Cat In A Diamond Dazzle

Chapter 22

Morning, Moon and Molina

"Charlie Moon."

"Charlie Moon?"

"Cheyenne's real name."

"Really?"

"Would I kid you?"

Temple looked up into Molina's ice -blue eyes and knew that would be the day.

The lieutenant didn't seem happy about conveying information to Temple, but in her profession she must have to deal with snitches, and one does not get unless one gives.

"That's a charming name," Temple said after a moment. "Why did he change it?"

"I suspect other kids used to laugh at it when he was a child.

On the reservation and off of it."

"So he did have Native American blood!"

"Some. Enough to bounce between relatives on the reservation and in Phoenix when he was growing up. The usual 'troubled youth' clashes with the law. Petty stuff. We can't find any next of kin to claim the body."

"No one to claim him? That's ridiculous. This guy could have been a celebrity, if he'd won. He would have been on Hard Copy and Hot Heads"

"Even then no one might have claimed him. Family is a forgotten concept for some of these kids growing up today. Charlie Moon never had much, except his looks. Now they're on ice at the medical examiner's, and the show goes on."

Temple followed Molina's glance to the stage, with its ramp, stairs and partial set.

"Somebody even showed up to claim the horse." Temple knew she looked as disgusted as she sounded.

Molina cocked her head like a hungry robin who had heard worm stirrings. "That's right. The horse.

Getting an animal that big into--and out of--a hotel can't be that easy. How did he manage it?"

"Don't ask me, Lieutenant. I never had a horse, unfortunately. I just know that Danny Dove said one of those horse-haulers whisked it away. He was big-time nervous about horse droppings on his stage."

"Where's Danny Dove?"

"Backstage." Temple pointed. She could hardly wait to see Molina and Dove go one-on-one.

"And what are you doing around here anyway?" "Ah, I'm helping with the show."

Molina nodded, slipping her narrow notebook into her sage-green jacket side-pocket. "You're practically on staff here now," she noted.

Temple said nothing. She wanted Molina to think that duty kept Temple around the crime scene.

Temple knew that it was a different kind of duty than her employment at the Crystal Phoenix: guilt over Cheyenne's death.

"Any fingerprints on the arrow?" she only remembered to ask as Molina turned away.

Molina turned back and her dark head shook. "Not a one. The killer was clever enough to think of that. Probably used a cloth, snatched up just before he, or she, grabbed the arrow from Cheyenne's quiver, and struck. The backstage area is cluttered with odd pieces of costuming and such. If you can call it costuming! The victim had nothing on but a flesh-colored jockstrap, a loincloth, and the quiver and bow case. And a medicine pouch with a bone and a feather and a few crystals," she added. "Not much material for evidence."

"If Cheyenne was struck backstage, how could he ride out and continue his act?"

"He didn't." Molina indicated the ceiling above the audience. "The routine called for him to shoot an arrow through the balloon."

Temple searched the dim heights, puzzled until she spotted a huge, heart-shaped red-foil balloon attached to a lighting fixture. "Pretty spectacular trick. I suppose a spotlight would hit the heart for the actual pageant."

Molina nodded grimly. "With the stage crew's concerned with the heart's placement and lighting, nobody backstage paid attention to what riveted the people in the audience: the victim and his horse.

Whoever stabbed him backstage with the arrow, a broad-head steel-tipped one more than sufficient for the job, knew that the shock of the blow, directed at a man who was keyed up for a performance, would virtually immobilize Cheyenne until the horse took him out on stage. There, massive internal bleeding enervated him, and he tumbled to the stage, the arrow in his bow never released. He was dead before anybody reached him."

Temple felt a chill. "So I'm not a suspect."

"Not if you were standing mid-aisle, gawking, in the presence of a witness."

"And Cheyenne was as good as dead the moment he passed the teaser curtains?"

"Exactly. A very clever attack, but risky. I have to hope that someone saw the perpetrator doing something out of character."

