Midnight Louie 05-Cat in a Diamond Dazzle

by Douglas, Carole Nelson

  "Speaking of swinging cats," Temple said, "has anybody seen Midnight Louie around here lately?"

  Darcy stepped back from her dressing table to reveal Himself sprawled on a red velvet pillow, one forepaw sweetly curled against his black velvet chest.

  Someone had put a red satin bowtie around his neck, which he had managed to scratch off-center until it sat rakishly under one ear.

  "Lord, he looks wounded ... or decorated!" Temple shook her head. "What's the big attraction for him down here?"

  "Besides Trish's smoked oysters?" Darcy grinned, and then nodded at the boot. "So when is Big Tex coming to town?"

  "That's what I'm here to ask. I found this stuffed under a costume rack in the hall and wondered if it was from a floorshow costume. I'm, um, sort of involved in the cover model pageant, and didn't want any of your essential costumes getting mixed up with theirs."

  "Nice thought." Jo twanged the side elastic on her g-string. "But none of our costumes are exactly essential."

  "Actually," Temple corrected, "they're the only essential things you're wearing. So, Nobody owns up to the boot."

  "Let's give it a once-over," Darcy suggested. "It sure isn't ordinary streetwear."

  They gathered around, their tap cleats ringing on the concrete dressing-room floor like horseshoes. Temple experienced a rare attack of claustrophobia as the showgirls closed in. With their heel-abetted height six feet-something, their plumed headdresses and the glitzy sway and clatter of their scanty harnessry, they reminded her of elegantly caparisoned circus steeds. She didn't know whether she felt more in danger of being crushed--or dazzled to death.

  Since her Crystal Phoenix association had begun, she had often glimpsed these women from a distance, knew them by sight, had waved and smiled. Now, in their glamorous midst, they overwhelmed her as much as the equally large, bare and blatantly sexy male cover models. Why must erotic symbols always come in the Large, Economy Size, like the Wizard of Oz's false, inflated head? Great and powerful might seduce at a distance--and Temple was no subscriber to Dorothy, the meek and humble--but what was wrong with small and subtle?

  "Nothing subtle about this-here boot." Jo took it from Temple to turn this way and that. "Talk about your Rhinestone Cowboy! Will you gander at these zit-size rhinestones caking the heel?"

  "Gross!" Darcy's moan commented on both the rhinestones and Jo's inelegant comparison. "But this is all custom work, and that silver-leather flame design has been hand-applied. The tragedy is that someone paid major money for this pair, when it was a pair."

  "Why did you think this gunboat might be ours?" Jo surrendered the boot with a wrinkled nose. "It's pretty big, but then so are you."

  "Not that big." Trish peered down the boot's tall sides as if hunting hidden treasure. "No size stamped anywhere. Odd. But I'd call it a fourteen or fifteen, at least. Who's been hotfooting it through our corridors--Bigfoot?" She nodded authoritatively at Temple. "That there's a galoot's boot."

  Temple sighed heavily. "I didn't want to hear that."

  "Besides," Trish hefted her foot back onto the chair seat to display her size-ten silver pump. "All of us hoofers wear these regulation character shoes with two-inch Cuban heels and the Mary Jane straps. If we tried to tippety-tap onstage in those rhinestone galoshes, we'd break our necks. Check with the boys in the Incredible Hunk contest."

  Temple watched them disperse to their makeup stations with a sense of relief. "You know about that?"

  She hadn't expected them to notice. Showgirls were night creatures and birds of passage as well, with lives of their own far from the madding Las Vegas Strip. They did their grocery shopping at 3:00

  A.M. and their nails at noon. They rarely had time or inclination to notice the gaudy male of the species Show Biz.

  "Who could miss a convention of Conan the Barbarians?" Midge asked. "Especially when one of them gets knocked off so spectacularly. Died in the saddle, I heard."

  "Not quite." Temple absently wrapped her arms around the boot and clutched it to her chest. It was less heavy that way. "He rode Native American-style. Bareback."

  Trish shook her plumed head in mock mourning. "Dead so soon, half-naked on a naked horse."

  "I knew him," Temple began.

  "Oh, gosh! Sorry." Trish smiled an apology. "We get a little melodramatic down here."

