Temple wandered back to the pirate-ship side, where all was broken and charred. She assumed the technical crew would have it shipshape again in forty minutes.
Could she find someone from the crew? Beg them to check the ship, the water, the staging area for Louie? Would they believe her?
"Kind of hard to believe," Eightball ruminated beside her.
She glanced at the elderly man. He was discussing the programmed destruction and resurrection of the dueling ships, but he had inadvertently answered her unspoken question. No one would believe a cat had jumped into the midst of battle to claw open a treasure chest so his human roommate could find a pair of bejeweled shoes.
Temple sadly eyed the fallen treasure, as tawdry and deceptive as any dream of riches from El Dorado to Indiana Jones's Temple of Doom.
Midnight Louie was her real treasure, not some rare shoes bearing an image she had decided was him, and not simply an anonymous black cat. Perhaps the shoes would be his memorial.
For he had slipped aboard on purpose to inspect the chest; she knew that. Somehow, he had picked up the trail of her quest and had boldly gone where she could not go.
A tear meandered down her cheek to her throat.
"Hey." Eightball jerked on her sleeve. "That's funny. Never noticed that detail before."
"What?" she asked listlessly.
"Over there by the houses, next to the parrot. Look, atop that buxom figurehead."
Temple finally did look. It would be too hard to explain the unrehearsed show that she had seen unfolding amidst the advertised attraction: the end of Midnight Louie.
The parrot still sat there in its gaudy glory, head forever cocked. The figurehead still thrust her chin and bosom into the distance. And crouching atop her tilted-back head, eyeing the parrot, was a cat. A black cat. A wet black cat.
Temple opened her mouth but said nothing.
The cat's green eyes blinked, then the left one closed as it began licking a spiky forepaw.
Chapter 20
Long John Louie
Greater love hath no cat for his human, than that he should get wet in her service.
Wet? I am waterlogged in the first degree.
At least it is an artificial body of water, so my own torso is not subject to fish-nips, leeches and other things that go glub in thedeeps.
Much as I like to give my finned friends the occasional love-nip, the truth is that they do bite and my terminal member looks much like a black caterpiller fallen on hard times.
So I sit in the semi-dark atop this somewhat wooden, naked and truncated lady known as a figurehead (why a head when her most prominent figure feature is somewhat lower, I do not know), tending to my grooming. I am relieved that Miss Temple has finally gotten her wits about her and noticed both my heroic actions on her behalf, and my long, slow recuperation afterward.
How I got here and did what I did is simple. When Miss Temple Barr leaves the scene of the crime these days--and these days the scene of the crime is my beloved alma mater, the Crystal Phoenix, sad to say--she is off on errands of a peculiarly repellent nature: looking for love in all the wrong places, such as a shoe store.
I do not know what the big deal is all about with my little doll and the two dudes at the Circle Ritz.
The solution is simple, as my old friend Sassasfras would say to her many suitors: You got the dime, I got the time.
I do not understand why humans are so addicted to the notion of exclusivity. If we felines followed that creed, we would be on the verge of extinction. True, I have been wounded by the darts of that Persian enchantress, the lissome Yvette. But this does not mean that Midnight Louie is off the romance shelf and stamped "Expired." No, siree. I am free to come and go, and do a good bit of both.
It seems to my beknighted mind that Miss Temple would do better in her relationships with the opposite sex if she would adopt a feline point of view. Obviously, the Mystifying Max is a roamer who should be taken on his own terms and enjoyed when he is in town. Mr. Matt Devine is more domesticated, although he is unaccountably persnickety about the rules and regulations for activities that are best pursued in an improvisational frame of mind. So Miss Temple can have her cupcake and eat it too, if she would only see that it takes two to tango, and they are often both asking her to dance.
However, I am not about to meddle in these complex human hormonal matters. Where I hope to lend a helping hand, so to speak, is in a smaller area of operation: Miss Temple's devotion to footwear.
