She Walks in Beauty Read online

  Table of Contents

  Copyright

  Dedication

  With special thanks to:

  She walks in beauty, like the night

  She Walks in Beauty

  Prologue

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  40

  41

  42

  43

  44

  45

  46

  47

  48

  49

  50

  51

  52

  She Walks in Beauty

  By Sarah Shankman

  Copyright 2014 by Sarah Shankman

  Cover Copyright 2014 by Untreed Reads Publishing

  Cover Design by Ginny Glass

  The author is hereby established as the sole holder of the copyright. Either the publisher (Untreed Reads) or author may enforce copyrights to the fullest extent.

  Previously published in print, 1991

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher or author, except in the case of a reviewer, who may quote brief passages embodied in critical articles or in a review. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Although there are references to the Miss America Pageant and to real people who have been involved with the pageant, this story is not based on any real events associated with the pageant or with real activities of pageant participants. This book is not authorized by or connected with the Miss America Pageant or its sponsors.

  Also by Sarah Shankman and Untreed Reads Publishing

  Impersonal Attractions

  First Kill All the Lawyers

  http://www.untreedreads.com

  For William Jack Sibley,

  my all-time favorite cowboy

  With special thanks to:

  The Miss America Pageant and staff in Atlantic City and the former Miss Americas and contestants who shared their experiences.

  Gary Bradley, for the technical assistance and many other kindnesses. Sandra Scoppettone, for generously reading. Dr. Robert Albo, for the magic. Ellen Danna, Nathalie Dupree, and Barbara and Jeff Malm, for opening their homes. Cheryl Sullivan, for the Atlantic City tour. Chris Wiltz, for putting me on to the loup-garou.

  Frank Deford’s There She Is was an invaluable source, as were John McPhee on the Pine Barrens and Ginie Polo Sayles’s How to Win Pageants.

  Thanks to Meg Parsont and all the others at Pocket Books who shepherd my work along, and to Johanna Tani for her eagle eye.

  And as always, thank you, Jane. Love you, Harvey.

  She walks in beauty, like the night

  Of cloudless climes and starry skies;

  And all that’s best of dark and bright

  Meet in her aspect and her eyes:

  Thus mellowed to that tender light

  Which heaven to gaudy day denies.

  —GEORGE GORDON, LORD BYRON

  Life is a beauty pageant.

  —THIERRY MUGLER,

  FASHION DESIGNER

  God don’t like ugly.

  —SOUTHERNISM

  She Walks in Beauty

  Sarah Shankman

  Prologue

  How to spend the Labor Day weekend? Sam could come up with a hundred ways. Covering the Miss America Pageant wasn’t one of them.

  A tall, pretty woman with short, curly dark hair, Samantha Adams had just turned forty. And with that anniversary she had begun to believe that a wolf whistle now and then wasn’t the worst thing that could happen to a thinking woman. But Miss America? Bubble-headed young flesh bouncing down a runway? Surely, Hoke had to be joking.

  She stood in the office of the managing editor of the Atlanta Constitution with her hands on her hips. “I know you call the shots here, Hoke, but in case you’ve forgotten, lifestyle, entertainment, and froufrou aren’t my regular beat. Remember me? The reporter who specializes in blood, gore, bad guys shooting up the little girl behind the counter in the fried chicken joint because she ran out of dark and crispy, didn’t get their change back fast enough?”

  Hoke wasn’t listening. “It’ll be a nice break for you. Get you to the beach, out of this heat, away from ringing phones. You can kick back for a week, do your race-walking on the Boardwalk.”

  “A week! The thing’s one Saturday night! Besides, I’m taking a couple of extra days. Harry and I’ve rented a place on Martha’s Vineyard.”

  “Sorry about that, Sammy. And, FYI, the pageant spans two weeks, actually, start to finish. The girls are taking a train, just like the old days, the Miss America Special, Philadelphia to Atlantic City. There’s a week of rehearsals before they begin interviews on Sunday before Labor Day—”

  “My God,” Sam interrupted. “They let you judge that, what was it, Miss Liberty Bell down in Valdosta last spring, and now you’ve become a beauty pageant junkie. Oh, Hoke. What does Lois think about this?” Hoke’s wife already spent half her time shooing off the never-ending parade of pretty young secretaries the guys in the city room called Hoke’s Cuties.

  Hoke shot her an indignant look, but the pose didn’t fly with the lollipop poking out of the corner of his mouth. His internist had said, Give up smoking or living, take your pick.

  “How many contests have you judged?”

  Hoke leaned back, scanned the ceiling. “Four,” he finally admitted. Then he lurched forward. “Now, this Miss Dogwood Festival, Rae Ann Bridges, is the loveliest girl you’ve ever seen—”

  “Yes, Hoke. She won Miss Georgia.”

  Hoke leaned across his desk. The overhead fluorescent light bounced off his skull beneath his crew cut, accentuating the hound-dog bags beneath his eyes. “She’s going to take the Big One. The title. Rae Ann’s a shoo-in for Miss America, no doubt about it. You’ll want to interview her before you go.”

