Cat In A Flamingo Fedora

Chapter 19

Gossip Never Dies

The next morning, Temple returned to Gangster's, Louie in his carrier beside her.

She was on time, 11:30 a.m., but she didn't expect to see much action today. Surely they would have to reshape the commercial tied into Darren Cooke's opening number.

She had not taken into account another famous musical number:

"The Show Must Go On."

Everyone was there: the chorus line, the choreographer, the commercial director, even the Divine Yvette in her pink tote bag, with her airheaded mistress, Savannah Ashleigh.

Savannah looked as shaken as anyone with so much plastic surgery could. The apples in her cheeks had slipped and the sagging skin around her eyes, normally drawn back into a slightly Asian tilt, looked as if it had been carved from sun-melted suet.

**********************

"Don't look glum," Kyle counseled Temple. "The show's not down yet.

Gangster's is negotiating with a substitute."

"Are there any substitutes for the likes of Darren Cooke?"

"How about Steve Martin?"

"Steve Martin? Really?"

"This is Las Vegas, dearie. Dreams come true here, especially after nightmares."

"On such short notice?"

"Not Martin Short; I said Steve Martin. All show biz thrives on short notice."

"I heard the name right the first time. He's a bigger star than Darren Cooke."

"Extreme emergencies require extreme solutions. Gangster's is not about to choke on spending money for its first revue. When fate hits you in the guts in show biz, you've got to bounce back swinging."

"And the cat commercial?"

"Same deal as before. Today we'll get some establishment shots in the car museum. Want help toting your cat back there?"

Temple actually didn't feel like going it alone today. She nodded, so Kyle whistled over the cat stylist. The trainer was watching sullenly from under her Nazi-like hairdo, definitely not a willing cat-toter.

"Gosh," Marcy said as the carrier exchanged custodians. "I swear this guy gains weight between assignments just to be ornery."

"Louie is never ornery," Temple said, defending her mute young. "Sometimes he's just too big to move easily."

"Let's go," Marcy said with a laugh. "This big guy gains weight just by sitting here, wishing."

She was off, the carrier bumping her jeans-clad legs on every step.

Temple hustled after her, glad to be leaving the theater behind, where the ghost of Darren Cooke had sat beside her, requesting help. Maybe she should tell the police about the letters from his reputed daughter.

It was while the commercial crew was parading through the lobby on the way to the old-car wing that a briskly moving figure intercepted them.

"Miss Barr," came the salutation of a familiar voice.

The entire party stopped to stare at Temple.

"Lieutenant Molina, Las Vegas MPD," the tall, advancing woman in a navy pantsuit added, producing a verifying badge. "I understand you cat-commercial people had brief encounters with Darren Cooke in the past few days."

Molina included them all in her roundup glance, but her eyes ultimately fixed on Temple.

"He came down to the seating area to welcome us," Temple conceded.

"And some he welcomed more than others."

Molina's assertion brought no answer but a guilty silence. Everyone resisted glancing at Savannah Ashleigh.

"I think," Molina went on, "the female contingent could answer that best. I understand that Darren Cooke was quite a ladies' man."

When no answer came, Molina flipped back her notebook cover and began to scan the contents. "I should say that some of you were spotted at his hotel suite in the past few days."

Temple felt her high heels turn into carpenter's nails and impale her to the floor.

"I'll have a word with you over there." Molina waved the notebook at the mostly deserted Prohibition Bar. "Kyle Conrad." The director. "Savannah Ashleigh." Savannah looked as guilty as Temple and twice as rebellious. "Sharon Hammerlitz." The animal trainer from hell, now that was interesting. "And Temple Barr. The rest of you can go do what you were planning on doing. I don't believe I'll need to interrogate the cats."

"Yvette does not leave my side," Savannah burst out in a hysterical falsetto. "You will have to wait to shoot her until my grilling is over."

"Miss Ashleigh." Molina's smile was so tight it resembled a rigor-mortis grin. "If you were truly getting the dreaded 'grilling,' it would be downtown in a bare, tiny room and no cats would be allowed. Keep Yvette with you, if you wish. But I will accept no whining and screaming from either of you."

"Oooooh," Savannah's shaky little moan came perilously close to a whine.

Temple waved Louie and his carrier on. He didn't like incarceration, but he was a perfect gentleman about it: no howling, hissing or pissing.

