Douglas, Nelson - Cat in a Flamingo Fedora

Temple put her shod feet atop the glass-topped coffee table, a rare desertion of decorum for her, and began skimming the two papers. She almost never got behind on her daily reading.

"Oh, Lordy, they're going to put up another megahotel and casino. Will this flagrant imitation of distant landmarks never end?"

Louie blinked and flattened his ears as she looked at him.

"I agree with you, boy. It's too much to keep up with. My Jersey Joe Jackson plans already sound like small potatoes, and I haven't even had time to write up a detailed proposal for the project. Nicky and Van are being very patient. If they knew I was out consorting with flamingos--!

"Hmm. Another drug bust on the north side."

She switched to the evening paper, scanning the front page, STAR FOUND DEAD IN HOTEL ROOM

caught her eye, but not as much as the word FLAMINGO in a below-the-fold headline.

Reading the bottom half, she saw that Domingo's first flamingo installation was already making waves. Vandals had removed or paint-spattered some already in place. Some Vegasites were calling them "an eyesore."

Well, Vegasites ought to know!

The police expressed concern that such a massive flocking of the plastic beasts would cause traffic accidents. And Domingo was quoted--she had to follow the jump to page six--as saying that the installation was intended to have an impact on casual spectators. That was the entire point of outdoor art. Were billboards distracting to drivers? No.

"A front-page jump story. Not bad, Domingo."

She was not the one who had gotten the coverage; her job, for once, did not include that.

Maybe Domingo was naturally newsworthy. Doing something loony in this town, even if you tried to dignify it by calling it "art," always caught the media eye.

Temple set the paper on the coffee table, so she'd remember to clip the story later, then recalled the tantalizing headline on the top half. What aging performer had died with his feet on the stage this time?

She retrieved the front page, flipped to the above-the-fold stories, and scanned the text.

When the name "Darren Cook" (they'd omitted the terminal "e"; so much for stardom) leaped at her, she jumped to her feet so suddenly that Louie, in midtoecurl, snagged her shorts. Temple didn't care.

She was reading avidly. "... found today after noon by a hotel maid." Then he died... "Police estimate death occurred after midnight Sunday." But, she had just seen him Sunday noon! "...

bullet to the head." Oh my! "Evidence of a last visitor, but the scene suggested suicide to the preliminary investigator, said a police source who declined to be identified."

Oh, yeah, the always-unreliable phantom source.

"Suicide!" she squeaked in disbelief at Louie, who looked utterly indifferent to her parroted revelations.

Why would a man as egotistical as Darren Cooke kill himself? Even if he were unnerved by letters from an unknown daughter? Even if he needed reassurance so much that he had hit on her, Temple.

Who had turned him down. Had she underestimated his sense of desperation? No! No.

Famous men did not commit suicide because little old her had rebuffed a seduction attempt.

Maybe no one had rebuffed him before. Maybe the letters had broken down his self-regard.

Maybe she was to blame.

Temple sat down again, slowly, forgetting to look for Midnight Louie. Forgetting Midnight Louie entirely, until his indignant howl as she squashed him reminded her to jump up again. She read the story once more, but the body had been discovered (by whom?) too late for many details to make today's newspaper.

What about Gangster's revue, she wondered? And the A La Cat commercial built around it?

She should call the director and see if tomorrow's location shoots were still on.

Temple scurried for the phone, the folded paper still in her hand. But when she began dialing, she found she was punching in Matt's number. Four-fifteen. He should be home. He should have about forty-five minutes before he left for work.

"Matt," she began as soon as the receiver was lifted. "There's been terrible news. Could you come down and help me interpret it? I'm pretty amazed, and dazed."

"News?" he asked. "From your family?"

"No, no, nothing personal. Not really. More professional. I just don't know what to make of it."

"I'll be right down," he promised, obviously having given up on getting any details over the phone.

Temple wandered to her door, reading the short article for a third time. She still shook her head in disbelief. She had seen the man only a bit more than twenty-four hours ago. It was hard to picture him dead. And if the suicide theory fell through, would anyone from the brunch remember that she had been closeted in his bedroom with him? Temple winced. What a compromising position. She wondered if she should have called a lawyer rather than an ex-priest.

Matt's knuckles rapped once and she had the door open.

"Thank you for not ringing the bell! I think it would have sent me up the wall. Here's the paper. That's the article. Come sit down, then tell me what you think."

He read as he walked, his white-blond brows knit into a small frown. Absently he bumped into the coffee-table leg, then just as absently compensated his direction to stumble around it to the sofa, where he sat.

This time Midnight Louie, also frowning, skittered away before anyone else treated him like a seat cushion.

Matt sat without incident, still reading, or rereading, the article. He looked up to find Temple sitting on the edge of the next cushion.

"This is the performer at Gangster's," he said.

She nodded gravely. "Imagine. I actually sort of knew the man. I almost feel guilty for turning down his proposition."

Matt looked shocked, perhaps as much by the circumstances as the fact of Temple's association with Darren Cooke.

"Look. He'd asked for my help."

"You never said what kind of help."

"Mystery-solving of a sort. Anyway, he took me into the bedroom."

"You went? And you never mentioned the bedroom before."

"He said he had something to show me."

"Etchings? Temple, I may have been out of the swing of things for years, but even I've heard of that old ploy."

"Oh, the proposition was probably just an afterthought. A tension-reliever after the main course proved unpalatable. Because he did have so mething pretty serious to show me. I guess I can tell you now."

"What?"

"I don't know whether to call them blackmail letters, or threatening letters. They were from a young woman who claimed to be his daughter. As far as he knew, he'd never fathered a child, but given his impressive list of women seduced, it's possible one gave secret birth to a child."

"What did this ... child want?"

"Hard to say if it was recognition, or money eventually. She seemed disturbed. It's even possible she's an adoptee who fantasized that Darren Cooke was her father."

"So how could you help him?"

"I couldn't. Or I did, by telling the truth. I told him this was a job for the police, or for a discreet private detective. He didn't want to hear that. When I tried to leave, he suggested I stay for horizontal consultation."

She glanced apologetically at Matt. "I'm sorry I didn't take your own recent encounter with seduction more seriously. Women get to expect it, but in this case I found it insulting. I mean, I shouldn't have; there I was, this nobody turning down this famous performer. Except I felt used; that pretext about me helping him, it was all so manipulative. I think he would have gladly taken any solid suggestions I had. But the bottom line was still... my bottom line."

Matt smiled. "You warned me that I was unlikely to correctly interpret Janice's motives. Now I'll tell you the same thing. Sounds like Darren Cooke was under a lot of pressure. I'd bet he wasn't as debonair a proposer as usual."