Cat In A Diamond Dazzle

Chapter 12

Hearse and Rehearsal

"Cheyenne invited us," Temple told the man in the knit shirt who paused beside the seats she, Kit and Electra occupied in the Peacock Theater the next morning.

The man glanced at his beeper, nodded and rushed on.

"Whew." Kit slid onto her tailbone until her head was barely above the seatback. "No New York theater would let onlookers camp out like this during rehearsal."

"This is Las Vegas," Temple explained. "Everybody knows or owes somebody. People are always dropping in. As long as you have the right name to drop--and apparently we do--no problem."

Electra had not bothered to shrink into her seat; with her hair moussed and sprayed papaya pink, what was the point? She gazed mistily toward the stage.

"Kind of brings back my uncovered, undercover assignment as Moll Philanders. Golly, that Hesketh Vampire made a dynamite stage prop, though."

"Huh?" The string of confusing allusions brought Kit upright gain. "I know what a vampire is, but what's a 'Hesketh' vampire? One with a lisp?"

"A big mean, screamin' machine," Electra intoned with fond and unfaded memory. "One thousand cee-cees of silver-streak 'cycle."

"I don't even know what a 'cee-cee' is. Max's vintage British motorcycle," Temple translated for Kit's benefit. "Electra got it as a downpayment on our condo. She used it in her gig as a senior citizen stripper when I was doing PR for the stripper contest."

Kit blinked. "Senior citizen strippers? I knew Las Vegas had a loyal elderly clientele, but--"

"It's a long story," Temple said, "and rather rowdy."

Kit gave up for the moment to look around. "Pretty ordinary theater and house, without the turquoise and violet velvet curtains. So, What if you hadn't had Cheyenne's name to drop? Would we still be persona grata?"

"Sure." Temple grinned. "I work for the Crystal Phoenix now, so I could always use my position here."

"Hey!" came a deep booming shout from the back of the house.

"Yeah!" came its cousin.

"Ta-rah-rah boom-de-ay," came a lusty male chorus of at least six.

Temple turned, looked, cringed and tried to shrink in her seat.

"Temple's back, and guess who's got her?"

The bearers of this untimely news came charging down the center aisle en masse, or so it sounded. Temple couldn't bear to look, but she could smell them at fifty paces: a phalanx of English and Russian Leather intermixed with a soupcon of Brut.

Temple peered between her fanned fingers, trying for a body count. To her best estimate, she was viewing the complete Fontana, Inc. All nine brothers--except Nicky, who didn't travel in packs--

at once. Nicky, owner of the Crystal Phoenix and husband to hotel manager Van von Rhine, was the White Sheep of a large family more noted for its wool of blacker hue. The other brothers were bachelors--attractive, genially oblivious to all but the finer vices in life (like gats, gambling and gams) and prone to preen. But now their image had taken a one-hundred-and-eighty-degree turn.

Gone were the Italian ice-cream suits; also gone was the discreet bulge of Beretta here and there. No, now it was skin-tight designer jeans and bulging muscle shirts. Ralph not only had a pony tail, but it wasn't one anymore. Instead, his unbound hair, moussed into a tangle from a figure on a Cretan frieze, dusted his shoulders. The presence of so many feral Mediterranean males made Temple feel like an extra on the set of "West Side Story."

"These guys look like they should be on Hesketh vampires," Kit commented, not without appreciation. "Friends of yours?"

"Business associates." Temple smiled gamely up at the assembly. "What are you fellows doing here?" she asked before they could ask her. "Security detail?"

"Naw," said one, "we're in the Hunky Hero contest."

"Is there a group category?"

"Nope," said another. "We compete separately, but we make our public appearances all together, if that makes sense."

"Yeah, if the six Goat Guys from Elbow Grease, Indiana, can rack up modeling contracts, we figure the nine Fontana Fellows from Las Vegas, Nevada, can do twice as good."

"Who are 'the Goat Guys'?" Electra asked.

"Sextuplet bodybuilders from Indiana," Aldo--or maybe Armando--said disdainfully. "Genuine hayseeds. They raise fainting goats; the kind that up and fall down when they hear a loud noise.

That's probably what makes them so good at holding up all those swooning women on romance bookcovers. Practice."

Rico frowned in disagreement. "The way I heard it, they raised pygmy and dwarf goats, for little people, I guess. You know, those hairy suckers with the pig's feet and devil horns."

