Cat in a Hot Pink Pursuit

by Carole Nelson Douglas

  But this inventory of her closet had nothing to do with Mariah. It had to do with one uppity narc. A date! Was he nuts? Was she nuts? Because here she was: single mother cop with teenage child, looking down the barrel of forty thinking she could go on a date. Just like that. When she didn’t have a thing to wear. Neither Jekyll nor Hyde was cut out for a dinner date. What the heck had she been thinking?

  For some reason the image of Matt’s friend, Janice Flanders, popped into her mind’s eye. Okay. Also a single mother and no kid herself. Tallish. One dignified lady. A wardrobe role model? No … those New Ageish artsydrapey clothes with cryptic images weren’t her, whoever “her” was.

  She slid the closet doors shut and went to the living room. Caterina and Tabitha, the tiger-striped cats, were curled into yin-yang formation on the sofa, dreaming of electric mice. Mariah was off at another one of her extracurricular activities … band or chorus or just something way too girly for her tender thirteen years … at her new friend Melody’s house.

  Carmen heard the grinding gears of the mailman’s mini-Jeep outside and moved into the hot morning sunshine, hoping for a catalog with some outfit labeled “middle-aged single mother dating ensemble.”

  She got three catalogs, with cover images that made some hitherto untapped fashionista in her soul go “yuck.” And a letter. Addressed to Mariah.

  Carmen frowned, staring at the unthinkable type in the sunlight. What? Now they were trying to push credit cards on middle-schoolers? Were there no limits? No. It must be a magazine solicitation, going by the fancy type in the return address, which looked vaguely familiar. Mariah had suddenly become a huge consumer of Seventeen magazine and a whole new slew of its ilk.

  Shaking her head, Carmen went in, blinking in the dimness of her living room, automatically snatching the letter opener and slitting through the taped flyers for new air conditioning units et cetera, even through the flap on the envelope addressed to Mariah.

  The pitch letter was two-color: pink and black. Carmen shook her head. What would her so very “now” daughter think if she knew that color combo was even older than her mother. “It Came From the Fifties” … Carmen chuckled.

  And then she read the letter. And sat down. And read the letter again. She looked at the return address. The headlining “sell” graphics.

  She took a very deep breath. She wondered who she could call.

  No one.

  She wondered what she would do.

  Whatever it was, it would be disastrous.

  Lose-lose.

  Oh, hell.

  Chapter 6

  Undercover Chick

  Temple was hammering out a new proposal on her computer, trying to forget about Awful Crawford and reality TV shows and all their satanic ilk, when her doorbell did its vintage doo-wap on her ears.

  Matt? Something more to say before he left? Hmmm. Max wouldn’t ring, and Matt usually knocked, so maybe Electra, the landlady … .

  Optimistic, as usual, she swung the door wide open, and found a figure as high, wide, and unwelcome as she could remember filling the doorway.

  “Lieutenant.”

  “Miss Barr. May I come in?”

  “You have a warrant?”

  “You have nothing to fear. This is a personal consultation.”

  Temple stepped aside to admit a woman who was almost a foot taller than she into her humble domain. Thank goodness Temple had resident “muscle” on the premises.

  Molina stopped cold in the archway to the living room. “Him.”

  “Louie lives here,” Temple said. “No doubt he’s thinking ‘her’ at this very moment.”

  “Actually, I like cats.” Molina crossed the invisible barrier between entry and living area to loom over Louie. “What a handsome fellow.”

  Louie was buying none of it. He fanned his long, curved nails and licked dismissively between his spread toes.

  “What can I do for you?” Temple asked, making small talk.

  Molina’s laser-blue eyes fixed on her insincere face. “A great deal. Can we talk where you have seating units not claimed by alley cats?”

  “My office?”

  “Better than mine.”

  So Temple led her into the spare bedroom-cum-office, wondering madly what this was about. She heard Louie thump assertively down to the floor as he followed them.

  Temple indicated the casual wicker chair opposite her computer desk and sank into the comfortable sling mesh of her teal Aereon size A chair.

