Cat In A Diamond Dazzle

Chapter 10

Pirates Ahoy

"Where are we headed?"

Electra wistfully eyed empty tables spreading into the casino from a dazzling variety of restaurants.

"Look at the fabulous boutique!" Kit gazed left toward display windows crammed with wearable glitz that bounced an acquisitive glint from her eyeglass lenses.

"We are here on business, ladies," Temple reminded them. Her brisk trot did not slow to match their dawdling, window-shopping pace. The enterprise she had in mind was shoe biz.

"Where do we conduct this so-called business?" Electra huffed to catch up with her. "We've been walking for ages. I had no idea the MGM Grand was so misnamed. It should be the MGM Gargantuan."

"Theme park out back." Temple wasted no words as she hustled past gaudy neon game arcades toward the pale horizontal slit of glass doors leading to the great outdoors. "It's just about to open."

Electra groaned. "That means a lot more walking."

"Good for us," Temple sang back, hopping on a down escalator.

Soon their weary feet were beating the merciless cement that was carved into pseudo-flagstones.

Sunshine as warm as drawn butter poured down on the crowd massing behind chain barriers while a troupe of spritely teenage entertainers bid them a tuneful welcome, with acrobatics and dancing. After they posed and froze for the expected applause, two clowns parted the chains. The camera-hung mob surged like misplaced souls in a Twilight Zone episode into an empty townscape of picturesque storefronts housing shops, eateries and amusement rides.

"Reminds me of H. P. Lovecraft's Innsmouth," Kit mused with ominous emphasis. "All quaint and picturesque on the outside, yet who knows what inbred spawn lurks behind the Williamsburg colors and the blank blackness beyond the polished window-glass?

"Actresses!" Temple complained to the world at large, none of whom stopped rushing past to listen.

"Everything is a stage set for you. This is Disneyland on the desert. What could be more wholesome?"

"Exactly why I suspect the worst," Kit said.

"Oh!" Electra was transported, foot discomfort forgotten. "Look! A wedding chapel. Got to dash in and check it out."

Kit and Temple edged into the tiny foyer while Electra dove through a doorway toward the nuptial mysteries beyond. They loitered nervously beside a window framed by peach organdy curtains not seen in such poufy array since Mr. Blandings Built His Dream House.

Wedding paraphernalia--miniature caketop couples, silk flower bouquets and boutonnieres, white satin garters--decorated several shelves of a built-in display cabinet.

Kit lifted the tiny tag trailing from a massive bouquet, then dropped it like a hot petunia. "Pricey! And that's just for Insty-Prince Charming-type weddings. Imagine what a full church ceremony must cost!"

"You ever do it?"

"What?" Kit looked alarmed and eyed the crowded foyer.

"Get married."

"No. I didn't mean not to, but it didn't happen."

"Hmm."

"What's the matter, kid? Feeling like an Old Maid? At your age?"

"Well, you were my age once, and unmarried. Maybe Old Maid-ism runs in families."

"It's called being single nowadays, and it's not so bad, especially in New York City, which is crammed with places to go and people to go there with."

"So is Las Vegas." Temple flattened against the display case as an influx of gawkers brushed against them. "I wish Electra would hurry. I don't want to miss the next show."

"Aha! So we're here to let them entertain us. That should be interesting."

"Not up to Broadway standards, I'm sure."

Kit made a masque-of-tragedy face as she studied Temple. "We're sure down at the kissy corners today." Her features reversed into a grin, and Temple found the corners of her mouth perking up despite herself. "Man trouble, huh?" Kit diagnosed.

"Men."

"Men. I'm impressed. Plurals always impress the shallow at heart, such as people who own two Mercedes. You're more of a vamp than you look."

"Not really. We're talking serial heartbreakers here." Temple felt obligated to explain her situation.

"Max--he's ... he was a magician--and I lived together for more than a year, then he vanished just as Matt showed up at the Circle Ritz. And we got along, more or less, but now Max is back--so I'm caught in the middle of two relationships that don't amount to much. Because how can I trust Max again after he pulled his vanishing act? And Matt, being a hotline counselor, is much too polite to trespass on what he now sees as Max's territory ... so, as far as I'm concerned, they're both welcome to join the French Foreign Legion and I'll just shack up with Louie forever."

