Cat In A Diamond Dazzle

Chapter 30

Undressed Rehearsal

From the wings, the Incredible Hunk pageant set looked almost as imposing as the MGM Grand's Emerald City layout.

White pillars recalling the glory that was Rome towered over a squat medieval arch of rough gray stone. Next to Gothicland stood Westernworld, represented by the crude wooden supports of a livery stable, complete with haystack. The late Cheyenne's pageant getup, and his horse, would have been in clover here.

Temple studied the construction from the rear, then promptly nicknamed the three pose-down settings "the Good, the Bad and the Ugly" from left to right: first the vaguely celestial soaring white columns; the definitely down and dirty gray stone keep; and finally a barn scene about as romantic as a roll in the barbed wire.

Temple saw that her vaguely medieval costume (and the lamb-to-the-slaughter in it) doomed her to the creepy Gothic dungeon. Lacey's sleazy harem silks fit the schizophrenic associations of faux white marble: classical purity versus the decadence that was ancient Rome. Quincey, the gilt-edged saloon girl, would inherit the haymow. Temple didn't envy her comfort quotient.

Studying the scene of the imminent forthcoming crime--a dress rehearsal for the pageant pose-down--Temple shuddered. The architecturally eclectic set resembled a Hollywood back lot awaiting an invasion of Barbarian hordes. Or perhaps invading accountants.

She tiptoed closer in her costume's odious flat-heeled stretch slippers (discount store glitz in bronze-metallic fabric). Yup, as she had feared, the Gothic niche included a pseudo-stone windowseat on which she could be wooed in endlessly contorted positions. At least a pair of black velvet pillows would make the condemned woman's fate a tad more cushy while she was slowly crushed to death.

"Look at that neat wood post," an awed voice breathed beside her. "I can work with that."

Temple turned to face a stage struck Quincey. "You actually look forward to this farce? Why are you doing it? And how did you get chosen, anyway?"

"Step-weasel." Quincey answered the last question first, while teasing the wispy tendrils at her ears into spit-curls.

"Are you referring to Crawford Buchanan?"

"Please! No names. Just thinking about the creep is awful enough. Though I must say that Step-Daddy Dearest did come through and get me this great gig."

"Now I know how, but why?"

"Why are you doin' this?" Quincey flicked sullen lashes over Temple's costume.

"Because--" The truth would never do. Maybe a half-truth geared to the audience would serve. "I'm mad at my boyfriend."

"Cool." Quincey snapped her everpresent gum.

"Actually"--Temple modified her previous statement with twenty-five percent more frankness--

"boyfriends."

"Cooler." Quincey eyed Temple with new respect, then hiked her knee-length skirt and vamoosed into the shadowed wings, leaving Temple no wiser about her sixteen-year-old motives. Temple suspected that it had much to do with being--what else?-- cool.

Actually, Temple was pretty cool herself. Here she was, about to undergo a serial pose-down, and she was no nearer a solution to Cheyenne's murder in these very wings than three days before. If she were playing the child's game where onlookers shouted "Hot!" and "Cold!" to guide someone in finding a missing item, everyone would be yelling "Frigid!" at Temple.

She shuddered again, this time at the iciness of her mental image. If she began this pose-down charade in her current mood, everyone would be yelling "Frigid!" at her anyway.

But don't think of the ignominy to come, she told herself. Don't even think of England. Think about committing murder.

She strolled alongside the entry ramp at stage left, then mounted the four steep steps at the end.

Troy Tucker was right. This height was enough to give a midget hubris. The burgundy curtain that protected this area from the audience view also put anybody standing against it into shadow. So this route would be murder to negotiate in the semi-dark of a rehearsal, given the usual stampede for places backstage. Yet the murderer must have used it. Temple imagined a horse beside her on the stage level, about to enter, its rider's back within easy striking distance.

Death was usually symbolized as the Dark Rider. Horseman, pass on by. This time death had lain in wait to strike, and the dark rider passing by had died.

The killer must have taken the fatal arrow from Cheyenne's quiver before this point, even before the victim-to-be slung its leather strap across his chest. It would be easy to pluck an arrow from a quiver at this height, but the action would have alerted Cheyenne. So the murder had been premeditated by at least a few minutes. Still, Temple sensed an indecent haste in the act. It had been risky, even desperate.

