And the next thing she knew, she was staring at her bedroom ceiling, gently lit by the time from the bedside clock floating in red numbers on the ceiling.
Twelve-oh-one.
Thing was, was it twelve o’clock high, or twelve o’clock low?
Chapter 50
A Paler Shade of Pink
Temple had decided it was time to take the pink satin gloves off.
First, she’d been diverted in the store area from looking for Oleta’s booth by recovered memories of the whole Shangri-La/Kathleen O’Connor tangle.
She’d come to terms with those speculations. They had nothing to do with this place, this time, and this crime. She could fret over them later when she and Matt could talk long and privately again.
Now, she had to get Electra off the police list of suspects. This convention would be winding down shortly. Everybody would be scattering to the far four corners of the country. It’d be all too easy for the police, even earnest Detective Alch, to stick the at-hand local with the whole rap.
This time Temple refused to let anything purple or red distract her on the way to Oleta’s booth. She stopped only to ask directions.
“Oh, yes, that poor woman!” said one purveyor at the Red-Hatto-Toe booth.
This specialized in head and footwear, including rhinestone-studded reading glasses and red-and-purple anklets and sneakers, not to mention the ankle bracelets and huge hats.
The stork-tall seller herself was festooned in as many of her wares as possible, which made her resemble an overdressed emu, like songstress/clown Candy Crenshaw.
“Poor Oleta’s chapter decided to sell whatever many of her wares they could, and take the rest back to Reno to benefit the chapter.”
“They’re selling her items?”
Temple felt a sudden panic. Something key could have been among that merchandise, maybe hidden among that merchandise. Like Oleta’s tell-all book manuscript. Temple just knew that while Oleta might have spilled some of the juicy beans about her love life on the Internet she would have saved the best for the actual publication of her tell-all.
“Oh, don’t worry, dear,” said Madam Big Bird, “I’m sure it’s not all gone. You can still buy a memento.”
Eek! The stuff was probably selling like red, white, and purple hotcakes because people always like souvenirs from a murder.
It still made Temple shudder that O. J. Simpson’s two kids by Nicole Brown had opened a lemonade stand to serve the media and crowds besieging the O. J. estate after their mother’s brutal death. Maybe they were too young to realize that cashing in on their mother’s murder was awful. Or maybe they were just too much O. J.’s and not enough Nicole’s children. When a wife is abused in a household, the children can choose the abuser’s side to protect themselves.
So Temple really hated to join the three-deep crowd around the booth clawing for goods. She had to stretch, even on her three-inch pink patent J. Reneé heels, to see what everybody was competing for.
Apparently Oleta was serious about being a writer. Her booth was piled with commercial diaries and notepads and stationery slathered with red and purple hats, heels, feathers, and cats dressed in all of the above.
The usual feather boas hung from corner racks, as did red hats by the brimful. No pink and lavender items that would attract Red Hat ladies-in-waiting decorated the booth.
Temple suspected that Oleta Lark, having displaced at least one older woman, didn’t like to cater to the younger women coming up behind her now that she was “an older woman,” and almost a Red Hatter.
Temple, with the tenacity of an entire life spent being too short to see anything, edged around the crowd to the side of the table and then peeked under the floor-length tablecloth. This was where extra items were always stacked.
She dearly wished she’d known enough at the Women’s Exposition to peer under the table skirt of the woman who had possessed among her stock-in-trade rings related to the two men most dear to Temple.
Temple felt another chill. She’d spotted something big and bulky under the table. Not a body this time, thank God! Yet it was an item peculiarly appropriate to the convention, and apparently unique at the booth.
Temple wasn’t proud. She got down on her knees and dove for the prize, pulling it toward herself with much effort over a tidal wave of empty boxes.
When she wrestled the huge round hatbox close enough, she lifted it. Cardboard. She shook it. Nothing shifted or rattled. Empty. Drat it!