Temple's contemplative focus on a petite wax wedding couple lifted to see her aunt's eyes as round as blueberries and tiny, gawking convex people reflected in her oversize lenses. Temple turned to face an audience. Her scattershot recital had stopped spellbound tourists in their tracks.

"What is this Louie-guy's occupation?" asked a woman in a Padres cap and tortoise T-shirt.

"Er, house sitter."

"Stick with the hotline guy," she advised, "steadier job."

"The magician." Her husband, a tall, beak-nosed man with sunburned forearms was no less definite.

"He'll always surprise you."

Temple blushed as lobster-red as the man's arms and turned back to the bridal display.

"You hadn't mentioned any Louie before." Kit produced an auntly frown. "House sitters can be a shiftless lot."

"So is Louie," Temple whispered. "He's a cat!"

"Oh. Good choice. Do you think he'd wear a pink carnation for the wedding?"

Temple giggled with Kit's accompaniment. They were still lost in laughter when Electra stormed out of the inner sanctum.

"Standard stuff, and way too country for my taste. Enough dried flowers to give Dorothy's Scarecrow hay fever. Folks are getting married, not emigrating to the Waltons set for a honeymoon. Why are you two snickering at the tools of the trade? Cynics! You don't think I make my dough from officiating, do you? No, it's the 'options' and 'accessories' and Video albums.' " She turned on Temple. "All right, Little Miss Marcher, where do we really have to go?"

"It's 'Little Miss Marker, '" Kit corrected, turning Temple away from the display and hustling her down the few wooden steps to the ersatz street. "I thought you'd be old enough to know that," she chided Electra.

"I am! And I'm even old enough to remember it wrong sometimes. Where are we going?"

Temple consulted the glossy folded map of the attraction.

"Down this street and to the left. I want the 'dueling pirates' show."

Kit shook her head. "Why ever for?"

"What do pirates have?" Temple asked in turn.

"Swords," Kit replied.

"Sashes," Electra suggested.

"Tattoos." Kit's eyes danced behind her lenses as she envisioned an ever-more-lurid scene.

"That's sailors," Electra objected. "Pirates just have solo earrings and bare chests."

"Yo, ho, ho and a bottle of tanning lotion. I can dig that," Kit answered.

Temple interrupted before the senior citizens in the party turned truly bawdy. "Chests. Dig. What do those two words suggest to you?"

"Lots of fun?" Kit's expression lifted hopefully.

"Treasure," came Temple's wet-blanket response. "We are not attending the cover-hunk pageant yet, ladies. We are out and about on serious business. We have priceless shoes to find. Where could they be hidden in plain sight?"

"Ah." Electra nodded sagely. "A chest of pirate treasure. But wouldn't one of those be buried to the hinges in sand, dear?"

"Not if it's a prop in a theme-park attraction. Come on."

"Are you certain that this 'dueling pirate' show uses a treasure chest?" Kit followed Temple even while she objected to the expedition's direction.

"No, but I have a hunch it might."

Electra nudged Kit's ribs. "Temple's hunches are A-one, especially in the murder department."

"Ooh, do you think we'll have a murder while I'm here?" Kit waxed instantly rhapsodic. "I was in

'Inspector Hound' once, but I've only seen stage corpses. Do you suppose a dueling pirate might do away with a fellow buccaneer?"

"Over hidden shoes?" Temple was indignant. "Hardly. Listen, I've had enough of murder as well as of men."

" Of Murder and Men." Kit paused to envision a marquee. "That has a ring. You should write a play."

"I want to see a play right now."

Temple circled behind the pair to herd them toward a souvenir shop, wherein she purchased three tickets to the pirates, then spurred them into the line outside the attraction. The pointed masts of a sailing ship bristled above the entry roofline.

Kit, a true actress, plunged into character. "Brace the mizzen-mast, me lads, and we'll make home port by dawn," she urged in a disconcerting basso.

"Do they brace mizzenmasts?" Electra wondered.

"Well, they ought to."

Temple, meanwhile, shuffled forward in line, feeling a moth eating a hole of excitement in her stomach. Was she right? Were the glamorous black-cat shoes tucked amongst swags of pirate pearls and Spanish silver? Would she hit the jackpot on her first jaunt? For once she was out to solve an innocent mystery, and a personally rewarding one. No dead pirates, she promised herself.

Once inside, she quickly eyed the setup. A pool masqueraded as a lagoon, with a pirate ship anchored at the rear. The audience sat opposite the ship in a steeply raked amphitheater, open-aired except for a sun-shading roof.

