A Parfait Murder by Wendy Lyn Watson

whole family worked our fingers to the bone to keep the vertical batch freezers churning one more day at the A-la-mode.
    “Are you looking for something special?” Cookie said. “We just got in some exquisite dahlias. Vibrant orange centers with gold tracing along the edge of the petals.”
    “Sounds beautiful,” I said. “But I wanted to send something to Kristen Ver Steeg’s law office. Express my condolences. I don’t know if she has family in the area.”
    Cookie blinked twice, quickly. I had her attention now.
    “Kristen didn’t have family here,” she said. “I think she was from down near Galveston, but I got the impression she didn’t have any family at all, really.” She sighed. “So sad.”
    “It certainly is. She contributed so much to the community. Involved with the fair and all.”
    She chuckled low in her throat. “I’m not sure she was making many friends that way.”
    “Really?” I put on my best wide-eyed innocent face. “But she gave so much of her time, was taking her commitment to the job so seriously.”
    Cookie clicked her tongue against her teeth. “Maybe a little too seriously,” she said.
    “What do you mean?”
    “Eloise has been chair of the pageant committee for years, of course. The only reason she’s not this year is because Dani’s competing. Conflict of interest, you know.”
    I nodded. That made sense.
    “Eloise was trying to figure out who should take her place this year, and then she went to a Pampered Chef party at Kristen’s house. Saw all of Kristen’s pageant crowns. She even had a big one for Miss American Pride 2001. Eloise figured Kristen would give the event some added legitimacy, and that way, when Dani won, it would be an even bigger deal. But Kristen was just supposed to be a placeholder, you know. I told Eloise it was a mistake. Kristen would take the job way too seriously. She was a lawyer, you know,” Cookie said, as though that explained everything.
    When I just stared blankly at her, she huffed impatiently. “She was a bit of a stickler for the rules. Had a real stick up her you-know-what. And that didn’t sit well with everyone, if you get my drift.”
    I didn’t get her drift at all. First, as a fellow rulestickler, I didn’t appreciate the mental picture Cookie was painting. Second, in my experience, lawyers were more interested in getting around rules than in actually following them.
    “Following the rules is usually a good thing, right?” I said, a little defensively.
    “Well, the Lantana Round-Up has rules, but not all rules are created equal, you know? Some matter more than others. Kristen was getting hung up on some of the little details that were on the books but never meant to be enforced. She was all trees, no forest.”
    “Could you give me a for-example?”
    Cookie leaned up on her tiptoes to peek over my shoulder, make sure we were alone.
    “It wasn’t official or anything, but she was calling a meeting of the pageant judges just yesterday. Right before she died. You didn’t hear this from me, but she said was going to move to disqualify Dani Carberry from the competition because of a rules infraction.”
    I gasped, trying to sound suitably shocked. “Dani Carberry? Isn’t she on the honor roll? What kind of rule could she have broken?”
    Cookie shrugged. “I don’t know. There’s a huge long list of rules for the pageant. Age and residence requirements, morals clauses, academic standards. But Kristen was pretty fixated on the artifice rules.”
    “The what?”
    “The artifice rules,” Cookie repeated slowly, as if I were a little dense. “You know, what sorts of artificial beauty enhancers you can and cannot use. Kristen made sure we all had a copy of the lists.”
    “There are lists?”
    I didn’t mean to repeat everything Cookie said, but I was trying to wrap my brain around what she was saying.
    “Sure. Lists of things you can use, and things that are strictly off-limits. Spray tans are okay. Mascara,