“Say! What’re you doing down there! Get up this minute.”
Temple crawled back out from under the purple table skirt, dragging her prize with her.
“I just saw something perfect for my new pink hat,” she wailed in a Mariah-like tone of aggrieved excuse.
She’d also just patted down the suspect hatbox in secret and now was mighty interested in conducting a private interrogation off the premises.
Temple rose from the floor, clutching an item that she knew would be the envy of all eyes: a crimson hatbox as big around as the bottom layer of a wedding cake, topped with a high mound of purple net flowers, and circled by a purple silk scarf with a design of red flowers. The exact same scarf design as the one that had wrung Oleta Lark’s neck.
“That’s the scarf!” a nearby woman shrieked. “You said you were all out,” she shrilled at the saleswoman.
That lady glanced from the screamer’s scowling face to Temple’s expression of innocently sincere greed.
“We were out. This young lady has found one we didn’t know about.”
“I’ll pay you fifty bucks for it,” Screaming Woman told Temple.
“I can’t sell it. I don’t own it yet, but I want to. This is for my very first pink hat.” Temple let her voice and chin tremble a little, like a scared Chihuahua’s.
“Shame on you,” the saleslady told the gathered shoppers. “You’re all a bunch of turkey-necked vultures gobbling up poor dead Oleta’s stock only because she is dead. This young lady is new to our organization and simply needs a hat box.
“That will be twenty-seven-fifty, miss.”
“Oh. Gosh. Thanks. This will look so great in my bedroom. It’s all pink with red and purple accents.”
“Cash. Thanks.”
The member of Oleta’s group leaned near as she handed over the change. “Love your hat.”
“Thank you!”
Temple escaped in girlish triumph, aware that the brouhaha had caught the attention of everyone in the room.
She hurried through the lobby toward the conference room that Nicky and Van had declared hers, shut the double doors, untied the scarf with the dignity the facsimile of a murder weapon deserved, then tore the lavender net roses off the hatbox’s mounded top.
Broken basted-on lavender threads sprouted like blades of grass from Oz on the red velvet top. Temple ripped off the glued-on purple braid around the lid, and lifted the red velvet.
Beneath lay a snowy mound of printed paper.
Oleta’s manuscript.
She’d brought a copy with her. To show it, sell it, or use it for blackmail?
Didn’t matter. Temple had the whole story in her hands now and an all-night reading assignment that even Matt couldn’t interrupt.
But that was later. This was now, and she still had a lot of tasks on her to-do list.
Chapter 51
The Flirting Fontanas
“You see the woman in the green shoes?” Temple asked.
“Yes,” Emilio said. “She Irish?”
“I rather doubt it,” Temple said. “Those are six-inch platforms and she always wears them.”
He stared. “Isn’t that excessive?”
“Darn right. Especially for covering a convention on these hard floors all day.”
“Agreed. I don’t wear high heels and my feet are killing me from this guard duty. So why would she do that?”
“I thought all Fontana brothers knew all women inside out.”
Emilio’s dark eyes grew wary. He knew
women well enough to realize that Temple was angling for something. This innocent game of Twenty Fashion Questions was the lead-up to the jaws of the trap crashing shut. On his fine silk-clad Italian calf.
“Like you, Miss Temple, she wishes to be taller and show off her ankles, which are not as world class as yours.”
“Nicely put. What is it with men and ankles anyway? Surely they’re one of the most awkward parts of the human anatomy, along with elbows.”
“It’s always a matter of what you do with them.” His eyes narrowed at Natalie Newman’s high-rise footwear. “Those are much too high for anything other than Milano runways or entering and exiting limousines.”
“I know that six-inch heels are the coming thing in InStyle. That’s not real life, though, and Miss Newman is a working journalist and filmmaker, doomed to be on her feet all day. Do you think Michael Moore would wear shoes like that to out a politician?”
Emilio choked discreetly at the idea of Michael Moore’s three hundred pounds on Natalie’s high platform shoes.
