Cat in a Hot Pink Pursuit

by Carole Nelson Douglas

  Temple wasn’t nervy at all now, except in the wimpy meaning of the word. Her back was to the desk and Beth Marble’s very dead body, but the grotesque image was branded on the movie screen behind her eyes: Beth’s head tilted back, eyes open, the curled black hair slid back several inches … a wig like Xoe Chloe’s exaccessory, but the head beneath it … bald. It was bad enough the woman was dead; worse that the killer had scalped her in a sense. Temple wondered if gravity, or the murderer, had unmasked Beth after death.

  “You say you were going to spring the murderer’s name on me when I got here. Then why the detour to Manship’s office?”

  “He’d left a note from my suspect on his desk, asking him to see her.”

  “‘Your suspect?’ Miss Barr, I personally think you’re an okay person, and I get that my boss wanted you on this scene for reasons relating to her daughter. But you’ve been caught red-handed over a dead body. You see my position.”

  “Yup. You’re probably sitting on the exact place the body was laid before it was propped up in the chair.”

  Alch eyed the large ottoman, then sprang up. “You think she was killed elsewhere and brought here? But how? This place is crawling with cameras and antsy contestants. You couldn’t import a bedbug here without getting major notice.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “So. Are we to suspect you, or Manship?”

  “Good question. Since I’m a wild card here—”

  Alch snorted.

  “Probably Manship. He’s the Big Meanie on board. The note signed by her was left in his office, so he probably was there.”

  “So how did he waltz a dead body three hundred feet through corridors that might be highly populated any second?”

  “I don’t know. He’s Australian. They’re used to wrestling crocodiles.”

  “Okay. Tell me about the vic.”

  “Well, I think the vic was actually the perp.”

  “You’re kidding me, right?”

  Amazing, Temple thought, how talking the talk cut through the fog. Vic. Perp. That made the so-intensely-personal act of murder strangely impersonal.

  “Or one of them.”

  “Say you’re kidding me.”

  “I can’t. I do have a rationale for why I thought the perp who is now a vic became a perp.”

  “Rationale. Look, Miss Barr, the lieutenant told us about your pseudo-participation in this circus. We are inclined to overlook a great deal. But being found first on a murder scene is not one of the overlookable offenses.”

  “How many ‘offenses’ did Molina consider expected?”

  His expression tightened. “A few. Like breaking and entering on the first death scene. And bringing her daughter along.”

  “You guys have taken over the show’s secret recording duties.”

  “Darn right. Now. I’ll take you downtown so the lieutenant can debrief you.”

  “Marian—”

  “Not to worry. Su’s with her.”

  For some reason, Temple felt usurped.

  “Why didn’t Molina use Su in the first place? Why drag me into it and then punish me for getting ahead of the curve?”

  “You’re a head of something, all right,” he said, gazing at her blindingly blond hair. Then he chuckled. “Don’t sweat it. Somehow I don’t see you as a candidate for stabbing someone through the heart.”

  “Was that the murder method?”

  Alch put a finger to his lips and mustache. “Not for publication.”

  So she was escorted out of the death scene, a defiant Xoe Chloe to the last. Everyone gathered around: herd of tittering blondes, glad to have Xoe off the show; Crawford Buchanan, hissing a blow-by-blow commentary into his live mike; her own aunt, looking aghast but keeping her lips zipped like a good actress; a subdued Dexter Manship; and Rafi Nadir, bringing up the rear to give her a thumbs up, her only supporter.

  Unless you counted Midnight Louie at the crowd’s very edge, backed up by a trio of hip kits, one silver, one golden, and one as black as Xoe Chloe’s hair used to be.

  Louie did not give her a thumbs up.

  But he did wink. Or blink. Whichever. He had a whisker’s chance in hell of helping her.

  “What did you think you were doing?”

  Molina didn’t waste words. Temple was in her office, which was a good sign. She doubted it was bugged but couldn’t be sure. After living in the Teen Queen Castle, she was fairly paranoid. Police had a license to be tricky.

  “I thought I’d lead Detective Alch to the person who’d killed Marjory Klein.”

