"I did."
"Good thinking, but can you be sure someone backstage didn't skulk off unseen?"
"No. I guess that's your job."
"But no one has left, that you know of?"
"Well--"
"Who?"
"Just Electra Lark, my landlady."
"I half-expected you to be here, God help me, knowing that you're working for the Crystal Phoenix, but what brought Mrs. Lark to this convention of weight lifters?" She nodded at assorted, half-attired hunks lounging in the seats. Sober faces went oddly with their luxuriant manes of well-tended hair.
"She had to attend a romance-writing class she signed up for."
"That sort of thing can be taught?"
"Apparently. And--"
"Who else has left?"
"My ... Aunt Ursula. Well, actually, her name is Kit. Nickname, that is. . . when she doesn't go by Sulah Savage."
"Your Aunt Ursula." Molina repeated in numb, computerized tones. "Explain."
"I ran into her at the hotel yesterday. Didn't even know she was in town, and she didn't know I lived here. She's a famous romance writer."
"Sulah Savage," Molina repeated, her voice cold enough to flash-freeze a fish.
"Well, famous to some. Her given name was Ursula, you see, but she couldn't stand it, obviously, so her friends call her Kit."
"Kit what?"
"Er, Kit Carlson."
"Kit Carlson." Molina thought. "She ride horses?"
"Oh, I'm sure not. She knows absolutely nothing about horses and, and arrows. She's from Minnesota, you know, but she's lived in New York City for years."
"That clears her, all right."
"Anyway, Electra and Kit were sitting with me two-thirds of the way up the aisle. They couldn't have done it."
"We don't even know how the man was killed yet, so don't rule them out."
"With the arrow, isn't it obvious?"
"Perhaps, but was the victim shot... or stabbed? Tell me what you saw. You're the closest thing to an expert observer I've got."
Temple didn't know whether to be flattered or insulted. She certainly knew enough to comply.
"His animal act was a surprise. Only a few people backstage must have seen the horse brought in; the rest would be dressing or undressing, or helping the guys dress or undress, as the case may have been. He had arranged for a girl to help him with the horse--"
"Yon dainty wench." Molina jerked a thumb over her shoulder at the buxom lass by the Appaloosa. "Her name is Camellia Stubbins and she gave her reason for being here as 'groupie.'
Apparently it was her self-appointed task to stand and wait upon these strapping he-men at large."
"Anyway, the . . . rider emerged slowly from the stage left wings--our right as we look toward the proscenium--bareback and bare a lot else, on the Appaloosa.
"He really milked the moment," Temple went on in appreciative remembrance and review. "It was a pretty stunning presentation: the bare horse and the almost-naked warrior atop it. The horse headed for stage center and the runway. I don't know if he was guiding it at that point, because any signals he'd have given would have been imperceptible, a mere tightening of leg muscles."
"You ride?"
"No, but I was a teenage girl once, and we go horse-crazy for a time. We learn these things, you know."
Molina's professional facade fractured into a wry smile. "I do know. I'm supposed to somehow fit a horse on a city lot, never mind the codes."
Temple guessed the horse fancier was the lieutenant's awkward preteen daughter, Mariah.
"Have you ever considered miniature donkeys?" Temple asked in all seriousness.
"I meet enough of them in my work," the policewoman an-swered pointedly, her cobalt eyes flashing blue steel.
Temple swallowed and accepted the admonition in silence. Back to story time, although she hated reliving those awful moments when Cheyenne's act was revealed as an act of violence. She recalled the so-short moments when she assumed Cheyenne was doing exactly what he wanted to be doing, instead of dying.
"A fabulous entrance, as I said. He looked magnificent, except I thought he was drawing out the strong, silent type image a bit too long." She grimaced. "Then he slipped sideways, and before we all could see it wasn't a dismount but something more ... deadly, I saw paint, red paint on the Appaloosa's snow-white hindquarters, red paint running down its gray side. War paint, I thought at first. What a great dramatic touch, I thought. Then I realized ... what it must really be."
