Cat In A Flamingo Fedora

Chapter 27

Temple Starts Cookin'

Temple had Louie home and toweled off from his heroic rescue--all caught on telephoto lens and videotape--by 9 p.m.

His coat was the feline equivalent of a buzz-cut: short, nappy and quick to dry.

"Two days off, Louie," she told him, ferociously toweling his tail. "I could use a break.

Spending all my time with Domingo and his minions, Savannah Ashleigh and assorted female consorts of the late Darren Cooke is taxing. At least I won't have to see the Wrath of Rodeo Drive for a while. Did you watch Savannah light into that director for unsafe conditions?

Threatening to sue everybody from the Mirage to the cat-food company to the cameramen for recording your feat rather than going to Yvette's rescue?"

Louie, sitting on the area rug washing his already- soaking feet, sneezed.

"You better not catch something from this! I hope Yvette's okay too. Savannah Ashleigh would sue us all, every one, if anything happened to that cat."

Louie, head bent to lick, seemed to be nodding strong agreement.

"You would think her precious cat came into this world spun-dry and was meant to stay that way. Yvette is not above sprinkling in her carrier, you know Hey! Don't growl. Am I hurting you?

Well, stalk off, then."

Temple absently dabbed the damp towel against her own sopping suit-front. Her shoes, J.

Renee snakeskin pumps, lay soaked at her bare feet. She had rescued the rescuer, after all.

Not that Savannah Ashleigh had been at all grateful as she stood shrieking in the key of F-sharp on the lagoon bank. She had snatched the dripping Yvette from Temple's overburdened arms, then carried her Precious at arm's length to the carrier. Once incarcerated, the sopping cat had begun to caterwaul. That was when Savannah had announced that Yvette required at least two days' paid medical leave to recover.

To Temple, this was a welcome break. She was still curious about Darren Cooke's daughter, wishing she had copies of her letters. Even the police didn't have that. Molina had called to confirm their continued absence, only a trace of smugness in her voice.

"Did you look in the hotel safe?" Temple had asked.

"Before you even brought the letters up."

"What about Michelle? Did she say where she found my card?"

"She says it was in the usual place for such fond mementos, under the mattress."

"And your guys missed it. Did you look--?"

"The mattress was lifted off the springs. Nothing there other than some blanket fuzz. You realize that we have only the widow's word on where she found it."

"But why would she lie--?"

"You're the detective," Molina had said smartly, hanging up.

Temple sometimes wondered if the worthy lieutenant didn't use her as a stalking dog to sniff out new directions in such cases. Certainly Molina only fed her enough information to tickle her curiosity bone, which in Temple's case happened to be every bone in her body, plus the calcium supplements she consumed to strengthen her petite frame.

"I don't know what you're going to do on your days off, Louie, but I'm going to find out who has hung around Darren Cooke only recently. Too bad I can't take you along, but this is woman's work."

Louie lay there, licking the coat she had dried, ignoring her every word.

Today, Friday morning, Domingo and his minions would be busy stringing flamingos with fairy lights for a lavish installation around the Luxor Sphinx and grounds.

Although Christmas wasn't that far off, Temple really wasn't in a light-stringing mood. So, leaving Louie to enjoy the quiet comforts of home, she headed for Gangster's. But first she made a telephone call.

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

By day, the Gangster's layout--like most Las Vegas attractions-- looked faded and forlorn.

Call it the carnival-funhouse effect. The parking lot was only half full, but Gangster's unique customer pickup-and-delivery system wouldn't produce a lot full of parked cars. She was pleased to note that a raven Viper lay in wait among the idle black limos parked in an imposing row.

When the Fontana Brother popped up like a chic jack-in-the-box as Temple entered the lobby, she didn't have to guess which one it was. She had spoken to Aldo on the phone.

"Hey, Miss Temple! Hear your pussycat went swimming at the Mirage."

"How'd you hear that so fast?"

"No problem. We are Fontana Communications, Inc." Aldo grinned and produced something from behind his back. The latest issue of the Sun, featuring a photo of the crew pulling Louie and Yvette from the lagoon. Nobody, human or feline, resembled themselves in the least . . . except photogenic Savannah Ashleigh, who appeared to be directing the rescue operation, and was so identified.

"Plastic surgery can really get you through those difficult moments," Temple murmured cattily.

"I thought you would like a copy," Aldo announced happily.

