A Really Cute Corpse — Joan Hess

Claire Malloy, reluctant director of Farberville's Miss Thurberfest beauty pageant, is being driven to distraction by baton twirlers, off-key singers, lead-foot dancers, and the general hysteria that is convulsing the eighteen beauties vying for this year's crown,

So she's hardly prepared when a nail is driven into the stage floor for the present Miss Thurberfest to trip on, a sandbag crashes onstage where the queen should have been standing, and a bullet pierces her open convertible. It can only end in murder, and it does--an ugly killing that eclipses the festivities and starts Claire poking around--until she comes too close to joining Farberville's queen of beauty at the town morgue....