Midnight Louie 05-Cat in a Diamond Dazzle

by Douglas, Carole Nelson

  While the audience was sizing up the men for the coming contest, Temple was watching and listening with different criteria in mind. Any bit of background suggestive? Any link to Cheyenne? No one's biography mentioned the stripper contest, but that wouldn't be something they'd emphasize. Although most of them were professional or aspiring models and actors, they didn't want to project too raunchy an image before this house of middle-American women.

  Temple contemplated the fact that these men walked a fine line. Yes, they were sex objects. Yes, they had to court and charm convention attendees in order to succeed and win followings. But they also had taken care not to cross over into any behavior that could be considered sexual harassment.

  That was a charge that female sex objects didn't have to worry about.

  Not all the men were pros. Some were dedicated amateurs. Those with everyday professions were particularly applauded: chiropractor, car salesman and lawyer (he was hissed first and then applauded).

  Those with perceived sexy job descriptions, cop and forest ranger, were hailed with roof-raising hoots and applause.

  "It's nice they have under-forty and over-forty age categories," Electra commented between introductions.

  "Thirty-three," Temple said contemplatively.

  "No, dear. Thirty-three isn't the break point, though it would be as good a place as any."

  "I meant thirty-three contestants. Cheyenne would have made thirty-four. That's a lot of potential victims, and suspects. Poor Lieutenant Molina!"

  "You feel sorry for Molina? This is a first."

  "It doesn't make sense to kill Cheyenne over the contest. There are just too many contestants to fix the outcome with one death."

  "Oh, goodie. Now you're going to tell us we have a serial killer at large," Kit said.

  "No, we don't. Not yet, anyway. I've got to get closer to the contest."

  "You mean the contestants," her aunt said. "You think you can stand the heat?"

  "They're just a bunch of nice guys trying to finish first."

  "Right," said Kit skeptically.

  "Without getting finished off."

  "Well, I'll look into your wish, Pinocchio, and you may prove to be made of wood, even with all those sparks around. But if your nose starts growing, I'll yank you out of there."

  "Don't worry. I told you. I'm off men. I'm immune."

  "With that attitude, you are not a good candidate for a reader of mine. At least you're not entering the Love's Leading Amateur writing contest."

  "Contest," Temple repeated dreamily. "People coming from all over to compete for a prize. And then they die. Why?"

  Chapter Interlude

  Hysterical Again

  Great to escape the hullabaloo of the crowd. A writer needs quiet to create. Now where was I? The jewels. Where could I hide them in a carriage? Maybe in the tire. Or weren't they inflatable then? Does it have a trunk? Hard to say. I know--

  "The jewels?" Even in the moonlight, the lovely Amaianariala's skin was seen to pale. "My good sir, I have no jewels. My carriage was a ruse to divert dastardly robbers from the real treasure trove. The jewels are on their way to

  Timbuktu. Was there a Timbuktu then? If not, where?

  to Sicily."

  "Cecily? Is this your sister?" he gruffed, brandishing his dagger.

  The fair Aananamiklia was seen to blush. "I have no sister. Sicily is an island in the Mediterrean Sea."

  "And I have no ship, so I am in no position to pursue the jewels by sea. I see. . . . Then--" The Demon Dagger of Devonshire grinned and leaped off his steed into the roadway.

  In a moment the carriage door was jerked open so quickly that the lovely Amslslisdmkdl Dammit! Rotten, stupid name. Never comes out the same twice. Oh, well, fix it later.

  tumbled to the road and right into the arms of the Demon Dagger of Devonshire.

  "Aghhh!" she screamed. "Would you mind not brandishing your dagger, sir? It pricked me."

  " 'Twill do more than prick you, madam, do you not do as I say you should do."

  Hey, I'm really getting the hang of this flowery language. And that repeated use of "prick" isn't too shabby. A little subliminal sex never hurt anyone. Now what?

  The duke's daughter swooned, so the Demon Dagger tossed her back into the carriage, ordered the driver to move on without any tricks and tied his faithful steed's reins to a Carriage wheel. Oops, that might strangle the damn, inconvenient horse. Ah!

  lantern (thingamajiggy at the top, find word later).

