Cat In A Hot Pink Pursuit

Previously in

Midnight Louie’s

Lives and Times .. .

How sad that my singing voice is more scat than lyrics, for my personal theme song would have to be “There Is Nothing Like a Dame.”

I admit it. I am a shameless admirer of the female of the species. Any species. Of course not all females are dames. Some are little dolls, like my petite roommate, Miss Temple Barr.

The difference between dames and little dolls? Dames can take care of themselves, period. Little dolls can take care of themselves also, but they are not averse to letting the male of the species think that they have an occasional role in the Master Plan too.

That is why my MissTemple and I are perfect roomies. She tolerates my wandering ways. I make myself useful, looking after her without letting her know about it. Call me Muscle in Midnight Black. In our time, we have co-cracked a few cases too tough for the local fuzz of the human persuasion, law enforcement division. That does not always win either of us popularity contests, but we would rather be right than on the sidelines when something crooked is going down. We share a well-honed sense of justice and long, sharp fingernails.

So when I hear that a reality TV show is coming to Las Vegas to film, I figure that one way or another my lively little roommate, the petite and toothsome, will be spike-heel high in the planning and execution. She is, after all, a freelance public relations specialist, and Las Vegas is full of public relations of all stripes and legalities. In this case, though, I did not figure just how deeply she would be involved in murder most media.

I should introduce myself: Midnight Louie, Pl. I am not your usual gumshoe in that my feet do not wear shoes of any stripe, but shivs. I have certain attributes, such as being short, dark, and handsome … really short. That gets me overlooked and underestimated, which is what the savvy operative wants anyway. I am your perfect undercover guy. I also like to hunker down under the covers with my little doll. My adventures would fill a book, and in fact I have several out. My life is just one long TV miniseries in which I as hero extract my hapless human friends from fixes of their own making and literally nail crooks. After experiencing the dramatic turn of events recently, most of my human associates are pretty shell-shocked. Not even an ace feline PI may be able to solve their various predicaments in the areas of crime and punishment … and PR, as in Personal Relationships.

As a serial killer–finder in a multivolume mystery series (not to mention a primo mouthpiece), it behooves me to update my readers old and new on past crimes and present tensions.

None can deny that the Las Vegas crime scene is apretty busy place, and I have been treading these mean neon streets for seventeen books now. When I call myself an “alphacat,” some think I am merely asserting my natural male dominance, but no. I merely reference the fact that after debuting in Catnap and Pussyfoot, I commenced to a title sequence that is as sweet and simple as B to Z.

That is where I began my alphabet, with the B in Cat on a Blue Monday. From then on, the color word in the title is in alphabetical order up to the current volume, Cat in a Hot Pink Pursuit. (Yeow! Pink is not my usual macho color.) Since I associate with a multifarious and nefarious crew of human beings, and since Las Vegas is littered with guidebooks as well as bodies, I wish to provide a rundown of the local landmarks on my particular map of the world. A cast of characters, so to speak: To wit, my lovely roommate and high-heel devotee, Miss Nancy Drew on killer spikes, freelance PR ace MISS TEMPLE BARR, who has reunited with her only love…

… the once missing-in-action magician MR. MAX KINSELLA, who has good reason for invisibility. After his cousin SEAN died in a bomb attack during a post-highschool jaunt to Ireland, he went into undercover counterterrorism work with his mentor, GANDOLPH THE GREAT, whose unsolved murder last Halloween while unmasking phony psychics at a séance is still on the books…

Meanwhile, Mr. Max is sought by another dame, Las Vegas homicide LIEUTENANT C. R. MOLINA, mother of preteen MARIAH .. .

… and the good friend of Miss Temple’s recent good friend MR. MATT DEVINE, a radio talk-show shrink and former Roman Catholic priest who came to Las Vegas to track down his abusive stepfather, now dead and buried. By whose hand, no one is quite sure.

Speaking of unhappy pasts, Lieutenant Carmen Regina Molina is not thrilled that her former flame MR. RAFI NADIR, the unsuspecting father of Mariah, is in Las Vegas taking on shady muscle jobs after blowing his career with the LAPD .. .

… or that Mr. Max Kinsella is aware of Rafi and his past relationship to hers truly. She had hoped to nail one man or the other as the Stripper Killer, but MissTemple prevented that by attracting the attention of the real perp.

In the meantime, Mr. Matt drew a stalker, the local girl that young Max and his cousin Sean boyishly competed for in that long-ago Ireland .. .

… one MISS KATHLEEN O’CONNOR, deservedly christened by MissTemple as Kitty the Cutter. Finding Mr. Max impossible to trace, she settled for harassing with tooth and claw the nearest innocent bystander, Mr. Matt Devine…

… who is still trying to recover from the crush he developed on MissTemple, his neighbor at the Circle Ritz condominiums, while Mr. Max was missing in action. He did that by not very boldly seeking new women, all of whom were in danger from said Kitty the Cutter.

In fact, on the advice of counsel, i.e., AMBROSIA, Mr. Matt’s talk-show producer, and none other than the aforesaid Lieutenant Molina, he tried to disarm Miss Kitty’s pathological interest in his sexual state by losing his virginity with a call girl least likely to be the object of K. the Cutter’s retaliation. Except that hours after their assignation at the Goliath Hotel, said call girl turned up deader than an ice-cold deck of Bicycle playing cards. But there are thirty-some million potential victims in this old town, if you include the constant come and go of tourists, and everything is up for grabs in Las Vegas24/7: guilt, innocence, money, power, love, loss, death, and significant others.

All this human sex and violence makes me glad I have a simpler social life, my prime goal being reunion with .. .

… THE DIVINE YVETTE, the stunning shaded silver Persian belonging to fading B-film star Miss Savannah Ashleigh and once my partner in some cat food commercials, and such a simple hope as trying to get along with my self-appointed daughter .. .

.. MISS MIDNIGHT LOUISE, who insinuated herself into my cases until I was forced to set up shop with her as Midnight Inc. Investigations, and who has also nosed herself into my long-running duel with .. .

… the evil Siamese assassin HYACINTH, first met as the onstage assistant to the mysterious lady magician …

… SHANGRI-LA, who made off with MissTemple’s semiengagement ring from Mr. Max during an onstage trick and has not been seen since, except in sinister glimpses . .

… just like THE SYNTH, an ancient cabal of magicians that may deserve contemporary credit for the ambiguous death of Mr. Max’s mentor in magic, Gandolph the Great.

Well, there you have it, the usual human stew, all mixed up and at odds with one another and within themselves. Obviously, it is up to me to solve all their mysteries and nail a few crooks along the way. Like Las Vegas, the City That Never Sleeps, Midnight Louie, private eye, also has a sobriquet: the Kitty That Never Sleeps.

With this crew, who could?

Chapter 1

Hello Kitty

Homicide Lieutenant C. R. Molina’s desk hosted two very different images.

One was a glossy 11-by-17-inch poster of a Barbiedoll-cute teen girl tricked out in industrial-strength amounts of hot pink.

The other was the same image, cut into jagged pieces that had been grafted onto photographed body parts of an actual Barbie doll.

The phrase “Teen Idol” on the first poster had morphed into “Twisted Sister,” with a welter of blood-red spatters, on the second one.

“Sick,” Molina said, unnecessarily.

They all stood gazing down on the twisted twin posters, neither of which was exactly wholesome. One was merely Extreme Fashion. The other had been refashioned into something freakishly violent.

“Being the mother of a newly teenaged daughter, finding this stuff strewn around a shopping mall parking lot makes me shudder,” Molina said. “The slashed poster reminds me that some things are scarier than adolescent hormones.”

“Mariah’s thirteen already?” Detective Morrie Alch asked, surprised. He was comfortably into his mid-fifties and his lone daughter was grown, gone, and a mother herself.

How Molina envied him.

“Just turned,” she said. “A month ago. I’m already considering a barbed-wire perimeter around the house. This is so sick.”

“The Teen Idol concept,” Detective Merry Su asked, “or the threatening poster?”

“Both.” Molina shook her head. “So tell me about this Teen Idol thing.”

“Reality TV hits Las Vegas,” Su said. A petite, twenty-something, second-generation Asian American, Su looked ready to compete for a teen title herself.

“Can’t prove it by me,” Molina answered. “We’ve been hosting reality TV since the New Millennium Hotel went up five years ago.”

“It’s a quest to name a ‘Tween and Teen Queen,” Alch said.

“Two age groups, thirteen to fifteen and sixteen to nineteen,” Su said.

“Got it. Teens-in-training and the full-media deal. Is this a singing competition?”

Being a closet vocalist herself, Molina had actually caught a few episodes of American Idol. She found the concept exploitive of the pathetic wannabes every art form attracts and a mockery of true talent by letting the public select winners for emotional reasons. Look who they felt most sorry for.

“More than that: talent of any kind, madeover looks and improved attitude.” Su was always eager to overexplain. “This is the triathlon of reality shows.”

Alch nodded at the unadulterated poster. “Yup. This girl here looks real athletic, all right. I bet it challenges her biceps to load on that amount of mascara and lip-liner every day.”

“‘Lip-liner?’” Molina called him on it. “Still keeping up with the girly stuff, Morrie, even with the daughter long gone?”

“You haven’t hit the bustier stage in your house, I bet. Hold on to your Kevlar vest.”

Molina chuckled, imagining some busty contestant wearing a bulletproof vest in a glamour roll call on TV. Whoa. Maybe that would have a perverse attraction.

She tapped her forefinger on the oversize plastic bag encasing the altered poster, protecting it for forensic examination.

“We’ve got … what? Dozens of teenage girl competitors from around the country pouring into a Las Vegas shopping mall in their Hello Kitty finery for auditions—and one sick puppy already announcing that he’s out there waiting?”

“That’s about it,” Alch said. “No fingerprints. No way to trace the color copier to a local Kinko’s.”

“Kinko’s are us,” Su said.

“No kidding.” Molina frowned. “You know the routine. Keep it quiet, keep an eye on the audition event. If we’re lucky, the uniforms will find him before this ridiculous show launches. When?”

“This week’s local auditions finish the selection process,” Su said. “Then they narrow the field down to twenty-eight finalists in the two age groups and seclude them all in a foreclosed mansion on the West Side. For two weeks.”

“Two weeks?” Molina didn’t like the wide window ofopportunity that much time afforded a pervert with a publicity addiction. “This could be the work of a kook as harmless as Aunt Agatha’s elderberry wine. Or not. Keep on it.”

Molina was still at her desk, with a different wallpaper of paperwork covering it, at seven thirty that evening when someone knocked on her ajar door.

No one knocked in a crimes-against-persons unit. She looked up—glared—from her paperwork. As the only woman supervisor, she never let down her guard.

A man entered as if he owned the joint.

Brown/brown. Five ten or eleven. A stranger who acted way too at home on this turf. On her turf. In her hard-won private office.

“Yes?”

“Working late?”

“Always.” She waited. His clothes were casual but hip: blue jeans, black silk-blend tee, khaki linen jacket, big diver’s watch face full of specialty minidials, and a sleek gold bracelet with a subtle air of South American drug lord. Couldn’t see his shoes. Too bad. A man’s shoes told as much about him as a woman’s.

“You don’t recognize me.” He sat in the single hard-shelled chair in front of her desk, meant to discourage loiterers.

Recognize? No. He was way too hip for what usually showed up in police facilities, except for a five o’clock shadow too faint to be anything but a trendy shaving technique.

“You’ll have to excuse me—” she began sardonically, still searching her memory banks.

“I consider that high praise.”

“That you’ll have to excuse me?”

“That you don’t recognize me in civvies.”

Okay. She ran a mental roster of uniforms, and came up blank. This was beginning to get annoying.

“I’m heading out,” she informed him, slamming her desk drawers shut, picking up the black leather hobo bag she toted to and from work and nowhere out on the job.

“How about a drink en route?”

“How about an ID? And … no.”

He laughed then. “You’re usually onto this stuff. Tough case on your desk?”

“They’re all tough. What’s your name?”

“You really don’t recognize me?”

He cocked his head, and then she had him.

“Dirty Larry?”

“All cleaned up.”

“Gone Chamber of Commerce! To what do I owe—?”

“How about a drink on the way home? Some noncop bar.”

“why?”

“Personal police business.”

She didn’t like the way he drawled that out but checked her watch. Mariah had stayed after school tonight. Sock-hop committee at another student’s house. Her baby daughter! Thinking about dancing with wolves. All harmless teenybopper stuff, hopefully. Staying at the Ruizes’ for dinner until eight or so.

Dirty Larry, the Mr. Clean edition, waited. He watched her with an amusement that hinted he knew the pushes and pulls of her private life.

Bastard! Her vehemence, unjust, pulled her back from the brink. This was a colleague, after all. An undercover narc. Maybe he had something for her. He’d be used to private rendezvous in public places.

“Okay. Five minutes?”

He nodded, got up, and ebbed into the hall. She speed-dialed the Ruizes and got a commitment that they’d keep Mariah until ten, just in case.

Chapter 2

Spooks

In a city built on urban fantasy hotels with sprawls that rivaled the King Ranch, the Palms bucked the hotel-casino trend and lived up to its name. It was an off-Strip cylinder of gilded construction, like a tower of giant golden coins.

“I am not dressed for this,” Molina said, meeting Dirty Larry at the Palms’s side entrance, as agreed, their separate vehicles parked in whatever spot could be found.

“What are you dressed for?” He had an annoying knack for taking her simplest remark as a springboard for some deeper meaning. Dirty Larry the Existentialist?

“A crime scene,” she said. “You going to deliver?”

“Not here. Not now. I’m off undercover.” He looked around. “It’s kinda nice to be escorted by an obvious cop. Like having a bodyguard.”

“I’m that obvious?”

“Like you say, you’re not dressed for the Palms.”

“A psychologist could speculate that you want to get me off my own turf, at a disadvantage.”

“Off your turf, right. Is that really a disadvantage?”

She shrugged and turned for the door, moving into a stream of tourists in tropical print shorts and shirts.

She knew what she was and she knew what she wore: low-heeled oxfords. Espresso-brown pantsuit. Oxfordshirt, faintest baby blue, open at the collar. Semiautomatic in a paddle holster at the small of her back, steel blue. Talk about fashion coordination. Supermodels had nothing on a modern female cop.

They entered the usual jam-packed, ultra-airconditioned smokehouse of a Vegas casino, an atmosphere lit by blinking slot machines that broadcast bling-bling bluster and the clatter of coins spilling into metal troughs.

In the craps area, Larry stopped to schmooze a pit boss who passed him some VIP comps. Comps papered the town, if you knew who to ask. The passes sent them to the head of a line that had formed even though the Ghost Bar had just opened, then onto an express elevator. Eerily, once aboard, all sound suddenly stopped, the casino’s endless clatter replaced by the customary silence of half-pickled strangers packed together like kippered herrings in a tin.

The Ghost Bar perched fifty-five stories above all the hustle, a tourist attraction of the first water. Three of the four walls were glass and the view was jaw-dropping. Inside, the place was a 2001: A Space Odyssey sixties wet dream of blue neon, streamlined silver seating pieces, and lime green accents. Icy in color and exclusive in attitude.

Molina took it all in with the same cool distance she used at crime scenes. She checked out the VIP clientele already seated as well as the ambiance and spotted several vaguely familiar faces. It took a moment to realize that they were stars, actors and singers, not escapees from Most Wanted lists. Odd, the jolt of false familiarity you could get from a household face.

“What do you think of the place?” he asked.

“Playboy, Penthouse, circa nineteen sixty-five.”

“You talking the magazines or improper pronouns?”

“Both.”

Posh or Mosh the Spice Girl wannabe did the waitress dip to lay two cocktail napkins on their sleek tabletop. Bowing to the power of the chichi, Molina surprised Dirty Larry, and herself, by ordering a pepper vodka martini. Larry ordered something called a Burning Bush.

Molina let her lifted eyebrows do the talking.

“Black Bush whiskey with peach, lime, creme de cassis, and a dash of cranberry juice for health.”

“Gack,” she said.

“It lives up to its name on the tastebuds. You can try a sip.”

He nodded at the twelve-foot-high glass walls.

“On the balcony, you can stand on a Plexiglas rectangle and look down fifty-five stories, if heights don’t make you nervous.”

Molina stood, uncoiling her own impressive height, almost six feet. “Shall we dance?”

Seconds later they balanced on the ghostly plastic platform over nothing. A rectangle of aquamarine sparkled four thousand feet below, almost a mile, overrun by what looked like small brown bugs.

“The Skin Pool Lounge,” he said.

“Not a glamorous name but a literal one?”

“Skinny dipping is only on Tuesday nights.”

Tuesday was the weakest night for customers, hence flashing the flesh. “Only in Las Vegas.”

They savored the glittering swath of the Strip’s massive hotels, laid out like jewels on black velvet or, more apropos to their profession, a glitter-dusted body on an autopsy table.

Take that, T S. Eliot, Molina thought. You and your “night anaesthetized like a patient on a table.”

“Shamelessly hokey but a must-see,” Larry said.

“Hokey should be shameless. I like it. That surprise you?”

“Yes and no. I’ve been to the Blue Dahlia. That’s shamelessly hokey too.”

She drew a breath, ready to retort, defend, deny. Instead she shrugged. “So?”

“So let’s sit down and talk shop.”

“Strange place for that.”

Their cocktails were waiting in glassware as kooky as the retro-modern furniture. The classic triangular bowl of Molina’s martini glass was supported by an off-center curve of crystal. His drink was served in a rectilinear tower of modernist glass.

He lifted it, not for a toast, but to offer a taste.

This was a way-too-early intimacy but Molina took him up on it. Dirty Larry had a challenging edge but she could match it. The bizarre ingredients produced a sizzling effect that explained the cheeky name that referenced both the religious and the obscene.

“So what was the Blue Dahlia crack for?” Molina asked after rinsing her palette with a swallow of clean, sharp vodka martini.

“Odd you should use that expression. Dirty Larry did a cocaine deal there once.”

Molina frowned. He tended to refer to his undercover persona in the third person. Weird.

“A one-off,” he went on. “Nothing habitual. The client had a thing for you.”

“Oh, great.”

“People get their kicks where they can.”

“And here I think I’m singing for dedicated vintage music lovers. Listen—”

“It’s okay. My lips are sealed. Your pseudonymous singing habit is safe. Everything I do undercover is off the record unless it involves criminal charges.”

“You’re not undercover now.”

“I take … vacations. R and R. It messes your mind to play an undercover role too long. I’m doing accident investigations for a while.”

“From drug traffic to traffic? Isn’t that a bit tame?”

He nodded. “That’s the idea. Nice quiet beat. After the fact. Fascinating, really. The evidence of a crash and burn but nobody there to threaten you or haunt you. Only evidence. Nice inert, cool evidence.”

“People die on the streets from vehicular accidents too.”

“But I’m not down in that pit with them. Biggest risk to undercover agents? Not gettin’ fingered or found out. Not getting killed. Getting hooked.”

“So why am I the receptacle of all this useful information from the opium den?”

“Just explaining where I’m coming from and going to.”

“Going to. Which is?”

“One more big score. There’s a funny ring operating. Dirty Larry can’t get near it. I’m going to have to come back as someone else and try again. Meanwhile, I detox on Traffic Accident detail. But the instincts don’t turn off.”

“And … ?”

“And I never bought your act the other night with the report on that Nadir guy. I can read upside down and backward in my game too, Lieutenant. That address pan out?”

“Yeah. Thanks.”

“Why would you think you could con an undercover guy?”

“Because I had to.”

He nodded. “Good reason. Why did you ever think you could keep Carmen a secret?”

“Because I want to.”

“Better reason.”

They each sipped from their drinks, gazing at the spectacular 180-degree view, then back at each other.

“If you don’t want something,” she said finally, “and everybody does, why did you get me away from the office?”

“What’s the worst I could do with what I know?”

“Blackmail? But I don’t think so.”

“No. Just exposure.”

“I deny. I stop. Carmen gets paid in cash. She has no Social Security number. You could mess up my friends at the Blue Dahlia a little, but I could mess you up a whole lot more. And Carmen could fall off the planet. Officialdom would never notice.”

“I would. Notice. I’d never do that, burn Carmen. She’s a class act. I oughta know. Acts, that is.”

“Then … what do you want?”

“Nothing. Everything. Just to get the cards on the table.”