  “Oh, you led Alch to something, all right. Another murder. And what the hell is going on with my daughter? You were supposed to protect her. Instead, your pet sleazebag is running loose on the premises and a pretty prime suspect for any and all of this.”

  “I didn’t know Rafi would be there. Savannah Ashleigh hired him as a bodyguard. And Mariah’s fine. Neither of them has a clue as to who is who. You really pulled the wool over Rafi’s eyes. If he found out he had a kid, he’d probably stroke out and your problems would be over. In fact, that might be a nice sneaky way to get rid of him forever.”

  “I wouldn’t count on convenient acts of God to get you out of this mess. Some amateur sleuth you are. You just led Alch to Beth Marble. This woman turned out to be a victim, not a criminal.”

  “Why does her killer have to be Mrs. Klein’s killer?”

  “We have a serial situation here. There was a young girl killed in the parking lot outside the shopping mall where you and your … peers auditioned two weeks ago. We’ve found defaced posters of the show flyer all over the place. Someone is targeting the competition and its entrants.”

  Temple absorbed this, even the additional details, with no surprise. “Those were the arguments you used to blackmail me into becoming Mariah’s chaperon. You’ve always suspected an outside stalker.”

  Molina, her face sober to the point of grimness, nodded.

  “Look. I don’t for a minute believe that you’d stab anyone in the heart … unless they were going after your sainted Max Kinsella. You can bet I’d never turn my back on you in that regard. But you’ve put me in an impossible position. You were found where you were found. I had to abstract you.”

  “‘Abstract?’ Like I’m a hologram you erase?”

  “Abstract like ‘take out’ before you’re taken out. First, I’d like to know why you thought Beth Marble killed Marjory Klein. It’s quite a leap of logic.”

  “Who do you think killed Beth Marble?”

  “Haven’t a clue yet. She apparently was not only the mastermind behind this piece of reality TV tripe but her personality was all grins and roses. A cloying personality type, I grant you, but why target her as a killer?”

  “Why should I tell someone who ridicules my deductions and jerks me around like a puppet?”

  Molina leaned back in her skimpy executive chair, not even big enough to hide a dead body. She tapped a pen on her desktop.

  “You build a good case, I’ll buy it.”

  “And that’s worth something?”

  “It’s worth our deal about Kinsella continuing.”

  “Okay. My reasons aren’t entirely logical—”

  “So I’ve been telling you about Kinsella. But go on.”

  “I just … felt from the first that the house’s history had something to do with the sinister goings-on now.”

  “‘Sinister goings-on.’ Very good. Very Agatha. Go on.”

  Molina was always a hard house to play. “I think, from the old photos in your fairly lousy news-clipping copies, that Beth Marble was really that blonde trophy wife of yore, Crystal Cummings.”

  Molina neither moved nor spoke.

  “After all, she didn’t die in the attack years ago. She just went off the radar after all the court trials and hoopla and her estranged husband’s disappearance. So did her seriously wounded teenage daughter. They became the forgotten victims.”

  “Have you any idea how many cold case f
iles there are? How many suspects and almost victims drift off into the great anonymity of modern life? It’s easier to lose people than to find them.”

  “Exactly. But I figure that this poor kid, Crystal’s daughter, she would have had enormous emotional trauma. Maybe enough to create an eating disorder, which is a cry for control. Enter Marjory Klein, an inflexible, doctrinaire therapist. Believe me, I had to sit in her office swallowing her legume regimen, and poor Mariah—”

  “What about ‘poor’ Mariah?”

  “You know Mrs. Klein was hard on her weight issue.”

  “Hispanic girls often have baby fat but they get it off later.”

  “Right. A Weight Watcher would know, wouldn’t she?”

  Molina’s face darkened but she didn’t say anything. Kids will blab. Temple felt her ground hardening under her.

  “And you’re only her mother and Mariah was only in Mrs. Klein’s hands for a few days and I did tell her to ignore the woman … and already the veins are standing out on your forehead.”

  “They are not.”

  “They would be if you allowed them to. So figure it’s not just a few pounds and your daughter but Crystal Cummings’s teenage daughter with a serious case of traumatic anorexia or bulimia brought on by the attack in the Dickson house.

