Page 12 of The Perfect Illusion

They heard scrambling, and for half a second, Jessie thought the guy might be trying to make a run for it. Instead, he appeared in the doorway with a scowl on his face.

Marcus Sullivan looked as weathered as his office. She already knew from the information that Jamil and Beth provided that he was 49. But the photos they’d sent of him didn’t reflect just how the years had worn him down.

His face was a strange, unnatural mix of wrinkles and smooth lines. It was if he’d gotten Botox treatments but didn’t have enough money to finish the whole job yet. His hair was black, but the roots and ends had hints of gray where the dye job was starting to fade. He was dressed in jeans and an Oxford shirt that was one button too open for Jessie’s taste. The sport coat he’d clearly just thrown on was fraying at the lapels. If his attire was any indication, it didn’t appear that the pageant business was doing all that well.

“What’s this about?” he demanded.

“We’d like to talk to you about a former employee,” Brady said, keeping things as vague as he could until they felt obligated to get more specific.

“Am I in some kind of trouble?” he asked, “because I’ve been the victim of a bunch of witch hunts.”

"No, not at all," Brady told him, lying with a warmth and friendliness that Jessie found impressive. "We just heard that you'd be a real asset in providing some background information on a case we're looking into. It shouldn't take more than five minutes. Mind if we have a seat?"

He stepped into the office without waiting for permission, and Jessie followed suit. This room was no more impressive than the rest of the place. The carpet was so worn in places that the flooring was visible underneath. Sullivan's desk, a rickety wooden behemoth, looked like it might collapse at any moment. The frame of the decaying couch intended for guests was so compromised that it sank in the middle. It also had multiple stains on it. Jessie remained standing.

The walls were covered with plaques and framed certificates. But as Jessie peered closer, she realized that nearly all of them merely announced Sullivan’s participation in various events and weren’t actual awards of accomplishment.

The one saving grace of the place was the window, which would have offered a nice view, if not for the equally tall, older building across the way that obscured any chance to see what was beyond it.

“We wanted to ask you about one of your upcoming pageants,” Brady said, plopping down on the couch. He apparently had no reservations about its hygiene.

“I thought you had a question about a former employee,” Sullivan said suspiciously.

“We’ll get to that,” Brady promised.

“Okay, what do you want to know?” Sullivan asked, returning to the chair behind his desk. When he sat down, it groaned loudly.

“How do you select the judges for something like that?” Jessie asked, doing her best to sound genuinely interested.

Sullivan leaned back in his chair. As she'd hoped, the question relaxed him. It was an opportunity to mansplain to her, and he leapt at the chance.

“It’s a complicated process,” he said. “I like to get a mix of judges from different walks of life. Sometime we’ll include a local community leader, like a council person or member of a chamber of commerce. We might also pursue a celebrity of some kind. The size of the pageant often determines how big a name we can get. And then we’ll want some kind of expert, maybe a past pageant winner or a consultant of some kind.”

“Are you using a pageant winner for the Costa Mesa event?” Jessie wondered.

"As a matter of fact, we are," he said. "We're going with a charming young lady who was Miss Altadena, 2019."

“Oh,” Jessie said, feigning surprise.

“What’s wrong with that?” Sullivan asked, leaning in uncertainty.

“Nothing,” she said with a wave. “I just figured you’d prefer a pageant winner from the area where the event was taking place, to make it more personal for everyone there.”

Sullivan eyed her, clearly weighing how forthright to be in his next answer. To Jessie’s mind, there was no legitimate reason not to come clean. If he wasn’t involved in Patricia Hollinger’s death, there was no point in hiding his invitation to her. And if he was responsible, he had to know why they were here. Pretending to be clueless would only make him look more guilty.

“I actually did try a local first, or at least a former local,” he said. “My go-to pageant rep for Orange County moved to Florida in January so I reached out to our former Miss Huntington Beach from a while ago, but she declined.”

“Who was that?” Brady asked.

"Her name is Patricia Corning, or at least it was when I knew her," Sullivan said. "It's been almost a decade, so she might have gotten married and changed it."

“You haven’t spoken to her in all that time?” Jessie pressed.

“No. We kind of fell out of touch.”

“Why did she decline?” Jessie asked.

“She didn’t say,” he told her, his tone more guarded now. “Is she the former employee you mentioned?”

---