“You are leading, Miss Temple, but I’m not following, although this is a most enjoyable ride.”
“That woman is wearing those ridiculous stilts for the same reason that I like my three-inchers. She needs to be taller to see.”
“But she’s already tall for a woman.”
“Exactly. She doesn’t need her eyes to see, but something else.”
Emilio digested that one. “She does lift that handheld camcorder over the crowd frequently. It’s clever, actually, to make herself into a giraffe the better to film the convention.”
“What about the tote bag?”
“Not even a Gucci knockoff,” Emilio noted with a slight sneer. “Otherwise not much different from your ever-present bag of the same sort, sensibly purchased at T. J.Maxx.”
“You do know women inside out,” Temple marveled at his accurate call.
He looked down at her through sexy, half-closed eyes. “I can get you a great deal on the real Gucci if you yearn to go upscale.”
“Sorry, Emilio, shoes are my thing, not bags. I’m happy with Target or Steinmart in that regard.”
Emilio winced to hear such anti-Italian talk.
“No,” Temple went on, craning her neck at the Newman woman as she moved through the crowd, “it’s what is in that bag that I want a good look at. That I want copied without her knowing it. Of course not even the fantastic flying Fontana brothers could manage that.”
“Such a thing is impossible. When do you want it?”
“It would have to be done without alerting her, and it would require special equipment.”
“All of us Fontanas have special equipment,” she was told fiercely. “And we all can move like leopards if necessary.”
“I’m happy to hear it for my aunt Kit’s sake,” Temple continued, unflustered. “Because I know in my bones that there’s a second camcorder in that tote bag and I want the video in it copied and returned to the camera with Natalie Newman completely unaware of that.”
“Hmmm. I’ll have to consult the family. A simple seduction might be the easiest way”—he glanced at Natalie’s severe features—“but, despite the sexy shoes, her ankles predict that she’s a plate of cold spaghetti sans sauce in bed and even Fontana brothers can’t sacrifice themselves to a pleasureless charade. I’m afraid we can’t rely on charm in this instance. Let me get back to you on this.”
“Of course,” Temple said. “But make it snappy.”
Temple returned to the Crystal Phoenix the next morning to find Red Hat ladies eagerly lining up to the right of the lobby.
She was about to walk around the impediment when a Fontana brother appeared with the smile of the maître d’ at the Bellagio’s Le Cirque restaurant on his handsome face.
“ ’Scuse, miss. Hotel security. Due to recent unfortunate events that are the talk of the convention and the town, we are conducting a spot check on items being brought into the hotel. Your most attractive tote bag has been selected for further looking into,” he murmured in a way that would lead one to offer tote bag, body, and soul to the inspector if she was not careful. “Please join the other ladies awaiting inspection. We promise to be thorough, but, alas, quick.”
“Just like a man,” the Red Hat lady who was last in line chuckled as Temple fell into place, mad with curiosity.
She spotted Natalie Newman’s hatless dark hair eight places ahead and realized the genius of the plan. Another Fontana brother was looming over the reporter despite her extra-high heels and slathering on Fontana brother charm an inch (of Alfredo sauce) thick as he slipped the precious bag from her custody.
“There’s camera equipment in there,” she protested, quite rightly.
“Exactly why my brothers in hotel security will hand-check your bag. We will handle everything with the most delicate of touches, and return it to you in perfect working order.”
An oooh from the entire line of women within earshot made Natalie look like a cur—or worse, a frigid fool—for objecting to anything a Fontana brother might wish to do with her bag.
“Do you think they do pat downs?” the woman in front of Temple giggled.
“Only of bags,” she replied, “and of course you don’t want to be taken for a ‘bag.’ ”
Natalie had been plucked from the line to be queried on the exact nature of her job and her work here, as if that were a rare and special activity of tremendous interest to the interrogating Fontana brother.