Although I myself eschew decorative accessories, far be it from me to sneer at another's obsession, especially when it is a leather fetish. Yum-yum. I like nothing better than a good chew now and then, a long-standing masculine pleasure, and Miss Temple has the leather goods to keep my habit humming.
(Although she does wax indignant when I slobber on her suede.)
Now that I know that a master of the shoemaker's art has been enlightened enough to use an image reminiscent of me on some of his creations, I can only extend all the powers at my command in assisting Miss Temple to obtain these rare objects.
This is why I followed her from the Crystal Phoenix, this is why my lightning-swift brain immediately surmised that her interest in things nautical had more to do with greed (as is usual with pirates then and now) than with wanderlust. This is why I risked body and soul by boarding the pirate ship. Who else could run so neatly over the rigging? Could cling so doggedly to the treasure chest, until all its tawdry contents had been exposed and dropped to deck?
Who else could face the burning deck without getting his whiskers singed? Who could be the last man ... male ... to desert ship? Who could paddle through the dark, disgusting water until he made shore safely, then find a high and dry refuge in plain sight of my distraught roommate, who by then had, to her credit but my underestimation, presumed me dead?
Only Midnight Louie is equipped to handle these kinds of crises. Please do not try these feats in your own home. There could be consequences and an investigation by the Federal Communications Commission.
Chapter 21
Opening Knights
"Here."
Kit thrust a fistful of printed matter into Temple's hand when she opened the door to her hotel room.
"What are these? Membership papers for the Hare Krishnas?"
"Mug shots."
"They are not." Temple shuffled through the array. "They're . . . the back covers torn off romance novels! I suppose the prose is provocative: 'He was wild as the wind, a whip-lean man of uncommon strength and fierce independence who would bow to no beauty's way, but whose proud heart longed for the sweet torment of the right woman's love.' Several titles right there: Wild as the Wind . . . Bow to No Beauty . . . Beauty's Way . . . Proud Heart . . . Sweet Torment . . . The Right Woman's Love. The whole blurb is a series of bloody titles!"
"Now she's getting it." Electra looked up from the dressing table mirror, where she was performing curious rituals with mousse, an electric brush and cans of washable hair color.
Kit shook her head. "Bow to No Beauty and The Right Woman's Love are too mainstream, kid. But I didn't rip the backs off perfectly good paperbacks just so you could wax cynical about the copywriters who blurb our books. Turn over the covers and you'll see your lady rogue's gallery of author suspects."
Doing as instructed, Temple inspected the smiling faces of several naturally (or unnaturally) attractive middle-aged women. "They look like accountants' wives dressed up for New Year's!"
Kit's face squinched up. "Ooh, unkindest cut of all! We dump our eyeglasses, buy some ritzy outfit we can't afford and a new hairdo, even go to Glamour Shots to get that soft-focus, wrinkle-erasing look for our book cover photos, and you compare us gloriously dramatic romance writers to accountants' wives?
I take exception. I am not married."
"You and I are exceptions," Electra murmured from the mirror, where she was frowning at the green and blue stripes in her hair.
"What does she mean?" Temple asked.
"She's right," Kit said. "Most romance writers are disgustingly married. For years and years. To the same man. I could honestly describe them as an unprovocative lot, despite their spicy reputation in the press, which is inaccurate, as usual. We are middle-aged, middle-America, middle-of-the-road."
"And sometimes Middle-Earth," Electra added while spritzing lavender into her elfin coiffure.
"Hmmm." Temple nodded at the black-and-white faces fanned in her fingers like a hand of playing cards, all queens. "That could mean that these women all have straight-arrow husbands who might take violent exception to macho models, especially now that women authors are touring with them."
"An arrow does seem like a man's weapon," Kit agreed.
"Why?" Electra stepped away from her hair preparations, looking like an interrupted rainbow.
"Anybody can stab something, and women get lots of practice with the Sunday pork roast."
"Unless," Temple pointed out, "these are modern households where hubby does the chef work.
That's a good question, though; why an arrow?"
"It was there?" Kit looked pleased with herself.
