Are you planning to continue your role of put-upon romance heroine tonight?"
She appreciated that he had refrained from telling her what she should do. "No. I chickened out. The reason for doing it is gone. Danny's not feeling let down; he'll substitute a girl who did it last year and is wild to do it again."
"A veteran of the romance wars," Max noted.
"Yeah. She's all of eighteen."
"I wondered, because I wanted you to go out with me after the pageant tonight."
"Out? Is it safe for you?"
"It will probably be safer where we're going than here."
"And that is?"
"The Goliath."
"Max, that's not safe for you! Why there?"
His smile became mysterious. "I have a yen to see the Love Moat again."
That gave Temple pause. She and Max had "done" the Love Moat when they'd first arrived in Las Vegas over a year ago. The gondola ride on a waterway winding through the Goliath's vast lobby was amusing enough, but the portion that ran through a romantically-lit artificial grotto provided the kind of privacy that lovers were known to take full advantage of. Temple wasn't ready for that situation again with Max.
"I don't know--"
"If you're worried, I'll invite your martial arts instructor to come along as a bodyguard."
That almost gave Temple a heart attack.
"What is going on? What are you up to with Matt, and--"
"Shhh." Max's green eyes twinkled mysteriously. "Trust me."
That was a lot to ask, and he knew it. Temple was tired. She had not only survived a murder attempt, but several hours at the police station and in the company of her arch-antagonist Molina. Still--Temple smiled--Molina owed her now, thanks to Midnight Louie's love for boot leather, and her own putting two and two together and arriving at the Italian connection.
"You seem to have had a good day, despite your ordeal." Max's voice broke into her reverie. "Meet me at eleven by the Lalique phoenix, and I promise you'll have an even better night."
His confidential baritone made chills run up and down Temple's spine like it was an escalator made to play on. Now this was a genuine proposition with possibilities to die for! But Matt, coming along? What was Max up to? Something surprising; she saw it in his eyes. She also saw the silent intensity behind his words. Do it! his considerable magician's will was urging her. Svengali Central.
What did she have to lose? If she could fight off Fabrizio, she could certainly wrestle her own divided heart.
Temple nodded; Max disappeared behind the blue velvet curtain. Temple sighed. What would she wear to the pageant now that she was free of the Renaissance gown? Maybe something that could get wet. A frogman's suit. Max could be one wild and crazy guy.
A strange man stopped Temple as she was nearing the elevator.
"Excuse me. Are you Temple Barr, by any chance?"
"Yes." But she raised her eyebrows.
He pointed. "They said you had red hair. I'm Hal Richards, the A La Cat commercial director."
He stuck out a hand, so Temple shook it, puzzled. Had Savannah Ashleigh sicced this guy on her to complain about Louie's little escapade?
"Ah, I guess there's more than one black cat around the hotel," he went on. "Miss von Rhine says the little one is a house cat, but that the big black guy is yours."
Temple nodded. What had Louie done now?
Hal Richards, a lean, Hollywood-tan man with close-clipped brown-gray hair, looked a bit tentative.
"It's awkward to talk like this, like islands in the stream." He gestured to the crowds walking by. "But I wanted to suggest something to you."
Oh, no! Louie had done something new and unthinkable . . . instead of old and unthinkable.
"We ran the film from our interrupted shoot the other day--"
"I'm so sorry about Midnight Louie busting in on your filming. He has quite a thing for Yvette and--"
"That's just it. The footage is fabulous! Our lights weren't set up for a black cat, and the contrast with Yvette's silver-white coat is unfortunately extreme, but we all concluded the same thing. They're dynamite together. We'd like to hire Midnight Louie-- that is, you and your cat--to do the commercial.
In fact, the ad agency exec is talking an entire series of commercials. Do you think you and the animal could travel to L.A. in the future?"
"Sure, but... how much does this pay?"
Richards shrugged. "If Midnight Louie were an elephant, I'd say peanuts. A hundred and fifty a shooting day."
Temple blinked. "And I thought human actors were underpaid."
"There are residuals, of course, and other promotional tie-ins. We usually use animals provided by trainers, but the ad agency suggested a famous cat, which is how we got Yvette. And Miss Ashleigh," he added unhappily.