Molina stared at the tiny circle of plastic cocktail table holding their Art Moderne drink glasses. “What cards? What table?”

“This one. Here. Now. Call it a social occasion with overtones of business.”

She finally got it. “You think this is a date?”

“Yeah. I thought you knew.”

Her jaw would have dropped for the second time that night, figuratively anyway, if she’d allowed it to. She looked away and found an irritatingly famous face in every direction. Holographic portraits imbued the place’s few interior walls, both hung on and burned into the wall. The Ghost Bar was a highly desirable destination in Las Vegas, and Dirty Larry had gotten them first-row seats.

A frivolous woman would have been impressed.

“You’ve got a lot of nerve,” she told him, not happy.

“Oh, yeah.”

He grinned and knocked back a big swallow of Burning Bush. Maybe the name was also a political statement.

The line for the elevator when they left a few minutes later was even longer, snaking through the casino. Lustful eyes followed them, envying their leaving a place most of them would never get into this night or even by four A.M. the next morning when the Ghost Bar closed.

Dirty Larry had just shrugged when she beat him to the credit card draw and slapped her Visa down on the tiny table. Thirty bucks plus a high-rise tip for a view through Go Ask Alice’s rabbit hole and a little atmosphere. That was the New Vegas, converted from cheap everything to entice gamblers to overpriced everything to entice tourists.

The parking lot was jammed but well lit.

“So you have pull with the pit bosses,” Molina noted. “In which persona?”

“Just as me.”

“Who is?”

“Just plain Larry Paddock.”

“I like Dirty Larry better.”

“Figured you might.”

He followed her to her car. “Where are you parked?” she asked finally.

He waved in a vaguely distant direction.

“I’ll drop you at your car,” she offered. Insisted. “You don’t have to.”

“You’re sure it’s safe out here with you bare-faced?”

“Should be. People look but they don’t really see. That’s always been my edge.”

“You sound like a magician.”

“Not a bad comparison, but you sound like you don’t much care for magicians.”

She leaned against the still tepid side of her Toyota. It took a load off her feet but also made their heights equal for a moment. She topped him by an inch or more.

“So what do we have here—?”

“Sergeant Paddock.”

“Sergeant Paddock.”

“We have a homicide lieutenant with a secret undercover role and a not very healthy interest in a drug-bust suspect, and we have a narc with a yen to play Joe Citizen for a while.”

“Why play that role with me?”

“Because I like your style.”

“I don’t have one. Just a job.”

“Right. That’s the style I like.”

“And you want?”

“Maybe I can help you with that Nadir guy. He was clean on this Maylords bust but something’s wrong with him.”

“I don’t need help.”

He grinned again. “That’s my girl.”

“Do you know how long it’s been since anybody’s had the nerve to call me that?”

“Too long?”

She jingled her key ring and let out a disgusted sigh. “I don’t ‘date’ inside the department.”

“No. You don’t date, period.”

“It’s mandatory?”

“No, but it might be fun.”

“I outrank you.”

“I’m a free agent. I make daily life and death decisions commanders don’t face. Rank doesn’t intimidate me.” She straightened. “I’m taller than you are.”

“Rock climbing’s my hobby when I want to relax.”

“I’m older than you are.”

“Now how did you know that, Lieutenant?”

“I checked your record. I routinely do that on anymembers of the force I have dealings with for the first time.”

“Ditto. Except I checked you out after that deal went down at the Dahlia. You shouldn’t have tried to rip off my file on Nadir. It got me interested again.”

“Why?”

“I think you’ve got more secrets than going Blue Velvet every now and again at a local club. I find homicide lieutenants with secrets irresistible.”

“Dangerous too, I bet.”

“Hope so.”

“And this is how you ask for a date?”

“Hope so.”

Molina eyed the PG-model of Dirty Larry. He still had the sloppy posture of a guy guy, but his hair was almost buzz cut and his angular, currently genial features went down smooth with a cocky charm that probably stood him well in undercover work. He looked like an ex-pilot, civilized but a little bit warped in some wild-blue-yonder way. Not her type at all. But then it’d been so long, she didn’t know what her type was anymore.

“You want to drag me out to some trendy hot spot again?” she asked.

“You’re a dynamite singer but you’re an even tougher audience. Not drag. Accompany. And not so trendy. Dinner.”

She opened the unlocked driver’s door and nodded for him to go around to the passenger side. A concession, but a small one.

“We don’t have a thing in common,” she warned him as he got in the aging car over the grumble of its engine. “Except police work.”

“A negative.”

“We both have to play roles every day to survive.”

She didn’t comment on that because she was too busy backing out without being crushed by one of the many Hummers scattered through the lot. Or because she was too uneasy about answering that assumption.

“West side of the lot. Black Wrangler.” He push-buttoned down the window and braced an elbow on it, showing none of the unease most men did when they weren’t driving, and a woman was.

One positive point to Dirty Larry.

“I’ve got two kids,” he told the open air. “Shared custody with the ex-wife in—of all places, divorce central—Reno.”

“Divorced ex-cop. Just the worst.”

“You are too.”

“I never married, but you know that.”

He didn’t deny it. “Smart.” Nodding, looking out the window. “Saved yourself a lot of grief. Was it a cop?”

She declined to comment, instead slowing the car. “Here we are.”

“All right.” He got out, then leaned his angular yet boyish face through the window. “Thursday night dinner, say seven. Civvies. My treat. No ghosts. I’ll pick you up at home.”

“You’re nosy as well as nervy, you know that?”

“Yeah. My best qualities. What can you lose?”

She didn’t answer that but pulled away as he hit the re-mote open for his car.

Molina did a quick postmortem. Nancy Reagan had been right. She should have just said no.

Why hadn’t she? Because she needed to figure his angle, and because he did indeed know too much about her. And because some of damned Max Kinsella’s taunts when they were tussling in the strip club parking lot had gotten under her skin and were still festering there, like a splinter you can only get out through some deep digging with a sharp needle.

Finding out Dirty Larry’s game might refute the magician’s nasty insinuations that night. Like how she was toouptight for a real life, for a real man. A sense of shame still lingered from that flat-out physical encounter, a confrontation she’d lost for winning. Even though she’d finally won, had him down and cuffed, she had to wonder if he’d let her. Never arm wrestle a snake.

And he’d escaped the cuffs later in her car, anyway, when events announced over the police radio made his arrest clearly unnecessary. Thanks to his slippery magician tricks, he’d left her cuffed to her own steering wheel. Molina’s mind winced away from recalling her struggle to reach the handcuff key he had left by the passenger door. Good thing she had long arms. She was still hoping the long arm of the law would reel in Kinsella one day. Hers, God willing.

But she enjoyed impudence if it was genial, like Larry’s. He was refreshingly upfront, unlike most of the people—men—she’d dealt with lately. So far.

Chapter 3

Swinging for It

Max stared down through the glass window into the lightning lit pit eighty feet below. It resembled a medieval vision of hell but it was just the mosh-pit madness at the nightclub.

In the name of a good night’s work, Max leaped down into that mélange of writhing bodies and flashing lights and pounding music almost every day now.

When you’re a double agent with two physical personas, you’re in constant danger of meeting yourself coming and going. Rather like having two portrayers of James Bond in the same movie.

As the cloaked and masked Phantom Mage, Max walked on air and juggled fireworks at the dark apex of the nightclub called Neon Nightmare.

As himself—the Mystifying Max, stage magician on hiatus—he’d crashed the hidden offices, spy galleries, and rooms beyond the noise and the neon of the club’s public spaces. Private rooms were strung along hidden tunnels through the pyramid-shaped building for the use of Neon Nightmare’s secret owners, a consortium of magicians.

Max as himself—bare-faced, clad in matte black civvies—was due to make another in-person appearance before the claque, the cabal, the clique of disgruntled old-school magicians called the Synth.

From the outside, Neon Nightmare was a dark mountain of architectural pyramid topped by the pyrotechnical display of a neon horse at the apex. Inside, it was designed like its ancient Egyptian role models. Once you were past the central open core where the bar and dance floor dominated, hidden paths led to unexpected chambers. If dead pharaohs didn’t await, career-dead magicians did, brooding over the wrongs of a world that now favored the naked revelation of magical illusions over the ancient tradition that cloaked stage magic in the mystic.

Max found his way to the center of the Synth’s secret world, an eternally stuffy Colonial club room, where the stout and storied sat and smoked and sipped and relived old triumphs.

He pushed the pressure point that turned black, unrelieved wall into a featureless door, then moved into a room that glowed the deep claret of a full wineglass. Crimson carpet, black leather, and ruby-stemmed glassware … it was like an Edward Gorey illustration, elegantly Edwardian and etched in black, white, and gray, except for the telling blood-red accents.

“Max! We were just talking about you.”

That would do for the opening salvo in a war of words. Having been “just talked about” made one the outsider in an instant. The inconstant lover. The philandering husband. The betrayer.

“Where have you been?” the dramatic-looking woman he had nicknamed Carmen demanded before he could answer.

“Certainly not onstage,” said the mentalist named Czarina Catharina. She wore the caftan and turban that hid an aging woman’s thinning hair and thickening waist. “No professional demands keeping you away. No excuses,” she added coyly.

He shrugged and slipped into an oxblood-red leather chair, happy to fold his telltale six-foot-four height into lounging level. “I have matters to attend to anyway,” he said.

“Matters?” Carmen’s question was sharp.

“Financial.”

“Ah.” The portly old gentleman by the bar cart who’d performed as Cosimo Sparks smiled tightly. “He now performs illusions with numbers, in private.”

“You must have made an obscene amount of money,” Carmen speculated, her husky voice softening with lust, whether for love or money it was hard to tell, but Max’s dough would be on the filthy lucre.

“Money isn’t everything. And the stock market.” Max sighed, spreading his fingers so eloquently that the assembled magicians stared at them as if seeing money melting away.

It had melted away too when he’d poured it into global counterterrorism actions after 9/11. Not into any specific government’s efforts, but into the same shadowy, idealistic nonpartisan group that he and his mentor Gandolph had supported for years.

“You know what we are,” Sparks said.

“I think I do. Does anyone ever fully know another?”

“Exactly. But we need to really know you.”

“Aren’t I enough of an open book for my fellow, and sister, magicians? You all know that I got caught in ‘a situation’ the night my performing contract closed at the Goliath. I was unfortunately seen too close to a couple of thugs attempting to rob the casino, who inexplicably shot each other. It was flee or face charges. And so my career came to a dramatic end.”

The bitter twist to his mouth on the last sentence was particularly effective, and truly felt. Honesty was always the best disguise among enemies.

“Your career was ruined,” Czarina agreed. “But new ones beckon.”

“Oh?”

“Join us.”

“I thought I had.”

Sparks answered for Czarina this time. “You’ve been tolerated, man, but remain unproven.”

“We require a trifling … initiation ritual,” the older woman put in.

“I found you in this rats’ maze, didn’t I?”

Sparks shook his head. Not enough. “We require more than fine discernment. We require risk.”

“You’re talking to me about risk?”

“Granted. But perhaps you’ve grown complacent behind your anonymity.”

“Perhaps. I wouldn’t bet on it.”

“We’re not. We’re betting on you living up to, and surpassing, our highest expectations. Once you complete your assignment.”

Max chuckled. It wasn’t a reassuring sound. “I haven’t had an ‘assignment’ since high school.”

“We are Ph.D. level,” Carmen noted languidly from her corner. Her working name was Serendipity and he supposed he’d better get used to it. She went by Serena among friends. “We require absolute loyalty, dazzling ability, and, oddly enough for magicians, transcendent honesty. To the Synth, anyway.”

“What do you want?”

“The Czar Alexander Scepter.” The slightly British accent of Cosimo Sparks slapped the words onto the table like a gauntlet.

Max snorted, delicately. “The centerpiece of the forthcoming White Russian exhibit at the New Millennium? You’re joking.”

“No,” Czarina said. “We want you to get it for us.”

“I’m not a thief.”

“But you could be, an exquisite one,” she coaxed him. “We don’t care about the value of the piece. We care about the value of the act of taking it. You can return it, if you like.”

“Or keep it.”

“Or sell it and share the wealth with us, which would be a nice gesture.”

Max fanned his fingers to produce a feathered bird of paradise, a faux one. No awkward droppings. “Magicians appreciate the nice gesture.” He presented the bird to the Czarina.

“Then you’ll do it?” she asked.

“I’ll do it if I study the situation and decide it’s doable.”

“We should warn you:’ Sparks said in his fuddy-duddy way. “None of us has come up with a foolproof method.”

“I’m your court of last resort?”

“You’re our pledge, Mr. Kinsella. If you can’t cut our initiation rite, you’ll have to take our hazing.”

The threat was unmistakable.

“I don’t take anything,” he warned back, “except what I want to. So I’ll leave now and examine the situation at the New Millennium that has stymied you all.” He stood to go.

“Just a minute.”

He paused, looking impatient. “Do you want this trinket, or not?”

“We want your undivided attention.”

“Have you seen the new act here at Neon Nightmare?” Serena, lying back on the room’s sole sofa in a gown out of a Sarah Bernhardt portrait, practically purred the question.

“Besides yours?” Max asked back, sardonically.

“Tut-tut.” Czarina intervened. “No need to get testy. You’re an untried factor. We must be sure you’re reliable.”

“So.” Sparks was looking excited and a bit nasty. “Have you seen the Phantom Mage perform here?”

“No, and with that impossibly hokey name, I don’t want to. I’ll be going.”

“I hope not.” Serena uncoiled herself to rise and take his arm, a seductive gesture that was also custodial. “Why in such a rush to leave us?” she purred. And her voice did indeed rumble deep in her … ah, chest.

“You want me to steal the most prized object in Las Vegas or not?”

“Stay just a while,” she coaxed. “You might find this new fellow interesting.”

“I find little that is common interesting. I must be off.”

“No.” The tone and the glance was commanding.

Max removed Serena’s arm from its entwined position on his.

“Yes.”

“It’s imperative you stay.” Sparks stood as well.

“Come to the window,” Serena cajoled, entwining him again, like a velvet boa constrictor. Max was very glad he’d decided to drop the nickname Carmen for her. She was acting completely out of character for the Carmen he knew.

He made her work to draw him toward the tinted rectangle on one-way glass that framed the dark upper pyramid of Neon Nightmare.

“I really have better things to do…” But he let the sentence trail off.

Everyone was watching him, like rats at a cheese tray.

He stared out over the empty darkness, glancing at his watch without seeming to. The Phantom Mage was scheduled to start a set just about now… .

Everyone behind him had tensed, as had Serena, so close and yet so far.

Max kept his own tension bottled, his limbs as loose as linguini. He could see Serena frown as she detected this.

Don’t worry, lady, he thought, I can produce the requisite tension when needed… . Which was not now, when everyone expected one and only one outcome for this charade: Max would fail because the Phantom Mage would fail to appear.

He knew they suspected that Max and the Phantom might be one and the same person. The Phantom’s performing gear, mask, and cloak certainly made his identity doubtful.

Beyond the glass, music was ratcheting up to introduce the night’s featured act: the Phantom Mage, aka Max.

Inside the glass, someone smiled pleasantly at the Czarina.

Max.

Breaths were held. Not his.

The space beyond the window remained mere space.

Then! A caped form swooped past the window, caroming off the dark sides of the narrowing apex of the pyramid-shaped building, strewing light wands and iridescent glitter.

He came plunging directly toward the one-way glass window. He saw it as only another of the Lucite mirrors positioned to reflect the neon fireworks. He touched toe to the surface and rappelled off like a mountaineer in Batman guise.

For a moment, the vision was face-to-face with Max. Or mask-to-face, rather.

Breaths released audibly behind him.

“The bastard!” Max exploded, tense now, so tense that Serena released him and reflexively jumped back. His muscles were knots of indignation. “He’s ripped off my old act’s finale. No wonder you wanted me to see this so-called act. The bloody bastard. Punchinello on a stick! This is a travesty.”

“Exactly so, lad,” Sparks said. “This is why the Synth exists. The true artists remain, uncorrupted. This is why we have to make a statement.”

“Damn right.” He turned to regard them with burning eyes. “Consider the Czar’s scepter your joystick.” They stood as one, and applauded.

“But I expect fifty percent of the proceeds for setting up my comeback act.”

The applause never died.

Max bowed and melted into the black and featureless passage.

He wiped the infinitesimal mustache of sweat from his upper lip and headed up into the pyramid’s apex, by ways even the Synth hadn’t found yet.

Gandolph awaited him up top, sweating as he retracted the flexible dummy in Phantom Mage guise.

“Did we reel in our fish?” he asked.

“The entire school.”

Gandolph collapsed against the wall, so close in these close quarters. “I’m too old for such shenanigans. This thing weighs a ton.”

Max pulled the dummy onto the narrow catwalk and peeled off the costume.

“They were suspicious. It was crucial to give this fellow a chance to swing.”

“I’ve been called a ‘puppet master’ in my counterterrorism years, but never so literally, my boy. So you’re in like Flynn.”

“No, I’m in like Max Kinsella, cat burglar.”

“Cat burglary is always an elegant sideline for a magician. I’m pleased to see you expanding your repertoire.”

Max quickly donned the dummy’s costume: the half-mask, the tool belt, the swirling cape.

“Can you do what they want?” Gandolph asked, stuffing the dummy into a large dark garbage bag like a dead body.

“Without getting caught?” Max, accoutered as the Phantom Mage, poised on the brink of plunging into the darkness below on a bungee cord. “Not easily. Why else set up the challenge? I’ll have to do it, though, if we want to embed me deeper in the real heart of the Synth.”

He swung out over the abyss, half Batman, half Spider-Man, all magician.

Gandolph would leave by the secret tunnels honeycombing the building, which he’d found even before Max had first come here, sniffing around.

For Max, there was no way out of the Synth’s challenge but to mount a one-man raid on a major casino museum. Get caught and he’d satisfy Molina’s deepest wet dreams, for sure.

Get caught and he’d betray and wound Temple past any patience and passion she still held for him. No matter what he did to lay his undercover past to rest for good, he only augered in deeper. And Temple paid as much in the present as he had. He was neglecting her, dangerously, risking their relationship in the hope of breaking free to enjoy it forever. Again.

If he didn’t get caught he’d be an actual thief on a global scale, but he’d have won the trust of the darkest levels of the Synth. He’d be well on the way to finding out who really backed this cadre of disgruntled magicians, and what they hoped to achieve.

He’d worry about the difficulties of the museum job later. Right now he had more important worries: how to”disappear” for the time required to set up the job without seeming to abandon Temple. Playing relationship Russian roulette with the woman he loved. Again. How many times could he risk that, and not lose?

His booted feet hit the opposite wall and he caromed off it like a cue ball cleaning up the table. He was flying, like Peter Pan, and it was fun. Thrilling actually. A Never-NeverLand of adrenaline and adventure.

But he sure didn’t want to leave Wendy behind, alone in the family bedroom.

Chapter 4

Male Call

Temple stood on her tiny triangular balcony, one of the perks of living in a round building and having what passed for a “corner” unit.

She was marking a sure sign of spring: her upstairs neighbor, Matt Devine, doing laps in the pool.

She watched him cut a swath through the becalmed aquamarine water. She was also regarding a crime scene through the foggy lenses of time. Electra, their landlady, had only recently told Temple of witnessing Matt’s first encounter with their joint Me-noir-to-be, Kathleen O’Connor, at that very poolside months ago.

Temple could picture that scene right now. Kathleen O’Connor made a very vivid, deceptively attractive ghost: maybe five-foot-five, in pumps, wearing an Irish-green silk pantsuit, and looking like a girl from a ballad. The fall sunlight would have glistened off her black, black hair, her ruby lips, her skin as white as snow. Snow Black.

As Temple retro-daydreamed, Matt finished whatever number of laps he’d set himself, and pulled himself onto the wooden decking that surrounded the pool.

Now only Matt remained of the word picture Electra had recently painted, and he was the same: lightly tanned, muscled enough to be fit without making a fetish of it, white swim trunks and teeth, blond hair glinting pure platinum in the sunlight.

Okay … yum. Good enough to eat alive. Kitty O’Connor had thought so too. Only literally. Luckily, she’d left. Permanently.

Temple watched him snatch a towel from a lounge chair. White. Both the towel and the vinyl straps of the lounge chair. Temple, single, female, and thirty, ducked out of sight.

This lurking was pathetic! You’d think she didn’t have a perfectly good beau of her own, also out of sight, unfortunately.

