Cat In A Diamond Dazzle

Chapter 21

Opening Knights

"Here."

Kit thrust a fistful of printed matter into Temple's hand when she opened the door to her hotel room.

"What are these? Membership papers for the Hare Krishnas?"

"Mug shots."

"They are not." Temple shuffled through the array. "They're . . . the back covers torn off romance novels! I suppose the prose is provocative: 'He was wild as the wind, a whip-lean man of uncommon strength and fierce independence who would bow to no beauty's way, but whose proud heart longed for the sweet torment of the right woman's love.' Several titles right there: Wild as the Wind . . . Bow to No Beauty . . . Beauty's Way . . . Proud Heart . . . Sweet Torment . . . The Right Woman's Love. The whole blurb is a series of bloody titles!"

"Now she's getting it." Electra looked up from the dressing table mirror, where she was performing curious rituals with mousse, an electric brush and cans of washable hair color.

Kit shook her head. "Bow to No Beauty and The Right Woman's Love are too mainstream, kid. But I didn't rip the backs off perfectly good paperbacks just so you could wax cynical about the copywriters who blurb our books. Turn over the covers and you'll see your lady rogue's gallery of author suspects."

Doing as instructed, Temple inspected the smiling faces of several naturally (or unnaturally) attractive middle-aged women. "They look like accountants' wives dressed up for New Year's!"

Kit's face squinched up. "Ooh, unkindest cut of all! We dump our eyeglasses, buy some ritzy outfit we can't afford and a new hairdo, even go to Glamour Shots to get that soft-focus, wrinkle-erasing look for our book cover photos, and you compare us gloriously dramatic romance writers to accountants' wives?

I take exception. I am not married."

"You and I are exceptions," Electra murmured from the mirror, where she was frowning at the green and blue stripes in her hair.

"What does she mean?" Temple asked.

"She's right," Kit said. "Most romance writers are disgustingly married. For years and years. To the same man. I could honestly describe them as an unprovocative lot, despite their spicy reputation in the press, which is inaccurate, as usual. We are middle-aged, middle-America, middle-of-the-road."

"And sometimes Middle-Earth," Electra added while spritzing lavender into her elfin coiffure.

"Hmmm." Temple nodded at the black-and-white faces fanned in her fingers like a hand of playing cards, all queens. "That could mean that these women all have straight-arrow husbands who might take violent exception to macho models, especially now that women authors are touring with them."

"An arrow does seem like a man's weapon," Kit agreed.

"Why?" Electra stepped away from her hair preparations, looking like an interrupted rainbow.

"Anybody can stab something, and women get lots of practice with the Sunday pork roast."

"Unless," Temple pointed out, "these are modern households where hubby does the chef work.

That's a good question, though; why an arrow?"

"It was there?" Kit looked pleased with herself.

"Yup, the arrow indeed came from Cheyenne's own quiver, but this murder must have been premeditated. Was using Cheyenne's arrow more than just handy? Was it symbolic?"

Kit's glance consulted Electra. "Is she always so existential about murders?"

"I think Temple is asking, did someone really want to stick it to him? Was it personal?"

"Murders usually are, aren't they?" Kit said. "What else would they be?" She looked shocked, which was a shame, since the expression clashed with the ultra-chic, silk-faille dinner suit she was wearing.

Temple hesitated. "Let's see. The murders I've seen were definitely done by personally involved killers, though in more than one case the murderer had never met the victim until he zeroed in for the kill."

"Then why kill them?" Kit looked even more shocked by Temple's calm dissection of a murderer's modus operandi.

"Revenge for ancient wrongs. It was good enough for the Greeks."

"I'll say. Enough to spawn dozens of endlessly long tragedies, some of which I had to appear in. On stage. In front of people."

Temple studied the photographic faces again. "Not one of these ladies looks mean enough to stab a Thanksgiving turkey with a thermometer."

"Looks are deceiving. That's why these lovely ladies are suspects." Kit plucked a cover from the crowd and held it up for Temple's closer inspection.

This woman, Temple decided, was the torchiest-looking: acres of curly blond hair like a cloudy halo, a dab of decolletage, mouth ajar in the professional model's about-to-suck-a-persimmon pose.