Temple nodded, then watched the policewoman plod up the stairs and down the long runway toward the stage proper. Molina always moved like a military tank. Maybe Temple wasn't used to large women. Or maybe Molina lacked grace. Temple favored the latter explanation.

"Don't stand and gawk when you can sit," a voice urged from the empty seats.

She didn't like being reminded of what she was doing when Cheyenne was dying, and turned with irritation to the empty auditorium seats behind her. Not all empty.

A hunk sprawled on a fifth-row seat, long blue-jeaned legs and cowboy boots thrust into the aisle. His western shirt was cut close and buttoned tight where it wasn't open to the chest hairs at their most profuse. No wonder they called this the Incredible Hunk pageant; all the entrants looked as imminently ready to split their seams as the comic books' Incredible Hulk himself.

A long, narrow woman wearing the same western uniform sat beside this particular edition of hunkdom like a feminine twin.

Temple took his suggestion--especially since she was wearing her smashing, red but uncomfortable, resale-shop Charles Jourdans--by perching on the seat-arm across the center aisle from the Deadwood duo.

"Troy Tucker." The man's hand extended for a hearty shake. "This here's my wife Nance."

Nance just nodded. She had a long, frizzy palomino ponytail and a face born to be freckled.

"I work for the hotel," Temple said, adding several yards of hemp to Molina's rope of misconception.

"I'm trying to get a feel for the contest. PR, you know."

Both of them unconsciously tensed, as if suddenly on stage.

"This is our third," Nance said in the same soft country drawl as her husband.

"Great! You can fill me in on everything. What's it like?"

They exchanged glances. He spoke. "Wahl, it's mighty like a rodeo, ma'am. Standin' around behind the scenes, gettin' in line, gettin' the adrenaline up for your few seconds in the spotlight and hopin' that nothin' out there throws ya. At least here you don't get horse hockey in yer bootheels."

Temple laughed, as she was meant to, and kicked up a high heel to indicate just how deeply she might sink in the stuff if it were around. "Maybe I would have been in deep doodoo ... if I'd been around when Charlie Moon was killed."

A new tension coiled both figures.

"How'd he get that huge horse in here anyway?" she went on.

"Simple as cow pies, ma'am," Troy said. "Unload 'im out back, at the hotel loading dock. Take 'im down in the freight elevator and bring 'im back up in the stage elevator, the one behind the scenes."

"How do you know all this?"

"Shoot, ma'am. I helped with the critter."

"Then you knew Charlie."

Husband and wife consulted glances again. Both their eyes seemed permanently narrowed, maybe from regarding distant, bright Western horizons, maybe from natural skepticism.

"We did," Nance said at last. "From the previous pageant. And he had done some rodeo, too."

"Rodeo! Really?"

"Naw, not really. Local kid stuff, years ago," Troy said. "Just enough to ride that pony on stage and look like Cochise. Sharp shtick."

"So was the arrow that stabbed him."

Nance winced, but Troy never stirred, his thumbs hooked in his hip-hugging belt, fingers arrowed toward the tight crotch of his jeans.

"Real thing, too," he said.

Given his pose, Temple had to resist a double take as well as a double entendre. "What do you mean

'real'?"

Troy ducked his curly cowboy head. "Shoot, it was an old arrow, that's all. Artifact, you could say.

Charlie got the whole getup from a place out on the highway that deals in genuine Indian gear. Not so old it would be in a museum, but collectors' stuff."

"Why do you think he was killed?"

"Who knows? Could have been jest about any reason. I figure it for an impulse thing. Somebody saw him alone backstage waiting to go on and grabbed the arrow, then, whoomph." Troy's fist made an effective, thrusting gesture.

"But if Cheyenne was on the horse, the killer would have to be eight feet tall."

"Hey, the police know all that angle-of-entry stuff. Anyway, there's a whole elevated ramp section backstage. Anyone standing on it would be in great shape to do in ole Charlie."

Temple let her expression curdle. "How awful to think of him riding out on stage, already wounded.

And his career ... I hear he had done some work in Europe even."