"Yup, the arrow indeed came from Cheyenne's own quiver, but this murder must have been premeditated. Was using Cheyenne's arrow more than just handy? Was it symbolic?"
Kit's glance consulted Electra. "Is she always so existential about murders?"
"I think Temple is asking, did someone really want to stick it to him? Was it personal?"
"Murders usually are, aren't they?" Kit said. "What else would they be?" She looked shocked, which was a shame, since the expression clashed with the ultra-chic, silk-faille dinner suit she was wearing.
Temple hesitated. "Let's see. The murders I've seen were definitely done by personally involved killers, though in more than one case the murderer had never met the victim until he zeroed in for the kill."
"Then why kill them?" Kit looked even more shocked by Temple's calm dissection of a murderer's modus operandi.
"Revenge for ancient wrongs. It was good enough for the Greeks."
"I'll say. Enough to spawn dozens of endlessly long tragedies, some of which I had to appear in. On stage. In front of people."
Temple studied the photographic faces again. "Not one of these ladies looks mean enough to stab a Thanksgiving turkey with a thermometer."
"Looks are deceiving. That's why these lovely ladies are suspects." Kit plucked a cover from the crowd and held it up for Temple's closer inspection.
This woman, Temple decided, was the torchiest-looking: acres of curly blond hair like a cloudy halo, a dab of decolletage, mouth ajar in the professional model's about-to-suck-a-persimmon pose.
Kit tilted her head at the photo. "Some romance writers-- usually the younger ones who have the most natural qualifications--cultivate a sensual image. They want you to think that they could pose as the heroine of their own book covers. Maybe they occasionally delude themselves into playing that part.
This is Ravenna Rivers, the one rumored to have cozied up with the Homestead Man on tour last winter.
Her husband always escorts her at conventions, and should be here. So should the Homestead Man. By the way, her books are the 'spiciest' of the lot, with a bit much S&M for my taste."
"How much is a bit much?" Temple wanted to know.
"Any at all. Sado-masochism was more common when the sexy historical romance got hot in the seventies. A lot of overprotected women in those days didn't know what was sexy unless it came home with their husbands in a brown paper wrapper, and a lot of male pornography depicts S&M. There's less of that stuff now in historical romances, but the underground appetite for kink, and for one's own worst interests, still keeps some practitioners of the art selling lots of books."
Kit tapped another author photo, a sixtyish woman with over-styled suspiciously raven hair. "This one is rabidly opposed to the hunkification of romance cover art. Mary Ann Trenarry. She started a letter-writing campaign against model-author contracts to the publishers involved and the media. I admire her guts, because the backlash could hurt her book sales. The rumor is that she can't sell her new books to anyone. Maybe a crusader scorned would want to sabotage the pageant."
Kit selected another photo with an odd smile. "And here we have Sharon Rose, a simple woman she would have you think, who just happens to be the Rasputin of the romance industry."
"This moon-faced, grinning woman in the dated bubble cut? Mrs. Girl Scout Mother incarnate?"
Kit nodded. "Makes Shannon Little look like Cruella de Vil, doesn't she? I told you appearances were deceiving. Her books are sentimental melodramas, and her fans adore her, but in real life she's a piranha in polyester. Also the biggest bestseller in the bunch. She had her own sister, a new author at the time, drummed out of her publishing house because she didn't like the competition. Poor woman didn't sell anywhere else, either. No one has heard of Jessica Rose since."
"If this woman is that filthy rich, why on earth does she wear polyester?"
"Because it doesn't wrinkle when she travels, dummy!"
Temple eyed her aunt's smashingly simple, simply smashing dinner suit. "Yours will wrinkle like a prune. That's silk shantung, probably designer."
"Indeed. Bought off-price, of course. We poorer souls have to dress for where we want to be. Some of the folks already there wouldn't know silk if the worm came up and mugged them. There is no justice.
All the people you know who get rich never spend their money the way you would."