"The folks smoking in the foyer said you were the first to notice that something was wrong, that you ran right for the body. The little red-headed gal,' they said. I knew that was you even before we walked into the theater."
"I didn't run to 'a body.' I ran to help someone who looked ill. I didn't see the arrow until I got there, and by then he was falling back on it." She winced again, picturing Cheyenne's own weight driving death more deeply into his body.
Molina was less dramatic and more practical. "Too late by then. The wound was probably mortal before he even appeared on stage."
"You mean we were all watching a dead man?"
"Deep stab wound can do that: turn the walking wounded into a walking corpse for a few seconds. In this case a riding one."
"The worst part," Temple said, almost to herself, "is that Cheyenne wanted to talk to me about something last night, and I... I brushed him off."
"Cheyenne? You knew the deceased?" The last sentence was a definite accusation.
"Knew him? Not really. I did meet him, once, when I was doing PR for the stripper competition a few weeks ago, that's all. He said hello last night."
"And wanted to talk to you?"
"Don't sound so incredulous, Lieutenant. According to Electra and my Aunt Kit, I'm surrounded by a sea of eligible men all panting to get me off on a desert island. They thought he was hitting on me."
"An Incredible Hunk candidate? And you didn't make time for him?"
"I don't like to be hit on; I was busy; I didn't believe them any-way. Besides, I think he may be--
have been--bisexual."
Molina's eyebrows rose. Such a juicy detail, if true, increased the pool of possible suspects and the range of motives considerably. "Any basis for this insight on the late Cheyenne's sexual preferences?"
"Female intuition, but I must admit that my instincts about men have been a little off-kilter lately."
"Funny, I thought that condition was chronic."
Temple refused to rise to that bait.
"Did you ever get the gentleman's full, or real, name?
"No. I just met him for a few minutes both times. I'm sure the pageant organizers have stat sheets on the entrants."
"And exitor." Molina eyed the crime scene again over her shoulder. "A horse. Of course. And I will want to question Electra Lark and your aunt Kit Carlson later. Who are those women over there?"
Temple twisted her neck around to look. Perhaps sixteen well-dressed, middle-aged women sat in a whispering cluster, looking like the ladies' garden society transplanted to a murder mystery set.
"Danny might know."
"Danny?"
"Dove. Danny Dove."
"Of course," Molina said with the same fatalistic politesse. Her blue eyes focused on Temple as if wondering if a concentrated stare could set her red hair on fire. "Are you sure that there isn't something else you want to tell me?"
"About the murder?"
"About any little recent event worth noting.
"The only recent event in my life isn't little," Temple said. "Unless witnessing a man die counts as a triviality."
"I was thinking more of witnessing a man coming back from the dead," Molina said cryptically.
She twisted her head over her shoulder. "Not him, that's certain. He was ... beautiful. I wonder if he would have won?"
"Somebody killed him over the pageant?"
"Certainly did stop his act cold. You can go now. Just tell your errant chums to stop by later. I'll deal w
ith you then. We'll be here all day."
"Danny will have a fit. He literally has only days to put the show together."
"The show must go on, but only after my murder investigation." She pointed a forefinger in Danny's direction.
Temple didn't argue; she figured Danny would be doing plenty of that very soon. She passed him in the aisle as he came forward.
"Who are the Babes in Boyland?" Temple whispered, tilting her head to the ladies on the aisle as they crossed paths like doomed ships in the night.
"Author escorts for the boychicks. They were supposed to rehearse their walk down the runway."
No more could be said in flight, but Temple eyed some of the Reigning Heads of Romance as she skated past. A thoroughly respectable lot, most the farther side of forty or fifty. That didn't surprise her. From what she had learned of the publishing industry during the American Booksellers Convention last spring, any author under seventy was lucky to be well-established, so slow and frustrating was the climb to even moderate success.