  "That's all right." Temple sat on an empty chair near the door, still clutching the boot like a stuffed toy. She rested her chin on the conveniently notched tops. "It's funny. I've been running all over town in search of a Cinderella shoe, and I end up with a glitzy, mystery cowboy boot on my own home turf."

  "You want some great shoes, cheap?" Midge asked, enthusiastically spraying the only part of her hair that wasn't covered by a begemmed headpiece--her bangs. "Try the Shoes Galore Discount Emporium."

  "Not just any shoes," Temple explained glumly. "The new Stuart Weitzman store in the Forum Shops at Caesars is offering a free pair of custom Austrian crystal-covered high heels to whoever can spot a similar shoe somewhere in Las Vegas."

  "They used rhinestone shoes in the Tropicana show a few years ago. Like to blind the sun."

  "Not rhinestones," Temple explained patiently. "Genuine Austrian crystals."

  "What's the diff?"

  "The same as between a jam jar and a brandy snifter. Crystal has more fire, and costs more."

  "These shoes must be worth a fortune."

  "To me, they would be. And the worst part is, he's on them." Temple pointed at Midnight Louie.

  "Louie? He's always on shoes, on makeup tables, on g-strings--" Darcy laughed as she pulled a string of pearls from under Louie's red velvet pillow.

  He batted lethargically as the pearls swung past, then yawned.

  "It's nice to have him calling on us again," Darcy said.

  "That's because Louie has a lady cat to visit on the premises."

  "That little black one we see around all the time?"

  "Heavens no." Temple was shocked. "Midnight Louise is his namesake. She's like his daughter.

  Besides, she's fixed. Louie's ladyfriend is an out-of-towner who breezes in now and again."

  "I bet he's been keeping 'midnight' hours," Midge speculated. "Now that he's back, we have to box our tap shoes again, or he'd gnaw their straps off."

  Not even mention of Louie's past misdeeds could rouse Tern-pie from her vision of shoe-heaven lost. "Oh, I suppose it isn't Louie, in person, pictured on those prize pumps, but these shoes are sooo wonderful, and just made for me! Black-cat figures on each heel. For Halloween. I just know that's Louie."

  "For you, it's Louie. For me, it's bad luck." Trish's shudder set her costume swaying in all the best places. "I'd never wear black cat shoes; everyone I'd walk in front of would panic. This is Las Vegas, children, where gamblers are so superstitious that they wear crossed suspenders."

  "If you only saw these shoes," Temple keened softly. "You'd love them."

  "Not really," Jo said. "I don't wear heels off the job."

  "Me, neither," added Trish.

  "You should discuss your lost shoes with Savannah, the vamp of Ipana; she's up to her ankles in oddball shoes," Darcy suggested.

  "Savannah, the vamp of Ipana?"

  "La Ashleigh with the bleached overbite. What a pain-a! She's emceeing the hunk pageant, and demanded her 'old' dressing room. Even though this area is off-limits to pageant people, she got it.

  All the prima donnas aren't in the opera."

  Temple stared at Midnight Louie, who stared right back.

  "Savannah Ashleigh . . . shoes. Of course! Not only is she back in town--with her cat Yvette, I bet, which explains the return presence of your G-string warmer"--she nodded at Midnight Louie nodding off again on the pillow--"but she's going after my shoes!"

  Temple leaped to her feet.

  Four sets of double false lashes blinked at her in the mirror, then dipped as they glanced as one to her feet.

  "Not these shoes I'm wearing, the prize shoes. Have you seen Eight
ball O'Rourke around lately?"

  The queens of diamonds, clubs and spades shrugged their naked shoulders, but Darcy's frown ended the group gesture.

  "Little guy, wiry. About seventy," Temple prompted.

  Darcy turned from the mirror. "I have seen Eightball down here a couple of times. I figured he was visiting Jill and Johnny Diamond."

  "He was working, the rat! He was after the black-cat shoes for that Hollywood has-been. If Savannah Ashleigh can afford to hire a private detective to find them, she can afford to buy them!"

  "I hear Savannah's been on her last uppers for some time," Midge noted with a cocked eyebrow.

  "Well, she can keep her greedy hands off my last uppers! Look at me. I hunted up and down the Strip, risked drowning and pirates and breaking my neck and being arrested for getting fresh with a witch, yet all I've got to show for it is one odd boot with a virgin sole and rundown rhinestone heels.