Was someone trying to silence Cheyenne? Or was the scene of the crime, the pageant, simply a distraction? Was Charlie Moon killed--not his alter ego Cheyenne, the pageant contestant and model--

but Charlie Moon, for some ancient, unrelated reason?

Crew members rushed by below Temple, never glancing up at her alongside the burgundy curtain.

Anyone preoccupied with the thousand hectic details of a large-cast production, Temple knew from her Guthrie Theatre experience, was far too harried to notice anyone else's actions.

So the murderer had participated in such events before, or had witnessed backstage action and knew how to use the situation. Great! That still left the cast of Ben Hur as suspects.

Could a scurrying crew member harbor an unsuspected motive, like the volunteer costume ladies, who had dubbed themselves the "Wardrobe Witches"?

Another bustled by, a prototypical grandmother unkindly described as dumpling-bland and nondescript, wearing the comfortable, concealing sweat-suit uniform some older women adopt as protective coloring. This edition was an ivory knit ensemble with a rearing navy unicorn etched upon the chest.

Perfect look for a murderer.

"Oh, my God," the woman was muttering, looking everywhere but up at Temple, thus proving how easily one could lurk backstage. "What am I gonna do?"

Temple never could resist a problem-solving challenge. Still unnoticed, she ran along the ramp on her stealthy-soled slippers (what had the murderer worn for footwear?), and dashed down the end steps to intercept this female version of Alice's befuddled, ever-tardy White Rabbit.

"Is something wrong?" Temple asked.

"Huh?" The woman almost collided with Temple, then eyed her costume in confusion. "Wrong? Hell, yes. You're all dressed and ready to go. Oh, what am I gonna do? There's no time."

Temple resisted the temptation to hunt for a rabbit hole. "What's wrong?"

"One of the boys--the contestants--he--oh, my--split out his costume and we have to start the rehearsal in a couple minutes and he's on first!"

"Isn't there an emergency-fix basket in the dressing room?"

"Huh?" Brown eyes set in maroon bezels of fatigue blinked dolefully. "We're not using the regular dressing rooms."

"Where is the side-splitting hunk?"

The woman gestured wildly toward the opposite wings. Temple took off in that direction, long brocade skirts swishing. Behind her came the bunny-trail thump-thumps of the hapless Wardrobe Witch.

"We're all assigned certain contestants to dress," the woman behind Temple chattered in breathless relief now that she had found a partner in panic. "We're responsible. It's not as if this is the actual pageant, but Mr. Dove demands promptness, and poor Lance is competing for the first time and so nervous. If he misses his cue, or worse, looks laughable, it will simply shatter his confidence for the actual pageant. Poor fellow--"

"Listen. If I can find that basket, and I know there's one somewhere, everything will be fine."

The object of their concern came into view like a lachrymose landmark: a tall young man wearing a white, full-sleeved shirt open to the navel. He was standing in pale relief against the backdrop, watching for his wardrobe witch like some Romeo aching for a glimpse of Juliet. He hardly glanced at Temple, which, given her lusty wench's getup, was a testimony either to his anxiety-level, or his sexual preferences.

"Follow me," Temple said briskly, passing him without a pause to snatch her duffel bag from the floor and continue offstage. Now the clump-clump of boots trailed the sneaker-muted thump-thumps of the Wardrobe Witch.

What a parade they must make! The Wench, the Witch and the Wardrobe. And the luckless Wearer of the torn-asunder Wardrobe.

Temple pattered down the concrete stairs to the basement and dashed into the Four Queens'

dressing room. Last night she had automatically noticed just what they needed.

In the corner where dressing tables and mirrors met sat an innocuous basket overflowing with odds and ends--extra false eyelashes and fingernails, glue, safety and bobby pins, spare feathers and. . .

viola, as we say in freshman French! A tidy sewing kit with scissors, needles and a rainbow variety of threads.

"Here!" She grabbed the kit and held it out to. .. "What's your name?" she asked the Wardrobe Witch.

"Mary Lou. And this is Lance." The hunk waited diffidently at the dressing-room door, head hung.