Kit tilted her head at the photo. "Some romance writers-- usually the younger ones who have the most natural qualifications--cultivate a sensual image. They want you to think that they could pose as the heroine of their own book covers. Maybe they occasionally delude themselves into playing that part.

This is Ravenna Rivers, the one rumored to have cozied up with the Homestead Man on tour last winter.

Her husband always escorts her at conventions, and should be here. So should the Homestead Man. By the way, her books are the 'spiciest' of the lot, with a bit much S&M for my taste."

"How much is a bit much?" Temple wanted to know.

"Any at all. Sado-masochism was more common when the sexy historical romance got hot in the seventies. A lot of overprotected women in those days didn't know what was sexy unless it came home with their husbands in a brown paper wrapper, and a lot of male pornography depicts S&M. There's less of that stuff now in historical romances, but the underground appetite for kink, and for one's own worst interests, still keeps some practitioners of the art selling lots of books."

Kit tapped another author photo, a sixtyish woman with over-styled suspiciously raven hair. "This one is rabidly opposed to the hunkification of romance cover art. Mary Ann Trenarry. She started a letter-writing campaign against model-author contracts to the publishers involved and the media. I admire her guts, because the backlash could hurt her book sales. The rumor is that she can't sell her new books to anyone. Maybe a crusader scorned would want to sabotage the pageant."

Kit selected another photo with an odd smile. "And here we have Sharon Rose, a simple woman she would have you think, who just happens to be the Rasputin of the romance industry."

"This moon-faced, grinning woman in the dated bubble cut? Mrs. Girl Scout Mother incarnate?"

Kit nodded. "Makes Shannon Little look like Cruella de Vil, doesn't she? I told you appearances were deceiving. Her books are sentimental melodramas, and her fans adore her, but in real life she's a piranha in polyester. Also the biggest bestseller in the bunch. She had her own sister, a new author at the time, drummed out of her publishing house because she didn't like the competition. Poor woman didn't sell anywhere else, either. No one has heard of Jessica Rose since."

"If this woman is that filthy rich, why on earth does she wear polyester?"

"Because it doesn't wrinkle when she travels, dummy!"

Temple eyed her aunt's smashingly simple, simply smashing dinner suit. "Yours will wrinkle like a prune. That's silk shantung, probably designer."

"Indeed. Bought off-price, of course. We poorer souls have to dress for where we want to be. Some of the folks already there wouldn't know silk if the worm came up and mugged them. There is no justice.

All the people you know who get rich never spend their money the way you would."

"At least you don't have to pine over what they've got," Elec-tra said briskly. She turned her Technicolor head from side to side. "What do you think? As an aspiring writer, I want to get noticed at the opening ceremony, but is this too much?" Before either Temple or Kit could reply, Electra posed her real question: not if, but how much. "Should I blend the edges or go for the shock effect?"

"Blend the edges," Temple and Kit replied as one.

Nobody organized special events like the Crystal Phoenix. Fantasy potted palms of white metal and brass ringed the ballroom. The convention decorating committee had taken the decor-- eighteenth-century French palatial, with pale-painted wood paneling and discreet touches of gilt--and swaged it with such airy, fairy fabrics as iridescent netting and metallic lace. Temple definitely felt that a troop of fairy godmothers should assemble soon to inspect the royal newborn and confer good wishes.

But somewhere around this hotel, if not in this crowd, lurked a wicked fairy whose wand had been a fatal arrow. Cheyenne's sleeping beauty would not awaken at the kiss of a lovely princess. Interesting, Temple mused, had anyone tried writing a role-reversal romance version of Sleeping Beauty? Eeek! She had been reading too many romances for homework lately; she was getting ideas. Her mind should be on mayhem and murder, not tulle and roses and . . . hissss . . . men.

"Those are some shoes." In the hustle of separating Electra from the hair sprays, Kit had not noticed Temple's feet. "They could double as a weapon."

"Steel heels, Weitzman. Clawed cousins to Louie's shoes." Temple spun to show off the wavy prongs of pewter-colored metal on which she balanced. They added kick to her primly styled sixties platinum-metallic suit.

