Cat In A Hot Pink Pursuit

Temple wished she had spotted something but maybe it was too early. Or maybe there was some law against secretly filming underage kids like Mariah. There oughta be.

Though the place seemed clean, so far, Temple advised her roomie via whisper that they’d better discuss “real stuff” only in the bathroom from now on.

“Gotcha, girlfriend.” Mariah high-fived her. “You really like my name?”

“I love it. Your mom, who’s way off base on s0000 much, was dead-on about that one.”

“She is kinda square.”

“Not square, hon. Wrapped tight. Probably because she worries so much about you, which mothers do. I had one of those myself once. Still do.”

“What would she say about your being here?”

“She wouldn’t say a thing, Mariah, because she’d be passed out cold in a faint on the entry hall floor.”

Mariah giggled again. “You are so funny. This is gonna be a riot.”

Temple devoutly hoped not.

That night they found that the Pink Fairy had visited their closets. Each had a pink Teen Queen sleep T-shirt and terrycloth robe and matching jogging suit and workout wear, all with their names embroidered in silver on the shoulder.

Once clothed like Stepford-wife wannabes, each contestant was singled out from the herd after breakfast on the patio and marched off to either exercise regimes or consultations with the coach/judges and various gurus.

Savannah Ashleigh told Temple her Goth look was “dead,” never getting the humor of the pronouncement. She also said it was “aging,” as was her Cher hair, and had to go.

Dexter Manship, told her she had control and authority issues. Surprise. He did too.

Her Aunt Kit Carlson said Temple needed to find a more positive cultural role model and expressed dismay that her talent selection would be a rap number she would write herself.

Beth Marble told Temple her persona hid a sensitive soul that needed to fight free and fly.

She was given a schedule of meals, exercises, and appointments with all of them, and signed up for a shopping expedition with a wardrobe consultant on the second-to-last day.

In the mansion’s sprawling den, Temple found several of the contestants sprawling on the off-white upholstered furniture.

They eyed Temple as warily as sheep would a wolf when she entered the room. Mariah was still undergoing interviews, but some girls her age sat on the floor trying to get the Xbox to work.

Like the other media equipment in this room, it seemed to have been disabled.

“No distractions,” a lanky blond girl commented, watching Temple take in the scene. “Come on in. I’m Norma Jean. All we can do here is exercise our butts off, consult, train, primp for the ever-present cameras, or hang and get on each other’s nerves. You don’t look like any competition to worry about.”

“Thanks.”

“Too short,” another girl said, her long legs stretched out on the floor and her hair color so blond it touched dead white on the color scale. “I’m Blanca.”

“Too dark,” said yet another blonde, this one even yellower. “Call me Honey.”

“Too flat,” pronounced an ash blonde with platinum streaks who filled out her spandex top like helium does a balloon. “I’m Silver.”

“Too freckled,” complained a dishwater blonde who’d bothered to come close enough to ogle Temple almost nose-to-nose. “I’m Ashlee.”

So much for sisterhood.

Every girl in the place except Temple hailed from the merry old land of Clairol.

At least no one said “too old,” which would have really given the game away.

Temple took a seat on a giant ottoman, not sure how one began talking with piranhas. The last time she’d been in a female competition had been high school softball, although some might say females were always in competition.

As the aura of all that blondness grew familiar, Temple saw that none of these girls were as picture-perfect as the magazine ads. Yet they all had terrific facial bone structure, like the radical makeover candidates on The Swan. These reality show producers were savvy enough to start with a good foundation before they worked their “magic” transformation.

“Hi. I’m Amber. Don’t listen to them.” A lanky strawberry blonde with thunder thighs joined Temple on the ottoman, which could probably seat forty. Temple didn’t envy her. That body type was hard to change. “We’re all hyper-nervous about our own evaluations. Have you done your interviews yet?”

Temple nodded. Suddenly, she was the center of everyone’s interest.

“Are they too beastly mean to stand, like Simon on American Idol?” Silver asked.

“They’re pretty blunt,” Temple said. “It wouldn’t be good TV otherwise. You can see the cameras and you know they want to make you sweat.”

“Who could see you sweat with that mop of dyed black hair?”

“You sound just like Mr. Adair, the Hair Guy. At least I stand out in a crowd,” Temple added pointedly. “Why did you all want to be in such a pressure-cooker, anyway?”

“Same reasons you did,” Ashlee said.

“I don’t think so.”

Temple doubted anyone else in the crew was a plant. Or a mole … oh. There actually could be a fake mole, as opposed to the real mole part Temple was playing. Reality shows loved to use fake contestants as insiders who could stir up trouble, keep everyone on edge, and rat to the producers on them all.

“What are your reasons?” Honey asked as if beeswax wouldn’t melt in her mouth.

“Needed to get away from the family, such as they are.” Temple snapped her gum for emphasis. “My brothers’ bike club was keeping me up nights.”

“You’re brother’s a biker?” Blanca asked with a curdled expression.

“Brothers. Plural. I have … six, I think. Yeah. You ever heard of the Demon Dozen?”

“No.”

“Why’d they let you in here?” Ashlee made no secret of the fact that this was a comment on the bad taste of the producers, not merely a question.

“That’s a no-brainer. I’m the only one here who isn’t a Paris Hilton clone. Thin and dumb is getting old.”

“Would you please stop chewing that tacky gum!” Blanca said.

“If it weren’t tacky, it wouldn’t be gum, sis. Can’t stop. It’s my weight-control secret.”

“Gum?”

“Yeah.” Temple blew another big pink bubble, then reeled it back into her mouth. “Burns calories. The longer you chew it, the more you lose.” Now that she had their rapt attention, it was time for a kicker, the more ridiculous the better. “And if it’s green tea gum—very rare, that stuff—you’ll lose a pound a day.”

“Really?” Amber edged near, her lips almost quivering to acquire a wad of green tea bubble gum.

Temple was seriously wondering how she could “manufacture” such a thing.

“All right, girls. Ready to rock-and-roll on the exercise mats?”

They all turned to regard the Barbie doll in bright pink spandex yoga pants and top. “I’m Brandy, y’alls personaltrainer, and an hour a day keeps the cellulite away. We’ll be working out by the heart-shaped pool. Won’t that be inspiring? Follow me.”

Silver was both preening and frowning. “Didn’t Jayne Mansfield have a heart-shaped pool? She was the best blonde bimbo since Marilyn.”

“She had a heart,” Temple said, “but not a head.”

Only ex-newsies would remember the car accident that had decapitated the actress in nineteen-something ancient. The newspapers and TV stations always like to recall the date of anything grisly once a decade or so and call it an anniversary mention. That was one reason Temple had left the news biz for the PR biz. Grisly did not go over big in PR. Except, somehow, it seemed, on accounts she handled… .

The crew of identically clad contestants, joined by the Little Sisters from the breakfast room, marched behind Brandy out to the welcome sunlight of the house’s expansive grounds.

What a sight to behold.

Twenty-eight hot pink yoga mats surrounded the heart-shaped swimming pool, its gunite walls painted pink for the occasion.

The only thing that marred the pink perfection of the scene was the whipped cream letters lying like fluffy clouds across every mat, spelling out …

Everyone else stopped cold in the hot Las Vegas sun, frowning into their hot pink sweat bands, but Temple/Xoe just had to step forward and count: Die, you damn heartless bitches!

Twenty-eight letters exactly, counting the punctuation marks. Twenty-eight little candidates all in a row. Someone was a perfectionist.

Chapter 20

Whipped Scream

You have not lived until you have seen the Las Vegas crime scene investigation folks (now famed on TV) photographing twenty-eight hot-pink yoga mats with whipped cream pooling on them in the sun.

By the time that they, and I, have been alerted and are on the scene, the colorful language, laid out one letter and/or punctuation mark to a mat, has melted enough that the b in “bitches” looks more like a sideways w. The authorities have to take the witnesses’ word for it as to the original intention.

I, however, have to take no one’s word, and never do. That is why I am such an ace detective. I am incorruptible. I must admit, though, that the whipped cream was a temptation too yummy to leave untasted. I was alone on the scene then. My Miss Temple, aka Xoe Chloe for the nonce, had been shepherded indoors toawait the police, along with everybody else. Human, that is. Or what passes for it on reality TV. The show security staff, i.e., bronzed gods in loin cloths, were arrayed along the doors to the pool area, facing inside to keep twenty-eight agitated candidates and assorted staff members from messing up the scene of the culinary crime.

So I was free to explore on my own.

The first thing my shameless taste test discovered was that the whipped cream was not even beaten. It was, in fact, a particularly soapy shaving cream, one that offered a full-bodied texture and a risqué and amusing hint of mint.

Not my vintage, thank you. And I thank Bast that I am not required to shave. It would be a full-time job. My unstunted white whiskers—vibrissae to the cognoscenti at the vet’s office—were double-dipped in fluffy white after my explorations, so I paused under a bush to wash off the evidence.

Yuck! No wonder people wash out the mouths of their sassy kits with soap. I would not even refer to a female dog by the proper term after a close encounter with this stuff.

I am clean-shaven as far as my kind is concerned but fighting residual nausea when I notice that a couple of curious cats have whiskered in on my action. Before I can throw my weight around and order them away, I realize that both are of Persian extraction, and one is of the sublime shade of platinum blonde known as “shaded silver.”

I drop my laundry mitt and stand at attention with every muscle in my body.

Although the sight of her personalized carrier told me the Divine Yvette would be on the premises, her personal presence is still a potent form of shock and awe. Not to mention also encountering her kittykin, for the fulsome blonde of blended apricot, gold, and cream shades is her shaded golden sister, the Sweet Solange.

No one told me the Shaded Sisters were part of the deal.

I leap out from my place of concealment but naturally must play the brusque (though noble) crime scene guardian.

“You there!” I cry as they are about to dip their dark little tootsies in the c of the word formerly known as “bitches.”

“Desist.”

Aqua-green and moss-green eyes circled in black mascara regard me with calm surprise and no hint of obedience.

Seeing the pair of them side by side is the human parallel of viewing a Jaguar XKE next to a Lamborghini. Where is a guy to look first?

I should mention one of the most unusual and charming aspects of the shaded Persian breed. Pale as their silver and golden coats may be, the leather on their persons—nose, eye surrounds, pads—is black, as are the hairs on the bottoms of their feet, which is why I call them “soot foots.” Purely to myself, you can imagine. No Persian worth her pedigree would answer to such a lowly description.

I trot over to enforce my order, for the females of my kind are not the docile and downtrodden type. Au contraire.

Hmmm. I see the Divine Yvette’s presence is the usual bad influence already. I am starting to think in French.

“Bon jour, girls,” I say.

“Hssss, les flics,“the Divine One says, which is the French equivalent of “Cheese it, the cops!”

(I should also make clear that the Divine Yvette is not the slightest bit French, unless rubbing shoulders with teacup poodles on Rodeo Drive makes her so. But she likes to think that others think so. And they both bear French names. Why people attempt to social climb via their animal companions’ names, I cannot tell you.) Me, I was born nameless, and the street people gave me my moniker, Midnight Louie. Fine with me. I think every male on the planet is secretly a Louie, only they just do not know it. Yet.

“Ladies, ladies.” I have arrived, panting slightly, whether from haste or another, less conscious cause I will not say.

“Louie! I did not expect to see you here.” The Divine Yvette blinks her aquamarine orbs as if doubting the message they are sending her.

Miss Solange regards me with her usual expression, which is calm but devastating.

“I can understand that,” I say, “but you can see crime has called me like a plate of lasagna calls Garfield.”

“Please,” Yvette sniffs, “do not mention that common yellow striper. He is not in our league.”

“No, of course not. He is a joke. But I must ask you ladies to keep your delicate nails out of this fluffy white stuff. It is evidence that the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police crime techs will soon be”—hmm, “sifting” does not quite do it—“nosing around.”

“What an unfortunate lime odor.” Yvette shakes a dainty foot in demonstration.

“The brand is Razor’s Edge,” Solange adds.

I gaze into those mysterious and soulful eyes. Too bad I am previously and seriously attached to her sister Yvette, because this is one great big beautiful doll in her own right. “How did you detect the brand?”

She sighs, which our kind does by looking sideways.

“One of our mistress’s … mates used it. Detestable stuff! So declassé.”

“I do not think lime scent is `the classy’ either. So your mistress, Miss Savannah Ashleigh, is present here? In what capacity?”

“Our mistress,” Yvette explains patiently, “does not have any capacity whatsoever. You must have noticed that in our previous mutual encounters.”

Unfortunately, “our previous mutual encounters” were way too mutual. I am not one for three-ways, despite my roguish reputation. So most of my close encounters with the Divine Yvette have meant her airhead mistress was also present.

“What has brought out Miss Solange on this occasion?” I ask, for I only met her formally once during our separate but mutual jaunt to New York City and ad agency shenanigans, back when Yvette and I were cat food commercial performers.

Ah, the lights. The cameras. The action.

“Our mistress has been promoted,” Solange explains. “She is a judge now.”

“Miss Savannah Ashleigh, the low-amp of Savannah, is a judge? What are federal appointments coming to?”

“A judge of the ‘Tween and Teen Queen competitions,” Yvette corrects me.

If one must be corrected, the Divine Yvette is the one to do it.

“It is like American Idol,” Solange adds, “with a panel of celebrity judges.”

“More like American Idle,” I mutter. It is no secret that Miss Savannah Ashleigh has been living off the TV commercial residuals of her feline companions rather than her own efforts.

“Our mistress is doing very well now,” Solange says in her defense. “Her old movies are now considered`camp’ and she is having a career revival. So she has semiretired us and we both travel with her now.”

I bring up a sensitive subject with Yvette. “And what about the, ah, you know … the patter of little paws?”

(I had been falsely accused of felonious littering during our last commercial assignment when the Divine Yvette ended up expecting. However, my Miss Temple fought that charge tooth and fingernail in The People’s Court and proved me innocent. Well, innocent of that particular outcome. The Divine Yvette proved to be the victim of attack when all her kits were born wearing the stripes of my rival spokescat, the yellow-bellied Maurice.)

“Oh, them.” Yvette yawns. “They were forced upon me and after birth were quickly allocated to other homes.”

I glance at Solange. Apparently the maternal instinct can be a fleeting thing.

“Poor Yvette,” she answers indignantly. “Attacked and left in an unwanted condition. Good homes were found.”

“They all came out yellow-striped,” Yvette adds with a shudder that sends all her fine silver hairs rippling.

I quite understand how an unwed mother might resent the resemblance of offspring to a foul attacker but…

“Is there not a strain of Stripe in the Shaded line?” I ask. “Were not common tabbies responsible for the Shaded’s sublime black leather and faint tracery of markings amid the fur that lends such a rich sheen to the divine silver and gold?”

Yvette shrugs again. “Stripe is common. Black and brown are the weediest variety of cat colors. If we have any Stripe in us, it goes back countless generations and therefore does not count.”

I did not mean to impugn the Shaded pedigree but must take exception to her characterization of black and brown, being of the very common House of Black myself.

Solange addresses this before I can. “I am actually the older type of Shaded Persian. There was a time when kits of my ilk were tossed aside as unvalued throwbacks. Fortunately, we are coming into new favor and our more robust coloration is prized now, in the show ring and out of it.”

“Hear, hear!” I say, eyeing Solange with new appreciation.

There is a little bit of tabby in every cat, and particularly in every alley cat.

Yvette has wandered away during my mutual admiration society musings with Solange.

She is patting at something under a bush.

I cannot have her disturbing my crime scene, so I rush over.

Well, well, well. I will have to see that the Las Vegas CSI, the real-life ones, find this prime piece of evidence pronto. It is a can of Razor’s Edge shaving cream, lime scented.

“Good job, girls,” I say. “Now huff your ruffs back inside. I will be sure to direct my associate’s attention to this useful clue.”

“You must visit us and tell us what happened, Louie,” Solange manages to say as I hustle them toward the glass sliding doors where they can paw pitifully until admitted.

“Where will I find you?”

“Lavender Wing, with the judges and Team Queen members.”

With that I return to the deserted pool area and the too-obviously abandoned shaving cream can. This job must have taken several cans. Where are they?

I sit and regard the empty can. I wonder what theCSI will make of the pad prints amid whatever human traces remain. Which is likely nothing. This can is a message, not a clue.

I picture the cops “fingerprinting” the Divine Yvette and Solange when their presence at this overall crime scene is detected.

Then they will be “soot foots” indeed!

I am very glad that I will not be wielding the inkpads on that occasion.

Ouch!

Chapter 21

Hanky Panky

Temple and Mariah huddled in their room that night, comparing notes on hastily scrawled pages they tore up and packed away.

As befitted a ‘Tween ‘n’ Teen Queen competition, half of their shared notes concerned the rules of the contest, the rituals of competition, psyching out the judges, and a keen awareness that their every word and gesture could be recorded.

The other half concerned the skullduggery. Skullduggery. Temple liked that word but Mariah adored it.

She was her mother’s daughter, though the very expression would have made Mariah howl. She was so into being “not Mother” at the moment.

For a final consultation, they huddled in the bathroom for a fast five minutes, shower running full blast and steaming up the mirrors, the air, and possibly parboilingany electronic bugs and cameras. Such devices weren’t allowed in the bathrooms anyway.

Still, that was the underlying paranoia of reality TV. One could never be sure.

So their conversation was as veiled as the air. -“What if that shaving cream had been acid?” Mariah theorized, “and all of us had been lying there exercising and trying to get tans and burning our skins off?”

“You have a morbid imagination.”

“Thanks. Whatcha think?”

“Thanks for asking. I think it was a stunt to get attention, which worked. And I don’t know if we really have a stalker among us, or if it’s the producers trying to throw the contestants off-balance, or—”

“Or a crazy killer?”

“Right. Like there are a lot of sane ones.” Temple leaned her arm past the shower curtain to crank the water force up the last notch. “Hand me that razor, please.”

Mariah did, looking a little jealous that Temple was so proficient at shaving her armpits. Hey, this was Feminine Hygiene 101. She should be a pro.

“I don’t think my mother shaves,” Mariah said glumly. “Are you sure?”

“No, but it doesn’t seem like something she would do. You’re really good at it.”

“Thanks.” Temple tore off a hunk of toilet paper and put it on the nicked shin that had happened when Mariah had opined that she didn’t think her mother shaved. Only her mustache!

“Those drawn-on tattoos are cool.”

“Tattoos are cool when they’re temporary. When they’re permanent, they’re a problem waiting to happen.”

“why?”

“Well, we always reinvent ourselves as we toddle through life. We should aim to be a blackboard, not a pincushion with no expiration date.”

“Huh? Oh, I get it. You’re funny.”

“I hope so, because this situation is getting less so every day.”

“It’s like boot camp.” Mariah picked at the dead skin around her big toenail. She sounded ‘tweenage sullen again. Temple found herself suddenly sympathetic toward Carmen Molina. “Everybody tells you what to do. `Exercise.’ `Suck in your stomach.’ `Eat your vegetables.’ `Smile.’“

Temple smiled. “Imagine making smiling an order? How many of those rules does your mother harp on?”

“The vegetables.”

“That’s not too bad.”

“No. But being a girl is harder than that.”

“Being a girly girl is harder. We don’t all have to be pretty in pink.”

Mariah squinted up at Temple. “I can’t see the real you in pink. But it does go with that Elvira wig in a weird sort of way.”

Temple pushed the hot, damp hairdo back on her forehead. It felt like a heavy wet turban.

“This thing makes one admire Cher in concert. Pink doesn’t go with my natural hair color, so it’s kinda fun to wear it now. I feel like a 1958 Cadillac convertible.”

Mariah giggled. ‘You’re not big enough to be a hugerrific car like that.”

“No, but I can think I am. You see anything suspicious around the camp today?”

“I snooped, like you said, and I found six cans of Razor’s Edge in the contestants’ lockers.”

“Good work! Empty? You didn’t touch them?”

“No! Only picked ‘em up with a towel. All of them were pretty light. You know what I’m thinking?”

“That whoever sprayed those yoga mats used what was on hand?”

“Yeah. How’d you know?”

“With this vast cast of competitive characters, it’s so easy to spread the blame. I bet our perp used latex gloves though.”

Mariah nodded. “My mom has a whole box at the house. She never leaves home without ‘em.”

Temple giggled this time. “She sounds like a gynecologist.”

“Ah, I have my first appointment after this is over.”