Troy shifted in the seat, creating a scrape of denim and creak of leather belt. "Yeah, well, Charlie Moon's look does okay in Europe. He could do greased-back hair and Armani suits. Me, I'm too all-American to get much work overseas. It might mean good money, but that there jet set is an unhealthy crowd, kind of corrupt. Nance is just as glad I do my modeling at home."

She nodded seriously.

"You don't mind your husband up on stage, getting ogled by hundreds of women?"

"Honey, that's fine with me. We're married. He's been around both loose and hitched, an' I figure he knows enough to keep away from anything too sticky. This pageant is pretty harmless stuff. These ladies jest like to look. Most of 'em would faint dead away if one of these guys put a real move on em."

"Most?"

Nance shrugged. Temple noticed that her shoulders were broad for a woman. If a raised walkway had run alongside where Cheyenne sat astride his horse, his attention focused on controlling the animal and his imminent entrance, anyone--including a woman--could have struck down at his bare back with the assistance of gravity.

"Are you so sure all of these women are so innocent? Really?" Temple pushed for an answer. "Have you never heard of any hanky-panky between the cover models and the women, whether fans or authors?"

"Hey, stuff happens," Troy said. "We don't know for sure, and we don't want to know. We just do our thing."

"How bad can it be? Some of the guys bring their wives along."

Nance's fingers toyed with the pearlized buttons on her half-open shirt front.

She wasn't a shy sort of filly, either, Temple thought. The Tuckers were two of a kind: above-average attractive and used to showing, using, enjoying it. Their behavior wouldn't threaten each other.

Nance said as much. "Why would the guys bring wives along if they were up to anything special?"

"Especially murder." Temple rose suddenly, dropping her weight to her feet.

The pair jumped as if she had snapped a whip.

"This murder stuff does make us skittish." Troy's earnest true-blue eyes looked out from under sun-whitened eyebrows.

He was a real appealing galoot, all right. "What about a rival?" Temple asked abruptly.

"You mean some other contestant?" Troy demanded incredulously.

"That's who's back there." Temple's thumb jerked toward the stage and its behind-the-curtain labyrinth.

"And a whole lot more," Nance said quickly, with emphasis. "There are the technical guys, the stage crew, and a whole lot of lady volunteers eager to lace some he-man into his open shirt or his tight leather pants that open all down the sides. And"--her eyes, a muddy green, were flicking Temple up and down--"there are a whole lot of lady authors hanging around checking out the contestants, supposedly eager to get the lay of the land for their walk-ons with the guys."

"What walk-on with the guys?"

"Every contestant comes out first on the arm of what they call 'a romance industry professional,' "

Troy explained. "That could be a cover artist or even an editor, not jest a book-writer."

Nance grinned. "Gives the ladies a chance to get all gussied up and get their names and their book titles or whatever called out," Nance said. "They do put on the pooch."

Troy frowned. "Speaking of dogs, I sure hope I don't get one for my escort this year," Troy said.

"Honey, that batch of ladies are worrying the same thing about you guys right now, don't you fret."

Nance was laughing.

"So the matchups aren't announced yet?" Temple asked.

"Naw, we do that on pageant day," Troy said. "It don't keep the ladies from coming around, though.

They want to know what the setup is, and what they have to do. 'Course, they gotta wear high heels and those long dresses, and this runway is pretty dicey. They're in and out of here all of the time."

"Speaking of which, I have to check on something backstage."

Temple excused herself to follow Molina's route up to the stage, her mind churning. It sounded like everybody and anybody at the convention could find an excuse to be backstage, and as if no one would be noticed. Temple hoped Molina had somehow found her way out. She arrived behind the curtain, relieved to spot no familiar face, although she recognized the various portions of male anatomy hustling to and fro in an undressed condition. She'd just think of England and forget about it.

But where was Danny Dove?

She asked that question of a guy nailing down a section of the raised backstage ramp Troy had mentioned. He gestured left, so she edged into the wings to find Danny consulting with the sound man.

"Let's set a level and keep it," Danny was saying, "no matter what. I hate it when the sound goes up and down like a see-saw. So unprofessional."

