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

Apparently it was her self-appointed task to stand and wait upon these strapping he-men at large."

"Anyway, the . . . rider emerged slowly from the stage left wings--our right as we look toward the proscenium--bareback and bare a lot else, on the Appaloosa.

"He really milked the moment," Temple went on in appreciative remembrance and review. "It was a pretty stunning presentation: the bare horse and the almost-naked warrior atop it. The horse headed for stage center and the runway. I don't know if he was guiding it at that point, because any signals he'd have given would have been imperceptible, a mere tightening of leg muscles."

"You ride?"

"No, but I was a teenage girl once, and we go horse-crazy for a time. We learn these things, you know."

Molina's professional facade fractured into a wry smile. "I do know. I'm supposed to somehow fit a horse on a city lot, never mind the codes."

Temple guessed the horse fancier was the lieutenant's awkward preteen daughter, Mariah.

"Have you ever considered miniature donkeys?" Temple asked in all seriousness.

"I meet enough of them in my work," the policewoman an-swered pointedly, her cobalt eyes flashing blue steel.

Temple swallowed and accepted the admonition in silence. Back to story time, although she hated reliving those awful moments when Cheyenne's act was revealed as an act of violence. She recalled the so-short moments when she assumed Cheyenne was doing exactly what he wanted to be doing, instead of dying.

"A fabulous entrance, as I said. He looked magnificent, except I thought he was drawing out the strong, silent type image a bit too long." She grimaced. "Then he slipped sideways, and before we all could see it wasn't a dismount but something more ... deadly, I saw paint, red paint on the Appaloosa's snow-white hindquarters, red paint running down its gray side. War paint, I thought at first. What a great dramatic touch, I thought. Then I realized ... what it must really be."

"The folks smoking in the foyer said you were the first to notice that something was wrong, that you ran right for the body. The little red-headed gal,' they said. I knew that was you even before we walked into the theater."

"I didn't run to 'a body.' I ran to help someone who looked ill. I didn't see the arrow until I got there, and by then he was falling back on it." She winced again, picturing Cheyenne's own weight driving death more deeply into his body.

Molina was less dramatic and more practical. "Too late by then. The wound was probably mortal before he even appeared on stage."

"You mean we were all watching a dead man?"

"Deep stab wound can do that: turn the walking wounded into a walking corpse for a few seconds. In this case a riding one."

"The worst part," Temple said, almost to herself, "is that Cheyenne wanted to talk to me about something last night, and I... I brushed him off."

"Cheyenne? You knew the deceased?" The last sentence was a definite accusation.

"Knew him? Not really. I did meet him, once, when I was doing PR for the stripper competition a few weeks ago, that's all. He said hello last night."

"And wanted to talk to you?"

"Don't sound so incredulous, Lieutenant. According to Electra and my Aunt Kit, I'm surrounded by a sea of eligible men all panting to get me off on a desert island. They thought he was hitting on me."

"An Incredible Hunk candidate? And you didn't make time for him?"

"I don't like to be hit on; I was busy; I didn't believe them any-way. Besides, I think he may be--

have been--bisexual."

Molina's eyebrows rose. Such a juicy detail, if true, increased the pool of possible suspects and the range of motives considerably. "Any basis for this insight on the late Cheyenne's sexual preferences?"

"Female intuition, but I must admit that my instincts about men have been a little off-kilter lately."

"Funny, I thought that condition was chronic."

Temple refused to rise to that bait.

"Did you ever get the gentleman's full, or real, name?

"No. I just met him for a few minutes both times. I'm sure the pageant organizers have stat sheets on the entrants."

"And exitor." Molina eyed the crime scene again over her shoulder. "A horse. Of course. And I will want to question Electra Lark and your aunt Kit Carlson later. Who are those women over there?"

Temple twisted her neck around to look. Perhaps sixteen well-dressed, middle-aged women sat in a whispering cluster, looking like the ladies' garden society transplanted to a murder mystery set.

"Danny might know."

"Danny?"

"Dove. Danny Dove."

"Of course," Molina said with the same fatalistic politesse. Her blue eyes focused on Temple as if wondering if a concentrated stare could set her red hair on fire. "Are you sure that there isn't something else you want to tell me?"

"About the murder?"

"About any little recent event worth noting.

"The only recent event in my life isn't little," Temple said. "Unless witnessing a man die counts as a triviality."

"I was thinking more of witnessing a man coming back from the dead," Molina said cryptically.

She twisted her head over her shoulder. "Not him, that's certain. He was ... beautiful. I wonder if he would have won?"

"Somebody killed him over the pageant?"

"Certainly did stop his act cold. You can go now. Just tell your errant chums to stop by later. I'll deal with you then. We'll be here all day."

"Danny will have a fit. He literally has only days to put the show together."

"The show must go on, but only after my murder investigation." She pointed a forefinger in Danny's direction.

Temple didn't argue; she figured Danny would be doing plenty of that very soon. She passed him in the aisle as he came forward.

"Who are the Babes in Boyland?" Temple whispered, tilting her head to the ladies on the aisle as they crossed paths like doomed ships in the night.

"Author escorts for the boychicks. They were supposed to rehearse their walk down the runway."

No more could be said in flight, but Temple eyed some of the Reigning Heads of Romance as she skated past. A thoroughly respectable lot, most the farther side of forty or fifty. That didn't surprise her. From what she had learned of the publishing industry during the American Booksellers Convention last spring, any author under seventy was lucky to be well-established, so slow and frustrating was the climb to even moderate success.

And Electra was a newcomer at sixty-something! Better that Temple herself should try her hand at becoming the next. . . Cella Savage. At least she had a few decades to burn, and from the suspended state of her love life at the moment, she would probably be better off writing about romance than attempting to commit it. Wait! How about writing about murder committed at a romance convention? No, death and desire didn't mix, except in real life.

Lieutenant Molina was amazing. By five-thirty, when Temple returned with an excited Electra and Kit in tow, she looked no different than she had that morning.

The trio sat in some front row seats. Most of the people were gone, except for a few union stagehands who were being interviewed up front by another pair of plainclothes detectives.

Yellow crime scene tape made a crazy-quilt pattern from stage left, down to a music stand set on the runway solely to serve as a turning point for the tape, and up to center stage again.

All that garish tape marked off an absence now: no horse, no corpse. Temple suspected the crime scene technicians had come and gone, along with the body bag brigade. She wondered if the horse had been dusted for prints.

"He fell there?" Kit's eager contralto could carry all the way up to the stage flies, and did.

"No, farther back. Upstage, they call it." Molina followed her voice out from the wings, stage right, of course, and walked along the tape and down the runway. Her height, weight of office and slow, flat-footed tread made her progression seem more of a dirgelike drag than a walk. Certainly it was not the high-spirited romp the runway had been erected to sponsor.