  “So she eventually dies, the daughter. Cummings would be her last name. Or maybe she’d have the last name of her actual, forgotten father. But maybe Crystal just used her mother’s own last name. I hear that sort of thing happens all the time. Much cleaner, especially if the father has abandoned the child.” Molina’s face was getting grimmer by the second. “The point is, this young girl was only a stepdaughter to Dickson. That was the tragedy of her getting hit by one of the bullets. She was a truly innocent bystander.”

  Molina started shuffling papers on her desk like a madwoman.

  Finally, she pulled one out and leaned back in her chair. “Tiffany Cummings.”

  “No, that wasn’t the daughter’s name. The articles said she was called Chastity.”

  “Tiffany Cummings was the name of the seventeen-year-old who was accosted in the mall parking lot during the Teen Queen tryouts and stabbed to death with a screwdriver.”

  “Ouch.” Temple was stunned into silence. She kept quiet to think. For once, she and Molina were in perfect sync.

  The notion of two young girls with their lives ruined and cut short so violently was appalling. Had Chastity survived just long enough to bear a daughter? Maybe postpartum depression had pushed her into anorexia. And maybe Tiffany was Crystal Cummings’s granddaughter. A far fresher motive for a killing.

  “We haven’t traced any relatives to the parking lot vic. If she wasn’t a runaway, she lived a gypsy life.”

  Finally Temple spoke. “If Tiffany Cummings was the first victim, Marjory Klein was the second victim, and Crystal Cummings masquerading as Beth Marble was the third—?” She fell silent. “I’ve got a headache.”

  “It’s probably an allergic reaction to bleach. That dye job of yours is unreal.”

  “That was the idea, wasn’t it? Just like the reality show was supposed to be unreal. Only it had ended up being a shadow of the Dickson house murders twenty years ago. If Crystal, aka ‘Beth,’ killed Marjory, who killed her? And why?”

  “That’s a very far-out theory of yours. We’ll have to do a lot of checking to prove the entwined threads in this tangled web. Meanwhile—” Molina stood, towering like the Palms hotel. “You can go back.”

  “I’m disgraced. I was taken away by the police.”

  “That should only burnish Xoe Chloe’s sorry reputation. Look. I don’t want Mariah alone in that mess, and you do seem to have some sort of whacked-out handle on things. Finish out the assignment and Max Kinsella is all yours, off my usual suspects list forever.”

  “He already is all mine.”

  “Maybe.” Molina’s electric blue glance met and held Temple’s a trifle too long.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean that nothing’s certain in this world but death and taxes. Taxes I leave to accountants. Death is my beat. Magicians are one step behind the Grim Reaper when it comes to surprise appearances. I wouldn’t count on them. Not a one of ’em. Especially that one. Deceiving the public can become an addiction that leaks over into a private life. That’s all.”

  “Cops can’t always be counted on either,” Temple said.

  Whether Molina got the reference to her ex, Rafi Nadir, or not, Temple left the office feeling she’d gotten a little of her own back.

  But not nearly enough.

  Chapter 52

  Dress for Success

  Temple finally understood Fonzie’s appeal when she returned to the Teen Queen Castle.

  The Fonz was the black-leather-jacketed “hood” on the Happy Days sitcom hit set in the fifties. The Bad Boy.

  Xoe Chloe Ozone returned free and triumphant to the Castle.

  Being taken away by the police, and released to return, made her a model of Teflon charisma.

  Eyebrows may have raised but they’d been lifted by botox or Dr. Perricone formulations anyway. Xoe Chloe was cool. Nobody could tie her down.

  Except maybe makeover madness.

  “Where have you been?” Vanetta, who’d obviously had her head in her makeup case all day, asked frantically when Xoe appeared. “We’re pulling wardrobe for the makeover debut and talent review. All the good stuff could be gone by now.”

  “That’s all right. I’ll take the bad stuff that’s left over.”

  Temple could not believe that with two rooms taped off as crime scenes, the show would go on. But apparently it was good to go, for reasons best known to Molina and Co.

  Somebody shrieked at seeing her. A fireball rushed down the corridor and embraced her like an upright lobster.

  “Mariah?” Temple had to detangle from the hyper teen to see her.

