Unknown - Cat_In_A_Hot_Pink_Pursuit

“Sure. I got rhythm.”

“Thank you. Thank you verra much.”

On that surreal closing note, the judges conferred again, checked their watches, eyed the long line behind Temple, and the anxious face of the woman named Beth Marble who held the portable mike. And was possibly the real power here.

“In,” Dexter Manship declared for them all.

Temple got in a mock curtsy before she allowed herself to be hustled off to the sidelines by another gofer with clipboard. She was in. In! She’d made it, purely on her hidden punk power. Her Inner Bad Girl.

The gofer, one of the twenty-something girls in hot pink who ran errands, sat Xoe Chloe down with another sheaf of papers to sign.

Xoe could have cared less, but Temple read every last word, appalled at giving blanket permission to be recorded in every media known to man and woman but mostly audio-video, in all forms, now and in the future. In the universe.

She’d be ceding all rights to her own self … except that own self was purely fictitious at the moment. Luckily, the phony driver’s license Molina somehow got for her attested that “Sharon Carlson”—please! No wonder “Zoe Chloe” had been born—was nineteen and therefore free to sign away her own rights to privacy.

She finally signed the thing with an X for Xoe and dated it.

Miss Pretty in Pink came back and asked for a real name.

“It is a real name. Mine.”

“We need a normal name.”

“I’m as normal as you are:’ Temple said. Being a teenager again was more fun than the first time! You could act out and act up and everyone thought it was the norm.

“I need a real last name,” the hot pink chick repeated.

Temple rolled her eyes, sighed, grabbed the clipboard and wrote “Ozone” after the X.

“X Ozone? I don’t think so.”

“Have you ever heard of the Artist Formerly Known As Prince?”

“Maybe.”

“He used an alien scribble for years. In purple ink yet. I think it was algebra. Surely you’ve heard of algebra? Why can’t I be X Ozone? It’s better than X Chromosome.”

Miss Pink frowned. “Chromosome. I’ve heard of that name. Somewhere. Maybe it’s Greek.”

“See! I’m famous.”

“Is there an apostrophe between the 0 and the Z?” That gave Temple pause. “Yes, two,” she said. “Just chill.”

The woman put the equivalent of quote marks after the 0 and darted away on her pert pink patent-leather slides.

She was back in about two minutes after conferring with the angel lady with the mike.

“I’m sorry. We need a real last name. Like legal.”

She hadn’t asked for Temple’s real last name.

“Carlson,” Temple said, appropriating her mother’s maiden name, and her aunt’s, which Molina had somehow come up with. She added the name to the X with a flourish.

“Carlson. Isn’t that a cavern somewhere?”

“In the brain:’ Temple said soberly. “You’re right. A cavern in the brain. We all have a Carlson cavern in the brain.”

“I knew I learned something in science class.” Beaming, the young woman bore away all the rights to Temple’s brand-new persona.

Shoot.

Chapter 12

Turnabout Foul Play

“Stabbed through the neck,” Officer Dunhill said. He was young and looked a trifle green. “The entry point is ragged. Really vicious.”

Molina stood there in the lukewarm early morning dark of another 24/7 Las Vegas eternity. She’d asked to be called on any teen deaths.

The girl lay in the middle of one row, halfway between the fat painted line that delineated parking places on either side. Probably attacked just as she was leaving, or about to return to a car.

All the cars were gone now, and the girl remained. Sprawled within an invisible chalk outline. (Police departments seldom outlined body positions nowadays; recording methods, especially video, were far too sophisticated to require the romance of old-time techniques.) The blood from the neck wound was a discreet rivulet mostly hidden by shadow. A lurid pool of pink puddlednear one hand that still touched a crushed ice cream cone. Walking to the mall with a strawberry cone in her hand. “Where’d that come from?”

Dunhill eyed the sickly pink splotch vaguely shaped like Australia. “Parking lot mobile vendor. My partner did the interview. She bought the cone at seven fifty.”

“So she could have been headed for the Teen Queen auditions at eight o’clock.”

“With a fistful of calories?” He sounded doubtful.

“Hot night. Slim girl. I’ll have the reality show people check if any candidates didn’t show up. I assume there was ID.”

He nodded, flipped back a couple of pages. “Tiffany Cummings.” He shook his head. “Sixteen. Wasn’t sexually molested, from the state of her clothes. That’s a blessing.”

Molina eyed the clothes in question—the teenage uniform that drove a mother like Molina nuts for a couple of reasons: tight low-rise jeans, skimpy thin top. Too revealing, too predictable.

Dunhill shook his head again. Obviously he hadn’t been called out on many homicides. “First response couldn’t do anything for her. Except get the names and addresses of all the owners who’d parked in the vicinity.”

“Any hot prospects?”

“Mostly women or women with children. All shocked to death themselves.”

“That many women? Alone? Shopping this late, in the dark?” Molina asked.

Dunhill shrugged. “Multitasking. The wife complains all the time that there aren’t enough hours in the day. All we’ve got here as onsite evidence is a short rubber burn and an airconditioning puddle over there. Looks like a car stopped fast and stayed long enough to leave traces.”

“Or to startle and then kill our vic.” Molina glanced up at the brilliant lighting. This poor girl had been “shined”

like a deer in the headlights by the very technology meant to protect her.

“They held the Teen Queen auditions here today,” she observed. “This could be another message.”

“That’s right! I heard about the mutilated Barbie doll images. You think this is related?”

“I think this is going to be pretty hard to explain to the press, much less the parents. I’ll ask the captain in the morning for more personnel to put on the so-called Teen QueenCastle that reality TV show is using for the next two weeks. Can you imagine a more captive population for a killer like this?”

“For this nut? Likes offbeat weapons. Nervy enough to attack in a major public place. No, Lieutenant, I can’t. Hey!” Dunhill was looking beyond her. “Get outa here! Scat!”

By the time she whipped around, all she spotted was a lean dark shape vanishing under a Nissan Sentra.

“Damn cat.” Dunhill was not happy. “Sniffing at the evidence. That pinkish gunk.”

“Probably licking at it. Lots of scavenger cats and birds around a shopping mall. Forensics will have already bagged a sample; don’t worry, officer.”

“This is my first murder call. Then to have it be a kid like this—”

“Kids ‘like this’ you never get used to, thank God. What did you say her name was?”

“Tiffany—” He again checked his notebook. “Cummings.”

“That contest inside. Find out if she was a contender.”

“She sure isn’t now.” He slapped his notebook shut.

Mariah was still safe at home in her messy bedroom, thank goodness, Molina thought, but tomorrow night she wouldn’t be. Her kid had made the final cut. Tomorrow she’d be in the Teen QueenCastle, hopefully safe behinda moat of cameras and the foolishness that passed for network TV these days.

Molina returned to her Toyota, parked far enough from the crime scene to preserve evidence. Something about the crime scene bothered her but she couldn’t say just what.