The group drew up chairs around an empty table for six. Molina plunked her notebook on the table and drew out a tiny pocket recorder.

"I'm compiling a roster of who was with the deceased the past few days. Since he entertained so often, it's hard to get a complete guest list. If any of you recall other attendees you knew, I want their names. This is all routine, I assure you."

Yeah, Temple thought. A homicide lieutenant on a suicide investigation. If suicide were the cause of death, with no reservations, Temple doubted Molina would even be here . . . unless to harass Temple.

Paranoia, Temple reflected further, was the curse of the thinking class. Like Hamlet, she thought too much, and look how that had ended!

"Mr. Conrad." Molina began with the director. "I understand you were present at Mr.

Cooke's Friday-night cocktail party at his hotel."

"Yes, purely a professional courtesy. I only met him when we began working on this cat commercial. He was a generous man, and so included me on his guest list. I was hardly on a level with most of his guests, who are recognized 'names' in the business."

"Was anyone else from the crew or associated with the cat commercial present that night?"

Kyle eyed the table as if to refresh his memory. "Only Miss Ashleigh. But she had known him for years."

"For years," Molina repeated unnervingly, jotting the information down.

"Not that many years," Savannah corrected. She had removed Yvette from the canvas carrier and was holding the slim little cat to her chest and cheek as a child will cuddle a favorite teddy bear.

"How many?" Molina was as cool as a frosted beer mug.

"Years? Well, I don't know exactly. I first met him when I was doing House on Heavenly Isle.

That was released in nineteen eighty-four, so . . . eight years ago or so."

"At least twelve," Molina corrected.

Savannah puckered her blond eyebrows and rubbed her prominent cheekbone (probably an implant) against Yvette's pretty Persian face. Yvette rubbed back.

"I can't be sure. I'm only thirty-six and I'm sure I made that film when I was about twenty, maybe?"

"We can check the film dates," Molina said, hiding a smile by forcing her mouth corners down.

Obviously, Savannah Ashleigh was so used to manipulating dates in her favor that she was hopelessly lost in a tangle of wishful lies when she discussed her career and its longevity.

"And you are--?" Molina asked the animal trainer.

"Sharon Hammerlitz. I train animals. I never knew Cooke before this project. I don't know why he invited me to his Friday-night party, but it was too good an opportunity to miss. We animal handlers are rarely invited to high-level parties, or any parties at all."

"So you went out of curiosity?"

"Like a cat." Sharon smiled for the first time in Temple's memory.

"You didn't sense that Mr. Cooke took a personal interest in you?"

"Me? I'm just a twenty-four-year-old animal trainer. What would a famous older man have an interest in me for?"

"You're attractive. Mr. Cooke never failed to notice an attractive young woman. How did he happen to overlook you?"

"Dozens of prettier types at the party; real starlets. I was just a lowly extra. I drank one margarita, nibbled some crackers and crab and left by nine."

Molina lifted an eyebrow at Kyle Conrad.

"True. I hardly saw her, and only stayed until ten myself. Nobody was much interested in talking to me. It was a closed crowd. They knew each other."

"I'm impressed by all your moderate hours and abstemious ways. And was Miss Barr present?"

Kyle and Sharon exchanged glances, shaking their heads in tandem.

Molina's eerily blue eyes finally rested on Temple again. "You weren't i nvited, Cinderella?"

Temple shook her head, wondering if she should volunteer her presence at the Sunday brunch, a much more incriminating day.

While she debated, Molina snapped her notebook shut and turned off her tiny tape recorder. "Just checking on the decedent's last days. He strike any of you as suicidal?"

More head shakes, very definite.

Temple sat there biting her tongue. If she didn't volunteer her presence in Darren Cooke's suite, admitting it later would look very bad. Perhaps if she had a private word with Molina --

But the lieutenant had stood and was thanking them perfunctorily for their time. The chance, now lost, would be awkward to reclaim.

"Well, are you coming?" Savannah Ashleigh demanded beside Temple. "We're back in business as usual, and your big tomcat must be gnawing at his carrier grille to get another chance to sully my little Yvette."

"Louie doesn't sully anything," Temple answered, hastening after the others and leaving Savannah to reinsert Yvette in her carrier, zip it up and come trailing after.