“The pits!”

“Is it scary?”

“Oh, yeah, but you get used to it. I mean, we all have to do it. Consider it a badge of courage.”

Mariah considered while Temple watched, remembering her own first gynecological exam. No matter how prepared you were, it was always a bit of a psychic violation.

“We heard about that in school,” Mariah was saying. “The badge of courage story. It was about war.”

The red badge of courage for women was a different kind of war, Temple thought. The onset of menstruation. Of being different from men. Of being capable of being hurt just for your gender, physically and psychologically.

Temple was a modern girl. She bought her own “sanitary protection” with careless regularity, somewhere between the way she bought breath mints and condoms. The euphemistic phrase “sanitary protection” still made the process seem dirty and secret, even today. What did you tell a girl on the brink? Relax and enjoy the anxiety, the shame of doing something guys don’t and sometimes mock?

Where was Carmen Molina when you needed her? Adolescence was murder.

For guys too, remember.

Temple pointed to the bloody nick on her shin. “Nothing is smooth, Mariah. Everything hurts a little. That’s how we know we’re alive. And we want to stay that way.

I’m afraid someone around this competition doesn’t feel the same way.”

“Yeah.” Mariah ran the disposable pink razor up her still fuzzy lower leg. “That’s obvious. We gotta find out who. That’s why my mother sent you here.”

“You think so?”

“No, she wanted you here as my babysitter but I’m not a baby anymore, so you might as well do something more useful.”

Temple gave her a high five. “Baby, you are so right!”

They were all on a schedule. Boot camp for beauty. That made them predictable targets.

Temple didn’t like being separated from Mariah for most of the day but they were on opposite ends of the age meridian.

The moment when Temple realized that she was old enough to be Mariah’s mother, she got cold chills. And then she heard her own biological clock ticking. What did she want? To be a pal or a parent?

But this wasn’t about her.

And then there were more one-on-ones with the judges in their advisor capacity.

First up was her very own maternal aunt, Kit Carlson.

Temple went to that one chewing a wad of gum big enough to choke a camel (and therefore disguise her voice).

She slumped on her tailbone on the single rattan chair before the Consultant Room One desk, and snapped gum.

Aunt Kit remained admirably cool to the whole act as she flipped through Xoe’s file.

“You wouldn’t be here at all if Manship hadn’t liked your cheeks,” Kit finally noted, slapping the file shut to gain Xoe’s attention, and staring at her over the rims of her half-glasses.“Men are easy.”

“Men are only fifty percent of the vote.”

“Yeah, what’s that Elvis guy here for anyway?”

“Apparently local color. I think he’s like Jai on Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. A cultural consultant, always a vague and unrewarding position.”

Temple shrugged. “Who cares what any of you do or think? I don’t want to win anyway.”

“I bet not. Losing can become a way of life. You get to sneer at the winners, whine, be cynical.”

“Cynical. Like it’s a sin? Sins are cool.”

“You try not to show it but you’re obviously a very bright girl.”

Temple sat up, indignant. “What makes you say that?” Kit smiled, making Temple feel like a rat for the masquerade.

“You worked that guy like a pro,” Kit said, woman to woman.

“Pro what?”

“Pro girly girl. No prob. That’s what this exercise in media exposure is about. Question is, is there a real person under that persona?”

“Persona? Lady, what big words you use. I’m more real than all those bottle blondes out there put together.”

“Granted. But what wins? The obvious. I almost voted against admitting you to the contest but I had to admire the crass way you played on Manship’s crassest inclinations. I have a weakness for chutzpah.”

“Is he really the deciding vote?”

“He’s the audience favorite. Everyone has a mean little devil inside aching to bust out. He feeds that need. That makes him a man of power. The temptation for women everywhere is to play the man of power. That’s the way women lose it. Lose it for winning.”

“So what are you doing here if the game’s so crooked?”

“Restoring balance? Plus, I’ve never done anything like this. I thought it’d be interesting. And it’ll help my career.”

“You’re just in it for the fame and fortune.”

“Anything wrong with that?”

“Just don’t go pretending you actually care about any of us.”

“But I do.”

When Temple snorted and looked away, Kit went on. “If we women leave it up to men to judge women, we’ll end up with the Taliban.”

Temple was speechless at the conviction in her aunt’s tone but Xoe squirmed in her chair. “This is way heavy stuff, lady.”

“She ain’t heavy, she’s my sister.”

Temple blinked. Maybe she had to banish tears. “That’s brother, lady, that quote. ‘He ain’t heavy, he’s my brother.”’

“It can’t work both ways?”

“Not in my world.”

“Get a different world, then. Make one.”

“I’m trying.” For an awful, role-playing moment, Temple was Xoe Chloe Ozone, teen girl rebel. Her Aunt Kit was good. Very good.

Kit smiled crookedly, at her. “Try a little less hard, and try being a little more soft, huh? Being interesting isn’t the kiss of death in the real world. It just looks like it sometimes.”

“Yeah. Thanks.” Temple stood and slouched away. She was such a fraud.

Who else around here wasn’t?

Including a stalker/killer.

Before she reached the door, Kit leaped up to intercept her.

“Oh, fashion faux pas! You’ve got mascara smudgesunder both eyes. You surely don’t think raccoon eyes are punk?”

Before Temple could defend her waterproof brand of mascara, Kit leaned close and whispered, “We need to talk somewhere. Privately.” Kit nodded to a small door at the left and whispered again. “Adjoining privy. They had it right in the old days, didn’t they?”

Temple recognized the word for “private” as applied to old-time bathrooms. But Xoe Chloe just looked puzzled, then nodded and followed Kit past the coffered wooden door into a bathroom equipped for a Victorian household, wood-paneled, with matching enclosed tub and toilet.

Once there Kit turned the faucets on full, retrieved a pair of thong panties that were drying over the edge of the tub, thought better of it, grabbed a tea-rose-embroidered hand towel instead, and tossed it over some sort of sprinkler spigot in the ceiling.

Thong panties? Temple thought. “I don’t think they can have cameras in the bathroom,” Xoe Chloe whispered.

“Just to be safe, sweetie.” Kit sat on the broad tub surround and kicked off her shoes, a pair of svelte but sensible pumps. Pink. She was an ex-actress after all, and tended to dress for real life as if it were a play.

“Not in the bathrooms,” Temple said. “Invasion of privacy. Even for reality TV. Cross my heart. But it never hurts to be safe.”

“Exactly,” Kit said. “What’s up, niece?”

“Oh, darn! I was afraid you’d make me.”

“The big, black hair and big bad attitude did the job until I spent a bit more time with you. It’s not nice to fool Mother Nature, and it’s even worse to play your old Aunt Kit. What happened to your dear curly red head, which I first glimpsed when you lay in your mother’s arms spitting up on my fifty-dollar infant jumpsuit christening gift, which was a lot of money when you were born, dear, although now it wouldn’t make a decent tip at Lutèce.”

“Wigs are us here in Las Vegas. So I was an ingrate from the first, huh?”

“An expressive child, I would say. Not one afraid to make her opinions known, of the infant menu or the world at large.”

“How did you end up here—?” they began in unison.

Kit took the next line. “Money, dear heart. My feeble celebrity as a romance author doesn’t get me many freebies but this was one of them. I bet the producers thought my theatrical background would make me more exciting on camera. Poor things. The stage was my métier.”

“You’re plenty lively. And just who are the producers? We keep hearing about them but never see them.”

“Money men. It’s the same everywhere. They keep out of sight so no one can dun them for funds or tell them what to do. I call this particular set Toddman and Goodson, an old-fashioned pair of late-middle-aged men living vicariously through the stuff that dreams and network profits are made on. All the hip young producers are making CSI imitations. I imagine you haven’t seen them, my dear, because they look like accountants and you’d never recognize them as the powers that be. So, why the wild child persona?”

Temple took a deep breath and explained, and then she swore her aunt to silence.

Temple was scheduled to see sweet-faced Beth but couldn’t stomach that after her confession to Kit. Beth was a super-sweet lady who seemed to live in a dream world, and Temple didn’t feel like deceiving another nice middle-aged lady who deserved a better menopause than an appointment with Xoe Chloe. She decided Xoe didn’t abide by schedules.

She headed for Consultant Room Three, Dexter Manship’s. It would be fun to play off someone she despised, a Crawford Buchanan substitute, so to speak.

Xoe didn’t knock, natch. Just swaggered in, swinging her hips and her belly button ring.

The high-backed leather chair behind the desk was turned away from her. (Wouldn’t you know sweet and savvy Aunt Kit had been assigned a room that looked like a porch but Dexter Manship had a Lord of the Manor study to commandeer?)

“Hey, man. I’m here.” Temple waited for an answer but got none. “A little early, like a couple hours, but what’s the point of being a go-getter if you can’t wake up the troops.”

No answer, not even a creak of leather.

Xoe leaned over the desk (all the better to create some cleavage) and shoved one wing forward with all her might.

The chair whirled around faster than Norman Bates’s mother in Psycho.

No wonder. It was empty.

Xoe put a hand on her bare hip and pouted for the cameras. She looked around. “Dude! Dude?” A glint of mirrored glass caught her eye. She swaggered over and helped herself to a swig of scotch on the rocks.

“What a setup,” she told the room, and the cameras. It was wonderful not wanting, needing, to win this thing. She could be her not-self. Very liberating. “Bet that’s a casting couch in the corner. The whole thing’s a setup. Right?” She toasted her glass to the room’s four corners. “It’s been fixed.”

She walked to the windows behind the desk, which overlooked the pool area. Two groups of seven girls were working out on the new hot pink mats or swimming in the heart-shaped pool while the other two groups were making the rounds of the diet/beauty/wardrobe consultants or “counseling” with the judges-cum-advisors and gadflies.

And she was indoors, in this shadowed room, with no one to shadow box. She set her glass down dead center on the desk, and ambled to the door. No coaster to buffer the expensive wood.

She didn’t know what she’d expected to find in here. Maybe a scorpion to tease, a statement to make. For a moment, she’d thought she might find a body waiting to be discovered.

But the room was empty, and the cameras had recorded a solo performance.

There was only one thing to do: go to her actual appointment with, sigh, Savannah Ashleigh. Late.

Chapter 22

A Meeting of Minds

Temple sidled into Consulting Room Four twenty minutes late, prepared to make surly obeisance.

Not to worry.

Savannah Ashleigh was striding away on the elliptical walker in the office, the TV tuned to the soap operas and a Cosmopolitan magazine splayed open on the machine’s control panel. Apparently, each judge had been allowed to import whatever they wanted to their offices.

Well! Temple was dying to see at what level, speed, and calorie-burning rate the woman was operating. However, the Cosmo issue effectively hid everything but its own provocative contents.

Savannah Ashleigh’s shiny spandex workout attire hid nothing. She had a Hollywood body, that was for sure, narrow but rounded. Her Dolly Parton hair bounced in one platinum blonde wave as she glided along at a rapid pace, her face delicately sheened with sweat.

Xoe leaned against the door and applauded, slowly.

That threw Savannah out of her rat race. She shook her head, batted her eyelashes, and observed her observer.

“Are you my ten fifteen?”

It was now 10:35, but Temple nodded. (Xoe was a shrugger, not a nodder, so Temple had to step in for her from time to time.) Reluctantly flipping the magazine shut, Savannah pressed her forefinger to the control panel and the green level control vanished … not before Temple noticed it was solid all the way to the top. Savannah was a serious strutter.

She eyed Xoe for the first time. “My, you’re a grim little thing. Pastels and brights, hon, are what you need. And, of course, someone will talk to you about that hair.”

Temple was willing to bet Savannah’s hair was about as natural as her own.

“Now sit down in that cute little chair, and I’ll sit at the desk and we’ll go over your program.”

“I have a program?” Xoe slouched into the seat indicated. “That makes me sound like a computer.”

“Don’t we wish. Program out the calories and carbs, program in the veggie shakes and distilled water.”

“That’d give me the shakes, all right.”

“Now.” Savannah was paging through the contents of the standard hot pink folder. “Hmmm. Could lose ten pounds. Definitely a hair and face makeover. I’ve been through your wardrobe—”

“When?”

“When you were out of your room, dear. Such trash. If it doesn’t chime, clatter, cling, or clash with every other color in your wardrobe, except for black, it isn’t there. We’ll be looking for something light, floral, and airy for you.”

“Are you recommending a scent or a wardrobe? ‘Cuz your recommendations stink.”

“A very good point, uh, Ex-oh-ee. A signature fragrance would be a fine addition to your wardrobe. I don’t think any other girl has mentioned a stinking problem, so you would be ahead of the competition. On that matter.”

“It’s Xoe-ee.”

“Oh. As in ‘Zoo.’ Well, you might consider a name change while you’re at it. Perhaps … Daisy.” She looked up to register Temple’s expression. “Or perhaps … not. Anyway, I’ve ordered some darling things for you, which should fit whether you work off those biggy, piggy ten pounds. Or not.”

Savannah rose, dabbed at her forehead with a floral hand towel, and escorted Temple to the door.

That was when some poor ‘Tween or Teen Queen candidate who had actually been left alone for a moment began to scream to wake the dead.

Savannah stood paralyzed in her tracks, hands over her waves of hairsprayed curls.

Temple sprinted out into the hall, not only beginning work on the biggy, piggy extra ten pounds but to find out whether a contestant had killed or been killed, or had just broken a fingernail.

Chapter 23

Exercised to Death

The screams continued, leaving no doubt that most of the contestants possessed well-developed pairs of lungs, not to mention any superstructure above them.

Mariah was three steps behind Temple, and Temple never thought for a moment of telling her to stay back for her own good.

They were both committed to serving time in what was quickly becoming a House of Horrors and deserved to know what was going on firsthand.

Temple and Mariah were apparently closest, for they burst through the double doors to the indoor workout room and found Silver standing hunched just inside the doors, screaming her heart out.

What riveted her gaze was instantly obvious.

A blood-spattered figure in a hot pink leotard lay slumped over an elliptical walker machine … the very kind of machine that Savannah had been putting throughits paces, or vice versa, just moments before in her private office.

Mariah gasped, and Silver screamed until her hair should have turned white had she not bleached it that shade long ago.

Temple gradually realized that the figure on the walker had pointed hands and feet. And then she saw that its bubblegum-pink flesh, spattered with a measles of blood drops, was rather … rubbery.

Footsteps were pounding into the room behind them and stopping.

“She looks like a Barbie doll,” Mariah’s clear young voice said.

Temple nodded. She’d heard of defaced and mutilated Barbie doll images showing up around town from Mariah’s mother.

But this was worse. This figure was life-size.

“It’s not a real person, it’s a blow-up doll,” Temple murmured.

“What’s that?” Mariah’s dark eyes demanded an honest answer.

“Later,” Temple hissed under her breath. “Cameras.”

By now the kitschy security forces were pushing their way into the room … and coming up mortified at the scene they confronted.

No way bronzed Greek god he-men were going to deal with butchered sex toys.

Beth Marble had finally arrived. Her voice could be heard urging the girls to leave immediately.

Temple went over to take Silver’s arm. “Easy. It’s just a doll. You can’t kill Barbie. She’s forever. Come on.”

Silver moved in tiny baby steps like an old, old woman. Amazing how shocking unreality could be.

Yet Temple couldn’t underestimate the sick mentality at work, or how bold it was. Someone knew the setup and was exploiting it.

Someone? Anyone. The crew was an assemblage of workers from here and anywhere. The contestants were selected from anyone who chose to enter. Temple knew for a fact that being a finalist could be manipulated. This could be about more than a single demented prankstercum-killer. It could be a conspiracy.

The producers could have arranged it. Maybe this had always been more horror show than beauty/makeover pageant. American Idol-cum-Fear Factor

“I’m calling the police,” Beth announced from the hall when the room had been cleared and the double doors firmly shut on the bloodied doll.

The bloodied life-size actual doll. The faux victims were getting bigger, and the “attacks” closer together and bolder. More personal.

Temple was interested to see three nervous men she’d never spotted before, overdressed for members of the camera crew. Must be the “suits” from the producers’ office. They had to be lurking around here somewhere, clean-shaven bland-looking men whose ages were in the indeterminate twilight zone of forty to sixty. Two of them immediately nixed calling the police.

Beth shook off their opposing voices. “Everyone go to your rooms and stay there until further notice.”

Everyone but the suits was forced to drift away, whispering to one another despite the ever-eavesdropping cameras and mikes.

“Scream Queen,” someone whispered before they all dispersed to their separate cells … rooms. “Silver should get a lot of screen time for this.”

“So what got everyone unglued about that doll, besides the blood?” Mariah asked in the shower-steamed bathroom, while water pattered into the tub 4nd down the drain. Xoe and Mariah watched from the center of the room. They would shortly be regarded as the cleanest candidates in the competition. “Sure it was gross, Xoe Chloe, but it was just a dead balloon. I mean, talk about airheads—”

And what, Temple wondered, would Mama Molina think of Xoe Chloe (Mariah obviously loved the comic book name) enlightening her sheltered daughter about sleazy ads in the back of men’s magazines?

But she explained, as delicately as she could. She’d always heard that parents should be honest about sex education. Even dragooned in loco parentis types like herself.

Mariah reared back. “Gross! Guys are so pathetic. And now gruesome too. Whoever is doing this is major sick.”

“Some guys. And the red may not have been real blood. And the perp may be sick, or just pretending to be.”

“What do you mean?”

Temple mopped at her sweat-dewed brow. The wig was looking very natural thanks to all these steam baths. It was relaxing, growing just like real hair. Maybe someday soon she would become a real Xoe Chloe, like Pinocchio became a real boy.

“These are flashy incidents,” Temple said, “designed to upset people and just begging to bring in the authorities. Maybe someone has it in for the show’s producers. There’s a point when too much freaky publicity hurts rather than helps a project. I’m Miss Public Relations. Trust me on this.”

“So someone’s trying to ruin the show.” Mariah nodded. “Could be.”

“Or it’s an elaborate setup.”

“Or it’s a real sicko.”

“Those are the options.”

“Do you think my mom will get involved in this?”

“Like a Kevlar vest on a SWAT team.”

“Oh … shoot. She’ll ruin everything. Can’t she ever just let me do anything by myself?”

“Hey! She okayed this whole deal, despite your never telling her in advance, but it’s going way beyond any of us being Teen or ‘Tween Queens. It’s starting to look like Junior Miss Fear Factor”

“If we solve this thing, we can get this show back on the road.”

“To me, that is not a good thing, Mariah.”

“Oh, no. You’re cool. You’ve got a real shot at this.”

“You think so?”

“Absolutely. Nobody here needs a do-over more than you.”

“Thanks.”

“I mean, it’s brilliant. You are just awesomely wrong. I wish I coulda had that much to start with.”

Chapter 24

Great Big

Beautiful Doll

It seems the Divine Yvette has taken it into her pretty little head that since the little doll named Silver found the big doll named Balloon, a shaded silver Persian is likely to be the next victim of random spattering.

“She is very superstitious,” sister Solange explains to me in the hall when I am denied access to the suite accorded to Miss Savannah Ashleigh and dependents. “She will not leave her carrier or take food. Other than caviar and sirloin tips, of course, which our mistress must hand-feed to her.”

I would like to see Miss Savannah down on her knees doling out the tidbits to the pink canvas carrier, for the Divine Yvette when in a mood is as likely to snap as to snarf.

However, I am out in the hall with her shaded golden sister, and Midnight Louie is not one to overlook an opportunity of any color or stripe.

“Since we are clearly not needed during the present crisis, we can take a stroll on the grounds and perhaps figure something out.”

“The grounds?”

“Yeah. Out by the pool. All the freak show people are huddling in the den trying to think up security ploys. It seems the producers threw a hissy fit at the idea of bringing the police in. Might close the show down. Luckily, my Miss Temple is already in place.”

“She is? Where?”

I feel a rush of pride for my little doll and her success at the undercover arts. The stunning Solange did meet her when we were all in the Big Apple last Christmas auditioning for the big come-on of an A La Cat contract. Unfortunately, murder-most-Noel put the whole commercial deal on the back burner.

Also, an unwanted delicate condition sidelined the Divine Yvette’s performing career for a few months, causing the sponsor to invoke the morals clause in her contract. Miss Savannah Ashleigh in turn leveled a wrongful paternity suit at moi. It is no wonder the Divine One is a bit high-strung. We all came out of that incident worse for wear but at least Miss Temple went to The People’s Court to prove me innocent as a lamb. Still, I do my best to avoid the instep-arching spikes of Miss Savannah’s footwear, as she would still like to nail me for daring to befriend Yvette.