Considering that Temple's photo-image looked like a freeze-dried and shrunken mummy, she was not duly appreciative. But she folded the paper into her miscellaneous file cabinet --her tote bag.

"Thanks. What about Darren Cooke's co-workers? Did you round some up?"

"Sure thing. They're all sweating like hell to brush up the show with Cooke's replacement."

"They've replaced him so fast?"

"Listen, my Uncle Mario was on the phone to Hollywood, calling in a few markers, first thing Monday a.m. The Fontana family does not mess around in a crisis."

"I have seen that." Temple nodded sagely. "So who did Uncle Mario dig up?" Oops, she had phrased that badly.

Aldo folded impeccably manicured hands in front of his rigidly pinstriped navy suit and donned a Cheshire-cat smile.

"I'd ask you to guess, but I figure you've had a pretty trying night."

"You figure right."

"Steve Martin fell through, so I'll just say: Sid Caesar."

"Really?" Temple couldn't help being impressed. "He'll be perfect in the part. Is he here yet?"

"Naw. He has some things to tidy up. We got a stand-in for now, but Sid's been sent a script so he'll be ready to go."

"Well, Sid Caesar certainly wasn't in Darren Cooke's vicinity lately, so I can't think up any excuse for talking to him ..."

Aldo took Temple's tote bag from her shoulder and then took her free elbow in hand too.

"I've arranged for the director to have a talk with you during the break."

He escorted her past the discreet chime of slot machines and into Hush Money.

"Thanks, Aldo." Temple resisted his polite but firm custody. "I prefer to snoop around on my own on the stage. Ask the stage crew things. You know."

"Miss Temple." Aldo's voice was gently chiding. "Of course I realize that you wish to do your sleuthing yourself. I thought it might help to start with an overview. Additionally, once the director has spoken to you, he will not question your presence on the set, and will let you go about your business."

"I see. Very diplomatic of you, Aldo."

"We Fontanas are nothing if we are not diplomatic. Now, have a seat and I will get the director-dude."

Seating her with the courtliness of a papal legate, Aldo proceeded to ruin the effect by absently patting his jacket as he left. He was not searching for something like a Cuban cigar, but more like an Italian automatic.

Temple hoped the director was not being coerced into seeing her. Reluctant witnesses were the worst kind.

She ordered the Lady in Red Clamato juice, it being a bit too early for lunch, and recalled coming here with Matt. That, naturally (or not so naturally) got her wondering why she hadn't heard from Max lately. He was probably burrowed away in the Welles/Kinsella/Randolph house burning the literary lamp as he toiled to complete The Great Gandolph's nonfiction expose of the seance game. Max an author! Really! She supposed he might need some organizational help, but wasn't about to volunteer. After all, she was apparently in high demand lately, so let Max wait and wonder and stew. Except she didn't think he was doing any of those things, drat.

Aldo returned in ten minutes, tenderly escorting a sixtyish man whose gray hair was cut close, in a Roman-emperor style, to hide a receding hairline. Nothing he could do would hide his receding chin. His bony features didn't profit from the severe haircut, nor did his chin benefit from a Benetton cashmere turtleneck in a shade of green that too closely made one think of a ...

well, a turtle.

Temple braced herself. She'd seen this theatrical type before and knew that he compensated for behind-the-curtain looks with high-theatah mannerisms and energy, energy, energy.

He descended like a pine-green tornado, that being the color he had chosen to set off what was left of his silver locks. He came shaking a finger at her.

"You can't keep your shabby little secrets from me anymore. I wondered what you were doing coming in and out of the theater, and now I know."

Temple swallowed a gulp of Lady in Red.

"But, Miss Barr, you look so young to be a producer!"

He pumped her hand and sat opposite her at the table for two.

Temple gave Aldo a poisonous look, but he merely rocked back and forth on his slick Italian heels and soles, like a boa constrictor that had swallowed a whole flock of canaries.

"Miss Barr, this is Manny Kurtz, the stage, screen and television director who is mounting the Gangster's revue."

What kind of producer was she supposed to be? Temple asked herself--and Aldo--

internally. She smiled, pumping up her energy to match Manny Kurtz. Wilt before all those kilowatts, and you were lost before you started.

"Oh, Mr. Kurtz. You know what they say: kids are running everything these days. Even the studios."

He raised a dramatic eyebrow, a gesture the Mystifying Max put to much better effect.

