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

"I'm sorry," he was saying, "that wasn't fair. I did that badly--"

"No! No." Temple threw her hands up in the air, then threw her arms around his shoulders. She embraced him the way Electra had welcomed Max back, sort of.

"No matter what happens," she whispered fiercely in his ear, "we will always be friends."

The fadeout from Casablanca it was not.

Chapter 3

A Fight for Love and Glory...

Winking neon from the sign outside cast pink and blue stripes into the large, darkened room. Pink for girls, blue for boys. The garish pastel light lashed many pale, motionless faces, but each time it struck Temple's cheek she blinked.

Still, the rhythmic wink of obscenely cheery neon had a hypnotic effect she found peaceful. She edged down the seat so the lucent tattoo beat across her knee instead of her face, slightly dislodging a bench partner in the process.

"Sorry," she whispered in automatic apology, though doing so was ridiculous. A Las Vegas wedding chapel, particularly one as eccentric as the Lovers' Knot, was not really a church.

Yet the silence remained profound, the atmosphere oddly serene. Pulsing neon flashed like heat lightning on the lattice archway at the room's front. Silk flowers intertwined the slats.

Temple appreciated the comfortable, well-stuffed bulk of the woman on her left. Her face under a broad-brimmed straw hat was unreservedly lumpy as well as quiet. A rhinestone beauty mark on the woman's cheekbone gleamed like a frozen tear.

Sitting among the congregation, staring at the blinking bars of light like a slot-machine junkie, made Temple feel like Goldilocks. She had found a "just right" place to be.

The side door creaked, then admitted an expanding bar of or-dinary incandescent light. Temple jumped like an experimental gerbil, then huddled against the commodious woman beside her, almost dislodging the hat.

Sorry, she didn't quite whisper aloud. She seldom found it necessary to make herself smaller than usual.

Whoever had opened the door wasn't about to stop with a quick glance around. Footsteps ground over a floor gritty from dozens of rice-strewing.

Temple watched the shadow explore the room's fringes, feeling as stupid as a kid playing the game of

"statue" and forced to hold stock still, or maybe feeling more like "It" in a game of hide and seek that she was much too old for. The longer she kept her presence quiet, the more idiotic she would look if she were discovered.

Still she said nothing, and moved no more than her neighbors.

The shadow paused by the dark hummock of the organ.

Temple bit her lip. Surely Matt hadn't come down again, perhaps seeking the same ersatz solace that she did?

The shadow, sure-footed, reached the room's ceremonial center, just an empty space meant for two, or three at most. It stopped dead center in the arch, head sweeping left and right like a spotlight.

"What on earth--?" Electra Lark's voice interrogated herself. "I never finished the Erica Kane figure that's supposed to go there. And poor old Sophie's hat has slipped."

She came scurrying down the center aisle, not about to be fooled by a living body among all these mannequins of her own making.

"It's me." Temple sat forward. The bracketing soft-sculpture people collapsed into each other behind her.

"Temple! Oh, my great-aunt Gilda's garters! You nearly scared the frost out of my hair. I thought it might be a burglar, or some sort of sex fiend."

"Just your local PR person," Temple confirmed in a foolish found-out voice.

Electra lifted the woman dubbed Sophie into the pew ahead, and then took her place on the seat, settling some papers on her lap.

"I was looking for you, I admit, but I'd given up and decided to see if everything was ship-shape here.

What are you doing in the chapel?"

"I thought it would be quiet."

"So it was ," Electra said, chuckling. "No wedding's scheduled for a week. Now, listen. I told Max he could house-sit the Kellers's condo while they're in Nova Scotia."

"Oh, Electra! That isn't fair. My condo is half his."

"He hasn't exactly been paying his half of the maintenance and mortgage lately, has he? Besides, Louie might not make him real welcome."

"Louie is not the issue."

"I know, dear. Obviously, you two need a little time--"

Temple snorted in despair at Electra's understatement.

"Anyway, the upshot is that Max wants nothing to do with the Circle Ritz. Says it's too public for him.

So you're off the hook."

"Am I?"

"For the moment. You and Max will still have to sit down and talk things over."

"And over and over . .. how do I get in such messes? I'd rather be confronting a murderer right now."

"I hope not, because that would make me a rather nasty customer, not to mention dangerous to be with alone in the dark."

"It's not quite dark."

"No, it isn't, dear, and you can't see that yet."

Electra sighed and settled against the hard seat, a human replica of the soft-sculpture figure she had dislodged.

"How did Matt take the resurrection of the Mystifying Max?" she asked.

"Like a plaster saint. So calm and so concerned about me. I could have kicked him."

"How did Max take Matt?"

"Like indigestion. Max and Louie don't get along either. I could kick them both. But since I abhor senseless violence, I think I'll relocate to Point Barrow, Alaska, instead."

"No, you won't." Electra rattled her papers. "That's why I was looking for you. That's why the chapel is closed for a week. I need a roommate for a conference I'm attending and you need to get away from all this. Best part is it starts tomorrow."

"Conference? I've had it up to here with stage-managing those events, and I can't leave town with my Crystal Phoenix renovation commitments."

"That's the beauty part. The conference is right here in town, at the Phoenix. What more could you ask for a convenient getaway? You and I can bunk at your home-away-from-home for six stress-free days and let the males in your life--Max, Louie, and Matt--rethink their absurdly territorial positions."

"Well, there's hope for Louie, but I doubt that Matt or Max will be bellying up to the bar together anytime soon. What kind of conference is this, anyway? For Justices of the Peace?"

"Hardly. A dull lot, you know. Quit sulking in the pews and come on into the light, dear."

Temple slid along the varnished wooden bench to follow Electra to the wall-hugging organ, where she fanned out her papers, then snapped on the music lamp atop the console.

"Voila!"

Temple blinked at the sudden bright light, trying to read a glossy brochure and flyer. But no text, however clever and copious, could compete with the lush four-color image of a hotly embracing, half-dressed couple.

"What kind of conference is this?" she asked suspiciously.

"G.R.O.W.L.--Great Readers Of Wonderful Literature. Just think, they're holding this year's deal right here in Vegas! At the Crystal Phoenix. Six days of glamour at a classy hotel, Crystal days and Crystal nights. Balls, banquets, cocktail receptions and lots of daytime panels on the how and why of the romance novel. All the big-time authors will attend, and the hunkiest cover models. They have a costume show, a cover model pageant, even a 'star search' writing contest for readers who want to write."

"Electra! You don't read this stuff?"

Electra inserted her muumuu between Temple and her precious papers. "It isn't 'stuff,' and I do. In fact, I plan to enter the writing contest. Why are you so sure it's junk?"

"I didn't say that. It's just that the grocery store rack romance covers are so lurid. Talk about selling raw meat."

"Not all of the covers are like that. And what's wrong with a little sensuality, anyway?"