“Where?” Solange interrupts my reverie, reminding me that past embarrassments should not upstage the presence of a lovely and unescorted lady with jade-green eyes.

“I am not at liberty to say but am glad to know that she is safely disguised. This looks to be a rough crowd.”

“Oh, it is.” Solange amiably follows me down the hall to the back areas of the mansion. “These girls all havesuch long claws, and they chitter and coo every time they see Yvette or me and try to pick us up and pet us. All that nasty hand and cuticle cream lotion on our freshly powdered coats.” She shudders delicately. “Our mistress can be distressingly dense at times, but she always wears cotton gloves when handling us.”

This strikes me as more than somewhat fastidious. “My Miss Temple does like to run her nails and fingers through my hair, but she is always gentle and I believe that her natural oils add sheen and polish to my coat.”

We have by now eeled through the kitchen door, aided by our collaborative doorwoman, the cook, who has taken quite a fancy to Solange.

“My mistress has no natural oils but she has rows and rows of unnatural ones she applies to various portions,” Solange reveals as we step into the shadow of the portico, then into the unfiltered sunlight. “My! Your coat is indeed as sleek as black satin. You could go to the Oscars and be a star on the red carpet.”

“Alas, our commercial endeavors are over, and I doubt they would have garnered us a nomination. The members of the Academy have certain prejudices, you know.”

We settle in the shade of a rattan lounge chair by the pool. It is like retiring to an airy pergola. Small slivers of sunlight pierce our retreat, creating entrancing patterns on Solange’s golden back.

“First the pool area,” I muse. “Then the exercise room. Does that suggest a pattern?”

“The prankster is striking at various areas of the house where pageant activities are scheduled.”

“Scheduled. That is exactly it. Each day here is laid out from hour to hour on schedules all the entrants and participants are following. Pretty easy to get one jump ahead of them.”

“Yet the shaving cream used in the pool area was ‘borrowed’ from the freebies in the girls’ lockers. That sounds like an impulsive move.”

I regard Solange’s sweet, contented Persian face with surprise. I had always thought of her as Yvette’s larger darker plumper sister but maybe she is to her sister Yvette as Mycroft Holmes is to Sherlock, bigger and brighter. She shows some talent in the problem-solving department I have never spotted in my Divine One’s makeup.

“And,” she adds, licking a fluffy mitt and applying it to an airy eyebrow hair, “the bad-boy toy in the exercise room would need to have been imported, which implies premeditation.”

“Say, you are no slacker in the logic department.”

“I owe it to my mistress’s elevated TV-viewing tastes. She is hooked on CS/.”

I spit. It is all I can do not to hiss in the presence of a lady. “That bogus show elevates the humble evidence technician, when it is us detectives who really do the fancy footwork and ferret out the answers.”

“Ferret! Do not mention that miserable creature. I had an unfortunate encounter with one of that kind.”

“I am not fond of ferrets either. They are sly and sneaky.”

“Exactly. If one were on the premises, I would know whom to suspect.”

“Wait a minute! One is on the premises. A human ferret. And we must not overlook the possibility that a human male on the show personally imported the overblown lady … and someone else appropriated it as an object of fear and disgust.”

Solange slaps her mitt back to the pavement. “I do not like crime solving. It requires thinking and rethinking, and I really should be in my room having my beauty rest. Except that Yvette is getting all the attention with her usual spoiled behavior.”

This small temper tantrum on Solange’s part reminds me of the intense competition between the Teen Queen candidates. All the hoopla and dirty tricks might only be Mean Girls in action.

One can never underestimate the human propensity for malice, spite, and mayhem.

I escort Solange back to her quarters but we are forced to duck into a doorway when we spot a man’s big black boot emerging through Miss Savannah Ashleigh’s door.

I am sorry to say that I recognize the rest of the man when I am able to see as high as his face, and give a low thrum of recognition.

“Ay, carumbar!”

“What is it, Louie?”

“Well put. Not so much a ‘who’ but a ‘what’ We are regarding Miss Lieutenant C. R. Molina’s worst nightmare and a serious fly in the ointment my Miss Temple will be none too pleased to see here either.”

“He is tall, dark, and grim looking but what other kind of monster can this man be, and why is he leaving my mistress’s quarters? Are she and Yvette all right?”

“I cannot reveal matters that I am confidentially informed about but that are hidden from the rest of the world. Let us just say that Mr. Rafi Nadir is bad news to everyone I know.”

Chapter 25

Close Encounters of the

Weird Kind

Temple decided that Xoe Chloe would not be one to cower in her room at the sight of a dead life-size blowup doll. Even if it was bigger than she was.

So she began a tour of the strangely deserted mansion. Apparently, the other candidates were the sort to cower in their rooms at the sight of a dead blowup doll, even if they were all bigger than it was.

It had taken all her persuasive PR powers to convince Mariah to remain safely in their room. Unauthorized explorations through the pageant house could very well get the younger girl disqualified. She didn’t want to risk that, did she?

“What if you get thrown out?” Mariah asked passionately. (Girls her age were always passionate.) They spoke, as usual, under the cover of the thundering shower water.

Both she and Temple were getting Irish-soft skin from all this steaming, and were winning spontaneous compliments from Team Teen Queen for their “glowing” complexions. Subterfuge does have its pluses.

“They won’t throw me out,” Temple said. “This show needs a Bad Girl like Buffy the Vampire Slayer needed evil slayer Faith.”

“You watched Buffy: The Vampire Slayer?” Mariah’s voice broadcast new respect.

“Still watching reruns. So. If you recall, sometimes little sister Dawn couldn’t come along. This is one of those times. And think how mad your mother would be if I got you tossed off the show, after all the trouble she went to seeing you had a partner in crime here on-site.”

“I can’t believe she let me come, with those creepy show posters turning up.”

“I can’t believe she made me come.”

Mariah gaped at her for a moment, her soft features looking absurdly fifth-grade for a second. “My mother tells you what to do too?”

“Sometimes. She’s da cops, you know.”

“I know.” Said with discouragement.

“That’s okay. We’ve got an inside track on what’s really going on.”

“Why are you doing this?” Mariah’s face suddenly showed an adult expression, half worry, and half hope. “Your mom offered me my heart’s desire.”

“She can do that?”

“In my case. And … after I saw that defaced poster, I agreed that you needed a partner inside.”

“Yeah. That was creepy. I can’t believe she showed that to me.”

“I think she wanted you to see that she could treat you like an adult.”

“Really?” The word had ended on an adolescent squeal. “Sometimes. If it’s important. But you’ve got a ways to go before you earn the right to be treated that way full time.”

Mariah grinned and leaned back against the sweating bathroom tile. Niagara Falls roared away into the bathtub, making it into a hot tub. “A long way. Like lying around here under the hidden cameras in the bedroom reading my pink Teen Queen folder while you pussyfoot around and have all the fun.”

“Yeah. Like that.”

“Okay.”

Temple smiled as she fronted down the hall, always aware of the cameras. Some maturity was creeping into Mariah, making her a heartbreaking blend of reliability and impossible imaginings. Teenagers had hot flashes too, Temple decided. Easy for her to say, caught as she was in the great long slog between maturation and menopause.

Meanwhile, she could play thirteen-going-on-twenty again and act out.

What struck her first was how tortuously this house was designed. It was an assemblage of separate wings joined by modern breezeways, with Mondrian-like windows inset here and there.

What struck her second was how difficult it would be to do mischief here, given all the hidden cameras. That meant the perp was either part of the production crew or had access to the camera installations.

Like a major hotel casino, the house would need some sort of central spy chamber where the images from all the cameras unreeled. Where someone watched and recorded. Several someones. Most likely the technicians and producers but perhaps also someone with a more sinister purpose.

Temple was thinking about who this Sinister Someone could be so hard she turned the corner into the den area of the house and ran right into someone coming the otherway: face-to-face and, ick, belly-to-belly, as in the oldie “Zombie Jamboree” song.

Double ick!! Rocketing Rollerblades! Where were Lexan bulletproof shields when a girl needed them?

She had ended up cheek by jowl with the diminutive Crawford Buchanan!

Temple disengaged as fast as Xoe Chloe’s size fives could manage it.

“Hey, little lady!” He reached out to steady her from the impact.

He should be so lucky.

“Chill, dude.”

Temple skated away from him on the smooth marble floor despite having no Rollerblades beneath her feet at the moment. She could still move like a street skater. (In fact, her four older brothers had taught her to waltz on Minnesota concrete years ago. Without knee or elbow pads. You never knew what you would be grateful for, thanks to obnoxious older brothers, years later.)

“You’re quite the spunky little dark horse,” he said.

“Just send me a ticket to the Belmont Stakes,” she rejoined.

“All this ugly hullabaloo and here you are, out and about like a Dead End Kid.”

“A dead what?”

“Guess you’re way too young to remember that old film stuff. I’d like to do an interview with you. Crawford Buchanan, media personality. I’m embedded here for KREP-AM radio.”

“Embedded? Dude, that sounds s000 sleazy.”

What a ferrety little weasel! Or was that piling on animal comparisons? No doubt, Temple knew she’d like ferrets and weasels a lot better than Awful Crawford. What a phony, with his cultivated basso that rumbled like gang warfare and his salon-styled hair that reflected every trendy fashion. She couldn’t believe the new gold highlights in its already dramatic black-and-silver tones, courtesy of Mother Nature.

The highlights reminded her of Matt Devine, who was so much more worthy of bumping into than Crawford Buchanan. She wondered what he was doing in Chicago on his vacation. Would he ever believe … ? No, and he’d certainly never approve of doing such a wild and crazy thing, this dangerous masquerade, all for the sake of Max Kinsella.

Or was it?

“So, kiddo.” Crawford was waxing oily again. “The old place is pretty spooky now that someone’s leaving funny valentines all over it.”

He’d immediately snapped her attention back to the here and now.

“What did you call it?” she asked, struck by his phrase. “This harassment?”

“Funny valentines. You know, the fluffy cream on the hot pink yoga mats. The … strawberry syrup spray on the, uh, balloon lady in the workout room. It’s all a joke.”

“And if it isn’t?”

“Don’t worry, babe. I’ll be here to rescue you and record it all for KREP.”

Hmmm. Another hanger-on, another motive. Maybe Crawford needed to bolster poor drive-time numbers. These flashy incidents could do it.

“I don’t listen to those middle-of-the-road stations, man,” Xoe sneered in answer.

“I’m not middle-of-the-road—” he replied, frowning. “No, just road kill. Scram, old geek, or I’ll run my spikes right through you.”

Temple fanned out her claws and pushed past him into the empty den. She breathed out her relief when he didn’t follow her in. How odd to think of everyone hunkered down in their rooms for safety’s sake … when they were all being spied upon and recorded 24/7.

This whole setup was a voyeur’s dream, she realized. Not the vague, general voyeuristic public instinct that supported reality TV but an honest-to-God, freaky, perverted voyeur of the old school.

The den was eerily deserted. Three large plasma TVs were blank gray screens on the wood-paneled walls, looking like modern art frames someone had forgotten to put the pictures in.

The many oversize white leather ottomans that the candidates had lolled upon in teen preening positions were empty now, and resembled giant poisonous mushrooms sprouting from the exotic wood-inlay floor.

The vast room was so dim and deserted that Temple braced herself for spotting another doll-like corpse, however ersatz.

But she was the only girl in residence.

Though not quite the only resident.

A figure stood, rising from one of the huge paired wing chairs near the see-through fireplace that served both the den and dining room.

It was tall, dark, and … familiar.

It leaned over to turn on a nearby torchère, casting light upward that defused before it reached the twenty-foot ceiling.

Cheese it, the cops! Cop, singular. Very singular. And not Molina.

In fact, the anti-Molina.

Rafi Nadir, attired in casual black, like Max, but much less expensively than Max, came toward her.

She stood paralyzed. He’d already seen through one half-hearted disguise of hers. Would he detect this much more thorough one just as fast?

He looked leaner and meaner than his usual bloated, discontented self. He looked serious.

“What are you doing roaming around this place?” he asked.

Fight or flight? Rafi wasn’t going to go away. Might as well find out now whether she could fool him or not. If not, maybe she’d have an ally inside. But, for now, undercover was her best option.

Temple/Xoe snapped her gum, then mumbled around it, “I’m a contestant. This is supposed to be … home.”

Luckily, his eyes were scanning the overall scene, only half on her. “It’s a TV set. And somebody is altering the script. You belong in your room, little girl. Better get back there.”

“I suppose you can make me,” Xoe challenged.

That girl never could keep her mouth shut when it mattered.

“Yes.” He was two feet away now. He looked away again. “But that’s not my job. That’s just some advice from someone who knows when a situation is escalating into the weird and dangerous.”

“I like the weird and dangerous.”

He looked her up and down. “You think you do. I’m private security. I can’t tell you what to do. I just say you oughta get back to your room. Lock the door. Do your nails. Wait for the producers to say the show must go on.”

“Private? Like a PI?”

“God, no.”

She knew that’d get his goat. Like all ex-cops, even disgraced ex-cops, Rafi hated private detectives. “I was thinking of hiring you, is all.”

“Yeah, right.” He actually chuckled. “You Teen Queens think you’re Britney Spears when you’re really Nancy Drew. I’m already spoken for.”

“Oh?” Temple tried to sound indifferent but Xoe sounded interested. “By whom?”

“By Savannah Ashleigh, the judge, is whom.”

“She’s no judge. She’s just an actress, and a bad one.”

“I don’t judge clients. But I think she’s right in being worried. So why a punk little chick like you is boogying around Hell House after all these unsettling incidents beats me. Given all the black you’re wearing, must be a death wish.”

“I don’t like being penned up.”

“You might consider that’s exactly what might happen if there’s another nasty prank and you’re wandering around unaccounted for. I’d skedaddle back to my safe little room if I were you.”

“It’s not little.”

He suddenly lunged forward, his booted foot smacking the floor.

She jerked back, retreating. It had worked. Xoe Chloe had made him too mad to see past her cheesy, mouthy exterior.

“Listen, little lady.” He caught her arms and pulled her close and spoke low. “My job is to guard the Ashleigh broad but I’ll give you some free expert advice. Somebody around here is this close to the edge. You don’t want to end up spattered on the exercise machines, stay in your room. Don’t wander around alone; do as you’re told.”

“And you’re protecting Savannah Ashleigh by lounging around in the den?”

His grip tightened. A fist came up.

Temple dodged but she couldn’t break free. Her “pal” Rafi wouldn’t do this to her, but it was instructive to see what he’d do to some unknown young girl. How had she ever thought he might be a midge better than the sleazeball Molina had made him out to be?

She winced, expecting a blow.

Instead he waved a cat-whisker-thin black wire at her.

“This place is bugged. Surveilled. All for the camera crews. But someone, maybe anyone, must be using this setup to watch and hear whatever he wants to, anytime. I’m going to track his ass through the same wires he uses to terrorize you people. Get it? Now shut up, get back to your room, and save your own pierced little skin.”

When he let her go, she almost lost her balance. “Surveilled” was not a word but Temple decided this was not the time to mention that. He stalked off without waiting to see if she was taking his advice.

He was right, though. They were all experimental rats in a maze. Technology was their reason for being here, and their Achilles’ heel.

Could Rafi himself be the creep who was stalking the show, relishing being called in to track himself?

What a mess. The cast and crew were too large, the pool of victims too numerous, and the potential evil-doer too easily hidden.

It was just a matter of time, she knew—and Rafi had indicated that he knew too before someone really got hurt.

And not even Lieutenant Molina could do a thing about it.

Rafi was right about one thing: she belonged upstairs keeping an eye on Mariah, 24/7.

Chapter 26

Midnight Attack

“So what’d you find out?”

Mariah was sitting cross-legged on one side of the giant bed, painting her toenails atop the pink silk bedspread.

“Whoops!” Temple grabbed her notebook, opened it flat, and poised Mariah’s chubby little toes on top of it. “You might drip.”

“I won’t drip,” she said, looking up.

Temple looked down just in time to watch a red glob of nail enamel hit the notebook and pool there like a gobbet of designer-shade blood.

“So spake Dracula,” Temple said. “Everybody drips painting their toenails. It’s a girly rule since the Garden of Eden. Eve did it. Evita did it. Even the Dixie Chicks do it. We don’t want to trash the room. That’ll give us black marks in the competition.”

Mariah said nothing but bit her lower lip in concentration as she painted her last big toenail.

“You’re acting like one big drip,” Mariah finally said. “You’re like my mother. I can’t do anything right.”

“You’re doing everything fine, just not over the pink silk bedspread with the scarlet nail polish, all right?”

Temple sat on the bed’s end. “Is something wrong?”

“Just that this whole place is stupid, and everybody in it.”

Temple pasted a cautionary finger to her lips.

“I don’t care,” Mariah said, even louder. “This place is creepy, even without the shaving cream threats and the just too gross rubber … thing on the exercise machine. I can’t believe I’m saying this but I want to go home.”

“What’s wrong?”

Mariah starting picked at her cuticles where the polish had smeared, peeling off tiny flecks of dried enamel.

“I’m the only girl in my category who has to do two hours of workouts a day and live on Bugs Bunny leavings.”

Temple paused, not knowing what to say. Then Mariah said it for her.

“I’m the only girl here who has to lose weight to win. It’s not fair! I’ve only got a week left, and now all I can see when I do the treadmill is that stupid, bloody balloon girl. Maybe she got spattered because she was too fat too.”

“You’re not fat.”

“You sound like my mom, and I don’t believe her either.”

“It’s baby pudge. You haven’t hit your full height is all. You’ll be willowy like your mom in no time.”

“Her? Willowy?”

“Well … maybe maple-y. She’s a little solid for a willow; cops need to be. But she’s not overweight.”

“Oh, yeah? She’s a member of Weight Watchers and she’s always on me to join too.”

“Weight Watchers.” Temple felt numbed by surprise. She’d never pegged the terrible Lieutenant Molina as out of control in any area.

“She only has to go once in a while ‘cuz she’s a life member,” Mariah added. “I’d have to get weighed every week and sit around with a bunch of fat old ladies.”

Molina a lifer in Weight Watchers. Okay, that did fit with what Temple knew of the woman. Disciplined. Did it once and it was over. The kind of person who could quit smoking in one day. But once upon a time … Molina had been pudgy too? Hard to imagine but very pleasant to contemplate nonetheless. Even though Temple was noticing her own weight creeping up since hitting year thirty.

“Listen,” Temple told Mariah. “If you’ve got a few pounds to lose, start now while it’s easier. You already look pinchier in the cheeks and waist, so that rabbit food and extreme exercise must be working. A lot of it’s probably only water weight.”

“That’s another thing. I hate that! It’s so gross. It hurts and it makes me look fatter.”

“Listen, kiddo. Everything women do makes us look fatter, including appearing on camera. Maybe it isn’t us looking fatter but the world deciding how we should look. You made the finals, just the way you are. They must really, really like you.”

Mariah frowned. “That last phrase sounded familiar.”

“Sally Field on winning an Oscar. Everyone thought she was too kiddish and ‘lightweight’ to do that. But she did. Twice.”

“Is that the little old lady who plays somebody’s mother on some sitcom? She did? She won two Oscars?”

“Against all odds, and with the usual monthly bloat.” Mariah set her nail polish bottle—the label read “Hot Hibiscus”—atop the nightstand beside her.

“I’ll think about it,” she allowed.

“Good. Can I turn the light out now?”

“I guess.”

Temple took that as the teenage equivalent of a yes.

She slipped out of her wig and into her nightshirt once the light was off, and then into the aaahhhh-cool, four hundred-count sheets right after that.

Molina a Weight Watcher? Nothing wrong about that. Admirable, really. Except Temple couldn’t stop grinning. Molina with her shoes off, weighing in like a lamb? Counting calories instead of counts on a rap sheet? Worried about that universal female bugaboo, weight.

Ummm, sweet dreams are made of these.

Temple awoke in the dark, suddenly disoriented. Strange room, strange bed, very strange sense of unease.

Had she just heard something? She listened. The hidden cameras didn’t click, rattle, and roll, so the constant surveillance wasn’t making her antsy.

Something was.