  “I’m ecstatic for you and Rae Ann, Hoke. And I think you ought to fly to Atlantic City and cover the story yourself. Shoot a little craps. Have a little fun. I’d leave Lois behind, though. Tell her you’ve checked into a mental institution for a couple of weeks to have a few shock treatments. Recover your equilibrium.”

  “Very funny, Sammy. There’s nothing more I’d love to do than go up there, but—” He extended a hand, the responsibility for the whole shooting match, morning and evening papers both, lay heavy upon it. “I can’t tear away from here. And Burton”—Burton Edwards, the features editor, would be the logical choice, if there were any logic to the Constitution’s sending someone to Atlantic City—�
��Burton is the most cynical so-and-so south of New York City. He’d savage the pageant.”

  “So will I! Count on it! You think I won’t, when you’re stealing my weekend? Sending me to watch bimbos twitching their butts down runways? Mink eyelashes and falsies—”

  “They don’t wear falsies.”

  “Oh, Hoke. Honey. What you don’t know—”

  “Well, Rae Ann doesn’t.”

  “You don’t want me to do this. Really. Sentence me to real estate, obit, anything—after I’m back from the Vineyard.”

  “Once you get there, Sammy, and you see how smart these girls are, how sincere, how wonderful the pageant system is, teaching them poise, giving them all that scholarship money—”

  “Hoke, no. Pretty please. I’m begging you.”

  “Just sleep on it, Sammy. Besides”—he took his scarlet sucker out of his mouth and inspected it carefully—“you’re already scheduled to go.”

  *

  Sam slammed in a tape and belted out “Sweet Dreams” along with poor old dead Patsy Cline. Patsy always made her feel better. She was driving too fast down Peachtree toward her weekly lunch with Charlie, plainclothes, Atlanta PD. They always met at Mary Mac’s, an Atlanta institution, for chicken and dumplings, three vegetables, gossip, and iced tea. Miss America, indeed! Boy, Charlie was going to love that one. He’d never stop teasing her. And Hoke would run it on page one, no doubt, along with the football scores.

  No wonder she was thinking of leaving the paper, though she’d been there (and back in Atlanta) only a couple of years after a 20-year sojourn in San Francisco. Despite a raft of good people still on staff, the Constitution wasn’t what it was when they’d enticed her away from the Chronicle. Its slant had suddenly shifted from a flirtation with serious journalism back to pop reporting with large pretty pictures done up in four color—rather like television.

  The Big Two, work and love, were both problematic these days. Both brought her mixed joys. Were they mutually exclusive was the real question.

  She’d met her sweetheart, the handsome (and much younger) Harry Zack, the previous spring in the Crescent City. Harry, a gray-eyed, broad-shouldered songwriting insurance investigator, had gotten in her way at first. Had gotten under her skin later. Had said a lot of things she’d prefer a man didn’t say.

  He’d been talking a lot about love lately, had even used the M word.

  Sam wasn’t sure she was ready for love again, much less marriage. All the men she’d ever truly loved seemed to have a way of disappearing, deserting, or dying.

  Besides, she’d said to Harry last night on the phone, you’d better give some serious thought to hooking up with a woman ten years your elder, especially one who skipped the line where they were handing out the mommy genes.

  He’d said it made him no nevermind. Harry, who’d grown up among the blue bloods of Uptown New Orleans, had a real Downtown way of talking.

  Just you wait, she’d continued. You’ll be strolling by a playground one morning, little kiddies screeching Daddy, Daddy, you’ll change your mind. The old lady on your arm’ll already have gone through her change. I’m not gonna be studying babies, Harry.

  You’re just saying that ’cause you think I want you to move over to New Orleans.

  Don’t you?

  Of course I do. Ain’t nothing to eat over there in Hotlanta except yuppie food and collard greens. No music to speak of. One of us has got to do it. The choice between Atlanta and New Orleans—no contest.

  What’s wrong with the way we are? I hop on that plane almost every Friday evening at six o’clock, cross that time zone, and it’s still six when I get there. Even time to relax a little before we go out to dinner.

  Talking trash, Sammy.

  What are you talking, son? Relocation and upheaval.

  Son’s talking commitment.

  Oh, Jesus.

  On the other hand, maybe she ought to give it some thought. Half a commitment’s worth, anyway. She’d tell Hoke to take his silly assignment and shove it. Miss America, indeed! Hand him the job while she was at it. It wasn’t like she needed the money, thank you kindly, Jesus. Independence was what her inheritance was for. Maybe she could take a little house near New Orleans over on the north side of Lake Pontchartrain, get away from urban rot altogether, in a place like Mandeville. No, Covington. She’d work on the true crime book she’d been wanting to do for a long time.

  Covington. Yes, that’d do it. She’d settle into a nice old house with a center hall and a veranda and oaks draped with Spanish moss and write her book while the ghost of Walker Percy, who’d lived near the village until his death, prowled around the neighborhood. She’d have oyster po’boys for lunch with the St. Tammany Parish courthouse gang in that old café where Harry had once taken her—where time had stopped in about 1950, and they talked about the Longs, Huey and Uncle Earl, as if they’d dropped by yesterday. Now, that ought to furnish her with some material.