  Whoa! The makeover team had been busy during Temple’s unhappy interview with the maternal unit.

  Mariah’s shiny brunette bob with bangs (so reminiscent of her mother’s unfussy do) had been … well, further bobbed. And cut. And streaked. With—what else?—blonde.

  It was still mostly brunette, though styled into one of those raggedly cheerful upflips so popular now. Oddly enough, the waifish cut emphasized Mariah’s blackberry-dark eyes and even some surfacing cheekbones, thanks to a diet of beans and veggies.

  “You look very cool,” Temple told her.

  Then she was yanked away into the adjoining library, which was filled with racks of clothing.

  Kit Carlson came rushing to greet her, looking relieved. “I’ve saved some outfits for you.”

  “You shouldn’t have,” Temple began. But when she glimpsed the goulash of lime green ostrich feathers, sixties Op Art prints, and leopard skin draping Kit’s arm, Temple knew Xoe Chloe had found her fashion muse.

  Kit leaned close to whisper, “I wasn’t wardrobe mistress for my high school production of Hair for nothing.”

  While Temple tried on various combinations of hip-huggers and chunky jewelry that would have made rock-star chicks look as staid as Laura Bush, Kit brought her up to date on the mood inside the Teen Queen Castle.

  “The police are on us all like a cheap suit—that Detective Alch is sure kind of Columbo-cute—and the camera crew is eating it up. Our show has morphed into a combo of Cops and Survivor.

  “Everyone said you were a murderer when the police took you away, so the producers have been madly assembling clips of every inch of footage on you for a special Xoe Chloe memorial montage. You are a star, kiddo! Clay Aiken has nothing on you.

  “The Clairol horde were thrilled at your exit and are so terminally pissed at your triumphal return that I notice they’re shedding brittle hairs like a miffed alpaca. Negative emotions are so bad for one’s looks.

  “Mariah is feeling supergirly about her transformation but she missed showing off for you, Big Sis.

  “Savannah Ashleigh’s glowery bodygua
rd, that Heathcliffy Rafi-guy, has been patrolling the halls and snooping around like a cop on the beat, way beyond his blonde bimbo duties.

  “So has that black alley cat mascot that showed up. He looks a lot like your Louie, but surely he’s safe at home and I suppose all black cats look alike. Does that old gigolo have a harem, or what? There are these white and yellow Persians with him.”

  Temple finally got a word in edgewise. “That is indeed Louie. He’s doing some investigative legwork for me. And we say ‘silver’ and ‘golden’ in the Persian game.”

  “Well, la-di-dah. The fluffy black one must be an ‘ebony,’ then.”

  “She’s not a Persian, just a long-haired American domestic. They call her Louise now, but I don’t think she’s Louie’s girlfriend; she’s way too independent.”

  “Well, call me a short-haired American domestic. Does madame find favor with her wardrobe selections?”

  “They rock, Kit! And so do you. Thanks a gadzillion!”

  “Only if I make it on The Apprentice with Donald ‘Mr. Comb-over’ Trump next. With my luck, I’d have ended up on The Benefactor with that cheapo Mark Cuban sports nut.”

  “May the Force be with you.” They slapped palms, then Temple gathered up her garish armful and fled.

  Mariah ambushed her again in the hall. “I need you to check out my performance outfit.”

  “In the bathroom, no doubt.”

  “Where else?”

  They returned to the room, and Temple found she’d been oddly homesick for it.

  Steam heat was less welcome. Bleached blonde hair had a tendency to frizz, but Ken Adair had handed her an arsenal of moisturizers, softeners, and conditioners for its upkeep. Being a blonde was hard work, but Xoe Chloe remade (and still reasonably disguised) was worth it.

  Mariah sat Temple down on the closed bathroom throne (Temple thought of Elvis’s last hour) and grabbed her hands. “I was so worried.”

  “About me?” Foolish Temple. Teens were teens.

  “No, about me! What do you think? Do I look hot? Will my mom kill me? Does this new haircut make my face look even more fat? What about these loser clothes they picked for me? What about my talent song? Is ‘Defying Gravity’ too obscure, too dweeby? Whaddayah think? Whaddayah think?”