Temple nodded, thrusting the show-saving kit at Mary Lou, whose hands, even now wringing before the prancing unicorn on her sweatshirt, abruptly vanished behind her back.

"Oh, no. No, I couldn't," she demurred, bit her lip and backed away as if Temple was proffering Cleopatra's asp. "I can't . . . sew.

Mary Lou almost looked embarrassed, as well she should--a woman her age afraid of a little needle and thread.

Exasperated, Temple turned to Lance, getting a better gander at the hapless hunk. He was the usual good-looks-gifted, weight-lifted he-man hero with thick, wavy, coffee-colored shoulder-length hair Cher would envy. And, at a raw twenty-one or -two, he was one of the youngest contestants.

Mary Lou was backing all the way out of the room now. "I'll wait. Outside." She eyed a big-dialed watch whose pink plastic strap cut into her chubby wrist. "Hurry! Lance is due onstage in only a couple of minutes."

"So am I!" Temple said.

And she did loathe late entrances, for rehearsals, and especially for dress rehearsals, even when she loathed the forthcoming onstage follies even more.

No time to wonder why the Wardrobe Witch had deserted her post. The show must go on! Temple pulled her glasses from the case in her duffel bag.

"Where's the problem?" she asked Lance, selecting a needle with a large, easily penetrated eye and hunting for white thread.

His odd silence in a crisis made her look up.

Lance was looking down.

Temple looked down.

Oh.

She began looking for black thread, and lots of it.

A seam in Lance's black leather like pants had split open. Temple could see why, now that his nether regions were no longer lost against the black backdrop of a curtain. The skin-tight legs laced up open sides. Apparently an enthusiastic, or nervous, lacer--like Mary Lou--had overtightened the lacing.

Something had to give, and had, in the most unfortunate location: a seven-inch seam along the front fly.

"I can take 'em off," Lance suggested lamely, eyeing Temple's glasses with visible doubt.

"No time." But he knew that already, else why would he be so pale and wan, prithee? "Stand here."

The overhead light was thinner than chicken consumme, and theatrical makeup lights didn't shine past the dressing table edge. So Temple backed him tight against the table, knotted her double thread-end four secure times and went to her beskirted knees. At least the yardage cushioned the hard floor.

Needle poised to strike, she analyzed the truly prodigious problem. The needle had to pierce the fabric at an angle in order to suture the seam shut. Given the nature of the costume and the site of the split, any too-vigorous thrust ran the risk of spearing the wearer rather than the wearing apparel, and in a place best left unstimulated in any way, pleasant or painful.

Temple sighed. Lance said nothing.

Like national disasters, theatrical crises bring out the best in people, a neighborly no-nonsense coping. Each participant braced to ignore the task's inescapably delicate nature.

Lance gazed around the dressing room, his eyes on everything but the site of the tragedy and Temple's needle.

Temple concentrated on the task at hand, rather than its social ramifications. She had to draw the straining fabric closer, then quickly slice the needle through one side and out the other before tension sprung it apart again.

If the material hadn't been a somewhat sleazy leather substitute, she couldn't have done it at all. Still, the fabric was tough enough to resist the needle point.

"Two minutes, folks!" boomed Danny Dove's brisk, martinet voice from the dressing-room speaker set high on the wall. He meant it.

They both jumped, then froze.

Temple drove the needle into the next stitch, trying not to grunt and grit her teeth as she forced the tip through the resistant fabric. Grunting might make the guy nervous.

She couldn't help speculating idly as she struggled to close the gap in the rended seam. Rock stars were known to bolster their crotches with socks, just as women had used handkerchiefs in their bras long before the lingerie industry had thoughtfully provided the proper inflationary devices.

Did Incredible Hunk candidates resort to such cheesy stratagems? If so, dumping any stuffing would make her task much easier, and swifter to accomplish. Surely Lance would have thought of that, and suggested any sacrificeable flotsam to throw overboard in an emergency like this. Then again, Temple would hardly toss her Wonderbra at a male tailor were the situation reversed, so she could only . . . er, wonder.

And if this was not a case of artificial amplification, the interesting question became just how well-endowed Incredible Hunks were. Certainly considering the conundrum in long, Latinate words kept the speculations on a disinterested, academic plane. Plane ... or fancy.

