Carole Douglas - Cat in a Jeweled Jumpsuit

“Here? Now?"

“I want you to stay for whatever time it takes to enact Priscilla Presley tomorrow."

“I'm sorry, you'll have to get yourself another bride of Elvis. I'm absolutely determined to keep out of it."

“Again, an admirable decision, and pretty atypical, from what I've heard from Lieutenant Molina, but you're here. You know the setting, the actors, the costume. We don't have enough time to prep a female agent and get her into place this fast. I don't like it, either, but you'll have the agency's full protection."

“Hah! That didn't help Lyle Purvis much.”

Bucek sat forward, alert. "You knew he was a target?" "It was pretty obvious after I found him dead." "You knew we were here?"

“The Memphis Mafia security crew make a great cover for G-men, but there were a few dozen too many of you running around.”

Bucek's smooth features suddenly roughened with a new insight. "And you had the fabulous, flying Fontana brothers to point out dramatis personae to you."

“They did mention the Mob, and the feds. And they knew that the first victim, Clint Westwood, was a minor crime figure. Where do the bozos get these names?”

Bucek chuckled. "In their own self-dramatizing imaginations. Even the bad guys want to see themselves as good guys."

“Maybe especially.”

He nodded slowly and puckered his lips. "Career criminals are just that: upwardly mobile working stiffs trying to climb the ladder. Whoever hit Lyle will expect a promotion."

“And it's the same person who harassed Quincey. Why?”

Bucek tilted back on the wooden chair's fragile legs, making Temple even more nervous. She hadn't relaxed for a second since he'd entered the room, though she was finding the information he was sharing fascinating. Why, he was almost talking to her like a colleague . . . or a patsy.

“You ever read any G. K. Chesteron?" he asked.

Temple shook her head. "Not an Elvis impersonator, I take it."

“British writer. Created the Father Brown mysteries in the nineteen-teens and -twenties. Ever read those?" "Not that I can remember."

“Guess they're considered old-fashioned these days. Chesterton was a writer with a theological bent. He used Father Brown as a vehicle for his ideas about God and good and evil. Father Brown was this utterly overlookable little man who just happened to understand the human soul in all its extremes.”

Temple nodded politely, as she did at all impromptu lectures, but she was wondering when Frank Bucek would get to the point. She could see him holding forth before a class of seminarians. No wonder so many had left the priesthood.

“Anyway," Bucek said, sensing her restlessness, "Father Brown once asked Flambeau the thief 'Where do you hide a leaf?' `In a forest,' Flambeau answered. The case involved an officer who died on a battlefield."

“And you think the killer here is hidden among the Elvis impersonators. Makes sense.”

Bucek's smile grew patronizing without his realizing it.

Temple felt anger flare, as it did whenever she detected men patronizing her, which they did more than they realized, in no small part because of her petite appearance.

Yet her anger suddenly illuminated the other side of the same equation.

“And someone else was masquerading as an Elvis impersonator! That's redundant, 'masquerading as an Elvis impersonator.' Wasn't there a rumor after Elvis's death that he went underground with the witness protection program because his antidrug stance angered the Mob?"

“That's far-fetched, even for conspiracy buffs. Elvis had nothing to do with illegal drugs, except for some LSD he tried once, and a little pot, also a brief experi- ment. He loved playing power roles, though; that's why the Memphis Mafia. But it was all play. Nothing to take seriously."

“Except as a cover at the Kingdome.”

Bucek nodded. "Unfortunately, that works both ways. We have a few real players running around here in shades and suits, just enough to confuse the issue."

“So. How long had Lyle Purvis been in the witness protection program, if he wasn't really Elvis?"

“He wasn't, but he was a lifelong Elvis fan. We went along with the cover because it was the perfect identitywithin-an-identity for him. It's hard for these guys to drop out of their previous lives, move, get new identities, worry about jobs, all that. Lyle was a loner, divorced, no children. He decided to indulge his secret passion for all things Elvis. It embarrassed him, but no one knew about it. He already had the perfect hobby to hide in, even made pretty good money at it. And the notion that surfaced now and again that he was really Elvis, well ... Elvis is a larger-than-life figure. He makes a pretty good screen, just obvious enough that everybody looks right past the impersonator to Elvis. But somehow the players had figured out where he was. We don't take kindly to breaches of the witness protection program."

“Poor Lyle." Then Temple snapped herself out of the lonely life and pseudonymous death of a former crook. She didn't even want to know what he had done, and she was sure Bucek wouldn't tell her anyway. "But poor Lyle is dead. And what about Clint Westwood? He wasn't in the witness protection program?”

Bucek's head shook. "Remember the question about hiding the leaf?"

“You were hiding a witness among the Elvises, and the Mob was sending in their own Elvis impersonator to find and kill your witness. But more than that, the Mob was hiding its real target behind a flurry of other incidents. The attacks on Priscilla, the bizarre killing in the Medication Garden, with a snake in tow no less. You'retelling me they'd kill other people to hide the fact that they had hit Lyle? That's vicious."

“That's why they're the Mob. They don't know we're onto them, and we don't want them to know that until we can build a case not only against the hit man, but against the family that ordered it. So they don't know that there's any reason to stop their original plan."

“Another killing. Turn the whole thing into a three-ring circus: Clint, Lyle, and . . . oh, no!"

“You'll have all the protection I can get."

“It didn't help Lyle, as I so presciently mentioned before."

“We didn't know Lyle was the target. We knew something was up when Westwood turned up dead, and you know that there's an ongoing mob scam in this town tracing back to the Goliath and Crystal Phoenix hotel casino deaths tied to the late Cliff Effinger, our friend Matt's noxious stepfather. If we don't blow our cover now, we may be able to net years' worth of illegal activities, perhaps on an international scale. So we need to catch the killer in the act. We think he has no reason to stop his plan now."

“I have no evidence to believe you guys could stop a flea from biting my cat, much less a hit man from killing me.”

Bucek's smile was apologetic. "You have reinforcements, don't forget."

“Reinforcements."

“Full Spectrum Elvis. The only reason they didn't keep Quincey's dress from getting trashed was that they had to be onstage to run through their number. We expect the last murder to occur during the show. We'll all be onstage, and you can have it the way you set it up for Quincey: Priscilla with her personal bodyguard around her at all times. The Fontana brothers are as apt to spot the perp as we would be. Just tell them you're the target of a hitman, and they'll be better than a pack of watchdogs. Plus, we'll be there."

“I don't know. I've been attacked on stage before, but I've never gone on knowing someone was going to attack me. Talk about stage fright!" Temple shivered and looked around the dressing room. All the laid out cosmetics reminded her of a mortuary preparation room. Tomorrow night Poor Priscilla could go from wedding to grave.

“Besides," Temple took a last stab at eluding the role of sacrificial lamb, "poor Priscilla doesn't have a thing to wear anymore.”