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

"If Cheyenne was struck backstage, how could he ride out and continue his act?"

"He didn't." Molina indicated the ceiling above the audience. "The routine called for him to shoot an arrow through the balloon."

Temple searched the dim heights, puzzled until she spotted a huge, heart-shaped red-foil balloon attached to a lighting fixture. "Pretty spectacular trick. I suppose a spotlight would hit the heart for the actual pageant."

Molina nodded grimly. "With the stage crew's concerned with the heart's placement and lighting, nobody backstage paid attention to what riveted the people in the audience: the victim and his horse.

Whoever stabbed him backstage with the arrow, a broad-head steel-tipped one more than sufficient for the job, knew that the shock of the blow, directed at a man who was keyed up for a performance, would virtually immobilize Cheyenne until the horse took him out on stage. There, massive internal bleeding enervated him, and he tumbled to the stage, the arrow in his bow never released. He was dead before anybody reached him."

Temple felt a chill. "So I'm not a suspect."

"Not if you were standing mid-aisle, gawking, in the presence of a witness."

"And Cheyenne was as good as dead the moment he passed the teaser curtains?"

"Exactly. A very clever attack, but risky. I have to hope that someone saw the perpetrator doing something out of character."

Temple nodded, then watched the policewoman plod up the stairs and down the long runway toward the stage proper. Molina always moved like a military tank. Maybe Temple wasn't used to large women. Or maybe Molina lacked grace. Temple favored the latter explanation.

"Don't stand and gawk when you can sit," a voice urged from the empty seats.

She didn't like being reminded of what she was doing when Cheyenne was dying, and turned with irritation to the empty auditorium seats behind her. Not all empty.

A hunk sprawled on a fifth-row seat, long blue-jeaned legs and cowboy boots thrust into the aisle. His western shirt was cut close and buttoned tight where it wasn't open to the chest hairs at their most profuse. No wonder they called this the Incredible Hunk pageant; all the entrants looked as imminently ready to split their seams as the comic books' Incredible Hulk himself.

A long, narrow woman wearing the same western uniform sat beside this particular edition of hunkdom like a feminine twin.

Temple took his suggestion--especially since she was wearing her smashing, red but uncomfortable, resale-shop Charles Jourdans--by perching on the seat-arm across the center aisle from the Deadwood duo.

"Troy Tucker." The man's hand extended for a hearty shake. "This here's my wife Nance."

Nance just nodded. She had a long, frizzy palomino ponytail and a face born to be freckled.

"I work for the hotel," Temple said, adding several yards of hemp to Molina's rope of misconception.

"I'm trying to get a feel for the contest. PR, you know."

Both of them unconsciously tensed, as if suddenly on stage.

"This is our third," Nance said in the same soft country drawl as her husband.

"Great! You can fill me in on everything. What's it like?"

They exchanged glances. He spoke. "Wahl, it's mighty like a rodeo, ma'am. Standin' around behind the scenes, gettin' in line, gettin' the adrenaline up for your few seconds in the spotlight and hopin' that nothin' out there throws ya. At least here you don't get horse hockey in yer bootheels."

Temple laughed, as she was meant to, and kicked up a high heel to indicate just how deeply she might sink in the stuff if it were around. "Maybe I would have been in deep doodoo ... if I'd been around when Charlie Moon was killed."

A new tension coiled both figures.

"How'd he get that huge horse in here anyway?" she went on.

"Simple as cow pies, ma'am," Troy said. "Unload 'im out back, at the hotel loading dock. Take 'im down in the freight elevator and bring 'im back up in the stage elevator, the one behind the scenes."

"How do you know all this?"

"Shoot, ma'am. I helped with the critter."

"Then you knew Charlie."

Husband and wife consulted glances again. Both their eyes seemed permanently narrowed, maybe from regarding distant, bright Western horizons, maybe from natural skepticism.

"We did," Nance said at last. "From the previous pageant. And he had done some rodeo, too."

"Rodeo! Really?"

"Naw, not really. Local kid stuff, years ago," Troy said. "Just enough to ride that pony on stage and look like Cochise. Sharp shtick."

"So was the arrow that stabbed him."

Nance winced, but Troy never stirred, his thumbs hooked in his hip-hugging belt, fingers arrowed toward the tight crotch of his jeans.

"Real thing, too," he said.

Given his pose, Temple had to resist a double take as well as a double entendre. "What do you mean

'real'?"

Troy ducked his curly cowboy head. "Shoot, it was an old arrow, that's all. Artifact, you could say.

Charlie got the whole getup from a place out on the highway that deals in genuine Indian gear. Not so old it would be in a museum, but collectors' stuff."

"Why do you think he was killed?"

"Who knows? Could have been jest about any reason. I figure it for an impulse thing. Somebody saw him alone backstage waiting to go on and grabbed the arrow, then, whoomph." Troy's fist made an effective, thrusting gesture.

"But if Cheyenne was on the horse, the killer would have to be eight feet tall."

"Hey, the police know all that angle-of-entry stuff. Anyway, there's a whole elevated ramp section backstage. Anyone standing on it would be in great shape to do in ole Charlie."

Temple let her expression curdle. "How awful to think of him riding out on stage, already wounded.

And his career ... I hear he had done some work in Europe even."

Troy shifted in the seat, creating a scrape of denim and creak of leather belt. "Yeah, well, Charlie Moon's look does okay in Europe. He could do greased-back hair and Armani suits. Me, I'm too all-American to get much work overseas. It might mean good money, but that there jet set is an unhealthy crowd, kind of corrupt. Nance is just as glad I do my modeling at home."

She nodded seriously.

"You don't mind your husband up on stage, getting ogled by hundreds of women?"

"Honey, that's fine with me. We're married. He's been around both loose and hitched, an' I figure he knows enough to keep away from anything too sticky. This pageant is pretty harmless stuff. These ladies jest like to look. Most of 'em would faint dead away if one of these guys put a real move on em."

"Most?"

Nance shrugged. Temple noticed that her shoulders were broad for a woman. If a raised walkway had run alongside where Cheyenne sat astride his horse, his attention focused on controlling the animal and his imminent entrance, anyone--including a woman--could have struck down at his bare back with the assistance of gravity.

"Are you so sure all of these women are so innocent? Really?" Temple pushed for an answer. "Have you never heard of any hanky-panky between the cover models and the women, whether fans or authors?"

"Hey, stuff happens," Troy said. "We don't know for sure, and we don't want to know. We just do our thing."

"How bad can it be? Some of the guys bring their wives along."

Nance's fingers toyed with the pearlized buttons on her half-open shirt front.

She wasn't a shy sort of filly, either, Temple thought. The Tuckers were two of a kind: above-average attractive and used to showing, using, enjoying it. Their behavior wouldn't threaten each other.

Nance said as much. "Why would the guys bring wives along if they were up to anything special?"

"Especially murder." Temple rose suddenly, dropping her weight to her feet.

The pair jumped as if she had snapped a whip.