Temple's needle plunged on. She also explored black thoughts about amateur dressers who are not professional enough to perform awkward but necessary theatrical tasks. Grandmothers who were far better equipped than she to deal dispassionately with strange young men--rather, young men who were strangers--and the more private parts of their anatomy. Grandmothers who had diapered and potty-trained and done heaven-knows-what-else and should be as asexual as amoebas by now.

Grandmothers who got eaten by big bad wolves, but grandmothers who might turn the tables on the wolves, too. For grandmothers also read--and sometimes wrote--romance novels, and had once starred in a few sensual scenes of their own (or they wouldn't be grandmothers and supposedly beyond the socio-sexual fray, would they?). Grandmothers who were still earthy enough to enjoy being around handsome men young enough to be their grandsons, and canny enough to duck the issue when it came to confronting the underlying roots of their admiration.

Temple nodded as she worked. A fan could have killed Cheyenne, or any of these men. Someone like a Wardrobe Witch. Someone with outlandish fantasies? Someone spurned? It happened the other way all the time: much older men and young women who traded on their looks sometimes do-si-doed into messy situations where murder might out.

"Places, people!" boomed the speaker. "Now!" Danny sounded like Patton in a snit.

Temple took some last frantic stitches, triple-knotted the threat at ground zero, then patted the dressing-table top for the scissors. They weren't within reach.

"Scissors?" she asked, curt as a surgeon.

Lance twisted to look, nearly breaking the precious thread below the knot and undoing all Temple had redone, while she drew in an audibly appalled breath.

"Uh, sorry." He had to toss a brunette tress over his shoulder when he turned back. "I can't find the scissors."

Temple considered using her teeth, then decided that was above and beyond the call of wenchdom.

"The dangling thread won't show against the black," she told him. "You'll have to have it repaired again on a machine anyway." She took off her glasses and threw them into the gaping duffel bag.

Then she was up and running for the stairs, her skirts hiked almost as high as Quincey's. Lance thudded up the risers behind her, asking for little but reassurance.

"Thanks. Um, do you think it will ... you know, hold up for the show?"

She devoutly hoped that he was asking about her repair job.

"Time will tell," she huffed back to him. "At least you only have to do your act once. I have to do mine eleven times."

And she was supposed to be onstage before the first trio of hunks.

Temple flew into the wings, Lance and his once-flapping fly forgotten. Lacey and Quincey were nowhere around, which meant that they already had melted onto the dimly lit set as directed.

Temple raced until the moment she could be seen from the audience, then braked herself to a saunter. No audience awaited except Danny Dove and some hangers-on, but she had to pretend that there was a houseful of eager watchers.

In the murky light, the glitter of Lacey's seven veils entwined a pillar. Temple's skirts swished soft as surf against the fake-stone riser of her Gothic corner as she stubbed an unprotected toe on it, then stifled a wail. Beyond her nook, Quincey leaned Lili Marlene-like against the barn set's ersatz lamppost.

Temple swirled into place and settled against her own wall, gazing soul-fully out the arched windowslit, which offered an unwavering view of backstage curtain.

At stage left, three hunks thumped from the wings. If Lance was assigned to her, after all they'd gone through together; wouldn't it be a ... stitch? At least she'd know to discourage any costume-straining positions.

A Roman gladiator, oiled torso gleaming in his harness, hairy legs bristling, leather and brass slapping and ringing as he walked, headed for Lacey beyond Temple. She didn't like to imagine getting whacked by the gladiator's lethal costume during the pose-down.

A second figure eased around the stone wall encompassing Temple, shadowy in a short cloak and tights. Beyond her, Lance, a curled bullwhip slung over one shoulder, headed for Quincey. How romantic.

Temple, appropriately panting from her hundred-yard-dash upstairs, waited for the spotlights to illuminate the awful truth. Thank heaven she hadn't worn her glasses, which would be out of period anyway, but she knew the drill: three lady models, thirty-three remaining Incredible Hunks, eleven each.