A long merow drew her back to the living room sofa and was interrupted by an even longer yawn. Midnight Louie was stretching until his toes reached the armrest, where he riffed off a few earnest rips with his front claws.

“Louie, no!”

He looked up with a lazy blink of green eyes but his toes stopped doing the Watusi across her upholstery, which was tough but not impervious. That might describe Louie himself, or even Temple as she liked to think of herself. Small but sturdy. Petite but persistent. Spoken for but not blind.

Meanwhile, Louie was yowling from the couch for more personal attention. She went over and attended to him, rewarded by a hoarse meow of contentment and a purr loud enough to mimic a light plane engine passing overhead.

“That’s a good boy,” she told him, scratching his tummy while he twisted and flipped from side to contented side. “You should stay at home for a while and get some first-class petting instead of roaming all over the city and getting into trouble.”

Only belatedly did Temple realize she could have been advising her often-AWOL significant other, the Mystifying Max Kinsella.

Like Louie, Max always managed to be there when she really needed him, but the times in between were stretching longer and longer … like Louie on the sofa right now.

Her doorbell rang. Actually, being a fifties’ vintage doorbell, it didn’t just ring. It chimed. It yodeled. It caroled a multinote phrase.

She opened the door before it had rung through its sonorous sequence.

“Oh. Hi.”

Matt was on her doorstep, towel like a flyboy’s white scarf hung around his neck, no longer dripping as far as she was able to discreetly see, but still all tan and bare. Bare. Oh, my.

“Electra corralled me for errand duty in the lobby. Seems you forgot to get your mail yesterday.”

“Wonder why?” Temple murmured, taking the four or five envelopes he held out. “Something bad in the neighborhood? Like a meltdown at Maylords Fine Furniture? Glad that’s a done deal. Come in.”

“I might drip.”

“It’s okay. Area rug. Right by the door. See?”

“I never noticed that before.” He was smiling at her, the implication being why would he look down any farther than her face.

Well …

Temple decided to flip casually through her mail, such as it was. “Speak of the devil. Oriental rug cleaning service advertiser. Political flyer. The usual suspects for shredding to keep my address safe and secret.”

He quirked a smile at her tepid witticisms. “I have to go out of town next week.”

“Speaking engagement?”

“Amanda Show, in Chicago.”

“What day? I can record it for you.”

He shook his head. “Not necessary. I long ago overdosed on my own image on TV. Just wanted you to know I’d be away. And—”

“Yes?”

“I’d like for us to have dinner when I get back.”

“Dinner?”

“Someplace nice. Maybe the Bellagio.”

“Someplace expensive! Every restaurant at the Bellagio is.”

“Money’s no object.” He was smiling now. “The company is.”

“Oh. Any special … reason?”

“Only that we don’t get a chance to just sit down and talk.”

“About what?”

“Just … anything.”

“Un-huh. Well, sounds fine. Just let me know when.”

“I’ll be back in several days. Any special time you’re free?”

“Pretty much all the time now,” she heard herself saying, wanting to retract the brittle tone as soon as it passed her lips.

“Fine,” he said after a pause. “I’ll let you know as soon as I get back. I might even stay over a few days more.”

“This trip is more than a quick TV gig, isn’t it?”

“Yeah. I’m finally doing what my mother wanted. I don’t know if unlocking the past is a good idea, but I’ve got an appointment in Chicago that might lead to my father. My real father.”

“So you could have news when you get back?”

“Maybe. But that’s not why I want to have dinner.” She was not going to ask the obvious question. “So, good luck.”

“I’m hoping for that.” His unexpectedly brown eyes, unusual in a natural blond, crinkled a bit. At her. “Thanks.”

She was swinging the door shut even while wishing it was going the other way. From the living room, Louie let loose a long, abandoned howl.

She started toward him, still flipping through envelopes over and over. Dinner? Bellagio? Just to “talk”? Were they talking “date”? Oh, my.

Temple stopped dead, between her entry hall and living room. Louie yowled unanswered. A bold return address had caught her attention completely.

This was it. A response on the “LV PR Job of the Year.” She ripped open the envelope to scan its contents. And rescan them. Again. Stamped her size five feet in their Via Spiga slides to wake the dead, i.e., the unfortunate tenants in the room below her, who were probably off at work anyway.

Temple stared at the form letter in her hand.

She couldn’t believe it.

“We thank you for your interest but—”

She’d lost the hottest PR account in town to … Crawford Buchanan, fellow freelance flack and part-time gossip guru for KREP-AM radio! Pronounced KREEP in her book, as anything relating to Buchanan was.

Nattering Nabobs of Negativity! This was so unfair. She had the background—former TV news reporter, former PR director for the prestigious Guthrie Repertory Theater in Minneapolis, current PR rep for the classiest hotel in Vegas, the Crystal Phoenix. What was there not to prefer over Awful Crawford? Plus she was a girl, andyou’d think that would be an advantage on an account like this for once!

Temple stared at the hot pink headline over the bad black-and-white news.

CALLING ALL TEEN QUEENS! The letters were an inch high and as curly as her natural red hair. TV’S HOTTEST NEW REALITY SHOW HITS VEGAS! FROM ‘TWEEN IDOL TO LEGALLY LIVE BAIT! THEY COMPETE FOR THE GUY, THE GOLD, AND THE GOOD LOOKS!

And the sleaziest PR hack in Vegas, not to mention the biggest lecher on Las Vegas Boulevard, would be handling all the publicity, not to mention the contestants if he could.

Temple shook her head. She hadn’t been entirely at ease with being head flack for a reality TV show anyway. Especially one that would turn the twenty-four-hour spy cameras on vulnerable young women of tender years. If you could find any of that breed around these days.

She deposited the letter in the wicker wastebasket near her living room sofa.

The position paid spectacularly well, and she certainly could have done a better job with it than Crawford, even with one manicured hand tied behind her back, but que sera, sera. She was probably better off out of it. The potential PR headaches were as big as the payoff.

The possibilities unscrolled in her mind.

Number one, permissions. You don’t put underage kids on TV without parental permissions up the wazoo. Then, too, how do you run a peep show involving minors without getting hit with child endangerment or abuse charges? More parental permissions.

Then there was the financial tangle of who would benefit from any resulting prizes or payments. Kids, or parents? Not to mention the ugly matter of stage parents who push their kids into this kind of media exposure for their own needs, otherwise known as JonBenet syndrome. One thing that ugly unresolved investigation had never made clear was where that offbeat name came from. That answer might explain a lot.

Kids tote a heavy load of parental expectations, Temple mused. Cats too. Maybe Louie hadn’t really wanted to be a TV commercial spokescat.

Nah. Louie had been born to attract attention, unless he was sneaking around, up to feline mischief, and then he was Mr. Invisible.

Chapter 5

Mail Call

Lieutenant C. R. Molina was doing a surprise inspection of her clothes closet and not liking what she saw. Not that any of her wearable troops were out of uniform and disorderly. Quite the contrary.

A row of black, navy, and brown pantsuits in serviceable twill for winter alternated with a row of taupe, navy, and charcoal gray pantsuits in sturdy cotton for summer.

They weren’t cheap, but they all came from conservative career clothing for women catalogs, where she could find styles long enough for her five-foot-eleven-inch frame.

At the other end of the closet hung the limp folds of a few choice silk-velvet evening gowns culled from vintage stores in Los Angeles and Las Vegas over the past fifteen years.

She looked from one end of the closet to the other.

“Lieutenant Jekyll and Ms. Hyde,” she muttered. She moved down to flip through the vintage gowns representing her years as Carmen the chanteuse. The rich velvets seemed to echo the tones of her bluesy contralto voice: dark mossy forest green; shimmering black, ruby-burgundy, deep magenta, blue velvet.

Her hand paused in pulling out that last gown. Couldn’t even remember buying it. Usually she knew the where and when of every costume … even, or especially, those found during her L.A./Rafi Nadir period. Her mind danced away from summoning those dread days beyond recall but her hand clung to the blue velvet. Was she losing it? She let the fabric fall away. No, just too much on her mind that was much more important nowadays, including Her Hormonal Highness, the periadolescent Mariah. Oh, for the pigtails and skinned knees and kiddish enthusiasms of yesterday!

But this inventory of her closet had nothing to do with Mariah. It had to do with one uppity narc. A date! Was he nuts? Was she nuts? Because here she was: single mother cop with teenage child, looking down the barrel of forty thinking she could go on a date. Just like that. When she didn’t have a thing to wear. Neither Jekyll nor Hyde was cut out for a dinner date. What the heck had she been thinking?

For some reason the image of Matt’s friend, Janice Flanders, popped into her mind’s eye. Okay. Also a single mother and no kid herself. Tallish. One dignified lady. A wardrobe role model? No … those New Ageish artsydrapey clothes with cryptic images weren’t her, whoever “her” was.

She slid the closet doors shut and went to the living room. Caterina and Tabitha, the tiger-striped cats, were curled into yin-yang formation on the sofa, dreaming of electric mice. Mariah was off at another one of her extracurricular activities … band or chorus or just something way too girly for her tender thirteen years … at her new friend Melody’s house.

Carmen heard the grinding gears of the mailman’s mini-Jeep outside and moved into the hot morning sunshine, hoping for a catalog with some outfit labeled “middle-aged single mother dating ensemble.”

She got three catalogs, with cover images that made some hitherto untapped fashionista in her soul go “yuck.” And a letter. Addressed to Mariah.

Carmen frowned, staring at the unthinkable type in the sunlight. What? Now they were trying to push credit cards on middle-schoolers? Were there no limits? No. It must be a magazine solicitation, going by the fancy type in the return address, which looked vaguely familiar. Mariah had suddenly become a huge consumer of Seventeen magazine and a whole new slew of its ilk.

Shaking her head, Carmen went in, blinking in the dimness of her living room, automatically snatching the letter opener and slitting through the taped flyers for new air conditioning units et cetera, even through the flap on the envelope addressed to Mariah.

The pitch letter was two-color: pink and black. Carmen shook her head. What would her so very “now” daughter think if she knew that color combo was even older than her mother. “It Came From the Fifties” … Carmen chuckled.

And then she read the letter. And sat down. And read the letter again. She looked at the return address. The headlining “sell” graphics.

She took a very deep breath. She wondered who she could call.

No one.

She wondered what she would do.

Whatever it was, it would be disastrous.

Lose-lose.

Oh, hell.

Chapter 6

Undercover Chick

Temple was hammering out a new proposal on her computer, trying to forget about Awful Crawford and reality TV shows and all their satanic ilk, when her doorbell did its vintage doo-wap on her ears.

Matt? Something more to say before he left? Hmmm. Max wouldn’t ring, and Matt usually knocked, so maybe Electra, the landlady… .

Optimistic, as usual, she swung the door wide open, and found a figure as high, wide, and unwelcome as she could remember filling the doorway.

“Lieutenant.”

“Miss Barr. May I come in?”

“You have a warrant?”

“You have nothing to fear. This is a personal consultation.”

Temple stepped aside to admit a woman who was almost a foot taller than she into her humble domain.

Thank goodness Temple had resident “muscle” on the premises.

Molina stopped cold in the archway to the living room. “Him.”

“Louie lives here,” Temple said. “No doubt he’s thinking ‘her’ at this very moment.”

“Actually, I like cats.” Molina crossed the invisible barrier between entry and living area to loom over Louie. “What a handsome fellow.”

Louie was buying none of it. He fanned his long, curved nails and licked dismissively between his spread toes.

“What can I do for you?” Temple asked, making small talk.

Molina’s laser-blue eyes fixed on her insincere face. “A great deal. Can we talk where you have seating units not claimed by alley cats?”

“My office?”

“Better than mine.”

So Temple led her into the spare bedroom-cumoffice, wondering madly what this was about. She heard Louie thump assertively down to the floor as he followed them.

Temple indicated the casual wicker chair opposite her computer desk and sank into the comfortable sling mesh of her teal Aereon size A chair.

Louie leaped up on the computer desk and sat there like a silent partner, switching his long black tail over the side. “I didn’t expect a familiar,” Molina said.

“Think of Louie as Paul Drake, and of me as Perry Mason.”

“Not possible.” Molina’s lips suddenly quirked. “What?”

“I could buy Nora Charles and Asta.”

“Oh. I could do The Thin Man! I do so love vintage clothes and vintage quips.”

Louie growled.

“Louie, however,” Temple added airily, “does not do dogs.”

Molina spread her hands, dismissing the parallels. “Perhaps Bucky Beaver, then. I need to hire your services.”

“A PR person could do a lot for your department.”

“For me.”

“For you?”

“And not PR.”

“What for then?”

“You’ve shown some … zany aptitude for undercover work.”

“Me?”

“Tess the Thong Girl ring a bell?”

“Well, that was just—”

“I know. You were just Little Red Riding Hood with a basketful of thongs trying to save the Big Bad Wolf from the Evil Huntsman.”

“Max isn’t a Big Bad Wolf! Although you’re an excellent candidate for the Evil Huntsman. You probably went after Snow White for the Evil Queen too.”

“Let’s set personal issues aside, Miss Barr.”

Temple saw those laser eyes shift, eyeing the room and conceding to Temple’s domain for the first time. “You really do want to hire me?”

“Yes.”

“For what?”

“I want you to enter the Teen Queen reality TV show competition.”

“What!” Temple leaped up from her chair. “I’m too old!”

“That leap says not. The upper age limit is nineteen. You can pass.”

“But—”

“You can pass. You think I don’t know who can go undercover and how well? You’re a shoo-in.““Get Su! She’s small for her age.”

“I would, but she’s a homicide detective. She’s not used to undercover. I’ve decided, abhorrent as the conclusion is, that only you … will do … for this job.”

“Abhorrent to you or to me?”

“To us both. Equally. It’s a Mexican standoff, Miss Barr. That should make it easier for you. You win, I lose. I lose, you win.”

“Why?”

Molina looked down. “My daughter—”

“Mariah. Nice kid.”

“She’s entered the contest. She’s a finalist.”

“Mariah? A Teen Queen? I don’t think so.”

“You haven’t been on the Teen Queen scene lately. But you will be now. With a vengeance.” Molina bent down to her big black purse that was half briefcase, and pulled out a plum. A one-sheet familiar to any PR person around. A flyer. An advert sheet. A Temple felt her pulse spike even as her jaw dropped. “This is … sick.”

“We have a stalker. A teen runaway has recently been found dead. That could be unrelated, but another adulterated poster like this was found in the general vicinity of her body. You realize what that means.”

Temple reluctantly took the paper.

“It’s a color copy,” Molina said. “You can’t hurt it. I wish you could.”

Temple nodded. “You’re asking me to risk my life.”

“You did it for him.”

“Because … I love him.”

“I love Mariah.”

“You can’t ask this.”

“I can ask. The deal is, I lay off Kinsella.”

“Max for Mariah? You can’t nail him for anything; you’re not even close to him.”

“But you are.”

Temple shook her head. The paper trembled in her hands. Who would deface the image of a young girl like that? And would he do as much to her body? That was the question.

“You want me there as a chaperon for Mariah? Why not just tell her she can’t do this?”

“I tried. Six hours of pleading and recriminations. Her whole soul is into this. She thinks she can sing. I’m afraid she actually can. I could at her age. Then, it wasn’t worth much. I could say she can’t aspire because I couldn’t. But I’m afraid she actually could win her division.”

“You could shut this down right now. Just say no.”

“Obviously you haven’t a clue about parenthood. Sure, I can say no and win this battle but lose the war and my daughter, forever. I suppose when you grew up in Wisconsin—”

“Minnesota.”

“—where it was old-fashioned, mid-American, and too darn cold for teenage girls to get much more from necking than frostbite, parents didn’t have to worry about their kids growing up way too fast too soon.”

Temple couldn’t help smiling. “We weren’t totally frozen out when it came to being rebellious teens. There was always punk ice-skating.”

“Not funny. I am hanging onto this kid’s future by the nape of her neck. She’s got a new bad-girl girlfriend. She’s under all the commercial pressures girls her age face: buy-buy-buy, be sexy, be hip, show it all, get guys. Never think of what you might lose by it. She could bolt if I said no. Better she try it and work out her energy and aggressions in a controlled arena. And—”

Molina looked away, to the tack board bearing the news articles on Temple’s accounts.

“Mariah has a passion to achieve girls my age, from my place in the world, were denied. Weren’t you? Twentyyears ago. Weren’t we all denied? I can’t stop her. I won’t stop her. But I can protect her.”

“With me?”

Molina nodded. Her expression tightened. “You’re all I’ve got. My agent on the scene.”

“You don’t like me.”

“No. But I’ve … come to respect your … pluck and dumb luck.” She sounded like she was swallowing a pickle.

Temple sat back, feeling slightly smug. “I’ve only fought for what … who I believe in.”

“I can’t buy that. I wouldn’t under any other circumstances in the world. But I can arrange things. I’ll have people outside the Teen QueenCastle. You can’t … won’t tell anyone. I don’t want the great Max Kinsella racing to your rescue and getting in the way. This is going to have to be a solo job for you. As it is for Mariah. And me. Maybe it’ll be good for all of us.”

“I can’t guarantee I’ll make the finals. You know what teens are like nowadays. I don’t know if I can cut it. Mariah might not either.”

Molina stood up. “I know you both. Unfortunately. I don’t doubt that either you or my daughter can make the final cut if you set your minds to it. You’re two of a kind.”

“Me and Mariah?”

“Thorns in a mother’s side.”

“My mother would beat you to death with a fast-food chicken limb if she knew what you were asking her baby daughter to do.”

“She can do it with my blessing if both our baby daughters don’t come through this. I wouldn’t let either one of you even try out if I weren’t pretty sure that this … pageant threat is a long shot. All the finalists will be confined to the same quarters for two weeks. Very hard for a bad actor to get in.”

“Or easy. Film crews are gypsies, hard to do background checks on them.”

“We’ll know them from the birthmarks out.”

“And you’ll really give Max a free pass from now on?”

Molina raised her right hand. “Absolutely. Unless he stands there with a smoking gun over a dead body right under my nose, I’ll totally forget he hangs out somewhere in this toddling town, up to murky business and possibly larceny or even murder. If you can live with that uncertainty, I can.”

“You have him so wrong.”

“I don’t have him. You do. That’s your problem. It’s a crime I have to compromise on this, but I’m off his case.”

“If I do this. Wow. How long do I have to get into character? I’ll need … cool clothes. Um, a couple body piercings, ears at least. A quick rundown on the latest slang and hot boy bands.”

Molina was reaching into that bottomless briefcase again. “You’ll have to try out locally but you’ll need to bring a tape. Here’s Mariah’s winning little number. Can we check it out?”

“Other room.”

Temple was feeling pretty numb as she followed Molina there, but then the bipolar reactions set in. Shocked/challenged. Scared/excited. Worried/confident.

Molina shot the video tape into its slot and Temple manned the remote.

In a minute they were both hunkered down on the sofa, watching with fascination as Mariah spoke, sang a clever pitch, and cavorted for the camera.

“This is Mariah?” Temple marveled. “I haven’t seen her for a while. She’s really grown.”

“Teened out,” Molina said grimly.

“Who filmed this?”

“New friend from a tough school. I’m lucky the onlything that girl talked Mariah into doing behind my back was this nonsense.”

“Didn’t she need your permission to do this?”

“One would hope, but nope. It was only an ‘open preliminary audition.’ The permissions come later, when or if the girls are actually accepted for the reality show cast, and there are a ton of them. As there should be. And … the show selected her.

“We’ve already got the preshooting packet. Mariah will be put on a diet. Sensible, they claim. She’ll have acting and singing classes. She’ll get clothes and a cosmetic Extreme Teen makeover and will generally hang out with her peers while competing ferociously.”

“So what’s so different between this and junior high?”

“Catholic school. Mariah hasn’t been exposed to the dark side of adolescence. She’ll be a chick in a yard full of foxes.”

“Maybe you’ve protected her too much.”

“Maybe.” Molina grabbed the remote and stopped the film.

“You’re expecting me to get selected? The competition for my so-called age group—Senior Teen Queen—must be killer.”

“I hope not. I’m counting on you being just as able and clever as Mariah in getting attention, even if it’s the wrong kind.”

“Then there’s that dumb luck thing of mine.”

“Exactly.” Molina stood. “The tape’s a copy. You can study it. I gotta admit the kid has chutzpah. Sophistication won’t cut it. You’ll have to find your inner teen queen. Your shoe collection should help.”