"Louie's famous," Temple said. "He's a crime-solving cat."
Hal Richards smiled weakly. Temple had a feeling he didn't put much faith in the reality quotient of cat people. "That's nice. Well, if you're agreeable, we could get contracts to you by tomorrow morning and shoot that afternoon. We're on a tight schedule. All right?"
Temple nodded, giving him her hotel room number as well as her home address and telephone, which he jotted down on a small notebook he carried in his shirt pocket. Hal Richards offered his hand again and it was a done deal. Midnight Louie was a media star in the making.
"I can't believe you," Electra said in their room that evening. "All you've been through, and you're still going to the Incredible Hunk pageant."
"At least I'll be there in an offstage capacity. What do you think?" She turned to show off her dress, the same short, silver-beaded number she had worn to the Gridiron with Matt.
"Great." Electra fluffed the long angel sleeves on her blue taffeta muumuu. "Too bad you aren't going to be onstage in that, though."
"I've had enough limelight," Temple said. "I want to sit quietly--unmolested--in the audience, like everyone else, and pick and choose winning hunks." She hesitated, and then tied a black velvet ribbon around her neck. "It'll hide the bruises. I hate to say that Molina was right, but they'll be doosies by morning."
"Molina was right about the crime, too," Electra noted.
"But Louie discovered the diamonds in the boot, and I got the Italian connection."
"So you did. Where is that scamp? I've hardly seen him around here."
"He'll be closeted with Yvette while her mistress is onstage tonight, no doubt. She's so overprotective. I hope Louie gets enough beauty sleep tonight," she added fretfully. "He doesn't know it, but he has a big day tomorrow. And I'll be in late myself," she added super-casually, "so don't worry about me."
"How late?"
"Midnight, or maybe one. Or so. I'll try to be quiet when I get in."
"Anybody I know?"
"Nobody you don't know."
Electra narrowed her pale eyes. "So it's none of my business, but I should know who you're out with.
Look at what happened the last time someone asked you out."
"I didn't go then. Maybe Cheyenne would still be alive if I had."
"Don't eat your heart out about his death. He was a jewel smuggler, dear."
"I still think he wanted help."
"Yeah, he probably wanted to talk you into some illegal scam. Forget it. This pageant should be a hoot tonight!"
Electra completed her outfit by spraying her hair an orchid color and donning emerald-green rhinestone earrings that hung to her shoulders.
The emerald rhinestones winked like the single Austrian crystals that represented the cat's eye on the Stuart Weitzman shoes. Temple still had time after the convention was over to search for the shoes, but she doubted she would find them. She'd already tried everywhere logical.
Temple picked up a tiny silver bag and waited by the door for Electra to finish gathering her evening things. By the time they got downstairs, the Peacock Theater lobby was crammed with women in sequined and beaded gowns, in rhinestones and pearls, in high heels
and high hair.
Only a few men mingled with the crowd, refreshingly middle-aged men with looks that would never grace a book cover, but were somehow more inviting.
"Get you ladies a drink?"
Harvey Herbert (or Herbert Harvey), Sharon Rose's husband, stood before them. Temple squinted desperately at his nametag (tonight was not a spectacles night), but couldn't distinguish between the two similar names.
"Ah . . . thanks. This is my friend Electra, who's entered the Love's Leading Amateur writing contest.
His wife is the bestselling author, Sharon Rose."
"Herbert Harvey," he said, shaking hands with Electra. "Sharon is an author-escort for a contestant, so I'm at loose ends. I'd love to buy you glamorous ladies a drink."
"Gibson," Electra said without hesitation, apparently infected by Kit.
"A Bloody Mary."
Herbert Harvey nodded and melted back into the crowd.
"What a nice man." Electra beamed.
"Don't get too impressed," Temple told her softly. "His wife is hell on mid-height heels and very possessive. Always calls him 'my Herb.' I wonder what glamorous outfit she'll wear to escort her hunk.
Her fashion sense was purchased at the five-and-dime in nine teen-fifty-eight."
"That doesn't sound like you, Temple."