Entering male trios would move to the set appropriate for their garb and grab the proper girl for a minute or more of ersatz passion. The trick was to change positions and poses constantly, like cover models being photographed. Temple knew that Quincey and Lacey had huddled with their designated hunks to plan their routines. She had been busy with other matters, such as murder, and would have to wing it with whoever showed up on her doorstep.

She could only hope that Danny had chosen wisely and well.

And she only had to be pliant and malleable (the usual requirements for any medieval virgin-bride, she figured). Theatrical illusion would do the rest.

Although Temple should be able to hear whoever was standing in for the announcer introduce the candidates, the microphone blurred his voice onstage. That meant that her partners would always be as much as a surprise as their improvised routine.

The lighting slowly brightened as Temple's first hunk went to one knee before her, took her tenderly in his arms, then bent her back until her false hair pooled on the stage floor. If her hairpins didn't hold, her false hair would remain a blood-bright puddle on the stage floor.

The lights came up full. Against the blurry blazing suns of the spotlights, Temple squinted to decode the visage above her. . . the fine Italian face of a Fontana brother in Romeo disguise!

Piece of pasta! The hunk you know is always a better risk than the hunk you don't know.

Rico or maybe Armando or even Eduardo bent over her until the feather in his velvet cap nearly put out her unshielded right eye.

"Don't worry, kid. I will treat you like a sister."

"Fontana brothers don't have any sisters," she hissed back.

He shrugged, then began performing a cover tango while murmuring dolce far niente, or so the lyrics of some forgotten Broadway musical described sweet Italian nothings.

Temple murmured sweetly back, "Rigatoni, Ziti Pitti, Uffizi. Oh, Linguini!"

No one could hear them over the canned music that beat out Bolero-type rhythms suitable for seduction. She was finally deposited again on the window seat to simper pensively as her swain backed away, bowing.

The lights dimmed. Temple squinted to see if the departing Lance was still intact, as far as trousers went, but she couldn't tell. Nor could she decide which of her ebbing attributes to check first: her false hair, or her authentically plunging neckline. She decided to semi-recline on the window seat for the next suitor.

Her knight in shining armor clanked as he came. She barely registered the arrival of her neighbors'

gentlemen callers, she was so busy wondering how she would cuddle up to an ambulatory Swiss army knife.

With one hand he pushed back his metal visor, with the other he encompassed her waist. Then he picked her up and turned in a circle, nearly ramming Temple's foot into a mock-stone wall while her heavy false hair threatened to elope in the arms of centrifugal force.

The grinning Fontana brother in the plumed helmet reassured her. "Fear not, fair lady, I will not drop you."

She had nothing to fear but fear itself, so she caressed his chill silver-metal cheek and ran her hands up and down his chain-mail chest as he lowered her back to the floor, very slowly, because he really did not bend very well. How refreshing to have a male contestant compelled to "dip."

She was definitely getting the hang of a pose-down, especially since it mostly involved hanging off the hunk until he could move her into one or another contorted position. Then they did pretend kissy-kissy until it came precariously close to real kissy-kissy, but by then she was kissing him offstage.

She was also quickly getting exhausted from inventing something different that she was willing to do, and she did feel obligated to help her assigned hunks win. Besides, she knew that Quincey and Lacey were not holding back. To let two teenage Lolitas outdo a mature woman in her prime was unthinkable.

So she posed down, and up, and sideways, sometimes half-climbing the wall or the hunk, sometimes swooning in lily like languor. All the hunks seemed alike after a while. Actually, they all seemed like Fontana brothers.

And that they were, for Danny Dove had devised a fiendishly simple method to keep Temple on familiar ground. It was all in the Crystal Phoenix family, you see. A Fontana brother who hoped to be welcome again on the premises would never drop, French-kiss, or otherwise commit vulgar acts with their brother Nicky's employee.

In fact, Temple felt so secure that she soon was lulled into a lazy rhythm, even losing track of how many Fontanas had passed by her window. The rhythmically dimming and brightening lights were hypnotic, she noted.

How many more could there be? Temple watched the latest Fontana swagger offstage in doublet and boots, as lights and ladies were lowered again to their quiescent positions.

Three more figures emerged from the wings, then separated as they moved to the sets. Temple wondered what the next Fontana would be wearing as he tripped up the single step to her lair. He actually did trip, in fact, in the dark, and fell across her hard enough to knock the breath out of her chest.

