At least twenty seconds passed before Mrs. Finch let out a tinkling laugh. “Of course it’s me.” She waved a hand as if wafting at a vapor. “Miss 2001 excused herself from the festivities, and I was immediately crowned queen. I’ve held the honor for years. She had it for… I don’t know… a matter of hours.” She said the final words as if the initial loss of first place didn’t cut deep, which helped me understand how much the wound had actually stung.
“Who was she?” I asked, perhaps too bluntly. “The first Miss 2001?”
Savilla coughed, and Katie held her breath. Apparently, neither of them wanted me talking with Mrs. Finch about her past.
“Sometimes…” Mrs. Finch gestured vaguely in my direction. “Sometimes even the best showrunners don’t do their jobs well.” She gave me a pointed look, as if I should know to whom she referred.
“Wait… who was in charge? Aunt DeeDee?”
Mrs. Finch shrugged. “For all involved, I think it’s best to leave the past in the past. Don’t you think, Cheyenne?”
“Dakota,” I corrected again. “And, no, I think it’s best to?—”
“Yes, of course, of course,” Mrs. Finch said, cutting me off. “You know, it’s an unfortunate reality that sometimes… well, people lie and there are consequences. You are so good to remind us.” She gave me a polished smile before continuing. “When that year’s queen abdicated her throne, the crown and title fell to me. It could have caused quite a scandal if I hadn’t graciously stepped up to the task. As it was, everyone was thrilled with how I handled my duties, especially Mr. Finch.”
Savilla seemed to breathe a sigh of relief at her stepmother’s summary of events while Katie averted her gaze. Both responses only made me want to know more.
“A lucky break, that’s what it was. My parents couldn’t even afford to miss work to drive down for the pageant,” Mrs. Finch said, nestling into the settee. I sensed her addressing me even as she closed her eyes in remembrance. “I borrowed a couple of dresses from another friend who had more money than we did, and I took the car into Richmond one day to shop with the only credit card Daddy had to his name. I left the tags on everything and planned to return them after the contest.”
“But you won—at least, eventually?” I could almost see Mrs. Finch standing onstage as runner-up, salivating for that winning crown before taking it the next day. Why wasn’t she the primary suspect here? She clearly didn’t care for her husband, and that crown had landed in her greedy hands. I strolled past the third and fourth paintings, these less remarkable and more recent.Miss 2012. Miss 2019.Both by Frederick Finch.
Mrs. Finch opened her eyes and studied me as if she’d suddenly become alerted to my nosiness. I wondered for a moment if she might kick me out of her apartment, but she was far too polite—or at least wanted to appear that way. Besides, if she had nothing to hide, I couldn’t be a threat. Perhaps she sensed me thinking as much because she continued, “Yes, after a bit of… drama, I won the crown and so much more.”
I looked at the three women sitting in a half-moon in this Victorian-era apartment covered in pink. Mrs. Finch lay on what would’ve been called a fainting couch a hundred years earlier when the pageant had begun. The other two ladies—a fashion-conscious, middle-aged Katie and a chic, young Savilla—looked like Mrs. Finch’s ladies in waiting, her loyal companions, her partners in crime.
I tried to squash my wandering thoughts. I couldn’t allow the décor and this strange environment to cloud my thinking. For all I knew, the original Miss 2001 had run far away and gone on to live a full and happy life.
But, no, that idea didn’tset well in my gut, as Momma would’ve said. The police had found that year’s crown in my aunt’s room on the very night that Mr. Finch had supposedly written to the “real jewels” of his life, telling them to “go on without” him.
There was more to Miss 2001.
Mrs. Finch finished her little diatribe. “Frederick was smitten.” She laughed dryly. “He told me later that he hadn’t wanted me to win the crown because he’d already decided to marry me, and it might make people think the pageant was rigged.”
“Is it?” I asked.
“Of course not,” answered a startled Savilla, her ice-blue eyes boring into me for the first time. Perhaps she wanted her stepmother to rest… or maybe she didn’t like my curiosity about her family. She stood abruptly, excusing herself to get ready for the party before hurrying away.
I could almost see Mrs. Finch all those years ago, playing coy, refusing to sleep with Mr. Finch so she could have the real prize—all of this. When Miss 2001 fell off the face of the earth, Mrs. Finch won the man, the estate, and the crown.
Lucky girl.
FOURTEEN
What those people who aren’t from rural communities fail to realize is that most people who call themselvescowboysorcowgirlswork 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’dexpanded the truthbecause 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 readBlack Beautyand 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 foreclosuresign, 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 withMomma 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.