He turned away and saw Temple waiting.

"Hello, Miss Muffett. What can I do for you?"

Temple edged nearer the wall, for more privacy. "I need a favor."

"You need only ask."

"I want to get closer to the pageant. I need a reason to hang around."

"You can be my assistant and carry my clipboard." Danny slapped this everpresent artifact against his blue-jeaned leg.

"Something that gets me in greater contact with the contestants."

Danny's lowered blond eyebrows forced his forehead into corrugations of worry. "I thought we had a boyfriend."

"I did, too. Had, past tense. And that has nothing to do with my request. My aunt Kit said the best way to get acquainted with the contestants was to be a model in the pose-down."

Danny's eyebrows seemed to be leaving the planet.

"Who is your aunt? The Mayflower Madam? Do you know what the pose-down is?"

"It sounds like something in wrestling."

His laugh was loud, long and delighted. "So it is, in a way." He pulled her deeper into the shadows and lowered his voice. "Dear girl, do you have any idea of what you're putting yourself in for? No, of course not. The pose-down is the pageant's third and final tier. First the boys come out in evening clothes with authoresses and other interesting and interested females on their arms. Piece of cake. Then they come out solo and introduce themselves. Then they come out bareback."

"Everybody rides a horse?"

"I was speaking literally. It's the equivalent of the swimsuit competitions in women's beauty pageants, except that too many hairy legs might offend the refined sensibilities of this particular audience, so our boys wear tight jeans, or less, and a broad smile."

Temple nodded. She was not surprised that, with the amount of upper body development on some of these guys, inspecting their progress would serve everybody's mutual interest.

"The third, and final, heat--if you'll excuse the expression under these circumstances--is the pose-down."

Temple nodded seriously.

"That's when the men come out in costumes fit for a historical romance cover and assume cover poses with young lady models."

"That doesn't sound too hard."

"Oh, my dear. I have tossed a ballerina or two around a stage in my time, but that is nothing compared to this. You must be prepared to be nuzzled, nibbled, smooched and pawed by almost-nude savages who are seeking a like degree of dishabille from you. You must expect to have your skirt pushed up and your bodice pushed down. You will suffer from tickling hairs, particularly from these pre-Delilah Samson types. You will be bent backward like a bow. You may be thrown belly-down over a shoulder like a feed sack. You may even be, horror of horrors, 'dipped.' "

"What is ... dipped?"

"You have done the tango?"

"Not in this lifetime."

" 'Dipping' is similar, but much deeper and it should be performed by an expert, 'else the dippee, that is to say the lady, could suffer permanent back injury."

As he spoke, Danny took Temple's hand, then whirled and tilted her until her torso was horizontal to the floor. She had a swirling impression of the wires and flats in the flies above. She had a sense of bending over backward until she broke. She had a tummy-churning fear that she would fall or be dropped much farther than the distance to the wooden backstage floor.

"You see?" Danny brought her up slowly, with perfect control, but she could feel his arm muscles trembling with strain. "And I am a professional. I have done this for a living. These guys are, on the whole, untrained amateurs."

"Do I have to get dipped?" Temple inquired in a small voice.

"It won't be your choice, believe me." Danny threw his hands up. "That's all these unoriginal bozos know to do with a woman. They want to come out, show their muscles and dip the nearest female.

When you are dipped, you must not try to hold your head up. It creates too much strain, and besides you want a long, vulnerable throat line so the gentleman can go for your jugular like Dracula, and then you will have to try not to sneeze when his languishing locks tickle your nose."

Temple blinked.

"In addition," said Danny, "you must keep on your face at all times a vacant, simpering expression that says you find the proceedings so impossibly exciting that you can hardly wait for the next gentleman caller and the next nauseating dip."

"That really doesn't sound too much different than the high school prom," Temple said. Still, she knew the secret terror of someone who announces that she will go on a really big roller-coaster ride and then wishes she hadn't. "I've had some acting experience. And in high school, I even played the shrew in Shakespeare's, The Taming of."

