"If you could just walk me through what happened." Manny said. He gestured to the crime scene.

The uniformed police who had responded had already cordoned off the area with plastic yellow tape, and gawkers were being dispersed by the resort's security staff. While Mel watched, she noted that the crime scene investigators had arrived and were surveying the surrounding scene.

Manny and Angie walked closer to the perimeter of the tape and Mel saw Angie explaining how she'd found the body. Even from across the room, she could see that Angie's hands were shaking. She wished she could go over and hug her friend.

"She'll be okay," Joyce said, and she hugged Mel to her side.

Mel turned to look at her. "Thanks, Mom. Does this mean you've forgiven me?"

"It seems silly now to have been so annoyed with you." Joyce let go of her and reached up to brush the blond bangs out of Mel's eyes. "My feelings were hurt that you left me out of your big news and then you broke up with dear Joe."

Joyce let out a sigh that sounded like it came from her feet. "An assistant district attorney." She sighed again. "I'm sure I'll be able to let it go, eventually."

Mel smiled at her. "That's my girl."

Joyce gave her a rueful look.

Mel glanced at Lupe and noticed she was scanning the room as if looking for the nearest exit.

"Trust me," she said to the teen. "You're going to be okay. Mariel must have been under the table before Angie and I set up today's cupcake tower. Whoever harmed her had to have done it earlier today when you were prepping for the bathing suit event, so you have Mom as an alibi."

Lupe and Joyce exchanged a glance. It was the bottom-heavy look of two people who were sharing a secret.

"Oh, no, spill it," Mel said.

Joyce put a protective arm around Lupe. "No one is accountable for every second of their day."

"Are you trying to tell me that you weren't with Lupe all morning?" Mel asked.

Lupe looked down and away as if afraid to meet Mel's gaze directly. Mel could feel her stomach knot up with anxiety. This wasn't good. Much as she hated to admit it, Lupe had been right. Her spat with Mariel yesterday didn't bode well for her. She would be the one that Manny and Uncle Stan looked at first. She had to have an alibi.

"Where were you this morning?" Mel asked.

"Studying," Lupe said. She looked miserable.

"Did anyone see you?" Mel asked. "Please tell me someone saw you."

"You're being overly dramatic. She doesn't need an alibi," Joyce insisted. "She's an eighteen-year-old girl, not a killer."

"Who's not a killer?" Uncle Stan asked as he joined them.

Joyce and Mel exchanged alarmed glances. When did he get here and how much had he heard?

A love of Mel's cupcakes and every other sweet he could lay his chubby fingers on had given Uncle Stan a physique that took up more than its fair share of real estate, so it wasn't often that he got the drop on anyone.

"They're talking about me," Lupe said. Mel and Joyce began to protest, but Lupe held up her hand. "Let's just get it out there. Mariel Mars tried to have me booted from the pageant yesterday. She was pretty mean, but I didn't kill her."

Uncle Stan blinked as he took in the young woman before him. "Hey, aren't you the girl who hangs out with Oz?"

Lupe nodded.

"I almost didn't recognize you without the . . ." Uncle Stan paused and wiggled his fingers over his bare forehead.

Lupe cracked a smile. "Green bangs?"

"I think they were pink the last time I saw you," he said.

"I liked the pink," Lupe said. Her voice was wistful, as if she were longing for more than her old hairdo-like, maybe her old life.

Stan glanced at the three of them. "So, what happened?"

"Well, Mariel Mars is a hideous, vile, nasty woman," Joyce began.

"This is the victim?" Stan asked.

"Yes," Joyce confirmed.

"And still you're describing her to me in such derogatory terms, knowing that I am a homicide detective?" he asked.

"You're my brother-in-law," Joyce said. "I am giving you the unvarnished truth."

Mel met Uncle Stan's gaze and rolled her eyes. He tucked his lips in, trying to hide his smile.

"Anyway, Mariel scored Lupe thirty points lower than any other judge on her interview yesterday," Joyce said. "So I challenged Mariel about it and, oh, did she ever throw a fit."

Stan's smile disappeared. "You challenged her?"

"I was just looking for some accountability," Joyce said.

"Did anyone else see this quest for accountability?" Stan asked.

"Well, Lupe was with me," Joyce said. Mel could tell she was trying to avoid answering the question. Probably she was afraid she was going to give Stan a heart attack. Mel figured they'd best just get it over with.

"The entire lobby area, which was full, heard Mom and Mariel disagree."

"They also might have heard me threaten her," Lupe said.

"Threaten her how?" Stan asked.

"I may have said something like 'hurt my friends and I'll make you pay,'" Lupe said.

"Oh, and you told her if she hurt us, you'd hurt her bad," Joyce said. Lupe gave her a wide-eyed stare. "Or something like that," Joyce muttered.

Uncle Stan started patting his shirtfront pocket and Mel knew he was searching for his antacid pills. When that yielded no results, he patted his front pants pockets. Then he looked around as if a pack of Tums might appear on the floor.

"Here you go." Manny held out an unopened roll of the chalky tablets to Stan. He looked at Mel and said, "I started carrying them when we partnered up."

Stan glowered but took the pack. "What have we got?"

"At a quick glance, we have a middle-aged female vic, strangled with a beauty pageant sash. Given the claw marks on her throat, she put up a fight," Manny said. "You ready to have a look?"

