Cat in a hot pink Pursuit

I’ve been thinking about it and find that significant, don’t you?”
    “Someone wanted Mariah to find the body?”
    “Someone wanted a ‘Tween Queen candidate to find the body.”
    “Why would anyone be after Mariah?”
    ‘They know her family connections?”
    “Who, besides you?”
    “Awful Crawford is here. You know, Crawford Buchanan, the KREP-radio guy. He gets around enough to know who’s who in Las Vegas. Wouldn’t take a master’s degree to figure out that Mariah Molina might have relatives in high police places. And...” Temple paused, really hating the other possibility that had occurred to her. “And what?”
    “Most of these ‘tween and teen candidates are hardy veterans of the beauty wars. They’re obsessed with their physical appearances.”
    “Mariah’s not.”
    “No. No JonBenet Ramsey, she. You reared her right. But..
    “But what?”
    “Weight’s an issue with her. The dietitian had Mariah in her sights. As far as I could tell, she’s the one with the biggest weight issue here.”
    “She’s barely a teenager! So she could lose fifteen pounds. It’s not a killing offense.”
    “Everything’s a bigger deal here. Maybe better, maybe worse. Someone could say, testify, that the dietitian was particularly hard on her. Mariah complained to high heaven, publicly, about eating beans and rabbit food.”
    “That’s not a murdering offense.”
    “We mature women wouldn’t think so but these are all girls, and most of them drama queens. Mrs. Klein had a vote on the winners. If someone was getting enough of a hard time...
    “Killing a coach or judge will stop the show cold. Not productive.”
    “Not to our incisively logical minds. But our hormones have settled down. I assume. I can’t speak for you, of course. Have you forgotten how desperately important every little thing is at that age?”
    During the long pause that resulted, Temple couldn’t help thinking that she and Molina were conspiring on the phone like teenage girlfriends planning a parentally unsanctioned outing.
    Bizarro!
    ‘I’d rather not remember,” Molina said at last. “How’s Mariah holding up?”
    “Okay. It wasn’t a pretty scene. What killed the poor woman?”
    “The autopsy hasn’t been done yet but Coroner Bahr tells me she was likely choked.”
    “No way could Mariah be a suspect then, that takes strong hands, right?”
    “Right, but not that kind of choking. It was lima beans.”
    “Oh. She was a huge advocate of bean eating. And lima beans are dry. I can see how she might be wolfing them down for a quick lunch at her desk. She did have a small fridge and microwave in that office and—”
    “Nice fairy tale, Barr. Now I see why you’ve hung in there with Mr. Unreliable Max Kinsella for so long. You’re an optimist to the point of pathology. They were stuffed down her throat, probably spiced with Jalisco peppers hot enough to set her choking in the first place. It wouldn’t take long to disable her that way, especially if the attack was unexpected.”
    “She was stuffed to death?”
    “It may be a little more complicated than that. An allergy or some lethal substance may be involved that caused her throat to swell up on contact.”
    “What would this have to do with the defaced Teen Queen contest posters?”
    “Nothing we can see. By the way, Alch and Su find Xoe Chloe—where do you come up with these things?— a suspicious character, but they haven’t made you yet. You must have put together some disguise.”
    “At least I’ve never been fingerprinted.”
    “Yet. I’m thinking about it.”
    “The illusion of Xoe Chloe won’t hold much longer anyway. The makeover process is stripping away all my best points.”
    “The show is suspended for now. It suits us to keep you all bottled up in the house, and maybe even let them start filming and recording again. It’s like Candid Camera, Crime Watchers’ edition. We’re going over everything they recorded so far.”
    “The producers must be frantic.”
    “Are you kidding? They love it. They’re planning to pick up the pageant as soon as we clear the scene and spin the show into Dying for Beauty or some such title.”
    “Then we’re all stuck here, like a sequestered jury?”
    “Right.”
    “But there’s a killer among us. I guess I can do some snooping.”
    “Please. You’re a glorified babysitter. Don’t get a notion of being a professional snoop.”
    That hurt. Temple found Xoe Chloe pouting into the cell phone.