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

"Cute," Temple complained.

"Relax and enjoy it," her aunt's most jaded alto advised. "The next stage is 'shaky and sinking fast.' "

She finished her cocktail. "We better get some good seats. I want to see a show. You don't mind if I sit with my editor, do you? Her suggestion."

Temple and Electra shook their heads, so Kit glided off alone. While they were still looking at each other, a thin woman in a sequined floral suit joined them.

"Electra! Tomorrow's prize day, can you believe it? I've saved you a seat in the writing class section.

Come on."

Electra turned spaniel eyes on Temple.

"Go ahead. I'll find a place."

The other woman pulled Electra away before she could protest.

Temple drank the dregs of her fiery Bloody Mary--the Crystal Phoenix had a first-rate bar, too--and left the glass on a tray.

She didn't feel left out. She wanted to see the show from the audience without having to discuss it with anyone. She wanted to judge how well Cheyenne would have done, had he been here to compete.

Maybe she was rooting for a ghost.

The seats were filling up, so she grabbed one halfway down the aisle. If the pageant ran too long, she could leave early. Butterflies were fanning the Bloody Mary flames in her stomach, but she wasn't going to think about past or future. She was going to see the show, period.

"Mind if I sit here?"

The woman who asked was tall and angular, with silky, blunt-cut blond hair to her jawline, dressed in severe black. She seemed nervous, but that was probably her grayhound metabolism.

"Not at all," Temple said graciously. "This is my first pageant."

"Not mine." The woman pushed down the fold-up velvet seat. "Duty, not beauty," she added, assessing the runway. "Beautiful boys are not my poison of choice. What a racket!"

"You must have attended several of these."

"Have to. I'm an editor at Bard Books. Emma Ransom."

"I work PR for the hotel. Temple Barr."

"Well, get ready for the illusion of publishing hype. If you want a running commentary on the true lies, just ask me."

Temple did not want a running commentary; she wanted peace. She hoped the woman beside her would get the idea. Then the woman bent down and lifted something from the floor. A plastic low-ball glass filled with ice and a clear liquid. Oh-oh. One didn't have to be an ace detective to deduce that the contents were not water.

Temple squinched down in her seat, glad she didn't need her glasses for distance. She would see the show with a fresh, uninvolved eye, and put the dead to rest.

The house lights dimmed, the pre-recorded music swelled and Emma Ransom's ice clinked. Temple slipped on her glasses.

The spotlights targeted stage right, where something like the Blue Fairy from Pinocchio gleamed: Savannah Ashleigh in Jean Harlow white satin and fox-fur stole, hopefully fake. Savannah would have no reason to get real about anything at this late date.

"Good evening, ladies, ladies and a few good gentlemen," Savannah quipped in her breathy, artificial voice. "Welcome to the West, where wanted men are what women are after."

Her co-host, a tuxedo-jacket-wearing biker-short kind of guy with long, surfer-streaked blond hair and a smooth disc-jockey patter, took up the pre-written dialogue. "What about wanted women, Savannah?"

"They're in fashion too, Vic. We're about to see a dress parade of our guys and dolls: handsome cover heroes and the women who dream them up."

"Then let the revels begin, Savannah," Vic suggested unoriginally. These emcee types always overused each other's names, as if to remind themselves who they were.

The lights dimmed on the dim-bulb couple beside the proscenium arch, flaring up on stage center.

One by one, the Incredible Hunk candidates strolled out, a woman in her glitzy best on his arm, bearing a scarlet rose.

Many women were decades older than their escorts, Temple noticed. How refreshing. Role reversal with a vengeance! The competitors looked polished and handsome in their sometimes eccentric formal wear.

Troy Tucker topped his stovepipe-tight black jeans, cowboy boots, tuxedo jacket and rhinestoned bolo tie with a white Stetson. An excited hoot drew Temple's eyes to Troy's wife Nan, bouncing up and down in her seat, her hands clapping high above her head.

A clink to her left prepared Temple for a comment.

"A leading contender for the popular vote."

Temple nodded. She could see why. But the long glitzy line of judges in the front row would decide the winners.

Each couple parted at runway's end with some romantic gesture. Troy doffed his Stetson to display long, Wild Bill Hickock hair down his back and bow his escort offstage, to thunderous applause and whistles.

The next hunk may have been Fabio reincarnated, but he was unlucky enough to escort Ravenna Rivers. Her gown put Scarlett O'Hara's burgundy velvet Shameless dress to shame. It was red, clinging, bare and backless. She bid her man adieu with an R-rated, torso-to-torso shimmy routine that had the youthful hunk blushing to match her gown.

"All her talent is in her hormones," whispered Emma's vodka rasp.

Temple had to admit that her running commentary was astute, if unwelcome.

Next came Jake Gotshall, looking quite presentable despite the gigantic clown shoes he had donned.

His entrance brought a laugh, and his author escort, Mary Ann Trenarry, was a dignified grande dame in contrast, wearing aqua crepe and pearls.

When they reached the end of the runway, Jake grinned and fingered the red carnation in his buttonhole. It squirted water into the audience, who squealed en masse. Then he pulled out the boutonniere and elaborately presented it to Mary Ann.

Laughter was still ringing when one of the most muscular hunks stalked out, arms swinging like stiff sausages because of his bulk. Yet his long hair flowed softly and a diamond stud sparked in his left earlobe. Temple tried to remember the sexual preference rules for earrings on men and couldn't. She was certain to mix it up, if it ever mattered.

She didn't know the author, a lovely, frail woman in her sixties dressed in a designer suit of citron beadwork. Don't dip her, Temple ordered the hunk with some of Max's unspoken willpower. She imagined Danny Dove in the wings, mentally urging the same thing. The poor woman placed one high-heeled foot in front of the other like a persnickety cat as she walked the runway. At the end, the hunk twirled her out the length of his arm.

NO DIPPING, YOU DIP! Then he reeled her back in, kissed her hand and watched her pussyfoot down the stairs.

Temple released a breath as the hunk received a rip-roaring round of applause for his chivalry.

Standing center-stage, bursting out of his rental tuxedo, holding his hands up like Sylvester Stallone's Rocky.

"Anna Amber Leigh. Her career is dead," Emma confided as the applause died. "Too old-fashioned.

No sizzle."

Temple nodded, resigned to her role of captive confidee. That's how the seating chart crumbles.

Another Conan the Barbarian clone came out, long dark hair flowing, moving like a robotic terminator. His author escort was much younger than the others, a buxom blonde in a strapless taffeta dress with a bouffant long skirt more at home at a high-school prom than a pageant.

"Love's Leading Naif, " Emma commentated. "Where did she get that tacky dress? From Carrie?"

Temple knew true stage fright when she saw it; the poor girl was terrified. She seemed most terrified of her hunk, who grinned with awesome confidence as he lumbered down the runway. At the end, he turned to her. She blinked. Her hands curled into pale fists.

Then he grabbed her, twisted her, dipped her until her shoulder-length hair touched the stage floor.

All the while she looked like a virgin sacrifice to the volcano gods. Temple glanced away. She had overheard some of the author escorts begging not to be dipped, but this guy was gonna dip her or die. It was a kind of social rape, like going to the prom with someone who got ugly or drunk.