  Louie leaped up on the computer desk and sat there like a silent partner, switching his long black tail over the side.

  “I didn’t expect a familiar,” Molina said.

  “Think of Louie as Paul Drake, and of me as Perry Mason.”

  “Not possible.” Molina’s lips suddenly quirked.

  “What?”

  “I could buy Nora Charles and Asta.”

  “Oh. I could do The Thin Man! I do so love vintage clothes and vintage quips.”

  Louie growled.

  “Louie, however,” Temple added airily, “does not do dogs.”

  Molina spread her hands, dismissing the parallels. “Perhaps Bucky Beaver, then. I need to hire your services.”

  “A PR person could do a lot for your department.”

  “For me.”

  “For you?”

  “And not PR.”

  “What for then?”

  “You’ve shown some … zany aptitude for undercover work.”

  “Me?”

  “Tess the Thong Girl ring a bell?”

  “Well, that was just—”

  “I know. You were just Little Red Riding Hood with a basketful of thongs trying to save the Big Bad Wolf from the Evil Huntsman.”

  “Max isn’t a Big Bad Wolf! Although you’re an excellent candidate for the Evil Huntsman. You probably went after Snow White for the Evil Queen too.”

  “Let’s set personal issues aside, Miss Barr.”

  Temple saw those laser eyes shift, eyeing the room and conceding to Temple’s domain for the first time.

  “You really do want to hire me?”

  “Yes.”

  “For what?”

  “I want you to enter the Teen Queen reality TV show competition.”

  “What!” Temple leaped up from her chair. “I’m too old!”

  “That leap says not. The upper age limit is nineteen. You can pass.”

  “But—”

  “You can pass. You think I don’t know who can go undercover and how well? You’re a shoo-in.”

  “Get Su! She’s small for her age.”

  “I would, but she’s a homicide detective. She’s not used to undercover. I’ve decided, abhorrent as the conclusion is, that only you … will do … for this job.”

  “Abhorrent to you or to me?”

  “To us both. Equally. It’s a Mexican standoff, Miss Barr. That should make it easier for you. You win, I lose. I lose, you win.”

  “Why?”

  Molina looked down. “My daughter—”

  “Mariah. Nice kid.”

  “She’s entered the contest. She’s a finalist.”

  “Mariah? A Teen Queen? I don’t think so.”

  “You haven’t been on the Teen Queen scene lately. But you will be now. With a vengeance.” Molina bent down to her big black purse that was half briefcase, and pulled out a plum. A one-sheet familiar to any PR person around. A flyer. An advert sheet. A—

  Temple felt her pulse spike even as her jaw dropped. “This is … sick.”

  “We have a stalker. A teen runaway has recently been found dead. That could be unrelated, but another adulterated poster like this was found in the general vicinity of her body. You realize what that means.”

  Temple reluctantly took the paper.

  “It’s a color copy,” Molina said. “You can’t hurt it. I wish you could.”

  Temple nodded. “You’re asking me to risk my life.”

  “You did it for him.”

  “Because … I
love him.”

  “I love Mariah.”

  “You can’t ask this.”

  “I can ask. The deal is, I lay off Kinsella.”

  “Max for Mariah? You can’t nail him for anything; you’re not even close to him.”

  “But you are.”

  Temple shook her head. The paper trembled in her hands. Who would deface the image of a young girl like that? And would he do as much to her body? That was the question.

  “You want me there as a chaperon for Mariah? Why not just tell her she can’t do this?”

  “I tried. Six hours of pleading and recriminations. Her whole soul is into this. She thinks she can sing. I’m afraid she actually can. I could at her age. Then, it wasn’t worth much. I could say she can’t aspire because I couldn’t. But I’m afraid she actually could win her division.”

  “You could shut this down right now. Just say no.”

  “Obviously you haven’t a clue about parenthood. Sure, I can say no and win this battle but lose the war and my daughter, forever. I suppose when you grew up in Wisconsin—”

  “Minnesota.”

  “—where it was old-fashioned, mid-American, and too darn cold for teenage girls to get much more from necking than frostbite, parents didn’t have to worry about their kids growing up way too fast too soon.”

