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With a new pageant coming to our city soon, and after what happened to Gretchen and the second missing girl, I wondered whether the SFPD was taking any security precautions for the event.
It was definitely something I wanted to look into.
6
CRAIG
It was unsettling to hear the details of that beauty contestant’s death. It also seemed odd that her body ended up in San Francisco. Lake Tahoe was a good two hundred miles northeast. If they planned a body dump, why not in the lake itself? Was she alive when they brought her, or was San Francisco even part of their plan? Hopefully, we’ll get more answers as Jonesy and Sean’s investigation continued.
I was concerned when Jonesy told me another woman had disappeared from the Nevada pageant. Who would've thought there were any devious plots to eliminate girls from a competition? I wondered if, beneath the beauty, there were sinister elements at play.
My personal connection to a beauty pageant came through a client who hired me and insisted on a background check into Miss Sacramento. It was fairly straightforward to verify her education, which was accurate, but I had to do some work to confirm her community service. Luckily, I had a friend who was an investigator living in Sacramento, working for the state capital. When I reached out to him, he said he’d get back to me before the Miss California pageant started.
My current workload included the cheating-husband case, the pageant background check, and the ongoing search for Oliver, one of the henchmen who disappeared after Wynn had been kidnapped. It had been three years since that incident, and Wynn’s parents put me on retainer to keep searching for him. The Summers wanted closure around that hellish nightmare.
Mrs. Brooke Chandler contacted me the day after I texted her about what I had discovered regarding her husband. We were scheduled to meet at my office at two p.m. so I could present her with the evidence. That gave me a chance to do a late-morning workout and grab lunch before heading into the office.
When I arrived at the gym, I ran into Bryce, my new workout buddy, in the locker room just as he was tying up his Nikes. I’d met him through Wynn, since they had worked together at the same TV station. Bryce had asked me to help find his boyfriend Andrew's siblings, whom he hadn’t been in contact with for many years.
I found Andrew’s brother and sister, although the news wasn’t pleasant to share in the end. Some drama ensued, which brought Jonesy into the picture, but once everything calmed down, Jonesy and I became good friends with them.
“Hey, Bryce!” I exclaimed as I walked up to where he was sitting. He finished tying his shoe and looked up with a smile.
“Hey, gym bro,” he replied, standing to give me a quick hug.
“How are things? We haven’t had the chance to work out together in weeks,” I said, dropping my gym bag on the bench.
“Things are good. I’ve been on nights this week at the TV station, that frees me up for some gym time.”
“How’s Andrew doing with culinary school… or should I ask how he’s been doing since all that stuff with his brother happened?” I asked, concerned.
“Better. He’s been staying busy at Marrow and Salt and school, which he’s almost finished with. He’s loving working at that restaurant, and it will be full-time once he graduates from the academy.”
“Good to hear,” I replied, feeling relieved. “Jonesy and I need to have dinner at Marrow and Salt one of these nights to see him. That being said, the four of us need to figure out a time to get together, too.”
“I’m sure Andrew would love to see you guys at the restaurant… and yes, it would be fun to go clubbing sometime.”
“Ya know, hitting a club might be fun. I’ll bring it up to Jonesy. Let me get changed, and I’ll meet you out there in a minute. Save me a treadmill,” I said, directing a thumb to the main gym area.
Bryce swatted me with his towel and headed out of the locker room. We usually spent a good ninety minutes on our workouts, and I hadn’t been there in a few days. I missed having Wynn as my workout partner, but I was happy to find Bryce to make up for it.
We were usually chatty, which made the time go faster. When we got to chest presses, I mentioned the dead woman’s case Jonesy and his partner, Sean, were investigating. Bryce racked the weight and shot me a knowing look. As a professional, I never gave away sensitive information, but we talked about work and our boyfriends from time to time.
“I heard about that. We did a news report on it. It had to do with a beauty pageant contestant from Nevada, right?” he asked as we added more weight to the bar.
I was surprised he knew about it, then remembered he worked in TV news, so of course he’d be familiar with the story. “Yeah, that’s right. And now another contestant has vanished. It’s really odd.”
“I don’t mean to make fun of what’s happened, but I never thought these pageants were that vicious behind the scenes,” he replied with a smirk.
“Well, they’re just beginning to gather information, but I doubt a fellow contestant would be that underhanded,” I said, lifting the bar with Bryce standing to spot me at the head of the bench. Once I had finished the set, I continued. “And the Miss California pageant is coming up, too. I’m sure with what’s recently happened, that’s on everyone’s watch list.”
“They’ll have more security, I assume,” Bryce responded.
“I brought that up to Jonesy,” I said with a light chuckle. “He was surprised when I told him about the Miss California pageant coming up in a little over a week. I only knew because a new client hired me to look into something before the pageant began.”
After we racked the weights and I wiped the bench down, we headed to the barbell rack. “Tell me something,” Bryce said. “Is Jonesy his nickname, considering that’s not his real last name? I mean, Jones is shorter than Jonesy.”
“That stuck from his old football days in high school and college. Just a friendly nickname,” I replied, picking up two thirty-five-pound dumbbells.
