Douglas, Nelson - Midnight Louie 05-Cat in a Diamond Dazzle

"Easy, easy." Electra patted Kit's shoulder. "The reviewers didn't much care for Waller either.

Speaking for myself, I can hardly wait to get back to the hotel and start my contest romance. But, say,"

she added, guiding Kit into the slipstream of tourists, "maybe I should consider using a male pseudonym now--"

Temple trailed them, momentarily immune to such issues as men and romance and money-making schemes. She was pondering where she should search for the Midnight Louie shoes next.

One woman's passion is another woman's feet.

Chapter 11

Blue Dahlia Bogey Boogie

Lieutenant Molina wouldn't have housed a homicide suspect in it, but Carmen loved her tacky dressing room at the Blue Dahlia.

It was only a large storage closet that the management had dedicated to her use. She had furnished it with a battered '30s Goodwill dressing table, the film-noir kind with a big round mirror centered between two low pillars of drawers. The maintenance man had scrounged a couple strips of makeup lights to act as sconces on either side.

A matching bench was too low for her height, and the lighting looked better than it lit, but the forties nightclub dressing-room ambiance tickled her fantasy. When she got out the Carmen paraphernalia, she felt like a big girl playing a little girl playing dress up.

The act of singing under a spotlight, however tiny the stage, the ritual of assuming another persona and then losing herself in the lyrical landscapes of the great old songs, these were all creation and recreation to her. She never changed clothes and left right after a performance. Instead, she sat and drank the whiskey and soda Rudy always had waiting on the blue-mirrored glass atop the dressing table.

She hummed some Gershwin, thought of nothing and everything, and replayed the music in her mind.

She was lucky to have this romantic escape from the realities of her profession.

She studied herself in the mirror. Lieutenant Molina didn't look in mirrors, but Carmen could, being a creature of smoke and illusion. Matt Devine's comment that her Carmen persona provided a playground for a policewoman's sensual side floated to the forefront of her thoughts.

Her mirror image rolled her eyes. How weird for an ex-priest to express such an intimate insight!

Even now she felt slightly embarrassed, whether by the remark's source or its truth, she wasn't sure. But Devine had used the dry, dispassionate tones of a trained counselor, and his perception was probably true.

Some women who went into police work, especially on the patrol level, reveled in the ultra-feminine: long nails, bleached hair, hard-edged makeup. That only reinforced any innate chauvinism and made the men's wives uneasy. Women hankering after careers rather than personal attention kept a rigorously neutral profile. Sure, they were called tough bitches and lezzies for it, but in time the lack of nonsense won out and won over.

So successful had C. R. Molina been at this form of defensive coloration that her showy alter ego had become something of a risk. If word of Carmen got out now, she would not like it.

She touched the signature blue dahlia, pulling a loose bobby pin from her hair and dropping it into a top drawer. The drawers, cramped and cheaply made, tended to slide awry. She bent her attention on making the drawer shut and only accomplished it with a bang.

When she looked up, she was no longer alone in the room, or the broom closet, rather.

The closed door framed a man's figure, as if he were painted on it. A professional description leaped into her mind: six-three or -four, 180 pounds, black slacks, black turtleneck sweater, black hair. Eyes indeterminate. Of course she hadn't heard or seen him come in; Michael Aloysius Xavier Kinsella was a magician, wasn't he? At least sometimes.

If his unconventional entrance was supposed to surprise or alarm her, he wasn't counting on the steadiest nerves in the LVMPD. Who did he think she was, anyway, and why was he here?

"Thanks for knocking." She lowered her eyes to the dressing table as if searching for something among the sparse accoutrements and didn't have to worry about watching him at all.

She looked up again when he pushed himself away from the door with a gymnast's ultra-controlled ease. "The situation didn't seem to call for formalities."

"What situation? Are you a fan?"

His smile was slight, and slightly mischievous. "Only since tonight."

"A new customer. Still, you could knock. We're not that hard up."

"Not if I wanted to enter unseen."

"Don't tell me. A deranged fan. I've always wanted one."

"I've always wanted an explanation."

"Of what?"

"Yourself."

"I don't see why."

"You should, Lieutenant."

"As you should know that I want an explanation of my own. But not here. I believe the expression is

'downtown.''

"I believe you have to take what you can get."

She didn't answer, never having settled for that, but well aware that he had chosen this time and place to suit his purpose.

She spun around on the bench to face him in something other than the deceptive, reflective glass-made-mirror by a dark, poisonous cloud of silver nitrate.

"So what brought you back, Kinsella, after all this time?" she asked in her usual flat, professional tones, empty even of curiosity.

"Apparently you have nothing better to do than harass Temple."

She felt humor flare when she least wanted it, but had no time to veil the impulse. "I would say that the case is just the opposite."

"You don't appear very harrassable."

"Let's say that Miss Barr has a talent for getting underfoot at the scene of a crime. Since she has never been very forthcoming about your past, present and future whereabouts, I make a point of asking whenever the occasion presents itself."

"Apparently an occasion presented itself to produce my class photo from Interpol."

She leaned back against the dressing table, resting her head in her hand, and smiled. "You know, it really is rather intriguing to be the interrogatee for a change. Is this what you did for the IRA?"

His head shook in wry disgust. "That old bureaucratic snafu means nothing, except to Temple."

"They say love is blind, but I guess it's not color-blind." She stood slowly, and tilted her head again.

"Let's see, are they green, or blue?"

"Nobody's business," Kinsella said tightly. "I had no idea the police were so interested in professional illusions. That Interpol alert was a farce when it was issued seventeen years ago, and its unconscionable ancient history now. Why brandish it in front of Temple?"

"Good psychology." She sat again, preferring to appear more casually in control. "Her idiotic loyalty to you made her a hostile witness. I needed to wake her up to the fact that I had good reason to be interested in you and your whereabouts."

"So you had to unmask me as some sort of imposter."

She shrugged. "Aren't you? I'm not one of your admiring audience, Kinsella. I'm not a gullible little girl from the Heartland. Don't expect me to buy for a moment the notion that you abandoned a lucrative performing career on an inexplicable whim. And where is all that money you made performing, anyway?

Miss Barr often struggles to pay her mortgage and monthly maintenance on her own income. Why sign her up as a co-owner if you had planned to skip out so soon?"

"Does your job allow you to sling suspicions at any passing stranger?"

"Do you think you can vanish just as a dead body is discovered on your turf and not stir up interest?"

"The Goliath is a big place, Lieutenant. That's why it's called the Goliath. The employees alone number in the thousands, not to mention guests and gamblers. Why should I have anything at all to do with that dead body of yours?"