Unknown - Cat_In_A_Hot_Pink_Pursuit

“One would hope, but nope. It was only an ‘open preliminary audition.’ The permissions come later, when or if the girls are actually accepted for the reality show cast, and there are a ton of them. As there should be. And … the show selected her.

“We’ve already got the preshooting packet. Mariah will be put on a diet. Sensible, they claim. She’ll have acting and singing classes. She’ll get clothes and a cosmetic Extreme Teen makeover and will generally hang out with her peers while competing ferociously.”

“So what’s so different between this and junior high?”

“Catholic school. Mariah hasn’t been exposed to the dark side of adolescence. She’ll be a chick in a yard full of foxes.”

“Maybe you’ve protected her too much.”

“Maybe.” Molina grabbed the remote and stopped the film.

“You’re expecting me to get selected? The competition for my so-called age group—Senior Teen Queen—must be killer.”

“I hope not. I’m counting on you being just as able and clever as Mariah in getting attention, even if it’s the wrong kind.”

“Then there’s that dumb luck thing of mine.”

“Exactly.” Molina stood. “The tape’s a copy. You can study it. I gotta admit the kid has chutzpah. Sophistication won’t cut it. You’ll have to find your inner teen queen. Your shoe collection should help.”

“And you’ll really, really, forget about Max?”

“Who?”

Temple nodded. “And if I don’t make the cut and the show doesn’t want me?”

“Then I still want Kinsella, and this time I’ll get him. For something, even if I have to make it up. But I won’t. He makes it too easy.”

“Okay. I guess I’ll let you know when I hit”—Temple consulted the fat, glossy, and expensive press kit—“the Teen QueenCastle. Oh, boy.”

“Oh, girl,” Molina corrected. She wasn’t Molina if she wasn’t correcting somebody.

Temple showed her out, then gazed down at Louie, who’d accompanied them to the exit like a major domo in a cat suit.

“Think I can pass as a teen queen, Louie?”

He rubbed against her ankles, nodding his head up and down as he left his scent on her shin bones. Now that was a vote of confidence!

Temple returned to the living room and ran Mariah’s tape again.

Couldn’t tell Max, couldn’t tell Matt. Wouldn’t have told Louie if he hadn’t been here.

She frowned, remembering the dismembered Barbie doll parts in the color Xerox image. If she got to the Teen QueenCastle, she’d really rather have some undercover backup that she knew about.

Not Max. Not Matt. Surely not Louie. Then who?

Chapter 7

Bait Boy

Not once during her pitch did Miss Lieutenant C. R. Molina specifically forbid Midnight Louie his own self to go undercover.

Wise of her. I am always undercover, anyway.

I have watched the video with both eyes wide open, thinking how I would feel if Miss Midnight Louise put herself on the chopping block in such a fashion. I guess it is not a chopping block unless the purveyor of the mutilated flyer makes it so. It is more like an auction block.

I cannot approve of these little dolls parading for the entertainment of the masses. I cannot approve of anyone parading for the entertainment of the masses.

Unless, of course, they held a midlife-macho-dude competition. That would be right up my alley.

Everything I have overheard today convinces me of one thing: I must be present in the Teen QueenCastlefor both the gore and the glamour of the competition, the guts and the glory. MissTemple needs some undercover muscle she can count on, i.e., something more than human.

Speaking of which, I could use some spiritual guidance. Or at least a hint of what is to come. Or at least a good laugh at the gullible.

So, once MissTemple is in her bedroom throwing clothes and shoes around, I bounce open one of the French doors to the balcony. I know this is her usual ritual for gearing up, quite literally, for action.

Me, I hop aboard the old palm tree leaning so conveniently over our balcony and ratchet up the shaggy trunk to the penthouse floor, just below the spreading vanes of leaves.

This entails an agile leap over the wrought-iron railing and a three-point landing on the plastic pad of the lounge chair. (Three-point because one of my shivholders slips off the cushion.) But I am good to go as soon as I sit up and shake my coat into dapper order.

I have another rank of French doors to break through. These have not been trained by me to open at the jiggle of a mitt under the bottom. So my entrance is not the usual blend of speed, skill, and silence.

I find myself expected.

Karma is not hiding under the furniture, as is her wont. (These psychic types loathe daylight.) No, this time she is sitting there bold as a bronze statue of Bast. The gaze she casts upon me, though as gloriously blue as Miss Lieutenant Molina’s, is pure steel and just as caustic.

She is a leggy rangy lady, her coat a longish soft cream shade and her mitts all gloved in pristine white. Yet she wears the brown facial mask of the formidable Siamese martial arts expert, which only emphasizesher blue-heaven eye color. While she is lovely to look at, one does not wish to annoy her. The breed is deemed sacred for defending a dalai lama against assassins ages ago. They have never forgotten it, nor should they. Nor do Hence their mystical gifts, if you believe in that sort of thing. I sort of do, despite my street sense. But at the moment she is crooning a not entirely welcoming song at me.

“By the prickling of my pads, this way comes the king of cads.”

“Oh, I say, Karma! That is harsh. If you are miffed that we have not had discourse lately, I have been mondo busy with various and sundry cases all across Las Vegas, from desert to downtown.”

She emits a sound that wavers between a growl and a purr. No wonder we dudes do not stick around the females of my species. They are one tough house to please.

I decide to play the mum dude-about-town and simply polish my nails on my shiny black sleeve.

“Oh, very well. Come in.” She rises and leads the way into the dim room where vintage pieces of upholstery graze like bison of yore … huge, dark, shaggy, and humped. They are mostly mohair or covered in large jungle prints.

No wonder a dude does not feel welcome in this dark, vaguely hostile homescape.

“Miss Electra Lark?” I inquire politely.

“Is absent.” Karma turns to give me another piercing look. “It is just we two.”

“Somehow it is never ‘just we two’ when I consult you.”

“Oh, so you have elevated me to a consultant. I thought you had dismissed me as a flake.”

I raise a defensive mitt. “Now do not get your dander up. I have had more than one brush with the mantic arts.”

“Your current case is hardly in that direction.”

“No. It is a silly-sounding affair. These human kits are quite playful, you know, and the females are overpampered. In fact, our kind has become the mascot of their blooming femininity. Have you heard of the Hello Kitty and Pinkie’s Palace phenomenon? Everything pink and frothy and marabou and glittery for girls from three-to-thirteen is decorated with the more beauteous of the feline species.”

“Crass commercialization. We are the superior species. We are not clowns.”

I do not know about that. I have encountered some pretty big clowns in every species.

We are in the room where the green globe on top of the fifties television cabinet shines like a cat’s eye at midnight.

Karma sits down again, tucks her fluffy train around her feet like a thirties torch singer, closes her eyes, and begins to croon.

“Very bad, Louie. I sense danger for all of the ‘little dolls’ under your protection, and now they are legion. Well, at least thirty or so. I see blood. I see many evil intentions. I see boiling oil. And that is just the normal course of events when so many competitive females are assembled together.