Cat In A Diamond Dazzle

Chapter 18

Every Large Breezy ...

Temple and Kit returned to the Crystal Phoenix to find the lobby packed with registering G.R.O.W.L.ers.

"Oh, no!"

"What?" Kit asked, scanning the mob.

"Fabrizio again. Does he stake out the registration line, or what?"

"Of course he wants to catch them coming in. This is his business, Temple, and these women are his fans."

"At least we registered early and can sneak past."

"But we're not going to." Kit corralled Temple's arm as she tried to eel away. "Here's an ideal opportunity to practice your new undercover persona."

"What new undercover persona?"

"Remember? I told you at lunch. Trot out your old reporting skills and become officially nosy. This crowd expects the media to be out in force, and it's dying to get noticed."

"Dying is the operative word around here lately."

Temple frowned as Kit pulled her toward Fabrizio's knot of women. "I really don't want another close encounter with Fabrizio. He's so bold, so blond ... so bigger than life. I feel like I'm going to be stomped by Trigger when I'm around him."

"Ah! But you are Media now. Breezy will be a pushover, and you'll do the pushing. Mention a major show, and he'll trot over quietly for a lump of sugar, I promise. Now, here's the notepad and pen from my registration packet. Remember, he's probably got the inside scoop on all the pageant personalities. He might even be the killer. Go, girl!"

Kit pushed Temple into the charmed circle surrounding the cover model. It made an odd sight: the squat cluster of women swarming the towering blond-maned man like a ring of enchanted mushrooms. He was it. The pinnacle of power, the Viking god with oiled muscles, sun-streaked blond hair and a twenty-four-karat Personality with a capital Pow.

Temple felt like an ambivalent bobby-soxer on the edge of the Elvis phenomenon, but ole Breezy zeroed right in on her, probably because she was, as usual, the most liftable female present.

"La Rossa!" He greeted her like an old fling.

His tanned face beamed, his Mediterranean-blue eyes twinkled, his impossibly white teeth flashed. This guy was a one-man weather report: clear and sunny and shining only for you, lucky woman you. Just you and another two-and-a-half million females on the planet. His . . . oh! ... huge, grasping hands were stretching for her.

Temple let out a big breath, as Matt had instructed her to do when confronted with a superior force, barked, "Stop!" in English, then "Basta!" in Italian, and held her palm up like a school-crossing guard.

David could not have gotten Goliath to so much as blink with this tactic, but Temple's routine halted the oncoming action figure in mid-stride. Maybe the Italian word for "enough" had done it. A cloud of uncertainty shadowed Fabrizio's relentlessly upbeat features.

"You do not like to be picked up by Fabrizio? But why?" His hands spread wider, both to question... and to prepare to pounce.

The encircling women grew quiet, like jackals waiting for the lordly lion to finish off the prey before they tore the leavings apart.

Temple swallowed, but her voice was firm when she answered. "Because I can't take notes when I'm off the ground, and notes are very important to a field producer for Hot Heads."

The fans' faces transformed from suspicion to rapture. Breezy was no less blissful. Hot Heads was the moment's most torrid tabloid TV entertainment show. The Heads was short for headlines, but the contraction was apt: famous faces and talking heads telling all made the show so hypnotizing to viewers.

"Why did you not say so earlier, dear signorina? I would never want to interfere with your working. And what do you wish?"

"Ah, just a few minutes of your time while I take preliminary notes for our on-camera personalities."

"You have them, these minutes. You have all of me." His arms spread wide, his open shirt gaping to strain across rippling chest muscles. Temple found the effect rather creepy. She could see her mythical tabloid headline now: "Fabrizio possessed by sentient muscles from Mars!"

Temple backed away from the oncoming Fabrizio and his train of silent, intent, gap-mouthed watchers, then led him to one of Van von Rhine's cream Italian leather seating pieces that dotted the lobby. Van had designed the Crystal Phoenix with such personal pains that every piece seemed a favorite of the hostess.

Temple perched on the cushy seat's edge, her heels planted on the lobby's navy and gold carpeting. Experience had taught her that sinking into down-stuffed furniture could entrap her.

Fabrizio leaned expansively into a shirred leather corner, like a very rich milk chocolate in a luxurious box, spreading his arms over the backrest and his legs until one askew knee almost nudged Temple's. And she taking so pathetically little space on her best days!

She laid her notebook on her crunched-together knees--she felt like a novice in a Spanish cloister, but Breezy was such a territory-hogging guy that she had no other choice, unless she wished to be annexed.