“And you’ll really, really, forget about Max?”

“Who?”

Temple nodded. “And if I don’t make the cut and the show doesn’t want me?”

“Then I still want Kinsella, and this time I’ll get him. For something, even if I have to make it up. But I won’t. He makes it too easy.”

“Okay. I guess I’ll let you know when I hit”—Temple consulted the fat, glossy, and expensive press kit—“the Teen QueenCastle. Oh, boy.”

“Oh, girl,” Molina corrected. She wasn’t Molina if she wasn’t correcting somebody.

Temple showed her out, then gazed down at Louie, who’d accompanied them to the exit like a major domo in a cat suit.

“Think I can pass as a teen queen, Louie?”

He rubbed against her ankles, nodding his head up and down as he left his scent on her shin bones. Now that was a vote of confidence!

Temple returned to the living room and ran Mariah’s tape again.

Couldn’t tell Max, couldn’t tell Matt. Wouldn’t have told Louie if he hadn’t been here.

She frowned, remembering the dismembered Barbie doll parts in the color Xerox image. If she got to the Teen QueenCastle, she’d really rather have some undercover backup that she knew about.

Not Max. Not Matt. Surely not Louie. Then who?

Chapter 7

Bait Boy

Not once during her pitch did Miss Lieutenant C. R. Molina specifically forbid Midnight Louie his own self to go undercover.

Wise of her. I am always undercover, anyway.

I have watched the video with both eyes wide open, thinking how I would feel if Miss Midnight Louise put herself on the chopping block in such a fashion. I guess it is not a chopping block unless the purveyor of the mutilated flyer makes it so. It is more like an auction block.

I cannot approve of these little dolls parading for the entertainment of the masses. I cannot approve of anyone parading for the entertainment of the masses.

Unless, of course, they held a midlife-macho-dude competition. That would be right up my alley.

Everything I have overheard today convinces me of one thing: I must be present in the Teen QueenCastlefor both the gore and the glamour of the competition, the guts and the glory. MissTemple needs some undercover muscle she can count on, i.e., something more than human.

Speaking of which, I could use some spiritual guidance. Or at least a hint of what is to come. Or at least a good laugh at the gullible.

So, once MissTemple is in her bedroom throwing clothes and shoes around, I bounce open one of the French doors to the balcony. I know this is her usual ritual for gearing up, quite literally, for action.

Me, I hop aboard the old palm tree leaning so conveniently over our balcony and ratchet up the shaggy trunk to the penthouse floor, just below the spreading vanes of leaves.

This entails an agile leap over the wrought-iron railing and a three-point landing on the plastic pad of the lounge chair. (Three-point because one of my shivholders slips off the cushion.) But I am good to go as soon as I sit up and shake my coat into dapper order.

I have another rank of French doors to break through. These have not been trained by me to open at the jiggle of a mitt under the bottom. So my entrance is not the usual blend of speed, skill, and silence.

I find myself expected.

Karma is not hiding under the furniture, as is her wont. (These psychic types loathe daylight.) No, this time she is sitting there bold as a bronze statue of Bast. The gaze she casts upon me, though as gloriously blue as Miss Lieutenant Molina’s, is pure steel and just as caustic.

She is a leggy rangy lady, her coat a longish soft cream shade and her mitts all gloved in pristine white. Yet she wears the brown facial mask of the formidable Siamese martial arts expert, which only emphasizesher blue-heaven eye color. While she is lovely to look at, one does not wish to annoy her. The breed is deemed sacred for defending a dalai lama against assassins ages ago. They have never forgotten it, nor should they. Nor do Hence their mystical gifts, if you believe in that sort of thing. I sort of do, despite my street sense. But at the moment she is crooning a not entirely welcoming song at me.

“By the prickling of my pads, this way comes the king of cads.”

“Oh, I say, Karma! That is harsh. If you are miffed that we have not had discourse lately, I have been mondo busy with various and sundry cases all across Las Vegas, from desert to downtown.”

She emits a sound that wavers between a growl and a purr. No wonder we dudes do not stick around the females of my species. They are one tough house to please.

I decide to play the mum dude-about-town and simply polish my nails on my shiny black sleeve.

“Oh, very well. Come in.” She rises and leads the way into the dim room where vintage pieces of upholstery graze like bison of yore … huge, dark, shaggy, and humped. They are mostly mohair or covered in large jungle prints.

No wonder a dude does not feel welcome in this dark, vaguely hostile homescape.

“Miss Electra Lark?” I inquire politely.

“Is absent.” Karma turns to give me another piercing look. “It is just we two.”

“Somehow it is never ‘just we two’ when I consult you.”

“Oh, so you have elevated me to a consultant. I thought you had dismissed me as a flake.”

I raise a defensive mitt. “Now do not get your dander up. I have had more than one brush with the mantic arts.”

“Your current case is hardly in that direction.”

“No. It is a silly-sounding affair. These human kits are quite playful, you know, and the females are overpampered. In fact, our kind has become the mascot of their blooming femininity. Have you heard of the Hello Kitty and Pinkie’s Palace phenomenon? Everything pink and frothy and marabou and glittery for girls from three-to-thirteen is decorated with the more beauteous of the feline species.”

“Crass commercialization. We are the superior species. We are not clowns.”

I do not know about that. I have encountered some pretty big clowns in every species.

We are in the room where the green globe on top of the fifties television cabinet shines like a cat’s eye at midnight.

Karma sits down again, tucks her fluffy train around her feet like a thirties torch singer, closes her eyes, and begins to croon.

“Very bad, Louie. I sense danger for all of the ‘little dolls’ under your protection, and now they are legion. Well, at least thirty or so. I see blood. I see many evil intentions. I see boiling oil. And that is just the normal course of events when so many competitive females are assembled together.

“I see … oh, my! You will be subjected to much of the health food that you so unwisely deplore. I see weight loss.”

“No! I need my fighting strength.”

“Not yours, alas. I see … hidden ways and motives and means.”

“Like what?”

The blue eyes slit open. “That is for me to know and you to find out.”

So, fine. I do not like the sound of blood and boiling oil, but at least they are forthright, unlike Karma.

“You are warned,” she intones in her most inscrutable whine. “You will encounter three divine emissaries of Bast herself and an old ghost. You will find the way of the dog your most useful weapon. Your efforts will get no credit.”

So what is new? I offer Karma a polite bow in farewell, taking care not to back into anything damaging to my undercarriage as I make my retreat.

As with all seeresses, Karma is best understood in retrospect.

Still, I have a few things to bear in mind. Particularly the boiling oil and the dog part.

Chapter 8

Separate Lies:

The Sequel

Little Red Riding Hood put on her visiting duds, picked up a basket, and walked through the woods to grandmother’s house, only a big bad wolf was waiting for her.

That night, after failing to sleep, Temple put on her best red Dorothy shoes, low-heeled slides with rhinestoned vamps across the toes, packed a basket full of adult goodies like a French loaf of jalapeno-cheese bread, a bottle of Chianti, and cinnamon-scented massage oil, among other delicacies. She then got into her red Miata to drive to Max’s house, where a recently distracted wolf was not expecting her.

She couldn’t explain her post-midnight raid on Max’s place, except that she wasn’t happy with their recent interactions, or lack of same. It was time to face the music and dance, like the song said. Or not. Either way, she’d know what the future held.

The horse knew the way, although that was from another fairy tale, the one where grandmothers’ houses still lurked down rural lanes.

The Miata’s hundred-some horses took her to Max’s neighborhood, all the houses decently dark. It was just past eleven P.M.

She parked three doors away and watched her back as she approached the familiar front door.

What she would do if he wasn’t home, she didn’t know. She also wasn’t sure he would be home. Max was up to something he wasn’t telling her about. She hoped it was something she could live with if she found out what.

No huntsmen seemed to be lurking in the vicinity, a good sign.

She rang the bell. Boldly. How else can you ring a doorbell at eleven P.M.?

When the door swung open, Granny was nowhere in sight. Just Max in his usual black, looking surprised, then pleased, then … worried.

“Temple.” He immediately grasped the purpose of the basket. “On a mission of mercy. To me. I could use it. Come in.”

“I’m not disturbing you—?”

“Oh, you are, but in the nicest of ways.”

He led her into the living room where a talk show she seldom stayed up long enough to see dominated a wide plasma TV screen.

“That’s new.” She pointed to the screen.

“This is newer.” He dredged the blue velvet one-shouldered maillot swimming suit from her basket. It was 50 percent spandex and looked just big enough for a Barbie doll. “You want to hit the spa?”

“Sort of the idea.”

“I could use it myself but … there are reasons. Why don’t I just open the wine. You can get warmed up in all that hot water?”

Actually, she was getting pretty warmed up without the aid of a hot tub.

She changed into her suit in the guest bathroom, then brought the basket out to the deck where an underwater Blue Hawaii light lit the bubbling hot water from below.

Heavenly!

Temple hadn’t realized how worried she’d been about her impromptu expedition to Max’s turf until she slipped under the hot water. Aaaah. Who would have thought the young woman had so much tension in her?

Two bubbles of glassware appeared on the drink indentations built into the spa’s side. Red wine, gleaming like Burmese rubies. Max sat on the hot tub lip.

He tugged at her one blue velvet shoulder strap. “Can velvet get wet?”

“Modem miracle, spandex for water babies.”

He chuckled and offered her a cracker with cheese from her CARE basket.

“I wasn’t sure you’d still be up,” she said.

He gave that remark the long pause any inadvertent double entendre deserved.

She laughed and sipped room-temperature wine, which felt cool compared to the hot tub.

“I’m glad you came,” he replied soberly, in kind.

“We seem to have been passing like ships in the night lately.”

“Agreed.” Max sipped from his wineglass, then spoke. Soberly. “I’m working up a new act. It’s secret. That’s why I’ve been so distracted. So absent.”

“Ummm.” She put her wet arms up to clasp his still-clothed ones, cables of steel. “No wonder you feel like Superman. That’s wonderful! Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I don’t know when I’ll be ready to make it public. Maybe not for … months. It takes—”

“Discipline. Zen mania. Max! This is great news. I thought—”

“What?”

“That you’d lost interest in … things.”

“In magic, or you? Never you. Am I now breaking my thirty-five-year-old back to make waves in the magic game? Yes. Guilty. I can’t say when my new apprenticeship will end. I have to make a spectacular comeback.”

“Of course. I’m so glad. I thought you’d given up on magic.”

“No.”

“Well then.” Temple snuggled down into the churning water. The aquatic blue light reminded her of something? The Blue Light special at Kmart? “I have to tell you. I may be AWOL myself for, oh, a couple weeks or so.”

“So long? Really?”

She nodded, her chin dipping into a froth of bubbles.

“I have to … go home. Minnesota. My dad. A minor cardiac thing. A stent? Anyway, they want me there.”

“Of course.” He kissed the top of her head. “I hope your father is all right. I’ll miss you,” he said.

What a liar she was! She didn’t deserve sympathy! At least Max wouldn’t worry about her.

“I’m sorry, Temple.” His voice vibrated somewhere above her head but she felt it in her heart. “Things will be better later, won’t they?”

“Absolutely. And now … they’re just perfect.”

“Just perfect.” He pulled away to lift his wineglass as her fingers curled around the stem of hers. They drank ruby velvet.

“Get in,” she said. “You don’t need a suit.”

“Can’t. I’ve got a midnight appointment.”

“With whom?” She hadn’t meant to sound sharp, she was just surprised.

Max trailed a hand in the warm, bubbling water. It ran up her arm. “I’m working out in secret. Using the Caped Conjuror’s home setup while he’s dazzling the second-show set at the New Millennium. I can’t stay.”

“But—”

“But there’s no reason you can’t stay here and enjoy the spa. The door will lock automatically on your way out.”

“I didn’t come here just to enjoy the bubbles.”

“I know. And do you think I’ll enjoy several hours of working out twenty-five feet above a terrazzo floor on bungee cords?”

“Max! It sounds—”

“Dangerous? Yes, what I’m doing is dangerous, Temple.” His blue eyes looked opaque, black against the night’s own darkness.

“But spectacular.”

Max laughed. “If you mean I could make a spectacle of myself… . Comebacks are hell, Temple. You have to give up a lot, including your dignity. And a private life.” He bent down to kiss her. Her fingerprints made darker blots on his black sleeves.

“Rain check? Ciao.”

It almost never rained in Vegas but when it did, it was a gully washer.

Temple floated in the spa’s programmed turmoil, feeling her internal boiling point mounting.

Odd. The blue lagoon waters now reminded her of something less pleasant than tropical nights: Lieutenant C. R. Molina’s sharp, ever-watchful laser-blue eyes.

But no one they knew was here. Now. Temple let the water roll her over as she turned to watch Max’s back disappear into his house on his way out.

Magicians did that. Disappeared. For a living. Sometimes lovers did that too.

Bitter disappointment made Temple rain two teardrops into the sizzling spa water. They instantly eddied away, lost in the sea of foaming warmth. Temple knew better than to feel rejected, but she did, dammit.

Selfish Temple! She knew how hard Max worked at both of his professions. Now, at last, he was reclaiming the public persona of magician instead of being consumed by the invisible cloak of spy. Times were more perilous worldwide than they’d ever been and Max had been out there, was still out there, trying to prevent disaster.

A game little woman would stand behind her man, even when he wasn’t there. Especially when he wasn’t there.

Still … Her hand slapped the water. This time droplets jumped up at her eyes, stinging them into blinking.

Blink. And Max had been gone without explanation. Blink. Lieutenant Molina had come asking brutal questions, painting the missing Max as a likely murderer. Blink. Enter Matt Devine, ex-priest, new neighbor, always there to help or tempt through no fault of his own.

Love and fidelity were great … when a couple actually spent time together now and then. But Temple was no longer feeling loved, even if she was, and Matt—God, Max! Wake up and smell the latte!—was finally outgrowing all those years of celibacy and coming on to her with Intent to Commit Relationship.

Temple laid her chin on her hands on the spa’s hard-shelled rim and let the swirling eddies float her body up, up, and away.

Men! They were maddening. Eve must have wanted to strangle Adam when he’d blamed the Apple Incident on her! Temple bet Eve had missed becoming humankind’s first killer by … this much! Justifiable homicide, in her opinion.

Like the song says: a total eclipse of the heart.

Chapter 9

Bling-Bling Babies

Molina sat, sober as a judge, on her comfy old living room sofa, reading for the fourth time the entry form that Mariah had filled out.

She’d reached the fiction part now, Mama Molina’s own creation: Julio Sanchez, heroic off-duty cop killed helping a citizen change a flat tire on the side of the notorious Los Angeles freeway system.

Would the TV-show staff research the contestants’ family histories? Or take them at face value?

“You’re still not mad at me,” Mariah said hopefully from the armchair, where she lounged on her tailbone, petting Caterina.

“Not mad. Disappointed.”

Silence. Mariah was still new enough to teenhood to cringe a little at that word. Disappointment.

Molina tossed the entry form aside, making a mental note to fax a copy to TempleBarr. Had to give the kidcredit; she’d beat out a lot of candidates to get a chance at the reality show slot.

Molina sighed and checked her watch. Mariah surreptitiously checked her mother’s face.

Standing up, Molina stuffed her bare feet into moccasins. “Come on. The mall’s open until six. A Teen Queen wannabe will need some new duds for her stay at the Teen QueenCastle. In fact—” Inspiration hit. It was a galling inspiration, but then the whole situation was galling from the get-go.

She drew her cell phone and hit a preprogrammed number. To this she had sunk.

Mariah watched, blinking.

“Yeah,” Molina told the phone when the ringing stopped. “Mariah and I are hitting the mall for some drop-dead Teen Queen garb. Maybe you’d better come along. Yes, it’s ‘kinda an order.’ Half an hour. Right. We’ll meet you at—?” Molina lifted interrogative eyebrows at her daughter.

“Junior department at Dillard’s.”

“Junior department at Dillard’s.” Molina flipped the phone shut and grabbed her buckskin hobo bag. “Who was that?”

“Image consultant,” she said.

“Who’d you know that I’d want having anything to say about my clothes?”

“You’d be surprised.” Molina shot a smile Mariah’s way as she snatched the car keys from the kitchen countertop. “You go to all the trouble of being on a national TV show, no matter how tawdry, you ought to get a little help.”

Molina felt naked as she followed Mariah into the dark garage. She wasn’t carrying tonight, for the first time in a long time. It would have been too awkward. Mama needed a new pair of shoes, and then some too. She just hoped to heck that tonight was not the one some gang member decided to go postal in the mall’s Hallmark Card Shop.

Temple Barr appeared to know the junior department as well as Mariah.

In fact, Mariah had about three inches on the woman. Molina hoped she’d stop growing soon. But maybe too tall was no longer a female liability.

Molina stood uneasily in the main aisle, eyeing rows of skirts the width of cummerbunds and see-through mesh tops skimpier than sports bras. The color and glitter were showgirl seductive, but there were so many clothes, and so little of them.

For the first time she felt like her own mother.

Red head and espresso-brown head bowed together over the racks, pulling out selections and tossing them over arms or thrusting them back onto the chrome poles, rather like blasé strippers.

“Cool color.”

“Oh, too rad.”

“To die for.”

The murmurs were both vapid and excited. Molina smiled, maternally, as she observed Temple and her daughter together. Temple acted like an older sister, caught up in the same girly ritual but far more sophisticated than Mariah with her cherubic halo of baby fat still intact, thank God.

Good pick, Molina told herself. TempleBarr was exactly what she herself always had lamented not ever being—petite and pretty enough to pass as a teenager.

Temple looked up as if Molina’s speculation about her was tangible and she’d felt it. Good instincts for an amateur. “Mama have a budget for this extended prom party?”

“Whatever you think she needs.”

Temple’s eyebrows raised, borrowing that tic fromMolina. She consulted the two stapled sheets advising “contenders” on “what to bring.”

“We are in plastic heaven, kiddo,” she told Mariah. “Let’s rock.”

Two hours later they emerged from the dressing room, giggling like classmates on a spree. Temple’s arm held almost as many draped items as Mariah’s. That’s what Molina had hoped for: Mariah’s taste would clue in Temple on current hot teen items, and Temple’s PR influence would guide Mariah to what worked on TV.

If Molina had cherished any reason but bodily safety to encourage a relationship between the two, she might even have found their bonding … sweet.

If they made the show, Mariah would have to know that Temple was there as a stooge before the charade began. No way would she be fooled. Hey, the kid would probably get off on being part of an “undercover” team.

How had a smart homicide dick like her ended up in such a mess? Daughter dearest and her mad, hopeful, predictable, determined desire to be somebody five years older than herself.

Molina played her prime parental role: she laid plastic on a checkout counter and watched the LED numbers hit the mid four figures. Yikes.

Temple Barr, she was pleased to note, had done as well. Molina supposed she should reimburse Temple but let that be a surprise after the ball at the Teen QueenCastle was over. If there was one for her.

Molina checked her watch.

“Done with still an hour’s time,” Temple chimed in, shooting a conspiratory glance at her pal Mariah. “Shoes, maybe?”

“Actually, I need to make a stop,” Molina said. “Ladies’ room?” Temple asked.

How heedlessly insulting. TempleBarr would make a fab teen queen. “No. Family members appear in the audience on the final show. I need something … less casual.”

Temple eyed Molina’s jeans, moccasins, gauze cotton top, and suede bag. “I guess! Your cop shop pantsuits won’t cut it either. And I don’t suppose you want to trot out Carmen”—she cut off as Molina glared from Mariah to her—“a Carmen Miranda ensemble.”

“Who’s Carmen Miranda?” Mariah wanted to know. Trust kids to sense when adults were getting their lies and deceptions in a wad.

Temple vamped expertly into a diversionary path. “Oh, an old-time performer. Wore these tall, tall headdresses of tropical fruits. Sang, danced. One hot Hispanic cha-cha chick. The movies in the forties were big on Latin music and performers.”

“The forties?”

“During World War II.”

“Latin was in?”

“Ole! There were some great, fun movies, all black and white. You should rent a couple.”

“Sounds coolio.”

“As coolio as Julio Iglesias.”

Mariah frowned. “Don’t you mean Enrique?” she said, mentioning Julio’s cleft-chinned singer-son in the sexy chip commercial. “To die for!” Nauseating sigh.

“Right,” Templebackpeddled. “Enrique.”