And Electra was a newcomer at sixty-something! Better that Temple herself should try her hand at becoming the next. . . Cella Savage. At least she had a few decades to burn, and from the suspended state of her love life at the moment, she would probably be better off writing about romance than attempting to commit it. Wait! How about writing about murder committed at a romance convention? No, death and desire didn't mix, except in real life.
Lieutenant Molina was amazing. By five-thirty, when Temple returned with an excited Electra and Kit in tow, she looked no different than she had that morning.
The trio sat in some front row seats. Most of the people were gone, except for a few union stagehands who were being interviewed up front by another pair of plainclothes detectives.
Yellow crime scene tape made a crazy-quilt pattern from stage left, down to a music stand set on the runway solely to serve as a turning point for the tape, and up to center stage again.
All that garish tape marked off an absence now: no horse, no corpse. Temple suspected the crime scene technicians had come and gone, along with the body bag brigade. She wondered if the horse had been dusted for prints.
"He fell there?" Kit's eager contralto could carry all the way up to the stage flies, and did.
"No, farther back. Upstage, they call it." Molina followed her voice out from the wings, stage right, of course, and walked along the tape and down the runway. Her height, weight of office and slow, flat-footed tread made her progression seem more of a dirgelike drag than a walk. Certainly it was not the high-spirited romp the runway had been erected to sponsor.
Molina stopped at the elevated edge and stared down, looking a little like Mount Rushmore's Jefferson, if stone faces could outweigh gender.
"I assume you're the famous aunt," she told Kit, "with the migrating name."
What was Kit to say? Nothing, and she did it well.
"Nice to see you again, Lieutenant," Electra chirped like a Technicolor cricket.
She had worn raspberry and violet for her writing class, and accessorized the usual muumuu with matching bangles, shoulder-dusting earrings and fingernail polish, raspberry and violet on alternating nails. Her hair was a monotone, tasteful shag of unnatural silver today.
Molina came down the steps, then leaned against the runway lip behind her, crossing her arms.
Her maroon wool pantsuit gave her olive skin a darker cast. Temple wondered where her gun was: under her arm, at the back of her waist, around her ankle. Hard to tell, which was the idea. Her partner materialized from somewhere behind them, sat on the chair arm across the aisle and flipped a long, narrow reporter's notebook to the back section.
"First your names and addresses."
This they gave, in turn, as Molina's partner wrote it down.
"You"--she eyed only Electra and Kit, in turn, like a mama eagle deciding which of two offspring should get the gory little mouse goodie next--"are attending the romance convention." Nods.
"You"--Kit only--"write romance novels under the alias of Suelah Savitch?"
"Sulah Savage," Kit said in her demurest voice. "I once considered using the pseudonym of Vernah Verandah--alliteration is critical--but decided that esses are more sensual." She pronounced the last word in the British fashion, without a "sh," slowly: "sen-sue-al." Slowly and sen-sue-al-lee. The male detective behind her choked back a laugh.
"Kit is a published author," Electra explained in awed tones.
"And you are here--?"
"I'm aspiring. An aspiring . . . author. Like Kit. Or aspiring to be like Kit. Published."
"That's why you left this morning to attend a romance writing class?"
"Yes."
"Did you learn anything?" Molina inquired pleasantly.
"Oh, yes. All about alpha males and pacing and sexual tension--"
"But you both were with Miss Barr this morning when the victim came on stage?" Molina interrupted.
"No," Kit said. "I'd already left for the ladies' room. By the time I came back, it was curtains."
Electra spoke. "Temple and I were leaving when we heard the horse come on stage. We were standing halfway up the aisle, awestruck."
"You both had the same view?"
Electra nodded.
"Why did only Miss Barr go up on stage when the man fell?"
A silence held as they regarded each other.
"Temple works here," Electra said. "I was ... a visitor."
"And Temple's pretty at home on a stage, anyway," Kit put in. "Besides, Electra, you hadn't figured out yet that something was going wrong, right?"