"Forget the details," Julio--or maybe Giuseppe, sometimes known as Pepe--said. "The bottom line is that the Goat Guys made it into the big time at last year's Incredible Hunk competition. They went straight from the slop pail to the media trough. Big-time modeling, acting, even recording contracts."

"Do you do any of that?" Kit asked.

"Raise goats? Hell, no."

"Model, act and record," she specified.

"Oh, that." Ralph was blase as he gave his locks a finger-fluff. "Any fool can do that stuff. You just gotta have the look. We're not the bodybuilder type, but we have other advantages."

"Yes," Electra and Kit agreed a bit too quickly for credibility's sake.

"So is there a talent segment?" Temple wanted to know. She really wanted to know.

"Yeah."

"There is?"

Ernesto--or possibly Eduardo--nodded soberly. "Yeah. Wearing clothes."

"And not wearing clothes," Emilio put in.

"Actually, the pageant is mostly about changing clothes," Ralph said eagerly. "First we all come on in clothes. Next we don't wear much clothes; then more clothes; then less clothes; then we all come back out in clothes and wait to see who gets to wear no clothes on a book cover."

"It's a big strain, let me tell you," Julio complained, "keeping track of all those costumes and what to take off and put on. Plus, they give us no time flat."

"And less room."

"And no private dressing rooms. The smell is like the locker rooms of the Rams after a playoff."

"But we don't mind personal hardship if it pays off big," Rico added with a grin.

"Doesn't it bother you to parade around onstage undressed?" Temple wondered. "What happened to the totally tailored Fontana brothers?"

"Fame."

"Fortune."

"An audience of adoring babes."

"But I do kinda feel a little naked sometimes," Ralph said with a doubtful frown.

"You do?" the amazed other brothers asked as one.

"Yeah." Ralph looked down and seemed, for a moment, as sheepish as one would imagine a Goat Guy would look if his fainting goat refused to swoon. "I kinda miss my Beretta."

"Ahh!" His siblings pounded him consolingly on the back, in the time-honored gesture of male sympathy. "You can't pursue a career in the arts without some sacrifices," Armando consoled him grandly.

Ralph nodded, and then brightened. "On the other hand, I can add to my earring collection.

Earrings are really hot among the contestants."

"We gotta go," Aldo urged. "Hit the backstage before we miss our cueball."

"Cue," Temple and Kit corrected in tandem.

"Wait'll you see us in our competition getups," Pepe bragged. "This is even better than our surprise appearance in the Gridiron show."

"I'm sure," Temple said, not at all sure that the world was ready for an intentional Fontana Brothers stage appearance.

"Tally ho!" said one.

"One for the money," said another.

"Two for the show."

"Three to get Freddy--"

"And four to go!"

They were off like Italian greyhounds, sleek, single-minded and born to win.

"Whew." Kit was suitably dazed. "Who was the chorus line from 'Guys and Dolls'?"

"The hotel owner's brothers, all nine of them."

"For a girl with romantic troubles, you certainly know a lot of eligible males; most, unfortunately, are on the young side."

"The Fontana brothers are bachelors, all right, but they're about as eligible as gigolos."

"Such darling brothers," Electra put in. "Look at Ralph's charmingly boyish attachment to his Bearetta. I had no idea young men nowadays were into stuffed animals. I'm sure they'll grow up and settle down in time. Do you think these Goat Guys will show up this year? Swashbuckling sextuplets.

They sound absolutely fascinating."

Temple shook her head without comment. She knew she had risen too early this morning for a person in a fragile emotional state.

"There she is," sang out another male voice, a baritone mimicking the Miss America theme song.

Temple stiffened. Apparently the world had nothing better to do this morning than to draw attention to her.

"Our ideeeeeal," the singer finished in perfect pitch, arriving beside their row of seats with a flourish. "Show us the tootsies," he ordered Temple. "What are our little tiny toes wearing today?"

Temple surrendered and lifted a foot into the aisle.

"Fabulous," he pronounced. "Yellow is your color. Is the ankle stronger than sheet metal again?"

"It's the other ankle and, yes, at least as firm as tinfoil. How are you, Danny?"

"In my element, ducks." Danny Dove cast a theatrically languishing glance over his shoulder at the stage thronging with wandering, bare-muscled, bawling hunks in search of stardom, not Stella.

Danny wore vintage Gene Kelly today: tight black T-shirt, jeans and sockless loafers. Gene would have worn the socks--dorky white sweat-socks--but that had been forty years ago, before the birth of Contemporary Cool.

