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

The mostly female audience hooted and howled and applauded. They did love their dips, as long as someone else was being dipped. The blond woman tottered down the runway steps, looking as if she wished she were dead.

"Some of these guys are pigs!" Emma Ransom spat, none too softly.

Temple nodded. She had seen the Good, the Bad, and now the Ugly. The pageant was like life, and death, full of endless variety and wonder, sometimes surprisingly nice and sometimes gratuitously self-serving.

Another couple waited in the wings. Temple braced herself after that last unpleasant pas de deux.

They made an odd couple: he, young for a hunk, tentative. She, mature and almost aggressively poised. Her hair was a shellacked helmet. Her gown was structured pink polyester from the sixties. Her smile was stiffly broad. Like me, or else!

" '... smile and smile and smile, and still be a villain,' " Emma quoted. "Makes Richard the Third look like a saint!"

Temple tried to ignore the comment.

"What a bitch."

That was harder to ignore.

No more ice was left to chatter in the drink next door, and damn little liquid. Emma Ransom held the plastic glass to her lips like a compress and mumbled into its rim.

"Got me fired from Chapter/Reynolds/Deuce. Needs all the credit. Needs to trample egos the way elephants trample flowers."

Temple tensed. She didn't need this after her really, really bad hair day. And she had been wearing a wig!

"Selfish bitch!"

Temple didn't need this.

"Poor bastard!"

Temple's ears perked up. Was the hunk an object of sympathy?

He did indeed look cowed as he went down on one gallant knee to a poised, triumphant Sharon Rose.

"Sells like pancakes."

Hotcakes , Temple the some times-editor herself corrected. Drink was a terrible weakness. It distorted even the weariest of cliches. And Emma an editor!

"Sells all over the world. Tours the East, the Riviera. Busts balls wherever she goes. She'd look good in the East River, don't you think?" A raucous, unhappy laugh.

Onstage, Sharon Rose drew her long-stemmed rose against the would-be hunk's cheek, from long thorny stem to the satin-soft petals at the blooming end. Oxymoron, the heart of romance: kind and cruel, soft and hard, illusion and reality.

"Busts butts. Busts babes. Bitch."

Hatred was addictive. Temple held herself apart from the tidal wave of venom looming over her. She was here to see the show. That's all.

"All over Europe. Sub-rights. Money rolling in. Millions! No justice. Even the Orient. Rich bitch. Villa in Via Reg, pied-a-terre in Paris, and the bitch can't even spell it! We rewrite her, stupid fool. Husband trotting after her every command. Hypocritical. Queen of sweet romance. Family values. Money, money, money."

"Excuse me." Temple stood up. She needed air.

Sharon Rose still smiled at her kneeling hunk. Temple's long distance vision had seen the single drop of blood on his cheek. The name of the rose is coercion. The name of the game is greed. She saw it--oh, yes--but she didn't need to hear it, not tonight, although she had not listened when a murderer had breathed his murderer's name into her ear like an endearment. Not after the death threat and the diamonds, and the imminent date with Max. And Matt.

Oh, God, she had to get out of here!

Temple stumbled over the woman sitting in the traditional critic's seat on the aisle, the woman sinking on the aisle. Heads turned, then turned back to the stage.

Another hunk and escort came out, came on. She glittered, he shone. Savannah Ashleigh's vacant voice carried to the very last row. Vic showed his dimples for the cameras. Everyone was here, Hard Copy, A Current Affair, and Hot Heads.

Temple was out of there, in the lobby, frantic for a phone. She never thought she'd be this desperate to talk to this person.

The telephone directory was set in eight-point type and even her glasses didn't help. She pushed one eye right to the page and dialed, impatient with the long recorded list of voice-mail options before she got a real person.

"Is there some way, any way, I can reach Lieutenant Molina tonight?"

Clicks and voices and finally a series of rings.

"Molina." Briskly, with a hint of very human annoyance.

"It's . . . Temple Barr."

"Yes?"

Questions for the policewoman. Answers for the PR woman.

"Inquiries are already underway," Molina said. "It'll take a few hours. International time zones,"

Molina said. "Interpol."

Temple winced. Then she spoke again, rushing her words.

"We'll look into it." Molina subscribed to the royal we of bureaucracy everywhere.

"Via Reggio," Temple suggested.

"Boots by design." Molina.

"Traveling." Temple.

"We'll look into it," Molina finished. "Don't worry. Don't worry. We're on it."

"Canada! Have you considered Canada?" Temple again.

"We will now." Molina.

Temple hung up the pay telephone near the Crystal Phoenix front desk. She wouldn't return to the pageant. Her watch, a delicate evening watch with a Barbie doll-size face she had to put her eye almost against, read ten o'clock.

She might as well walk to the Goliath. Fresh air would be welcome.

Chapter 35

Love in Vain

Max melted from among the crowds in the Goliath lobby, the man in black against a black curtain again. Temple couldn't even see his ponytail. "You're early," he said almost hopefully.

"You, too."

"Our chaperon isn't here yet."

"He'll come on time."

"I didn't know he worked nights."

"He'll come on time."

"Meanwhile, would you like a drink?"

"I'm considering teetotalism, but yes."

The Goliath lobby bar featured gilt camel-saddle tables and knee-high silk cushions for chairs.

Temple sank into one gratefully.

"You look frazzled," Max said. "The pageant?"

"Leaving the pageant."

"You don't know who won?"

"I did."

"You've really changed," he said, cocking his head.

"Have you?"

"Maybe not enough."

The waitress came, clad in harem veils. Max sent Temple an inquiring look.

"Bloody Mary," she said with feeling.

Max laughed. "That kind of night?"

"Yes."

"Isn't the case closed?"

"No." She paused, wondering if he'd understand how much she'd hated doing it. "I had to call Molina."

"Lieutenant C. R. Molina." His green eyes laughed at a private amusement, then sobered. "Are you all right?"

So the Four Queens had wondered a day or two ago. Did it show?

"Great. Louie's going to be a star. I'm out from under the hunk pageant, quite literally. I just gave Molina some vital information. It may resolve her case."

"So." Matt lifted his tall glass of exotic liqueur. "What do you want now?"

"Nothing." Temple was surprised to find that was the truth. "What killed Cheyenne--and Fabrizio--and almost killed me, was uglier than ambition, sillier than sex."

"Knowing too much is worse than knowing nothing at all," he warned.

"So you tell me, from self-interest."

"Granted," Max sipped his drink, green as absinthe, yet it couldn't be. Absinthe was illegal now.

"I meant to surprise you," he said. "Instead, you surprise me."

"Good." She was beginning to mellow, in her element.

"I hope I... don't disappoint you. Tonight."

"Modest Max."

"No, just hedging his bets. Ah. He was early, after all."

He stood, and Matt joined them.

How truly bizarre, Temple thought. Yet not as bizarre as what had happened at the Incredible Hunk pageant.

"Temple has contacted Lieutenant Molina," Max told him.

Matt sat, and refused the waitress an order. His wary eyes stayed on Temple. Her guardian angel against that ole devil previous involvement.