What?

A restless, hungry feeling. The menus at this place were low-carb, low-sugar, and low-fat. That could get on one’s nerves.

Temple pushed herself up on an elbow and turned her bedside light onto the lowest wattage.

Not too low to show her a bed that was way too flat on the other side.

“Mariah?”

She pushed out of the bed and went to the bathroom door. It was shut. Was the poor kid having her period now? No wonder she had been so down.

Temple let her knuckles rap gently on the door.

No answer. She pushed, gently. The door wasn’t locked but opened into utter darkness.

A flick of the light switch produced a fluorescent flood of light that left Temple blinking.was.

Red letters. Red letters written on the mirror above the sink. Studying them made her eyes water but she spied the bottle of Hot Hibiscus on the countertop.

YOU’RE A BUNCH OF BLOODY BITCHES the nail polish block letters declared. Well, sometimes. Yes. Mother Nature was like that.

Had Mariah done this? Not likely. Had Xoe Chloe sleepwalked and scrawled this angry comment on her competitors? Not likely.

Someone had been in here, though, appropriated Mariah’s nail polish, and gone to work behind the closed bathroom door with neither of them the wiser.

Or maybe not. Because Mariah was gone. The bed was flat, the bathroom was empty. The closet—Temple swooped the sliding doors open on a plethora of nauseous pink—was turned into a Stepford Wives zone and was empty of human habitation. Under the bed the cupboard was bare.

Mariah was gone.

Oh, bifurcated Barbie dolls! Temple’s prime assignment was missing in action.

She shoved her feet into a pair of low-heeled mules, pink, of course, but her own bunny variety from home, and headed for the door.

Ooops. First she doused the lights and felt her way back to her bedside, whisking her Cher hair off the lampshade and onto her head.

Outrageous is the best disguise.

She grabbed the key-chain pepper spray from her purse and burst out into the hall. It was as black as the bathroom had been before she’d turned on the light.

Someone was having fun with the mansion’s light board. And not a hidden cameraman. They craved light.

She felt her way along the wall, with no idea of where she was going, only that she’d trace the power outage to its origin.

The producers had been diligent in soft lighting every inch of the place so that their cameras could record every twitch of a contestant. Only the bedrooms provided absolute dark.

Mariah. Temple felt cold sweat break out all under the irritatingly hot wig. Her charge. The reason she was here. Gone.

And someone painting bloody threats on their bathroom mirror while they slept.

While Temple slept.

She began to appreciate the constant needle of maternal anxiety. It was a drug, being responsible for someone else, for a young, helpless, naive someone else. Mariah. A picture in Temple’s mind’s eye, teenage whining, painting her toenails fluorescent red.

If anything had happened to her … forget Molina! Remember Temple’s own panic.

Something brushed her legs.

She screeched and hugged the wall.

It brushed again.

Furry.

An eighteen-inch-high tarantula? She wouldn’t doubt it in this Hell House.

Some sound between the first low buzz of an alarm clock and a purr pushed against her bare legs.

High furry boots, or … Puss-in-Boots, Las Vegas style.

“Louie?” she rasped. Whispered. Ground out.

The feathery presence drifted away but a step caught up with it.

Okay. She was either tailgating an ostrich or following a fine-feathered friend who just happened to have a cat tail.

In the dark, all things being equal, it was probably a cat. Her cat. Hers not to question why. Hers but to do or die. Into the Valley of Doubt marched Temple and her phantom feline.

A slice of light beckoned in the distance.

Was this a trap laid by a sneak-thief psycho nail-polish correspondent? Or … enlightenment?

Temple felt another plumy brush against her bare calves and decided she need to be very Zen right now, right here.

She pushed toward the light, into the light … and through a swinging door into the mansion’s brightly lit and darkly designed kitchen, all stainless steel and black marble and granite.

And all … Mariah. Sitting on a black granite countertop in her pink Teen Queen nightshirt, sucking on a raspberry Popsicle.

“You total idiot!” Temple accused, knowing this was not the proper esteem-building tone but she had lost that concern. Funny that relief could be so enraging. “I was worried to death.”

“Around this place that’s serious,” Mariah said. “How’d you find me?”

“You’ll look terrific on spy TV.”

“One Popsicle. Sugarless. That’s the best they have in those three giant refrigerators. It’s not a federal case.”

Temple eyed the Popsicle stump. “Sugar-free, really? Where are they?”

“Bottom freezer drawer, fridge on the left.”

Temple eyed the black marble floor between here and there. Not a creature was stirring, not even the proverbial mouse. Or tarantula. Or cat.

“How’d you know where to look, really?” Mariah asked. She wanted an answer.

“Oh, maybe I was ready for a taste of faux sugar myself.”

“It’s fructose. Real fruit sugar. That’s better than added sugars or even artificial ones.”

Temple boosted herself up on the kitchen island beside Mariah. The black granite’s chill seeped through her thin cotton T-shirt.

“I’m sorry I was crabby,” Mariah said.

“That’s all right, kid. I get crabby too.” She leaned into Mariah’s ear. “You’ll be even crabbier when you know that someone used up your whole bottle of nail polish writing nasty notes on our bathroom mirror.”

“No!” Mariah looked around, her soft young features squinching into suspicion, and annoyance. “This place is getting off the wall. The show’s gonna be ruined.”

“Unless the Teen Queen slant was a front from the first, and the show was always intended to be an updated game of Clue.”

“What’s Clue?”

“Let’s shuffle off down the hall again. I think that’s safer than talking here. And we sure don’t want to steam up our bathroom mirror again.”

“Why not?” Mariah jumped down and actually held a hand out to help old Temple make the same leap.

“Evidence,” Temple whispered against her ear again.

She had a feeling the location of this last prank would merit some serious, and open, police involvement. And probably the presence of the one person that the two of them least wanted to see here: Mama Molina.

They sat up the rest of the night, leaning against the foot of the giant bed while Temple explained the game of Clue to Mariah, and Mariah explained current teen hotties to Temple.

All of their dialogue was suitable for public replay. Breakfast was served at seven, just like at camp. So once Mariah had been escorted to the ‘tween dining area, which was ashriek with excited girls having so little to chew on that they were chewing on each other, Temple headed for the Teen Team offices.

“Oh, Beth, thank God you’re here.”

The bustling, plump woman paused in pawing through an open file drawer.

No wonder. That had definitely not been a Xoe Chloe opening line.

“Why, Zoo-ey, what are you doing here, dear? You’re supposed to be at breakfast right now.”

“I kinda lost my appetite. Got a stomach full of red nail polish last night.”

“You … you drank some red nail polish! Oh, I knew you looked like a paint sniffer. This means expulsion.”

“Hold on to your granny panties, lady. The nail polish was the writing on the mirror in Mariah’s and my bathroom. Like the hot foam jobs on the yo-yo yoga mats in the patio area the other day.”

“Writing? Like—?”

“Like handwriting? Like graffiti. You know, nasty messages in public places. Only our bathroom is private. I thought.”

“I must see it … we must see it. At once.”

“Then you’ll call the cops.”

“The police? Oh, no.” Beth Marble paled, if that were possible for one so wan. “The producers don’t want them here.”

“Gonna be hard to keep them away. Better if you play Sally Citizen and call them before they call on you. Cops get agitated about the littlest things.”

“How do you know?”

“Well, I’m a little thing, right?” Xoe Chloe spun to indicate her punk but petite form.

“The police.” Beth Marble imitated her last name and plunked down into her chair as if the weight of Michelangelo’s David had suddenly descended on her from above. “Dexter will be so disagreeable about that.”

“What’s new? Besides, he doesn’t run the show. You do. Don’t you?”

“Yes. I’m head coach. The show was my idea. But Dexter’s the star.”

“I thought all of us mini-teen wonders were the stars in the making.”

“You’re not the draw. No one knows you. As the show unfolds, yes, they’ll get to know the candidates and like or”—she glanced significantly at Xoe Chloe—“dislike them. And then they’ll vote for the winner. But Dexter has the right to discount an audience winner at the last moment. The final decision is his. He’s the star maker. Thus, he’s the star.”

“Thus. You learn that in Latin class forty years ago, lady? So. Dexter has audience veto power. I wonder what an enterprising girl has to do to get ole Dexter’s vote. Sleep with him?”

“No!” Aghast. “You’re almost all minors. That’s unthinkable. Such a thing would never happen.”

“Happens all the time in the halls of junior and senior high schools. Read the paper.”

Beth frowned sternly. “Not here. We have cameras all over the place. Any hanky-panky would be recorded.”

“All the better to titillate the viewers, eh? Then you must have our bathroom action on tape. Whoever wrote the hate note would have been sneaky, and pretty good at it. But no one could write in the dark, especially with something as thick and quick to run out as nail polish. It took a whole bottle, which means it took some time.”

“We aren’t allowed to record in the bathrooms, young lady.”

“What about alerting the police?”

“Oh, I don’t think we need to involve them in these malicious little pranks.”

“Do you mean that ‘these malicious little pranks’ are part of the show script?”

“We are unscripted!” Indignantly said.

“No. No, you’re not. Somebody’s pretty good at writing in a lot of ‘unauthorized’ scenes. If you figure out how my roomie and I are going to get a decent night’s sleep after this, send us a memo. Just don’t leave it unsigned on our pillowcases. We need our beauty rest, you know.”

Chapter 27

Midnight Assignation

It was during the Night of the Living Lipstick (okay, it was nail polish but that does not sound as good) that I decided I must take what they call “a proactive role” in the proceedings.

I, of course, had remained cleverly concealed, listening in with my awesome radial antennae (i.e., pointed little ears) when my Miss Temple and little Miss Mariah discussed the defacement of their bathroom mirror.

Now, I am not much for mirrors, though I long ago figured out that the suave gentleman in black I glimpsed in them was merely my own self. Many of my kind are convinced they are viewing twin littermates. These benighted sorts are not candidates for more sophisticated roles in human society, such as shamus.

As an ace gumshoe, I immediately decided I needed more inside operatives and must call on the Ashleigh girls.

I did say “girls,” did I not? I have already discovered that they are well acquainted with mirrors but are among the deluded type who mistake their own image for a rival (although a bewitchingly attractive rival) for their mistress’s affections. It is bad enough that there are the two of them. Luckily, both are inverse images of each other, so they will never mistake a sister for a twin. If that makes any sense.

I paw their bedroom door, shivs politely retracted. That subtle sound, rather like a steel brush hissing across a snare drum skin, instantly perks up the ears of my kind. It has the advantage of sounding like some leaf blowing along a sidewalk, a phenomenon universally ignored by Homo sapiens.

And speaking of Homo sapiens, surely Miss Savannah Ashleigh must be the sappiest around.

So, in a moment, a curled soot foot is pushed under the door frame and then come tempting little jiggles of the door, abetted by my leaping to apply my weight near the doorknob until the catch springs … and out through a narrow opening push the pretty-in-pink noses of the Persian sisters.

When I compliment them on their pink proboscises, they feign ignorance of the word “proboscis” and state that the breed standard for their kind’s noses is the color rose.

So a rose nose is a rose nose is a rose nose, but plain old pink in my book.

Once in the hall and over our terminology debates, I explain that what I need is not noses, of whatever shade you want to call them, but eyes and ears.

“Quite right, Louie,” Yvette says with a shaded silver brush along my side. “Noses are a canine sense: loud, snuffly, and vulgar. We can see and hear without being seen and heard, in perfect silence.”

“I agree,” say I, “especially about the perfect part.”

behind us, Solange makes discreet retching noises. It may be the common malady of a hair ball, or it may be an editorial comment.

I know better than to be caught between them. That would be like being the Jack of Spades sandwiched between the Queen of Hearts and the Queen of Diamonds. Lunch meat.

I tell my new staff about the latest Zorro attack: evil words on a bathroom mirror.

“Our mistress writes in the steam on the bathroom mirror all the time,” Solange offers.

“Indeed. You would say she is a skilled graffiti artist then?”

“I would say,” Yvette puts in, with a corrosive glance at her sister, “that family secrets are family secrets. She writes down the phone numbers of her various gentleman friends so she does not forget them.”

“Why would she not use a little black book, or a computer?” I wonder.

“Blackmail,” Solange purrs thrillingly. ‘Too easy to access. The tabloids are always stalking her.”

I do not point out that they do so because Miss Savannah Ashleigh always provides them with useful opportunities, such as sunbathing in the nude with Yvette and her litter of unwanted kittens. The tabloids got a lascivious closeup of Yvette nursing with Miss Savannah Ashleigh’s bare anklebone in the background that time.

“We could use some tabloid photographers on these crime scenes,” I point out. “The only cameras here are indentured to the producers. They will either be suppressed so the show can go on, or … even more devious, the show planned these disruptions and this is a Fear Factor pattern rather than a makeover pattern.”

“What is a makeover?” Yvette asks with touching curiosity.

“Humans,” I explain, “do not all come with luxuriouscoats of fur, airy whiskers, dainty limbs, kaleidoscope eyes, and expressive tails. Many of them are handicapped from birth. Hence their need to remake themselves in a better image.”

“Poor things!” Solange cries.

“But our own,” I point out. “I am sure you wish to serve Miss Savannah Ashleigh as much as I do my Miss Temple.”

“But, Louie.” The Divine Yvette’s voice rises to an imperious tone. “Your Miss Temple is not here.”

Ooops.

“That is correct, Yvette. As usual, your perceptions are formidable. However”—I am thinking, thinking, thinking—“however, little Miss Mariah is here, and she is not only an acquaintance of my Miss Temple, but in my own view, she and her mother, a noted law enforcement personality in this town, are to be commended for adopting a pair of”—here I gaze soulfully at Yvette—“striped homeless kittens last fall. In my own view.”

A silence holds. Yvette unwillingly bore a litter of yellow striped cats once erroneously purported to be mine. They were given up for adoption, naturally, once the tabloid interest had died down. I cannot believe that Yvette is indifferent to those who adopt striped nobodies.

She sniffs. I cannot tell if it is the usual French sniff, as is used to dismiss an inferior wine, or a snuffle, as is used to record a deep but unacknowledged emotion.

“I understand, Louie,” she says finally. “Your devotion to the underdog does you credit.”

Hmmm. This is an edged compliment at best but I let it pass.

“Yvette and I,” Solange agrees in the flash of an eyelash, “will happily aid you in protecting the Mariah kitten.”

Hallelujah! It is not easy to turn purebred Persians into legmen. Er, leg ladies. And I certainly expect a lot less back sass than I get from Midnight Louise. Having claimed to be my relative, she is therefore free to call me anything she likes.

Devoted is not on that list, along with a lot of other sterling qualities.

Chapter 28

Contingency Plan

“I’m glad Old Cold Marble isn’t calling in the police,” Mariah said. “My mom would be all over this place, and I’d be outed.”

She was sitting on the bedroom carpet with Temple, leaning glumly against the end of the bed and facing the door.

They’d decided to do their own guard duty. Light from one of the bedside lamps cast a soft campfire glow on the lavish furnishings.

“Why does someone hate the contestants so much?” Mariah asked after awhile.

“Let’s see. It could be one of us.”

“No way! Why would anyone ruin her one chance at fame and fortune?”

“Fame and fortune, my latest Lash ‘n’ Flash eyeliner! Did you read the contest rules? All the contestants get is a non-invasive makeover and a few new clothes. That doesn’t begin to offset the fortune your mom paid for your Teen Queen clothes. So the two division winners get a highly chaperoned date with some boy band has-been and a few more new clothes and a rhinestone crown you can get at a dozen outlets in Vegas. So what?”

“And a car!”

“And a car. A really sexy Dodge Neon, sure. Don’t you have three years to go before you could drive it anyway? That’s forever in Teen Time.”

“Two and a half years. Then I get a learner’s permit.” Mariah’s dark glance slid toward Temple. “You’re one to sniff at a car. I’ve seen that red Miata you drive. You got yours. And you can diss boy band guys. I hear you have a real Bad Boy on the string.”

“Really? Exactly how did you hear that?”

“It’s a small house. I can’t help overhearing things. I heard my mom and her friend Matt talking about him once. Max.” Mariah slid her another glance. “He sounds cool.”

And lately Max was being way too cool, Temple thought. “Your mom’s mistaken about Max.”

“She’s not usually wrong about her job.”

“She’s wrong this time. Max is not a criminal. He’s just a magician. Sometimes they act similar.”

“All I know is my mom doesn’t much think about men but he’s sure got her paddle holster in a snarl.”

“So. You see a lot of Matt at your place?”

“Some.” Mariah picked at a fleck of nail polish on her thumb cuticle. “He’s a little old to be in a boy band but he sure is cute. My mom says I can ask him to my father-daughter dance at school. The other girls would be so fried!”

This bit of news offered Temple two opportunities for choking on her next words: surprise that Matt was becoming a domestic fixture at Casa Carmen Molina, orhorror that poor Mariah didn’t know that the man actually entitled to escort her to the father-daughter dance was right here at the Teen Queen Castle right now, doing surveillance.

“Are you falling asleep yet?” Mariah asked.

Not after this discussion. No way. “No. But we do need to get some rest. Why don’t you try to sleep and I’ll watch? Then we can switch.”

“By then it’ll be morning,” she said.

“Yeah. That’s okay. Dark circles around my eyes just save me applying my Smudge Pot kohl eyeliner in the morning. Nothing like lost sleep and hollow eyes to make a modern girl look hip and interesting.”

“Add enforced starvation.” Mariah tilted her head to listen to her tummy growl.

“Now you got the program!”

Kids were amazing. Mariah was off to sleep sitting up before Temple could count to thirteen.

That left Temple on guard duty, and therefore free to brood.

Matt was taking Mariah to the school father-daughter dance? Max was a topic of Molina household discussion, and not in flattering terms?

Temple was feeling decidedly like the odd woman out with everyone she knew. Xoe Chloe, the rebellious loner, began to seem less like a role and more like a dose of reality.

Temple sighed deeply, wondering what was going on in her life, and if she would be the last to know.

Screeches two decibels lower than a klaxon in pitch and strength ripped down the hallway outside their bedroom door.

Mariah awoke, as punchy as a toddler having a nightmare.

Temple was on her feet. “Stay here! I mean it. Sit. Down. Freeze.”

She sprinted out the door, paused to identify the direction of the god-awful noise, and raced left.

Their room was near the end of the wing housing a third of the contestants, so she wasn’t surprised to hear vague buzzes and shuffles behind her.

The guttural cries and high-pitched shrieks ahead never faded.

Temple charged through the ajar door between her and the unceasing hullabaloo.

Lights were glaring but everybody in the room was still blinking, so Temple had to assume the lights had just been turned on an instant before her arrival.

She crossed the threshold and stopped, stupefied. It wasn’t what she saw. It was who.

Savannah Ashleigh. White-faced, straw-haired, and shaking, wearing a filmy mauve peignoir set off the cover of a 1970s paperback Gothic romance, the kind with the big house with a light in the window behind the fleeing figure of a nightgown-clad woman.

Rafi Nadir. Clad in durable black denim jeans and a heavy cotton turtleneck shirt alarmingly like a Kmart version of Max’s garment of choice. Puzzled, angry, and uneasy.

Midnight Louie, his fur punked up into damp spikes and his tongue hanging sideways between his bared white fangs.

Savannah’s purebred Persians, one silver, one gold, and both with their coats messed up as if by a whirlwind, still snarling and spitting, mostly to themselves.

“What on earth happened here?” Temple asked, raising her voice into Xoe Chloe’s more hyper range. This would put the Xoe Chloe makeover to the acid test. Both Savannah and Rafi were acquainted with Temple though they’d never expect to see her here, in this guise.

“That’s what I want to know,” Nadir said, still staring accusingly at Savannah. “I turn on the light and get onehysterical female and three pretty raggedy cats, all ready to chew my ass.”

“I glimpsed him,” Savannah shrieked like a wind-up doll that, having been set for one mode, can’t escape it. “He wore black.”

“I’m your bodyguard,” Rafi said. “I just got here. I came when I heard the caterwauling. Are you saying some guy in black came in here and attacked you?”

“In black like you, yes.”

“Bodyguards wear black. Especially at night. It’s useful if people don’t notice us. I came as soon as I could. Did you maybe glimpse the cat? He’s all in black.”

That directed Temple’s attention to Midnight Louie. Again. He was sure dogging her footsteps on this one.

