Free Ms America and the Villainy in Vegas (Beauty Queen Mysteries No. 2) by Diana Dempsey Page A

America organization has allowed you to join us this week and we’re looking forward to meeting Trixie tomorrow.”
    The girls clap. The vibe is pageant-like minus the cattiness and hair spray.
    “Ladies, you already know we are a precision dance team. What our eighteen dancers aim to achieve in every performance is perfect synchronization, particularly in our signature kick line numbers.
    “What you may not know is that our dancers perform approximately three hundred kicks per show, and it is not unusual to do several shows a day.”
    My mind is reeling. Thank heaven for Frank Richter and the cryogenic chamber.
    “The final dance in every performance, our real showstopper, concludes with 36 eye-high kicks. I will expect all of you”—Elaine looks at Shanelle and me—“to achieve that kick height. Otherwise the beauty of our line will be marred.”
    Shanelle and I nod in acquiescence. I know that whatever it takes, all three of us queens will be up to the task.
    “It requires enormous stamina to put on these performances,” Elaine goes on. “Needless to say, the rehearsals are strenuous, too. You must stretch at the beginning and end of each session and you will become more familiar than you ever thought you would be with ice baths.”
    The girls laugh and groan. I’m thinking I got a lesson in extreme cold this morning and apparently I’ll get another one this afternoon.
    “So without further ado,” Elaine concludes, “let us get stretching …” and she leads us through a 20-minute warm-up that begins with gentle yoga stretches and segues into crunches, push ups, squats, and lunges. “We’ll leave our barre work for later,” she calls out, “now let’s get in line,” and I’m already thinking that the first thing I should do after rehearsal is buy stock in Bengay.
    I don’t know how many kicks, steps, struts, and ball changes it takes for Shanelle and me to be sprung.
    “If we didn’t have dance experience,” I shout to Shanelle as we propel our exhausted bodies down the Strip toward our hotel, “we would never be able to do this.”
    The Sparklettes people clearly grasped that most beauty queens at some point train in tap, ballet, jazz, or modern dance. Virtually every pageant includes a dance number in which every contestant participates. The routines aren’t all that complicated but they do require synchronization. We practice till we nail it.
    “I thank God there is only one performance a night this weekend,” Shanelle yells as we maneuver around a group of tourists who are all wearing yellow tee shirts so they can find each other in the crowd. “I am already slammed and this is just day one.”
    And now we have another potentially grueling experience to get through: Danny Richter’s wake. Shanelle has agreed to accompany me, and if Trixie’s flight arrives on time, we intend to rope her into it, too.
    Fortunately, I had the presence of mind to include in my luggage a simple rayon dress in a timid pearl gray, with pleated folds that extend from curved side seams. It’s a trifle fitted for honoring the dead, but with black pumps, pearl studs in my earlobes, and hair restrained in a bun, I am wake-appropriate.
    I hear giggling in the corridor outside my room before I hear a knock. I race to fling the door open and get just what I was hoping for.
    “Happy!” Trixie Barnett shrieks.
    “Trixie!” I grab her in a hug. We jump up and down a few times—Shanelle, too—which we can manage even without flared heels.
    “I am so glad to see y’all!” Trixie follows me into the room and tosses her clutch on my bed. She looks cute as ever, what with her chin-length red hair and bright hazel eyes. Clearly she got the wake memo, because she is conservatively dressed in black trousers and a sleeveless white blouse with a sweet bowtie at the V neckline. Shanelle has selected a plum-colored sheath with a scalloped bodice and banded waist. “It feels like forever since we were on Oahu. And Ms.