"The higher we go the better we'll see," Kit suggested sotto voce, as if passing on the secrets of the ancients.

"Too high, and I won't get a good look at any treasure chest," Temple said.

"Which may or may not be here," Electra pointed out.

After much vacillating, aisle-blocking and whispered consultation, the party settled on seats four rows up. By then, quite a crowd had entered. They were forced to shuffle into the row, off center to the empty pier area facing the water.

"Don't you think the actors would make off with the shoes if they found them?" Kit asked

"No, they'd probably be in on the scheme." Temple pursed her lips and knotted her eyebrows to match. "Or they don't know. I doubt the shoes will be obvious, but they should be ... reachable."

"For who?" Electra jeered. "The Seven Dwarves? Or the Giant in the beanstalk?"

"Wrong play," Temple said just as a swashbuckling figure shot from the top of the seats to the waterfront below on a rope and a reel instead of a wing and a prayer.

Enter stage left a band of pirate scum, fair maiden in hand.

Actually the fair maiden rode in a chiffon-curtained sedan chair, with the pirate scum toting the poles thereof. When she left her shelter, the chiffon collapsed to reveal the real object the poles supported.

"Yes!" Temple barely restrained herself from leaping out of her seat.

The pirates set down their treasure chest, its suggestively agape lid spilling ropes of pearls and glitter into the bright sunshine.

The action below resolved into a comic opera musical interlude for the pirate scum, who were led by a villainous but impressively muscular first mate, bare of shirt, chest hair and tattoos. Had he heard about the Incredible Hunk contest at the Crystal Phoenix?

Our hero was the pirate captain who had shot from the sky in wide-sleeved shirt, sash and head bandana. In the course of rescuing the maiden, defending his ship and treasure chest and quelling a mutiny, the entire cast ran, skirmished, swung on ropes and cavorted from the platform before the audience to a tower to the ship and another tower. Tension ran high as the audience waited to see who would plummet into the lagoon and get wet first.

While all eyes ogled the athletic action at home and aboard, Temple stepped over the seatback before her and slid down into the next row.

Twin gasps from the rear indicated that Kit and Electra had noticed Temple's unconventional change of seats. Luckily, the lusty action below kept the rest of the audience unaware.

Temple settled into the vacant seat like a slowly sinking ship, then sat immobile until the pirate crew cavorted from pier to the ship's deck and masts.

She again rose, stepped down into an empty seat in the lower row and sat. Only two rows below reposed the treasure chest, set aside and forgotten at what amounted to stage right.

Meanwhile, the cast was engaging in frantic swordplay at stage left. Luckily, Temple was on the fringe of the seated audience. She had only to make her way down two more rows, and the treasure chest would be hers, all hers. At least for the few seconds a look required.

At closer view, the chest was unpromising, even disappointingly tawdry. The gilt paint streaking its exterior was thin and hastily applied. Like some eternally gape-jawed village idiot, it sat lolling its tongue of cheap pearl ropes at the audience. None of the contents thus revealed were worth more than fifteen cents. Temple glimpsed the foot of a gilded goblet. A string of plastic red beads. Swaths of red, green and gold glitter mired in glassy slicks of yellowing glue.

Stage props, like the actors themselves, were designed to appeal most from a flattering distance.

Would Temple entrust a delicate, expensive pair of Austrian crystal-studded shoes to such a lowly container? No, but the least likely the looks, the better the hiding place.

Shrieks from her right made Temple jump like a thief in a spotlight. She glanced to the playing area.

Some pirate crew horseplay had splashed the front-row occupants with a whiplash of water.

Under cover of squeals and claps, Temple darted down two rows and sank down right before the pirate treasure.

She clasped her hands like a princess bride, hardly believing she was now front-row center, staring at the object of her outing. The temptingly ajar lid looked permanently glued into place. She would have to get on her knees and peer into its shadowed mouth, perhaps even pry it open more, if possible. A good thing she wasn't wearing pantyhose, she thought, as she knee-walked into position and twisted to peer inside the lid. Something pale and glittering as a shark's tooth tickled her eye. She craned her head closer to the chest, hearing distant shouts and laughter.

Was it a crystal-encrusted toe? Or a ... a fork tine? And stainless steel at that? What kind of pirate treasure were these yahoos passing off here--?

