Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In A Topaz Tango

Now, if you are not mumbling or screaming meaningless phrases when you front down the street, you are not hip. You are the new “boom boxes.”

I must say that my kind has admirably resisted the trend to constant and showy communication. We still say more with the blink of an eye or the twitch of a back or the flick of a shiv.

Still, such are these times that my Miss Temple and I are forced to tear our attention from Miss Carmen’s most satisfying meltdown to regard Mr. Rafi’s one-sided monologue.

“The Barbie memo? Sure, anything on that would be good.” He paces, nodding and listening. “No kidding. Just today. Missing? Search the mall, and do not forget to comb between every row of the parking lot. Especially the parking lot. There is precedent. Get back to me as soon as. The lieutenant? On the other phone. I will make sure she gets the message.”

Miss Temple and I have edged nearer on one very provocative sentence.

“Another Barbie doll has shown up at the Albuquerque audition site,” he reports grimly, “and a female competitor is missing. I had better tell ‘Carmina.’ Unless you—”

“No,” my Miss Temple says wisely. “She is all yours. I will check the Internet for fresh Barbie doll atrocities.”

So there we are again, torn between a cell phone and the Internet. I tell you, the art of investigation is not the same old gray mare it used to be.

Everybody Undercover,

Quick!

Temple figured she was playing a pretty good Mariah substitute at the moment.

She even had the typical teenager’s quarreling parents. There was no doubt that Lieutenant Molina and Rafi Nadir made volatile partners. After they’d made it to the high-roller suite, Raphael and Carmina made sure to get as far as possible from each other in their bedroom assignments. Lions, and tigers, and angry ex-lovers, oh my!

As soon as Temple could relax in the presumed privacy of her star bedroom, she phoned Matt on her cell.

“Where are you and what are you wearing?” she said when he answered.

“Who are you?”

“Your light of love in a kickier, bolder persona. Enjoy.”

“Temple, where are you?”

“Don’t you want to know what I’m wearing?”

“If it’s the usual Zoe Chloe Ozone Goth issue, no. Ish, for sure. Can I make it any plainer, because I certainly can’t make her any plainer.”

Temple was not about to relinquish making a provocative call from a high-roller suite.

“You are about to lose a date,” she told him.

“Our wedding date?”

“No, sweetums. We haven’t even set that yet. I’m referring to your dinner-dance date with a star, Mariah Molina.”

“Huh?”

“Surely you haven’t forgotten the glamour event of the fall, the father-daughter dance at Our Lady of Guadalupe High School?”

“Shoot. I had. Your crazy new assignment has my mind going to mush. I’m supposed to squire Molina Jr.”

“Yes, you are, and we’ve found the little footloose and fancy-free rascal. She’s managing a hot newcomer in the junior division of this very hot Dancing With the Celebs gig you’ll be dazzling with your fancy footwork.”

“Good for her.”

“Not good for Mama Bear’s composure and now Papa Bear has IDed her as a walking wounded policewoman, which makes her twice as dangerous a bear. Did you know anything about that? Molina getting hurt?”

“Uh, maybe.”

“Oh, no! Matt, you haven’t been playing Wailing Wall for the enemy? What’s this all about?”

“It’s hardly relevant to what’s going on now.”

“The heck it isn’t. You’ve got a rival for Perfect Dream Dad. Rafi wants to escort Mariah to that dance.”

“His world and welcome to it. Her mother sort of railroaded me for the job anyway.”

“Her mother railroads us all, but right now she looks like she’s been working on the railroad, rode hard, and put up wet. What is going on with her?”

“She’s been . . . wounded. That’s all I can say without violating—”

“The sanctity of the confessional.”

“In a way. I swore.”

“ Humph. The only way you would swear. Fiancés shouldn’t keep secrets from fiancées.”

“I know. I’m between a frying pan and the steel wool here.”

“What a labored metaphor,” Temple hooted. “Who’s the steel wool, me or Molina?”

“Okay, that was a bad figure of speech. Say, if Mariah has been found and is back in Vegas, your charade is over and you can go home, right?”

“Wrong.” Temple lowered her voice. “There was another mutilated Barbie doll outside a mall audition in Albuquerque. One of the teen wanna-be competitions. Molina’s boss has decided they have a decent team undercover here and wants our show to go on.”

“Mariah will see through you all in a millisecond.”

“She did, but she likes it. Drama queen. We’re all going to share the multibedroom Zoe Chloe Ozone comped high-roller suite, except Mariah, who’ll bunk with the junior division competitors. So far Mama Bear has given her holy hell for taking off and Papa Bear has been introduced as an investigator from hotel security, which he is. We’ll all keep an eye on her, and she’ll keep her mouth shut because she badly wants her little friend to compete. Ekaterina is a Chechen refugee and a world-class dancer, apparently. What I’ve gotten out of the kids is that, caught between Russian troops and Chechen security forces, a new wave of Chechens have been immigrating since 2003, mostly to European Union countries and a few to the United States. EK could qualify as a cultural refugee with the right creds. Like winning this contest.”

“If this Barbie Doll Killer is branching out to auditions in New Mexico, the finals here would be a free-for-all for him and you are masquerading as a teenager, Temple. Now that I’m a fiancé, I’m saying you should forget it and go home for your own safety.”

“I’ve got two police types living with me, practically, and you’re booked into a room here, too, for contest week. And I’m key to the undercover operation. Or Zoe Chloe is.”

“You make this zany character sound almost real.”

“It’s scary how real she is to these teen fans. I needed a phalanx of hotel security getting to the private elevators. They were screaming and shooting photos. I felt like Marilyn Monroe come back from the dead. And Zoe Chloe doesn’t do anything, except broadcast attitude.”

“All this is supposed to reassure me?”

“My job is to stick with Mariah, and we’ll have Mama and Papa Bear all over us, believe it. It’s like they’re in a competition to safeguard Mariah.”

“Guilt.” Matt’s tone was grim. “They each need to prove they’re the perfect parent. I really hate you being caught in the middle there, Temple, whether it’s between dueling parents or a serial killer and his prey.”

“Is it because we’re engaged now?”

“It’s because you’re a target two ways: as part of an undercover police team with a known stalker on the loose, and as the crazy pop persona, Zoe Chloe, who attracts maniac fans. Max isn’t here anymore to play guardian angel. He did, you know, and he was darn good at it.”

Temple was stunned into silence. Matt was right. She’d always had her secret “shadow,” had unconsciously taken it for granted. Even now.

“I’m sorry,” he said finally. “It’s the truth.”

“I know. But I committed to this. Mariah’s a neat kid. Maybe her yen to perform is really an unconscious hope of pleasing an absent father. She did this not for herself, but to help another kid who could really use a boost. I don’t know what Molina told her daughter about her parentage, but I’m seeing something happening with Molina and Rafi. A coming to terms. Mariah, too. This enforced mission might even settle things with all three of them. I can’t bail.”