"At least you don't have to pine over what they've got," Elec-tra said briskly. She turned her Technicolor head from side to side. "What do you think? As an aspiring writer, I want to get noticed at the opening ceremony, but is this too much?" Before either Temple or Kit could reply, Electra posed her real question: not if, but how much. "Should I blend the edges or go for the shock effect?"
"Blend the edges," Temple and Kit replied as one.
Nobody organized special events like the Crystal Phoenix. Fantasy potted palms of white metal and brass ringed the ballroom. The convention decorating committee had taken the decor-- eighteenth-century French palatial, with pale-painted wood paneling and discreet touches of gilt--and swaged it with such airy, fairy fabrics as iridescent netting and metallic lace. Temple definitely felt that a troop of fairy godmothers should assemble soon to inspect the royal newborn and confer good wishes.
But somewhere around this hotel, if not in this crowd, lurked a wicked fairy whose wand had been a fatal arrow. Cheyenne's sleeping beauty would not awaken at the kiss of a lovely princess. Interesting, Temple mused, had anyone tried writing a role-reversal romance version of Sleeping Beauty? Eeek! She had been reading too many romances for homework lately; she was getting ideas. Her mind should be on mayhem and murder, not tulle and roses and . . . hissss . . . men.
"Those are some shoes." In the hustle of separating Electra from the hair sprays, Kit had not noticed Temple's feet. "They could double as a weapon."
"Steel heels, Weitzman. Clawed cousins to Louie's shoes." Temple spun to show off the wavy prongs of pewter-colored metal on which she balanced. They added kick to her primly styled sixties platinum-metallic suit.
"Where did you get that outfit?"
"A resale shop called Reprize. Some of this ancient stuff is actually neat."
"Some of this ancient stuff, baby, was neat, and new, when I wore it." Kit's wry expression as she viewed the resurrected fashion ghosts of her youth turned into a smile. "I really had concluded that all that stuff from my era was absolutely horrid, but you look so cute in it."
"Don't call me 'cute,' " Temple warned. "That's one of my button-pushing words."
"Oh." Kit grinned. "I see, as in your 'cute, button nose'?"
"Were you always mean?"
"Only since I left Minnesota."
"The real show-stealer to swoon over is Electra."
They turned to their companion, who was obliviously craning her neck to see the crowd as the crowd craned its necks to study he
r hair.
Instead of wearing her usual muumuu, Electra was swathed in an electric-blue lame pantsuit, and wore shoulder-dusting, pink-fluorescent flamingo earrings.
"She's really serious about this romance-writing bug, isn't she?" Kit asked in a whisper.
"I guess so. Any hope of real money in it for newcomers?"
"Virgins, you mean? Sure. As there is in anything. It's just that so few get it. Why?" Kit cocked her a shrewd look. "Are you thinking of turning your personal woes into bestselling fiction?"
"Except that my story would be sold as 'true horror.' Is there such a category?"
"Not... yet," Kit said. "Although paranormal, or what we call New-Age themes, are hot in romances now."
"What sort of books are those?"
"Oh, vampire heroes, angel heroines, time-travel and futuris-tics, which are set in space."
Electra's flamingo earrings jangled in their direction as she heard her own trigger words. "New Age!
Right up my Ouija board," she said gleefully. "But I'm confining myself to a simple historical romance for the contest. Nothing fancy to distract the judges."
"Good idea." Kit was searching the crowd now. "Keep it simple when you're starting out."
"Maybe it is simple," Temple mused. "Even I had an idea for a romance novel just now."
"Watch out!" Kit made like a goblin, startling Temple into jumping to look behind her. "The big-time romance-writing blues are gonna get you."
"No," Temple said, reassembling her dignity. "I don't think that's my strong point."
A new voice, masculine, insinuated itself into their threesome. "You seem to be standing on your strong points, Red."
Temple whirled. No one called her "Red."
Oh. Of course.
"These shoes were made for kicking," she told Crawford Buchanan, who had changed into an evening vest and jacket, both black to match his oil-slick hair. "And if you don't step back a bit, that's what they're gonna do."
Midnight Louie 05-Cat in a Diamond Dazzle Page 21