"Right. I couldn't imagine why Temple was hotfooting up that runway ... unless she couldn't keep her hands off that darling Cheyenne a moment longer--"
"Oh, please!" Temple cast a beseeching glance at the unnamed detective whose moving pencil would write and move on, putting her in that ridiculous light forever. He was quashing a smile under cover of his mustache.
"I simply realized that the man was sick," Temple said, "that he was sliding off the horse, not dismounting. Gallopin' Gertie, I even knew him a little. I didn't think about interrupting the act, just getting to the scene of the ... the problem."
"A true PR person down to her press kit." Kit's pixyish smile would get nowhere with Molina.
"So ..." Molina turned to Kit. "Tell me about your meeting with the victim in the hotel bar last night?"
"What 'meeting'?" Temple interrupted with a trace of huff. "Aunt Kit and I were sitting there chatting when he walked by. Pure chance."
"Well, I don't know--" Kit began.
Molina pushed her long frame away from the support of the runway. "What do you mean?"
"Hard to miss that man. Looked to me like he had spotted Temple, then hung around until our conversation paused and he could slide in there suavely."
"No ..." came Temple's modest, disbelieving drawl.
Kit nodded soberly. "He was after you, Temple. And then when he asked you to have a private drink with him--"
Temple found it high time to state the obvious. "This is a police detective, Aunt Kit. She is looking for likely suspects. You being such a congenital matchmaker could establish me as knowing the victim, or him as knowing me. In simple terms, you are marching me down to storewide services and setting me up for what is known in the trade as a murder wrap, with satin bows on it. I didn't go with him, did I?"
"Not then ..." Kit's tone was pure, puzzled honesty.
"Not ever! We all three went to the MGM Grand to sightsee after that, returned to the Phoenix for dinner, then went to our rooms and to bed. Electra and I were roommates! We were there all night."
"Well--" Now Electra was looking uncertain.
"Yes, Mrs. Lark?" Molina's voice cracked like a whip.
"She . . ."--Electra gave Temple a hangdog look--"I woke up and you weren't in your bed, dear."
"Aargh!"
Kit cleared her throat in a warning. "Was that a confession, Temple dear?"
"No. I didn't sle
ep in my bed. I slept in the bathtub."
"Oh?" Molina was really interested now.
"Actually, I mostly read in the bathtub, where the light wouldn't disturb Electra. All those books you gave me to study, remember, Auntie darling?"
Kit nodded sagely.
"But I did sleep finally, yes, Lieutenant, in the bathtub. And, believe me, Cheyenne was not there.
So that's where Electra found me in the morning. Alone."
"But you could have been not there," Molina observed. "Mrs. Lark had no way of knowing if you left and returned sometime in the night."
"Okay. I've got the books. You can give me a surprise quiz on any of the contents."
"That's hardly necessary, although it might be fascinating."
Molina nodded at her partner to close his notebook. "At this point you are not a suspect, despite your ardent attempts to implicate yourself."
Temple strangled another inarticulate cry of protest.
"But don't leave the hotel," she added, as if Temple were about to.
"Ladies." She dismissed the other two with a nod.
"No. I want you to play amateur sleuth. I want you up to your anklebones in romance writers, and readers, and especially in Incredible Hulks."
"Hunks."
"Incredible Hunks. I want you to notice everything, talk to everyone, bother everyone, annoy everyone. I want your little pug nose sniffing about the premises and the programming."
"I do not have a pug nose!"
"I do physical descriptions in my job. Trust me."
"It's retrousse."
"Retro-what?"
"Retrousse. That is French for turned up. Piquant. Pointed. A pug nose is thick and bulbous. Ugh.
Mine is narrow and refined."
"And French, apparently. All right, Miss Barr, stick your narrow, piquant little nose wherever you like, but if you smell anything suspicious, report it to me."
"You're ... deputizing me?"
"Please. I'm offering you a deal. I will not report your liaison with the victim to any interested parties at the Circle Ritz you might not want to know about it, on the condition that any results of your congenital nosiness come home to me? Got it?"
Midnight Louie 05-Cat in a Diamond Dazzle Page 13