Molina feared that Temple’s love of vintage anything was giving away her age. This was definitely not an Iglesias, Sr. crowd. Molina would have to warn her about that.

Temple turned a sharply focused eye on her. “Now. What does Mama Bear need? Something not too casual, not too formal but just right. For what reuse once the show is over?”

“I don’t know.” Molina did know but she wouldn’t say that. “Something suitable for dinner at one of the big hotels. Maybe.”

Temple reared back, obviously daunted by the challenge. “Let’s hit Ladies’ Dresses.”

“I’m not much for dresses,” Molina objected. “They’re always too short.”

“Not with long skirts so hot right now.” Temple did the teen eyeroll like an expert. “If I don’t buy petite sizes I have to roll up the waistbands until I look like I’m pregnant.”

Mariah giggled hard at this notion that her mother had hoped would never cross her mind under any circumstances, except when saying no to boys, until she was in college.

What have I done!

The stroll through Better Dresses was agonizing. Molina understood for the first time her Jekyll/Hyde clothing philosophy: slacks and jackets, jeans and tops for on-and off-duty. Vintage velvet for Carmen, a distant star who was seldom coming out at nights to sing these days. And in between these two extremes lurked a jungle of fussy, expensive clothing that did not scream “date” with a maybe man.

Temple Barr, however, obviously relished the extreme challenge of making over Molina. TempleBarr thrived in the messy middle ground. She and Mariah ravaged the racks, then pushed Molina into the dressing room with armloads of improbable clothing.

She ended up with an outfit chosen by their mutual consent.

“Car-wash skirt, definitely,” Temple told Mariah. “Very cool,” Mariah concurred.

“It looks like Jack the Ripper’s been at my hem from the knees down,” Molina grumbled.

“Dangerous,” Temple said. “Ideal for a law-enforcement type. And not black. Deep, dark plum. Good contrast for your eyes.”

“My eyes don’t need contrast.”

“Absolutely right,” Temple said. “Just a little mascara—you do use mascara? No! Makeup counter’s on the way out, Mariah. Take that down. Lash Out, just the thing.”

Mariah meekly wrote that at the bottom of her clothes sheet.

“An eyebrow waxing would be a gift from heaven,” Temple mused.

“I’m not going to go through that sort of ridiculous assault in the name of female exploitation.”

“Too timid for a little pain in the name of self-improvement, Mariah. So like a guy! Add a Tweezerman to the cosmetic counter list. You might be able to sneak up on her when she’s asleep and pluck.”

“Scratch that!” Molina ordered. “Or I cancel the credit card charges.”

Mariah did as told.

But Molina had been conned into the skirt with the shredded hem, $128.00. A black sleeveless top shaped from bands of ribbons. And a net shawl of purple, black, and turquoise iridescent beads.

“That is so cool, Mom,” said Mariah, who was sold on the outfit. Mariah had never seen Carmen.

“This may be a little dressy,” Molina said with a frown, eyeing herself grudgingly in the mirror. Short, tiny Temple had a feel for supermodel togs.

“You’ll need heels,” Temple decreed.

“No. You do heels. I don’t do heels.”

What, Temple had been about to say, about those vintage forties platform heels Carmen wears?

Molina could read the entire sentence as it formed in her mind and her eyes. But Carmen did not exist here, and besides she stood solo on stage and sang. She didn’t have to worry about dwarfing some insecure man from the stage.

Not that she had an insecure man in mind when she rejected heels. She just had an insecure woman in mind, who had minded these things since the eighth grade.

“Shoe department:’ Temple said in a threatening tone.

Actually, it had been an anticipating tone but Molina found that threatening.

There, Molina held her ground. She would not wear so much as an inch-and-a-half-high heel.

Mariah, trying on every tarty spike she could find, pled with her. It was sad to see how much a teen girl wanted a glamorous mother. Molina almost caved.

Except that Temple, of all people, gently praised and prodded Mariah into demure slides with small, low heels.

“She’s too heavy for those spikes,” Temple commented as Mariah pranced before the mirrors in her petite princess shoes, feminine to the max. “Maybe later, when the baby fat goes.”

“You don’t want me to wear them?”

“Carmen’s vintage platform forties heels, with all those industrial-strength straps, scream sturdy as much as sexy. They’re fine on someone of your height. But these stilettos aren’t. You’d wobble. And I bet you’d hate to wobble. High heels should look able to support their wearer.”

“I’m amazed. You make shoe selection sound like an art form.”

“It is.” Temple frowned at Molina’s size nine feet. “I’d like to see a tiny heel, but since you won’t have it… .”

She darted away like a dragonfly with no credit card limit.

Moments later she returned with an utterly flat shoe, a thong sandal with a beaded triangle over the instep that perfectly matched the shawl.

Like a dragonfly, the improbable sandal reflected the light.

“Oh, Mom, that’s perfect,” Mariah pleaded.

Mariah wanted her to sparkle because then that meant she could too. Like mother, like daughter.

Molina bought the dragonfly sandals, not sure whom they would remind her of more—Mariah the would-be Cinderella, or TempleBarr, the reluctant fairy godmother.

Later, she and her daughter celebrated their first mutual girly occasion (for Molina, it was her very first girly occasion): they whisked out their purchases in the living room, while Caterina and Tabitha gamboled on fallen pieces of colorful tissue.

“This is so cool, Mom. Thank you! I know I can win.”

“It doesn’t matter if you win. It matters if you have fun, keep your head, and … stay safe.”

“Temple is so cool.” Mariah, head bent, held up some ridiculous glitzy top to her underdeveloped breasts. “She hardly acts like an old person at all.”

“I really hope so, honey.”

Mariah looked up, catching her change in tone. “Because we three have a secret, and it’ll be up to you to help carry it off.”

And then she told Mariah that Temple was working undercover to trap a potential perp, and Mariah would have to help her carry off the masquerade.

Mariah the cop’s kid looked even more amazed and happy than Mariah the potential ‘Tween Queen.

Chapter 10

Louie Goes Ape

What has happened to my dear little roomie, MissTemple?

She was always a spirited, happy little human.

She always got a kick out of life and having a humongous high-heel collection. She was perky but not sappy. Full of mischief but not slaphappy. Upbeat but not nauseating. Cute as a ladybug but not too girly to rock and roll.

Now she has done a complete turnaround.

I watch her upend about a zillion shopping bags on the bed I have honored with my reclining presence.

I am adrift in a blizzard of mall-style plastic … the Gap, Victoria’s Secret, The Icing, et cetera. She has been on a shopping spree wild enough to smother me had I not beaten off a rain of plastic bags with the Ginsu knife shivs so conveniently attached to my extremities.

“Oh, sorry, Louie,” she remarks offhandedly, trying on a faux-leather bustier over her faux-front gel cups in the full-length mirror on the wall.

I am used to seeing my MissTemple in a state of undress, due to our intimate relationship in the bedroom, i.e., we share my king-size bed.

I am not used to seeing assorted tattoos and rings on her upper arms, ankle, neck, and the … gasp, small of her back, which is pretty small, her being a Lilliputian human.

When did she go berserk at a piercing parlor without consulting me, I would like to know! Obviously, I have been derelict in my duty of shepherding her through life as we know it in Las Vegas.

When she pulls out the Cher wig and tugs it on over her own tortie-red curls, I know I have to take action.

She turns from the mirror, looking like something from the back of a squad car on Cops, the first and most-forgotten reality TV show.

I am aghast to see that her eyes are as vibrantly green as mine … then I realize that she has borrowed Mr. Max’s performing trick: green contact lenses for that mesmerizing gaze. Trouble is, it works on cats and magicians but I am not sure it works for my MissTemple.

“Well, Louie, do I look like a reconstruction project?”

She looks like an escapee from the city pound, especially with that rhinestone dog collar around her neck.

“Am I ready to take on the world of reality TV?”

Hmmm, I already observed that she looked like an escapee from Cops.

“Am I post-‘Tween Queen in the making?”

‘Tween tweezings, I think to myself. Not to mention a ripe candidate for brain implants.

“Do I look sweet, swingin’ nineteen going on Goth thirty?”

Goth? As in I “goth” to get outa here?

I take my own advice and retreat to the outer room but resolve to keep a very close eye on her from this moment on.

Chapter 11

Good Golly,

Miss Goth Girl

The mall was mobbed with ‘tween girls from just-thirteen to a tarty fifteen. And a few good legally blonde bimbos from sixteen to nineteen. The decibel level in the vaulted central atrium suggested a jungle of screeching parrots.

Temple had never seen so much metallic and iridescent nail polish, so many spandex capris, thong flipflops, and belly buttons in one place since a Britney Spears concert. And she’d never seen a Britney Spears concert except in TV commercials.

Temple glimpsed a shadow of herself in a Gap display window. It took her a moment to pick herself out from the crowd. She couldn’t believe she was doing this: standing in line, hiding her hair, and showing her belly button.

This was the screwiest self-marketing job she’d ever done. She’d decided that the subject of a TV makeover show should require some major makeover, plus. And sheneeded to disguise herself enough to fool any possible acquaintances, so …

She craned her neck to see if her little buddy—or was that “budette” in this case?—was anywhere around. But Mariah was not here. No. The Molina kid had made the smart move. Applied early. Before the humiliating cattle call. Mariah was less than half Temple’s age, and she was already a finalist, a contender. Temple was a raw recruit.

Temple, aka Xoe Chloe—“pronounced just `Zoey Chloey,’ or `Chloey Zoey’ if you like that better,” she’d told the babe with the clipboard collecting their application forms—stared down the endless line forward, and then back along the endless line backward.

It felt creepily like instant aging in a horror movie to be bracketed by so many genuine tender young things. Skin creamy as a SouthBeach diet ricotta cheese dessert. Zits, yes, but young, plump, cherry-colored zits, almost beauty marks, not the occasional pale pink spot staking a pallid postdated claim on the shoulder blade of thirty years’ duration.

Well, she had the right shoes. A girl could do anything with the right shoes: go to the ball, leave Oz, shave a decade or so off her age. Temple stared at her Heavy Metal Hot Pink Funk–painted toenails in their red rhinestone slides. Excellent color clash. The toe rings added a nice trashy touch. Her feet alone demanded a serious redo.

Then there was the black, straight-haired Cher wig from the singer’s Cleopatra period. Las Vegas had wig shops galore filled with celebrity dos. Even Temple was amazed by how totally a redhead with short curly hair could vanish behind glossy dark eyebrow-length bangs and shoulder blade–brushing strands of thick black. A Maybelline black eyebrow pencil covered the last of Temple’s natural coloring. Any freckles disappeared under pale foundation and dead-white face powder accoutered with assorted magnetic studs and rings at eyebrow, nose, and lip, adding a modern touch to the Queen of the Nile. And she hadn’t forgotten the belly button ring, clip-on. She was a fraud from sole to poll.

Except for her long painted fingernails, each one a color of the rainbow. They were real under that lacquer.

When she’d given her remade self a once-over in the bedroom mirror, for a surreal moment she was struck by the fact that she almost resembled the black-haired, rice-powdered persona of the evil she-magician, Shangri-La, who had kidnapped Temple and Midnight Louie months before. Now Shangri-La was missing in action and Temple was, ta-dah, suddenly a black-haired teen bad girl. Think the twisted slayer Faith on Buffy, the Vampire Slayer.

But that was then, and this was now. Temple shuffled forward in the line. Her feet were killing her. Normally wimpy little inch-and-a-half heels wouldn’t bother her. But she was used to flying around, on the job. Standing, shuffling, on these aggregate-stone mall floors. Killer!

She clutched the sheet she’d filled out in tilted block letters with the i’s carefully topped by circles as fat as a cartoon dialogue balloon. Favorite hunk. Favorite punk band. Favorite junk food. Favorite class to skip. Favorite cosmetic. Favorite fast food.

She peered around the snaking line of bare shoulders and barely covered rears. Oh, at last! She glimpsed a long table at which people actually sat. They must be the interviewers, the American Idol–style judges who would say yea or neigh.

Nay! This was not a horse race. This was an empowering opportunity for today’s savvy young women. Was she quoting the TV show propaganda, or what?

Stand. Shuffle. Shuffle, shuffle, shuffle. Stand.

Behind her, someone snapped her gum. A nauseous odor of banana-strawberry almost put Temple down forthe count. A woman of thirty ought never have to smell that again!

Suddenly … open air ahead of her. A table clothed in linen to the floor. Four adult humans sitting behind it. All looking at her.

Four maybe-human adults …

Because one of them was (gasp!) Savannah Ashleigh, fading film starlet and an acquaintance.

Another was (gasp!) a very ripe Elvis impersonator, big and bellied, complete with tinted aviator sunglasses, long, dark caterpillar-fuzzy sideburns, neck scarf, glitzy white jumpsuit and more knuckle-buster diamond rings than Liberace. Well, she supposed Elvis had been an expert on teenage girls, including his almost-child bride, Priscilla.

Another was (double gasp)—once you’re thinking in terms of cartoon bubbles you’re lost—her very own maternal aunt, Kit Carlson, aka the romance novelist Sulah Savage!!! What was she doing here, all the way from New York City?

And the last (thank whatever gods may be!) was a Strange Man who looked like Simon Cruel, i.e., Cowell, on American Idol.

Two of the four judges knew TempleBarr, for better or worse. Was this going to be a cakewalk or a shambles or what?

More like, or what.

Temple, ex-TV newswoman … ex-community theater thespian … former repertory theater PR woman … decided to regard this debacle as an opportunity to stretch her dramatic muscles, i.e., her I.Q. Insincerity Quotient.

“Zoo-ee,” Savannah Ashleigh was reading from her cheat sheet with her usual skill at the cold read, rhyming Zoh-ee with gooey.

“Zoh-ee,” Aunt Kit corrected. Smartly.

“A zoo, all right,” the Simon clone bellowed loud enough to reach the back of the line. His diction was Aussie, not British, but just as scalding as Simon’s. “Child. Give those capris back to the zebras, there’s a good sheila. ‘Twould be a mercy.”

“Mercy,” Elvis repeated, frowning down at his sheet. He probably needed reading glasses. (The real Elvis would be—my gosh!—seventyish by now.) Maybe this guy’s vision would lose focus going from the sheet to her.

“So why are you here, my dear?” a woman with a wireless mike popped out of nowhere to ask. She was almost as astounding as Xoe Chloe. A woman past early middle age was a rarity on TV and this one was fighting age all the way: phony black-dyed hair, all Shirley Temple ringlets where Temple’s was all long, razor-cut bob. Her papery complexion emphasized baby bright blue eyes and an attitude of relentless good cheer.

Temple shrugged. It directed attention to her shoulder with the temporary tattoo: a tail-lashing crocodile.

“If you don’t know, lady, I don’t know. Somebody said I should. I’m blowing this gig. It’s been unreal.”

“Now wait a minute.” Savannah was squinting at Tem-ple, sans the glasses she obviously needed. “You look—” Temple cringed, expecting the dreaded word, “familiar.” The Ann Landers with the mike seized her arm. “This girl is not all brash insouciance. She’s got goose bumps.” So would anyone with those vanilla-ice-painted talons running crosswise on her forearm!

“You can see she’s trying to make a statement,” Savannah said. “Girls these days think they have to be so hard. You can be a lady and succeed.”

“Why?” Temple answered. “You obviously didn’t.”

“What d-d-do you mean?” Savannah was stuttering. “Succeed or be a lady?”

“Both. I’m outa here. I got a grunge band to run.”

“Really?” Elvis had finally exchanged his shades for a pair of half-glasses to read her entry blank. He regardedher over their rainbow titanium rims. “I think you’re all bluster and sass, young lady. I think you’re a fake.”

Coming from him … now Temple was considering stuttering.

“But a sublime fake, mate,” the Australian Simon was saying. “This girl has cheek. Love that bicep croc. And the underlying sentiment: ‘Green Machine.—

“You would,” Aunt Kit noted. “You’re nearly breaking your neck to see what those hip-huggers are embracing from behind.”

Temple, recognizing her advantage, shook her Cherlocks and her booty at one and the same time. “Dream on, old dude.”

At that moment, the middle-aged angel with the mike—she really did remind Temple of the good witch Glinda from The Wizard of Oz movie, all that chirpy upbeat optimism—thrust herself into Temple’s field of vision. Cameras were rolling from the sidelines.

“I’m Beth Marble, creator of this show. And I sense, dear girl, that despite your bold front, you’re really desperate to make the cast. Isn’t that true?”

Temple eyed the Simon-clone. “I think he’s the one into bold fronts.” Then she stared into the emcee’s impossibly sincere eyes, heard that impossibly syrupy voice, and managed to nod, gruffly. If one can nod gruffly, Xoe Chloe was the girl for the job.

The four judges’ vastly incompatible heads were nodding together as annotated pages passed back and forth.

Scratch “annotated.” Not a Xoe Chloe word. How about … pages scribbled with cool graffiti.

“Do you do anything entertaining?” Elvis looked up over his granny rims to ask.

“The lambada,” she said, “while clipping my toenails.”

“At least she confesses to clipping them,” Savannah ventured. “That’s a start. We could really fix her look, but—” They all frowned at Xoe Chloe. Temple sensed she was losing her audience, particularly Simon Pieman, whose real name was Dexter Manship, and who was sitting back with his arms crossed over his designer Tshirted chest, one bicep bearing a Crocodile Hunter tattoo. No sell, the body language screamed.

Temple thought she knew the type and what pulled his Hell’s Angel’s chain. She boogied around in a tight little circle, all the better to show off the back of her waist-high thong panties almost fully revealed by the plunging low-rise capris. Rise? Heck, they’d never heard the word.

Temple’d seen this classless getup on a teen mall salesgirl at Frederick’s of Hollywood last week, her attention drawn to the outfit by a pair of clucking old ladies. She had proudly and promptly appropriated it for bad girl Xoe.

Dexter was moved to chuckle. “I said she was cheeky. Let her in. We could use a juvenile delinquent.”

Aunt Kit was frowning at Xoe’s sheet, looking like someone about to cast a dissenting vote. Temple nailed her with a quick, pleading look the instant Kit looked up, her mouth already open and the no verdict on the tip of her tongue.

Temple watched long enough to see the surprised expression forming, then looked away, defiantly sullen. Actresses ran on empathy and prided themselves on seeing beneath the surface. Aunt Kit should be a shoo-in now, and Simon Pieman was all Xoe’s—muscles, tattoo, and libido. But the Elvis impersonator … what was he doing here, except maybe as a tribute to the Elvis-loving man who’d built the house and was now long gone. And maybe because Elvis, dead or alive, real or false, always drew a crowd.

Temple did a series of three quick-on-her-feet cramp rolls and assumed a West Side Story stance. “Hey, Officer Elvis, you ever do any break dancing during your film career?”

“Break dancing? I invented it in my `Jailhouse Rock’ routine.” He seemed surprised she had appealed to him as a dancer. No, shocked. His persona was mired in the seventies. His Vegas audiences were determinedly middlemiddle-middle. Middle-aged, middle-class, middle-of-the-road.

“I do the mosh pit thing,” she said. “You’d go over big today if you had one.”

He laughed at the idea of a bunch of moshing middlemiddle-middles, then glanced at the others. “I might be able to teach this one something, if she’ll listen.”

“Why, Mr. Presley, I would always listen to you … sing.”

“You talk tough, Xoe Chloe,” he answered sternly, “but you haven’t worked until you’ve worn your tail and toes off on a rockabilly dance floor. Are you game?”

“Sure. I got rhythm.”

“Thank you. Thank you verra much.”

On that surreal closing note, the judges conferred again, checked their watches, eyed the long line behind Temple, and the anxious face of the woman named Beth Marble who held the portable mike. And was possibly the real power here.

“In,” Dexter Manship declared for them all.

Temple got in a mock curtsy before she allowed herself to be hustled off to the sidelines by another gofer with clipboard. She was in. In! She’d made it, purely on her hidden punk power. Her Inner Bad Girl.

The gofer, one of the twenty-something girls in hot pink who ran errands, sat Xoe Chloe down with another sheaf of papers to sign.

Xoe could have cared less, but Temple read every last word, appalled at giving blanket permission to be recorded in every media known to man and woman but mostly audio-video, in all forms, now and in the future. In the universe.

She’d be ceding all rights to her own self … except that own self was purely fictitious at the moment. Luckily, the phony driver’s license Molina somehow got for her attested that “Sharon Carlson”—please! No wonder “Zoe Chloe” had been born—was nineteen and therefore free to sign away her own rights to privacy.