Savannah’s eyes dilated even more. “That cat!!! That devil! He’s been the ruination of Yvette and now he’s come to get me. That’s Midnight Louie, I know it!”

Rafi’s dark eyes narrowed as he assessed Savannah. “You superstitious about cats? Is that it? Ma’am?”

The address of respect had been added way too late.

“Just that one. I’m sure that’s the one that ruined my darling Yvette and he’s here to ruin me.”

Temple actually felt a twinge of pity for the woman. Obviously something had occurred to frighten her, and she was all alone in this suite, unlike Temple and Mariah. Temple suspected that Louie had come running, just like her and Rafi. Temple had tried to ignore Louie’s skulking presence around the place but now she understood it. He’d always been sweet on the luscious Yvette, who now sat shaking and licking her pretty little front paws by turns.

Time for Temple’s new persona to sink or swim. This was Zoe’s second run-in with Rafi. Brash Xoe Chloe’s extreme looks and attitude would either fool these two closeup. Or not.

“Hey, lady!” Temple kept her naturally foggy voice high and a bit nasal. “This is just a black stray cat. Chill. I don’t know who this ‘Louie’ is. Your bookie? But this ole cat here is just some innocent stray. I mean, could those big green eyes lie?”

Here Xoe Chloe turned to eye Rafi Nadir up and down much more thoroughly than Temple would ever do. His eyes were in no way green.

“And this man can’t have been here earlier,” she decreed. “Look! Those cats have lost a lot of nail sheaths engaging someone in this room tonight.” A few pearly scythes still glinted from the navy carpeting. “Some would have clung to that denim and cotton-knit and showed up like dandruff on all that black. Someone else walked out of here dripping nail sheaths. But not your bodyguard. Look again! There’s another one by the door.”

“Oh.” Savannah looked from Rafi to the carpet to the door, but not at Xoe. She pressed a hand to her bony chest and sank into seated posture on the end of her bed. “Then I did see someone in black. Just not this man.”

“Maybe.” Nadir bent to the rug, glanced at Temple with no great favor, then followed the trail of nail sheaths to the door. Opening it, he encountered a herd of pink-shirt-clad contestants, looking like agitated sorority sisters.

He quickly shut the door. “What happened?” he asked Savannah, his voice brusque with urgency. “How exactly were you attacked?”

“It was dark. I heard the door open. When I got up, someone or something pushed me back onto the bed. Then there was this shrieking, like bats or banshees or something.”

“Cats,” Xoe said. “It sounded like a cat fight from forty feet down the hall.”

“My cats were fighting something big,” Savannah insisted, pushing herself upright on the bed. “I glimpsed a man’s figure, just as the lights went on. And off again. And on again.”

Rafi rubbed his forehead. “I came in and hit the lights.”

“No. No, he must have been gone by then. You had to have passed him in the hall.”

“I didn’t. Nothing to run into, not even a current of disturbed air. Nobody went out of here.”

Temple swaggered to the door in Xoe’s motorcycle boot gait, which is hard to do in bunny slippers.

From Rafi Nadir’s expression, he’d come to the same conclusion as Savannah.

“Hey.” Xoe Chloe blew a kiss at her own bizarre reflection. Totally not-Temple. “You got a full-length mirror here. Next to the door. How’d you rate?”

“Yes.” Savannah was pleased by her observation. “That’s part of my contract wherever I appear. A full-length mirror installed next to the room door. So I can check myself just before I leave. So many women end up dragging toilet paper on their shoes or with hitched-up skirts or worse from not checking their full-length reflection in a mirror before they leave a hotel room.”

“You’re saying—?” Nadir pressed Temple/Xoe with the same weary skepticism his no-longer-significant other used.

“I’m saying the mirror by the door, in dim light, could confuse a witness. Or a victim.”

“A victim?” Savannah’s voice—never sweet, gentle, and low—rose to new hysterical heights. “I was to be a victim?”

Temple nodded, though she wasn’t entirely sure about that. “The cats must have sensed a problem and attacked the man in black in the dark, before the lights went on. Their eyes don’t require much light to see.”

“The cats.” Savannah glanced around. “My little darlings! Fighting for their mommy tooth and nail.”

“Nails,” Temple corrected, pointing out another lost sheath with the pink felt nose end of her bunny slipper. Nadir frowned and dropped down to the carpet to mark the spot with an X of tape he’d taken from a dispenser on the spindly-legged desk near the door.

Temple, meanwhile, advanced on the mirror. Midnight Louie was shadowing her ankle like it was his lost love. She hoped that wouldn’t give her away. Savannah certainly wasn’t praising him as her savior.

But then, unlike Rafi, he wasn’t Savannah’s bodyguard. He was Temple’s.

She glanced down. In the now overlit room, Louie’s dark pupils were the eye of the needle in his enigmatic green eyes. They were aimed like arrows toward the target of the mirror.

Once in front of it, Temple’s fingernails tested the frame, looking for a mechanism.

Rafi came up behind her, his dark reflection encompassing her pageant-pink one for a moment, like an ugly storm cloud swallowing a remnant of the sunset. Would he recognize her now? Or had her gift for disguise fooled even a suspicious guy like him?

He eyed her for a long while. But it wasn’t really her he was looking at, for he then lifted the mirror off its hook as if it were made of cardboard. As if to prove something.

And revealed…

A paneled wall. A wall paneled in picture frame panels, rather.

His black work boot pushed at the bottom. The inside of the panel clicked inward, revealing a dark and mysterious passage beyond.

He stepped into the patch of black. “Stay here.”

“Wait a minute, dude. I found this.”

“Drop the dead-end-kid act.”

Temple’s heart dropped instead. He’d made her! Then he went on.

“You think you’re such a tough twerp. You’re a kid. In your nightie. Stay here.”

Temple rammed him from the side and forced her leg through, bunny slipper and all.

“This is nuts! The city is crawling with ballsy little broads. Stay here and pet the cats or something.”

“I’ll raise such a ruckus you’ll be the last person on earth to see inside that passage.”

Rafi, glowering like a World Wrestling Federation personality at intermission, reluctantly stood aside.

“Ladies first.” He didn’t, of course, mean either word of it.

That didn’t matter. Neither one of them would be first into the dark.

Midnight Louie hefted his tail into the air at a ninety-degree angle and preceded them into the lightless secret passage beyond.

Temple followed and so did a thin beam of light. She turned back to see Rafi hoisting a cigar-size flashlight he’d pulled from his jeans pocket.

The passage was pretty dull. Instead of being dank and vermin ridden, it was dry and dusty. Nothing moved in it but them. Louie spotted a few snakes to pounce on but they turned out to be electric cables.

Rafi pointed his narrow light at the seam where ceiling and walls met. More cables, affixed to the support beams by huge staples.

“The man who built this place was a bit paranoid, like Elvis,” Temple noted.

“Perfect setup for wiring and surveillance. That’s why the producers picked this house. It was wired for everything already. Must be more of these access passages all though the place.”

“Perfect system for sick pranksters to use,” she noted. Rafi laughed. “Yeah. I’d call the producers of all these rigged reality shows sick pranksters. Amazing. People protest the increased surveillance touching their lives because of terrorists but love to watch their fellow citizens being eavesdropped on and filmed on the sly and tricked in these cheesy reality shows.”

“Inhumane nature,” Temple commented sagely.

The flashlight picked out the black shapes of hidden cameras strung along the corridor like suspended bats in a cave.

“The technicians must be running up and down these all the time,” she noted. “What keeps a really nasty voyeur from being among them?”

“Not a thing, bunnie babe. Not one thing. I suppose there’s no hope for it but to go back and guard that Ashleigh broad. Ain’t it amazing how the most irritating one aboard is the most careful to protect herself?”

“Oh, Miss Ashleigh isn’t the most irritating one here.”

“You have a better candidate?”

He obviously had not considered the male contingent. Dexter Manship … Crawford Buchanan … Mr. Hair Guy. Male chauvinism can be blinding.

They re-emerged smelling of dust and, it turned out, covered in it. (Only Louie seemed to relish the fact. He shook himself dust free in a few seconds, then began licking his coat in the proper direction again.) No one much noticed their less-than-triumphal return. The room thronged with cooing girls in pink pajama sets intent on both soothing Savannah and courting her vote.

Even the Persian girls were now ensconced on the bedspread beside their recumbent mistress, purring away in solace and solidarity.

“Frightening,” Rafi noted.

Temple was sure that Midnight Louie concurred, and she was ready to join the both of them.

“I’m being stalked,” Savannah insisted. “I suspected asmuch but now that this demon, this evil black ninja, has shown up in my very room, I’m certain of it.”

The accusation caused all eyes to turn toward the trio returned from their expedition through the looking glass, all black in some sinister way. There was Louie, black as a witch’s familiar from toe to tail to tip of ear. Temple and her ebony Cher hair. Rafi Nadir and his Middle-Eastern looks in black denim. The lion, the witch, and the … Temple glanced at Rafi. No, he did not qualify as a wardrobe. Thank goodness.

“There’s a hidden passage,” he said, “behind the mirror. Anyone could have come in or out.”

Savannah sat up, all disheveled blonde hair (her usual style anyway). “My babies were in danger!” She gathered Yvette and Solange close, their eyes slitting in an expression of utter feline distaste mixed with bored sufferance.

Come to think of it, that exactly matched the expression on Rafi Nadir’s face.

“Nail it shut,” she ordered.

“Can’t,” he said. “The mirror covers the entire door.”

“Well, I can’t possibly move. It would upset the girls. Cats are far more attached to places than to people.”

Rafi visibly struggled not to say that in her case such a reaction would be justified. While he dawdled, Rome burned. Or at least Savannah’s baser instincts.

“Then you’ll just have to keep watch all night on this side of the mirror,” she purred.

Yes, she purred. She had doubtlessly been called upon to purr a line or several in every one of her B and C movies, and probably a few Ds, Temple thought. Or were those cup sizes: before and after augmentation?

As Rafi looked around in horror at his frilly dutystation-to-be, Savannah took charge. “You can sleep—or catnap rather, for you certainly don’t want to miss another intrusion—on the chaise lounge.”

He regarded this bejeweled pillow-heaped upholstered torturous curl of feminine furniture as if it were a medieval iron rack.

“I’ll do whatever it takes to prevent any further incursions,” Rafi said, through his teeth, “but I’ll sleep in the hall right outside the door. Just a scream away. Yours or theirs.”

He nodded at the languid Persians.

Savannah pouted but didn’t object. Temple supposed luring any man any nearer at all satisfied her vanity and reduced the fuss and muss of actual intimacy. But Rafi’s resistance to the siren of soft porn surprised Temple.

Was he possibly tiring of the superfeminine stereotype? Then again, he’d hooked up with Molina years before, so he must have something of a soft spot for hard women.

Scratch a male chauvinist and find a … masochist secretly in search of a dominatrix? Interesting.

“Good.” Savannah snuggled down in her many decorative bed pillows, dragging the Persian sisters with her. “You girls can leave now. I have a bodyguard.”

The Teen Queen candidates pitter-pattered out, the young and the sleep deprived, a herd of blonde bunnies.

Temple regarded her bunny slippers, a Christmas gift from her mother. They belonged with the herd. The rest of Temple/Xoe did not.

“You want me to take the chaise lounge?” she asked Rafi in a West Side Story teen-gang accent, using Savannah’s misnomer.

“No. I can handle both sides of the door, girly. Take yourself back to your bunk bed.”

“My little sis is probably having hysterics,” she conceded.

When she ankled out into the hall, Louie was making like Saran Wrap on her ankles again.

Everyone had accepted him as some stray mascot thathad adopted the house. Cameras lingered lovingly on his liquid feline progress through the rich environs and the gathered Teen Queens. He strutted like a sultan with a private harem.

Temple decided she could do worse than to adopt the attitude everyone else had.

Mariah was waiting at the door to their room, as ordered, but barely.

One foot and an elbow and an inquisitive nose were in the hall.

“What happened? Who screamed?”

“Savannah Ashleigh and her cats.”

“Oh.” Mariah instantly diagnosed a false alarm. “That airhead gives Clairol a bad name. Every time anything male crosses her path, including that black cat there, she swoons. I thought that went out with corsets.”

“No one told Savannah. And corsets are back in, since Madonna. But Miss Ashleigh is a judge, so good little contestants don’t want to be caught on camera dissing her.” Temple looked up. “Although I’m betting all the cameras are trained on Savannah Ashleigh’s bedroom after tonight’s scare.”

“I need a shower,” Mariah declared. She looked in Temple’s direction and sniffed. Pointedly. “Where have you been? Smells gross. Let’s go.”

This call for a private talk was about as subtle as Emeraude perfume, but Temple retreated into the bathroom with Mariah for a quick consultation. She actually relished the moisture falling hot water would pump back into her desiccated sinuses. That “secret” passage had been as deserty dry as a pharaoh’s tomb.

“No!” Mariah, red faced and dewy from the makeshift sauna a few minutes later, was rapt. “A secret passage.”

“Packed with recording equipment. Nothing Gothic about it. Just high-tech snooping.”

“And with that bodyguard guy. He looks hot.”

Temple wasn’t ready to hear this from Mariah but allowed for teen exaggeration. “He’s just a middle-aged private cop,” she said carefully. “Nothing glamorous like a Day-Glo boy.”

“My mom hates those guys.”

“Day-Glo boys?” Temple asked, startled. From Max to boy bands? Where would Molina’s prejudices end? “No, private cops.”

Maybe, but her mom hated this particular private cop even worse.

“He’s right, though,” Temple said. “All the pranks here smell like producers’ tricks to up the ante on the competition.”

“Cops have no imagination,” Mariah said authoritatively.

Nor did cops’ kids, thank goodness.

“Is that cat going to sleep with us?”

Temple considered Louie. And the fact that Mariah had seen him once, months ago, with Matt, and didn’t know he was Temple’s cat. Or, actually, he wasn’t Temple’s cat. She was Louie’s person. As such, he would sleep with them.

“Probably,” Temple said. “He’s an outcast. Savannah would never let him bunk with her precious Persians.”

Giggles were Mariah. “I’d love to see that! Her cats sure are pretty, though. Mine are kinda scrawny and stripey.”

“They’re delightful. I remember them as kittens. They were the cutest things.”

“‘Cute’ doesn’t cut it.” Mariah had suddenly plunged into one of those teen dives on a bungee cord to self-esteem hell.

“Look. I’ve been ‘cute’ my whole life, and I survived it.”

“Yeah … but.”

“I am not a ‘yeah … but.’ I am a real girl. Remember, your police professional mom hired me to look after you.”

“She did, didn’t she? That was weird. My mom doesn’t depend on anybody but herself.”

“Maybe that’s a problem.”

Mariah reared back. She had bought into Supermom herself.

“She can’t be everywhere,” Temple pointed out. “And you gotta admit some strange things are happening here.”

“But none of them are really real, are they? They’re all threats but no action.”

“You’ve got a point. This is a ‘reality’ show but the action is strangely unreal. You might even say surreal.”

“What does that mean?”

“Surreal?” Temple smiled at Midnight Louie, now sprawled out in the vast wasteland between her and Mariah’s sides of the gigantic bed. “Surreal is sort of like saying this big black cat here is our personal bodyguard.”

“Who’d want a cat for a bodyguard? I’d want Enrique Iglesias. Who’d you want?”

Temple considered. “Not Kevin Costner.”

“Who?”

Oops. Already over a decade out of date. “Ummm.” Nobody Mariah might know came to mind. “The Pink Panther.”

“The Pink Panther? Who’s that?”

And that gave Temple an opening to tell a fairy story about a world long ago and far away and very funny. She took them both miles away from the Teen Queen Castle with its secrets and strangers and perplexing puzzles that seemed to lead nowhere.

Chapter 29 Home Sweet Harassment Molina couldn’t believe it. Only five days at the Teen Queen Castle and Temple Barr had phoned to report four incidents of threats and harassment. All of it sounded pretty amateur, but even one loose cannon in that hothouse situation was bad news.

She certainly had time to think this whole thing over at home. The house felt incredibly empty without Mariah in it, so empty that she hadn’t been able to sleep. This did not bode well for the coming teen dating years.

The competition house was being watched around the clock. It would have been hard enough to send Mariah off on her first independent stay away from home under normal circumstances. To do it under the wacky auspices of a reality TV show was way worse. To have edgy little acts of violence surrounding the Teen Queen competition made it a mother’s nightmare.

She wandered into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator door. The ostensible reason was to feed the cats, Caterina and Tabitha, who were also up and hyper, looking lean, mean, and neglected. Meee-ow. Feed me. Their girly caretaker was gone.

Not to worry. Mama to the rescue.

The underlying reason to feed the cats was to search the fruit/vegetable drawer, then the freezer, for something sweet, fatty, and delicious.

No such animal in the Molina household.

Drat!

Wait!

What the heck is this?

A non—Weight Watchers frozen dessert.

Caramel. Chocolate. Six hundred calories. Thirty-three carbs. Eighteen grams of fat …

Mariah must have imported this anti-diet bomb to the family fridge.

No, she’d been fanatic about low-fat, low-carb foods the past month. Probably because she’d been hoping to get The Call from the Teen Queen people.

How could a detective-mother have missed that change of habit?

Been a little busy at work?

Molina balanced the frozen dessert package on one palm, weighing its presence here as well as its calories.

The frozen package chilled her hand. The icy chill drove deeper as she realized … this wasn’t just some forgotten purchase. This was another “gift” from the anonymous stalker.

She slid the kitchen drawer open and pulled out a large plastic baggie, one-handed. The frozen container might not hold prints and there probably wouldn’t be prints anyway, but she would check.

Meanwhile, her daughter was on her own in the Teen Queen Castle, which was also beset by stalker incidents.

Okay. Temple Barr was on the teen scene. Not bad for an amateur. A gifted snoop. But no professional. What to do?

For one wild moment, Molina wanted to rip the dessert from the protective baggie, gobble it down, eat the evidence, take two aspirin, and think about it in the morning.

She picked up her cell phone.

Something bad in the neighborhood? Who you gonna call?

What was happening with Mariah, and how could a mother under siege deal with it? Not to mention Rafi Nadir stalking out of her past like a mummy brought to life.

Who you gonna call?

The latest number on her instant dial was Larry Paddock’s. Paddock. Hip, available, suddenly there and suddenly interested.

Not … unattractive. Probably a damn good undercover cop.

Suddenly there.

Molina hit a preprogrammed number. It was answered despite the late hour, thank God, but she’d expected no less.

“Molina. No, not exactly. Got a minute? Or twenty. Good. Thanks, Morrie.”

Chapter 30

The Extent of the Law

Matt still saw stars, not his fellow guests on today’s live edition of The Amanda Show, but from the intense television studio lights.

The lights made everything beyond the hot, faux living-room set seem unreal. No matter how many times he appeared on the talk show, and this was his seventh or eighth visit, he never lost the sense that everything on camera happened in an overcivilized dreamtime, not unlike the Australian aborigines’ mystical cycle.

Nothing mystical about leaving the studio for Chicago’s hyperactive streets. Now he was in a cab on traffic jammed Michigan Avenue near Water Tower Place.

New York City soared, a stone forest primeval with thin tall buildings. Chicago squatted. The city’s broad, heavy-set edifices were also high and huge, but Chicago post–Carl Sandburg was more a sumo wrestler of a city. Manhattan was a wirewalker.

Now Matt was trading one thick tower for another, from the TV studio to an office building a few blocks farther up Michigan Avenue.

He carried a slim aluminum briefcase, accoutered more as a celebrity dilettante than a legal eagle. He’d bought it for this one occasion: broaching the law offices of Brandon, Oakes, and McCall. That decades-old name had been on the papers giving his mother title to the old, two-flat residence in the city’s decaying Polish section almost thirty-five years ago.

By now, sitting on the hot seat of a television talk show set was old hat and Chicagoans he had contact with coming and going might recognize him. Might comment on the day’s topic. Tell him about their brother/sister/kid who should be on The Amanda Show He had become what Temple so aptly called a semicelebrity. A regular on a surviving talk show. Not quite Oprah. Not Ellen. Not The View. But comfortably second tier. When it came to being in the spotlight, Matt liked second tier fine. That was where the fitful public limelight didn’t fry your private life for dinner.

Dignity was not necessarily a requirement for the job but he’d managed to keep his, so far, during his media ramble. Dignity would be the key to getting any kind of honest attention from Brandon, Oakes, and McCall.