"Where did you get that outfit?"

"A resale shop called Reprize. Some of this ancient stuff is actually neat."

"Some of this ancient stuff, baby, was neat, and new, when I wore it." Kit's wry expression as she viewed the resurrected fashion ghosts of her youth turned into a smile. "I really had concluded that all that stuff from my era was absolutely horrid, but you look so cute in it."

"Don't call me 'cute,' " Temple warned. "That's one of my button-pushing words."

"Oh." Kit grinned. "I see, as in your 'cute, button nose'?"

"Were you always mean?"

"Only since I left Minnesota."

"The real show-stealer to swoon over is Electra."

They turned to their companion, who was obliviously craning her neck to see the crowd as the crowd craned its necks to study her hair.

Instead of wearing her usual muumuu, Electra was swathed in an electric-blue lame pantsuit, and wore shoulder-dusting, pink-fluorescent flamingo earrings.

"She's really serious about this romance-writing bug, isn't she?" Kit asked in a whisper.

"I guess so. Any hope of real money in it for newcomers?"

"Virgins, you mean? Sure. As there is in anything. It's just that so few get it. Why?" Kit cocked her a shrewd look. "Are you thinking of turning your personal woes into bestselling fiction?"

"Except that my story would be sold as 'true horror.' Is there such a category?"

"Not... yet," Kit said. "Although paranormal, or what we call New-Age themes, are hot in romances now."

"What sort of books are those?"

"Oh, vampire heroes, angel heroines, time-travel and futuris-tics, which are set in space."

Electra's flamingo earrings jangled in their direction as she heard her own trigger words. "New Age!

Right up my Ouija board," she said gleefully. "But I'm confining myself to a simple historical romance for the contest. Nothing fancy to distract the judges."

"Good idea." Kit was searching the crowd now. "Keep it simple when you're starting out."

"Maybe it is simple," Temple mused. "Even I had an idea for a romance novel just now."

"Watch out!" Kit made like a goblin, startling Temple into jumping to look behind her. "The big-time romance-writing blues are gonna get you."

"No," Temple said, reassembling her dignity. "I don't think that's my strong point."

A new voice, masculine, insinuated itself into their threesome. "You seem to be standing on your strong points, Red."

Temple whirled. No one called her "Red."

Oh. Of course.

"These shoes were made for kicking," she told Crawford Buchanan, who had changed into an evening vest and jacket, both black to match his oil-slick hair. "And if you don't step back a bit, that's what they're gonna do."

"Tsk-tsk." He minced backward. "And here I was going to get a closeup for Hot Heads." He had to lean closer to whisper, "These romance broads aren't half as photogenic as you, T.B. Most of them fill up the camera and then some."

"Maybe they're fed up with you," she suggested. "Haven't you got anything better to do than hang around and harass women?"

"Hey, it's my job." His long, thick eyelashes flickered. "I get paid to do this."

"That's what is wrong with this country," Temple said, turning her back on both him and the camera.

That didn't stop Crawford Buchanan. Temple watched Kit and Electra bloom in an aura of light as the cameraman panned down Temple's head to her shoes.

"If I had the Midnight Louie shoes," she muttered under her breath, "the Austrian crystal kick would burn out the camera sensor."

"You were saying something about sensuality," Buchanan purred in her ear. Or maybe he growled.

Men did that a lot in some romance novels.

Temple would have loved to G.R.O.W.L. back, but instead she did the mature thing and ignored him, until finally the bright lights drew away and faded.

"Is he gone?" Temple asked her companions.

They nodded.

"Next time he comes around," Electra said, "I'll tell you when he's leaning close again so you can stomp his instep with your steel heel."

"You need to meet a better class of men." Kit focused like a very chic Doberman on a nearby group of people. "Ah. There stands an abandoned husband. Husbands, and men in general, are rare in this crowd; isolation is an occupation for them. Want to do some sleuthing on the sly? Follow me."

Throwing her hands up at Electra, Temple did so. All too soon she found herself confronting one tall man standing like a lonesome pine in a sea of overdressed shrubs.

