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

"A world did, and you know what? He didn't have anything there to boost."

"Whatever. Maybe me and the other dud--as opposed to stud--just want to say . . . hey, regular guys can be romantic too."

"What about Cheyenne? Was he a prime contender? Was he going to win?"

Jake's shaggy head shook. "Who knows? He had all the right stuff--and seemed hip enough, but... he never gave me a clue about himself. He came storming in, one of the last contestants to arrive, fresh off some transatlantic flight, smelling of first class. I hated his washboard guts."

"What does first class smell like?"

"Leather and champagne and stewardess. He plunked down a couple of duffle bags--as you saw from his costume, there wasn't much of it; all he needed otherwise was a tux, jeans, spray mousse and his Evian water. What a guy!"

"Knowing a murder victim should enliven your act."

"Sure. I can say all the cover hunks were knocking each other dead."

"You really think the murder is going plural?"

Jake's genial, flaccid face--he had a good old gray gelding look--tightened with alarm. "Shit, I hope not! I didn't enlist for hazardous duty with no pay. Waggling your tush for a few hundred screaming women shouldn't be a terminal offense."

Temple sat at Cheyenne's vacant place, lost against the mirror's reflected burgundy curtains. Even traveling light, Cheyenne carried more hair accessories than Temple kept on her whole cosmetics shelf at home. She picked up a small sleek aluminum canister of mousse, as compactly packaged as Mace. It felt full. She set it down quickly, imagining how many times a living Cheyenne could have still used it.

"Nobody came for his things but the police," Jake noted. "The duffle bags with his clothes and stuff. I glimpsed an electric shaver, a fancy blow dryer, some foreign magazine, French or Italian. They left the glop."

He nodded at the slick array of bottles and canisters. "Maybe someone killed him for single-hairedly doing in the ozone layer."

Temple touched another of the aluminum soldiers on parade. "These are pump-sprays, not aerosol containers. All politically correct. He wasn't hurting anything."

"He must have been hurting somebody's chances, or why kill him?"

"It doesn't have to be a pageant rival. Take your pick of possible killers: a jealous lover; an ex-lover of a new lover; a would-be lover spurned. Maybe even a terminally irritated author who hates cover hunks getting all the attention and the money."

"The authors hate these guys?"

"Maybe I exaggerate, but many of these women have labored for peanuts book after book. To see some pretty boy walk off with big bucks for standing around buck naked for an hour might be a trifle aggravating. It's a theory."

"Holy hair-mousse!" Jake flattened his hands on his dressing table top, as if about to spring himself into orbit. "It's bad enough to sashay out in your skivvies in front of hundreds of screaming women, but to think that some of them might be screaming for your blood--! That's gruesome."

"Cheyenne was killed at the first rehearsal, not at the pageant, but all sorts of suspects were around that morning: fellow contestants--"

"I didn't do it," he screamed melodramatically, going down on his knees. "You know I'd never win no matter who I eliminated. I could off the entire lot and still lose. I'm innocent, I tell you, innocent."

Temple refused to be distracted by theatrics. Comics were always on, always improvising. It didn't make them the world's most astute witnesses. She wondered what Molina had made of this guy, while continuing to tick off suspects on her autopsy-red fingernails.

"And stage crew. Then don't forget the fans... you know, those pudgy, eminently overlookable sweet midlife ladies who volunteer to help you hunks shake your tushies into those skin-tight pants. Demented fans are not unknown in the entertainment biz. Several lady authors were milling around too, trying to figure out who they'd escort on the big night."

"None were milling around me," Jake reported glumly, pushing himself back into the folding chair.

"Listen." Temple leaned forward on her chair--Cheyenne's chair--and nailed him with a dead-serious look. "I know life is a cabaret, my friend, but even a professional jokester must occasionally notice more than how his jokes are going over. Cheyenne was worried enough about something to want a tete-a-tete with me the night before he died. Why? Because I'm a PR person? Because I work the hotels and conventions, know the scene? Or because I've been involved in solving a few murders."

"You? Cute little cheerleader-type you?" Jake's naturally pallid face had turned a lighter shade of gray. "Involved in murders?"

"Only indirectly."

"I should hope so!"

"So tell me something that will help me understand what Cheyenne tried to tell me and couldn't.

Because I wasn't listening to him that night. You shared this cramped space for what, twenty-four hours? You must have heard, seen something significant."

Jake shrugged and made a face. "Just the usual. He came in, fighting jet-lag with that kind of show-biz energy you can call on to keep going no matter what."

"Not drugs?" Temple thought of another motivation: a new, exciting jet-set lifestyle running on speed and sex appeal. . . maybe even smuggling.

Jake's headshake was final. "Naw. I can tell the difference between a two-hundred-dollar high, a Java jag and Mother Nature's freebies. I've done it, run on the dead certainty of performing. That's what he was high on: doing this pageant and coming out good." Jake's serious voice sank into a Brando drone.

"He coulda been a contendah--"

Interviewing a professional comic was like opening a bag filled with cartoon characters all screaming to get out at once. Temple nodded, encouraging Jake to say more.

"Man, he had energy, though. Made me feel my age, and I don't like to get that personal with myself.

You should have seen him, dashing out to handle last-minute details. He got that horse here without tipping anybody off but a pal or two. He wanted to surprise the other contestants, too. He wanted 'em all to know he had a leg up on them. Get it? 'Leg up'? Horse?"

"I get it. So he did have business to take care of once he got here. He could have left the hotel and seen--or been seen by--almost anybody."

Jake nodded solemnly. "He did act. . . abstracted, though, rehearsal morning. He dashed out with one of his duffle bags, and when he came back, he kinda threw it in a corner as if he didn't like what was in it. Like it wasn't really part of him. Now that you nag me to death about it, he acted a little schizy. Even asked me to run out and get him a Pepsi, when he'd been guzzling nothing but Evian water. He was--"

"Worried?"

"Maybe. Or maybe he wanted to get rid of me for a while. When I came back, he didn't say much.

Just grabbed his stage kit, stood up in that skimpy outfit, what would you call it--teeny weeny loincloth and itty bitty medicine bag and great big quiver on his back, which come to think of it, was a hell of a phallic symbol. Lord, that would make the ladies quiver! I guess, looking at him as Navaho Joe, I knew my chances had been shot in the heart." Jake's arms spread wide to display his unremarkable body in its unremarkable clothes. "What's to say?"

"You've got nerve," Temple admitted. "I bet the ladies will love you, especially the hunky-cover-model haters."

"The ladies, God bless 'em, love a lot of guys like me. These studly types with mammoth muscles are just window dressing. For looking at, not into."

"Perfect Kens," Temple mused. "As in Ken and Barbie." She recalled Matt's dislike of his own good looks for the superficial attention they brought him. "Still, beautiful people have real feelings. And fears.

Somebody must have feared Cheyenne--Charlie Moon--enough to kill him."