The fans had withdrawn to a decent distance, just barely, and hovered, hoping to overhear any scintilla of stray sound.

Fabrizio smiled at her, steadily, knowingly, intimately. "Why you not like picking up, eh? Every woman"--he pronounced it "woo-mahn"--"likes man to take charge, to carry her away from the everyday. This is what Fabrizio do. Why you not like?" His piercing gaze, honed under hot studio spotlights hundreds of times at $3,000 a pop, she had read, focused on Temple like a lascivious Latin laser beam.

The three-grand ogle did not impress her. They all had that smug invasive look, the professional ladykillers, implying that the woman was some uptight ignoramus resisting the Sultan of Sex. And just underneath the romantic schmaltz lay an implicit threat of superior masculine knowledge, if not force, of knowing what was best for her. Temple was too polite to tell Fabrizio that the whole manner repelled her because it was so perfectly professional.

"I have a phobia of heights," she said shortly.

"Oh, yes." He nodded. A neurotic weakness was perhaps understandable, and not unexpected.

"So you say before. I will not let you fall. You would no longer be afraid with Fabrizio."

"I'm, ah, afraid I would be. Now, about the show--"

His body and features clicked into another mode: rapt attention.

"Everyone, of course, knows your story, Fabrizio."

"Ah, yes. How Fabrizio is simple Italiano boy. Always I want to be model, travel, always I build body and want to go to America. Like Arnold. But then I model for romance covers, and the woo-mahn is ecstatic. I now am multi-media personality. I have workout book and tapes, calendars, romantic advice line, cologne for men."

"Do you model for romance covers anymore?"

"No, too busy." His smile again showcased the Teflon teeth.

"Or . .. there are so many other male cover models competing now."

Fabrizio shook his head until his split ends whipped the sofa back. "No. Covers are start, not end.

Small fries for international multimedia personality. I only come to do walk-through for pageant because G.R.O.W.L was a good start for me. But I do not need this audience. Fabrizio is for whole world now."

"Then you don't feel threatened by all the up-and-comers?"

He shook his golden mane again, his distant watchers shiver-ing with delight. "Fabrizio not threatened by anybody." The lothario's smirk was back. "Except lovely woo-mahn who believes she is afraid of height. This makes Breezy feel very bad, that she does not think he is strong enough to hold her."

"So you're not even threatened by a murderer?"

The last word froze the look on his face, but the intimacy had left it.

"You think a murderer would want to kill Breezy? No. This dead model, this Cheyenne. He was new to this, and he did not have the physique of Fabrizio, no?"

"Still, he apparently had done some modeling abroad. That's usually a sign of a rising career."

"Peanuts, how you say? Little stuff. Fabrizio does all the big stuff, leaves that small fries to the others now. He would be no threat to what I do, what I am. No man is."

"We may assume that you are not a suspect, then, since you had no motive?"

"Suspect? For small woo-mahn you play big games. Why should Fabrizio wish anyone ill? He is rich, famous, happy. Many woo-mahns wish to be picked up by Fabrizio, all over the world!"

The massively muscled arms spread wide again, the better to display his firm, rounded, fully packed pectorals. Funny, Temple thought, that used to be a female secondary sexual characteristic.

Breezy's thigh pressed into hers, hot and hard. It reminded her of an encroaching Christmas ham.

She slapped the notebook shut. "As the second Incredible Hunk winner, you can't compete again anyway, can you?"

"No. But there is no need. Fabrizio has won every heart, because he speaks from the heart." A ham-sized hand pounded the tan-gilded breastbone, in case Temple had overlooked a part of his anatomy. "Sincere, that is the secret of Fabrizio. And we do very well with that."

How odd that he referred to himself in both the third person and the royal "we," when mentioning his business enterprises. Temple supposed that he was a one-man conglomerate of sorts. Pneumatic Man, able to spread himself into million-dollar multimedia areas with a single muscle flex.

Temple stood. "Thank you. This will help ground my anchors."

Fabrizio snapped his fingers. A harried-looking woo-mahn trotted over, tote bag in hand. "This is Cindee, my publicist. She has press kit."

A glossy folder with a color image of a hip-up naked Fabrizio was thrust into Temple's hand. The photo was so lifelike that Temple expected her palm to suffer an oil slick.

Fabrizio stood, too, towering over her as he had loomed over countless swooning, swept-away cover models. His eyes, already too close together, narrowed horizontally as well. "You will one day like to be picked up by Fabrizio."