  Harry could come visit on weekends.

  But wasn’t that what he was complaining about now—weekends? And wait until she told him about Hoke putting the kibosh on their plans for Labor Day.

  Well, she couldn’t think about that anymore right now. She had to concentrate on changing lanes if she was ever going to make the turn onto Ponce de Leon. She signaled, tried to pull out, got cut off, honked at, and flipped off. Hey, maybe it was time to move to a little town out in the middle of nowhere. The traffic in Atlanta was growing more snarly by the day, the influence, no doubt, of all those carpetbagging Yankees.

  Now Miss Patsy had finished singing about her sweet dreams, and Sam, sitting at a red light one block away from Mary Mac’s, popped in one of Harry’s tapes. Strumming his guitar, he was singing the first song he’d written for her. I thought I knew how angels flew till you stepped off the plane.

  Oh, Harry. The boy had a sweet baritone—and lots of other sweet things. What to do? What to do? Sam sighed and answered her car phone.

  It was Charlie. Something had come up. Something he thought she ought to know about. Yeah. Uh-huh. Charlie always managed a doozie when he was late—which was almost every time they had a date. She listened to him with one ear.

  Then she heard what he was saying. Skeeter Bosarge had escaped.

  “What?”

  “He’s been on the run about eight hours. Now, we don’t know where he’s headed. No reason to think it’s this way.”

  “Great. No reason to think it’s not, either, is there?”

  No, there wasn’t. And just in case, he didn’t want to frighten her, but maybe she ought to swing back and pick him up at headquarters. They could have a little chat about precautionary measures.

  Indeed. He didn’t need to remind her that Skeeter was stark raving crazy. The rapist/murderer had killed three women in Atlanta before Sam’s series on him in the paper pushed enough victims who had lived, but hadn’t told the tale, to come forward. Like most madmen, Skeeter needed someone to blame. He’d picked Sam.

  “I’ll get you, you bitch!” he’d screamed at her as they dragged him out of the courtroom after his sentencing.

  “Melodramatic, don’t you think?” Sam had flapped her lips at Charlie, hoping her nonchalance would hide their trembling.

  “Serious as death,” Charlie had said then. Now he asked, “You got your .38?”

  Sam reached over and patted the glove compartment as if Charlie could see her.

  He couldn’t.

  But Skeeter Bosarge could. Rising from the back seat behind her, he could see her clear as day.

  *

  “Let’s go have us some fun, pretty lady,” Skeeter whispered as he slipped one big rough hand around her neck.

  Sam froze. She’d never forget his filthy voice as long as she lived—however long that was.

  She’d already hung up the phone. Charlie couldn’t help her now. No one could. Not even her trusty friends Smith & Wesson, so near—just about 12 inches from her fingertips if she could only reach out and touch t
hem—yet so far away.

  “It’s just you and me, baby.” Skeeter ran his other hand down her chest. She could see the blue letters HATE tattooed between his fingers and thumb by someone who didn’t have very good handwriting.

  Her mind stepped off and looked back. Here she was thinking about some needle artist in stir who hadn’t learned the Palmer Method when she ought to be concentrating on getting loose from this maniac.

  Well, it was easier than thinking about the realities. The possibilities. Skeeter Bosarge’s particular brand of savagery.

  She didn’t want to die chopped into little pieces in puddles of blood. She was too young. Well, almost young. She’d been obsessing recently about the cellulite on her thighs, the little lines at the corners of her eyes. But 40 was looking perkier by the minute.

  Now what she had to do was concentrate, stop her stomach from doing loop-de-loops, deter the blood from coagulating in her veins. Maybe she and Skeeter could talk about this.

  She eased into it. “How you doing, Skeeter?”

  His answering laugh was filled with slimy crawly things. It made her want to take a bath.

  Then he pinched her breast between his right thumb and forefinger, his left hand still around her neck. She resisted the temptation to reach up and slap his face.

  “You been dreaming about me?” he crooned.

  Only in my nightmares, you ugly sucker. She didn’t say that. But he was ugly, with dank, greasy hair, a lowering forehead, too-long arms, dim, dumb eyes. He shuffled. Skeeter the Neanderthal.

  Then his right hand moved. Up, back, and she felt the cool, smooth blade against her throat. Oh, God. Oh, Jesus. She was almost deafened by her heart’s pounding.

  Skeeter growled, “Just in case you get any funny ideas about running a red light, blowing a stop sign, you try anything, you die.”

  He was preaching to the choir. She was a believer. She’d seen his handiwork. Skeeter liked to cut and carve and maim. He’d started with an old girlfriend, raped her, then cut her heart out and ate it. He liked to tell reporters he’d developed a taste for blood right on the spot. Yeah, Skeeter was one hell of an interview.

  “Now, what we’re gonna do is we’re gonna have a little drink, then you get over to Monroe Drive, take that down to I-20, head east.” His hairy fingers poked an open pint of bourbon against her lips.