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“What other way is there to take it?”

“If you need to ask, I don’t need to tell you.”

“Huh? Oh, that this too, too solid delusion would melt, dissolve into a dew—”

“When you’re done spouting, could we meet somebody else?”

“I’m sorry you couldn’t go in to meet KOK Elvis. It would have blown my cover.”

“Well, I can meet one pseudo-celebrity without blowing your cover.” Electra took Temple’s arm firmly. “Now. Show me Miss Priscilla.”

Quincey was in and receiving visitors in her dressing room. “Hi,” she tossed over her shoulder and around her flowing hair at Temple. “I heard a whole lot of stomping going on upstairs. Did somebody off Elvis onstage?”

Electra stepped around Temple, which was never hard to do. “No, dear. We just saw an Elvis performance thatrocked the roof off the Kingdome. A pity you were confined down here.”

“I’ll see plenty of Elvis acts at the real show.” Quincey’s long, pale fingernails poked at her towering hair, which leaned a little to the left, like the edifice at Pisa. “I’ll have to sit there for hours and hours, dying of boredom. But my gown arrived, thanks to the hotel. Isn’t it cool?”

She led the way to the costume niche, where a white column of silk and lace and beading hung like a frozen fountain.

Temple, who had been known to glance at a bride’s magazine gown layout when killing time in front of a magazine stand, was stunned by the high-necked, long-sleeved design of Priscilla’s wedding gown, a world away from the strapless bustier styles modern brides preferred.

She was stunned that Quincey, with all her teenage eagerness to equate beautiful with bad, actually liked this virginal froth of fabric.

Quincey lifted an empty sleeve as if introducing a friend. “It’s not a perfect replica. I guess the estate owns that. I’ll wear it when I present the winning Elvis with the championship belt.”

“That’s scrumptious, dear,” Electra said with naked envy. “Oh, my. I could have fit into that, once for fifteen minutes in nineteen fifty-two.”

Quincey laughed. “Don’t worry, Everybody gets their fifteen minutes of fame, and I guess everybody gets their fifteen minutes at fitting into an impossible dress.”

Temple formally introduced Electra, then thought of something. “By the way, you two, with all the Elvis trivia you must have stockpiled, was there ever any mention of a pet snake?”

Electra and Quincey exchanged coconspirators’ glances: Was Temple off her rocker?

“You have to admit a huge snake is a pretty bizarre prop for a murder,” Temple said. “It has to mean something, it being in the Medication Garden …”

“Oooh.” Quincey was waxing theatrical. “Like in the Garden of Eden.”

“The snake is a universal symbol of evil,” Temple agreed, “through no fault of its own except the usual human superstition.”

Quincey giggled. “A big snake is the symbol of something else humans are pretty superstitious about.”

Electra collapsed onto a dressing table chair, laughing. Her muumuu turned even more fluorescent in the makeup lights. “You got that right, girl. Say, now that we’re on the subject. I do recall something about a big snake.”

“The only strange animal I can think of was the mynah in the basement,” said Quincey.

“That was at Graceland,” Electra said. “The snake was not there. Somehow … I know!”

Temple and Quincey came over to Electra like an audience gathering for a revelation.

“Felton Jarvis,” Electra said portentously. “That ring any bells for you, Quincey?”

The girl dropped her jaw, rolled her eyes, and otherwise pantomimed deep thought, or what passed for it in her set. She shook her head.

“Nothing?” a disappointed Electra wailed.

Quincey tried, God love her. “Uh. Felton. Kinda like Elton. And the last name starts with a ‘J.’ ” When Temple and Electra continued to stare blankly at her, she added defensively, “Elton John. His name’s kinda like Elton John’s.”

“Not really,” Temple said. “And what about the snake? Where’s the snake in all this?”

“Felton Jarvis,” Electra intoned, as if she were channeling the man, or calling up her memory. She smiled like Buddha. “Felton Jarvis! He was a record producer who actually did a good job for Elvis in the sixties and early seventies. Worked out of Nashville. And he had apet anaconda he took swimming with him in his apartment pool.”

“Did he call it Trojan?” Temple asked.

“I don’t know what he called it, dear. All I know is you’re lucky that I remember that much. Can’t you check this out with the Animal Elvis attraction manager?”

“Yes, I can, now that you’ve remembered something concrete.” Temple glanced from Quincey to Electra. The effect was like a time machine. Over thirty years ago, Electra had—what color hair?—and maybe had dressed like Quincey’s Priscilla in white go-go boots and teased hair. On the other hand, the real Priscilla, who was at least a decade younger than Electra, didn’t look anything like the older woman, and probably never would, not with all the anti-aging services Hollywood had to offer.

“Fel-ton Jar-vis,” Temple intoned, mimicking Electra. Southern men’s names had a certain elegance when they weren’t the usual countrified Billy Bob and Bobby Joe: Rhett Butler. Lyle Purvis. Ashley Wilkes. Elvis Presley. Felton Jarvis.

“She’s thinking,” Electra whispered to Quincey. “It doesn’t always come easy.”

“Hush your mouth!” Temple mock-snapped. And then the subtlety that had been nagging at her snapped back. “Ohmigosh! Elvis’s name is in Fel-ton Jar-vis. El-vis. Do you suppose that was a clue? Is that why the snake was let loose in the pool with a dead man? Because it had a personal connection to Felton Jarvis and therefore Elvis himself? Was Lyle right? Did an ‘Elvis’ have something to do with the mock Elvis’s death?

“Or did his anaconda?” Quincey threw in, looking excited. She turned to Electra. “Where did you read about that anaconda?”

“I don’t know. In one of my books.”

“You actually own books about Elvis?”

“Dozens.”

“Can I come over to your house and study them? If I missed something as way cool as the snake, I need to.”

“I did loan some to a friend, but I’m sure you could look those over too. When do you get off here?”

“The rehearsal’s over, so I can split.”

“Great.” Electra stood. “Temple, coming?”

“No. I need to find out more about Trojan here. There must be a keeper for that miniature zoo somewhere.”

“Hope he isn’t a miniature keeper,” Quincey said with a giggle.

She and Electra exited left, laughing.

Chapter 43

Too Much Monkey Business

(A song Elvis recorded—and never released— during a truculent 1968 recording session, the first time his musicians noticed a puzzling personality change)

I am beginning to develop a deep sympathy for those forced to make their living as nannies.

This conclusion comes home to me when I escort the ingratiating Chatter on an outing to the local zoo and garden, both happily uninhabited yet by humans, save for the staff.

Chatter, it seems, would like to hold my hand. Apparently, the chimp is used to being treated like a child and likes to cling to his escort of the moment. It cannot have escaped anyone’s observation by now that I do not have a hand.

Oh, I have useful forelimbs, aka arms, and clever pads and shivs. But hands they are not, and they must double as walking extremities. When I am afoot, they belong to no one but me.

So Chatter, being an inventive, clever chimp, settles for tightening his long fingers around my tail.