Chapter 14
FOURTEEN
What those people who aren’t from rural communities fail to realize is that most people who call themselves cowboys or cowgirls work day jobs that have nothing to do with tilling the soil or herding the cattle.
They are the teacher who lives at the family ranch in the summers, the orthopedic surgeon who drives an hour from the farm she and her husband bought as part of their retirement plan, the kid who wears tennis shoes to school and dons boots at the junior rodeo.
Being a cowgirl is a state of mind whose only requirement is a penchant for animals and dusty jeans.
Until her arrest, I’d somehow forgotten that Aunt DeeDee was the one who’d first started telling me stories about a real-life cowgirl and heroine named Kate Warne while Momma worked the late shift at the hospital.
For a handful of years Aunt DeeDee took charge of dinner and bedtime, so when the house was quiet, I would snuggle under my blanket speckled with cartoon horses, and she would curl her body around mine and tell me about this first female detective who she claimed was a part-time cowgirl.
The stories always featured a different alias—Kitty, Kat, Katie, Kay—and were filled with details about how this woman and her horse thwarted plots against President Lincoln, tracked down a bank robber who’d stolen thousands of dollars, gathered intelligence during the Civil War, and generally set the nineteenth century to right.
Surprisingly, Ms. Kate Warne’s childhood had been much like mine—brought up by her mother and maiden aunt, a girl who had one close friend and could sense what an animal needed with a glance.
Except some parts were made up. When I reached middle school and decided to do a research report on this famed historical figure, I discovered that Kate Warne died in her mid-thirties and researchers know very little about her—except for the Lincoln story, which is true—and that her horse was entirely a figment of Aunt DeeDee’s imagination.
When I’d asked Aunt DeeDee about the fictional additions to the woman’s life, she’d shrugged and said she’d expanded the truth because she wanted me to know that I was just fine.
As a tomboy in a town known for a beauty pageant, she knew I didn’t quite fit in with the popular kids, like Savilla Finch and her crew.
She wanted me to see that someone like me—a girl who preferred to read Black Beauty and draw horses, a girl who cried over deceased goldfish and feared honeybees for the longest time, a sensitive and independent child who didn’t fit an exact mold—was a good thing to be.
I was staring at Aunt DeeDee’s abstract portrait and remembering these things when my phone vibrated.
I excused myself from the Finch living room to check for messages.
Three missed calls labeled “Spam” meant the creditors were at it again, and their relentlessness made my stomach churn with the uncertainty of the future.
I could see myself standing outside Momma’s house next to a foreclosure sign, a few heirlooms and a box of photos in the back of my car.
Aunt DeeDee always said catastrophizing was a waste of time, but I’d literally watched a catastrophe happen with Momma less than a year ago. In order to avoid another, I had to push forward and I had to win.
I cleared the notifications, unable to deal with that right then, but I was glad for an excuse to get out of that stifling apartment. With an uptight, entitled Mrs. Finch ordering us about and with a nameless Miss 2001 hanging on the wall, I needed to catch my breath.
I grabbed my garment bag at the door, and looked up and down the hallway, wondering how to get back downstairs.
I tried one direction but hit a dead end.
I retraced my steps, this time feeling along the wall in case there was a hidden door.
As I followed the wainscoting, I noticed a break in the wall and pushed it to find the staircase we’d ascended earlier.
I shook my head in wonder as I hurried down to the first floor.
The Jewels and Gems party would start soon, but there were no more bustling hallways or women click-clacking across the marble floors.
Since I still didn’t know how to find my cottage, I decided to sneak into the bathroom nearest the lobby.
Even the restroom was opulent, with gleaming brass faucets and gray-speckled marble.
As I sat in one of the stalls, I took the ledger I’d “borrowed” from Mr. Finch’s whiskey cabinet, perusing the contents.
The original entry on the first page of the wire-bound book was dated 1982.
The letters R.P.P.—Rose Palace Pageant—had been written next to a series of numbers, most of them deposits, but a few debits that increased with the years.
The next page was dated 1983, the following 1984, and on and on the pages went, a detailed account of that year’s pageant and the income brought in and expenses going out.
The bottom of each page ended with a profit until the year 2001, when the numbers on the page grew smaller and smaller.
Hmmm… so maybe Mrs. Finch had been wrong.
Perhaps her saving the throne that year hadn’t been as effective as she’d assumed.
I couldn’t make out most of the abbreviations in the left-hand column, but a repeated entry labeled “Peabody” started in 1996. At first, the amount next to the name was meager by Finch standards—$16,000. But every few years after, the amount increased.
1996 Peabody: $16,000
2000 Peabody: $35,000
2003 Peabody: $47,000
2007 Peabody: $62,000
Whoever this Peabody was, they’d gotten a lot of money over the years.
I flipped past empty pages and a folded white piece of paper fell to the floor. It was a series of numbers for a policy—a life insurance policy—taken out on Mr. Frederick Finch in the amount of eight million dollars on May 3 of this year. A month and a few days ago.
My eyes scanned the document to the signatures at the very bottom of the page. There were two.
First, Savilla Finch was the guarantor, paying the monthly premium, but why would Savilla need an insurance policy on her father? Wasn’t she already set to inherit? Or would everything go to her stepmother?
My eyes landed on the second signature, the witness. It read Deanna Green.
Oh Lord, this didn’t look good. Again.
Even with signs pointing to the contrary—the crown in her room, the pinky ring in her drawer, her name at the bottom of a recent life insurance policy—I knew Aunt DeeDee wouldn’t do anything sinister or underhand.
I wished I could talk to her, hear her explanations.
I imagined the things I would say to the sheriff to set him straight after all of this was resolved.
My mind skimmed possibilities, many of which I did not want to seriously consider and which would hamper my first goal of getting Aunt DeeDee out of jail.
I could march upstairs to the apartment and demand an answer from Savilla, but what good would that do?
If she had something to hide, I would’ve shown my hand. No, better to keep quiet.
I briefly considered tearing up the life insurance policy and the pages of the ledger into tiny pieces and flushing them down the toilet. Instead, I decided to wait and do what was next on my schedule: attend the All That Glitters… Jewels and Gems party.
I checked the time. Twenty minutes, certainly not enough time to find my accommodation out on the grounds, change into whatever was inside the garment bag, and make my way back here on time. And I needed to be on time in order to rack up as many points as possible.
I hesitated only a few seconds before pulling off my jeans and my button-down shirt and wadding them into a ball with the ledger inside. I would hide them in the stall while I made an appearance and collect them before I headed to my room.
I unzipped the garment bag and found a formal romper that blended from a dark graphite color on the bottom into a shimmering explosion of tiny crystals on top.
One side was off the shoulder and the other featured delicate straps.
It was spectacular, and I knew immediately the narrative that Aunt DeeDee was going for: The graphite-colored bottom was the carbon from which diamonds sprang. Ingenious.
I slid into the romper and grabbed the loose items from the bottom of the bag—rhinestone-studded heels and a small Melbourne Cup-style charcoal hat.
I added the finishing touches and stepped out of the stall to study my sparkling reflection.
Aunt DeeDee had outdone herself. I didn’t even need more makeup.
The woman gazing back at me in the mirror had already changed since Monday, when I’d learned I’d been registered to compete.
I looked more mature, more accomplished but, more importantly, I was beginning to rediscover the spark that had always defined me.
I pulled my hair into a stiff ponytail and then decided to wind it into a bun, securing the flyaways with bobby pins from a basket on the counter filled with last-minute necessities.
Reminding myself that I had everything I needed to win, or at least place, I made my way into the Primrose Ballroom for the Jewels and Gems party.