Part 6

We all stare at the man, even the smallest of tiny blonde haired girls falling silent at the sight of the Houston Police Dept. Detective taking the stage and commandeering a microphone. Even the glitter on the painted back drops seems to dim in an effort to silently genuflect before real authority. He seems a ludicrous vision , poised the dignified on the stage of the Oh You Beautiful Doll pageant, standing among glistening cardboard cutouts of kewpie dolls. None of the mommas dares to breath waiting for the next thing.

He speaks and I cannot clearly concentrate on the words coming from his mouth due to the distraction he poses just by standing here under the hot lights. Handsome, when’s the last time I’ve seen such a handsome man who wasn’t clearly homosexual, I can’t even remember it’s been so long. I stare at him as he introduces himself to the crowd as Detective Roger Conyers and proceeds without much in the way of small talk to tell us why he’s here. Just as I suspected he’s here because ‘Lanta Bledsoe is officially missing. We’re all instructed to take a seat on the light green padded chairs lined up in the ballroom because the police will be doing a systematic search of the hotel, starting with the ball room and meeting rooms here on the ground floor before moving to a room to room search on the guest floors. No one can leave and Detective Conyers says they’ll want to talk to anyone who may have seen anything. Damn, I cannot help but watch this beautiful man and listen to his beguiling accent that spoke of his heritage somewhere in the Caribbean.

As the Detective wound up his speech I noticed that the other two detectives, the lady with the expensive shoes and another man, had eased silently into the room, coming to stand next to the stage. No sashaying among this bunch I notice, all business. Detective Conyers introduces the lady as Detective Margarita Hull of the HPD and says that her partner is Agent Michael Naquin of the FBI. I have to wonder what the FBI has to do with a missing kid in a Houston Texas beauty pageant.

Detective Hull steps up onto the stage to take charge, immediately outlining what type of information they are after, saying that they already have a list of pageant attendees they’d like to talk to first as she reiterates the need for all of us to stay put right where we are as the search for Atlanta takes place. “Atlanta’s missing,” deadpans Butt Ugly Mr. Steve next to me, “Well someone better tell the governor of Georgia..” except he pronounces Georgia as “Jaw-Ja” stretching out his Mississippi accent to such exaggeration that it seems more a mockery. I giggle mindlessly but I pay no real attention to Mr. Steve, I’m occupied studying the lady cop, wondering what it’s like to be the lone woman in what is primarily a very macho mans domain. She gives off an aura of no nonsense, about as different from this pageant mothers as a woman could get and not be considered butch, dark black hair in a chin length bob, truly lovely skin like luminous old ivory with green eyes. I notice her makeup is subtle, nothing as overwhelming as anything seen in this room. Detective Hull is clad in a updated version of the classic black pants suit with those shoes I’d been admiring, black leather shoes with gracefully scalloped stacked heels. She and I were the only ones in this room that didn’t look like we belonged on QVC. Cop or not in those first moments I took an instantaneous liking to this detective.

Now her partner, the FBI agent, looked as though once upon a time he could have been a biker or some sort of societal outlaw, he just had a certain mad gleam in his cat green eyes that bespoke something more than riding a desk toeing the law enforcement line. I’d bet that he’d seen his fair share of undercover jobs in a hell of a lot of bizarre places. His rumpled suit couldn’t disguise this about him. Agent Naquin might have sported a buzz cut like many a well scrubbed copper but he had the air of a decided bad ass.

“Cute, ain’t he?” I overhead Samantha Smith stage whisper to another woman. I smile, cute indeed as Agent Naquin is I can just imagine he and his partner have just landed behind enemy lines into very hostile territory and I’m guessing that they do not know this yet. Already behind me I’m hearing furious whispers of how dare they interrupt the competition for something like this. Even as Agent Naquin is droning on about the importance of finding a missing child within the first few hours I’m seeing Leslie Leahanna Cannon, the pageant director, frown deeply as she realizes this is going to put a damper on her personal pageant. “Young man,” she says in a bored voice quite loudly, seeking to be heard over the building buzz of the room, “Exactly how long is this going to take? We’re in the middle of an event here and cannot be bothered by the parenting problems of one person..” Naquin isn’t what I’d call young, later thirties if I had to say exactly how old and he glares at the very ancient Leslie Leahanna in her chiffon ball gown and frosted Zsa Zsa Gabor-alike appearance as he replies, “This will take as long as it takes. Remember the well being and safety of the missing child is paramount in our minds right now.” Well, this is obviously not good enough for Leslie because she stands, all five feet of her and she announces in the same sort of voice you’d order a waiter do something incredibly distasteful for you, “That is simply not good enough. Investigate if you must but we must continue the show while you’re looking for this girl.” Everyone freezes at her words, the room silences and the tension becomes almost a living thing in the air as we see the FBI agent’s facial expression shift subtly from serious and stern to downright threatening as he says, “Lady sit down, shut up or I’ll be forced to charge you with impeding an investigation.. you’re seriously screwing with my cha-cha right now..” She sits down like someone boinked her on the head, shocked silent with her heavily rouged lips opening and closing like a trout hooked on the end of a fishing line.