"Even the TV studios, they tell me. I think it's wonderful that 60 Minutes is doing a retrospective on poor Darren! Feel free to tromp all over my set to find your interview subjects--I myself have several theories on poor Darren's... er, death. Who will do the actual on-camera stuff? Morey?

Ed?"

"Umm, maybe ... even Ted."

Kurtz frowned.

Temple rushed on. Aldo was apparently taking lessons from her Aunt Kit Carlson in the telling of Really Big Lies. The last time Temple had been introduced as a 60 Minutes field producer, she'd had to carry out the impersonation for a massively egotistical over muscled cover hunk, the male equivalent of a blond bimbo. Kurtz was full of himself, but he was several million brain cells ahead of Fabrizio.

"It'll be as much a surprise to me as to you who will front the story," she replied quite truthfully. "This is just a background expedition, to see if there's story enough here. I'm looking for people who knew Mr. Cooke for a long time, and some who just knew him recently. We hope to get a three-dimensional take on his life and times that way."

"Three dimensional." He nodded, enraptured. "Very good idea! You know, of course, that nobody really knew Darren well, over a long period of time. He was a comic. He required a fresh audience for his same old jokes. He moved on."

"Especially with women." Temple hoped she had managed a confidential leer. "Darren Cooke was the last of the great Hollywood lovers, after all. I've seen his widow, Michelle, of course," she reported with haughty honesty, "who was well aware of his . . . special relationship with the opposite sex. She accepted his inclinations and even gave me permission to explore the real Darren Cooke."

"What a remarkable woman! French, I believe. Trust Frenchwomen to be broad-minded."

"Apparently her late husband was also."

"Broad-minded, you mean?" Kurtz withdrew an antique silver cigarette case from the inner pocket of his cream linen blazer and tapped out a nasty little cylinder that Temple seriously suspected of being a Gauloise, a French brand.

"Darren made no bones about it," he went on after lighting the st unted little thing with a sterling-silver Zippo. He flashed Temple a sharp look from behind his screen of serpentine smoke. She doubted he inhaled, which ought to do his lungs some good.

He was already tapping nonexistent ash from the cigarette end. The entire ritual was a prop with him, providing enough stagy business to keep him in the spotlight anywhere he went.

"Darren and dames." An uproarious laugh. "We're so soaked in the gangster atmosphere for the revue that sometimes we talk like them. He liked his women young, so I was surprised when he actually married and she was over thirty."

"Michelle is an international beauty, of course."

"Quite a catch for Darren, if he were going to be caught. And I know he adored his daughter.

Cutest little kid! Don't care for rug rats much myself, or anything that crawls on four legs." His thin frame shuddered.

Temple was glad Midnight Louie was no longer on the stage set, or present to hear this.

"Of course, it's easy enough to get in touch with his official associates. Yourself, for example. His wife and daughter. The less public liaisons are no less integral to the man's life and work, but far harder to ferret out."

"Oh, indeed!" Kurtz turned his unfortunate profile to her while he blew out a huff of smoke in an ostentatiously sideways direction.

Temple waited.

Kurtz leaned in, confidential. His raucous baritone voice lowered to Crawford Buchanan-level. "Actually, my dear, poor Darren had one of his exes on the set last week. Slinky number with the IQ of an onion but a plastic surgeon from heaven. Although she is over his age limit now, I was betting on them reviving the embers. So you might want to talk to Savannah Ashleigh."

Temple dutifully wrote the name on a notepad she had extracted from her tote bag immediately upon being informed that she was a producer for a national news show.

"I've heard of her," she murmured.

"Amazing! I'm impressed. Savannah hasn't done anything to hear about since her last face-lift."

"Was there anyone else in his life this past week, or month?"

"Well, we haven't been rehearsing a whole month, dearie!" He was half-talking and half-inhaling on a new cigarette, his lighter flame ebbing and flaring like a candle in the wind. "Oh, the chorus cuties were always around Darren. He radiated charm. Girls seemed to jump into his bed like lemmings into the sea."

"An interesting analogy. Are you implying that getting involved with Darren Cooke was self -

destructive?"

"No! No, no, no. I meant that they had very little concern for their reputations. I suppose he was a fairly major star, and these starry-eyed young things like to say thirty years later when they're knitting booties for the grand brats that they once had an affair with a star. One-night stand usually, with Darren. But nobody ever complained, as far as I knew."