She finally signed the thing with an X for Xoe and dated it.

Miss Pretty in Pink came back and asked for a real name.

“It is a real name. Mine.”

“We need a normal name.”

“I’m as normal as you are:’ Temple said. Being a teenager again was more fun than the first time! You could act out and act up and everyone thought it was the norm.

“I need a real last name,” the hot pink chick repeated.

Temple rolled her eyes, sighed, grabbed the clipboard and wrote “Ozone” after the X.

“X Ozone? I don’t think so.”

“Have you ever heard of the Artist Formerly Known As Prince?”

“Maybe.”

“He used an alien scribble for years. In purple ink yet. I think it was algebra. Surely you’ve heard of algebra? Why can’t I be X Ozone? It’s better than X Chromosome.”

Miss Pink frowned. “Chromosome. I’ve heard of that name. Somewhere. Maybe it’s Greek.”

“See! I’m famous.”

“Is there an apostrophe between the 0 and the Z?” That gave Temple pause. “Yes, two,” she said. “Just chill.”

The woman put the equivalent of quote marks after the 0 and darted away on her pert pink patent-leather slides.

She was back in about two minutes after conferring with the angel lady with the mike.

“I’m sorry. We need a real last name. Like legal.”

She hadn’t asked for Temple’s real last name.

“Carlson,” Temple said, appropriating her mother’s maiden name, and her aunt’s, which Molina had somehow come up with. She added the name to the X with a flourish.

“Carlson. Isn’t that a cavern somewhere?”

“In the brain:’ Temple said soberly. “You’re right. A cavern in the brain. We all have a Carlson cavern in the brain.”

“I knew I learned something in science class.” Beaming, the young woman bore away all the rights to Temple’s brand-new persona.

Shoot.

Chapter 12

Turnabout Foul Play

“Stabbed through the neck,” Officer Dunhill said. He was young and looked a trifle green. “The entry point is ragged. Really vicious.”

Molina stood there in the lukewarm early morning dark of another 24/7 Las Vegas eternity. She’d asked to be called on any teen deaths.

The girl lay in the middle of one row, halfway between the fat painted line that delineated parking places on either side. Probably attacked just as she was leaving, or about to return to a car.

All the cars were gone now, and the girl remained. Sprawled within an invisible chalk outline. (Police departments seldom outlined body positions nowadays; recording methods, especially video, were far too sophisticated to require the romance of old-time techniques.) The blood from the neck wound was a discreet rivulet mostly hidden by shadow. A lurid pool of pink puddlednear one hand that still touched a crushed ice cream cone. Walking to the mall with a strawberry cone in her hand. “Where’d that come from?”

Dunhill eyed the sickly pink splotch vaguely shaped like Australia. “Parking lot mobile vendor. My partner did the interview. She bought the cone at seven fifty.”

“So she could have been headed for the Teen Queen auditions at eight o’clock.”

“With a fistful of calories?” He sounded doubtful.

“Hot night. Slim girl. I’ll have the reality show people check if any candidates didn’t show up. I assume there was ID.”

He nodded, flipped back a couple of pages. “Tiffany Cummings.” He shook his head. “Sixteen. Wasn’t sexually molested, from the state of her clothes. That’s a blessing.”

Molina eyed the clothes in question—the teenage uniform that drove a mother like Molina nuts for a couple of reasons: tight low-rise jeans, skimpy thin top. Too revealing, too predictable.

Dunhill shook his head again. Obviously he hadn’t been called out on many homicides. “First response couldn’t do anything for her. Except get the names and addresses of all the owners who’d parked in the vicinity.”

“Any hot prospects?”

“Mostly women or women with children. All shocked to death themselves.”

“That many women? Alone? Shopping this late, in the dark?” Molina asked.

Dunhill shrugged. “Multitasking. The wife complains all the time that there aren’t enough hours in the day. All we’ve got here as onsite evidence is a short rubber burn and an airconditioning puddle over there. Looks like a car stopped fast and stayed long enough to leave traces.”

“Or to startle and then kill our vic.” Molina glanced up at the brilliant lighting. This poor girl had been “shined”

like a deer in the headlights by the very technology meant to protect her.

“They held the Teen Queen auditions here today,” she observed. “This could be another message.”

“That’s right! I heard about the mutilated Barbie doll images. You think this is related?”

“I think this is going to be pretty hard to explain to the press, much less the parents. I’ll ask the captain in the morning for more personnel to put on the so-called Teen QueenCastle that reality TV show is using for the next two weeks. Can you imagine a more captive population for a killer like this?”

“For this nut? Likes offbeat weapons. Nervy enough to attack in a major public place. No, Lieutenant, I can’t. Hey!” Dunhill was looking beyond her. “Get outa here! Scat!”

By the time she whipped around, all she spotted was a lean dark shape vanishing under a Nissan Sentra.

“Damn cat.” Dunhill was not happy. “Sniffing at the evidence. That pinkish gunk.”

“Probably licking at it. Lots of scavenger cats and birds around a shopping mall. Forensics will have already bagged a sample; don’t worry, officer.”

“This is my first murder call. Then to have it be a kid like this—”

“Kids ‘like this’ you never get used to, thank God. What did you say her name was?”

“Tiffany—” He again checked his notebook. “Cummings.”

“That contest inside. Find out if she was a contender.”

“She sure isn’t now.” He slapped his notebook shut.

Mariah was still safe at home in her messy bedroom, thank goodness, Molina thought, but tomorrow night she wouldn’t be. Her kid had made the final cut. Tomorrow she’d be in the Teen QueenCastle, hopefully safe behinda moat of cameras and the foolishness that passed for network TV these days.

Molina returned to her Toyota, parked far enough from the crime scene to preserve evidence. Something about the crime scene bothered her but she couldn’t say just what.

Someone caught up with her.

“What’s going on?” A voice behind her.

She turned. “Larry. What’re you doing here?”

“Heard the buzz. Now that I’m off undercover, I can’t sleep nights. Did too much action then. So I listen to what’s going down on the police channels. Looks like a tragedy.” He nodded back toward the fallen girl.

“Sixteen? Yeah, a tragedy.”

He scanned the mall’s hulking profile, haloed by the city’s constant aurora of artificial light. “The most innocent public places are where the dirtiest deals go down. Malls. Hotel parking lots. No safe place anymore.”

“Not news.”

“You’ve got a kid. Is she too young for malls by herself?”

“Young,” she conceded, recalling the recent madcap shopping expedition with the trace of a smile. “And not `young’ enough for my taste.”

“That’s why you care. That’s why you came out personally.”

Molina shook her head, leaned against her car’s front fender. “No. That wouldn’t keep me up nights. It’s a case, that’s all.”

“Are you sure it isn’t personal?”

“Anyone killed on my watch is personal.”

“That’s a lot of responsibility, Lieutenant.”

“Goes with the job title.”

He leaned against the car beside her. He’d be sorry.

She recalled that it was dusty. Who had time to visit a car wash? Multitasking.

“I, ah, lost that sense of being personally responsible,” he said. “I miss it. I was responsible for living up to my false identity. Period. It took all my energy and all my cunning.”

“Cunning. I think of that as a criminal attribute.”

“Right. I needed criminal attributes.”

“Must be hard to drop.”

“The hours are. Let me follow you home, make sure you get there.”

“Are you kidding? I can’t drive this town at night alone, why have a firearm or a shield?”

“I’m trying to be a regular guy here.”

“Why?”

“Maybe because I think you might have a regular girl in there somewhere.”

“Regular equals helpless?”

“Regular equals liking company.”

“Not now. I’m not a babysitter for insomniac narcs. I’ve got my own baby to sit.”

He backed off, literally. “Sorry. You’re right. I shouldn’t have come out. I’m just not used to being out of the loop, that’s all. Guess I just wanted to bullshit about the crime scene, whatever. Talk the talk. See a … friendly face.”

She could’ve sworn he was about to have said “pretty.”

Unbelievable! But maybe she was doing him an injustice.

Sensing her irritation, he shifted topics. “That guy you tried to con me out of. You know, the address the other night. I’m betting that he’s personal.”

“If he is, then it’s really none of your business.”

He ignored her warning. “Ex-cop. L.A. I see that’s where you came here from.”

“I see that you’ve been digging deeper into personnel records.”

“You did it first. Karlinski in Records mentioned it to me.”

Molina felt her face heat up, whether from annoyance or being caught, she couldn’t tell.

“Listen.” He came closer and lowered his voice. “Undercover cops know better than most that the lines between professional and personal can get blurred in police work. You wanted to take something from me without my knowing it. Think what a lot more you could get if you were up front about it. That Nadir guy is trouble, I can smell it, and he worries you. Accidents isn’t putting me to work 24/7, the way I used to work. I got a lotta free hours. I could help.”

“You’re volunteering? For what?”

“Whatever you need.”

“Why?”

“I’m bored.”

“Not what I need.”

“And I think you could use more of a social life.”

She pushed off her car. “What would give you that idea? That’s the last thing I want, need, have time for.”

“Case closed.”

“I don’t even like you.”

“Not a problem.” He grinned. “I’m still losing my street persona. I’ll get cuddlier.”

“Give it up. You are not my type.”

“Oh, you think you have a ‘type.’ That’s progress. Let me guess: tall, lean, and mean. Early Clint Eastwood, right?”

Molina felt herself flush for real. “You’re pursuing this, not me.”

“That’s the way it’s supposed to be, have you forgotten?”

“Maybe. And I like it that way.” She opened her car door, paused, considered, and said “Good-night.” He backed away to let her drive out of the parking slot, hands in the pockets of his nylon shell jacket, watching her with head lowered, a bit boyishly.

She headed into the maze of access roads that circled the mall.

Not her type.

But better than Rafi Nadir.

Although, who wasn’t?

At home, sweet home Dolores napped on the couch while early-morning TV blared. Molina hated to awaken her, but she knew Dolores would want to be home with her own kids and husband. So she saw her out and watched her cross the street to her own door and safely enter.

In the distance, low-riders grumbled like very disgruntled thunder. That was a negative of living in a Latino neighborhood, but in Anglo neighborhoods it would be costly car stereo systems cranked up loud enough to keep the canals on Mars awake. One way or another, the young bucks in the neighborhood have to make their presence known.

Mariah was sleeping hard in her room, face buried in a tangle of covers.

Molina went to her bedroom and deposited her weapons in the closet gun safe. She could never open the large metal cabinet without brushing against Carmen’s array of vintage velvet gowns. Velvet and steel. It sounded like the title of a supermarket romance novel.

Carmen hadn’t come out to sing and play at the Blue Dahlia lately. Maybe the on-premises body a few months back had accomplished that. Maybe Molina had just been too busy.

She started taking off her clothes … shoes kicked off first. She slipped out of her jacket and blouse, slacks, then sat on the bed to pull off the dark socks she wore with her working “uniform.”

Something slid into her back as her weight created a sinkhole for whatever was on the bed.

What was on the bed? Shouldn’t be anything. She kept a military-neat room, unlike her darling daughter, the mistress of mess… .

A box lay there on her grandmother’s patchwork quilt. A gaudy gilt-paper box. Had Mariah performed one of her random acts of preteen sweetness?

Molina opened it, not surprised by the array of fancy chocolates but by the unfamiliar handwriting on the tiny envelope inside.

She pulled the flap loose to withdraw the stiff note card. The same handwriting that had written “For you” on the envelope had written “Sweets to the sour” on the card inside.

She stood there staring at the black-ink block lettering in the dim light of the overhead ceiling fixture.

Was this some clumsy attempt at humor, or a threat?

Mariah, veering wildly in the bipolar state that was ‘tweendom, might be apologizing and complaining at one and the same time. Or …

This might be from someone else. Like Dirty Larry. Was he a colleague, a would-be boyfriend … or a stalker? He was the only new man in her life … or was this a calling card from a former man in her life?

Rafi Nadir. Now that they’d finally run into each other, he knew that she lived and worked here in Las Vegas. He had a lot of reasons to resent her. Sweets to the sour. The line reeked of bitter anger; was it for leaving him without notice? Like you’d mention to a strike-poised rattlesnake that you’d decided to back off.

Had he found her address after she’d visited him the other night without warning to give him a warning? Turnabout foul play?

Molina spun on her bare heels and padded through the hall and living room into the kitchen. There she ran-sacked drawers looking for something she ought to remember right where it was.

Damn! Whoever had left that candy was no friend and maybe a lot worse. She marched back to her compromised bedroom, plastic sandwich baggies in hand. The note went in one baggie via the offices of the new tweezer from her adjoining bathroom. The box went into the quart-size bag, for analysis by forensics. She’d think of some reason in the morning.

For now … she went through the house from garage to seldom-used front door, checking closets and locks.

All secure, doors dead bolted, sashes nailed shut yet easy to open in case of fire. The place was a freaking monument to advocated domestic security measures, courtesy of your local police department.

So. Someone had gotten in, and gone. And left the poison. Maybe not literal poison but mental poison. Who’s been creeping into my bed with Ethel M candies?

She didn’t even want to finish undressing to don her Land’s End sleep-size T-shirt.

But she did.

Then she unlocked the gun safe, set the semiautomatic on her nightstand, and shot the bolt on her bedroom door so Mariah couldn’t wander in.

The illuminated nightstand clock said four-twenty A.M.

Molina was thinking now that she might actually welcome having Mariah out of the house and under the constant surveillance of reality TV show cameras for the next couple weeks.

What’s a mother to do?

If she’s a homicide lieutenant, maybe a lot more than some cowardly stalker might imagine.

Chapter 13

Macho Nachos

“Dinner? At your place?”

Matt knew he had sounded unflatteringly shocked, but it was too late to backpedal. That was another disadvantage to years spent in the priesthood: an inability to shift rapidly into glib social lies.

“Just casual,” Molina said quickly. “I’ve got some issues I want to bounce off you.”

These must be some issues to merit a social occasion at Casa Molina, Matt thought.

“Yeah, fine. I’m always available for dinner.”

“Usually, I’m not. But, what say, six thirty tomorrow?”

Very pressing issues. “Sure. That’s perfect. Saturday night supper. I’m leaving town for a few days early next week.”

“Glad I caught you before you left. We’ll have something, oh … something. See you then.”

Matt stared at the phone receiver for a moment before replacing it. Molina was always busy when she was at work, and she was almost always at work.

He immediately dialed Temple’s number, but after five rings her slightly raspy voice informed him she’d had to leave town on a family matter and would be back in two weeks or so.

This time he stared at the receiver as if it were an alien artifact.

Curiouser and curiouser. Guess he’d have to go take two hours’ worth of lonely hearts phone calls at WCOO-AM, which is what paid his bills, and find out what was going on with the hearts and minds he thought he knew later.

The morning paper had a splashy front-page story about the young woman found dead outside the shopping mall.

Matt skimmed the report, which was all too similar to other senseless killings in every city and town across the country: savage attack, senseless slaughter, and another family torn apart by another demented killer.

So … surely Molina would cancel their casual dinner. She must be on this case 24/7.

The cancellation call never came. Matt changed his knit golf shirt to a long-sleeved shirt that matched his khakis, rolled up the sleeves to the elbow, and headed over to Our Lady of Guadalupe convent at about five thirty.

He found the nuns preparing dinner. They let him kibbutz while they bustled around the communal kitchen. Convent life had been characterized as “communistic” in the big, bad fifties when a Red was seen under every bed, but Matt would call it “democratic.”

Each nun had her duty and went about washing salad greens or stirring soup as if that were the most important task on earth. Next week the duty roster would changeand today’s washer would become that week’s stirrer. Just as today’s mother superior would defer to another leader when the time came.

Peter and Paul, the stray cats that had unofficially joined the community when they’d wandered into the convent yard as kittens, had arranged themselves in supervisory positions. Peter, a chubby yellow striped cat, was tolerated on one chair seat, while the darker striped Paul was lying on the wide windowsill above the sink, absently patting at the intermittent faucet drips.

There was a placid joy in the way the nuns moved, with long familiarity and an efficient grace that brought to mind the floor-length, flowing habits they’d once all worn, still welcoming a visitor to their modest domestic ritual as if he were a king, or a wandering saint.

“How’s that darling redheaded girl?” Sister Seraphina, Matt’s former grade school teacher at St. Stanislaus in Chicago, asked right up front. That was “Sister Superfine,” dynamic and blunt. “I never see her at mass with you anymore.”

“She’s Unitarian,” Matt explained, or didn’t really.

But the nun just nodded and invited him to dinner. He was tempted, but… .

“Not this time. I’ve got a dinner appointment in the parish, though.”

“A date?” Elderly Sister St. Rose of Lima beamed the way nuns who like to play matchmaker do.

It touched Matt that his past in the priesthood was taken as a given here. He’d been officially laicized, leaving with permission, unlike most ex-priests. But like all newly ex-priests, he was still sensitive about his new non-celibate status. He found it endearing how these elderly “sisters”—the last, almost, of their uniquely devoted kind—gave him a free pass on their own turf.

“Not a ‘date.’” I’m heading over to Lieutenant Molina’s.”

Eyebrows raised.

“Those aren’t exclusive subjects,” outspoken Sister Seraphina said. “Carmen Molina has achieved commendable responsibility in her job but she’s not a lieutenant all the time.”

“I couldn’t swear by that. I think she wants to find out something that relates to her job.”

“How do you know that?”

“Molina? Entertain for dinner?”

Sister Seraphina stopped bustling and folded her arms. “Too much work and no play is bad for everybody. Carmen too. Maybe you can get her to forget about her job for a few hours.”

“That would be an act of charity,” Sister Mary Monica said slyly.

Matt laughed and headed for the door. “Gossip is a sin, sisters. Don’t get any ideas.”

Their chorus of good-byes drifted out the screen door behind him like a breeze.

Trying to second-guess Molina was futile.

Matt pulled his new silver Crossfire to the curb in front of her house, got out, and heard a low wolf whistle.

She was standing on the threshold of her seldom-used front door.

“Not you. The car,” she said. “When did you develop ambitions to race in the Grand Prix?”

“It just looks fast. And I finally didn’t need an undercover car,” he added, referring to his former stalker, as he came up the walk.

“Better stay at the speed limit. That’s a real ticket-magnet. At least it isn’t red.”

This was a Molina he’d never seen. She was wearing a gauzy white puffed-sleeve blouse and paprika-andturquoise-pattern gauze skirt. Mexican casual. And shewas barefoot. She looked fifteen years younger and about twenty-five years more relaxed.

Still no jewelry, though, and no makeup except for a faint color on her lips.

Matt thought he’d never seen her looking better. “Maybe we can go for a spin in the Crossfire after dinner,” he suggested.

She laughed, and looked beyond him to the fancy car a bit ruefully. Maybe Sister Seraphina was right.

“This is a no-diet zone tonight,” she warned as she led him into the modest one-story house.

“You diet?” He was surprised. She was a strong five-ten, at least. Neither heavy nor thin. Sculptural, like a pillar, especially in those long, lean vintage velvet gowns from the forties she wore when singing at the Blue Dahlia.

Few knew that Carmen the occasional chanteuse was C. R. Molina, the 24/7 Vegas homicide cop. Those who did found the contrast perplexing.

“I thought you’d call this off,” he commented as they entered the homey living room, complete with two cats. What was it about cats and the Our Lady of Guadalupe neighborhood?

She turned to fix him with a Lieutenant Molina interrogatory stare. Her vivid blue eyes were her best feature, and against this Ole Mexico getup they made her electrically exotic.

“Why?” she asked. “Oh. The murder. There are always murders in Las Vegas, my friend.”

“I just thought you’d need to be on the job.”

“What makes you think I’m not?” she asked with some irritation.

“I don’t see myself as part of your job.”

“No. No, you’re not. Sorry. Sit down, get some cat hair on those khakis. I’m glad you could come.”

She clattered and rustled in the kitchen until the microwave tinged and then she brought out several small vivid pottery dishes of various salsas and a big platter of nacho chips wearing a mantle of cheese and sliced fresh jalapenos.

Matt grabbed a big blue linen napkin and dug in. “This is better than Friday’s,” he said.

“Yeah. A lotta Velveeta, a little Rotel, some fresh peppers to tart the whole thing up. Sorta like tonight.” Matt stopped scarfing and got wary. “Oh?”

“I got you out here on false pretenses,” she admitted. “Fast food?”