  Temple couldn’t help smiling. “We weren’t totally frozen out when it came to being rebellious teens. There was always punk ice-skating.”

  “Not funny. I am hanging onto this kid’s future by the nape of her neck. She’s got a new bad-girl girlfriend. She’s under all the commercial pressures girls her age face: buy-buy-buy, be sexy, be hip, show it all, get guys. Never think of what you might lose by it. She could bolt if I said no. Better she try it and work out her energy and aggressions in a controlled arena. And—”

  Molina looked away, to the tack board bearing the news articles on Temple’s accounts.

  “Mariah has a passion to achieve girls my age, from my place in the world, were denied. Weren’t you? Twenty years ago. Weren’t we all denied? I can’t stop her. I won’t stop her. But I can protect her.”

  “With me?”

  Molina nodded. Her expression tightened. “You’re all I’ve got. My agent on the scene.”

  “You don’t like me.”

  “No. But I’ve … come to respect your … pluck and dumb luck.” She sounded like she was swallowing a pickle.

  Temple sat back, feeling slightly smug. “I’ve only fought for what … who I believe in.”

  “I can’t buy that. I wouldn’t under any other circumstances in the world. But I can arrange things. I’ll have people outside the Teen Queen Castle. You can’t … won’t tell anyone. I don’t want the great Max Kinsella racing to your rescue and getting in the way. This is going to have to be a solo job for you. As it is for Mariah. And me. Maybe it’ll be good for all of us.”

  “I can’t guarantee I’ll make the finals. You know what teens are like nowadays. I don’t know if I can cut it. Mariah might not either.”

  Molina stood up. “I know you both. Unfortunately. I don’t doubt that either you or my daughter can make the final cut if you set your minds to it. You’re two of a kind.”

  “Me and Mariah?”

  “Thorns in a mother’s side.”

  “My mother would beat you to death with a fast-food chicken limb if she knew what you were asking her baby daughter to do.”

  “She can do it with my blessing if both our baby daughters don’t come through this. I wouldn’t let either one of you even try out if I weren’t pretty sure that this … pageant threat is a long shot. All the finalists will be confined to the same quarters for two weeks. Very hard for a bad actor to get in.”

  “Or easy. Film crews are gypsies, hard to do background checks on them.”

  “We’ll know them from the birthmarks out.”

  “And you’ll really give Max a free pass from now on?”

  Molina raised her right hand. “Absolutely. Unless he stands there with a smoking gun over a dead body right under my nose, I’ll totally forget he hangs out somewhere in this toddling town, up to murky business and possibly larceny or even murder. If you can live with that uncertainty, I can.”

  “You have him so wrong.”

  “I don’t have him. You do. That’s your problem. It’s a crime I have to compromise on this, but I’m off his case.”

  “If I do this. Wow. How long do I have to get into character? I’ll need … cool clothes. Um, a couple body piercings, ears at least. A quick rundown on the latest slang and hot boy bands.”

  Molina was reaching into that bottomless briefcase again. “You’ll have to try out locally but you’ll need to bring a tape. Here’s Mariah’s winning little number. Can we check it out?”

  “Other room.”

  Temple was feeling pretty numb as she followed Molina there, but then the bipolar reactions set in. Shocked/challenged. Scared/excited. Worried/confident.

  Molina shot the video tape into its slot and Temple manned the remote.

  In a minute they were both hunkered down on the sofa, watching with fascination as Mariah spoke, sang a clever pitch, and cavorted for the camera.

  “This is Mariah?” Temple marveled. “I haven’t seen her for a while. She’s really grown.”

  “Teened out,” Molina said grimly.

  “Who filmed this?”

  “New friend from a tough school. I’m lucky the only thing that girl talked Mariah into doing behind my back was this nonsense.”

  “Didn’t she need your permission to do this?”

  “One would hope, but nope. It was only an ‘open preliminary audition.’ The permissions come later, when or if the girls are actually accepted for the reality show cast, and there are a ton of them. As there should be. And … the show selected her.

