE COLTER LIVES IN FEAR.
    The reporter went on to paint a colorful picture of the Colter family besieged by hordes of vicious and violence-minded homosexuals. Thousands of hate letters and hate calls came in every week Both the Colter houses—the town house and Windfall—were wired with all kinds of burglar alarms, and connected with the closest police departments. Jeannie herself wore a special beeper on her belt, which would beep the police if she were assaulted.
    Mary Ellen knew, better than anyone, that none of this was true.
    Jeannie was somewhat perturbed at the threatening letters and phone calls she'd received, but they were fewer than the paper claimed. Tom Winkler had told her that the amount was nothing out of the ordinary.
    "Any rock star," he said frankly, "gets that many in a week."
    Mary Ellen also knew that the security precautions were exaggerated. There were guards at both properties, but not as many as the paper stated. And there was certainly no police beeper.
    In fact, Jeannie, perhaps discouraged by what Mary Ellen had told her about flak vests, had actually decided against a lot of security paraphernalia.
    "Why should I have to live like that—under guard in a free country?" Jeannie had said. "Why should I have to protect myself like that? I haven't done anything wrong. God will protect me."
    Yet she had seen fit to portray herself, to this reporter, as that poor lovely woman who was just trying to clean up the country, and protect her family and other people's children from being perverted, and whom those awful homosexuals were persecuting.
    Mary Ellen threw the newspaper down in disgust.
    "For that lie alone, lady," she