  Then he leaped into the carriage, his dagger between his teeth.

  The comely Arianainla cowered in a corner.

  Sex, remember, sexual tension.

  The Demon Dagger thrust his dagger in

  in ... in .. .his (belt? too modern) . . . sash!

  his scarlet sash, and took out his

  Finial!

  That's the damn word I wanted to tie the reins to.

  moneybag.

  "I have no money," shrilled the lass.

  "Luckily, I do," he rasped. "I don't want your money, I want justice."

  "And for you, justice is--?" she inquired spiritedly.

  "Whatever of the Baron's possessions I can take," he snarled, as he looked her lush, recumbent form up and down.

  "What has my father ever done to you?" she cried.

  He has transported my brother to the wilds of Australia, my other brother to the coal mines of Wales, my eldest sister to the gin mills and my youngest sister to the streets of San Francisco (check for time). And he has made a wanted man of me."

  "You sound a thoroughly degenerate lot, sir. No doubt you deserved my father's treatment."

  "But you will not deserve mine," he swore, sitting beside her on the seat of the carriage.

  "What do you intend?" she said faintly.

  Okay. Got to get down to the hard stuff. Where's that section in this one book? I can kind of. . . echo it. In my own original way, of course.

  Moonlight washed through the casement carriage window like midnight lace, and painted the face of Lady Hester lovely Arianaina soft silver. Moonlight shone from the white silk shirt of the Demon Dagger, emphasizing his broad shoulders and narrow hips, his long limbs and pale long hair, his hairless face, his washboard stomach and rain barrel chest.

  Say, rain barrel goes pretty well with washboard. Wonder if this is what the tipsheet meant when it said to avoid "laundry lists" of physical description? Maybe I'd better cut that washday analogy, save it for a rainy day. Heh-heh. Look at me! I can write wringers around these dumb romance hacks. Bet I win.

  Chapter 22

  Morning, Moon and Molina

  "Charlie Moon."

  "Charlie Moon?"

  "Cheyenne's real name."

  "Really?"

  "Would I kid you?"

  Temple looked up into Molina's ice -blue eyes and knew that would be the day.

  The lieutenant didn't seem happy about conveying information to Temple, but in her profession she must have to deal with snitches, and one does not get unless one gives.

  "That's a charming name," Temple said after a moment. "Why did he change it?"

  "I suspect other kids used to laugh at it when he was a child.

  On the reservation and off of it."

  "So he did have Native American blood!"

  "Some. Enough to bounce between relatives on the reservation and in Phoenix when he was growing up. The usual 'troubled youth' clashes with the law. Petty stuff. We can't find any next of kin to claim the body."

  "No one to claim him? That's ridiculous. This guy could have been a celebrity, if he'd won. He would have been on Hard Copy and Hot Heads"

  "Even then no one might have claimed him. Family is a forgotten concept for some of these kids growing up today. Charlie Moon never had much, except his looks. Now they're on ice at the medical examiner's, and the show goes on."

  Temple followed Molina's glance to the stage, with its ramp, stairs and partial set.

  "Somebody even showed up to
claim the horse." Temple knew she looked as disgusted as she sounded.

  Molina cocked her head like a hungry robin who had heard worm stirrings. "That's right. The horse.

  Getting an animal that big into--and out of--a hotel can't be that easy. How did he manage it?"

  "Don't ask me, Lieutenant. I never had a horse, unfortunately. I just know that Danny Dove said one of those horse-haulers whisked it away. He was big-time nervous about horse droppings on his stage."

  "Where's Danny Dove?"

  "Backstage." Temple pointed. She could hardly wait to see Molina and Dove go one-on-one.

  "And what are you doing around here anyway?" "Ah, I'm helping with the show."

  Molina nodded, slipping her narrow notebook into her sage-green jacket side-pocket. "You're practically on staff here now," she noted.

  Temple said nothing. She wanted Molina to think that duty kept Temple around the crime scene.

  Temple knew that it was a different kind of duty than her employment at the Crystal Phoenix: guilt over Cheyenne's death.

  "Any fingerprints on the arrow?" she only remembered to ask as Molina turned away.