"Hah! In that play Katarina gets to knock the men around. In these vignettes, they will be pouncing on you. And imagine how two-hundred-and-twenty pounds of unfeeling muscle feels when it pounces in its own clumsy, oafish way."

Temple didn't have to imagine. She recalled the dubious benefits of having been uplifted by the adorable Fabrizio. For one of her petite size, these muscle men seemed abnormally huge and hazardous to her health. Still, a pose-down model would have a golden opportunity to get to know the contestants, and to find out what the contestants knew about Cheyenne's death.

"I appreciate the warning, Danny, but I'm afraid I have to do it."

"You are inserting yourself into another life-and-death situation." He was speaking of more than the pose-down. "Why?"

"Lieutenant Molina asked me to tell her the lay of the land."

"Lieutenant Molina did not mean undercover investigation."

Temple sighed. "Cheyenne wanted to talk to me the night before he died. I didn't take him seriously, but I think he had suspicions."

"Why would he come to you?"

"I'm good at figuring things out. Except I didn't figure out that he wanted to speak to me about something important. He never got another chance.

Danny shook his head. "I'll try to assign you the contestants with the least resemblance to King Kong, but I can't control everything." He thought. "And I don't want another murder. Especially yours."

"You think that there might be one?"

"Don't you?"

"I don't even have a full suspect list for this one yet." That reminded her that Danny was the perfect person to ask about something that had been bothering her, if only she had the nerve.

"Was Cheyenne bisexual?" Temple asked bluntly.

Danny hesitated for a long time. "Sexual preferences aside, I'd say he had a universal soul. He was soft inside, if you know what

I mean, with a very thin protective shell. He meant well. He had charisma, but it was built on deference. He wanted to be . . . useful to people. Maybe that was all kinds of people in all kinds of ways.

Maybe that meant being used at times. He wasn't a user, though."

"You liked him."

Danny nodded. "I thought he was too nice for this game. I guess I was right." He glanced at Temple.

"What do you think of these Incredible Hunks? As a woman, I mean."

"Me? I'm the undercover investigator. I don't have an opinion."

Sure you do." Danny crossed his arms and grinned.

"I don't even read romance novels. Well, I didn't until I got here and had a few thrust upon me.

There's such a range in the books, from embarrassing adolescent drivel to extremely sophisticated literary sagas. I notice the same range in the cover models. Some seem all muscle on the outside, the equivalent of the ever-popular female bimbo, with hair mousse for brains and the sensitivity of a moose--north woods variety. Others are accomplished, attractive, well-rounded performers. They all have a public persona, though, that one would do well not to take too seriously."

She sighed and joined Danny in leaning against the wall. "I did that with Cheyenne. He approached me for a drink the night before he died, and I brushed him off. My friends were teasing me, and I didn't want to be taken for a vain, silly woman with a flattery threshold of zero. I think he wanted to talk to me because he was worried about something. He was on the scene when I meddled in the stripper killings.

You know, I underestimated him because he looked too good to be true. And now he's dead."

"Hey!" Danny shook her arm. "You're not superwoman. One chat wouldn't have stopped a murderer." He looked amused suddenly. "Are you always so contrary with the opposite sex?"

"You mean Matt. That's right, you met him. He's too good looking to be true, too, but he is. It's me I distrust, not them. I don't want to be hooked by the shallow."

"Then move out of Las Vegas, honey! Nothing on the Strip is more than skin deep, not even the skin."

"You didn't answer my original question. Was Cheyenne bi- sexual? I'm not just being nosy. If true, it would enlarge the cast of suspects, and the range of motives. Lieutenant Molina asked me to background her."

"The Dragon Lady of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department is taking hints from amateurs?"

"She's keeping an open mind. What about Cheyenne, bisexual or no?"

"Probably." Danny shrugged. "I didn't pay much attention to the daily do-si-do. Some people--gay and heterosexual--do like the edge of being with someone who cuts both ways."

"Even in the age of AIDS?"