Uncle Stan nodded. Mel studied him, wondering if he was going to tell Manny what they had told him.

"Stick around," Uncle Stan said to Joyce. "I'm going to look over the scene. I'll be back shortly."

Joyce nodded. Mel wondered if she had finally caught on that they were not in the best possible situation here.

"Oh, man, I'm dead," Lupe moaned.

"Don't panic," Angie said. "Think about it this way-if Mariel was as nasty to the others as she was to you, and that seems likely, than you're hardly the only one with a motive to kill her."

"But how are we going to find out who she was mean to?" Lupe asked. "I was already an outsider before this happened. I think it's safe to say none of the other pageant girls are ever going to talk to me."

"We can ask Cici," Mel said.

"She does seem to like us," Angie said. "And I don't think she was terribly fond of Mariel, either."

"Mom, since Ginny is connected in the pageant world, can you ask her to dig up what she can?"

"Good idea," Joyce said. "I'm sure Mariel left a trail of unhappy behind her and all we need to do is follow it." She turned to Lupe. "Don't you worry, honey, your pageant dream is alive and well."

"Scholarship dream," Lupe said.

"Yes, of course," Joyce agreed. "That's what I meant."

Mel looked at the glint in her mother's eye. She wondered if this was what her mother had hoped for when she was a teenage girl, to be the champion of a beauty pageant daughter. To Joyce's credit, if she had felt that way, Mel had never known. Still, she felt a little bad that she might have let her mother down by being the chunk she'd been all those years ago. The thought didn't sit well.

"Mel, can I have a word?" Manny approached their group and Mel felt her face get warm.

Joyce looked perturbed, but said nothing. Angie glanced away as if she hadn't heard.

"Sure," she said.

They walked across the room toward the French doors that led out to the pool. Several of the contestants were sitting on the padded lounge chairs with their knees drawn up to their chests, as if they could tuck and roll away from the tragedy inside.

Mel saw the blunt-featured redhead called Sarah, who she remembered was particularly nasty to her mother the day before, after her interview. When she'd asked Ginny about her, Ginny had told her that Sarah Hendricks was the scourge of the pageant circuit, known for weeping when she lost, which she usually did due to her serious lack of people skills. Presently, Sarah was pacing in the corner, with her mother pacing beside her.

Mel also spotted Destiny Richards with her mother, Brittany. Destiny was watching a hummingbird working its way around a potted plant of petunias while her mother talked animatedly on her cell phone.

Manny moved to the side of the doors and Mel followed him, turning away from the view of the stressed contestants. He was quiet for a moment and she got a bad feeling down deep.

She had met Manny when he was investigating the murder of Baxter Malloy, a man her mother had been dating. Since he had been murdered on their very first date, Joyce had not been dating Baxter for very long. Still, she had been a suspect and Mel and Manny had not hit it off, not until a few months ago when Manny transferred to the Scottsdale PD and became her uncle's partner. Murder had brought them together again, but that time, Manny had saved her life, forever altering their relationship.

Mel glanced at the handsome detective out of the corner of her eye. He was good-looking in a raw-boned, rugged, "not afraid to punch a guy in the face if it was needed" sort of way. Frankly, Mel found it very attractive, which only served to make her feel even more awkward around the man, since she was quite sure that her heart belonged to Joe. She cleared her throat and forced her mind back to the situation at hand.

"So, is this where you break it to me gently that you're arresting my mother or Lupe for the murder of Mariel Mars?" she asked.

Manny met her gaze with a grim one of his own before he said, "Yes."

Thirteen.

"What?" Mel snapped. Any attraction she felt for the big Neanderthal vanished, and she stepped closer to him, as if she could intimidate him with her ire. "You can't! They're innocent! Does Uncle Stan know about this? He cannot be going along with this!"

"Um, yeah, I was just kidding," he said. He gave her a sheepish look. "You gave me the perfect set up. Sorry."

"Ugh!" Mel swatted his arm with her hand. "For future reference, normal people do not joke about arresting other people's loved ones."

"Noted," Manny said. He caught her hand in his and held on to her fingers. Mel tried to tug free but he didn't let go.

"Still not available," she said.

He let go of her hand with a sigh. "Are you still hung up on that pesky attorney?"

"Now is that a nice way to talk about a guy behind his back?" a voice asked.

Mel glanced over her shoulder to see a dapper man in a shiny suit join their little group.

"Steve? Steve Wolfmeier," she said. She gave him a quick hug. "How are you?"

"Better now that I'm talking to you," he said. He returned her hug and gave her a smile that rivaled a shark's in whiteness and points.

"Did you call him?" Manny asked in disgust, as if Mel had just confessed to enjoying deep fried sandwiches of peanut butter and bologna.

"No," Mel said. "In fact, I haven't seen him since-"

"You held her in your office to interrogate her about her mother, and I gracefully removed her from the situation," Steve said to Manny.

"Oh, yeah," Manny frowned. "As I remember it, DeLaura was the one who got her out."

"I'm her attorney," Steve said. "Once my client, always my client."

"But you turned down my case," Mel said.

"Details. You're still my client," Steve retorted. "Always."

The two men glared at each other. Well, Manny glared and Steve looked bored, which Mel suspected he was doing just to bug Manny.

"Let me guess," she said. "You two have a history."

"Everyone has a history with 'the weasel,'" Manny said with a glower.