"Hello," Kit said warmly. "Haven't seen you in ages! Remember the G.R.O.W.L. reception in New York at the romance writers' convention a couple of years ago? Kit Carlson, better known, I devoutly hope, as Sulah Savage."

"Oh, yes," the man said with relief.

Besides being tall, he was pleasant-looking in a low-key way, nice but not exciting, the perfect man to be somebody else's husband. Although he was doing a good impression of a man happily alone in a world of women and content with doing nothing but gawking, he was clearly glad to see a possibly familiar face. He gazed uneasily at Temple, as if he should know her too.

"My, ah, cousin," Kit extemporized, deftly erasing their age difference, and thus enhancing hers.

"Temple Barr. She writes for Women's Work magazine, you know, the mag about rags-to-riches women entrepreneurs. Their circulation is massive. I'm sure they'd love to do a story on your darling wife."

Kit glanced toward an animated knot of women who were either in a feeding frenzy around the chip and dip table, or gathered to worship a face familiar only lately to Temple from the ripped-off back of a paperback book.

"Quite the popular girl," Kit said in her blatantly artificial social voice. A woman would have instantly heard the underlying satire; a man, or at least this man, merely nodded politely. "Temple, this is the man behind the woman behind the bestsellers, Sharon Rose. I know your last name is different. . .

Herbert--?"

"Harvey," he said.

"Oh, sorry! Harvey--?"

His shook his head with a smile. "No. Herbert Harvey."

"Oh."

How unfortunate, Temple thought, to have two first names.

Herbert Harvey nodded shyly at her. "I'm sure my wife would be delighted to have another national magazine article. She was featured in Martha Stewart's celebrity holidays issue. Quite a spread. She had the down-home Fourth of July picnic with old-fashioned bottles of Coca-cola on ice in a washtub and country ham on a checkered tablecloth."

This was not the sort of upscale entertaining Temple expected from a filthy rich, bestselling author.

Then she remembered Kit describing Sharon Rose's books as "nauseatingly" homey and sentimental.

Having been assigned her role and then handed her cue by Kit, Temple wrote and recited her first speech, which was not brilliant.

"Do you often attend these conferences, Mr. Herbert ... I mean, Harvey?"

"That's all right. Everybody's always getting my names mixed up. Just call me Herbert." He sighed and looked over the animated crowd, whose dominant female voices were going a mile a minute. "I just come now and again, when it's convenient. I'm on my way to do some hunting in western Canada."

Now that was more like lifestyles of the rich and famous! Canadian hunting trips, with guide, cost a bundle.

"Where do you and Mrs. Herbert live?"

"Muncie, Indiana. I was an assistant school superintendent there." He looked somewhat lost for a moment. "I'm retired now.

No need to work." He glanced again toward his wife's charmed circle, as if worried.

Temple guessed that Hervey Harbert, or whatever, was still in his forties. His wife's fame and fortune had made his entire career redundant. He stuck his hands in his pockets and smiled expectantly at Temple, waiting for her to toss back the conversational ball. She figured she'd learn more by letting him take the lead, which he did.

"Tell me about your job. Interviewing all those successful women must be interesting work."

"It is." Temple nodded brightly. "Sometimes annoying."

"Annoying?"

"Well, they're so rich and busy, and I'm just a freelance writer. I wish I could write one of these romances--"

"The pay isn't good at the beginning," he warned her. "And it's a lot of hard work in a pretty cutthroat business. Sharon has had to fight for every inch of progress she's made. She travels more than she writes."

"I don't think I'm cut out for romance writing anyway. Crime writing, now's there's an area I might go for. You did hear about the cover model murder?"

Herbert frowned and cleared his throat. "I guess they have to put those guys on the covers to sell books, but it's kind of hokey, don't you think--these prima donna musclemen? Oh, some of them seem decent enough fellows, but the women sure make idiots of themselves swooning over them."

Temple smiled conspiratorially. "I agree! It's embarrassing to see all these middle-aged women chasing the nearest pretty pectoral as if they were mainlining hormones. Shallow and silly. Pure ego-building."

Herbert blinked. He couldn't tell if Temple was putting him on or not. But he laughed, nervously, and that's when a short, plump woman with a really overcooked permanent in a shade of not-too-blond brown materialized by his side, her arm possessively through his. She was smiling, but through her teeth, and she made no effort to conceal her intense annoyance with them both.

