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

And leafless and loose for the taking, which she does. My poor little doll. I have been neglecting her for the siren call of my kind. Can her state in life be so barren that she must resort to collecting dead branches as a hobby? What happened to her hankering for shoes?

Whatever the answer, I am not about to get it now.

Miss Temple discreetly brandishes her branch with a triumphant expression, then returns to confront the witch. Hey, I do not cotton to the old grouch, but there is no need to take a switch to her animated effigy!

Even as I doubt the evidence of my eyes, the green sky above the Emerald City shifts with lightning.

Thunder rumbles and glowers. I anticipate the arrival of a gaggle of security guards while the message

"Surrender Temple" is etched across the dreadful lime sky above.

Miss Temple Barr, of course, is oblivious to all but her weird task. With a last lunge forward and a terrific jerk upward on her stick, she manages to dislodge the witch's long black skirt from the ground.

Beyond it I glimpse shadow and no substance--the witch has nothing left to stand on! No wonder she melted like liquified rubber at the film's end. I also finally understand the object of Miss Temple's machinations. The witch has no feet, and therefore no shoes.

Oh, what a clever, inventive girl my little doll is! I confess that I have utterly underestimated her for once. Of course she would suspect a pair of black-cat Halloween shoes of being hidden under the Wicked Witch of the West! Not only did the ruby slippers originally bedeck the witch's feet (when she had these useful appendages, which her stand-in does not), but black cats and witches go together in the popular imagination like white doves and peace. Not in this instance, alas, but good try Miss Temple!

Even as I transmit waves of support and approval, I notice that someone human has sneaked up on Miss Temple. A blond young woman in a short skirt and a vest. She is frowning.

"Pardon me, ma'am," says this Goldilocks in the wrong world.

Oh, Miss Temple must hate that "ma'am." She straightens so fast her precious branch snaps into two skimpy pieces, and she knocks her shin on the fence rail "Did you lose something?" The babe In the woods regards my dear roommate with a solicitous smile that is most denigrating.

Never let it be said that Midnight Louie associates with those overburdened by the heavy weight of literal truth.

"Uh ... yes," Miss Temple extemporizes in a wide-eyed Dorothy way. "A ... cat. Not a real cat. A little black cat figure I keep on my keychain. I think it rolled into the woods right here."

"I don't see anything," the helpful girl guide says.

Meanwhile, Miss Temple has noticed the uniform nature of the girl's attire and realizes that she has been caught by someone official.

"Maybe I lost it getting out of the car. I'll check there. Am I too late for the show?"

"Almost," the young woman answers. "Better hurry."

And so Miss Temple Barr does: right past the blathering animated tin woodman and scarecrow and into the towering green domes of the Emerald City itself. The young woman watches her retreat so closely that I cannot follow, although I am dying to see the magic act inside the fabled viridian metropolis.

Instead I make my hidden way to the Emerald City's other side, observing that it is constructed of particle board and glitter. Illusions. Life is a magic act and this time I am in the last row. But I am waiting in the fake greenery when Miss Temple emerges from the structure, blinking. Above us, thunder grumbles and the Wizard exhorts the masses from the podium of his balloon gondola.

The more things are different, the more they are the same-- here or over the rainbow. And where are the purported bluebirds, anyway? I could use a snack even more than Miss Temple Barr could use another pair of shoes.

Chapter 28

Romantic Rendezvous

"Where have you been all morning?" Kit demanded the next day, sounding mighty like Temple's mother.

"Out. Hun-ting " Temple echoed Bela Lugosi's fiendish intonation when he had played Dr.

Frankenstein's hunchbacked assistant; he didn't always get to be Dracula.

"Okay, Igor," said Kit, proving herself well up on vintage horror movies. "Shoe business again, huh?"

Temple nodded, not eager to relay her indignities at Fabrizio's hands. She was also wondering where Kit had been all morning, given Jake's disturbing new information about her aunt's late night assignations. And Electra hadn't been too evident this morning, either, come to think of it!

Oblivious to Temple's mental reservations, Kit verbally careened on. "Whilst you were off tracking the wild Weitzman, I arranged for a high-powered coven of romance writers to assemble.

A murderer may be among them. Need I say more?"

Temple shook her head.

"All right." Kit went on, talking a mile a minute. "The setup is you're a producer for Prime Time --

"

" Prime Time? You don't mean the network news show?"

"Right." Kit shoved a slippery stack of author press-kit folders into Temple's arms. "I grabbed these in the press room, so it looks like you've done your homework."

"Thanks for the big promotion, but I really can't pose as a Prime Time producer. That's...

actionable if anyone finds out. Impersonating a tabloid TV producer with intent to trap a murderer doesn't carry the same risks. Nobody in tabloid TV has much reputation to protect, but masquerading as network --"

"Cool it, kid. I admitted that you're my niece, so these authors probably assume you're just a lowly producer-in-training-wheels. And so young for such an important position, too."

She patted Temple's unruly curls into place, like a mommy readying her offspring for the garden club.

"Aunt Kit! You are the senior member here. First you suggest I offer myself up to some mysterious pageant ritual called a pose-down; now you arrange an audience with the queens of romance under childishly false pretenses. You said these women were mega-bestsellers. They'll be much too sophisticated to fall for me extorting information under cover of media blitz."

"Don't count on it." Kit was now patting her own unruly red-gray curls. "They'll cut you slack because you're a relative of a colleague. Besides, we poor romance writers have been the national media's whipping girls for so long that we've developed the pathetic optimism a single woman feels about another blind date. Maybe this time it won't be so bad."

"And maybe tomorrow is another day, Scarlett."

" Scarlett . " Kit's eyes squinched shut behind the sparkling picture windows of her glasses. "God, I wish, I wish I'd gotten that writing assignment! I'd have done a helluva better job, and I'd be squalidly rich by now."

" 'Squalidly rich' is an oxymoron, Auntie, as you well know from our earlier buzz session at the Debbie Reynolds' Hotel. What is it nowadays, with everyone and their first cousin writing sequels to classics by long-gone authors?"

"A dastardly trend," Kit said with a snarl. "Here's what it is: publishers . . . and agents . . . and heirs so remote they're almost invisible, all making easy money from dead writers by exploiting live writers as work-for-hire, sweat-shop labor to continue the 'sure thing' of the past. Forget about today's writers, and their present and future. Who are they gonna rip off forty years down the road if they don't let us writers get anywhere significant, huh?"

Temple seized an opportunity to segue into a touchy subject.

"You feel strongly about these publishing issues."

"I should. It's my livelihood."

"And you aren't crazy hot about the cover trend to feature semi-nude hunks."

"True." Kit, being an actress, had immediately read the underlying seriousness in Temple's voice.