And dignity was the reason he was visiting this old established law firm. His mother’s. She wanted to know more about the man who had sired him. A boy, really, from what little she’d told Matt about the circumstances of his conception. A young man determined to volunteer for a foreign war his family had the means to keep him safely out of. Meeting a girl from the wrong side of the WASP tracks in a church on the eve of shipping out.

It was hard for Matt to imagine his timid, conservativemother being young enough to fall into first sex with a stranger she’d met in a church, before the flickering candles at a saint’s station.

But she had. And what came of it? Only him, a fatherless child in a working-class Catholic neighborhood that didn’t forget sins of carnal knowledge.

Matt found himself shaking his head in the back of the cab, which smelled of chewing gum and smoke. Its lurching progress through the rush-hour traffic was making him sick. Or something else was.

His mother was fifty-four now, looking remarkably young yet leading a life circumscribed by her underachieving job and the Church. What good would it do her to know the name of her particular hit-and-run Joseph?

He had died, that privileged boy who’d rejected his get-out-of-war free card. Over there somewhere. The family lawyers bought amnesia from mother and son with the title of a two-flat that would keep them, with a spare unit to bring in steady rent. Matt’s mother had never known more than his father’s first name but he’d been somebody, whoever he was. Any seed he’d sown on the way to annihilation was … so much wildflower along the highway. Unnamed, unnoticed. Unacknowledged.

So much chaff in the wind. Then he thought of his stepfather, Cliff Effinger. Why had she married him when he’d been just a toddler? He’d asked that question at six and he still asked it of himself today, almost thirty years later. Effinger. Now dead, and Matt not sorry one bit. A mean, lesser man than the sainted boy Mira met at the saint’s station in the church.

How could she? How could she have turned them both over to an abusive creature like Effinger? Unless she’d felt she deserved punishment? Unless she’d been so beaten down that she’d needed to marry a permanent punishment. Matt finally had grown old and big enough to banish punishment, but it hadn’t been soon enough.

His mother wasn’t to blame; it was the social milieu that said that pain was a fallen woman’s only lot. It was her righteous, callous family and the Church he’d run to himself at the earliest opportunity for ultimate approval. Holy Mother of God. He too had deserted her for his own petty salvation.

Matt probed for the right bills as he paid off the cabby and got out to face a fifties building of pale stone and castlelike crenellations.

He didn’t need this. Want this. His mother did. A bad idea. If he … she … learned nothing, it was another disappointment in a life replete with too many. If they learned something, it was … a slap in the face; they weren’t wanted here, not even Matt with his seminational media profile.

Still. He had his national TV suit on, which was a lot better than Dr. Phil’s, and his new seriously slick briefcase, and his smooth, photogenic media cool. None of it was bedrock real, but then neither were the high-priced lawyers from this firm who had bullied a naive young mother into settling for down-at-the-heels real estate as shabby security instead of real information about the most traumatic, and apparently transcendental, moment of her life.

How much you want to bet a Chicago lawyer even knew what transcendental meant?

Matt walked in, read the tiny white type on the big black plaque by the elevator, and was whooshed, ears quickly blocked, to the forty-fifth floor.

Brandon, Oakes, and McCall offered a reception suite paved in plush plum carpet and furniture upholstered in espresso-dark brown leather.

The receptionist reminded Matt of a high-priced Las Vegas call girl: tall, chic, managing to be both icy and sexy.

He ought to know, thanks to his latest unwanted adventure in the land of neon and sex for sale.

The woman’s demeanor warmed as he neared the desk. She glanced down at the appointment ledger and frowned. “Mr… . Devine? You requested an appointment with a senior partner.”

“Yes.”

A few junior female clerks were dashing in and out of the smooth wooden door beyond the receptionist’s arena that kept the uninvited out. They glanced at him, then looked again, then outright gawked.

Okay. He was getting used to these epiphanies among the female population. Maybe it was his blond Polish good looks. Maybe familiarity from his stints on The Amanda Show. Maybe it was the highlight job from his last bizarre undercover turn in Temple’s Everlasting Carnival of Crime and Detection.

Ms. Fashionista Receptionist smiled intimately at him in recognition of his high profile in the waiting room.

“You may go right in. Miss—” She hesitated before bestowing the honor on just the right one of the paralyzed paralegals. “Miss Hendrix will escort you.”

Miss Hendrix leaped forward, clutching a bouquet of legal-length manila folders to her pin-striped heart. “Certainly, Mr.—?”

“Devine.” He expected his name to generate references to his latest appearance on Chicago TV, but Miss Hendrix blinked as if confounded, then stuttered forward like a geisha on her four-inch spike heels toward the unmarked, exotic zebrawood door.

Puzzled, Matt followed. Certainly his yellow hair alone hadn’t merited this reception. But if they didn’t recognize his media ties, what else could account for this quick and cordial reception?

The office he was ushered into was the size of a racquetball court and about as welcoming.

Glass winked coldly from a ring of expensive modern prints. Leather and wood was slathered everywhere, enormous distances separating desk and chairs from facing walls of built-in bar and audio-video equipment. Beyond all this, looking like a gigantic print, was the sweep of distant gray skyscraper towers through a window-wall.

“Mr. Brandon will see you shortly,” said Miss Fluttering Legal Briefs. “Please. Be seated.”

He took one of the three tufted brown leather wing chairs placed before the desk, set the silver briefcase beside it, and commenced to wait.

“Mr. Devine!”

The voice from the doorway was both powerful and jocular.

“My wife loves your appearances on Amanda’s show. What brings you to our offices?”

So that was it. Mr. Big himself had recognized his name.

The voice advanced on him from behind, its energy bouncing off the window-wall. Matt turned in the wing chair, started to rise.

“Charles Brandon.”

His … host, it sounded like, came into view around the curl of the chair’s obscuring wing.

A chubby hand accessorized with a three-carat star sapphire ring was extended.

Matt rose to take it, then watched shock rinse all the welcome from Charles Brandon’s pink and fleshy face.

It was too late to stop the handshake. Matt kept his grip firm but not pushy. The hand he shook went limp with the surprise the face had registered first.

“Mr. Devine,” the man repeated, as if impressing the name on his memory. “You are the visiting family counselor on The Amanda Show Aren’t you?”

“Among other things, yes.” Matt studied the man, watching him juggle preconceptions.

“Well, sit down.” Brandon bustled around the desk toinstall himself on the gray leather behemoth of a chair behind it. His formerly flushed skin tones now matched the ashen hide. “Ah, as I was saying, my wife loves you. I mean, she loves your, ah, point of view, I guess. You know women, always into that relationship stuff. So. What can I do for you?”

While Matt reseated himself, reaching for the briefcase, Brandon kept talking in the way of a man who makes his living by it.

“You must forgive my surprise. You’re not what I expected.”

“In what way?”

“Oh, you know. Dr. Phil. Fat and fifty. I had no idea you were such a … handsome young fellow. No wonder my wife, eh?”

“I’ve been told I’m telegenic. That word always sounds like an exotic affliction to me.”

Brandon chuckled, his face and manner resuming their earlier bonhomie. “Clever fellow too. How’d you get into the TV shrink game?”

“I’m not a shrink. I was a Catholic priest for most of my adult life.”

“Now that surprises me. Also relieves me. Can’t have the wife too enamored of sharp young men on TV. You left, then?”

“Officially, yes, the priesthood. One doesn’t ever leave the Church, I’m told.”

“I’ve heard that same sentiment from Chicago’s most famous priest, Father Greeley. Wonderful man.”

Matt felt he had now been firmly pinned to whatever part of the bulletin board Brandon reserved for such alien life forms as celibate priests, current or former.

“What can I do for you?” Brandon repeated.

“Not for me so much as for my mother.”

“Your mother—”

“She lives here. In Chicago.”

“And you?”

“I live in Las Vegas now.”

“Las Vegas? Really? Quite the switch for you, I imagine.”

“It’s mostly a city that ordinary people live in. That’s where my syndicated radio talk show originates.”

“Syndicated. Indeed.”

Matt hated to use his media connections but they appeared to work.

“Would you like my girl to get you a cup of coffee or tea? Something stronger?”

“No. Thank you. What I’d like is for you to take a look at this … document my mother signed thirty-five years ago. Your firm drew it up.”

“An old document. Quite the mystery. Now you’ve got me curious. Let’s see it.”

Matt lifted the briefcase, unlatched it, and brought out the three-page agreement that bore his mother’s signature.

Brandon lowered his silver-haired head to the pages, skimmed the first page. Flipped the paper back over the staple in the upper-left-hand corner.

“A deed transfer. Straightforward. Your mother was given title to a two-flat.” He hit the third page, where she was required to seek no more “compensation” and to make no further “contact” with the unnamed party who had transferred ownership of the two-flat to her.

“Most … unusual.”

Matt had watched Brandon’s face fade again to gray. He’d heard people described as “going white” with shock but he’d never actually seen the phenomenon before. It was more a grim tightening of the features than actual paling, but there was no doubt that what Brandon saw in those papers disturbed him.

“An unusual deed transfer but quite binding, I’d think.” Brandon held the papers out to Matt, who didn’t take them.

“It was a compensation for my birth. Child support of a sort, if you will. My mother was very young, not even eighteen, and she signed it without legal advice.”

“Still, she signed it.”

“But I didn’t. I’d like to know who the unnamed ‘party of the first part’ is.”

“Impossible. The anonymity is as binding on this firm as your mother’s agreement to seek no further information was, and is, on her.”

“I’m not her. I want to know the name of the family that made arrangements for my domestic life. I want to know my family name.”

“You have a perfectly good, and fairly famous, one now: Devine. I advise you to be happy with it.”

“It’s a phony name, Mr. Brandon. Do you know where my mother got it? From her favorite Christmas hymn, ‘0 Holy Night.’ The line goes, ‘0 Holy Night, 0 Night Divine …’“

Brandon kept his eyes on his lizardskin desk set. “However it came to be, it’s very … telephonic. Stick with it and forget delving into the dead past.”

—The dead past’ involves how I came to be. I’m not going to leave it alone.”

“I can’t help you break the confidentiality of a document this firm constructed.”

“Why not? ‘The truth shall set you free.’ My mother was a naive teenager in desperate circumstances when she signed that document. Encouraging her to do so might be construed as fraud. Who paid her off to keep her, and myself, ignorant of my father’s identity?”

“I can’t tell you.”

“Why not?”

“I have to protect the party of the first part, our client.”

“But it’s my birth, my life, hidden behind these three sleazy little pages buying silence and selling souls.” Brandon waved the papers at Matt again. His face crinkled with appeal. “That was almost thirty-five years ago, young man! Take my advice. Forget about it. You have a successful life. I assume you can take quite good financial care of your mother.”

“Someone felt guilty, or that paper would never have been drawn up. Guilt doesn’t melt like hailstones. It sits and festers. Whoever wanted that secrecy enough to buy it doesn’t really sleep well at night, thirty-five years down the drain or not. I’m doing him or them a favor. And I won’t give up or go away. Quite frankly, I started this on my mother’s behalf. I tried to advise her against it with the same platitudes you’re now urging on me. But Shakespeare said it best: ‘the past is prologue.’ That’s the story of all our lives, if you think about it, and we all deserve to know our own pasts.”

Brandon jabbed the papers at him one last time.

“Keep that,” Matt told him. “It’s only a copy. I’m after the originals.”

“You’re quite eloquent, you know that? I’m glad you’re not an attorney. But the law’s on my side. I can’t help you, or your mother. I’m sorry. I can’t.”

Matt stood up. “I want to know. I need to know. I intend to know. Maybe other attorneys in this city would like to know too. Maybe Amanda would like a personal story from an expert on her show. Maybe a lot of possibilities are out there somewhere. Like the truth. Thanks for your time. Give your wife my regards.”

It was a long walk to the door. He took it as if he had won, not lost. Hearing Brandon make the same arguments to him that he had given his mother had turned Matt 180 degrees on this whole issue.

She had a right to know. He had a right to know. They had a right to know.

Opening the door, he almost bumped into the lurking paralegal.

“Oh. Mr… . Devine. May I show you out?“He smiled. “Sure. Thanks. These offices are a rat maze.”

“Don’t we know it? So many junior partners.”

She happily led him through carpeted hallways that turned and twisted, always passing by more paper-filled work cubicles.

“When do you find time to watch The Amanda Show?” he asked as they neared the central reception area.

“Amanda Show? Daytime TV. Oh, I don’t. Ever find time, I mean. I know it’s a Chicago institution. Why do you ask about it?”

“Because it’s a Chicago institution, like Oprah,” he said, shrugging as if he didn’t care.

So her amazing interest in him didn’t derive from his TV appearances. Surely his recent Queer Eye for the Straight Guy hair highlighting job wasn’t solely responsible for these frequent dewy glances?

“Here we are. Reception, Mr. Win—” She glanced, mortified, at the appointment roster in her hand. “Oh, yes. Right. Mr. Devine.”

“Thank you.”

He’d never meant those two words more. Moving through the crowded reception area, barely seeing the blur of briefcase-carrying men and women, he mentally repeated the young woman’s slip of the tongue over and over: Mr. Win … Winthrop? Winston? Winter? Winterhalter? Winscott. Wingate. The Chicago phonebook would be crammed with enough possibilities to make his vision blur at the tiny type repeating W-i-n into infinity.

So, suddenly, there were possibilities. He had been mistaken for someone. A client. Apparently there was a marked family resemblance. He looked like someone alive in this world besides his mother.

The feeling was weird, and frightening, and infuriating. He would find out who, one way or another. Win is for Winning.

Chapter 31

Kissing Cousins

Matt’s mind was running in circles as he headed to his mother’s apartment in a cab through rush-hour traffic. He’d happened on a hornets’ nest at Brandon, Oakes, and McCall but exactly what variety of wasp had he stirred up? Legal shyster? Loyal attorney protecting a client?

Maybe he should have stayed. Watched the employees leave for the night. He had a hunch someone would be hearing about his visit. But … no one would be showing up until tomorrow. If ever. Let your fingers do the walking, use the phone or e-mail nowadays. Never show your face. Someone might notice your lying eyes.

“Here you are, bub.”

Said pointedly. While Matt had been enacting various scenarios in his head, they’d arrived at his mother’s apartment building. A bland block of windows. Horizontal glass windows, tall vertical exterior columns of stone. Plaid fifties-era urban high-rise.

Matt paid the driver, tipping him way too well. He couldn’t be bothered calculating a few dollars when his whole life was suddenly a million-dollar question. He entered the echoing lobby, so much more pretentious than the Circle Ritz’s music-box proportions. And therefore, so much less homey. And no Temple here to run into.

He was whistling by the time the elevator disgorged him on the twenty-second floor, thinking of Temple. The key his mother had given him on his last visit to Chicago turned in the plain apartment door with its lofty four-digit number. He was already relishing the peace and quiet of an empty apartment—Mom was at her job as a restaurant hostess, miles away. Wouldn’t be back until eleven P.M.

By then he’d have relaxed, chilled out, gathered his wits so he wouldn’t blurt out his discovery before he had any hard evidence… .

The door gave and opened before the key had finished its turns. A tallish young woman stood behind it. “Matt! Come in.”

“Krystyna! Krys. You’re here.”

“Yup. Live here, off and on. Didn’t Mira tell you?”

“Uh, no.”

“Don’t you look as yummy as a caramel sundae! What’s with the bleach, dude?”

Talk about the pot calling the kettle black. Blond in this instance. His cousin Krystyna’s hair was a kaleidoscope of platinum-on-blonde-on-black.

He put a dismissive hand to his hair, remembering it looked different. “Photo shoot for the radio station. I’m told it’ll wash out.” Close enough. “You, on the other hand… .”

“Madonna, Evita-in-Krakow style. You like the indigo highlights?”

“Colorful. I’m surprised to see you.”

“Have I got a Mae West line for you! Never mind. Not suitable for ex-priests. I guess my job is to entertain you until Mira gets home.”

“So … you live here. Off and on. I take it the punk boyfriend is around during the off?”

“Huh? Him? Oh, history. I was young and stupid then.”

“Three months ago?”

“Yeah. Want a beer?”

She was poised on the carpet verge next to the linoleum that marked off the alley kitchen.

“Yeah.” Matt realized he needed one.

Krys. She changed like a rainbow. Since he’d first met her when he’d connected to his Chicago relatives six months ago, she’d gone from breathless teenager to rebellious young adult, heavy on young to now … assertive single chick. Cousin. Assertive single cousin.

First cousin. Like it mattered to her.

She brought a Bohemian beer, the dark brown bottle sweating goose bumps of condensation. She didn’t offer him a glass.

“So.” Leaning against the eating bar that divided kitchen and living room. Five-foot-nine of fine Polish womanhood. Blue eyes both guarded and challenging. “How’ll we kill some time until Mira gets home? Cousin clearest.”

He suggested that they sit and talk. That was his profession, after all.

Or watch some TV. The remote was front and center on the small round fruitwood coffee table.

“I watched you on The Amanda Show today,” she told him, settling beside him on the couch. Settling way too much beside him.

“Really? It’s amazing how many people in Chicago miss my golden hour.”

She sighed. “You’re really good. I studied advertisingin class. TV is a ‘cool’ medium. The cooler and more laid back you are, the hotter you come across.”

“Glad you’re learning something in college. Is Uncle Stash letting you major in art?”

“No.” She sat up from her couch-lounging position, took a long swig of beer. “He still treats me like a kid. A woman.”

“I thought you wanted to be treated like a woman.” Matt was surprised at himself for challenging this incendiary cousin with a crush on him.

She grinned. “Not that way. Like the kind of woman you write off and put down. Polish Catholic burqa anyone? Like a nobody with nothing about her that counts.”

“He’s old-fashioned. He can’t help it.”

“So I should suffer?”

“No.”

She set down the beer. Moved closer on the couch. She wore a soft black sweater that ebbed off her shoulders like ebony surf. Cashmere maybe, or just a really good acrylic.

Wow. He was really absorbing a lot from Temple. Including enough savvy to regard his high-spirited young cousin as sheer poison.

“I’m mad at you.” She sounded like an adolescent again, emotionally bipolar. Also like a Lolita.

“Why?” Might as well walk into it.

“It could have been you.” When he continued to look blank, she added. “Last Christmas.”

Matt sipped the beer, knowing he wouldn’t like where this was going.

She mirrored his gesture, eyed him sideways. “Instead it was that loser Zeke.”

“I met him. You brought him to the restaurant where my mother works. Apparently he wasn’t such a loser then.”

“If you remember him, you know I’m not lying.”

“He … like most guys his age he’s just self-involved, dead set on being too cool to care. Or too cool to appear to. He’ll civilize in a few years.”

“I wish you’d told me that before I lost my so-called innocence to him.”

“You—Krys, I don’t need to know this.”

“Are you shocked?”

“I don’t hand out moral judgments anymore. Gave that up for Lent, along with my Roman collar.”

“You’re shocked, I can tell.”

“Not shocked. Just not comfortable discussing this with you.”

“You discuss things like that all the time on TV and the radio, in front of thousands of people.”

“I don’t know them.”

“I’m just being honest.”

“You need to be honest with yourself. You don’t have to share the news with other people.”

“You’re not other people. You could have been the one.”

He shook his head. “Never would have happened. Face it; we’re first cousins. Even civil law, not just ecclesiastical law, frowns on that. I know family dynamics. First cousins are often first crushes but I’ve been too messed up myself to do unto others the same. It’s not that you’re not bright and attractive, trust me.”

“Are you still—?”

“It’s none of your business.”

“You are!” It was an accusation. “Why?”

When he didn’t answer, she shook his arm. “Are you saving yourself for someone?”

Matt thought for a long moment. She had nailed it. The question was, should he be?

“Because if you are, maybe a little preliminary practice, a dry run, would be just the thing. Cousin.”

Chapter 32

The Wig Is Up

“The show must go on” is an ancient theatrical maxim probably going back to the Greeks and the first ever chorus line on some hill in Thessaly.

It was all too evident that reality television shows still abided by the same philosophy.

Except that Temple and Mariah had been on Candid Camera much more frequently than the other candidates, so Big Brother and Sister had been watching Xoe Chloe’s every far-rambling move.

Mariah returned to their room from her morning lifestyle counseling session feeling both nervous and rebellious.