"She nearly ran me over for merely speaking to her husband. Poor man. I can see how he'd like to socialize for a few minutes without her."
Harvey soon made the traditional male return trip from the bar, three glasses crowded against his evening jacket.
Temple and Electra took their glasses and chimed their thanks.
"Happy to do it." He looked around with interest. "My, doesn't everybody look grand."
Temple sighed to herself. Why be jealous of a man who said innocuous things like that about a roomful of women in their most dazzling evening wear?
"What's Sharon wearing?" Temple asked.
"Ah . . . something pink, I think."
Temple nodded. What else would the Romance Queen of Mean wear? The woman's personality and public persona were at war, but for wardrobe, sweet conquered sour.
Herbert Harvey drifted away after a decent interval.
"Ahhh," Temple confided in Electra. "This drink is great."
"Your nerves were shattered. I'd be at the bar tossing back boilermakers if I'd been through what you had."
"Electra!"
"Hi, gang." Kit slipped beside them. She was resplendent in a black silk dinner suit with a floor-length skirt slit up to high heaven.
When Temple complimented her apparel, she stuck out a shapely leg in lace pantyhose. "The older author's compensation for a sagging middle. You look cute as a cricket, Temple. And Electra, you are truly electric."
"Cute," Temple complained.
"Relax and enjoy it," her aunt's most jaded alto advised. "The next stage is 'shaky and sinking fast.' "
She finished her cocktail. "We better get some good seats. I want to see a show. You don't mind if I sit with my editor, do you? Her suggestion."
Temple and Electra shook their heads, so Kit glided off alone. While they were still looking at each other, a thin woman in a sequined floral suit joined them.
"Electra! Tomorrow's prize day, can you believe it? I've saved you a seat in the writing class section.
Come on."
Electra turned spaniel eyes on Temple.
"Go ahead. I'll find a place."
The other woman pulled Electra away before she could protest.
Temple drank the dregs of her fiery Bloody Mary--the Crystal Phoenix had a first-rate bar, too--and left the glass on a tray.
She didn't feel left out. She wanted to see the show from the audience without having to discuss it with anyone. She wanted to judge how well Cheyenne would have done, had he been here to compete.
Maybe she was rooting for a ghost.
The seats were filling up, so she grabbed one halfway down the aisle. If the pageant ran too long, she could leave early. Butterflies were fanning the Bloody Mary flames in her stomach, but she wasn't going to think about past or future. She was going to see the show, period.
"Mind if I sit here?"
The woman who asked was tall and angular, with silky, blunt-cut blond hair to her jawline, dressed in severe black. She seemed nervous, but that was probably her grayhound metabolism.
"Not at all," Temple said graciously. "This is my first pageant."
"Not mine." The woman pushed down the fold-up velvet seat. "Duty, not beauty," she added, assessing the runway. "Beautiful boys are not my poison of choice. What a racket!"
"You must have attended several of these."
"Have to. I'm an editor at Bard Books. Emma Ransom."
"I work PR for the hotel. Temple Barr."
"Well, get ready for the illusion of publishing hype. If you want a running commentary on the true lies, just ask me."
Temple did not want a running commentary; she wanted peace. She hoped the woman beside her would get the idea. Then the woman bent down and lifted something from the floor. A plastic low-ball glass filled with ice and a clear liquid. Oh-oh. One didn't have to be an ace detective to deduce that the contents were not water.
Temple squinched down in her seat, glad she didn't need her glasses for distance. She would see the show with a fresh, uninvolved eye, and put the dead to rest.
The house lights dimmed, the pre-recorded music swelled and Emma Ransom's ice clinked. Temple slipped on her glasses.
The spotlights targeted stage right, where something like the Blue Fairy from Pinocchio gleamed: Savannah Ashleigh in Jean Harlow white satin and fox-fur stole, hopefully fake. Savannah would have no reason to get real about anything at this late date.
"Good evening, ladies, ladies and a few good gentlemen," Savannah quipped in her breathy, artificial voice. "Welcome to the West, where wanted men are what women are after."
Her co-host, a tuxedo-jacket-wearing biker-short kind of guy with long, surfer-streaked blond hair and a smooth disc-jockey patter, took up the pre-written dialogue. "What about wanted women, Savannah?"