  Molina turned back and her dark head shook. "Not a one. The killer was clever enough to think of that. Probably used a cloth, snatched up just before he, or she, grabbed the arrow from Cheyenne's quiver, and struck. The backstage area is cluttered with odd pieces of costuming and such. If you can call it costuming! The victim had nothing on but a flesh-colored jockstrap, a loincloth, and the quiver and bow case. And a medicine pouch with a bone and a feather and a few crystals," she added. "Not much material for evidence."

  "If Cheyenne was struck backstage, how could he ride out and continue his act?"

  "He didn't." Molina indicated the ceiling above the audience. "The routine called for him to shoot an arrow through the balloon."

  Temple searched the dim heights, puzzled until she spotted a huge, heart-shaped red-foil balloon attached to a lighting fixture. "Pretty spectacular trick. I suppose a spotlight would hit the heart for the actual pageant."

  Molina nodded grimly. "With the stage crew's concerned with the heart's placement and lighting, nobody backstage paid attention to what riveted the people in the audience: the victim and his horse.

  Whoever stabbed him backstage with the arrow, a broad-head steel-tipped one more than sufficient for the job, knew that the shock of the blow, directed at a man who was keyed up for a performance, would virtually immobilize Cheyenne until the horse took him out on stage. There, massive internal bleeding enervated him, and he tumbled to the stage, the arrow in his bow never released. He was dead before anybody reached him."

  Temple felt a chill. "So I'm not a suspect."

  "Not if you were standing mid-aisle, gawking, in the presence of a witness."

  "And Cheyenne was as good as dead the moment he passed the teaser curtains?"

  "Exactly. A very clever attack, but risky. I have to hope that someone saw the perpetrator doing something out of character."

  Temple nodded, then watched the policewoman plod up the stairs and down the long runway toward the stage proper. Molina always moved like a military tank. Maybe Temple wasn't used to large women. Or maybe Molina lacked grace. Temple favored the latter explanation.

  "Don't stand and gawk when you can sit," a voice urged from the empty seats.

  She didn't like being reminded of what she was doing when Cheyenne was dying, and turned with irritation to the empty auditorium seats behind her. Not all empty.

  A hunk sprawled on a fifth-row seat, long blue-jeaned legs and cowboy boots thrust into the aisle. His western shirt was cut close and buttoned tight where it wasn't open to the chest hairs at their most profuse. No wonder they called this the Incredible Hunk pageant; all the entrants looked as imminently ready to split their seams as the comic books' Incredible Hulk himself.

  A long, narrow woman wearing the same western uniform sat beside this particular edition of hunkdom like a feminine twin.

  Temple took his suggestion--especially since she was wearing her smashing, red but uncomfortable, resale-shop Charles Jourdans--by perching on the seat-arm across the center aisle from the Deadwood duo.

  "Troy Tucker." The man's hand extended for a hearty shake. "This here's my wife Nance."

  Nance just nodded. She had a long, frizzy palomino ponytail and a face born to be freckled.

  "I work for the hotel," Temple said, adding several yards of hemp to Molina's rope of misconception.

  "I'm trying to get a feel for the contest. PR, you know."

  Both of them unconsciously tensed, as if suddenly on stage.

  "This is our third," Nance said in the same soft country drawl as her husband.

  "Great! You can fill me in on everything. What's it like?"

  They exchanged glances. He spoke. "Wahl, it's mighty like a rodeo, ma'am. Standin' around behind the scenes, gettin' in line, gettin' the adrenaline up for your few seconds in the spotlight and hopin' that nothin' out there throws ya. At least here you don't get horse hockey in yer bootheels."

  Temple laughed, as she was meant to, and kicked up a high heel to indicate just how deeply she might sink in the stuff if it were around. "Maybe I would have been in deep doodoo ... if I'd been around when Charlie Moon was killed."

  A new tension coiled both figures.

  "How'd he get that huge horse in here anyway?" she went on.

  "Simple as cow pies, ma'am," Troy said. "Unload 'im out back, at the hotel loading dock. Take 'im down in the freight elevator and bring 'im back up in the stage elevator, the one behind the scenes."

  "How do you know all this?"

  "Shoot, ma'am. I helped with the critter."

  "Then you knew Charlie."