  Life is not fair."

  "Temple?" Darcy clopped over on her silver tap shoes, sounding remarkably like Cheyenne's Appaloosa. "Are you all right?"

  Temple sat again, knowing the answer was no, and knowing that she didn't want to explain why finding the Midnight Louie shoes seemed like the only sane act in a world gone mad, a world of murdered models (one, so far) . . . dueling boyfriends (two, so far) . . . and undercover pose-downs with a herd of handsome hunks (one dreaded dress rehearsal coming up)

  "I've been working pretty hard," she said, "between the pageant and the shoe hunt, that's all."

  She hefted the boot. "I just hope this thing isn't an essential part of somebody's costume and they're missing it."

  "So what part do you play in the pageant?" Darcy returned to the mirror to powder her makeup.

  "Wench."

  "What?"

  "Wench of all work, with neckline down to here. They need warm bodies for the cover pose-down."

  "Pose-down. That's a new term."

  "They photograph embracing romance-novel cover models for the cover artist. The Incredible Hunk candidates need willing females to pose with them for the pageant's last competition: serial, live-action lusting."

  "You volunteered for this?" Trish sounded incredulous.

  "Let's say I was drafted by a relative."

  Midge shrugged and grinned. "It could be kind of fun."

  "So," said Temple, taking up her boot and preparing to walk, "could acupuncture."

  Temple returned to her dressing room, a cubicle identicle to the one Jake Gotshall and the late Charlie Moon had shared. She stored the odd boot--odd both for being only one of a pair, and for its garish decoration--deep in her costume duffel bag. One never knew what someone else would mistake for a valuable.

  Her costume hung from one of the curtain-draped pipes that defined the limits of each dressing area. According to her wrist-watch, in only half an hour she'd have to change for the pose-down dress rehearsal.

  Still, half an hour was longer than the absent Quincey was going to spend dolling herself up for the main event. Temple plucked her wallet from the duffel bag and moved into the aisles between the dressing rooms.

  The Incredible Hunk candidates themselves were not about to skimp on preparation time; not one was to be seen, since all were closeted in their cubicles, primping. Voices murmured and curtains bulged here and there with sudden movements as Temple passed.

  The aisles were filled with anonymous scooting forms, though-- the hunks' lady-volunteer dressers. Most were safely past middle age, like priests' housekeepers. Unlike priests' housekeepers, they weren't automatically indifferent to their charges' boyish charms. With the outstanding exception of Matt Devine, most priests weren't blessed with looks gorgeous enough to pose for a romance novel cover.

  Thinking of Matt had made Temple think of Max, which was an awkward juxtaposition in any event. What had brought these two strangers together, besides her? That mystery was more aggravating than the conundrum of Charlie Moon's dramatic death, if not as serious.

  Think about Charlie Moon, Temple advised herself. Then think of England.

  Moon first. Alone in the wings. Preoccupied with his entrance, mentally a million miles away from what was happening around him. Temple could believe that. Nothing was as isolated as the stage wings in the few, nervous moments before an entrance, especially if you were trying to manage almost a ton of horseflesh in an alien situation. The animal would be mincing around, its hooves slapping the wooden stage floor, making a racket, distracting the rider.

  Temple could see how the numbing impact of an arrowhead in the back would hardly penetrate the adrenaline-driven concentration of a performer about to go onstage. She'd badly stubbed her toes on a metal plate backstage while rushing to make an entrance once. She'd gone on anyway, declaimed two pages' worth of light-comedy lines, and swept off laughing . . . only to collapse writhing and cursing sotto voce in the opposite wings, finally feeling the injury, or allowing herself to feel it.

  And no fingerprints on the weapon. Whoever had snatched the arrow had thought to grab a makeshift hot pad to hold it. Picturing an actual oven mitt on the killer's upraised fist was such a laughable image that she chuckled.

  She was still chuckling when she ran straight into another person.

  "Oh, sorry!" Temple said.

  "Goodness, girl, you ran right into my clipboard. You could have flattened yourself permanently,"

  the woman added, frowning at Temple's bosom. "That would never do for a pose-down girl."

  "You know who I am?"