"Really! What a remarkable man." Temple cupped her face in her hand and placed her elbow on the table to lean in closer. "What about women who were strangely . . . unsusceptible to Darren Cooke? Any of them around?"

"Well, nobody really notices the losers . . . but we have a new costumer who seemed quite inoculated against his charm. And Darren's personal assistant is quite a striking creature, yet she broadcasts such an icy air of pure business that I doubt even Darren tried the Romeo act on her."

"Personal assistant," Temple repeated, writing and remembering. "I really should contact her. Where would she be now that he's . . . dea d."

"Why, his office, I expect. Tidying up the files for the widow."

"Office? Where?"

"He appeared here so often that he maintained a small Strip office. Somewhere on Charleston. Surely you have assistants yourself who can look it up."

"That I do." Temple finished her Clamato drink and shut her notebook.

"I'll buy you another Bloody Mary," he said, pointing, obviously uneager for the interview to end.

"Thanks, but I must get to work. I'll just poke around backstage, if you don't mind. Interview the 'little people' who are so often overlooked in media biographies."

"Excellent idea! Our set is just crammed with the little people -- crew and hoofers and floor-sweepers. If you want an overview, don't hesitate to come to me."

"I won't," Temple promised as sincerely as he had offered.

When she rose, Aldo slipped into her seat.

"I would like a Bloody Mary," he told the director, deadpan.

Obviously, Aldo considered his next assignment to be keeping this camera-hound out of her way while she snooped around. Manny Kurtz was in fine (and persistent) Italian hands for at least forty-five minutes.

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

Once in the theater itself, Temple mentally changed identities and brought forward a new rank of half-lies.

"Where's the cat?" an idle dancer called as she approached the stage.

"Resting at home like a movie star." She climbed the few steps to the stage. The empty staircase reminded her of Midnight Louie's almost-tumble down those homicidally long risers . .

. could the cat have tripped on something? The next person down that stairway would have been Darren Cooke.

"I've enjoyed watching the company rehearse," she told the marooned dancer, crossing to where he lounged in the wings.

That was an old theater person for you: she "crossed" the stage, didn't "walk."

He nodded. "Would have been a good show with Darren. It'll be great with Caesar."

"Was Mr. Cooke ... uneasy at all before his death? Did the average co-worker have any suspicion about what was coming."

"Co-worker? We were just the chorus. He did seem a little withdrawn for Darren Cooke, the world's first wild and wonderful guy. I noticed that he played footsie with the blond chick with the cat commercial, but he didn't seem too pleased about it."

"Darren Cooke pretending to be interested in women?"

"In that woman, anyway. Hey, she was a silicone babe; I don't blame the guy. You seemed to be more his type."

"Me?" Temple hoped she didn't look as guilty as she felt.

"So how come you're asking about all this?"

She sighed. "I'm helping a friend with a book." True, although in the future. "It looks at true-life situations that end in death." Half-true. "Nobody can figure out why he killed himself. I'm looking for a little insight. And, then, I actually met him during the commercial shoot. I'm an ex-reporter. I guess I'm like everybody else. I want to know why."

"Guy had it all. Model wife. Kid. Money enough for a nanny to look after the kid, which is the best part. His show was going to do well. Gangster's is a great venue. I can't figure it."

"Nobody ever--"

"Ever what?"

"I know you've just been around for this show, but did one of his ex-girlfriends or one-night stands get ugly about her built-in obsolescence?"

"Nobody I ever heard of, and the hoofers hear a lot about the headliners, believe me. Except that Ashleigh bombshell. I saw them coming out of his dressing room, arguing about someone.

Drew, that was it. The name! By God, I remembered it."

The dancer straightened his spine and grew an inch in an automatic physical expression of his psychological exuberance.

"Do you suppose that's important? That he and this Ashleigh woman were arguing about some other woman named Drew. Could be a last name, or a first name. What do you think?"

That everybody thinks he's a detective, Temple told herself sourly.

"Should I tell the police?"

"I doubt it. I'm going to look around during break. Thanks."

She walked backstage, imagining this sudden windfall of information getting to Lieutenant Molina. She imagined Molina finding out that the "Drew" under discussion was "Nancy."

And finally, of course she'd realize, that the person was her, Temple Barr. She couldn't help wincing as she thumped down the narrow backstage stairs to the dressing rooms below.