Unknown - Douglas_Carole_Nelson_Cat_in_a_Jeweled_Jumpsuit_Bo

Just when Temple thought that Las Vegas had pulled out all of the stops, shown its best hand, exceeded the spectacle speed limit, outgrossed and grossed out, say, the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, it would concoct another baked Alaska of entertainment: an overdone confection of fire and ice, a high-calorie extravaganza of fairy dust and fever like the Kingdome.

The real wonder was that the Kingdome had managed to evoke Elvis in all his incarnations without presenting one genuine artifact of Elvis Presley’s roots, history, performing career, or personal life.

He might as well have been a dead god for anything material of him that survived in this mausoleum of ersatz mementos.

Above the roar of moving, talking people, a sound expanded like an invisible cloud over all their heads. It was not rock ‘n’ roll, although it was as hard to ignore.

High, piercing female shrieks.

Holy Hunk-a Burning Love! The hotel designers had even imported Elvis’s screaming fans! Temple clapped hands to ears. In this vast, marble-lined stadium, shrieks bounced off every hard surface, and the only softening surfaces here were the plants and the people.

The hubbub troubled no one else. Las Vegas tourists had long since learned to tune out programmed sights and sounds if they were discussing vital issues like the locations of loose slot machines, or looser women.

Temple hurried toward the stage where the sound probably originated, on the theory that it could only be better close up.

But when she arrived at what would be the mosh pit nowadays, she looked up at a dark and empty stage. No show at the moment, no screeching fans.

She released hands from ears. The screams had subsided.

Just when she thought it was safe to breathe normally again, shrieks resumed, so loud that the set of cymbals near the unattended drums vibrated in sympathy.

The sounds were coming from behind, and below, the stage.

Temple knew theatrical geography. She darted up the dark stairs at stage right, then dodged walls of ponderous velvet curtains and the toe-stubbing array of fly anchors in the wings behind them. She flailed in the dark until she found a stairwell leading to the dressing rooms below.

In that narrow, dark passage the screams turned positively painful. Temple burst into the bright light of a deserted hallway and followed the sounds to a dressing room.

And there, dead ahead of her, she found him dead: Jumpsuit Elvis, face down on the bare cement, a rampant rhinestone stallion on his back stabbed through the shoulder with a gold-studded dagger haft.

The screamer was reflected in the dressing table mirrors opposite Temple: a white-garbed Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, whose midnight tresses writhed like Medusa snakes against her long, flowing temple-virgin gown as she continued screaming.

Temple had either stumbled onto the set of a Roger Corman horror flick, or the scene of a crime. Given her past performance record, she’d opt for the scene of a crime.

Chapter 9

Paralyzed

(Otis Blackwell wrote the song for Elvis, and it was recorded in 1956)

“Thank God you’re here!”

Temple had no idea she was expected.

The white witch in the corner stared at Temple through the black holes of her makeup-charred eyes. Splayed fingers behind her hugged the wall as if it were the gates to Hades and the fallen figure on the floor were King Kong.

Come to think of it, the parallel to Elvis was not farfetched.

Temple did not like the way the fallen man’s limbs lay. Living flesh would not tolerate those straw-man angles of muscle and bone.

She stared at the viscous red liquid pooling between the winking rhinestones of the horse’s bejeweled trappings. Red blood. Fresh.

Then she reached into her tote bag for her cell phone.

This was a job for Crimes Against Persons, not PR persons on holiday.

“What’s going on here?”

The newcomer was male, middle-aged, and dressed in faded work-shirt blues. Stage hand or maintenance man.

“Nothing we should mess with,” Temple mumbled, scrolling through her computerized directory of key phone numbers, which just happened to include that of a certain homicide lieutenant.

The guy eyed the body, not moving. Then he took a step toward it.

“I’m not kidding,” Temple warned. “You could contaminate the crime scene.”

He glanced at her, baby-blue eyes puzzled under a worry-corrugated forehead that extended into thinning silver-blond hair. “It’s just that I recognize something.”

“The dead man?”

“No—”

Before Temple could issue another warning to leave the scene untouched, he darted forward, bent down and snatched something from the end of one twisted arm.

In fact, he snatched a forearm from the end of one twisted sleeve, now an empty twisted sleeve.

“Groossss!” wailed the vixen impaled against the wall.

Temple couldn’t decide whether to (a) scream too, (b) lose her Oreos or (c) jerk the idiot back with a well-executed martial arts move, of which she had mastered very few.

Then he held up his trophy: a long rolled oblong. Bone … ? Yuck. Or …

“That’s nothing but a roll of paper towels,” she said.

“Yeah.” The guy’s voice was taut with anger. “My cart got ripped off yesterday. A whole twelve-pack of goddammed paper towels.”

Temple stared down at the spread-eagle Elvis suit. “He’s just a straw man? Pardon me”—she glanced at the textured paper cylinder in the man’s huge hand—“a Brawny-brand paper-towel man? And the blood?““You tell me, lady. Paper products is my job. Blood’s another ball of wax.”

Temple edged forward, squatted, and dipped a hesitant forefinger into the puddling red. “Fingernail polish!” “Oh.” The girl on the opposite wall waved a bouquet of scarlet-lacquered nails on long, pale-stemmed fingers. “A brand-new bottle of my favorite color, Vamp Tramp, was missing yesterday.”

Temple’s cell phone received a quiet and dignified interment in her tote bag. She was most thankful that she had not reached her party. “Is this someone’s real costume, or what?”

Paper-towel man was shaking his head on the way out. “Don’t ask me, lady. Ladies. I’ll let maintenance know to clean up.”

“No. Wait! This may not be a murder scene, but it is a malicious mischief scene. At the least, hotel security should be notified. And the … tableau should be photographed. And probably the components should be preserved.”

“Who the heck are you?”

“I handle public relations for the Crystal Phoenix. I know what precautions to take.”

“Okay. I’ll tell someone who can make decisions. Me, I’m outa here. And … if this roll of paper towels might be evidence, keep it. I got plenty more where that came from.”

He dropped the roll on the dressing table top and bowed out, quite literally.

“Really?” the woman in white asked in a small, wee voice. “It’s just a dead … dummy?”

“Nothing but a deck of cards, honest.”

The reference to Alice in Wonderland was lost on this Babe in Elvis land. Beneath the heavy swags of dark hair, her alabaster brow may have frowned, infinitesimally, as she spoke. “They play cards upstairs. Not down here. This is a dressing room.”

“And what were you doing here?”

“Dressing.”

“For what?” Temple asked. “And you act as if you know me.”

The girl finally pushed off the wall and stepped forward. “Of course I do.” She parted the river of long hair that made her face a pale stepping stone almost lost in its rippling brunette flow. “It’s me.”“

‘Me’ ?”

“Your posing partner! Well, not your partner. I mean, that would have been a little kinky, even for the cover-hunk pageant.”