Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In A Topaz Tango

“I bet Molina is a joy to associate with right now.”

“You know what’s going on, don’t you, Matt?”

“Some of it, maybe.”

“That I’ll have to torture it out of you after this road show is over. So, do you want to meet Zoe Chloe in your room or not? And just how many fans have managed to snag your cell phone number?”

“Zoe Chloe, no. Temple Barr would be welcome, but I’ve got to wash off my makeup and peel off my costume and shower first.”

“First? Sounds like you could use a dresser. Or an undresser, rather.”

“You want to talk, or something else?”

“I’ll take both when I can get it.”

“Room twelve thirty-four. I do have to leave for the radio station by eleven thirty.”

“Don’t worry, Cinderfella. I’ll be through with you by then.”

Temple snapped her cell phone shut. She wasn’t kidding about the undressing part. Zoe Chloe was such an impetuous little gangsta girl. They’d have plenty of time to talk after.

There was something about being naked in bed in a hotel room that was sinfully stimulating.

Temple and Matt each leaned against their two fat piled-up pillows, the heavy hotel bedspread tucked discreetly under their armpits.

“You have to slip my costume back onto the dressing-room rack tonight,” he said. “Show rule. I really shouldn’t have worn it up here to my room.”

“You can always plead being rattled by the emergency situation, although you never are,” Temple said, studying the formal white tie tossed on an armchair, the satin-striped black trousers draping the desk chair, the white tucked-front shirt sprawled like a ghost over the ottoman. “So why didn’t you change first before I came up? Or down in my case.”

“You were in a hurry to meet. And . . . you kinda seemed genuinely interested in acting as my undresser.”

“That was Zoe Chloe talking. She is such a sexpot.”

Matt eyed Zoe Chloe’s scattered accoutrements, from striped thigh-high stockings to miniskirt to puffed-sleeved Victorian jacket to sequined tube bustier.

“She has the fashion sense of a yard sale after a tornado,” he said, “but she’s pretty adorable anyway.”

“And that spray-on tan really looks good on you. And it stays on really well too. Passes the taste test.”

She’d finally pushed him out of his comfort zone and he looked uneasy. Matt hated the artificial, and now he was one.

“Leticia is having a hoot giving me a hard time about this at work,” he admitted. “Says I’ll be her color by the time the dance show ends and we can go on the road with a soft-shoe act.”

Temple laughed. “She’s a grand lady. That filmed segment of her church choir coming in to lead you in the rhythm chorus was just . . . wonderful. She’s never come out from behind her radio persona as Ambrosia before, has she?”

He shook his head. “That took guts.”

“What you’re doing takes guts.”

“What you’re doing takes even more guts. I can’t believe this Zoe Chloe persona. She’s a pistol. I can see why the Internet dweebs adore her even though I feel a little predatory when she wants my spray-tan body. Where’d that come from? Seriously, Temple.”

“Maybe we all need an outrageous alter ego. I don’t think I would have pursued coming up to your room tonight. At least not all the way.” She wiggled her toes under the bedspread. “But it was hot, wasn’t it?”

“Oh, yeah. But now’s the talking part. Keith may be seriously, even mortally ill.”

Temple nodded, sober and her full self again. “I’m trying to put this together. Hot pepper in Sou-Sou’s dancing shoes. A chef stricken by gastronomical problems. There’s an odd foodie element here. I don’t like that the mishaps bridge the adult and junior casts.”

“Glory B. fell from a defectively assembled jungle gym in a rehearsal room even before these incidents,” Matt told her. “Danny and I were there but he thought it was just a rehearsal glitch. Now it could look deliberate.”

“Sure could.”

“The dancing shoes had to be sabotaged by someone deliberately,” he pointed out. “Keith’s condition could be accidental.”

“What’d you think of him?”

Matt clasped his hands behind his neck to consider while Temple gaped appreciatively. That spray tan went on everywhere. She used spray sunscreen, but maybe she should try a tan. Looking different in someplace different was a total turn-on. And if she got a teeny-weeny yellow bikini . . . .

“Chefs are a breed of their own,” Matt mused. “Culinary prima donnas. The kind of grown men who have tantrums. He insisted on his own chair before his own spot along the makeup mirrors, his costumes always at the right end of the rack. His meals had to be absolutely prepared to his specifications, fresh from the kitchen, brought and served by an under-chef. He’d never touch the common buffet table for cast and crew we all ate from.”

“Was he a tyrant, or was he afraid of something?”

Matt sat up, rethinking the man’s eccentricities. “Was he persnickety, or was he paranoid, you’re thinking. And rightfully so. Could be.”

“Who would hate a chef?” she mused. “Other than his kitchen staff?”

“Keith Salter? Plenty. He had that reality TV show, Butcher’s Holler, where he anonymously ate at restaurants all over the country and then tore the menu, food, and service apart.”

“Could Keith Salter be why Dancing With the Celebs had death threats before it even aired? Everybody in Vegas would figure the Cloaked Conjuror for the target. He’s had local death threats since he opened his Goliath show exposing the other magicians’ stage tricks. That might have led the authorities astray. It could be someone from out of town, following Keith to kill him.”

“You think like Agatha Christie,” Matt said. “Now that I rethink it, Keith could have been scared, not just a snob. He didn’t have much to do with the rest of us.”

“What are ‘the rest of you’ like?”

“José has the drive and dedication of an Olympic athlete. If I’ve got a rival in this thing, it’s him. But he’s fanatic about winning, and I’m not. I lack his Latin fire, but I have a certain ease of self and lightness of heart he could never master. I mystify him. I suppose I’m the most laid-back of all the contestants. I don’t have anything to prove. Keith must, or he’d have never made a career out of exposing and disparaging his peers. The Cloaked Conjuror has given up fellowship with his peers for im mense amounts of money, but has to endure anonymity and hatred, the worst of both worlds.”

“ Hmm. Incisively put. I think I’ll keep you. What about the male and female dance pros who train you?”

“They’re doing this because all dancers wear out their bodies in a few years. Founding a studio and teaching and doing choreography is the next stage in their impassioned careers. And they are impassioned about their art form. I get that. I get the dedication of a true vocation. That’s why the kids’ competition is important. Start young, make hay while your legs last, or forget it. Olympic performers have that same pressure. Chefs and ex-priest radio shrinks, not so much.”

Matt finished with a self-deprecating grin.

“And the women?” she asked, astonished by his insights.

“I don’t share a dressing room with them. Only you.” His voice had lowered on the last two words, and an intimacy break was definitely in order.

“I’m glad you came,” Matt whispered as they took a breather.

She decided not to comment on the double entrendre. Zoe Chloe Ozone had been hired to be a G-rated act.

“The women,” Matt said, now fully cerebral, lying back again and staring at the white ceiling. “I really enjoy dancing with Olivia. She feels she has a lot to prove, works hard, and I like helping her look good. Neat lady. Dotes on her grandchildren. Pretty amazing for an aging femme fatale on the soaps. She knows she’s an anachronism, but loves her work. Maybe it’s just a job for her now, but she has her pride and she needs the income. The soaps are dying. Not Olivia.”