Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In A Crimson Haze

''Watch out!" a man shouted.

Temple looked up to see a sky of silver collapsing down upon her, upon them all.

A flying tackle of Fontana brothers--pale as Cool Whip-- rushed forward in a wedge formation. Temple, Danny, Crawford ... all were swept away, wood chips in a water drain.

Temple had enough wits about her to see that the two arguing ,men had toppled like bowling pins under the force of Fontanas leveled at them.

She herself--oh, my--was levitated in the manner of a musical comedy vamp, so she perched on the impeccably padded (and probably impeccably pecced) shoulders of Fontanas twain. She couldn't lean over far enough to read their name tags and find out who her rescuers were, specifically. Too bad.!

In the wings, frantic tech crew members male and female were swinging from various ropes.

Under their combined weight and quick thinking, the footloose UFO had halted in mid-air just three feet above the stage.

When four Fontana boys applied themselves to the ropes like dapper but demented bell-ringers, the mechanism lifted slowly into the darkness of the flies where it belonged.

''Oh, my God.'' Danny Dove had forgotten spats with obnoxious show chairman. "Dear girl!"

He leaped up to look up at Temple with devastated eyes. "You could have been killed.

"We could have been killed." Crawford Buchanan was rising from the floor with far less grace and speed than Danny Dove. His prized ice-cream suit looked as if it had been double-dipped in soot. He glared accusingly at Temple.

"Don't look at me," she said, pleased to be in a position to stare down at Crawford as if he were a bug. "I didn't write this unauthorized landing into the script."

"We were all in jeopardy, but our dear Miss Barr was in the direct . . . line of fire, so to speak." Danny extended a hand, which Temple took.

She found herself wafted to the floor like a thistledown ballerina. Danny's looks were deceiving; the dancer/choreographer was as strong as piano wire.

"That UFO weighs a ton," he fretted. "I don't understand--"

A Fontana brother--Ralph--came swinging down from the flies like Flynn to the rescue, only on a rope and a hope instead of a wing and a prayer.

''Cut," he pronounced, displaying the end of the fallen cable.

"Sabotage," Danny instantly diagnosed. His eyes narrowed at the descending Adonis in Armani. "I love your earring."

"It's nothing," Ralph said modestly, missing the point and Danny's proclivities, if he had not missed the Significance of the sliced rope.

Temple again felt an overwhelming urge to intervene. Interpret. Peacemake. Oh, blessed are the seriously straight, for they shall be politically incorrect until death do them part.

Until . . . death.

She looked up at the UFO rising jerky foot by foot to the rhythm of the stage ratchets, rather like bad poetry.

"Danny, do you think--?"

"I definitely do, darling." His demeanor was utterly serious now. "First the stairs. Now the . .

. alien object. I'm dreadfully sorry, dear lady, but I fear that you are the subject of a nasty objective. I always thought that this show would be murder."

Chapter 22

Skits Ahoy!

"I don't get it," Temple said. ''Why are you making a federal case out of this? It was just a stupid stage accident."

She looked from Lieutenant Ferraro to Lieutenant Molina, fervently hoping that this was a nightmare induced by a conk on the head' with a fake UFO: not one but two homicide officials interrogating little old her. Again. Molina smiled, and when Molina smiled at something Temple had said, that usually meant trouble.

''You are batting a thousand today," Molina told her. ''First you avoid being squashed like a ladybug by an unanchored UFO; now you've anticipated the actions of two branches of the law."

"Huh?" Temple didn't mind playing dumb when she was feeling thoroughly stupefied.

Besides, she was still reeling from the close call with the runaway UFO, not to mention the threat of imminent demise while in the company, however unwanted, of Crawford Buchanan.

Imagine ending up next to that creep in the morgue!

Temple remained puzzled. Why had hotel security hustled her to this secluded office right after the mishap? She hated being pulled untimely away from the sight of Crawford Buchanan whining and threatening law suit. Dousing that legal fire was a lot more important than submitting to another police grilling. Large portions of her anatomy would soon show pemanent parallel tracks, she was sure. . . . And what was this gruesome twosome doing at the Phoenix so conveniently, anyway?

When Temple remained silent, Molina nodded at Ferraro-- great, they were in cahoots--

who went to open the door into an adjoining empty office.

Except the room wasn't empty until the man inside it walked out to join them. He struck her as a nondescript middle-aged man in a nondescript gray suit from Men's Warehouse, with a tie equally as off-the-rack, but his blue-striped shirt had a sparkling white collar. Another cop? With a subconscious urge to make a fashion statement while taking hers? Oi, her aching ankle!

Despite his snappy shirt, the new man didn't bother to say hello. He came right up to her with a grim expression, pulled a leatherette case from his inside breast suit pocket, then flipped it open in front of her nose.

Darn. Temple was too curious not to look. An unflattering head shot. An impressive seal.

Lots of tiny print.

"FBI" Temple read the big blue initials aloud to make sure that she wasn't having a dyslexic episode and it really said IBM. She wasn't. ''You've got to be kidding!" She glanced to an impassive Molina.

The man shook his head so slightly Temple hardly saw it. He wheeled a secretarial chair over the tiled floor, then sat opposite her.

''We need to talk," he suggested.

"I can do that. I could even do a song-and-dance until a couple of days ago." To demonstrate Temple hefted her still-swaddled ankle, which reposed on a pulled-out desk drawer. "So how have I offended this time?"

Amusement flickered behind the stiff, burglar-bar eyelashes shading his steel-gray eyes.

Flickered and went out.

''Apparently you're a repeat offender around this town," he said dead-pan.

''Only at being innocent," Temple replied.

"Unfortunately, she is. So far." Molina had vouched for Temple out of the blue, sitting on the edge of the desk. "Harmless, I mean. Miss Barr's only crime has been acting as a magnet for trouble."

"Murderous trouble?" the FBI man inquired.

Molina nodded.

"Is this about that dead man that fell on the craps table?" Temple dared to ask.

Lieutenant Molina pounced like Midnight Louie on a trespassing cricket unwise enough to announce its presence with a friendly chirp. "You understand something about that we should know?"

Of course Temple did. However, she wasn't about to announce to all and sundry that the second casino murder victim was also connected to a man of her acquaintance. In fact, the Crystal Phoenix victim was much more certainly attached to Matt Devine than the long-dead unidentified man at the Goliath was affixed to Max Kinsella.

While Temple stonewalled, internecine rivalry saved her.

The FBI agent shook his head at Molina, as if to shut her up, before concentrating the full power of his drill-press gaze on Temple. "The murder is . . . under control, Miss Barr. This interview concerns that skit you wrote for the Gridiron."

"My Gridiron skit? You've got to be--" She decided not to accuse the man of kidding again.

He didn't look like he had a sense of humor large enough to permit a discreet chuckle.

None of them looked particularly amused. Temple glanced from one sober official face to the next, searching for a quirk of the humanity that she knew had to be there. It was absent without leave in every case.