"Thank you," she told Temple in steel-wool tones meant to rub her raw. "Thank you, miss, a mere stranger, for keeping my Herb busy while I was chatting with all my fans."

With that she jerked her entwined arm and led Herbert Harvey away like a delinquent labrador retriever brought to heel. He lumbered off faithfully.

Temple felt herself flushing, not for her masquerade, but for Sharon Rose's awful behavior to both of them. The nerve, as if Temple were some vamp trying to lure away a lawfully wedded husband just by talking to the man! As if he couldn't be trusted to be away from her uxorial claws for one minute. Why hadn't wifey-pooh bothered to include Herbert in her adoring circle, if she feared that he couldn't talk to another woman without imminent danger of seduction?

Kit cruised up, both hands brimming with goblets of white wine. "She just writes romance, remember? She doesn't necessarily know a thing about men, or marriage."

"I suppose that's an expert speaking." Temple took a glass and sipped before she forgot herself and spit. "What a-- Too bad I don't use those words about other women."

"Oh, make an exception. I know just what you mean." Kit turned to beam on the new, adjusted scene: Sharon Rose in bloom amid her admiring wreath of fans, ignored by nearby husband Herbert, who was sticking up like a transplanted stalk of hollyhock desperately in need of water, or something much stronger.

"Her Herb," Temple repeated in the same pointed, trendy tone of voice.

"Are you stuttering, dear?"

"No, I'm trying to fathom that paranoid, possessive mentality. She must be insecure."

"Brilliant deduction."

"Still, why me? A stranger. What does she do to women who actually know her?"

"Grinds them into the ground with teeth-gritted pronouncements about how they should do everything from family rearing to writing a sex scene. And she smiles every moment. She'll go after men like a pit bull, too. I've seen her trotting around conventions with a whipped-dog male agent on one side and a humiliated female editor on the other, both two steps behind. That lady has a genius for dysfunctional living, actually. That's the book she should write: How to Whip Ass and Stomp Egos for Fun and Profit. "

"I could see someone murdering her. "

"No such luck. Nor does her husband strike me as the type to knock off a cover hunk, do you think?"

"Never! Why?"

"Oh, I happened to see the sales cover flat of Sharon Rose's new book before I left New York, Satin and Sagebrush. And it was Cheyenne's last, best moment, believe me. A smashing painting of him in cowboy gear, minus shirt and pants. Her 'personal pen pal' notes on the inside back bubbled about how fun it was to witness a cover shoot with a rising star."

"Then you came here and recognized him?"

"When I saw him dead. And undressed. He was reclining on the cover."

"That's a new angle. I suppose you didn't want to tell me until I had experienced the Rose of Sharon personality close up and personal. Ouch! Do you suppose I'll have the stomach to approach her later and ask some pointed questions?"

"It depends on how badly you want to know the answers."

While they talked quietly, Temple had been vaguely aware of a civilian, a woman in a modest knit top and slacks, standing, two or three feet away, out of earshot but clearly waiting.

"Yes?" Temple said.

She approached diffidently. "I saw you talking to Miss Rose. She seems awful nice."

"Hmm," said Temple in that politely noncommittal way the British have mastered since the time of the Norman invasion.

"I'm much too nervous to ask her for an autograph. Maybe I can just ask you about her. Is she as wonderful as her books?"

The woman's eyes were shining, as was her unpowdered nose. She would never be a bestselling novelist who touted down-home virtues while she ran roughshod over other people with a cattle prod.

How do you tell hero-worshipers that their idol has feet of corrugated steel?

Temple didn't. "She was lovely, just lovely." Temple smiled.

The woman nodded and floated off to the fringes of Sharon Rose's admirers.

"A legend is born," Kit muttered. "We all know what she's really like, having felt her bite as well as her bark, but we have to hear readers coo over her as if she were a plaster saint. And she doesn't write worth a damn, either. That's show biz. No justice."

"It would be nice if Sharon Rose had murdered Cheyenne."