Ufffth. She tried to speak, to breathe, but no words came.

Temple pounded her fists on the man's broad, bare chest to alert him to her predicament. He took the gesture for mock resistance, for he remained pressed atop her breathless body. It was terrifying, being unable to scream or say a word while a big lummox lay across her like a sledge of lead, his stupid long hair tickling her neck and falling into her mouth, which needed air--

She felt, maybe even saw, the lights coming up, but she didn't care how the audience would view the scene. She could not breathe. She. Could. Not. Breathe. Not draw air in, or push it out. She needed to breathe, but how could she with two hundred pounds of clumsy hunk sprawled all over her, even if he was a Fontana brother?

But he wasn't a Fontana brother.

The curtain of hair tenting their conjoined faces was blond. Had Danny finally run out of Fontanas? Of course, nine brothers to a set (too bad Nicky wouldn't moonlight), and eleven hunks on Temple's menu.

Danny had been forced to fill in her pose-down program with a couple of odd hunks. Very odd, she thought. Why was this guy just lying on top of her like a weight, no wonder she couldn't breathe!

" La Rossa," the impinging hunk whispered in a strange voice. Oh, no! Why had Danny let Fabrizio, of all hunks, into her safe cage of Fontana brothers?

His features twisted with some extraordinary emotion. "I-- sorry."

He dam well should be sorry, Temple thought in rising panic.

His hands rested on her shoulders, thumbs pressing against her neck. One dug into her carotid artery until she could feel her pulse bucking under the fleshy pad.

His mouth hung over hers, a smothering not-quite-kiss.

But she still couldn't breathe! And he didn't know it. He could crush her to death with clumsy theatrics!

Then his hands tightened around her neck, huge hands that had promised to pick her up and never drop her. Her back slid half-off the window seat. Still she was trapped in an airless silence, her rib cage crushed by the hot, heavy weight of Fabrizio's three-thousand-dollar chest.

She felt her throat arching back in the long, flowing line so beloved of romance cover artists, the pose that always reminded Temple of a woman in extremis, not ecstasy.

Now that she was in that exact position herself, she could ... not . . . breathe . .. ever again. And Fabrizio thought he was so sexy, his hammy hands on her throat, his hot breath panting into her mouth!

He was killing her. He. Was. Killing. Her.

The hands tightened, with palpable purpose. Fabrizio's too-close blue eyes squinted shut in a face his perpetual tan had deserted.

Black spots danced before Temple's eyes. From staring up at the spotlights . . . no, she didn't see spotlights or any light at all, just black spots and a narrowing tunnel of vision, tunnel vision, with a bright light at the end, like so many near-death experiences. ... No!

Temple twisted, fought to fall off the ledge that half-held her, to slither out from under the crushing weight, to escape the hands circling her throat. Fought to breathe! Fabrizio grunted in his own battle to seal off all breath forever, as if he were a Samson whose strength was ebbing. But she felt his long hair brush her shoulders. He was invincible. ...

One gasping inhalation took ragged hold. Rushing air dried her oxygen-starved throat and lungs as it drew deep into her chest, then reversed itself and burst outward with a rapid whoosh.

The shuddered breath, violent as a dry heave, jolted Fabrizio's hands loose. Temple inhaled again, another wrenching spasm of her entire torso, like giving birth. Giving breath. As she exhaled a turbulent hiccough, she twisted her body with all the life-fighting might in her.

Fabrizio tumbled to the stage floor on his back. Temple pushed herself up on one arm. She hung gasping above him, the ends of her long false locks mixing with the corona of yellow hair around his surprised face. No matter the embarrassment, he deserved it.

A few false crimson strands pooled on Fabrizio's smooth, golden chest. Some even curled around the knife hilt pressed tight against his washboard stomach.

Now that Temple could scream, she didn't dare.

The lights dimmed on cue.

Luckily, someone had glimpsed something amiss. Someone with power.

"Lights full up, dammit!" Danny yelled like an oncoming berserker.

Feet clumped toward them from all directions, but Temple still couldn't talk yet, and Fabrizio--?

Fabrizio wouldn't ever hear again.