"They're in fashion too, Vic. We're about to see a dress parade of our guys and dolls: handsome cover heroes and the women who dream them up."
"Then let the revels begin, Savannah," Vic suggested unoriginally. These emcee types always overused each other's names, as if to remind themselves who they were.
The lights dimmed on the dim-bulb couple beside the proscenium arch, flaring up on stage center.
One by one, the Incredible Hunk candidates strolled out, a woman in her glitzy best on his arm, bearing a scarlet rose.
Many women were decades older than their escorts, Temple noticed. How refreshing. Role reversal with a vengeance! The competitors looked polished and handsome in their sometimes eccentric formal wear.
Troy Tucker topped his stovepipe-tight black jeans, cowboy boots, tuxedo jacket and rhinestoned bolo tie with a white Stetson. An excited hoot drew Temple's eyes to Troy's wife Nan, bouncing up and down in her seat, her hands clapping high above her head.
A clink to her left prepared Temple for a comment.
"A leading contender for the popular vote."
Temple nodded. She could see why. But the long glitzy line of judges in the front row would decide the winners.
Each couple parted at runway's end with some romantic gesture. Troy doffed his Stetson to display long, Wild Bill Hickock hair down his back and bow his escort offstage, to thunderous applause and whistles.
The next hunk may have been Fabio reincarnated, but he was unlucky enough to escort Ravenna Rivers. Her gown put Scarlett O'Hara's burgundy velvet Shameless dress to shame. It was red, clinging, bare and backless. She bid her man adieu with an R-rated, torso-to-torso shimmy routine that had the youthful hunk blushing to match her gown.
"All her talent is in her hormones," whispered Emma's vodka rasp.
Temple had to admit that her running commentary was astute, if unwelcome.
&n
bsp; Next came Jake Gotshall, looking quite presentable despite the gigantic clown shoes he had donned.
His entrance brought a laugh, and his author escort, Mary Ann Trenarry, was a dignified grande dame in contrast, wearing aqua crepe and pearls.
When they reached the end of the runway, Jake grinned and fingered the red carnation in his buttonhole. It squirted water into the audience, who squealed en masse. Then he pulled out the boutonniere and elaborately presented it to Mary Ann.
Laughter was still ringing when one of the most muscular hunks stalked out, arms swinging like stiff sausages because of his bulk. Yet his long hair flowed softly and a diamond stud sparked in his left earlobe. Temple tried to remember the sexual preference rules for earrings on men and couldn't. She was certain to mix it up, if it ever mattered.
She didn't know the author, a lovely, frail woman in her sixties dressed in a designer suit of citron beadwork. Don't dip her, Temple ordered the hunk with some of Max's unspoken willpower. She imagined Danny Dove in the wings, mentally urging the same thing. The poor woman placed one high-heeled foot in front of the other like a persnickety cat as she walked the runway. At the end, the hunk twirled her out the length of his arm.
NO DIPPING, YOU DIP! Then he reeled her back in, kissed her hand and watched her pussyfoot down the stairs.
Temple released a breath as the hunk received a rip-roaring round of applause for his chivalry.
Standing center-stage, bursting out of his rental tuxedo, holding his hands up like Sylvester Stallone's Rocky.
"Anna Amber Leigh. Her career is dead," Emma confided as the applause died. "Too old-fashioned.
No sizzle."
Temple nodded, resigned to her role of captive confidee. That's how the seating chart crumbles.
Another Conan the Barbarian clone came out, long dark hair flowing, moving like a robotic terminator. His author escort was much younger than the others, a buxom blonde in a strapless taffeta dress with a bouffant long skirt more at home at a high-school prom than a pageant.
"Love's Leading Naif, " Emma commentated. "Where did she get that tacky dress? From Carrie?"
Temple knew true stage fright when she saw it; the poor girl was terrified. She seemed most terrified of her hunk, who grinned with awesome confidence as he lumbered down the runway. At the end, he turned to her. She blinked. Her hands curled into pale fists.
Midnight Louie 05-Cat in a Diamond Dazzle Page 35