The rest of the afternoon starts to pass with the slowness of time spent watching the clock. Some of the kids in the ballroom get bored with sitting still this long, protesting to their mothers while some simply fall asleep, grateful to have a moment’s rest during this unexpected break in the usually hectic pace of children’s pageant competitions. Every inch of the ballroom has been searched, under the chairs, the stage, behind the tables and banquet set ups. De nada, the rooms yields nothing more than the usual tasteful yet bland furnishings that could be found in any hotel in any city in the United States. I do have to smile as the contents of several of the boxes hidden behind the stage are opened and displayed to the officers, the usual assortment of cheap trinkets given out to the girls by the pageant officials, the even cheaper gift bags given to the mommas and the other assorted crapola passed off as the winners due. Once someone pointed out in great sarcasm when a mother complained about the cheapness of the pageant goodie bags that they’d be better of dressing their child up and taking her to Chuck E. Cheeses if she wanted cheap prizes for a low fee. Days later this wicked piece circulated the pageant message boards and lists..

Since some pageant moms want:
BIG guaranteed cash prizes,
Expensive Gifts,
Fancy Party,
Giant Crown,

and you don't want:
to pay to enter,
to bring a handful of cheap gifts,
to be first in your group but don't want to enter on time either,
to lose,
to compete against someone who is really good
pro-am
retouched pictures
door badges
door events
and free gifts from the director (if they're inexpensive)

Why don't you buy yourself a crown and take a trip to Chuck E Cheese on karaoke night. All the excitement and you can afford it!

It’s an expensive hobby and the pay off isn’t very deluxe regardless of which pageant it is, Santa’s Gingerbread House pageant, Holly Daze, Miss Sunshine N Sweetness or Yankee Doodle Dandies. The most I’ve ever seen awarded as a cash prize is a thousand dollars. The crowns are made in Hong Kong, bought by the case cheaply , filled with cheap glass rhinestones and molded from metal not much thicker than aluminum foil. The party for this pageant was planned for tomorrow night, balloons, sodas and lots and lots of Kleenex. Candy for the kids and secret stashes of booze for the mommas, at least for those that aren’t hooked on Prozac or swacked on valiums.

Don’t know how much more of a pageant there will be this weekend considering how the officers searching the ballroom have been accidentally mangling all the accoutrements of the show. One tried to move aside the crepe paper masking the bottom lip of the stage and managed to shred it into confetti as another one dropped the stack of crowns he was moving. I can just feel Leslie Leahanna’s blood pressure rising at the sight of the younger men roughly pawing through her pageant supplies. A nervous looking rookie with blonde hair knocks over a false wall stage right that’s bedecked with paintings of dolls and turns quickly batting over a large potting palm with his dangling night stick.

Butt Ugly Mr. Steve sits next to me in the padded chairs, his five year old daughter Jooniper napping with her long arms and legs akimbo across his lap. Steve keeps whispering to me and I long to tell him to shut up, to leave me with my thoughts. But I don’t and as a result he doesn’t shut up. He continues on with his running commentary on everything that’s happened so far today through topics as silly as the tight fit of the uniformed officers pants and if you could get them to use their nightsticks and handcuffs on you in the bedroom. “If these chuckle heads had a clue they’d know everyone in this room has reason enough to want to piss off Miz Tanya, get in line, take a friggin’ number on who’d mess with her precious daughter, mores the pity that the brat is probably safe and sound somewhere sleeping off a sugar od. You do know that Tanya gives that child a Starbucks Double Shot Espresso in the can right before she goes on.. Nothing like sugar and caffeine to get a kid to be magically sparkly and energetic..”

Even the judges look like they’re feeling exactly what the rest of us are, alternating between the extreme boredom of being stuck in this room and feeling weirded out by the entire police force of Houston Texas crawling around the place like curious ants in uniforms. This pageant features a former Miss Texas from the stone ages, a hapless airline pilot roped into judge duty by his pageant mom wife and a hapless local rapper trying desperately to do anything that might help him build local name recognition before his debut CD is released. Ghetto boy with nappy dreads, baggy pants and the nervous look of a man caught red handed doing something forbidden. Bet he’s secretly praying none of his homies hear about his turn as a beauty pageant judge. He’s sandwiched in by two nearly identical looking blondes who own and operate a local charm schools. They looked freaked just to be sitting next to a guy they wouldn’t give the time of day to on the streets for fear he’d carjack their mini vans. The final judge is a woman who was a pageant mom before she discovered that she liked to take the photos for pageant portfolios. I stare at her, realizing that the strange shading on her upper lip is actually hair, she has a slight mustache. Very freaky.

Every now and again someone’s name is called out by a uniformed officer and that person is escorted out for times ranging from just a few minutes to as long as a half hour.