"Are you coordinating the pageant?" Temple asked hopefully.

" 'Coordinate' is more word than most of these guys can manage. Some have modeling and acting experience, if you count blue movies, but theatrically, the majority are barbarians. Three days to turn these sows' ears into silk tuxedos. Still, I do love a big, juicy challenge."

Danny stiffened his shoulders and marched up the aisle toward the milling contestants.

Temple glared at Kit before she could say anything. "He is not an eligible man."

"Not to us, perhaps. But everybody is eligible to somebody. Who is he?"

"Local choreographer. I would have introduced you, but his heart was in the Highlands." Temple jerked her head toward the stage, where a tow-headed giant wearing a red tartan kilt and little else was striding over the boards, broadsword in hand. "Danny Dove is a pretty big name in this town."

"Danny Dove? No kidding?" Kit leaned forward in her seat to watch the wiry director instantly whip milling hunks into something resembling a chorus line.

"You've heard of him?"

"He made his name on the Manhattan bathhouse circuit back when Bette Midler was making hers in the same venue. So he ended up in Vegas. I'd bet he makes bucks."

"You'd win."

Electra frowned. "Then why is he doing this little show?"

"Kid in a chocolate factory." Temple nodded at the stage. "Men in tights. Ambiance."

Electra was not assuaged. "Is it . . . safe for these young men--?"

Kit laughed. "Golly, Electra, guys who look like that have learned to encourage or fend off either sex since high school. They're the ones who take advantage of--they take advantage of their looks and other people's longing. Beautiful people learn the drill early, and if they choose to make a career of it, they're usually the least vulnerable of anyone in the dating game."

"I'm old-fashioned," Electra confessed. "I married all of my husbands."

"All?" Kit was shocked.

Electra nodded demurely. "Let's watch the rehearsal, girls. Isn't that what we're here for?"

They sank back into their seats in unison, but Electra's question lingered in Temple's eternal inner monologue.

What were they themselves here for? Kit was the professional. A writer, imagine that. Her aunt the romance novelist. To Kit this pageant was a mere promotional circus, and the men on stage were the attractive animal acts that lured the public to buy her popcorn.

Electra was the ardent amateur, a reader yearning to break into print. She saw these rather overwhelming men as symbols of lost youth and late-life renewal.

Temple was an escapee from reality. Along for the ride, evading the angst at home, dodging her personal responsibilities. Fleeing to an environment she barely understood, and wasn't sure she liked or even approved of.

Women frankly ogling men as a role reversal had a certain kinky appeal, but was as silly and immature as men ogling women. And, at the moment, Temple wasn't in the mood for either option. Had Hamlet showed up instead of Danny Dove, and barked "Get thee to a nunnery," she might have gone, gratefully.

Kit, actress-author extraordinaire, gestured to the proscenium. "This is set up more like a fashion runway."

Temple nodded as she examined the temporary tongue of stage covered in garish red cloth with cellophane blades like trampled grass, sticking out at the audience in tacky audacity.

Onstage, Danny's hands were slapping out amazingly loud claps.

"Attention, Romper Roommates. You all have your order of appearance, God bless us, everyone.

Walk it on down, one by one, and show me the shtick you came in with. Then I'll give you something that works. Go!"

They came down the runway, as obedient as lambs who would be lions. Shoulder blade-long manes streamed (though some men were post-Delilah Samsons, conventionally shorn); sculpted muscles flexed in four-four time in shoulders, thighs and washboard stomachs (though some were less muscle-bound than others); all flashed bleached-to-bone-white teeth (though any audience was absent except for Temple and associates, and a mixed-sex cadre of stage crew and costume volunteers).

"Oooh!" Electra exclaimed as one candidate performed several handstands down the runway The next produced a wavy dagger with a jeweled hilt, then held it pointing floorward between his legs as he executed a slow split, letting the metal blade suggestively lift skyward as his riven thighs neared full contact with the stage.

"Whew!" Kit fanned herself with one hand. "A night at the Laddie's Lair."

A roguish sort with short curly hair sashayed downstage, a workman's leather tool belt clattering around his hips like a gun belt. At the runway's very tip he took a wide stance, then drew a metal measuring tape from its center-hung housing in the twelve o'clock low position.

"Danny Dove is right," Temple muttered. "Everybody has a gimmick."