Temple had slept in, in her wig, which was now looking matted as well as lank and dispirited. In fact, it looked like the road kill of some thankfully unrecognizable species.

She awoke grudgingly from dreams of Rafi Nadir and Matt Devine escorting her and Mariah to the father-daughter dance, except that Temple got Nadir for a father!

“What a nightmare,” she muttered as Mariah shook her awake. Although, the alternate possibility of Matt as her “father” escort was even worse. And far more Freudian.

Mariah was whispering in her ear. “They say I’m missing my beauty sleep and getting into trouble. I got a big lecture about bearing down on my diet and exercise program and staying away from you.”

“Good idea.” Temple struggled up and pulled the bedside clock closer to read it in B.C. time. Before Contacts were installed for the day.

“Yikes! My lifestyle session is in eighteen minutes. Gang way!”

In fifteen minutes, Xoe Chloe was fully assembled, bedhead and all.

“The great thing about punk,” Mariah noted from her watching post on the bed, “is that you can be considered put together no matter how ragged you look.”

“Thanks, kid.” Temple dashed into the hall where she ran into the Golden Girls, advancing in a pack and sniggering at her approach. This was not a promising sendoff to her lifestyle consultation.

“Are you going to get it,” Silver predicted.

Temple’s faux-green morning eyes blinked in the glare generated by so much pink, shiny spandex in a group. Even if they were all as stick-thin as flamingos.

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“You haven’t buckled down to the program,” Honey said. “I hear the coaching team will be reading you the riot act.”

“Shape up or flunk,” Ashlee added.

This was not good. If Temple was totally out of the running, she’d be of less use to Mariah, and her mother. “Outa my way, Blondies.” Temple ploughed through the permanent wave of sugar and spice and everything not nice.

Under the current regime, the house’s den had the feeling of a headmaster’s office. Temple paused at the closed double doors, then opened one and strolled in.

The whole Teen Queen team sat around the big oval wooden table. Only one chair was free, at one end of the oval.

Temple slid onto the huge leather chair, feeling like Little Orphan Annie called onto the carpet in Daddy Warbucks’s office.

Four judges and the five consultants glanced up, away, and shuffled folders. Not promising. Their spandex-shiny hot pink folder covers looked ludicrous lying on the dignified walnut conference table. Arthur Dickson might have been a tad eccentric, but he would be spinning in his presumed grave to see this crew taking over.

“Normally,” Beth Marble announced, “at this point in the competition we’re starting to see real improvement in the candidates.”

“I am too.” Temple nodded sagely. “I met a bunch in the hall coming here. Their high-pitched giggle quotient is way lower and I think they’re all developing larger calf muscles. Must be from the spike-heel footraces.”

“You always have a sassy answer.” Beth shook her head, putting her halo of curls in motion. “That hides nothing but your own anxiety.”

“Hide my anxiety? Not my idea. Anxiety is the watchword of our modern age. I’m visibly neurotic and proud of it.”

“I don’t think so.” Ken Adair, the Hair Guy, rose and walked toward Temple. “Everybody wants to be confident and secure, and you too are going to get that way if we have to browbeat you into it.”

Temple rolled her eyes, trying to think up a suitably Xoe Chloe comeback. “Anybody recording this? Sounds like lab-rat abuse to me.”

Adair reached her chair, spun it to face him, and scalped her.

“Yeow-ouch!” She gazed up at a foot of limp coal-black monofiber filaments dangling from the hairdresser’s viselike grasp.

“You are a fake, Xoe Chloe.” Beth Marble came to stand behind him.

“A freaking fraud,” Dexter Manship added to the chorus, while still balancing on his tailbone in his matching leather chair.

“A spirited but self-deluded girl,” her own Aunt Kit threw in, trying to put a positive spin on this shocking revelation.

“A … a has-been,” Savannah added after a long and visible search for words that hadn’t been used yet. Apparently, she could only come up with phrases that applied to herself.

“So I wear a wig.” Temple/Xoe sat up boarding school straight. “So does Cher. And Dolly. And a lot of performers. You going to tell me that’s not true?”

“Why a black wig?” her aunt asked, playing the defense attorney role.

“Sim-ple. I’ve got red hair.”

“So?”

“So who wants that? It’s unlucky. And mine’s curly too. Who wants to be Shirley Temple in a world where the Good Ship Lollipop is dropping anchor a day away from Guantanamo Bay?”

“No politics!” Beth commanded. “We are an issue-neutral show.”

“Yeah, right. So anyway, curly red hair’s a drag. It belongs in a comic strip. Like I’d want to be mistaken for that loser comedian, Carrot Top? Black is the new red.”

“My dear child:’ Beth said, “wigs are not allowed. We’re going for natural beauty here.”

Temple snorted. “Tell that to the Golden Girls. When they sit in the bleachers, it’s at their hairdresser’s. Right, Mr. Adair?”

“Nothing wrong with subtle colorations, Miss Xoe. Subtle,” he repeated in a voice like a drill bit.

“Subtle sucks:’ Temple said airily. “It’s the refuge of uncertain minds.”

“Well, we’re certain about one thing.” Manship had risen and was staring her down. “That rats’ nest of fake hair has got to go. What’s under there can’t be any more pathetic. Color and restyle, Adair. Right now.”

Temple would have opened her mouth to protest, except Adair had her by the shoulders. He was dredging her out of the chair and marching her down the hall before she could say “Gamier Fructose.” In one minute flat, she was shoved into a room where the reek of hairspray was sickly sweet enough to choke a skunk.

This was a part of undercover work Molina had never prepared her for: beauty boot camp.

For the next ninety minutes, Temple was buckled into a rotating chair where she was washed, styled, spun, dried, spindled, and mutilated.

She felt like a duck in the weeds whose shelter is ripped away one reed at a time. Huddled under a pink plastic cape, she watched tiny feathered remnants of her past haircut fall like residue from a tarring and feathering. Too many people inside the Teen Queen Castle knew Temple Barr, redhead and PR whirlwind. Her cover was being stripped away and blown dry even as she sat strapped to the chair.

“I don’t know why you hate your red hair,” Adair said. “So many girls do. Guess they feel like Raggedy Ann dolls. A shame. Red rocks for me, but change what irritates you. Take a look, pussycat.”

He handed her a mirror.

Temple glanced sideways at her reflection through squinty eyes. How would she face Molina when she admitted to having lost her cover to a pair of barber’s shears, leaving the policewoman’s daughter alone in a house crawling with secret tunnels, cameras, and sick stalkers?

Temple, shrinking in the chair, straightened.

So had her hair. Straightened somehow.

It had been bleached into a medley of warm and cool blonde shades! And straightened and razor-cut into shoulder-brushing length. She looked like … nobody she knew. A stranger. The Power of Blonde: hide behind your hair color.

Her cover was not blown! It was … better than ever. Hallelujah!

Of course, imagining what the grow-out would be like was a nightmare, but for the moment…

“Pretty foxy.” Her Aunt Kit was standing there, beaming down on her niece. “This girl has a chance at the prize if her attitude improves.”

Thanks be to savvy aunts! What an actress! Still, Kit might be onto something. Temple was still studying herself in the mirror. Dang if the blonde hair didn’t make her green contact lenses even more dominant. An eye of another color was a slim sliver of a disguise but it had worked for Max. Temple guessed that her new pale honey hair would even make her real eye color, a wishy-washy blue-gray in her own opinion, resemble the dangerous, deep steel blue of a Fontana Brother’s Beretta.

“Pink is not her color,” Kit told Adair, “too sweetysweet with her pale complexion. If she were on one of my book covers, she’d be wearing Nile green or peach velvet.”

Vanetta, the show’s wardrobe witch had appeared as well. “We’ll go with the icy Easter tones … peach, aqua,and pale lilac for her. This will be one of the more dynamic makeovers. From jet black to liquid blonde.”

Vanetta, a brunette and therefore one who might be expected to have issues with blonde, instead grinned from ear to ear. “I love it. I have to put everybody else but that Molina girl in pasty pastels. This honey-warm blonde at least gives me a mid-tone palette to play with.”

Temple was startled to realize that she and Mariah were the only not-blondes in the finals. And also the reason why: in states with a large Hispanic labor force, Anglo women, even natural-born brunettes, didn’t want to be mistaken for “the hired help.”

On the other hand, not being blonde made the two of them stand out in a crowd. For a wild, wonderful moment, Temple pictured Mariah winning her category, in her glory, going—oh, all right, no dog in a manger, Temple—going to her school father-daughter dance with Matt Devine, a “dad” to die for.

Oops. Another prominent brunet haunted the premises: Rafi Nadir, Mariah’s real father. Temple didn’t see him playing a role in any fairy tale ending except one of the darkest tales by the Brothers Grimm, maybe Iron John.

Meanwhile, the moment was all about her, Xoe Chloe, debunked brunette and closet redhead now transformed into a mainstream blonde bombshell. If only Max could see her now. Not Matt. He didn’t have Max’s theatrical instincts and would probably just be shocked.

“Okay, pumpkin.” Adair the Hair Guy was suddenly her best friend. “What d’ya think?”

Xoe Chloe had only one thing to say to the mirror. “It rocks, dude!” She slapped palms all around and stood up. Her sigh blew snips of hair into a small whirlwind around her.

Still in the game, Temple thought. Who knew a new hairdresser was the best disguise? Probably the eighty million women who patronized them regularly, which had not included her. Until now.

By that afternoon, the ravishing, newly conventional Xoe Chloe had instantly blossomed into the lead in the makeover sweepstakes.

Matte-black Xoe Chloe’d had so far to come that the transformation was breathtaking. Blondes of all description—tall, taller; thin, thinner—darted stiletto glances her way as Temple put in her forty minutes on the elliptical machine and her twenty-minute jog around the Hearst Castle–size pool, slathered in the sun screen recommended for her pale complexion, sweating into her extravagant dye job, which seemed up to the abuse.

It occurred to her that, having proven herself the most dramatic makeover so far, she might also be the freshest candidate for harassment.

Every cloud had its silver lining.

She was ready.

First she had to put up with reactions.

“Hey, toots! Love the paint job. Looking good. How about an interview for KREP?” Awful Crawf suggested, slinking alongside her at the pool.

She cringed. Without the wig she felt naked. Worse, recognizable. Was blonde really the best disguise? Maybe for Marilyn. But her? She easily outtrotted him, avoiding the moment of truth.

“Wow. Oh, wow.” Mariah. “Wonder what they’ll make me look like? I should be really spectacular. Well, I’m younger. Way younger. Although you look pretty teen-y for a … you know.” She glanced about for cameras and mikes. “For an older woman. Will they dye my hair too? My mother will kill me.”

Rafi Nadir was a study in skepticism when she passed him in the hall. Quickly. But he didn’t seem to recognize the “ballsy little broad” he knew now that she was a blonde. He recognized something about her though.

“You don’t look like a chick who’d go down a dark hidden passage anymore.”

Temple was annoyed to discover herself insulted.

Chapter 33

Upping the Auntie

Temple knocked on the door of room number two with her knuckles, almost hoping no one was home.

“Come in.”

Drat. Watch out for what you claim you want; you might get it.

Kit Carlson sat at a French desk, clickety-clacking away on a large-screen laptop computer, lips moving silently and eyes fixed on the text in front of her.

After a minute, Temple said in a little girl voice quite unlike her natural husky rasp, “I hope I’m not interrupting anything?”

Kit’s head finally turned, slowly, from the screen to recognize her presence.

“Just the climax of my latest book.”

“I thought you wrote romances.”

Kit’s eyes looked over the plastic rims of her glasses. “Exactly.”

“Oh, that kind of climax. It’s happening … right here?”

“You don’t suppose I compose in the bathtub?”

“I wouldn’t doubt it. I don’t know if my jet-black mascara goes with my blindingly blonde hair. You have a lighter kind of mascara?”

Kit pushed her glasses up on her nose. She was a small woman with chin-length hair that insisted on assuming large loose strawberry-gray curls. She seemed better cast as some well-aged French chanteuse in a small nightclub, gargling throaty world-weary songs sans mike, a glass of poison-green absinthe sitting on the piano beside her.

“Of course. Dead-black mascara on me makes me look like Elvira, Mistress of the Dark. I have a nice warm brown shade that should compliment your new Goldilocks locks. Come into my parlor for a moment.”

Once they’d hied into the privy, Temple asked her most burning question.

“Do I still pass as undercover agent after being forcibly stripped of my wig?”

“A dreadful thing for a double agent, to lose the cover of darkness. But I must say Ken Adair did a terrific job of making the real you look utterly unlike yourself.”

“So my new look isn’t a dead giveaway?”

“Oh, no, dear. It’s a spectacular success.”

“So you’re saying I look too good to be mistaken for myself?”

“Except by a relative. Or an intimate. Any more of those here?”

“Only an enemy or two.”

“Oh, you’d fool an enemy. They tend to fixate on specifics. As long as your trademark hair is history and your eyes are an astonishing shade of green, your secret is safe.”

“So what do you think of all the scary things that have been happening?”

“Scripted,” Kit said promptly. “The producers are bent on stirring things up. Stripping the contestants to their barest emotions.”

“With this crew of exhibitionist blondes, that’s not hard.”

“Now, dear, don’t be brutal to blondes. They have so much to overcome nowadays, like Jessica Simpson and Paris Hilton.”

“So you think we’re all lab rats being teased by the producers? No lurking evil-doer in sight?”

“Oh, evil-doers are always lurking. I often use them in my books. Is that why you’re here, pretending to be young and difficult? Who would be so dreadful as to force you back into revisiting your teen years? That dishy boyfriend I met in New York? Max … something… yum-yum?”

“Max isn’t aware of this. I’m here on unofficial police business. Well, unofficial official police business.”

“Surely no one is taking this circus of hokey threats seriously?”

Temple didn’t feel she could mention the mutilated poster and Molina’s concern for her daughter’s safety. For once she agreed with her enemy. Something nasty was going on here. But what?

“Maybe not.” Temple rose from her seat upon the commode, reassured. “I hope you didn’t lose any major inspiration.”

“No. Guido was about to do something interesting with a box of Lady Godiva chocolates. Deep dark bitter chocolates, do you think, dear, or perhaps white ones?”

“Never touch ‘em,” Temple said, retreating toward the main room. “I’d better get back on observation. For some reason, the Teen Queen team gets nervous if they don’t know where I am every minute.”

“You’re a perfect little delinquent, Xoe Chloe Ozone! That’s why. My straitlaced sister would be … appalled.““You won’t ever tell Mom?”

“Not if you don’t tell her about my quandary with Guido and the gourmet candies. Karen was always so … Midwest.”

“If you stay in town long enough after this is over, Aunt, remind me to introduce you to the Fontana brothers.”

“Mobsters? I can always do research.”

“Yum-yum young mobsters. Definitely the white chocolate type.”

“Really?” Kit rose from her seat upon the tub surround to show Temple out, like Lady Macbeth rising from trying out the throne of Scotland. “Plural, you say. Very intriguing.”

“Thanks for the use of the biffy,” Temple/Xoe said once they were within mike and camera range again in the main office room. “I’ve got eighty million little tiny hairs to rinse off from that salon job they gave me. You’d think that Adair guy was a mini–Bucky Beaver.”

“You look smashing. A death of a thousand hair snips is worth the agony for the result. Take lots of long showers to rinse off the little pricklers, and keep your self-esteem up. You show great potential, Xoe, if you don’t get stubborn and blow it.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” Temple returned, emphasizing the “ma’am” as Kit grimaced in distaste. “I’ll do my best to be a candidate you all can be proud of.”

Then she left, without gagging, miraculously.

Chapter 34

Two-Faced

while my Miss Temple is doing the beauty bit, I spend my time prowling from boudoir to kitchen. My two favorite chambers, it is true, but at least Miss Midnight Louise is not around this time to point out my failings.

I have been accepted as a walking mascot, always good for the occasional camera shot. So have the Persian girls. I hear the camera operators slavering over our natural grace and good looks. We have no bad angles, they say. Unlike other objects of their lenses, apparently.

Of course, a full head … and shoulders … and legs … and tail of hair does wonders to hide any conformation flaws. And our eyes are naturally green without benefit of artificial enhancement. And the Ashleigh girls are the reigning hair color, silver and golden blonde. I must admit that my Miss Temple looks alarmingly unlike herself even with the dead-skunk hairdo now history.

Things are proceeding apace here at the Teen Queen Castle, and I am getting more nervous by the moment.

Perhaps this atmosphere of female pheromones has lulled the male factor into a stupor. Even Rafi Nadir, a man meant to notice danger if not bring it into play himself, is strangely mellow. He is demonstrating a certain gallantry to these mostly underage ladies, especially the younger set.

Of course, being employed by Miss Savannah Ashleigh would immediately encourage any nearby male to elude her obvious toils and focus on the more refreshing and innocent of her gender.

I cannot help thinking, though, that they all have been lulled into the calm before the storm. That the juvenile dirty tricks going on are camouflaging some serious mischief that is brewing.

So I prowl the perimeter, looking for signs of anything amiss. I suffer camera closeups, and attempted molestations by the herd of blondes. I poke my nose into odd nooks and crannies, and follow any more of those sinister hidden passages I can find.

I begin to find secrets to follow, such as Crawford Buchanan’s odd special entrée to ringmistress Beth Marble’s office.

I whisk right in with him, knowing that the ladies always have a welcome mat out for a suave and continental guy like me. They are suckers for a kiss on the hand and I am a past master at that art, having spent years studying Tantric grooming, so I am as versatile with my tongue as Mr. Mick Jagger or Mr. Gene Simmons of KISS. And you know what those dudes are. International rock stars.

Life is so unfair! I could have given them both a run for their groupies and their millions if only I had been born a lot taller, with access to a semi-thorough body-wax job.

But I ankle over to Miss Beth Marble and make with the ankle rub, which soon has her purring.

“What a disgusting alley cat,” my pal Crawford comments.

A mlstake. When push comes to shove, many a lady would take a cat over a mere man anytlme. And why not? We are genteel but sheer steel under our satin topcoats. We are discreet. We can keep a secret, or dozens of them. Mum’s the word. We will never grow mustaches suddenly. We have all the attributes of a fur coat without the angst of politically incorrectly offing other creatures, plus a nice baritone purr much like certain sensual aids advertised for big money in the back of Cosmopolitan magazine. Our company and affection are free. We keep their feet warm. We do not ask for custody of the children, or the car. We are invariably neat. We never miss the toilet unless we have a serious point to make. We are always willing to eat out.

What is not to love?

I feel the tendons in Miss Marble’s heels tighten at Buchanan’s slur.

“He is harmless,” she says.

Erroneously. That is what I love about little dolls. They are so sure they know what is what. So what would they do without me knowing better?

“Anyway,” the Crawf goes on, sitting so carelessly in the chair opposite her desk that even I hear something on his person scratch leather.

I cringe in tune with Miss Marble’s entire frame. It is not her leather chair, merely a loaner for the length of the show, but she takes responsibility for all that occurs at the Teen Queen Castle. Boy, is she in trouble!

I murmur sympathy under her desk and resume massaging her ankles. Let the Crawf do his worst (and he has plenty of that). No one does ankles better than Midnight Louie!“Anyway, what?” she asks.

I stiffen. She is starting to rebel. Any fool or feline could see that. Not the Crawf.

“I have kept the unsettling events here off the air,” he whines on. “That gives me access to the tape recordings, as we agreed.”

“We agreed that you would not release them before the end of the show.”

“Right. But … things have changed. I need something lively to keep my exclusive coverage syndicated. Gossip. Cat fights. Dirty tricks. I want the last batch.”

“Mr. Buchanan.” She makes the title and name sound even more despicable than I could manage with my most dismissive spit and hiss. “I cannot say I understand your influence with the producers, but ultimately I am responsible for the ethical operation of this program. We are halfway through, only a week to go. I submit that you can wait.”

She stands, forcing me to jump aside to preserve my second most valuable appendage. If she has forgotten my presence she is one miffed little doll!

I leap upon her desk, fangs bared, backing her up.

She strokes my back and, urn, upright member, which is fluffed out like a radiator brush, should anyone alive still remember that useful tool.

“You are upsetting the cat,” she tells Pukecannon. “Whatever hold you have on the producers, the show is almost done now and I no longer need to kowtow to your demands. You already have extorted far more scoops than any of the legitimate media. You will just have to get your new information on your own. That should be interesting, as I doubt you have ever got anything in this world solely on your own.”