“Fast talking. I need your advice.”

“Oh. Well, that comes with the territory. ‘Will advise for food.”’

“I’m not good at plying my … acquaintances for free advice.”

“Well, then break out the Dos Equis. That’ll get me talking. You do have some?”

“Oh, my God! I forgot the beer.”

Matt smiled as her bare feet slapped kitchen tile and the refrigerator door shot a sliver of light into the dim living room.

The cats yawned and stretched, as if used to slapdash improvisation in feeding at Casa Molina.

Matt hated to admit it, but the nachos with bottled salsa sauce were superb: hot, greasy, and crispy.

A condensation-dewed long neck of Dos Equis landed on a cork coaster on the coffee table in front of him. By now the jalapenos had hit pay dirt on his tongue and he downed several swallows.

“Milk would be better,” she observed.

“Not manly,” Matt said, still choking a little. “Okay. What’s it all about, AlfieT’ he looked around, suddenly aware. “Is Mariah off with her friends?”

“Yes, and no. And, yes, we are alone here. I arranged it that way.”

“Really? Is this entrapment? This is very low-alcoholcontent beer.”

“Only entrapment for your professional opinion.”

“You didn’t have to ply me with dinner for that.”

She sat back on her tailbone in her chair, balancing her beer bottle on her stomach. This was no Molina he’d ever imagined.

“Mariah is away from home for a couple of weeks.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means that my naive, gutsy daughter got herself accepted by some stupid, exploitative reality TV show, and Mama couldn’t say no without being cursed for life. So…”

“Wait a minute! Is that the Teen Queen thing?”

“And ‘Tween Queen,” she corrected with loathing. “Mariah thinks she wants to be a singing star and win a date with the latest Boy Toy nonsinger around. What’s a mother to do? I could take any casino boss in town in for questioning, but I can’t put a leash on my only daughter.”

Matt chewed some nachos while he thought about it. “No, you’re right. You can’t. She got accepted? On her own?”

“Yeah. Every kid has access to a video recorder nowadays.”

“Mariah? She’s just a baby.”

“Are you out of it! This is not what I want your advice on. Here. Watch her homemade video. The one that got her on the show.”

Molina got up, skirts swaying, to pop in the offending video.

Matt began to understand her mixture of panic and pride. Mariah had shot up. Those chubby baby features and limbs were starting to look coltish and graceful. Her eyes were as dark as her mother’s were light, making Matt wonder about the father again. Likely Hispanic.

Molina was half and half, although what the other half was he couldn’t guess.

Mariah’s voice was a contralto that blared like a boom box on occasion. She was a belter, unlike her crooner mother, and suited the pop music mode of her own day. But she had a voice. Too.

Molina got up to eject the tape and dropped it atop the TV.

Matt decided it was time to gently probe at the maternal wounds. “So the problem is … Mariah is unrealistic about a performing career?”

“Who isn’t unrealistic about a performing career? Everybody dreams. Maybe a tenth of one percent lives the dream. No, the kid can try it. She might break the odds. I think this freaking show is foolishness, but that’s not the problem. It’s possible that a killer is stalking the contestants.”

“My God.”

“I’ve got people on the stalker thing. That’s not the big problem.”

“What on earth could be, then?”

Molina leaned back, drained a bottle of Dos Equis, eyed the pathetic level in his own bottle, and got up.

“We’re out of beer, and the chili on the stove is about to desiccate. Come, sit down and eat.”

Chapter 14

Bad Daddy

The chili was red, full of beans and beef, and hot enough to fry the soles off a pair of Dr. Scholl’s sandals. Matt tucked in.

He and Molina sat at a small round table in a tiny bay window off the kitchen. He sensed this nook was hardly ever used for dining. Instead, quick bites were taken at the elbow-height eating bar between the kitchen and the living room.

Molina had poured their beers into thick glass mugs chilled in the refrigerator. Correction: Carmen had done that.

“So the problem—” Matt began when the first edge of his hunger had been soothed.

She had only picked at her chili—the plump bean here, the chunk of ground beef there. An occasional ring of soft-cooked jalapeno. She leaned back in her chair, suddenly Madame Interrogator again.

“You know what it’s like to be a bastard.”

Professional interrogator. Always went for shock value.

“Yeah. It means your mother is called names for the sin of being trusting and honest. Is there a woman in the world who gets caught in such a situation who anticipated it, or wanted it?”

“Maybe only the Virgin Mary.”

“She got a warning from an angel.”

“So. I know you resented, even hated, your stepfather. Have you also resented your real father?”

“This business of ‘real’ parents is interesting. There are genetic parents, and spiritual parents, and stepparents. Any and all of them can be horrible, or great.”

“I don’t need generalizations.”

“That’s mostly what’s out there, like it or not.”

“I like it not.” She took a swallow from the beer mug. “Mariah’s father is in town.”

“The guy … from Los Angeles? Your—?”

“Yeah. My ‘question mark.’ I tried to divert him by setting Kinsella on his trail but then I ended up with two snakes on mine.”

“How does Max come into this?”

“Max! Even that’s a damn anagram, not a given name. Michael Aloysius Xavier Kinsella. The man’s a puzzle from the most elementary fact.”

“All good Irish-Catholic given names,” Matt said, savoring the effect.

“Like Matthias,” she lashed back.

“Not particularly Irish Catholic. Look, I know this is serious, but I also think you’re seriously hung up on Max Kinsella. He’s not the father of your child, and that’s who’s really got you riled.”

She huffed out a sigh, part anger, and part exasperation. “You’re right about that. Screw Max Kinsella. He’s off my most-wanted list. It’s this other guy.”

“You mentioned him to me a long while back. The one you were living with in L.A. who got you into that ethical corner of unwanted pregnancy. To abort or not to abort. Didn’t you think he’d pushed a pin through your diaphragm?”

“I can’t believe I’m sitting here discussing this in depth with a priest.”

“What do you think I did all those years of being a priest? Discussed the unthinkable with the unwilling. I’ve heard it all.”

“But you haven’t lived it all.”

“No. That’s my weakness.”

“What’s mine?”

“You think you’ve lived it all. So this guy is here in town now.”

“Worse. He’s finally put two and two together. He realizes I live and work here. Next thing, he’ll find out about Mariah. Your little friend is pretty helpful in that quarter.”

“Temple? How so?”

“She’s hooked up with him somehow. She fairly reveled in having him pretend to nab a perp in my last case. I admit I was on her about Kinsella but that’s no reason to sell a thirteen-year-old down the river.”

“Wait a minute. Temple wouldn’t do that. She doesn’t know this guy is Mariah’s father.”

“You didn’t tell her?”

“No. The time you mentioned it to me, he didn’t have a name, much less a local mailing address. I’d have never told Temple anything about it. That was … confidential.”

“Confessionally secret?”

“Not technically, but as far as I was concerned. I’d virtually forgotten about it. Believe me, Carmen. No one knows but you and me, and I’m not talking. Ever. Not even to you if you want it that way.”

She took a deep breath, leaned back in her chair, rubbed a hand over her forehead, disarranging her Dutch-cut bangs.

“Never ever?”

“Never ever.”

“Then do you think I have to tell Mariah about her so-called father, or vice versa? Can’t he just go away?”

“What do you think?”

She paused to do just that. “There’s unfinished business. He won’t go away, now that he’s found me, because I went away from him all those years ago.”

“I can’t believe Temple would champion him.”

“I rode her about Kinsella for over a year. I imagine it’s sweet revenge.”

“Temple isn’t vengeful.”

“What you know about women I could put in a thimble.”

“Do you sew? Not very useful then. So what are you asking me?”

“Do I need to let Mariah know about him before he finds out about her and tells her himself?”

Matt didn’t hesitate a moment. “If there’s the danger of the latter, yes.”

“That is not what I wanted to hear.”

“Yes, it is. You wanted to hear the truth from an uninvolved person. And you did.”

“You’re uninvolved?”

“Pretty much.”

“What does that make you, then?”

“In worse shape than you are. Oughta be some comfort.”

She smiled and scratched her neck. “Actually, it is.”

Matt insisted on helping with the cleanup, which mostly involved soaking the dishes in one side of the sink while Tabitha patted the bubbles.

“You remember seeing me wear a blue velvet dress at the Blue Dahlia,” Carmen asked out of the … well, blue.

“No. I remember a ruby-purple one. And black. But not blue.”

“I’ve got one in my closet and can’t ever remember wearing it, much less buying it.”

“You don’t wear them that often, do you? Especially lately.”

“That a hint that I oughta climb back onto that stool and sing?”

“It must be hard to keep your voice up if you don’t exercise it regularly.”

“True.”

The doorbell rang, catching them both with hands in soapy water.

Carmen tossed Matt a towel after she’d blotted her palms, and headed for the front door with raised eyebrows, obviously not expecting company.

Matt heard voices from the living room. The other one was male so he ambled out there, just in case, although Molina was a match for most men on the planet.

A guy about his size in a black jeans jacket was just inside the door, talking faster than a Fuller Brush man.

Seeing Matt stopped him dead. “You’ve got company, sorry. I thought you wanted these documents right away.”

“Tomorrow at work would have done,” Carmen was saying coolly, but her manner was edgy.

The guy was one of those dirty blonds whose face was all angles sharp enough to cut you. You could see him as the scrappy kind of kid who always got into playground fights. Tough in an oddly admirable way. He seemed too lean and hungry to be a beat cop: those guys tended to have sloppy beer bellies and neat mustaches, and the deceptively laidback attitudes of those who know they’re in authority.

In the ensuing silence, Carmen did introduction duties, clearly loathing every word.

“Larry Paddock, Matt Devine.” She emphatically avoided saying what either of them was.

Paddock nodded, Matt nodded back.

Matt was the guy with chili powder on his breath, so Paddock had to leave.

He ducked his head and backed out, looking none too pleased.

Carmen put the small manila envelope, unopened, on the TV cabinet. “This job never leaves you alone.” Larry Paddock’s drive-by visit had broken the off-hours mood.

Matt fished for the car keys in his pocket, making leaving noises himself.

“Don’t rush off:’ she said, “right after I’ve drafted you for manual labor.”

Did she think Paddock might be waiting for him to go?

So he settled on the living room sofa and accepted a tiny glass of Tia Maria liqueur and commented on the cats until her unexpected visitor was long gone enough so he could go too.

The night outside was as warm as a sauna. Larry, he thought later. New one. Matt got in the Crossfire, sitting for a moment to lower the window for some breeze—now they had a convertible version out—and to savor the newness of everything, the new-car leather scent, the dramatically night-lit dashboard, before starting the engine. New Car Whine.

Carmen came running out of the house, her bare feet slapping concrete, and reached him before he could shift into reverse.

“Matt! Can you come back in for a moment?”

“What for?” Trust an ex-priest, on seeing a woman run after him, to know it was for some reason quite impersonal.

“To find out if I’m going freaking crazy or not.”

Chapter 15

Sweet Tooth

Matt followed Carmen back into her house.

By the time he caught up with her, she was pacing back and forth in the tiny fifties foyer like a tiger in a rabbit cage.

“I can’t believe it. While we were here talking! It had to be.”

“What?”

“You have to see it. Come on.”

He followed her through the living room and down the long narrow hall. Most of Las Vegas’s older homes were one-story and built like rat mazes. What kept the sun out also kept the interiors dark and cramped. Matt had never been more appreciative of the Circle Ritz’s round construction style. There, every unit had an outside wall of windows.

Matt was in her bedroom before he had time to think what a leap in intimacy that involved. He’d never been in any woman’s bedroom before, except a guest room in a convent, which hardly counted. And Temple’s. But only in passing.

This room wasn’t such an exotic locale, after all. It was furnished with the usual suspects, in this case serviceable furniture store–style bed, dresser, and nightstand.

Molina was at her closet door, holding up a curtain of velvet for his inspection.

“First this.” She shook it like Exhibit A in a courtroom. He went over to see it better, recognizing one of the dark velvet vintage gowns she wore to sing at the Blue Dahlia. “These old evening gowns are beautiful. What’s wrong with it?”

“What’s wrong with it is that I don’t remember buying it. I have a deep forest-green one, a wine one, a scarlet one, and several black ones.” She pulled the skirts of the gowns in question out into the light to illustrate her point. “I’ve never had a blue one.”

“I don’t see why not. It complements your eyes.”

“You don’t get it. This isn’t a wardrobe crisis. I wasn’t sure at first, but I never bought this thing. It just … appeared in my closet.”

“You’re busy. Super busy. You must have forgotten.”

“That’s what I thought. Until this arrived.”

She threw the blue velvet gown across her bedspread and bent to pull a box from the lowest drawer in her nightstand.

Matt eyed the box. Not a simple square or rectangular box, but curvy. Candy-box shaped. He was beginning to get it. “How did it arrive?”

“Showed up on my bed. With a card.”

Matt frowned at the handwritten note through the plastic baggie that encased it, displayed like a fresh scalp in Carmen’s uplifted hand.

“‘Sweets to the sour,”’ she quoted the message inside. “The first really wrong note.”“‘Note’ indeed. Sour note. You baggied it.”

“Yes, of course.”

“Like you bagged Temple’s waylaid ring from Max,” he couldn’t resist adding. She winced at the comparison. “So someone’s been snooping in your closet.”

“And now this. The latest. Just now!” She handed him a small plastic device, now bagged. It took him a moment to recognize the late-model Game Boy. Except someone had stuck a Post-it note on it reading “Game Girl.”

“I found this in Mariah’s bedroom. Thank God she’s away from it for a while.”

“You’ve got a stalker,” Matt said quietly, remembering his recent and violent liberation from one. “Why, do you think?”

Carmen wrapped her hands around her elbows and began her Big Cat–pacing again. “I don’t know, but whoever it may be is circling closer and closer. Classic pattern. Cowardly psychotic creep—!”

“I know. They’re good at that. Sure can’t be mine transferring affections to you.”

“No. Nothing to do with you, except you were here when that piece of slime snuck this last little token into the house.”

“Mariah’s away, you said. How long ago could it have been left?”

“Six hours, maybe? I checked her room for anything she might have needed at the … at the place where she’s staying. That little bomb wasn’t there then.”

“Where was it?”

“On her pillow.”

“You’re right to be upset. Can’t you, of all people, arrange for surveillance?”

She stopped to hug her elbows to her rangy frame. “No. No, I of all people can’t do that. Not openly. Not officially. This … stuff could be from her father.”

Chapter 16

Monday Morning

Coming Down

Xoe, aka Temple, arrived at Hell House, aka the Teen Queen Castle, first.

Cameras were rolling, and so was she.

In fact, she wore Rollerblades. And skin-tight capris, a sweatband reading Go Gurrrrl, and a hot pink sports bra liberally assisted by various boob-building devices.

Xoe! Zowie!

The cameras followed her as she did a wheelie at the mansion’s front door.

What an entrance. The doorway, not hers. Double doors, of course, of embossed copper with pewter hardware. The effect was more like the entrance to a bank vault than a residence.

She noted the security camera leering down from above and blew a huge bubble of well-chewed pink bubble gum right at it before she entered. On Rollerbladed feet.

Beth Marble, the show’s guardian angel, was waiting for her in the marble-tiled foyer.

“No edged instruments allowed inside the house. That includes Rollerblades.”

“That also include fingernails?” Temple fanned her impressive ten.

“Fingernails are feminine. Allowed.”

“That’s what you think.” Temple bent to detach the Rollerblades.

“You’re an interesting case.”

“I thought a case had an alcohol content.”

“You’re not as tough as you act.”

Duh!

Temple sneered. Being a bad, ballsy little broad, as Rafi Nadir had named her once, not mentioning the bad, was fun.

“Here, honey.” She handed over the heavy, bulky blade set. “Hang this on your hope chest.” She stared pointedly at the angel’s decidedly flat version of same. “You need one.”

No hope there.

“Listen, kiddo,” the woman said, dropping her voice into a soft, warning tone. “I came up with the Teen Queen concept. Consider me the show shrink. Part of your makeover involves an improvement in attitude. If you want to have a chance at the Teen Queen slot, you’ll use your time here, with me, to get that beehive-size chip off your shoulder.”

“We gotta see each other?”

“Every day for an hour. Be prepared to open up your baggage or drop to the bottom of the first wave of wannabes on Day Three.”

Xoe made a face but kept further comment to herself. Beth thrust a shiny hot-pink folder toward her. “Here are the house rules and your daily schedule of self-improvement appointments. Remember, we work on body, mind, heart, and soul, so be prepared to bare all four.”

“You sure this is legal? A lot of these girls are underage.”

Beth’s patient smile hinted at perennial martyrdom. “We’re well aware of that. We’re assigning rooms on a Big Sister/Little Sister basis, so roommates won’t be competing at the same level. The name of your Little Sister is in the folder.”

“A mini-me! How hip. Who is the little devilette?”

Temple let her long fingernails do the walking through the half-inch wad of loose papers inside the folder.

Mariah Molina. Her roomie. The gods, or at least the Great Goddess Cop, had smiled on her so she could ride shotgun with poor little Mariah.

Why any right-thinking kid would want to coop herself up in a phony media circus like this was beyond Temple, but then Temple was too far beyond the Teen Dream stage to remember.

Beth Marble glanced around all sides of Temple and then nodded her satisfaction.

“Glad you’re not dragging any more than your one bag and your bad attitude in here. The ‘Tween Queen branded sweat suits and other workout wear you’ll be using during your makeover are in your room, in the proper size. Your personal stylist will confer with your personal trainer on your new wardrobe, when it’s time for your ‘reinvention.”’

“Meanwhile,” Temple observed, “it’s in the army now.”

“That’s right.” Beth’s Stepford Wives smile never faltered. “You are a private and we are the commanders. We’re here to help you but only if you’re willing to commit to helping yourself. You may go to your room until our Cheering Session at five P.M. tonight.”

“It sounds more like PMS,” Temple muttered as she shuffled off in her stocking feet.

“What?” Beth asked, a trifle uneasy.

“Nothing you’re not too old for.”

Two faint frown lines on Beth’s forehead indicated she might have sensed an insult.

Awesome! The woman seemed made of the same impervious veneer as the remade toothy smiles on the women from the makeover shows.

The house was huge. It was a perfect pick for a castle because of the copper-topped towers that surrounded the huge copper dome at the place’s center. These mysterious copper roofs glittered enough to be seen from the Strip. They’d been treated to keep their bright copper-bottompan gleam and not age into a verdigris color with wear and weather.

That new-penny look always bothered Temple when she glimpsed the place. It was rather like Burt Reynolds during his cosmetic face-peel stage: so shiny and smooth that it gave you the creeps.

It especially gave Temple the creeps. Las Vegas was the kind of high-profile place where new scandals and sensations constantly made yesterday’s atrocity fade into prehistory. Yet she’d learned the horrific history of this house when she’d first come to town two years ago. And a good PR person never forgets.

Over the past twenty or so years, the house had been a white elephant, huge and impossible to reinvent. It had been a Halloween spook-show place for a while. A theme restaurant. (Middle-Eastern, with the Disneyesque Neuschwanstein castle towers appropriately repainted as minarets.) A funeral home. That was the weirdest and last incarnation. And lately, it had stood perilously empty, inviting vandals, until it had been turned into the set for a presumably hot reality TV show.

The first time it had made media news, it had just been another sprawling tribute to big money and minuscule taste.

Temple was one up on the other contestants.

As a media person, she’d heard of the bizarre tragedy that had made this place the house that no one wanted to own. The builder had been Arthur Dickson, a reclusive techno-geek who’d wired it for every media known to man at the time and filled it with high-tech toys and Elvis trivia. He’d gotten married here to a former showgirl and mother of a young daughter, who reportedly topped him by six inches… . Of course, the marriage disintegrated in a haze of vindictive heat over sex and money. During the trial separation, the wife and stepdaughter got the house.

It ended with a big shootout one night. When it was over, the stepdaughter was seriously maimed, caught in the crossfire; the showgirl-wife had been shot in the shoulder, her male friend had been killed, and the husband had vanished.

Since then, no one had seen Arthur Dickson, the man who’d bought and rebuilt this mansion in tribute to Elvis. He was presumed dead. A second cousin had later brought suit charging that his body had been spirited away, because after seven years his estate had reverted to the wife and he had been declared dead.

So Temple approached this house with the notion that it had best served its history when it had been a funeral parlor, not the set for a frivolous TV program.