"Just like the strippers in 'Gypsy,' " Kit agreed, rising. "I've got to visit the ladies' room. Let no hunk do anything he shouldn't do before I get back." She bustled up the aisle.

Onstage, Danny Dove had collapsed into a cross-legged position at stage right, rubbing his corrugated forehead with his hands. His dancer's eloquent body conveyed what words did not: the contestants' preplanned shticks were as corny as anticipated.

"What a disappointment." Electra spoke loudly enough to carry to the stage apron, just as Mr.

Tape Measure's nine extended inches snapped back into its holster. "I mean... I expected more, more savoir faire."

"More dash and less trash," Temple said. "I hope Cheyenne doesn't embarrass himself, though I shudder to imagine what the Fontana Boys will come up with."

Electra nodded bleakly. "Kit isn't missing anything."

"Maybe we can sneak out discreetly," Temple suggested, rising.

"Imagine, a front-row preview parade of Incredible Hunks and we're bored. Let's catch Kit coming out of the ladies' room."

A lull in the lineup of male pulchritude created a perfect escape hatch. Temple and Electra were tip-toeing rather ostentatiously up the plush-carpeted aisle when rustles and whispers erupted behind them.

Yell bloody murder and no one will look. Whisper a little and they'll stand transfixed. The two turned to the stage just as a bare leg thrust out from behind the side curtain.

It was well-formed, and hairy enough to be masculine, but also decidedly equine.

Temple raised an auburn eyebrow.

Another leg--or, rather, foreleg--followed.

Edging nervously onstage was a horse of mottled gray color daubed with white, an Appaloosa famed for the pale scatter of melting "snow" spots on its hindquarters.

But no one in the audience could see its hindquarters yet, and who would even worry about it, given the tawny, sinewy, naked male figure of an Indian--Native American, in politically correct terms--on its back?

"Well!" Electra stopped so sharply Temple caromed off her suddenly solid form. "Wait. I once considered using an Indian hero in my romance entry. Wish I'd seen this guy sooner. This is more like it."

"It's theater, all right," Temple agreed, watching horse and rider amble downstage. "Will that makeshift ramp hold a near-ton of horseflesh and hunk?"

Each hoof struck stage with the muffled thump of a drumbeat. Though the rider looked naked, Temple soon spotted the thongs over each hip that supported a buckskin loincloth. The brave's long dark hair was braided in front, and no smile fractured his chiseled features. A small deerskin pouch on a leather string lay on his bare breastbone. The leather strap slashing diagonally across his well-developed chest led the eye to a beaded quiver and three feather-tipped arrows peeking over his right shoulder. He carried a pale bow of antler or bone, with a two-foot-long arrow notched on the string, though his arms were slowly lowering the weapon as the horse moved toward the audience.

Very sensible, Temple approved. Safety before sensation.

The horse paused at center stage. It wore no bridle, Temple realized, no reins, no saddle, but was trained to respond to rider signals only. What a magnificent creature! she thought, although most (less romantically burned-out) women would apply that praise to the rider rather than the ridden.

The horse held its noble position for long seconds, then turned its head over its shoulder and whinnied inquiringly. Temple didn't know much about horses and whinnies, but she knew a lot about greenhorn performers wondering 'what next,' whether in plain English or plaintive horse.

The rider did nothing. Did not so much as move.

Good call; his stoic bearing added to the mystery and the moment. Cheyenne--for Cheyenne it was--had created a show-stopper. Even Danny Dove sat immobile and rapt, captivated by a true stage suspense as everyone present was, by a breathless wondering What will he -- they -- do next?

"Bravo," Temple whispered under her breath. "But don't milk it too long--"

Even as she spoke the rider moved. The warrior's lean torso shifted left, as if to dismount, the bare left leg slid sideways along the horse's gray belly, the bow and arrow pointed downward, to the floor. Every motion was as elegant as ballet, blessed with a lingering; sure sensuality that only intensified the effect. The onlooker didn't want the slow-motion poetry of man and horse to end, but knew that--at any instant--the moccasined feet would spring lightly to the stage, for the horse couldn't walk on the temporary runway.

But the anticipated dismount didn't happen. Instead, the man's body kept tipping sideways, like a tin figure struck by a lucky shot at a shooting gallery. Temple expected such a figure to flip upright and move on. It didn't.

Cheyenne's feet touched the stage floor only an instant before his entire length did, collapsing like a straw man. Bow and arrow fell to one side.

