Douglas, Nelson - Cat in a Flamingo Fedora

"Personal assistant," Temple repeated, writing and remembering. "I really should contact her. Where would she be now that he's . . . dea d."

"Why, his office, I expect. Tidying up the files for the widow."

"Office? Where?"

"He appeared here so often that he maintained a small Strip office. Somewhere on Charleston. Surely you have assistants yourself who can look it up."

"That I do." Temple finished her Clamato drink and shut her notebook.

"I'll buy you another Bloody Mary," he said, pointing, obviously uneager for the interview to end.

"Thanks, but I must get to work. I'll just poke around backstage, if you don't mind. Interview the 'little people' who are so often overlooked in media biographies."

"Excellent idea! Our set is just crammed with the little people -- crew and hoofers and floor-sweepers. If you want an overview, don't hesitate to come to me."

"I won't," Temple promised as sincerely as he had offered.

When she rose, Aldo slipped into her seat.

"I would like a Bloody Mary," he told the director, deadpan.

Obviously, Aldo considered his next assignment to be keeping this camera-hound out of her way while she snooped around. Manny Kurtz was in fine (and persistent) Italian hands for at least forty-five minutes.

*******************

Once in the theater itself, Temple mentally changed identities and brought forward a new rank of half-lies.

"Where's the cat?" an idle dancer called as she approached the stage.

"Resting at home like a movie star." She climbed the few steps to the stage. The empty staircase reminded her of Midnight Louie's almost-tumble down those homicidally long risers . .

. could the cat have tripped on something? The next person down that stairway would have been Darren Cooke.

"I've enjoyed watching the company rehearse," she told the marooned dancer, crossing to where he lounged in the wings.

That was an old theater person for you: she "crossed" the stage, didn't "walk."

He nodded. "Would have been a good show with Darren. It'll be great with Caesar."

"Was Mr. Cooke ... uneasy at all before his death? Did the average co-worker have any suspicion about what was coming."

"Co-worker? We were just the chorus. He did seem a little withdrawn for Darren Cooke, the world's first wild and wonderful guy. I noticed that he played footsie with the blond chick with the cat commercial, but he didn't seem too pleased about it."

"Darren Cooke pretending to be interested in women?"

"In that woman, anyway. Hey, she was a silicone babe; I don't blame the guy. You seemed to be more his type."

"Me?" Temple hoped she didn't look as guilty as she felt.

"So how come you're asking about all this?"

She sighed. "I'm helping a friend with a book." True, although in the future. "It looks at true-life situations that end in death." Half-true. "Nobody can figure out why he killed himself. I'm looking for a little insight. And, then, I actually met him during the commercial shoot. I'm an ex-reporter. I guess I'm like everybody else. I want to know why."

"Guy had it all. Model wife. Kid. Money enough for a nanny to look after the kid, which is the best part. His show was going to do well. Gangster's is a great venue. I can't figure it."

"Nobody ever--"

"Ever what?"

"I know you've just been around for this show, but did one of his ex-girlfriends or one-night stands get ugly about her built-in obsolescence?"

"Nobody I ever heard of, and the hoofers hear a lot about the headliners, believe me. Except that Ashleigh bombshell. I saw them coming out of his dressing room, arguing about someone.

Drew, that was it. The name! By God, I remembered it."

The dancer straightened his spine and grew an inch in an automatic physical expression of his psychological exuberance.

"Do you suppose that's important? That he and this Ashleigh woman were arguing about some other woman named Drew. Could be a last name, or a first name. What do you think?"

That everybody thinks he's a detective , Temple told herself sourly.

"Should I tell the police?"

"I doubt it. I'm going to look around during break. Thanks."

She walked backstage, imagining this sudden windfall of information getting to Lieutenant Molina. She imagined Molina finding out that the "Drew" under discussion was "Nancy."

And finally, of course she'd realize, that the person was her, Temple Barr. She couldn't help wincing as she thumped down the narrow backstage stairs to the dressing rooms below.

Chapter 28

Dressing the Part

If Temple knew how to do anything, it was how to schmooze up theater people, especially crucial backstage personnel.

Like support staff in any endeavor, these folks were often taken for granted or even snubbed by visiting stars. For a little attention and commiseration, they could tell a lot about the stellar personalities with whom they had passing, but intimate, contact.

So Temple spent the next hour gossiping with Mike the stage doorman, the janitor, a few more lingering chorus members who weren't needed until the next number and the all-important hairdresser and costumer.

"I had standing instructions to let any pulchritudinous females into Mr. Cooke's dressing room," Mike admitted.

"Pulchritudinous? He really said that?"

"No, I said that."

It soon came out that Mike, at seventy, was studying English at the University of Nevada to make up for a scanted education (in sixth grade he had dropped out to help support his family).

"Really?" Temple asked, not knowing anybody who hadn't been forced to go through high school, and often college. "What could you do at age . .. eleven or twelve?"

"It was the Depression. Lots of things. You don't want to know."

Though Mike looked like a stunt double for Santa Claus, with his trimmed white beard and trifocal glasses, Temple took him at his word. In Las Vegas, the Capital of Present Tense, you often don't want to know people's past lives.

"So, did any of these pulchritudinous females slither on in?"

"You didn't," Mike said gallantly. "But that Hollywood harpy sure did."

Temple almost purred. Mike's English classes were making him quite a hand with a cutting phrase. "You mean Savannah Ashleigh, who's managed single-handedly to raise her breast measurement to match her IQ?"

Mike had to think that one through, but then he grinned, showing some black holes where teeth should have been. "That's the she-devil herself. Boy, did they carry on in there! Mr. Cooke always looked very cranky after she came shooting on out. The only rendezvous those two were having was in the boxing ring."

Temple paused to contemplate the lovely notion that Savannah Ashleigh had been Darren Cooke's Sunday midnight visitor, and had driven him to suicide ... or helped him leave the planet in the guise of suicide.

But why? "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned," was a pretty good motive. No other woman had gone ballistic when the affair was over, but Savannah had the temper of a born pouter. She might have been hanging onto him like a piranha.

"Anyone else?" Temple asked. "Females, I mean."

"That trim little personal assistant of his. Great gams."

"I hadn't noticed, but then I'm not supposed to. I saw her at his Sunday brunch. She seemed almost fanatically all business."

"That's what she did here. In and out in five minutes, and the same stiff, stern look on her mug. She never even nodded to me as she went by, just trundled past with her briefcase and papers."

"And?"

Mike frowned and adjusted his pistol holster in the groove beneath his Santa-jolly beer belly. "Now we're down to staff. No, wait! Some elf in a miniskirt cut up to her hair-length came in once to see him. Didn't stay long enough for any hanky-panky."