I could do this, hat or no hat, tradition be damned.
The front desk looked like one I would imagine at a five-star hotel, the granite countertops gleaming and glistening. Even the floors sparkled in the afternoon sunlight streaming through tall windows that showcased the majestic blue mountains watching over all of the nonsense. Staff members came and went, many of whom I recognized. It was as bustling as the hotel might’ve been almost three decades ago before Mr. Finch had shuttered it to all guests, with the exception of pageant week.
As I surveyed the open space, I couldn’t help but admire the jewels that shone from behind polished glass cases. Lacy was right. Notwithstanding the creepy cutouts in the front hall, this place gave off definite museum vibes. Dozens of crowns, each gleaming underneath track lighting, broke into prisms of rainbow refractions sparkling against the walls.
I walked over to read the typed labels in front of the crowns.
1931, Bonny Brock
1932, Kathleen Daugette
1933, Sarah Applegate
Even with my hesitancy to step foot onto this estate, I had to admit that those shimmering objects were quite a sight.
I must’ve looked out of place because two guards—one of whom I recognized as the son of Aubergine’s mayor, and the other a deacon at First Methodist—checked the badge hanging from the lanyard Lacy had strung around my neck.
“Good to see you, Dakota,” the mayor’s son said, tipping his head.
“My condolences,” said the deacon.
I gave them a half-smile, surprisingly grateful that the town remembered. Maybe I could get pity votes if nothing else.
Half a dozen women, their eyes shaded and their lips pouty, passed me without a word, click-clacking their way across the marble floors of the lobby. I didn’t recognize these ladies, which was to be expected. One or two women from Aubergine might compete any given year, but for the most part the contestants were from moderate-to-obscenely wealthy families up and down the East Coast.
Women who don’t need the money half as much as I do, I thought, before a pang of guilt bit at me. How was I to know who needed the money or why? Perhaps one of these ladies was a daughter competing to earn money for a parent’s medical treatment. Or maybe another gal was in this thing to bring home enough money to pay off a mountain of student loan debt.
There had to be other people here in need, I tried to tell myself as a woman dressed to the nines strode up to me.
What Aunt DeeDee would call a “tasteful” navy fascinator sat across her forehead, and she rolled a Louis Vuitton case behind her. The badge around her neck read Jemma Jenkins.
“Where’s the nearest restroom?” Jemma asked.
I looked behind me, wondering if she was addressing someone over my shoulder.
“The restroom?” she asked again. A nervous energy exuded from her. The woman’s fingers and wrists were laced with jewels, and her outfit was modest but fashionable, her heels making her legs appear ever more slender.
“Oh… uh… I don’t know. I just got here.”
“You don’t work here?” Jemma frowned as if this were some kind of prank, and I might be the prankster.
“Perhaps someday, but only if I’m lucky.” If every contestant was as intense and condescending as Jemma Jenkins, this was bound to be a delight.
“Oh, well, you look like the help,” she said, dismissing me as quickly as she’d demanded information.
I was fairly confident that wasn’t true, but if it was, I needed Aunt DeeDee more than ever. As I spun in a half circle, desperate to find her, a flash clicked only a couple of feet from my face.
FIVE
“Dakota?” It was Savilla Finch, my old classmate whose father owned—and reigned over—the Rose Palace. She’d cut her teeth on society events both in New York and our little town, and she stood before me now in a flowing mint-green dress, thick-rimmed rectangular glasses, and an old-fashioned pillbox hat with a swath of netting hanging over one eye. She held an old-fashioned-looking camera in her hand.
“Savilla?”
She stared at me, her smile fixed, her eyes unblinking. We’d been in school together, but education, learning, books had never really been herthing. “Gosh… you look… different,” Savilla said, tilting her head as she took me in.
I felt like a specimen being observed under a microscope. “Gooddifferent? Orbaddifferent?”
She pursed her lips as she considered. “Good, very good,” she decided. “You learned how to use makeup, and you’re thinner.”