A strong hand clasped her elbow and jerked her upright.

Temple gasped and turned. The frowning first mate was leering at her, his trusty rubber dagger clenched in his impeccably white, even teeth.

"Aha!" he said so broadly that Temple thought he could walk the plank on his villainous tone alone.

"Another meddling but comely lass. Booty for below."

Another pirate came swinging down like Tarzan to alight beside them. "We'll take her aboard," her captor decreed, pulling Temple nearer in his sweaty embrace to stage-whisper, "Just hang on and put your feet on the knot. You'll be fine."

Even as he spoke he grabbed a passing cable and stepped up on the heavy knot, holding Temple with only one arm.

Before she could blink, they were sailing over the lagoon like blind mice clinging to the pendulum of a grandfather clock. Temple's feet flailed for the advertised knot, but she was too short to reach it, so she clung to the sailor and the rope, watching the blurred world shoot past like running water colors.

Somewhere in that sea of smudged faces were Electra and Kit.

The first mate landed with a jolt on an upper deck, letting the rope swing back across the water.

"That's what you get for lusting after pirate treasure," he announced to Temple and the world at large, thanks to the wonders of portable mikes and modern sound systems.

"Oh, please, sir," she pled prettily, "I must return to my aged and ill grandmother and great-aunt."

The microphones hidden about the scene bounced her voice from waterline to rooftop.

Something else bounced: the poop deck as the pirate captain swung jauntily to deck, where he engaged the first mate in a bit of choreographed swordplay. What was not choreographed was Temple's presence. She had no refuge but cowering against the mast while the pretend pirates traded steel and corny lines.

The audience, safe in their seats across what looked like a hundred feet of cold water (it was October and the nights grew chill), laughed at her plight.

At last the first mate dropped his sword to the deck and performed three backward flips to elude the captain's vengeful blade.

"Worry not," the victor announced, grinning beneath his red bandana, "I will return you safe and sound to yon shore."

With that he seized Temple in one arm and the convenient rope in another.

"Oh, no," she protested, "I'd rather swim."

"That can be arranged!" The first mate was charging them, dagger at the ready, as the captain shoved off with a booted foot.

Once again Temple was airborn with a strange man (very strange), swinging at a tummy-twisting speed over the water wide to the pier.

They landed with only an instant to debark before the rope swung back. The captain escorted her to an empty seat with a bow ... which a mutinous crewman took advantage of, hitting the red bandana with a belaying pin.

While the captain kissed concrete, the first mate swung over to recapture the real fair maiden, who hopped aboard the rope like a pro, protesting all the while.

Temple slumped in her seat, her head spinning from the motion, the noise, the uncertainty. She sat still for the rest of the show, and applauded when the last "Avast, ye cowardly dogs!" had been shouted and the last crewman had taken a watery dive.

So she remained while Kit and Electra edged toward her as the audience filed out of the amphitheater.

"Are you all right?"

Either Kit or Electra had asked that question, and Temple didn't care which.

"Right as rum," she declared, standing and swaying slightly, as if still aboard a rope. "Except I think I'm seasick."

"You looked so cute swinging back and forth," Electra said. "Much cuter than that other girl."

" That other girl' is a gymnast," Temple pointed out. "I'm not. If I looked cute, I must seek more opportunities for sheer terror, then, and have my picture taken." Her usually gritty voice had been scared into a growl. "I should sue those swashbuckling goons."

She stiffened as one of the offenders bounded over: the first mate, his sword tabled and his grin more friendly than fiendish this time.

"Say, you did okay. I figured you would. We're supposed to interact with the audience, and you made a great target, sneaking a peak into our treasure chest. I hope you didn't mind the ride. It's pretty safe."

"Pretty?"

"And so are you," he said with a bow.

Smarmy talk would get him nowhere. Temple didn't respond.

"Why were you so interested in the chest, anyway?" he asked.

"Well." Temple paused. Her last attempt to explain a complicated situation had gathered a gaping crowd at the wedding chapel. Somehow she didn't think rhinestone cat shoes would fly here, even if she had. "I'm a high school drama teacher," she said, lying through her pirate-white teeth. "We're putting on The Merchant of Venice. I wanted some ideas for doing the three suitors' chests for the play."

"Cool." The first mate nodded, his long blond hair going along for the ride. He smiled dutifully at Kit and Electra, then bounded to wherever pirate scum go to wait for the next show.