  “We’ve already got the preshooting packet. Mariah will be put on a diet. Sensible, they claim. She’ll have acting and singing classes. She’ll get clothes and a cosmetic Extreme Teen makeover and will generally hang out with her peers while competing ferociously.”

  “So what’s so different between this and junior high?”

  “Catholic school. Mariah hasn’t been exposed to the dark side of adolescence. She’ll be a chick in a yard full of foxes.”

  “Maybe you’ve protected her too much.”

  “Maybe.” Molina grabbed the remote and stopped the film.

  “You’re expecting me to get selected? The competition for my so-called age group—Senior Teen Queen—must be killer.”

  “I hope not. I’m counting on you being just as able and clever as Mariah in getting attention, even if it’s the wrong kind.”

  “Then there’s that dumb luck thing of mine.”

  “Exactly.” Molina stood. “The tape’s a copy. You can study it. I gotta admit the kid has chutzpah. Sophistication won’t cut it. You’ll have to find your inner teen queen. Your shoe collection should help.”

  “And you’ll really, really, forget about Max?”

  “Who?”

  Temple nodded. “And if I don’t make the cut and the show doesn’t want me?”

  “Then I still want Kinsella, and this time I’ll get him. For something, even if I have to make it up. But I won’t. He makes it too easy.”

  “Okay. I guess I’ll let you know when I hit”—Temple consulted the fat, glossy, and expensive press kit—“the Teen Queen Castle. Oh, boy.”

  “Oh, girl,” Molina corrected. She wasn’t Molina if she wasn’t correcting somebody.

  Temple showed her out, then gazed down at Louie, who’d accompanied them to the exit like a major domo in a cat suit.

  “Think I can pass as a teen queen, Louie?”

  He rubbed against her ankles, nodding his head up and down as he left his scent on her shin bones. Now that was a vote of confidence!

  Temple returned to the living room and ran Mariah’s tape again.

  Couldn’t tell Max, couldn’t tell Matt. Wouldn’t ha
ve told Louie if he hadn’t been here.

  She frowned, remembering the dismembered Barbie doll parts in the color Xerox image. If she got to the Teen Queen Castle, she’d really rather have some undercover backup that she knew about.

  Not Max. Not Matt. Surely not Louie. Then who?

  Chapter 7

  Bait Boy

  Not once during her pitch did Miss Lieutenant C. R. Molina specifically forbid Midnight Louie his own self to go undercover.

  Wise of her. I am always undercover, anyway.

  I have watched the video with both eyes wide open, thinking how I would feel if Miss Midnight Louise put herself on the chopping block in such a fashion. I guess it is not a chopping block unless the purveyor of the mutilated flyer makes it so. It is more like an auction block.

  I cannot approve of these little dolls parading for the entertainment of the masses. I cannot approve of anyone parading for the entertainment of the masses.

  Unless, of course, they held a midlife-macho-dude competition. That would be right up my alley.

  Everything I have overheard today convinces me of one thing: I must be present in the Teen Queen Castle for both the gore and the glamour of the competition, the guts and the glory. Miss Temple needs some undercover muscle she can count on, i.e., something more than human.

  Speaking of which, I could use some spiritual guidance. Or at least a hint of what is to come. Or at least a good laugh at the gullible.

  So, once Miss Temple is in her bedroom throwing clothes and shoes around, I bounce open one of the French doors to the balcony. I know this is her usual ritual for gearing up, quite literally, for action.

  Me, I hop aboard the old palm tree leaning so conveniently over our balcony and ratchet up the shaggy trunk to the penthouse floor, just below the spreading vanes of leaves.

  This entails an agile leap over the wrought-iron railing and a three-point landing on the plastic pad of the lounge chair. (Three-point because one of my shiv-holders slips off the cushion.)

  But I am good to go as soon as I sit up and shake my coat into dapper order.

  I have another rank of French doors to break through. These have not been trained by me to open at the jiggle of a mitt under the bottom. So my entrance is not the usual blend of speed, skill, and silence.