On that threat and promise, he strode back into the mob of woo-mahns, who closed on him like eager antibodies surrounding an infection.

"See!" Kit had materialized from somewhere, and was as happy as hell's bells. "He doesn't bite.

Learn anything relevant?"

"Only that there is no justice in who gets rich and famous, and how."

"Pshaw, we knew that already."

"He's not worried about being a victim," Temple said thoughtfully. "Either he hasn't thought about the possibility, or ... he knows why Cheyenne was killed."

"Maybe we could waylay him late at night and interrogate him."

"Aunt Kit! You don't find that bloated hunk of overdeveloped ego attractive?"

She shrugged, shameless.

Temple headed for the elevators, Kit by her side.

"You were right, though," she told her aunt. "Pretending to work with tabloid TV is an open sesame. Works much better than legitimately being employed by a local TV station years ago."

They were edging into the chiming slot machine area, for no one can go anywhere in a Las Vegas Hotel without passing these garish coin-catchers for the eternally hopeful.

Temple suddenly grabbed Kit's arm, jerked her into an aisle and sat them both down on two adjoining stools--hard.

"I can't believe it!" she said indignantly. "Keep your head down."

"Why? Is Fabrizio trolling for redheads again? I fear I'm a bit faded--"

Temple's red head was bobbing up and down like a dunking apple on Halloween. "Shhhh!" she ordered, her fierce eyes focusing over the top of the slot machine. "What are they doing ...

together! Of all the nerve."

"Who?" Kit cautiously peered over the machine in the direction that Temple was staring. "Those two cover models?"

"They are not cover models!" Temple was almost rabid with rage. "They have no business being here. Especially together."

"Temple! Who are they? They look innocuous enough."

"That was my first mistake. One is the Mystifying Max--"

"Your ex?"

"So to speak. And the other is Matt Devine."

"Oh. Your ... maybe current." Kit tilted her head almost horizontal to the floor to sneak another look. "Which is which?"

"Who cares? What are they up to?"

"I would say about six-three, if you're looking at the tall one. Hmm, not bad, Niece. Either one could compete in the pageant. If you don't need both, I'm available."

Kit was summarily jerked back down to her stool.

"Fine, if you're in the market for traitors!" Temple was still fuming.

"What have they done?"

"Well, the last time I saw them together, you could carve the hostility into chunk-size pieces and feed it to the sharks. Now they're strolling around the Crystal Phoenix like buddies. And Max claimed he needed to keep out of sight! Sure. Of me!"

Kit ventured to stretch her neck up again. "And so he is. Now. Matt too. Pity. I'd sure like to see them closer up."

Temple stood slowly, ready to duck again. "I don't know whether they make me more nervous when I can see them, or when I can't."

"That's men for you, every time." Kit yawned. "Well, now that I've had my daily dose of excitement, I'll pop up to my room for a beauty rest before dinner." She patted Temple's hand.

"Don't let this worry you. I'm sure that there's a very simple explanation."

"There isn't," Temple said grimly.

Clutching her Fabrizio folder until the glossy paper squeaked, she ventured to the elevator with her aunt. She kept scanning the area for another sighting.

And never saw hide nor hair nor pectoral nor tempestuous mane of anything that resembled a cover hunk the entire way back to her room.

Electra was lounging on the bed when she got there, studying a folder full of papers.

"How did the writing class go?" Temple asked, tossing Fabrizio facedown on her bed's coverlet.

"Terrific. We had a two-hour lunch break, so I dashed up and began my contest entry. That little machine is so adorable and petite, just like you!" She didn't notice Temple grinding her teeth. "It makes such cute little words, all prancing across the itty-bitty screen. So much more interesting than a typewriter. I'm glad you brought it."

"So am I. I'm going to have to punch some notes in tonight. The cast of characters at this circus is larger than the extras roster in a Hollywood epic. Speaking of epic, I had another close encounter with the scrumptious Fabrizio."

"Oh." Electra was so intent on her class papers she hardly reacted.

"And guess who I just saw strolling through the lobby? Max Kinsella and Matt Devine."

"That's nice, dear. I've got to concentrate on my scene-and-sequel writing exercise."

Temple held her arms up, wide, Fabrizio-style. Didn't anyone want to be swept off their feet anymore? Not even by a hot news flash?

"I'm going to jump in the shower with Fabrizio," Temple said, gathering her gear.

"That's nice, dear. Don't let the water get too hot."

"And with Norman Bates's mother!" Temple shouted from around the bathroom corner.

"Urn hmm. Say hello for me."