  Husband and wife consulted glances again. Both their eyes seemed permanently narrowed, maybe from regarding distant, bright Western horizons, maybe from natural skepticism.

  "We did," Nance said at last. "From the previous pageant. And he had done some rodeo, too."

  "Rodeo! Really?"

  "Naw, not really. Local kid stuff, years ago," Troy said. "Just enough to ride that pony on stage and look like Cochise. Sharp shtick."

  "So was the arrow that stabbed him."

  Nance winced, but Troy never stirred, his thumbs hooked in his hip-hugging belt, fingers arrowed toward the tight crotch of his jeans.

  "Real thing, too," he said.

  Given his pose, Temple had to resist a double take as well as a double entendre. "What do you mean

  'real'?"

  Troy ducked his curly cowboy head. "Shoot, it was an old arrow, that's all. Artifact, you could say.

  Charlie got the whole getup from a place out on the highway that deals in genuine Indian gear. Not so old it would be in a museum, but collectors' stuff."

  "Why do you think he was killed?"

  "Who knows? Could have been jest about any reason. I figure it for an impulse thing. Somebody saw him alone backstage waiting to go on and grabbed the arrow, then, whoomph." Troy's fist made an effective, thrusting gesture.

  "But if Cheyenne was on the horse, the killer would have to be eight feet tall."

  "Hey, the police know all that angle-of-entry stuff. Anyway, there's a whole elevated ramp section backstage. Anyone standing on it would be in great shape to do in ole Charlie."

  Temple let her expression curdle. "How awful to think of him riding out on stage, already wounded.

  And his career ... I hear he had done some work in Europe even."

  Troy shifted in the seat, creating a scrape of denim and creak of leather belt. "Yeah, well, Charlie Moon's look does okay in Europe. He could do greased-back hair and Armani suits. Me, I'm too all-American to get much work overseas. It might mean good money, but that there jet set is an unhealthy crowd, kind of corrupt. Nance is just as glad I do my modeling at home."

  She nodded seriously.

  "You don't mind your husband up on stage, getting ogled by hundreds of women?"

  "Honey, that's fine
with me. We're married. He's been around both loose and hitched, an' I figure he knows enough to keep away from anything too sticky. This pageant is pretty harmless stuff. These ladies jest like to look. Most of 'em would faint dead away if one of these guys put a real move on em."

  "Most?"

  Nance shrugged. Temple noticed that her shoulders were broad for a woman. If a raised walkway had run alongside where Cheyenne sat astride his horse, his attention focused on controlling the animal and his imminent entrance, anyone--including a woman--could have struck down at his bare back with the assistance of gravity.

  "Are you so sure all of these women are so innocent? Really?" Temple pushed for an answer. "Have you never heard of any hanky-panky between the cover models and the women, whether fans or authors?"

  "Hey, stuff happens," Troy said. "We don't know for sure, and we don't want to know. We just do our thing."

  "How bad can it be? Some of the guys bring their wives along."

  Nance's fingers toyed with the pearlized buttons on her half-open shirt front.

  She wasn't a shy sort of filly, either, Temple thought. The Tuckers were two of a kind: above-average attractive and used to showing, using, enjoying it. Their behavior wouldn't threaten each other.

  Nance said as much. "Why would the guys bring wives along if they were up to anything special?"

  "Especially murder." Temple rose suddenly, dropping her weight to her feet.

  The pair jumped as if she had snapped a whip.

  "This murder stuff does make us skittish." Troy's earnest true-blue eyes looked out from under sun-whitened eyebrows.

  He was a real appealing galoot, all right. "What about a rival?" Temple asked abruptly.

  "You mean some other contestant?" Troy demanded incredulously.

  "That's who's back there." Temple's thumb jerked toward the stage and its behind-the-curtain labyrinth.

  "And a whole lot more," Nance said quickly, with emphasis. "There are the technical guys, the stage crew, and a whole lot of lady volunteers eager to lace some he-man into his open shirt or his tight leather pants that open all down the sides. And"--her eyes, a muddy green, were flicking Temple up and down--"there are a whole lot of lady authors hanging around checking out the contestants, supposedly eager to get the lay of the land for their walk-ons with the guys."