Everyone watched, motionless, waiting for the drama's next act. Surely something not yet seen would explain this turn of events.

Temple saw the unthinkable reason first.

"No!" she shouted at someone, spurred to action, wanting to roll the film backwards. She sprinted down the long aisle and up the five or six steps to the runway.

Every eye wrenched to her. She could sense annoyance on the accusing faces of watching stage crew members in the wings. But she had her glasses on, all the better to see the heroes on parade strut their stuff. She had spotted something else in the spotlit glare ... something other than naked horse and nearly naked man.

Blood dappling the snow of an Apaloosa's hindquarters.

No one--nothing--was moving but her and the gently sidestepping horse, except time. The horse whinnied again, this time in obvious distress. It minced away, as magnificently bare as its fallen rider, turning to display a thin crimson stream that meandered down the sleek, swelling belly.

Now everyone was running for the same spot, but Temple was already there. She paused at the foot of Cheyenne's figure, studying his open, unseeing eye, his slack mouth. Then she saw the feathered haft of an arrow bracing his back, keeping it from sinking flat to the floor.

Or was he sinking to the floor, driving the shaft in deeper?

Temple knelt to seize his ebbing shoulder with both hands.

"Help me! We've got to keep him from falling on it--"

Someone crouched beside her. "Hang on, dear heart!" Danny Dove.

Even greater force checked the body's fall. A Fontana brother knelt at Cheyenne's head, his bent knee helping prop up the torso.

Temple sensed legs crowding around them.

"Lay him forward," someone suggested.

"Has he got a pulse?" Another voice.

"I've done some nursing--" A man knelt beside them, then pressed two fingers to Cheyenne's carotid artery.

After a second, his fingers moved to another site. And another. Temple sensed rather than saw the headshake that accompanied his spoken verdict. "Nothing. No pulse."

A nondescript costume woman brought rolled-up towels daubed with suntan-shade makeup anyway, pushing them under Cheyenne's back to keep ... the body ... from rolling onto the arrow.

An arrow. A stage prop gone awry? Or a murder weapon, first and last? Temple stared into Cheyenne's dead face, remembered its charming yet oddly diffident animation the previous night, when he'd invited her to today's rehearsal... for death.

No! He had first asked her to go somewhere else last night. With him. For a drink. To talk. She had considered the invitation frivolous and insincere; he was just another ambitious hunk winning women's favor and influencing votes. Kit and Electra wanted to assume that he was attracted to her, thought that she should accept any flattering invitations. She had brushed off both assumptions. She had said no. She had no time for games.

But maybe Cheyenne was interested in her, for reasons other than the eternal he/she. Maybe he had a problem and knew about her role in uncovering the Stripper Strangler.

She had said no.

Nobody would ever say no to him again.

People were edging away from tragedy, stepping back from death. There was nothing they could do.

Nothing she could do.

"Come on," someone above her urged, a hand on her shoulder, as she had laid hands on Cheyenne's shoulder only moments before.

Temple remained crouched beside the body, dumb as a dog. Danny caught her elbow in his wiry grip and pushed her upright despite herself. She teetered on her high heels like someone on a cliff.

The sudden change in position made her senses swim. Beside her, the horse minced nearer, a great gray wall of muscle and hide.

"Someone get the bleedin' 'orse outta 'ere!" a disconcertingly Cockney voice ordered.

"No," Temple said. "The police will want it kept as close to the scene of the crime as possible. It's evidence."

"Some blighter's supposed to stand 'ere and 'old the big bugger by his nose hairs?"

Temple glanced at the speaker. He was almost as tall as the horse, a chestnut-maned hunk with an artistically broken nose and piercing hazel eyes. He was obviously not volunteering for groom duty.

"I'll .. . hold it," she said. "And we should keep people away from here until the police come."

Temple had never held a horse in her life, much less one bare of bridle and rein. So she stepped near its huge head and caught a fistful of mane, stroking its long nose.

Everyone but Danny Dove and the anonymous Fontana had backed away. Violent death did that to people: first attracted and then repelled them.

"The police have been called?" she asked.

"I sincerely hope so, Miss Annie," Danny said, his face ashen.

"Annie?"

Danny grinned from under his angelic coil of grizzled blond hair. "Annie Oakley, that is. Don't worry, I'll keep an eye on our friend Flicka there with you."

The offer was welcome.

Temple didn't know which she would have more difficulty handling in the long run: the live horse she didn't know how to hold, or the dead man she hadn't known how to help.