"Especially in the age of AIDS. You forget that gays aren't the only ones who run on self-loathing. The promiscuous lifestyle isn't 'gay' in the old sense, or glamorous and knowing, or even smart. If being gay can be hell, I imagine that being bisexual nowadays can be purgatory."

"I'm surprised. I would have thought you, of all people, would be comfortable with your orientation."

He laughed, as if to say, "Oh, you kid!"

"Look, darling girl. The flagrant act is a kind of bravado, and a kind of defiance. Even straight theater people spread around the easy affection, because we all graduated from the same Odd Duck School.

We're family, all of us in the sweetie, dearie, darling set, who assemble and disperse for temporary shows, temporary togetherness. There's both an intimacy and an eternal isolation.

"High school was hell, and being openly gay was suicide in my day. You barely begin to guess who you are at that age, sexual preferences aside, except that you know you don't fit in a thousand ways."

"Who does fit?" Temple wondered suddenly. "Do all the supposedly cool kids really feel so sure behind the facade?"

"A few are cursed with no self-doubts. That's why the supercool kids in high school never amount to much afterward. That was it. Their peak. At least the ugly ducklings are still waddling toward swanhood later in life."

Danny leaned against the homely concrete wall by the back-stage phone. With its graffiti of phone numbers, it reminded Temple of a set from West Side Story.

"Anyway," he went on. "I knew as soon as I hit high school that my social life was going to be non-existent. I was already being called queer for taking dance lessons, then I realized that I wasn't going to be any Adonis, or any taller than five and a half feet. Kids like me back then usually found an older guy outside high school who would use us, or we might use them. Which was which wasn't always clear. But I still had to ask some poor girl to the high school prom, and sweat it that she'd turn me down, or--

worse--think that my invitation meant something. After I got out, I stumbled into the underground gay scene. And then I did it all, took all those risks, too soon and too long. And I developed my front-fag, my swish and bravado just so everybody would know where I was coming from, especially me. Hey, it keeps women from getting the wrong idea, heaven forbid. Well, I guess heaven wouldn't want to forbid that, a gender-preference conversion, but it ain't gonna happen. I'm so gay that I don't understand bisexuals."

"Me neither," Temple agreed. "Sometimes I think celibacy is the simplest answer."

"You?" Danny mocked her. "Miss Hot Redhead of the nineties? Besides, do you know any happy celibates?"

"Maybe. At least they're disease-free."

"And emotionally empty, I've got to believe. At least I was when I was celibate. I don't believe in taking physical risks, but emotional risks are always necessary."

He paused, regarding Temple with a stark serious face that made carefree Danny Dove look like his own worried older brother. Even his happy, curly hair seemed to have straightened.

"I'm not the gadabout gay you think. I have a partner," he said, still in a sober mood. "We've been together--monogamous--for seven years. He had HIV when we met, but he's hanging in there. Safe sex, of course, which is a bore but better than regret after the ball is over, so to speak." Danny's bawdy laugh deliberately broke the mood. Temple suspected he seldom allowed anyone to see his serious side.

"Seven years. That's . . . great." Like all supportive murmurs, hers was vague and somehow inadequate. Even Temple wasn't sure whether she referred to the duration of Danny's relationship or the duration of his partner's survival. But Danny didn't care about the quality of her cue lines; he was reciting from his life story.

"He's a landscaper. Really into xeroscape--native water-sparing plants. I worry about melanoma, out in this hot sun so much. I make him wear sunscreen, nag him about hats. He hates hats."

She nodded. She hated hats, too, almost as much as she loved shoes.

"And then I think--" Danny made a self-deprecating face. "Hey, at least what he does has a life beyond a few hours on stage. If he dies--when he dies--there won't only be a grave to visit. There'll be all those scrubby little, ecology-saving cactus corners to drive by every day. ..."

"I'm sorry," Temple said, voice breaking and eyes welling. She disguised her emotional downfall by hugging Danny.

His reciprocal hug nearly cracked her ribs. "You've got heart, girl." His voice was raw. "Don't you let anybody break it."

Easier said than done, Temple thought, especially when she herself seemed bent on imperiling it.