The doorbell pealed out “You Ain’t Nothin’ But a Hound Dog.”

It reminded Temple that Dickson had been an Elvis nut. The place boasted a grotto outside the pool fit for a mass burial. But Graceland it was not. This house had apurely Las Vegas mystique, from the copper-domed four-story towers along the sprawling façade to the rumored wine cellar vault in the bowels of an unusual Las Vegas real estate feature, a basement.

Temple edged into the entry hall, not knowing what to expect but ready for anything.

At least Xoe Chloe was.

Chapter 17

Mr. Chaperon

Imagine the Taj Mahal with a copper roof and a six-car garage and you have a pretty good idea of what the Arthur Dickson house looks like.

As my Miss Temple in her new outré garb vanishes inside, its white stucco walls shimmer in the midday Las Vegas sunlight like a whited sepulcher. Wait! I have a more topical simile. It shimmers like those Da Vinci dental veneers you see on the queen of TV makeover shows, The Swan. I bet old Leonardo himself is rolling over in his sarcophagus in Italy to hear how his name is being bandied about in everybody’s upscale mouth these days. Fame is one thing; foolishness is another.

Speaking of foolishness a wee bit closer to home, it is more than somewhat clear to me that if my Miss Temple is not acting her age, I need to be on the scene from the get-go to keep her little masquerade from turning dangerous.

So I enter the place with the film crew, who are obligingly loaded with so many long aluminum equipment boxes that a crocodile could slink in at their ankles and they’d never notice.

Make that one svelte black puddytat, and not even Tweety Bird would notice little moi.

I cannot imagine how my expedition has escaped the notice of my nosy partner in crime solving, Miss Midnight Louise, my wannabe daughter, but so far I am solo on this case and relishing the peace and quiet. This joint is so grandiose that it is easy for me to slip around wherever I feel like it. The floors are all marble or wood but my tootsies come stocking shod when I want them to. I skate over the shiny surfaces like a shadow glimpsed out of the corner of someone’s eye.

I overhear one of the tech guys joking that the place is supposed to be haunted by an Elvis imitator’s ghost.

Better and better. Elvis and I have a noncompetition agreement when it comes to haunting. And any untoward noise I might make is likely to be taken for an unearthly phenomenon.

I check out the kitchen first, because … oh, just because. Without Miss Louise on my tail demanding explanations for my every move, I am free to do as I please.

Wow. This place is huge. You could hold basketball games in the kitchen, which has three huge stainless-steel Sub-Zero fridges big enough to stash a limousine’s worth of bodies. Basketball-player-size bodies.

With the black granite countertops and black marble floors, this is not the kind of kitchen that tolerates the errant crumb. I see that I will have to do some creative cadging to provide my own meals during my stay here.

I eyeball the back yard, which has all the comforts of your average five-star health club … pools, spas, airconditioned exercise pavilions, distant athletic courts, none of them the sort of facility I would care to spend a minute in. Amazing how humans have to force themselves to physical action when my kind knows that sleeping twenty hours a day is the key to a healthy lifestyle.

In fact, I stretch out in the sun for a few minutes and someone coos and the next thing I know a camera is framing my lissome figure in its single eye.

“He must come with the property,” a camerawoman says. “This place is so big and bland, it’ll be nice to have a little animal interest to focus on.”

“When we are not close up and personal on all these teen sluts,” a guy answers.

‘They are not sluts. This is a very life-affirming program,” she says indignantly.

Like most indignation, it is lost on her hearer, a cameraman with a world-weary attitude.

“These reality shows are just a new network twist on T and A. You do remember T and A programming? And I do not mean Transit Authority. Back in the eighties. Jiggle shows. About the only life-affirming activity around here will be all those Ts and As getting exercised to within an inch of their lives and being uplifted into prime shape. Looks like your new pal the cat could use a little time on the treadmill, and maybe a shave and a haircut.”

I honor the crass slob with a hiss and a glare.

“See. He heard you! Animals are amazingly sensitive to human emotions.”

“That was not a human emotion. That was a professional opinion.”

A reeking boot swings at my mug. The smell almost knocks me over, though the boot never even grazed a whisker. Humans have no idea how overwhelming ground-level odors are.

“Watch your sneaky step, kitty. If you try to steal ascene and get in the way of my camera, you will be shredded cabbage.”

I do not deign to tell him I have kung fu moves that would make Jackie Chan look like he was standing still and whistling Dixie.

Let them underestimate you.

The woman coos at me and stands guard, arms folded, until the creep takes his hand-held camera and leaves.

“Poor fellah,” she says, bending down to pat my head. “Dick really lives up to his name. He’s a good cameraman but pretty pathetic in the public relations department.”

I hate to say it but during her solicitous gesture I get a really good view of T and A. Luckily, they do not attract in my case unless fully furred.

I give her a short appreciative purr, rise, and go back inside while the sliding kitchen door is still ajar, exhaling morgue-cold airconditioning on a desert world. At least there is no icky orange scent here to banish the odor of decay. Yet.

There are four ways upstairs: the front stairs, which resemble those at the Paris Opera House for marble-paved elegance, and the back stairs, which are plain unvarnished wood, steep and twisty, and intended for servants, or at least mothers-in-law. Then there is the elevator, which is way too small for me to easily blend in with the human passengers, and the silent butler in the kitchen, a capacious box open on one side, which operates at the push of a button and has shadowy recesses. Think of it as a large litter box set sideways and in upward and downward motion. Or a mini-elevator for domestics. Or domestic cats. I do.

I press the button with my strong right mitt and hop aboard. Soon, it wafts upward. I press toward the back of the box, like a lizard in a mailbox (a common phenomenon in this climate). When the mechanism stops, I peek out, find the upper hall empty, and thump down to the floor.

More wood.

In an hour, I have made a quick tour of about thirty-five bedroom-with-bath suites. This place is built like a bed-and-breakfast for Attila the Hun and accompanying Mongol horde.

Only once during my tour did anything untoward happen.

It was in bedroom number fourteen, I think. I was nosing around the perimeter when I noticed some unopened high-end luggage in the room, all in pink high-denier and all bearing the cursive initials S. A.

Of course, I naturally think of South America and wonder if Charo is in residence, speaking of T and A, or about to be. But then, as I backed away to the wall when I realized the room could be occupied at any time, I rear-ended my way into an impediment.

A somewhat wishy-washy impediment but an impediment nevertheless.

I whirl to face it and find myself confronting another pervasive pink canvas bag, except this one has a familiar look. And there is a familiar name emblazoned on it. Yvette.

My heart stops and does a double-axel somewhere two feet above the floor.

I inhale the rich, perfumed scent of the Divine Yvette. She is not here at the moment but she has been, and will be again.

What a lucky break! I can protect my Miss Temple from fire, flood, and overexposure on national television and still pursue my courtship of Miss Savannah Ashleigh’s pampered Persian siren at one and the same time.

I tiptoe out of the divine chamber, branding its location on my brain. Now to lay low until ail the players are in place and I can be about my quiet and stealthy work … and, as it happens, play.

Chapter 18

Pretty Putrid in Pink

Despite the bravado of Temple’s Rollerblading arrival at the Teen Queen Castle, she had hit the moment that made her quail: orientation.

This was like joining a sorority in public. Not only was Xoe Chloe not sorority material in any reality, but Temple herself was known by several of the show’s officials. Was her pre-makeover makeover good enough to fool them?

Max had always said brazen was the best disguise. She was about to find out.

The contestants assembled in the large and impressive library, good enough to serve as a set for the mystery board game Clue.

There, the organizers informed them that they were twenty-eight of the most promising young ladies ever assembled and would be working with the celebrity judges and coaches to bring out their true potential.

Temple wasn’t sure if this was an all-girl version of The People’s Court or an NFL draft. In addition, Hollywood’s most hailed hair and makeup artists, personal trainers and wardrobe consultants would oversee their transformation into fully gorgeous, empowered young women.

There was Ken Adair, the Hair Guy, and Kathy Farrell, the mousy makeup specialist in army green knit stirrup pants and a shapeless nightshirt top. Avis Campion, the physical trainer was an awesomely buff black woman with the take-no-prisoners air of a drill sergeant. Marjory Klein, the dietitian, was the oldest advisor, a spare, unadorned woman in her fifties dressed in the cheerful animal-figured loose pants and top favored by nurses nowadays.

And, finally, Beth Marble announced, the winner, besides snaring a small role on CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, Las Vegas—Temple figured it would be a closeup as a corpse—would also win a date with one of two male singing heartthrobs: Aiden Rourke of Day-Glo for the sixteen-to nineteen-year-old Teen Queen winner, and Zach French of Boys Ahoy for the thirteen-to fifteenyear-old ‘Tween Queen winner.

Thirteen unlucky girls in both categories would go away losers, Temple thought, but no one mentioned that except to say that every girl would leave with a brand-new self. The assumption being that any old self was pretty expendable. And that even a brand-new self wasn’t enough sometimes.

Temple tapped her foot with impatience, one glitzy little mule sliding off her toe.

Instantly, she sensed a camera zooming in on the gesture. Sure enough, one of the camera crew had his lens pointed at her foot.

Good grief! Talk about being under a microscope. Two weeks of this would drive everyone batty.

Not that they didn’t have a running start at it.

As Beth Marble, the cooing cheerleader, formally introduced the coaching judges, Temple eyed Mariah, who was searching the fourteen over-fifteens for Temple. Temple was cheered considerably that Mariah was completely confused for now. Once everyone stood up, though, Temple would be the only over-fifteen whose stature belonged in the under-sixteen group.

Beth introduced herself as a pop psychologist and self-help author who had designed the program. Aunt Kit Carlson was introduced by her pen name, Sulah Savage, as a writer of “chick lit fantasy.” Huh? Temple had thought the genre was historical romance. Spin was everywhere.

Ken Adair, the Hair Guy, was a hip metrosexual who probably had done Matt’s quick highlighting job a couple weeks ago when Matt had impersonated a dead man for a few very weird hours. Dexter Manship was introduced last, a lanky, outspoken, and egocentric Aussie in a tartan vest who glowered at the assembled girls as if he were thinking of beheading them.

“This won’t be a cakewalk, ladies,” he warned. “This is not some girly pajama party where you play with makeup. This is a makeover! We’re going to tear you down and build you up right. You don’t sweat, you don’t starve, you don’t bare your pathetic little souls, you don’t fight hard to leave all the other girls in the dust, and you’ll be a bigger failure than you were before. Two weeks, ladies, to become kick-ass winners. Or nothing.”

A pained look crossed Beth’s determinedly pleasant features. Watching people humiliated on national TV had become a countrywide diversion lately. Beth must know that the shows needed brutal drill-sergeant types like Manship. Simon Cowell had proved that on American Idol. Brits appeared to do scathing better than Americans. Witness Ann Robinson’s schoolmarmish dominatrix and her terse tagline, “You are the weakest link. G’bye.”

That was the unsaid mantra for every reality TV show.

Temple eyed the under-fifteens huddled in an excited, scared girly mess on their side of the massive room. Mama Molina worried about some nutcase killing their bodies. But what about the process scarring their minds? Did the parents who signed the fistful of papers realize what a risk they were taking with their kids’ self-esteem?

On the other hand, the girls who’d volunteered for this all overflowed with oodles of that bounce-back crazy-kid optimism Temple remembered from her own youth. She smiled, recalling her secret application to San Diego’s Old Globe Shakespearian theater right out of high school. She’d gotten a very nice letter—encouraging her to apply again when older—that she still had. And now look at her, starring as Xoe Chloe on TV! From Shakespeare to reality TV. Her mother, if she knew about it, would have had a cat fit either way, then or now.

Beth had taken over the wireless microphone. “You’ll find your program kits on the library table against the wall, alphabetically by name. Your roommate’s name is also affixed, so you can meet and go to your rooms to get a great night’s sleep for the program launch tomorrow. Remember, young women, you are likely to be caught on camera at any time, so be on your best behavior at all times. We have our own public relations representative. Crawford, will you step up to the mike?”

Temple found her fingernails driving into her palms as a small dapper man with delusions of hipsterdom headed toward the mike.

Like many radio personalities, he’d cultivated a deep, mellow voice that was reassuring only if you liked buying swampland in Florida. He wore a lime green jogging suit and resembled a rather unripe banana. His graying hair was slicked back and dyed black for the visual media, with a fringe of curls at the nape of his neck, rather like an unwanted “ring around the collar” in laundry detergent ads.

“Thank you, Beth Marble. Now, girls, if you have any questions be sure to ask me. My name is Crawford Buchanan of KREP-AM, and I’ve logged a lot of live time on mike and many on-camera miles. I can advise you on how to look and sound good, even though I’m not an official coach. So come to me any time.”

Temple shuddered at the very idea and was distressed to see many earnestly naive faces watching him with gullible intensity.

While she was seething about the stupidity of letting Awful Crawford loose in a harem of impressionable young girls, the introduction ended and would-be ‘Tween and Teen Queens proceeded to mingle.

Temple shook her head to see Dexter Manship and Crawford Buchanan immediately surrounded by eager questioners.

“Cool tattoo,” a voice said softly in her ear. “I bet they’ll make you cover it with makeup.”

She turned to the svelte and sensuously packaged champagne blonde behind her, who was ogling the drawn-on image of a motorcycle on Temple’s left bicep—had that been a chore!—and spoke her doom again.

“Bad Girl isn’t gonna make it in this crowd.”

“Maybe I don’t wanna make it.”

“That’s a new one. Anyway, name’s Blondina.”

Temple nearly swallowed her bubble gum. Since the wad was as large as a ping-pong ball, that would have been a life-threatening event. Was there any way out of here but blonde?

“Xoe,” Temple said. “With an X.”

“As in X-rated? All right! See you around. And watch your backside. Everyone else will be.”

Actually, that was Temple’s fervent hope. Her selection of provocative piercings and drawn-on tattoos was aimed at distracting people from her face and false hair. Not to mention her lying green eyes.

She didn’t want there to be any chance that Xoe Chloe Ozone would be a finalist, much less a serious contender. This was not a Survivor-style kick-you-off show. Everyone stayed until the bitter end when the final talent show and announcement of the winners took place. If she was written off as a sure loser early, she’d be free to observe and protect.

Temple toddled to the built-in bar, which was stocked with nonalcoholic mixed beverages bearing cute names.

She ordered a My Tai Chi—green tea and lime juice—and turned to study the room.

“Pity.” The voice behind Temple set her spine on edge.

She whirled. Dexter Manship himself had been eyeing her unawares. A shoulder-hoisted camera was eavesdropping and recording over his shoulder. The man holding the camera was half-hidden behind the mask of his equipment. Temple guessed they’d all come to take this constant surveillance so much for granted, they’d soon hardly notice it.

“You’ve got quite a creative look, in your own trashy way, but it’ll all have to go, from the tattoos on out. We want little American beauties here, not five-dollar hookers.”

“You let me in.”

“For a bit of amusement and contrast to the real contenders. This is reality TV, sweets. Freaks sell.”

“You’re living proof of that. Maybe I’ll surprise you and get the votes of the real judges.”

He laughed, turning to play directly to the camera. “Guttersnipe but cheeky. It takes all kinds in America. Or, rather, America takes in all kinds.” He turned to pinch Temple’s overheating cheek before ambling off.

Temple turned to the camera herself. “Somebody should tattoo the words ‘male chauvinist pig’ on his condescending hide.”

Barely had the cameraman cruised away in Manship’s wake than a voice near her said, “Tut, tut, tut.”

Beth was hovering nearby, oddly nervous. “You don’t want to take on Dexter Manship, my dear. He can be vicious.”

“How do you know?”

“Oh, well. His reputation. He’s not afraid to say the most outrageous things in front of, and about, everybody. I’d stay away from him, if I were you.”

“He can’t seem to stay away from me.”

“That’s another warning sign, isn’t it? Perhaps if you dressed less provocatively?”

“Tell it to Britney Spears. If you can get past her bodyguards.”

“We’re looking for a more wholesome female role model.”

Temple eyed the room. Every candidate was dressed to kill. Even nervous thirteen-year-olds like Mariah wore clothes designed to show off, if not outright incite. It must drive their parents bananas.

The word “bananas” brought her gaze back to Crawford, surrounded by his gaggle of naive young things who’d heard the word “media” and rushed like lemmings to any sleazeball therewith associated.

It was really hard to be a sedate thirty pretending to be today’s exhibitionist nineteen. Temple had the same mixed feelings toward the Teen Queen contest as she did toward strippers.

These young women and girls were desperately upwardly mobile. The tangible rewards they fought for were superficial, and in her heart of hearts she felt they were selling themselves short.

“Don’t be glum, dear.” Beth squeezed Temple’s upper left arm, motorcycle tattoo, ladder of little chains on herknit top, and all. “I know your edge is just an act. You’ll learn here that you can be yourself and still succeed.”

Not really, Temple thought. The only way I can succeed here is to not be myself and keep Mariah safe.

Only what was she saving Mariah from? A lurking killer, or the corruption of becoming a Material Girl?

Chapter 19

Chicklets

“Wow. You look cool-io. No wonder you didn’t buy a thing at the mall without metal on it.”

Mariah stood in the middle of the room they shared, staring at Temple. Admiringly. Especially at the skimpy hot-pink stretch top with the short silver chains that were all that held the slit sleeves together.

Temple caught Mariah in a quick embrace, even though the thirteen-year-old was already taller than her five-feet-nothing and probably hated to be hugged.

“Careful,” she whispered in Mariah’s ear. “I bet we’re all on Candid Camera here 24/7. Supposedly we don’t know each other.”

Temple drew back. “You’re a pretty cool chick yourself, kid. I was thinkin’ I’d draw Suzy Square for a roomie. You look like a with-it kitten.”

“Thanks, but I’ve got a lot to work on.”

“Like what?”

“Like my weight.” Mariah opened her pink glossy folder. “Look at this slop they have me eating.”

“It’s called vegetables and fruit.”

“You sound like my mother.”

“Gad!” Temple mimicked a heart attack and fell back on the huge king-size-plus bed they’d share. “Heaven forbid! I’m just trying to help Bugs Bunny sell his line of veggie delights.”

Mariah giggled and sat on her side of the bed, a full body-length away. “You look like you’ve been living on radishes.”

“Yeah, I got a great metabolism but no boobs. You, kiddo, could have a J-Lo figure if you don’t let adolescence pack on the pounds.”

“Really?”

“Really. That’s why the diet and exercise program for you. What you do now sets your babe appeal-o-meter for life. Capische? Suffer now or pay later.”

“You’re not entirely flat.”

“Thanks,” Temple whispered to Mariah, “but I’m implementing things for my role as the Bad Girl candidate.”

“No, really.” Mariah, a quick study, whispered back. “You look cool. What’s with the wig, though?”

“I know some of the folks around here, and don’t want to be recognized. ‘Cuz they know me too.”

“Oooh, too bad. I keep forgetting you’re here to finger a bad person.”

“Thanks for the compliment, kid.” Temple lifted her voice to a normal tone. Time to play to the concealed mikes.

“I like to go by ‘Mari.”

“Why, girl?! You’ve got a great name. Look at Mariah Carey. She’s cool.”

“And she’s just changed her name to ‘Mimi.’ My mother liked that name, but even Mariah Carey thought it was lame.”

“Listen, if I knew why my mother named me what she did, I’d have a Ph.D. in parental psychology.”

“So you hate Xoe?”

“No, it gets attention and distracts them from who I might really be. Oops.” Whispering again. “Neglected Basic Step One in Spy-Girl 101.”

Temple then proceeded to check the large room and adjoining bathroom for all the usual suspect places for hidden cameras and bugs. Mariah watched with round eyes, then joined in the hunt.

“What a posh joint,” Temple exclaimed for the unseen recording devices. “Wonder why the dude who built this place went bankrupt? It’s on sale for four-point-six million. I bet somebody will pounce on this white elephant once it’s become famous on national TV.”

“Like us?” Mariah asked.

“Well, I hope somebody doesn’t pounce on us … unless we want him to. How about that win-a-date thing? You like the boy band guy, Zach French?”

Mariah shrugged. “He’s okay. For a kid. I like the guy your age group gets, Aiden Rourke, way better. He’s such a stud.”

“Now, how do you know that? He could be a dud. You young chicks always go for the older guy. It’s a stage.”

“The whole world is a stage,” Mariah retorted, spreading her arms and shamelessly playing to the presumed cameras.