Her sunken cheeks began to pinken at such intimate and solicitous attention. She didn’t even notice that the other women shuffled past, allowed to proceed far more quickly than she.
Temple was soon the only woman behind her. No others had been recruited after her.
Everything was very airport: the beige wall dividers. The sounds of a big machine churning out of view.
Natalie turned to watch Temple’s tote bag being whisked out of her custody with the same charming patter as her own had been.
“This is ridiculous,” Natalie whispered to her, suddenly a partner in being subjected to bureaucratic idiocy.
“It looks like they’re targeting oversize bags,” Temple whispered back.
“These other silly cows seem to actually like being examined by these greaser gangsters!”
“Well, they’re here to have fun and I suppose this adds a bit of drama.”
“These are the same silly, stupid women who watch soap operas and read romance novels. They’re making idiots of themselves and don’t even know it.”
“Isn’t it hard to record the convention when you despise the attendees?”
Natalie’s pale lips pursed. “I’m not a PR flack like you. I’m a journalist. I can . . . be objective about anything.”
“Except Purple Cows,” Temple said innocently.
Natalie’s unplucked brows clashed above her nose like broadswords.
“It’s fine for you girly little things to think you can slide through life on your looks without any moral or social conscience. Some of us aspire to more than easy money and the attentions of”—she glared at the Fontana brother handing her tote bag back with a small bow and a big smile—“gigolos!”
Temple and Armando watched her depart, driving those porn-film high soles into the marble floor like flatirons.
“It was a pleasure,” he mused, “to pick the pocketbook of such an unpleasant female undetected. We will have video in fifteen minutes in your conference room. Julio will fetch a chilled bottle of Asti Spumanti for your viewing pleasure.”
“It’s only 10:00 A.M. I don’t need wine.”
“But we do. It really is necessary to rinse the taste of that unhappy woman out of our mouths.”
In the conference room, Temple’s tote bag awaited her atop the long conference table opposite the dead-body-long television that had descended from the ceiling.
A DVD player sat like a centerpiece at the exact middle of the long table. Temple wasn’t even going to ask what it had taken to extract and
copy the media in Natalie’s hidden camera, and then replace it as if nothing had transpired, but technical boxes of unknown abilities crouched along the sideboard.
The four Fontanas active in the operation took seats along either side of the conference table, one using a remote to darken the lights and start the player.
Immediately the buzzing chaos of the convention-goers filled the room. Snatches of conversation. Laughter. The footage had a film verité feeling.
The screen was filled with deep purple. Then the camera’s eye zoomed out to reveal the very large purple butt of a woman bending over a wheeled canvas bag.
The camera roved at hip level, zooming in on swollen ankles in laced-edged red anklets, then swooping up to creased and folded middle-age faces wearing blobs of red and purple on lips and eyelids.
“You look darling!” a female voice caroled as the camera closed in on another, decidedly not-darling close-up of an unsuspecting woman.
“Jeesh,” a Fontana murmured, “this is character assassination.”
Temple nodded in the dark. “She’s using a fish-eye lens to distort their faces and bodies. Natalie’s pretty good at operating that totebag camera blind. She must have done a lot of this.”
“What’s the point?” Eduardo asked. “She’s getting paid to film the convention.”
“As I suspected, her real agenda is mocking it. Paid to undermine. Nice work if you can get it. I bet she’s done this before. Time to ask the Internet to cough up any references on her.”
“If she’s using her real name.”
Temple glanced at Eduardo. “She’s been a stringer for national news magazines, and I hear that’s her married name. And she doesn’t care how angry the Red Hat Sisterhood is, organizationally or individually, once she’s got what she wants in the can, or on the DVD, rather. Amazing how technology is outdating all our expressions.”
When the recording had run its course, Temple refused a glass of wine, but lifted her water glass in their honor.
“To the Fontana brothers. Long may they wave.”
Cat in a Red Hot Rage Page 26
