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

Shaking her head and her bucket, Hester Polyester resumed her pursuit of the elusive jackpot.

Temple's sigh was loud enough to make several nearby heads turn, and it was hard to interrupt a slot player. She was tired of inspecting the usual bulbous brass lamps, the predictable swags of pearls, the gleaming Aladdin's lamps and seeing nothing but flashy trash. She prowled the slot machine aisles, eyeing the row of treasure chests along the casino's far wall.

What she had told Hester Polyester wasn't so wrong. She must not really want to find the shoes for some deep psychological reason. Maybe she felt she didn't deserve the shoes, or good luck. Maybe she was hooked on heels. (That last word could cut two ways, given at least one man in her life.) Maybe she was co-dependent on cool shoes and in denial about even cooler dudes. Maybe she was just a lousy treasure hunter. .. .

As she passed the second-to-the-last niche, something glittered white and bright, like a snowflake in sunlight. Temple paused. She craned her neck and went up on her toes like a vigilant meerkat again.

Silver lame fabric bunched into the corners of this display, and something in it sparkled. Star stuff.

Maybe ... a glitter that went yesteryear's rhinestones one better. Rhinestones had been named for Germany's river Rhine because they were first made there, but today's upscale Austrian crystals--made from real lead crystal rather than mere glass--had fiercer fire.

Before she thought about it, Temple had dragged a stool from a vacant slot machine and had hopped atop it. Now she was teetering on it. Now she was just high enough to lose sight of the trove's big picture, like a kid climbing for the cookie jar on the top shelf. Her nose nudged the shelf-lip. Drat, she could see the tops of everything, but nothing more.

Oops. Now her balance was going. Her fingertips curled over the ledge as she felt the stool wobble.

Temple grabbed for some of the star stuff, which was like catching at clouds. The fabric was airy, fragile, it was barely there ... it was pulling toward her as she wavered on the stool, and all the pirate plunder that rested atop it was oozing like gravid, luxurious lava to the shelf-rim above her head.

Temple's eyes winced shut, her shoulders hunched, anticipating the forthcoming downpour.

"Let go!" someone ordered her, and she did. Any port in a storm.

She felt herself tip off the stool, but someone caught her. After a little kicking and striving, she was standing on her own two Evan Picones on the floor. Her rescuer was no hoop-earred pirate bold. If she were a collector of salt and pepper shakers, she'd pair him with Hester Polyester, but she knew better.

"Eightball O'Rourke! What are you doing here?"

"I'm not doing nothing. You're the one who was assaulting the Treasure Island's ceiling. What's up?"

"That's right! I must have shifted the contents." Temple scrambled backwards, gazing up, until she could see the entire vignette again.

The treasure, looking more like junk now that it balanced on the brink, had pulled away from the silver-white material, now flat instead of fluffy. No shoe like shapes lurked behind or under it. Slack, it drooped over the trove lip, flashing a single star-shape of silver glitter.

Eightball was dragging the stool back into place. "Lucky for you security is on a rum break," he grumbled. "Messing with casino decorations is mighty suspicious behavior. You're probably on tape, close up. Let's get out of here before they make you walk the plank."

Temple did not argue.

She could barely keep up with Eightball's blue-jeaned and booted legs as he wove through the gaming area. They were soon dodging tourists through the lobby toward the building's main entrance.

"You still didn't say what you were doing here," Temple said when she caught up to him.

"Same case," he said shortly. "Only I found my way here on my own."

Temple could hardly complain, given her uncommon luck. Only two people had noticed her studying the treasure chests: Hester Polyester and Eightball. Neither was fond of hotel security. Maybe there was something to zen gambling, after all.

They broke into fading daylight through another set of skull-handled doors, reminding Temple that it was past 7:00 p.m. She glimpsed a hillside of quaint architecture and exotic landscaping to her left.

Before them a wooden walkway thronged with coming-and-going people all the long way to the Strip.

Something large loomed on her right. She looked up at yet another dinosaur of the new Las Vegas Strip--an eighteenth-century sailing ship, its sails rolled up like window shades, tucked into snug harbor against the towering cliff side of the Treasure Island Hotel. People four-deep crowded the railings on both sides.

She stopped to gawk.

"Ain't you seen the show yet?" Eightball asked.

"You mean the battling pirate ships?"

"Well, that one there's the pirate. The other one's the Royal Navy, and that comes along later."

"Who wins?"

"Wouldn't be fair telling if you ain't seen it yet."

"Is that why those rope barriers divide the bridge? To keep show-watchers separate from the traffic in and out of the Treasure Island?"

"What a gumshoe! Exactly."

"When's the next show?"

"Anytime between now and forty minutes from now." Eightball edged over to the left wooden railing to gaze down on an expanse of water lapping at the walkway's piers. "Everything's peaceful now, which means they're setting up for the next sail-bashing."

Temple joined him at the rail, which came up to her collarbones. Across the way, a large bay window framed a glint of cutlery and metal lamps. The diners at table were strictly contemporary, so she was peeking into one of several hotel eateries. But the exterior scene made a course of a far less formal flavor. Cables and barrels littered the landscape. A presumably stuffed parrot roosted on a post. A ship's female figurehead thrust out from a second story, busty enough to give the one on Caesars Palace's Cleopatra's barge an inferiority complex and a yen for a Wonderbra.

The scene was obviously a pirates' rookerie on some uncharted island.

Water licked at the bridge's support structures and lapped at the artificial lagoon's faraway edge near the Strip, where more people lined up. The scene, the water, the distant diners instilled peace in a place more noted for haste and hustle.

Temple lay her forearms on the sun-warmed wood, joining the waiters and watchers.

"Quite a show," Eightball observed. "Worth the wait."

"I suppose I'm obligated to see it, being a PR person."

He nodded.

The crowd had that air of mass expectancy found in theaters and sports arenas. What a perfect place to murder someone, Temple thought. One quick stab and away into the mob. No! Her mind was not on murder. No hunks lurked here as victim or perpetrator (unless some manned the ship), and the Treasure Island sat next to the Mirage, far from the Crystal Phoenix.

Temple noticed that the waves kissing the distant pilings were now administering slaps. Yet there was no wind, only the long slow sunset simmering at their backs.

"If we're lucky, it'll be twilight by showtime," Eightball said. "Enough light to see by, but more dangerous in the dark."

Temple shivered as she felt an imaginary breeze and watched its ghost riffle the cool water below, in which the nearby lamp reflection twinkled like a falling star. Fair wind, fiery star. Yes, the water was making waves now, small ones that snapped at the pilings, fell back and grew bigger. Was that possible in an artificial lake with little wind present? True, Las Vegas would try anything for a special effect. Did some eggbeater-like machine lurk beneath the waterline? Creepy!

Temple suddenly noticed a small wooden boat on the water, two men rowing like mad toward the bridge. Voices from the anchored pirate ship behind her urged them on. The men rowed under the bridge and vanished. Their voices ebbed.