"Nice, but pure fiction I fear. She doesn't need to kill anyone; she shrivels their spirits while they're still living, like her poor husband."

"Opposites do attract," Temple mused as they cruised through the mob looking for the blue-green neon of Electra's hair.

"Or maybe you're attracted to opposites. Your two guys look pretty diametrically different."

"I wish you wouldn't call them 'my two guys' as if I had a harem! Everything's on hold, at the moment, with everyone. Nobody is nobody's anything."

"Maybe you had better not try writing a romance. You don't make sense when you get excited, and that's fatal in the sex scenes."

"Fine," said Temple. "I'm more interested in fatalities than sex at the moment, anyway. Now let's find Electra so we can watch this show get on the road."

Kit kept meek silence as they do-si-doed around the room, stopping whenever someone recognized Kit or, more likely, the pseudonym on her name badge.

"Sulah Savage! I love your books!" the typical greeting would begin, an approach guaranteed to put a seraphic smile on the face of the hailed author. "When's the next 'Love's Inquisition' book coming out? I loved Reynaldo's story."

"My Spanish epic," Kit murmured modestly to Temple as they moved on, leaving an excited fan in their wake flashing Kit's phony signature at all her friends.

"Doesn't it feel funny to sign a made-up name?" Temple asked.

"Heavens no! I made it up myself. Besides, it's like playing a role.

When I appear as Sulah Savage, I'm in character as Sulah Savage. It's liberating to have an official alter ego."

"This is all about role-playing, isn't it?" Temple said.

"I told you, this is bookselling. Hype. Theater."

"Maybe the murderer was playing a role too. Or Cheyenne was. One he hadn't counted on playing."

"Of course Cheyenne was playing a role. That was his job."

"His job." Temple thought about that too. "I need to see more of what a cover hunk's job is like."

"Well, forget that for now and grab a chair, because Electra has been nice enough to save a couple seats at that table just ahead, and I hear the podium mike being tested by amateurs." A horrible screeching momentarily froze the assemblage before fading. "Showtime!"

"I've got to work on a good pseudonym," Electra said as soon as they sat down. "I've been talking to readers and they all say the name is very important."

"Electra Lark is a fabulous pen name!" Kit argued indignantly. "Not so long it will run off a book cover, but different as well as pretty."

"Everybody says it sounds like a pseudonym." Electra took a heartfelt slurp through the straw in her Blue Hawaii. "Besides, it isn't alliterative."

"All that alliteration is regarded as hokey today," Kit said. "You forget that I've been doing this for ages. I'd never use Sulah Savage now, but it's too late."

"What were you thinking of using?" Temple asked Electra.

"I've always wanted to be a Vivian."

"Well," Kit said, "we all know I didn't want to be an Ursula." She eyed Temple. "Did you ever cherish visions of another name?"

Since Temple Kinsella was the only speculating Temple had ever done in that area, and it was hardly a harmonious name, or appropriate to mention now, she kept quiet. Then some imp of unconscious invention put the name Temple Devine in her head. She swallowed her wine wrong, laughing the entire time as Kit and Electra pounded her on the back.

On the low, long staging area, spotlights were brightening.

"I think I'd keep Temple Barr," she whispered when she could talk again.

They both nodded, no longer interested, eyes focused on the narrow area of light in the darkened ballroom.

There followed the usual opening ceremony rituals at conferences everywhere, only with a romance novel twist. The president of G.R.O.W.L. welcomed the authors and readers. The president of Fabrizio's fan club came up and presented him with a sterling flacon for his new cologne, "Macho Man."

"Temple's been picked up by him," Kit leaned across her to tell Electra.

"No!" Electra leaned across Temple from the other side. "I've heard that he accosts women in elevators." She frowned. "I've also heard that he really doesn't care for women at all. So I guess both rumors can't be true."

By the time the two had finished hashing over Breezy's inclinations and/or lack of them, the model himself was gone, golden locks, silver flacon and all that muscle.

By the time Temple had realized that there was something very different about this opening ceremony--all the officials at the mike were women--the few obligatory speeches were over.

Another woman bathed in the spotlight, only she had the Barbie-doll hair for it. Temple blinked, and then a breathy monotone hyperventilated into the microphone.

