Dancing with Danger


The two girls were asleep, tangled like gangly kittens next to Temple in the Tahoe’s second bench seating row.

Las Vegas’s dazzling megawatt halo had been dancing like the aurora borealis on the dark desert horizon when they’d left Vegas many hours before but now both city and surrounding desert were bright and bland.

When Molina’s cell phone rang, she sighed heavily and answered it.

“Yeah? Got her in Laughlin. Figured it was too late to call earlier, and then it was too early. Besides, this was a personal crisis.” She listened. Neither Temple nor Rafi could figure out who had called. They were trying their mightiest to eavesdrop without looking like it.

“Not her this time. Helping a girlfriend I’ve never heard of in some crazy scheme to get on a dancing show. Dancing With the Celebs, yeah? How’d you hear about it?” Silence.

Temple eyed Molina pushing herself up straighter in the front passenger captain’s chair to listen. Molina swallowed a groan of discomfort. “I’ll hold on.”

A pause while someone else got on the phone’s other end. Molina’s tone was crisp, emotionless. “Yes, Captain, I’m glad Alch could reach me. What’s up? He told you about my daughter?” Thunder threatened. “That’s personal busi—because? At Dancing With the Celebs? You’re kidding.”

Rafi’s eyes met Temple’s in the rearview mirror.

“Yes, I know you don’t kid. The other girl is a babe in the woods but she won . . . and will be on the show.

“Sure, we’re set up for undercover, but there’s no point now. Mariah’s fine. She’s sleeping right behind me—

“The same show? That can’t be? Yes, I suppose it’s ‘fortuitous,’ but I’ve got two civilians here—yes, yes he was.” Molina glared at Rafi. “Yes, she’s along.” She twisted her head over her shoulder to glare at Temple. “I know you’ve seen those Teen Queen house tapes. Yes, it is stupid to argue with success and an easy entrée. Right.”

Molina punched off the cell phone.

“Great,” she whispered under her breath, eyeing the sleeping girls. “I hate it when Mariah comes out smelling like tea roses when she should be grounded for ten weeks.”

She eyed Temple. “God, I’m going to hate seeing that black wig of yours.”

“And me?” Rafi asked.

“And your new, improved annoying persona. Forget any home runs today. We’re going straight to the Oasis to operate our sting at the Dancing With the Celebs show that starts a weeklong TV run tomorrow.”

“But Matt’s on that,” Temple objected.

“On it? He’s on this case too? Another flaming civilian?”

“I meant, he’s on the show. One of the celebs. Well, he is one. Sort of.”

“Perfect,” Molina spat, meaning the opposite. She seemed to remember something, looked briefly sheepish, then sighed. “I guess you might want Zoe Chloe to be on site, then. The show’s getting death threats, the hotel and sponsors are going ballistic, they’re worried the junior performers will attract the Barbie Doll Killer, and the captain is just as happy as heck I can lead my ready-made amateur undercover team right into the killing field. And it will be one, because I’m going to kill Alch for squealing to the captain about who is who and where we were and what we were doing.”

“I suppose,” Rafi said, “those hokey false identities that Buchanan created for us will work here. What were they again?”

Molina’s teeth seemed to be grinding. “You know only too well. It’s all set up. We’ve got access to a high-roller suite at the Oasis. Or, rather, Miss Zoe Chloe Ozone has. Matt Devine’s personal appearance agent, Tony Fortunato, did a number on the competition organizers. Apparently even that weasel Crawford Buchanan has some pull. Fortunato negotiated a rock-star package for Our Little Miss Smartmouth. He said if she didn’t do the entourage routine she’d look phony.”

There was a silence. The backseat girls slept through the verbal fireworks, as fast-growing, sleep-deprived drama queen teens will.

“Death threats, they said?” Temple asked, worried about Matt.

“To the Cloaked Conjuror, mainly, now that he’s more accessible,” Molina answered, “but that’s a given. There’s also that national concern that the Barbie Doll Killer has been haunting teen reality TV auditions again. This dance show does have a junior contestant level.” She nodded at EK in the backseat.

Rafi frowned as he watched the traffic ahead. “The captain know about the mutilated Barbie doll outside Mariah’s window?”

Temple’s eyes and ears widened as Molina nodded. “Alch told him. The place will be crawling with undercover and uniformed cops.

“That’s awful,” Temple said. “Matt really, really didn’t want to be one of the adult contestants,” she said, “but I encouraged him to do it. I’m the PR expert, after all. I said it would be great exposure for him.”

But not to a murderous crackpot after a famous magician or a teenage girl or a dancing celeb.

Nobody had an answer to that . . . or to the stricken tone in her voice, not even Midnight Louie.


Temple stroked Louie as she held him close in the big tote bag.

Now he was part of this rolling thunder bizarre road show too.

She didn’t think he’d be an easy rider at this purse pussycat thing, but he needed to appear docile for the crowds and the cameras.

“Louie,” she whispered in his perked black ear with the shell-pink interior, “you are a star, just like Zoe Chloe Ozone. They had footage of you all over that Teen Queen reality TV Web site. This isn’t going to be much different than our outing to New York for that cat food commercial assignment, except you’re going to have to put up with masquerading as a pet being carted around in a celebrity’s tote bag. I know this is a big comedown for you, but please behave. We are getting a free high-roller suite out of the deal and you and I get dibs on the biggest and best bed.”

Thinking about the suite’s “bedroom assignment” made Temple give a little shudder. Molina had said the captain had assured her Mariah and EK would be safe bunking with the other two junior dancers and their mothers in the heavily protected junior suite.

“Raphael” and “Carmina” would have bedrooms in Zoe Chloe Ozone’s fancy high-roller suite too. At least Temple didn’t have to worry about hanky-panky in the night.

Domestic violence, maybe, but not illicit sex.

Lions, and tigers, and angry ex-lovers, oh my!

With only one big housecat to monitor them all, one alley cat to do the time and fend off crime.

Midnight Louie.

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