"No shoes, huh?" Electra joined Kit in staring at the abandoned treasure chest.

"Nothing but some plastic pearls and a tin fork." Temple brightened. "Maybe I don't think big enough."

"This is a pretty big chest," Kit pointed out.

"Not the chest! The site. Where we need to try next is the Treasure Island Hotel. That place must be crawling with treasure chests."

"Not us," Electra said. "Our aged grandmotherly hearts can't take watching you swing from a poop deck."

"Also our aging great-auntly hearts," Kit added.

"Come on, I had to say something to earn audience sympathy!"

"Too bad you didn't get ours," Electra said.

"We need to get back to our duties at the convention." Kit looked speculatively at Electra. "Maybe we can find our own manly dope-on-a-rope who has a scissors phobia and a serious case of myopia." She and Kit turned to join the people shuffling out of the amphitheater. One was not shuffling. One had stopped by the entrance, hat in hand, to grin at the oncoming trio.

"Eightball! What are you doing here?" Temple asked.

"No need to ask what you're up to, is there? Thinking of joining the Big Top?" He gestured with his dapper straw fedora to the ship's mast-tops. "Circus Circus might have an opening. I know the security head there."

"I intend to keep my feet on the ground from now on," Temple said with grim determination.

"And I intend to make sure that she does," Electra added.

Eightball offered her a nod and a tight smile. Then he clamped the hat on his balding head and asked Electra, "That Hesketh Vampire still running smooth as polished steel?"

"Absolutely, when I've got time to take her out for a howl."

"Noticed you were away from the Ritz," he said.

"Did you?" Electra sounded unaccountably pleased. "How did that happen?"

Eightball's toe stubbed the damp concrete, which had been baptized by the buccaneers' shenanigans.

"Went to say hello to Matt. He mentioned that you and Miss Barr had headed for the hills. Didn't know where."

"Didn't he? I guess we should be pleased that he noticed we were gone." Electra winked at Temple.

"Well, I'm going to school at the Crystal Phoenix, and Temple is there to make sure that I crack the books."

"School at the Phoenix?" Eightball dislodged the hat to scratch his head. "This lady the schoolmarm?"

He nodded at Kit, who had been patiently waiting for an introduction.

"Kit Carlson." She extended her hand for a businesslike shake. "Mr.... Eightball."

"Heck, Eightball's my handle. Last name is O'Rourke."

"Eightball is a private detective," Temple put in helpfully.

Kit arched her eyebrows. "Really? Maybe you could drop by our romance convention. A lot of romance writers are moving into mystery and intrigue. You'd be a great visiting expert."

"No way, ladies. I don't have nothing to do with those books."

Mention of romance had Eightball backing away as if he had seen a snake. With a parting nod and an edgy adjustment of his hat, Eightball O'Rourke joined the crowds ambling through the theme park.

"You see what I mean," Kit said with a sigh.

Temple nodded. "Even the word 'romance' is poison to some men."

"They're just afraid to admit their romantic feelings," Electra added. "It's not macho."

"Except for The Bridges of Madison County," Temple said. "Maybe Clint Eastwood playing the lead made romantic love manly again."

"Don't mention that dirty rotten book!" Kit's face flushed with feeling. "One man writes a hasty, three-hanky romance glorifying adultery. Give it a nonromance title and it's suddenly respectable.

Booksellers who sneer at paperback romance fiction can't push it at their clients fast enough. It becomes a major bestseller. Hundreds of women have written romances celebrating monogamy and female empowerment, but they're chopped liver, even the megasellers, when it comes to respect. Besides, everyone thinks that silly Francesca was so noble to stay with her husband and kids after her fling with the traveling photographer ... but what happened after the f-stop was over and Mr. Snapshot packed up his light meters and moved on? She lived a lie with her own family for the rest of her life, presumably."

"Easy, easy." Electra patted Kit's shoulder. "The reviewers didn't much care for Waller either.

Speaking for myself, I can hardly wait to get back to the hotel and start my contest romance. But, say,"

she added, guiding Kit into the slipstream of tourists, "maybe I should consider using a male pseudonym now--"

Temple trailed them, momentarily immune to such issues as men and romance and money-making schemes. She was pondering where she should search for the Midnight Louie shoes next.

One woman's passion is another woman's feet.