Carole Douglas - Cat in an Alphabet Soup

Buchanan was entertainment writer for one of Las Vegas’s many newssheets, which were heavy on flacking and light on objectivity. He was also a free-lance hiree like Temple, acting as liaison between the ABA’s regular publicity force and the mysteries of the myriad local publications. Buchanan was a small man, neat as a wolverine, with permed grizzled ringlets, permanent bags barely upholding limpid brown eyes and spider-silk lashes, and the moral fiber of a sidewinder. Like many Napoleonically egotistical slight men, he figured Temple was just his size.

He ignored her sally to eye the commotion. “Not good for business. Just what the LV C and VA wanted to avoid, T.B.” A devotee of Initialese, Buchanan had early on discovered the unfortunate effect of Temple’s. So far he hadn’t found out that her middle name was Ursula, thank God.

“Well, they can’t avoid this,” she riposted, “not even the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority. You’ve heard about the eternal unavoidables—death and taxes.”

“Better get that off the premises.” His head jerked toward the body, or rather the figures clustered around it.

“Not until the police are through.”

“Maybe you should lean on someone at headquarters, T.B.” Buchanan smirked. “You’ve got such a powerful personality.”

“Yeah, and you’re Limburger. Why don’t you stand over there and drive them out?”

His fingers flicked like a snake tongue across the back of her neck. “Temper, temper, Temple.”

“Cut it out!”

But Buchanan had oozed on; he was a hit-and-dodge expert, always cozying up to unsuspecting women. Temple retreated to the ABA public relations office at the facility’s rear, anxious to measure damage.

“Well, if it isn’t Jessica Fletcher, Junior,” Bud Dubbs, the guy in charge of free-lance flacks, greeted her.

Temple flinched. “I thought I was bagging a missing cat; I would have been happy to find just a missing cat.” Dubbs squinted into the cat carrier’s small wire door through his half-glasses. Temple had sent an assistant to buy it once the cat was corralled. “That it?”

“Sort of.”

“And the police?”

“Should be out of here in a few hours and we can open up the aisle again.”

“What about the bad publicity?”

“Maybe none of the local rags will notice it.”

“Think they won’t?”

“No... but maybe I can defuse it somehow.”

“How?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“Was it murder?”

“The police don’t know—or won’t say.”

“You landed on the body.”

“Death doesn’t advertise causes... except that sign sure looks like somebody enjoyed seeing the guy dead.”

“Who was it?”

This was the bad one. Temple moved the carrier to the side of her desk, off dead center. A deep growl remarked on this dislocation. She sat, always feeling more commanding in that position.

“A publisher. Chester Royal, head of Pennyroyal Press.”

“A publisher?” Dubbs glowered at Temple as if that was her fault. “A bigwig?”

“Not that big. Pennyroyal Press is just an imprint, a mini-operation within a bigger publishing house.”

“What’s the bigger house?”

“Reynolds-Chapter-Deuce.”

“That... sounds familiar.”

“They all used to be separate publishers until they merged in the eighties.”

“What you’re saying is this is one hell of a big outfit and it lost an executive at our convention center.”

“No, you’re saying that. Bud, it’s not our fault that out of twenty-four thousand bodies streaming through the security lines one is a murderer maybe, and one a murderee. It could have happened anywhere—San Francisco, Atlanta, Washington.”

“It happened here and it’s bad press. And tomorrow is opening day when all the booksellers and news-hungry media types come in. You’ve got to stop this from getting out.”

“I can’t suppress the news, Bud, the public’s right to know.”

“Public relations is your job. What’s the good of doing it unless you can launder what the public has a right to know?” Bud glanced at the cat carrier. “Once the corpse is gone, you better dump this cat.”

“I don’t know about that.” Temple bent to peek into the dim interior. A pair of grape-green eyes regarded her accusingly. “I may have professional uses for this pussums.”

3

Nothing but a Pack of Flacks

T emple slipped downthe corridor past Charlton Heston and nodded automatically.

Movie stars’ familiar faces bred the notion that one actually knew them, a wholly one-sided phenomenon, unfortunately. She stopped to watch Heston’s six feet three inches shoulder around the corner, shrugged and headed for room 208. Amazing, she ruminated, how a murder can alter one’s sense of proportion. Heston was en route to the interview room down the hall, where celebrities gathered like an exaltation of La-La Land larks, in high supply given Las Vegas’s proximity to Hollywood.

Earlier during the setup period for the ABA’s long post-Memorial Day weekend, when Temple’s patience had been young and her feet uncallused—just yesterday, Thursday—she actually had been uncool enough to “peek” when a particularly stellar personality was flashing the flesh. Now,

She could trip over Charlton Heston, Paul Newman or Sean Penn and she wouldn’t care—just so long as he wasn’t dead.

Outside conference room 208’s nondescript door she paused to contemplate the coming ordeal. Nothing was worse than a triumvirate of PR persons with conflicting goals. A messy murder put a lot of public images on the line: the convention center’s, the ABA’s and, especially, that of the big publishing house that sponsored Pennyroyal Press. Temple lowered her glasses to her nose, lengthened her neck for an illusion of greater height and charged the door.

Correction, Temple thought as she surveyed the two people in the otherwise empty room: nothing is worse than a trio of PR women, definitely the more dangerous of the species. Public relations was one of the rare fields where women could rise to the top; most of them would not settle for less, especially Claudia Esterbrook, the power-suited woman who’d run the ABA publicity circus maximus since the heyday of Messalina. That she didn’t show it was only thanks to the gentle art of plastic surgery.

“We don’t have much time,” Claudia announced. Claudia’s lacquered hair was the color of tapioca. It was razor-cut and so were her mandarin-length fingernails. One tapped the table with Freddy Kruegerish emphasis.

“I’ve got a rock star,” she said, “with a mouth that Drano couldn’t fix meeting the press in twenty-five minutes. I’ve got to be there for damage control.”

“This won’t take long.” Temple clicked toward the conference table and slung her briefcase atop the beige Formica. “We better get our acts together before we rush out conflicting press releases on the Royal death. That would really prolong the agony.”

The mouse-haired woman with a long, sinewy face sitting opposite Claudia Esterbrook nodded. “Lorna Fennick, director of PR for Reynolds-Chapter-Deuce. You’re right; if we’re not all tap-dancing in time, it’ll be Reverb City.” From her open patent-leather briefcase she withdrew sheaves of paper and spun them across the slick tabletop.

“Bios of Chester Royal; a history of the Pennyroyal Press imprint; releases on its three biggest authors and a statement from our publisher expressing regret et cetera for Mr. Royal’s death.”