He held up an envelope. “Nobody’s in trouble. Yet. We received another letter threatening the pageant. I already checked for prints and it’s no one in our system, so I figured it wouldn’t hurt to see if you had any theories. No one else at the station is bothering,” he added bitterly.
The aunties and I all raised our eyebrows. Detective Park had always maintained a professional attitude toward his colleagues, even when their ineptitude had caused him problems. I guess their lack of interest in this case was finally getting to him. He wasn’t even supposed to be a regular employee, just a consultant, but since there were no detectives on the force, he got called in whenever a big enough case came in. After all, Sheriff Lamb had to at least pretend he cared, especially when the mayor got involved.
Detective Park handed me the envelope and everyone, except for Lola Flor, scooched closer to inspect it. It had the red and blue markings around the edges that designated it for international mail use. warning was written in scratchy-looking capital letters. I pulled out the letter, which had been written on a yellow legal pad and contained a single sentence.
I hadn’t paid much attention to the first note he’d shown me, so I made sure to take my time looking over this one. The first thing I noted was that it was written in cursive, probably using a black fountain pen, based on the style. My eyes struggled to decipher the script so I could read the letter out loud, but Ninang April got impatient and took it from me.
Shut down the pageant before someone else gets hurt
She lowered the page. “That’s it? They couldn’t be more original with their threats?”
It wasn’t the phrasing that stuck out to me, but the trappings. I’d seen that envelope and script before. “Oh my gulay, I know who’s been sending these letters!”
I ran to my aunt’s office to grab my bag and riffled through it till I found my phone (Lola Flor wasn’t a fan of phones at the table, so I always left it in another room so I wouldn’t be tempted). “Mr. Weinman has been writing letters to Winnie Pang to try and woo her, I guess. He dropped off an envelope when I was at her salon and the other salon customers said he does it all the time. There were a few lying open in the waiting area and Adeena got a picture of them.”
I went to the Brew-ha group chat and pulled up the photo to show the detective. The aunties crowded around him to look at the screen—you didn’t have to be a handwriting analyst to see the notes were written by the same person.
“Send me that picture, Lila. I think it’s time I had a talk with Oskar Weinman. Thanks for the tip. This is some good work.” Detective Park handed me back my phone and nodded at me. He didn’t smile or say anything else, but that was high praise coming from him and I reveled in the validation. Nice to see that I was good at something. I mean OK, it was Adeena’s quick thinking that got the photos, but I was the one that put it all together. That had to count for something.
“Does that mean I’m off the hook?” Bernadette asked. She’d been hanging back at the table with Joy, her posture curled in small as if she didn’t want anyone to notice her. The exact opposite of how she usually carried herself. Any other day, she’d be crowded around with the aunties giving her own opinion on the situation, but she must’ve been too uncomfortable to approach the detective since he still considered her a suspect.
Detective Park must’ve noticed as well because he tempered his voice before addressing her. “Mr. Weinman is a person of interest and it’s too early for me to say anything definite. However, I’m hoping this is the breakthrough we need to clear you of suspicion and bring closure to this case.”
That was the closest he’d get to admitting he didn’t consider her a real suspect, so it would have to do. And if Mr. Weinman really did it, that meant it was safe to hang out at Sana’s again. A way to try to fix my and Bernadette’s relationship came to me. “Hey, do you want to join me and the girls for one of Sana’s classes? I’m thinking of taking up yoga.”
Bernadette’s eyes gleamed. “I love Sana’s studio! I’ve been going there all the time now that they cut my hours at the hospital. But we’re not doing yoga. You have to join me for one of her Zumba classes. They’re the best!”
I groaned inwardly. Bernadette was the dancer in our group. I was a good singer, but somehow suffered in the rhythm department. Bernadette, meanwhile, had been in several dance crews in high school and college and had an entire wall full of trophies to show how good she was. She probably could’ve gone pro if her mother had let her. In fact, there’s a better than average chance that she would’ve won the crown the year we competed together, but she’d injured herself while practicing her dance routine for the talent portion. She still performed, but it was obvious she couldn’t put 100 percent into it. I wondered how differently things would’ve gone for us if we’d both been able to compete at top form.
Before I could go down the rabbit hole of what-ifs, my aunt nudged me and I realized I hadn’t given Bernadette an answer. “Oh! Sure, Ate Bernie. But no making fun of my dance moves! And you have to come do karaoke with me sometime as well.”
I make a fool of myself on the dance floor for her, she embarrasses herself at the mic for me. Equivalent exchange. We shook hands on it, signaling the end of the dinner party. Everyone packed up leftovers to take home—even Ninang June, proving the power of Tita Rosie’s cooking—and left as a group, chattering happily now that the fear of Bernadette getting arrested was gone. Now that we knew who sent those threatening letters, it was only a matter of time till he confessed to killing Rob. I helped my family clean up and we went home filled with the pleasure of a job well done.
I snuggled up to Longganisa and had the most peaceful night’s sleep that I’d had in months.
Chapter Nineteen
Who knew exercise could be fun? I went jogging all the time, but that’s because the slow, rhythmic pace helped me think and was good for Longganisa’s health. But here I was dancing and sweating up a storm—in public!—and I didn’t mind at all. In fact, it was the perfect way to shake off the bad vibes from that day’s pageant event.