  "Not who, what. The only females your age back here before dress rehearsal are the lucky skinny young things who get to play cover model. Otherwise, only old bags like me hang around here."

  "You're not an old bag!" Temple had always hated the term. "What's the clipboard for?"

  "Oh, I don't even get to push, pull, prod and lace the laddies into their tight-fitting costumes. I'm the List Lady. Paperwork, not pant work, that's my specialty."

  Temple laughed, but she was also thinking furiously. Her new acquaintance was a raw-boned woman in her late sixties wearing baggy jeans and a grass-stained Ohio U sweatshirt she had no doubt inherited from a grandson.

  "Then you know who's paired with who for the pose-down?"

  "Haven't you checked yet?" She raised eyebrows as wild and wispy as a cat's.

  "I've been . . . busy elsewhere. I'm wearing an off-the-shoulder, lavender brocade gown."

  "You must be Miss Melisande, then, the Medieval/Renaissance model. We give everyone quickie code names. You sure can't be Miss Kitty, that's the Wild West outfit, and that minx Lacey is Miss Odalisque."

  Temple tried to peer over the top of the clipboard the woman was consulting, but she whisked it out of view.

  "If you haven't bothered to find out," she said sternly, "it's too late now."

  "No, it isn't. Look, can't I just see what costumes the guys might be wearing, so I could figure who I'm likely to work with?"

  Her white hair, cropped close to her head, shimmied as she indicated no, but Temple edged to the side to read the paper clipped on top anyway.

  "Oh, all the guys have little titles too," Temple cooed. "Such a clever idea."

  "I can't have great long lines of costume description, can I, and still end up with one sheet for thirty-three guys? Here's one you might be a match for: Mr. Romeo."

  "Renaissance Italy," Temple said, nodding. She peeked further down the roster. "And Mr.

  Lancelot, that's mine. I imagine that some of these guys must be wearing gloves."

  "Gloves? Whatever for?"

  "Accurate period costume."

  "In all my days as a pageant Wardrobe Witch, I have never heard anything so funny." She put her head back and roared, displaying a filling-free mouthscape of false teeth.

  "No ... gloves?"

  "No, my dear. They'd get in the way during the pose-down-- and, besides, the audience wants to see as much of the contestants as the law allows. Gloves don't quite fit the bill."

  "Oh. I suppos
e mail gloves would be a little chilly." Temple shivered daintily.

  "Don't you worry, Miss Melisande. No gloves, no gauntlets." The woman ran an expert eye up and down the two-column list. Then she frowned. "Except--"

  "Except?"

  "Well, he's way ahead of your period anyway, so I wouldn't worry."

  "What period is he?"

  "Viking raider. He goes with that ferrety girl in the see-through chiffon."

  "But he wears gloves?"

  "The only one, and only one glove, like Michael."

  "Michael, that's his name?"

  "No! Like Michael Jackson." The woman held up a fist, spread her fingers and pantomimed pulling on a glove. "Only his glove isn't white, it's black. Black leather. Because of the bird."

  "The bird." Temple was really lost now.

  "The bird. He's supposed to come on with this hawk on his wrist. So he needs the glove. Keeps it backstage, or rather that PR girl of his does, all hooded. Not her, the hawk. Kind of creepy. Haven't you noticed the cage?"

  Temple shook her head numbly.

  The costume lady smiled, certain and satisfied. "That's the only guy with a glove. The Birdman, so to speak. And he won't be in your vignette, not unless you move back a century or two, or he moves forward, and the pageant isn't a time-travel novel."

  "Who?" Temple asked patiently.

  "Who? Who what?"

  "Who," she repeated, beginning to sound like another bird of prey, an owl, "who is dressing for pose-down as a Viking raider?"

  "Why the big blond, of course. Fabrizio."

  Fabrizio. Of course.

  Chapter Interlude

  It's Hystery!

  Deadlines, deadlines.

  That word is so appropriate for this convention of happy, dancing G.R.O.W.L.ers, now that someone has knocked one of those over advertised hunks out of the running.

  But murder is not my game; romance is. I'll give those contest judges something to growl about. Now it's time to pull out all the stops and make some organ music here. Sensual scene, coming up! Millions, here I come. Ye old Demon Dagger had better get to it.