His already pasty complexion (the curse of a life on the airwaves; luckily Mr. Matt leads an outdoor life that prevents such disabilities), pales. I love the way people can change their skin color at the drop of a four-letter word or even a two-letter word like no.

“You will be sorry,” he says, using the ancient playground threat heard around the world.

“Not today,” Miss Marble says. She pauses to run a hand along my spine all the way to the tip of my quivering tail. “And not any other.”

It is a great closing line, and I give her a two-tail salute at ninety degrees upright in recognition of same.

Too bad it is ruined by this long, sustained piercing shriek somewhere on the premises.

I beat Crawford Buchanan to the office door by sixteen lengths of my youknow-what versus his youknow-what.

Chapter 35

Diet of Worms

Temple was resting in her room, trying to figure things out, when she heard the scream, probably along with everybody in the house, and what’s worse, she recognized the screamer. She’d always had an ear for various vocal tones.

She took off at a dead run, the cute little flapping Xoe Chloe mules keeping her from running quite fast enough. So she let them fly off in the hall and pounded on barefoot.

Knowing the tone of the scream … alto vibrato … told her who but not where it was coming from. Her bare arms had broken out into so many goose bumps of unhappy premonition you’d think she’d been having a wet dream about Spike the Vampire.

Holy shiitake mushrooms! she thought. Let me be wrong!

Her heart was pounding way past the safety zone, her bare soles hitting hard on the concrete beneath the carpeting.

Turn here? Maybe. Or there?

Or … maybe just follow the dark flowing contrail that was Midnight Louie, ears back, tail straight back, body low as a jet-black Maserati?

Where did he come from? No matter. Go with the flow, as long as it was feline.

She zigged and zagged and bumped into blondes fleeing in the opposite direction. Where was Paris Hilton when you needed her? Overbooked, that’s where!

She was entering the portion of the house allotted to the Teen Queen coaches, running her memory of the day’s schedule sheet through her mind like a white shirt through a mangle.

Friday, Xoe Chloe interview with Beth Marble, office number three at two P.M. And at three P.M… . in office number four. Oh, my goddess! Oh, no! Let it not be Louie’s low-flying tail vanished through a doorjamb just ahead. Temple almost turned an ankle making a right-angle dodge to follow him.

Office. Very … plain. Almost stripped. A scale in the corner. A chart on a wall.

A body in a leather desk chair, throat tilted back. Face … darkened. Red black. Unrecognizable.

And oh, holy moley, wholly Molina! Mariah standing in front of the desk, chair and all. Screaming. Screaming for all of her just-teen worth. A real little belter.

Something bad in the neighborhood. Someone dead in the neighborhood. The dietitian. The mousy, by-thebook, plain-Jell-O dietitian. Marjory Klein.

Found dead in her office chair. By Mariah.

Temple raced up to put her hands on Mariah’s shaking shoulders, pressed down hard.

“It’s okay. I’m here. Hel-lo! Look. Even the silly cat that’s been prowling around the place is here too. Hewouldn’t risk his skin if it weren’t safe. Have you ever known a cat that wasn’t totally cool?”

Those last two words finally jerked Mariah’s focus off the dead body.

“Cat?” she asked. “Cool?”

If a cat could look at a queen, or even a dead body, maybe she could too.

Louie used the opportunity to twine around Mariah’s ankles, over and over again. It was fine feline therapy but it wasn’t enough. Mariah suddenly spun into Temple’s embrace. Grabbed on to her like a leech. A growing girl big enough to rock Temple off her bare heels.

But Temple recovered and held on back. They were roomies, after all, and that went way beyond silly reality shows and even Mother Superiors in common.

“I’m sorry,” Temple told her. “So, so sorry. I was afraid it would come to this. Hoped not.”

Mariah just sobbed. Temple remembered sobbing that hard. Long ago, when she was so young that every setback, real or imagined, was a total tragedy.

This was all too real though. This was a tragedy, period. The dead woman was such an unlikely object of another person’s venom. Of murderous hatred.

Just yesterday she’d been earnestly urging legumes and cruciferous vegetables on that hopeless Xoe Chloe creature.

Temple found herself crying along with Mariah.

Still, another part of her brain sounded warning. This will bring Molina herself into the equation.

Not a good thing for either Mariah or Temple. Or Xoe Chloe, for that matter.

Later, Temple was very glad she and Louie had been the first to arrive on the murder scene. That meant that she and Mariah were partners in interrogation. She could ful-fill her undercover role and stick up for the poor kid if necessary.

Temple was relieved that Molina hadn’t shown up, yet wasn’t surprised to see Detectives Alch and Su arrive shortly after the uniformed officers had come, dismissed the EMTs, and sent for the coroner and the crime scene team.

Molina would want her favorite investigative team on scene in her stead. While patting Mariah’s back and being otherwise the wise, stable big sister, Temple was madly speculating whether Alch and Su would see through her colored contact lenses and blonde blow-dry job to the annoying amateur sleuth they knew and could do with a lot less of.

She and Mariah huddled together on one of the giant leather ottomans that dotted the house’s domestic landscape, in a corner of the murder room where everything else was thankfully obscured.

Morrie Alch squatted down before them, as you would with children, leaving his petite Asian-Americanprincess partner, Merry Su, to do the looming.

A man in his comfy fifties, he was graying a little, gaining even a little more around the middle, and putting a heck of a strain on his aging knees at the moment.

“You’re the young lady who made the sad discovery,” he told Mariah. “Mind if I sit down here and ask you some questions?”

Her earlier sobs had quieted into the occasional hiccup. She knew Detective Alch but she wasn’t supposed to show it. Her color grew high and feverish, and her dark eyes burned with anguish.

“I guess.”

“Okay, sweetheart. What’s your name?”

Like he didn’t know! Temple thought.

He got up, knees creaking, and sat beside Mariah,pencil poised over a narrow-lined newspaper reporter’s notebook.

His pencil needed sharpening. It didn’t need his gesture in licking it first but the whole act made him into Uncle Morrie, a man to be trusted.

Temple know no homicide detective was a man to be trusted, including Mariah’s own mother.

“Who are you?” Su asked Temple in a far less gentle tone.

“One of the other contestants.”

“So which of you got first dibs on the corpse?”

Morrie cleared his throat to signal Su to go easier. He might as well have waved at the moon.

“Well?” Su insisted.

“I was here first,” Mariah said. “Alone. I found … her.”

“She had an appointment,” Temple pointed out quickly. “That’s why, when I heard the scream and recognized her voice, I knew where to go. I must have reached the scene only seconds after she came in and found Mrs. Klein dead.”

“I’ll thank you not to put testimony in the girl’s mouth, Miss—?”

“Ah, Ozone.”

“Ozone?”

“It’s a stage name. Like Axl Rose. Or Sting.”

“Why don’t you step this way, Ms. Ozone Sting?” Su suggested.

Temple hated to leave Mariah to the mercies of kindly Detective Alch. The kindly part was true, and he was certainly well aware he was interviewing his boss’s kid, but all of that only went so far in the homicide biz. Temple, meanwhile, was totally undercover and totally suspicious.

“Now.” Su sat Temple down on a most uncomfortable modern sofa in the room’s opposite corner. “You tell your story.”

“It’s not a story. Mariah and I are roomies. Roommates. She’s a ‘Tween Queen candidate and I’m a Teen Queen one. They pair us up, little and big sisters.”

“So you feel a responsibility for the girl?”

“Yeah, right. Of course.” And why wasn’t Mariah’s mother here now?

“You’ve never met her before?”

Maybe that was why. Conflict of interest. Not wanting to finger her own kid. Or her own kid’s secret babysitter. Temple was on her own here. Thank heavens for Xoe Chloe.

Su’s almond Asian eyes were bent to her notebook. Temple danced around the truth as if it were a Maypole. “Nope. We’re all strangers here.”

“And you are?”

“Xoe with an X.”

Su’s ballpoint pen (unlike Alch, she was unlikely to change her mind or anything else) stopped dead in the middle of one line. “And how do you spell Zoe with an X?”

“Easy. X-o-e. Zoe-ee.”

“And ‘Ozone’ is your last name? Do you spell it with an X?”

“No. And I actually go by Xoe Chloe Ozone.”

“Where do you go by this?”

“Performance art. In the clubs. You know. And at the Rollerblade havens.”

“You’re a Rollerblading performance artist?”

“That’s it. Body and soul. Synthesis. That’s my thing.”

“So, what did you find when you entered the crime scene?”

“Uh, you mean, the room?”

“Yes.”

“Well, um, the scale.”

“The scale?”

“Yeah, the weigh thing. I do not like scales. I don’t suppose you much avoid them, being one skimpy girl, butwe’re all on television here and every ounce looks like a pound.”

“That’s why the dietitian was part of the package. You were all supposed to lose weight?”

“Yeah. Pretty much all of us. You can never be too rich or too thin.”

“What does money have to do with it?”

Xoe Chloe (she was baaaaack!) shrugged. “Hey, we get named Teen or ‘Tween Queen, we get money, fame, and a new car, not to mention a date with a sex symbol.”

“What passes for a sex symbol on a reality TV show these days?”

“Nobody you’d recognize. Frankly, nobody I’d care to share a straw with. Much less … well, you know.”

“No, I don’t know, Miss Ozone. That’s why I’m asking you questions.”

“Here’s the deal. I hear the scream, like everyone else I come running, except they’re all going in the opposite direction. I find poor little Mariah shrieking her head off in the middle of the room, and poor Marjory looking all laid back in her desk chair. How on earth did she die? Heart attack? Her face was all dark. As a card-carrying Goth girl, that doesn’t frighten me, unless it’s done without makeup.”

“Speaking of cards, let’s see yours.”

“My what?”

“Your driver’s license.”

“Uh, I don’t have one.” Actually, Temple had a fake one from Molina she could flash later but figured Z. C. would only produce a plain-Jane name under intense pressure.

“You don’t? Why not?”

“I Rollerblade, silly. Don’t need a license for that.”

“What about when you go into bars?”

“Hey, I may be Goth but I’m not a lush. I don’t go that much into bars.”

“But when you do.”

“Simple. I don’t drink. Would you believe I’m a born-again Christian?”

“No.”

“You’d be right but I still don’t drink. I just rock and roll along and nobody bothers me.”

“Well, they will now. We’ll want your fingerprints and some legitimate ID.”

“I was born illegitimate,” Xoe Chloe said, “but you can have my fingerprints. Like everyone else’s, they’ll be in the room. We all had appointments with Marjory.”

“And what did she recommend for you?”

Temple let her nose squinch up. “More fruits and legumes. Heck, there are enough fruits around here to form a conga line of Carmen Mirandas.”

“Not funny. You are no longer on Candid Camera, Ms. Ozone. You are in the sights of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department Crimes-Against-Persons Unit. You know what that means?”

“Of course. CAPers! I love it. Such a merry word for the murder unit. Bring ‘em on.”

“Oh, we will, Ms. Ozone.” Su stood, all wiry fourfeet-eleven of wily Asian-American brains and martialarts-buff body.

Su glanced over to where Alch was bidding Mariah adieu with a friendly pat on the shoulder.

“Mariah’s thirteen, you know,” Temple said.

Su must already be aware of Mariah’s age and maternal unit but didn’t bat a black eyelash.

“Most of the suspects on this scene are under twenty,” she noted. “That doesn’t mean we won’t investigate all you ‘tween-teen types, from date of birth to date of last period. Get it?”

Temple did.Temple “showered” solo that evening.

Mariah, pale and tired, slept the sort of long drugged sleep teenagers major in. No wonder Sleeping Beauty remained such a popular fairy tale.

Meanwhile, Temple sat on the commode, the shower pelting into the tub and steaming up the mirrors. She speed-dialed Mama Molina’s private home-phone number. “Hello?” came the usual brusque opening.

“Agent Ninety-nine reporting.”

“Cut the quips. This has gotten serious. How the hell did you allow my daughter to blunder onto a crime scene?”

“She didn’t blunder. She had an appointment. I’ve been thinking about it and find that significant, don’t you?”

“Someone wanted Mariah to find the body?”

“Someone wanted a ‘Tween Queen candidate to find the body.”

“Why would anyone be after Mariah?”

“They know her family connections?”

“Who, besides you?”

“Awful Crawford is here. You know, Crawford Buchanan, the KREP-radio guy. He gets around enough to know who’s who in Las Vegas. Wouldn’t take a master’s degree to figure out that Mariah Molina might have relatives in high police places. And …” Temple paused, really hating the other possibility that had occurred to her. “And what?”

“Most of these ‘tween and teen candidates are hardy veterans of the beauty wars. They’re obsessed with their physical appearances.”

“Mariah’s not.”

“No. No JonBenet Ramsey, she. You reared her right. But…”

“But what?”

“Weight’s an issue with her. The dietitian had Mariah in her sights. As far as I could tell, she’s the one with the biggest weight issue here.”

“She’s barely a teenager! So she could lose fifteen pounds. It’s not a killing offense.”

“Everything’s a bigger deal here. Maybe better, maybe worse. Someone could say, testify, that the dietitian was particularly hard on her. Mariah complained to high heaven, publicly, about eating beans and rabbit food.”

“That’s not a murdering offense.”

“We mature women wouldn’t think so but these are all girls, and most of them drama queens. Mrs. Klein had a vote on the winners. If someone was getting enough of a hard time…”

“Killing a coach or judge will stop the show cold. Not productive.”

“Not to our incisively logical minds. But our hormones have settled down. I assume. I can’t speak for you, of course. Have you forgotten how desperately important every little thing is at that age?”

During the long pause that resulted, Temple couldn’t help thinking that she and Molina were conspiring on the phone like teenage girlfriends planning a parentally unsanctioned outing.

Bizarro!

“I’d rather not remember,” Molina said at last. “How’s Mariah holding up?”

“Okay. It wasn’t a pretty scene. What killed the poor woman?”

“The autopsy hasn’t been done yet but Coroner Bahr tells me she was likely choked.”

“No way could Mariah be a suspect then, that takes strong hands, right?”

“Right, but not that kind of choking. It was lima beans.”

“Oh. She was a huge advocate of bean eating. And lima beans are dry. I can see how she might be wolfing them down for a quick lunch at her desk. She did have a small fridge and microwave in that office and—”

“Nice fairy tale, Barr. Now I see why you’ve hung inthere with Mr. Unreliable Max Kinsella for so long. You’re an optimist to the point of pathology. They were stuffed down her throat, probably spiced with Jalisco peppers hot enough to set her choking in the first place. It wouldn’t take long to disable her that way, especially if the attack was unexpected.”

“She was stuffed to death?”

“It may be a little more complicated than that. An allergy or some lethal substance may be involved that caused her throat to swell up on contact.”

“What would this have to do with the defaced Teen Queen contest posters?”

“Nothing we can see. By the way, Alch and Su find Xoe Chloe—where do you come up with these things?— a suspicious character, but they haven’t made you yet. You must have put together some disguise.”

“At least I’ve never been fingerprinted.”

“Yet. I’m thinking about it.”

“The illusion of Xoe Chloe won’t hold much longer anyway. The makeover process is stripping away all my best points.”

“The show is suspended for now. It suits us to keep you all bottled up in the house, and maybe even let them start filming and recording again. It’s like Candid Camera, Crime Watchers’ edition. We’re going over everything they recorded so far.”

“The producers must be frantic.”

“Are you kidding? They love it. They’re planning to pick up the pageant as soon as we clear the scene and spin the show into Dying for Beauty or some such title.”

“Then we’re all stuck here, like a sequestered jury?”

“Right.”

“But there’s a killer among us. I guess I can do some snooping.”

“Please. You’re a glorified babysitter. Don’t get a notion of being a professional snoop.”

That hurt. Temple found Xoe Chloe pouting into the cell phone. Good thing Molina couldn’t see her. She wiped her brow of the sweat the steamy bathroom had deposited. Better to assume the producers lied and that cameras and mikes were still recording.

“So what do you want me to do?”

“Stay with Mariah as much as you can.”

“What’ll we all do?”

“Exercise, eat or don’t eat, watch each other. Alch and Su will be there too. I’ll make sure they look for a suspect a little farther afield than Chloe Zoe.”

“Xoe Chloe.”

But Molina had disconnected.

Temple sat there puzzling. The least likely person on the premises had been murdered. Why? And what about the lurid threats to the show and the mischief inside the house? That seemed to be from an entirely different script than Marjory Klein’s quick, deviously planned death.

Script. Maybe a script for mock mayhem was part of the “reality” here. And someone had taken advantage of the distraction it provided to commit murder for a totally unrelated reason.

Xoe Chloe was going to have to snoop around plenty. Luckily, she had the personality for it. Temple stood up, still puzzling. She didn’t dare leave Mariah alone now though. What to do? She couldn’t be with her all day; they had separate exercise schedules. Mariah would actually appreciate the show’s suspension; she could make more progress.

What to do about Mariah? But wait! Temple knew an “inside” man already on the premises, a pro for her to recruit. It was a fiendish idea, but Molina was giving her no rope so she’d just have to live with any lifeline Temple could come up with on such short notice.

Chapter 36

Diet Drinks

A soft knock on the bedroom door awoke Temple sometime between midnight and five A.M.

She glanced across the gigantic bed. Mariah was a completely concealed lump under the covers. When she was in this state, Temple had discovered, not even an earthquake-style shaking could wake her.

Temple crept to the door nevertheless and turned the interior key in the lock. The person in the hall was about her height, so she edged the door open.

Her aunt scuttled in.

“Are we alone?”

Temple nodded at the giant tortoise shape on the bed. “As good as. But come into my office.”

Once they were ensconced in the bathroom, Temple turned on the small fluorescents surrounding the mirror. Kit Carlson wore her trademark big-frame eyeglasses, and an elegant vintage nylon peignoir set—red, studded with rhinestones which were somehow very attractive on a small, energetic woman. She also carried a Manhattan-big tote bag. From it, she pulled a bottle.

“I never travel without my dessert sherry.”

“Oh, thank God.” Temple pulled the toothbrushes out of the matching water glasses and rinsed them at the faucet. “I deserve a break today, even if it’s tomorrow. What time is it anyway?”

“Three A.M.,” Kit said in a spooky voice. “When ghosts walk.”

“You spot Mrs. Klein in the hall on the way here?”

“No. But I had the oddest impression that someone saw me. Maybe it’s just a hangover from this twenty-four-hour oversight we’re getting.”

“The spy machines are off for now. The homicide lieutenant on this case told me so herself. The show is ‘suspended.’ We’re all stuck here until the police know whodunit.”

“Oooh! Ten Little Indians. Agatha Christie stories made great plays.” Kit lifted her clumsy glass with the toothpaste spatters on it and clicked rims with Temple’s. “You found her dead, poor thing. Drink up, then tell me all about it.”

“I don’t know if I should,” Temple said after a slow sweet swallow. “I’m here on police business myself.”

“Listen. I am one nervous Nellie, niece. A coach was killed. They’ve got us judges and coaches cooped up in one wing, easy pickings. Who’s next? Apparently, someone doesn’t much like being made over.”

“Maybe it’s someone who doesn’t like women reinventing themselves,” Temple said.

“Like who? The Taliban?”

And that remark of her aunt’s put Temple in mind of the lone Middle-Eastern man on the premises: Rafi Nadir. But hadn’t he made over Carmen Molina, to hear tell? It didn’t compute.

“Any controlling man,” Temple said. “The kind who can’t stand women getting out from under their thumbs and becoming themselves. Maybe it’s a cliché, but there’s truth under the truism. I’ll never forget this case I covered when I was a TV journalist in Minnesota. A woman. A wife. A mother. A nurse. Just lost some weight. Just trying to enhance her self-esteem. Soon clear why. The husband—he had to have been abusive—attacked her in the family garage with an electric drill. And she lived. And stood. And he set her on fire. And she burned. And she lived. And she stood. And he ran. And they found her, burned over ninety percent of her body. And she spoke. Save her kids from him. They took her away. And she died. And, you know what, nobody would report what happened to him. Maybe a mental hospital. Maybe he’s out there. I tried to trace where he went, but my station wouldn’t support me. Everything about her was public. Nothing about him was. Reminds me of the vanishing Arthur Dickson.”

“Arthur who?”

“There are too many men who don’t want women to remake themselves. And apparently Arthur Dickson, the man who built this place, was one of them.”