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

"They are not." Temple shuffled through the array. "They're . . . the back covers torn off romance novels! I suppose the prose is provocative: 'He was wild as the wind, a whip-lean man of uncommon strength and fierce independence who would bow to no beauty's way, but whose proud heart longed for the sweet torment of the right woman's love.' Several titles right there: Wild as the Wind . . . Bow to No Beauty . . . Beauty's Way . . . Proud Heart . . . Sweet Torment . . . The Right Woman's Love . The whole blurb is a series of bloody titles!"

"Now she's getting it." Electra looked up from the dressing table mirror, where she was performing curious rituals with mousse, an electric brush and cans of washable hair color.

Kit shook her head. " Bow to No Beauty and The Right Woman's Love are too mainstream, kid. But I didn't rip the backs off perfectly good paperbacks just so you could wax cynical about the copywriters who blurb our books. Turn over the covers and you'll see your lady rogue's gallery of author suspects."

Doing as instructed, Temple inspected the smiling faces of several naturally (or unnaturally) attractive middle-aged women. "They look like accountants' wives dressed up for New Year's!"

Kit's face squinched up. "Ooh, unkindest cut of all! We dump our eyeglasses, buy some ritzy outfit we can't afford and a new hairdo, even go to Glamour Shots to get that soft-focus, wrinkle-erasing look for our book cover photos, and you compare us gloriously dramatic romance writers to accountants' wives?

I take exception. I am not married."

"You and I are exceptions," Electra murmured from the mirror, where she was frowning at the green and blue stripes in her hair.

"What does she mean?" Temple asked.

"She's right," Kit said. "Most romance writers are disgustingly married. For years and years. To the same man. I could honestly describe them as an unprovocative lot, despite their spicy reputation in the press, which is inaccurate, as usual. We are middle-aged, middle-America, middle-of-the-road."

"And sometimes Middle-Earth," Electra added while spritzing lavender into her elfin coiffure.

"Hmmm." Temple nodded at the black-and-white faces fanned in her fingers like a hand of playing cards, all queens. "That could mean that these women all have straight-arrow husbands who might take violent exception to macho models, especially now that women authors are touring with them."

"An arrow does seem like a man's weapon," Kit agreed.

"Why?" Electra stepped away from her hair preparations, looking like an interrupted rainbow.

"Anybody can stab something, and women get lots of practice with the Sunday pork roast."

"Unless," Temple pointed out, "these are modern households where hubby does the chef work.

That's a good question, though; why an arrow?"

"It was there?" Kit looked pleased with herself.

"Yup, the arrow indeed came from Cheyenne's own quiver, but this murder must have been premeditated. Was using Cheyenne's arrow more than just handy? Was it symbolic?"

Kit's glance consulted Electra. "Is she always so existential about murders?"

"I think Temple is asking, did someone really want to stick it to him? Was it personal?"

"Murders usually are, aren't they?" Kit said. "What else would they be?" She looked shocked, which was a shame, since the expression clashed with the ultra-chic, silk-faille dinner suit she was wearing.

Temple hesitated. "Let's see. The murders I've seen were definitely done by personally involved killers, though in more than one case the murderer had never met the victim until he zeroed in for the kill."

"Then why kill them?" Kit looked even more shocked by Temple's calm dissection of a murderer's modus operandi.

"Revenge for ancient wrongs. It was good enough for the Greeks."

"I'll say. Enough to spawn dozens of endlessly long tragedies, some of which I had to appear in. On stage. In front of people."

Temple studied the photographic faces again. "Not one of these ladies looks mean enough to stab a Thanksgiving turkey with a thermometer."

"Looks are deceiving. That's why these lovely ladies are suspects." Kit plucked a cover from the crowd and held it up for Temple's closer inspection.

This woman, Temple decided, was the torchiest-looking: acres of curly blond hair like a cloudy halo, a dab of decolletage, mouth ajar in the professional model's about-to-suck-a-persimmon pose.

Kit tilted her head at the photo. "Some romance writers-- usually the younger ones who have the most natural qualifications--cultivate a sensual image. They want you to think that they could pose as the heroine of their own book covers. Maybe they occasionally delude themselves into playing that part.

This is Ravenna Rivers, the one rumored to have cozied up with the Homestead Man on tour last winter.

Her husband always escorts her at conventions, and should be here. So should the Homestead Man. By the way, her books are the 'spiciest' of the lot, with a bit much S&M for my taste."

"How much is a bit much?" Temple wanted to know.

"Any at all. Sado-masochism was more common when the sexy historical romance got hot in the seventies. A lot of overprotected women in those days didn't know what was sexy unless it came home with their husbands in a brown paper wrapper, and a lot of male pornography depicts S&M. There's less of that stuff now in historical romances, but the underground appetite for kink, and for one's own worst interests, still keeps some practitioners of the art selling lots of books."

Kit tapped another author photo, a sixtyish woman with over-styled suspiciously raven hair. "This one is rabidly opposed to the hunkification of romance cover art. Mary Ann Trenarry. She started a letter-writing campaign against model-author contracts to the publishers involved and the media. I admire her guts, because the backlash could hurt her book sales. The rumor is that she can't sell her new books to anyone. Maybe a crusader scorned would want to sabotage the pageant."

Kit selected another photo with an odd smile. "And here we have Sharon Rose, a simple woman she would have you think, who just happens to be the Rasputin of the romance industry."

"This moon-faced, grinning woman in the dated bubble cut? Mrs. Girl Scout Mother incarnate?"

Kit nodded. "Makes Shannon Little look like Cruella de Vil, doesn't she? I told you appearances were deceiving. Her books are sentimental melodramas, and her fans adore her, but in real life she's a piranha in polyester. Also the biggest bestseller in the bunch. She had her own sister, a new author at the time, drummed out of her publishing house because she didn't like the competition. Poor woman didn't sell anywhere else, either. No one has heard of Jessica Rose since."

"If this woman is that filthy rich, why on earth does she wear polyester?"

"Because it doesn't wrinkle when she travels, dummy!"

Temple eyed her aunt's smashingly simple, simply smashing dinner suit. "Yours will wrinkle like a prune. That's silk shantung, probably designer."

"Indeed. Bought off-price, of course. We poorer souls have to dress for where we want to be. Some of the folks already there wouldn't know silk if the worm came up and mugged them. There is no justice.

All the people you know who get rich never spend their money the way you would."

"At least you don't have to pine over what they've got," Elec-tra said briskly. She turned her Technicolor head from side to side. "What do you think? As an aspiring writer, I want to get noticed at the opening ceremony, but is this too much?" Before either Temple or Kit could reply, Electra posed her real question: not if, but how much. "Should I blend the edges or go for the shock effect?"

"Blend the edges," Temple and Kit replied as one.