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

This was not the sort of upscale entertaining Temple expected from a filthy rich, bestselling author.

Then she remembered Kit describing Sharon Rose's books as "nauseatingly" homey and sentimental.

Having been assigned her role and then handed her cue by Kit, Temple wrote and recited her first speech, which was not brilliant.

"Do you often attend these conferences, Mr. Herbert ... I mean, Harvey?"

"That's all right. Everybody's always getting my names mixed up. Just call me Herbert." He sighed and looked over the animated crowd, whose dominant female voices were going a mile a minute. "I just come now and again, when it's convenient. I'm on my way to do some hunting in western Canada."

Now that was more like lifestyles of the rich and famous! Canadian hunting trips, with guide, cost a bundle.

"Where do you and Mrs. Herbert live?"

"Muncie, Indiana. I was an assistant school superintendent there." He looked somewhat lost for a moment. "I'm retired now.

No need to work." He glanced again toward his wife's charmed circle, as if worried.

Temple guessed that Hervey Harbert, or whatever, was still in his forties. His wife's fame and fortune had made his entire career redundant. He stuck his hands in his pockets and smiled expectantly at Temple, waiting for her to toss back the conversational ball. She figured she'd learn more by letting him take the lead, which he did.

"Tell me about your job. Interviewing all those successful women must be interesting work."

"It is." Temple nodded brightly. "Sometimes annoying."

"Annoying?"

"Well, they're so rich and busy, and I'm just a freelance writer. I wish I could write one of these romances--"

"The pay isn't good at the beginning," he warned her. "And it's a lot of hard work in a pretty cutthroat business. Sharon has had to fight for every inch of progress she's made. She travels more than she writes."

"I don't think I'm cut out for romance writing anyway. Crime writing, now's there's an area I might go for. You did hear about the cover model murder?"

Herbert frowned and cleared his throat. "I guess they have to put those guys on the covers to sell books, but it's kind of hokey, don't you think--these prima donna musclemen? Oh, some of them seem decent enough fellows, but the women sure make idiots of themselves swooning over them."

Temple smiled conspiratorially. "I agree! It's embarrassing to see all these middle-aged women chasing the nearest pretty pectoral as if they were mainlining hormones. Shallow and silly. Pure ego-building."

Herbert blinked. He couldn't tell if Temple was putting him on or not. But he laughed, nervously, and that's when a short, plump woman with a really overcooked permanent in a shade of not-too-blond brown materialized by his side, her arm possessively through his. She was smiling, but through her teeth, and she made no effort to conceal her intense annoyance with them both.

"Thank you," she told Temple in steel-wool tones meant to rub her raw. "Thank you, miss, a mere stranger, for keeping my Herb busy while I was chatting with all my fans."

With that she jerked her entwined arm and led Herbert Harvey away like a delinquent labrador retriever brought to heel. He lumbered off faithfully.

Temple felt herself flushing, not for her masquerade, but for Sharon Rose's awful behavior to both of them. The nerve, as if Temple were some vamp trying to lure away a lawfully wedded husband just by talking to the man! As if he couldn't be trusted to be away from her uxorial claws for one minute. Why hadn't wifey-pooh bothered to include Herbert in her adoring circle, if she feared that he couldn't talk to another woman without imminent danger of seduction?

Kit cruised up, both hands brimming with goblets of white wine. "She just writes romance, remember? She doesn't necessarily know a thing about men, or marriage."

"I suppose that's an expert speaking." Temple took a glass and sipped before she forgot herself and spit. "What a-- Too bad I don't use those words about other women."

"Oh, make an exception. I know just what you mean." Kit turned to beam on the new, adjusted scene: Sharon Rose in bloom amid her admiring wreath of fans, ignored by nearby husband Herbert, who was sticking up like a transplanted stalk of hollyhock desperately in need of water, or something much stronger.

"Her Herb," Temple repeated in the same pointed, trendy tone of voice.

"Are you stuttering, dear?"

"No, I'm trying to fathom that paranoid, possessive mentality. She must be insecure."

"Brilliant deduction."

"Still, why me? A stranger. What does she do to women who actually know her?"

"Grinds them into the ground with teeth-gritted pronouncements about how they should do everything from family rearing to writing a sex scene. And she smiles every moment. She'll go after men like a pit bull, too. I've seen her trotting around conventions with a whipped-dog male agent on one side and a humiliated female editor on the other, both two steps behind. That lady has a genius for dysfunctional living, actually. That's the book she should write: How to Whip Ass and Stomp Egos for Fun and Profit. "

"I could see someone murdering her. "

"No such luck. Nor does her husband strike me as the type to knock off a cover hunk, do you think?"

"Never! Why?"

"Oh, I happened to see the sales cover flat of Sharon Rose's new book before I left New York, Satin and Sagebrush. And it was Cheyenne's last, best moment, believe me. A smashing painting of him in cowboy gear, minus shirt and pants. Her 'personal pen pal' notes on the inside back bubbled about how fun it was to witness a cover shoot with a rising star."

"Then you came here and recognized him?"

"When I saw him dead. And undressed. He was reclining on the cover."

"That's a new angle. I suppose you didn't want to tell me until I had experienced the Rose of Sharon personality close up and personal. Ouch! Do you suppose I'll have the stomach to approach her later and ask some pointed questions?"

"It depends on how badly you want to know the answers."

While they talked quietly, Temple had been vaguely aware of a civilian, a woman in a modest knit top and slacks, standing, two or three feet away, out of earshot but clearly waiting.

"Yes?" Temple said.

She approached diffidently. "I saw you talking to Miss Rose. She seems awful nice."

"Hmm," said Temple in that politely noncommittal way the British have mastered since the time of the Norman invasion.

"I'm much too nervous to ask her for an autograph. Maybe I can just ask you about her. Is she as wonderful as her books?"

The woman's eyes were shining, as was her unpowdered nose. She would never be a bestselling novelist who touted down-home virtues while she ran roughshod over other people with a cattle prod.

How do you tell hero-worshipers that their idol has feet of corrugated steel?

Temple didn't. "She was lovely, just lovely." Temple smiled.

The woman nodded and floated off to the fringes of Sharon Rose's admirers.

"A legend is born," Kit muttered. "We all know what she's really like, having felt her bite as well as her bark, but we have to hear readers coo over her as if she were a plaster saint. And she doesn't write worth a damn, either. That's show biz. No justice."

"It would be nice if Sharon Rose had murdered Cheyenne."

"Nice, but pure fiction I fear. She doesn't need to kill anyone; she shrivels their spirits while they're still living, like her poor husband."

"Opposites do attract," Temple mused as they cruised through the mob looking for the blue-green neon of Electra's hair.

"Or maybe you're attracted to opposites. Your two guys look pretty diametrically different."

"I wish you wouldn't call them 'my two guys' as if I had a harem! Everything's on hold, at the moment, with everyone. Nobody is nobody's anything."