"Ladies and ... ladies. And laddies." She glanced coyly to her left. Temple could just see the shining crowns of a long line of male models.

"Oh, no," Temple moaned to her wine glass.

"My official duties don't begin until the pageant Saturday night, but I'm proud and pleased to introduce the contestants." A furious rustling of papers came over the mike.

"Who is she?" Kit was asking, dumbfounded.

"Looks like we didn't listen to the introduction. That has to be Las Vegas's version of Norma Desmond, the film star Savannah Ashleigh."

Beside her, Electra jolted into life from a long reverie. "That's it. My pseudonym. Great name."

"You can't use it, Electra. It's already her pseudonym, whatever her real name was."

"And besides," Kit put in consolingly, "it's much too long for a book cover. I've never heard of her,"

she added.

"You're lucky. I had to interview her during the Stripper Killer case. I would have gotten more, and more sensible information, out of her cat Yvette."

"Yvette? For a cat?"

"You should see it. A Persian, of course, a silver thistledown with tiny little teeth and claws. She keeps it in a pink canvas carrier."

"Savannah Ashleigh did what in a pink canvas carrier?" Electra demanded.

"Never mind. We better hush up while she's talking. I guess that's what you call it."

With another wicked giggle, this time shared with Kit, Temple settled down to serious listening. A clue might pop out from the mouths of babes. It was possible.

The mouth of this babe, though, continued to stumble over the models' names and vital statistics.

Perhaps Savannah needed reading glasses and was too vain to use them. Or perhaps she had never been able to read and talk at the same time.

Once called, the men bounded onto stage with the same eagerness as if they were about to be introduced to Sharon Stone. Confident, charming, each with a prepared off-the-cuff comment, they made Savannah Ashleigh look like the aspiring performer.

Female heads nodded approval all over the room, and each contestant was ushered off with enthusiastic applause, especially the blond-white-haired surfer male nurse who flung heart-shaped wrapped candies into the audience.

While the audience was sizing up the men for the coming contest, Temple was watching and listening with different criteria in mind. Any bit of background suggestive? Any link to Cheyenne? No one's biography mentioned the stripper contest, but that wouldn't be something they'd emphasize. Although most of them were professional or aspiring models and actors, they didn't want to project too raunchy an image before this house of middle-American women.

Temple contemplated the fact that these men walked a fine line. Yes, they were sex objects. Yes, they had to court and charm convention attendees in order to succeed and win followings. But they also had taken care not to cross over into any behavior that could be considered sexual harassment.

That was a charge that female sex objects didn't have to worry about.

Not all the men were pros. Some were dedicated amateurs. Those with everyday professions were particularly applauded: chiropractor, car salesman and lawyer (he was hissed first and then applauded).

Those with perceived sexy job descriptions, cop and forest ranger, were hailed with roof-raising hoots and applause.

"It's nice they have under-forty and over-forty age categories," Electra commented between introductions.

"Thirty-three," Temple said contemplatively.

"No, dear. Thirty-three isn't the break point, though it would be as good a place as any."

"I meant thirty-three contestants. Cheyenne would have made thirty-four. That's a lot of potential victims, and suspects. Poor Lieutenant Molina!"

"You feel sorry for Molina? This is a first."

"It doesn't make sense to kill Cheyenne over the contest. There are just too many contestants to fix the outcome with one death."

"Oh, goodie. Now you're going to tell us we have a serial killer at large," Kit said.

"No, we don't. Not yet, anyway. I've got to get closer to the contest."

"You mean the contestants," her aunt said. "You think you can stand the heat?"

"They're just a bunch of nice guys trying to finish first."

"Right," said Kit skeptically.

"Without getting finished off."

"Well, I'll look into your wish, Pinocchio, and you may prove to be made of wood, even with all those sparks around. But if your nose starts growing, I'll yank you out of there."

"Don't worry. I told you. I'm off men. I'm immune."

"With that attitude, you are not a good candidate for a reader of mine. At least you're not entering the Love's Leading Amateur writing contest."

"Contest," Temple repeated dreamily. "People coming from all over to compete for a prize. And then they die. Why?"