Cat in a Topaz Tango

Everybody Undercover,

Quick!

Temple figured she was playing a pretty good Mariah substitute at the moment.

She even had the typical teenager’s quarreling parents. There was no doubt that Lieutenant Molina and Rafi Nadir made volatile partners. After they’d made it to the high-roller suite, Raphael and Carmina made sure to get as far as possible from each other in their bedroom assignments. Lions, and tigers, and angry ex-lovers, oh my!

As soon as Temple could relax in the presumed privacy of her star bedroom, she phoned Matt on her cell.

“Where are you and what are you wearing?” she said when he answered.

“Who are you?”

“Your light of love in a kickier, bolder persona. Enjoy.”

“Temple, where are you?”

“Don’t you want to know what I’m wearing?”

“If it’s the usual Zoe Chloe Ozone Goth issue, no. Ish, for sure. Can I make it any plainer, because I certainly can’t make her any plainer.”

Temple was not about to relinquish making a provocative call from a high-roller suite.

“You are about to lose a date,” she told him.

“Our wedding date?”

“No, sweetums. We haven’t even set that yet. I’m referring to your dinner-dance date with a star, Mariah Molina.”

“Huh?”

“Surely you haven’t forgotten the glamour event of the fall, the father-daughter dance at Our Lady of Guadalupe High School?”

“Shoot. I had. Your crazy new assignment has my mind going to mush. I’m supposed to squire Molina Jr.”

“Yes, you are, and we’ve found the little footloose and fancy-free rascal. She’s managing a hot newcomer in the junior division of this very hot Dancing With the Celebs gig you’ll be dazzling with your fancy footwork.”

“Good for her.”

“Not good for Mama Bear’s composure and now Papa Bear has IDed her as a walking wounded policewoman, which makes her twice as dangerous a bear. Did you know anything about that? Molina getting hurt?”

“Uh, maybe.”

“Oh, no! Matt, you haven’t been playing Wailing Wall for the enemy? What’s this all about?”

“It’s hardly relevant to what’s going on now.”

“The heck it isn’t. You’ve got a rival for Perfect Dream Dad. Rafi wants to escort Mariah to that dance.”

“His world and welcome to it. Her mother sort of railroaded me for the job anyway.”

“Her mother railroads us all, but right now she looks like she’s been working on the railroad, rode hard, and put up wet. What is going on with her?”

“She’s been . . . wounded. That’s all I can say without violating—”

“The sanctity of the confessional.”

“In a way. I swore.”

“Humph. The only way you would swear. Fiancés shouldn’t keep secrets from fiancées.”

“I know. I’m between a frying pan and the steel wool here.”

“What a labored metaphor,” Temple hooted. “Who’s the steel wool, me or Molina?”

“Okay, that was a bad figure of speech. Say, if Mariah has been found and is back in Vegas, your charade is over and you can go home, right?”

“Wrong.” Temple lowered her voice. “There was another mutilated Barbie doll outside a mall audition in Albuquerque. One of the teen wanna-be competitions. Molina’s boss has decided they have a decent team undercover here and wants our show to go on.”

“Mariah will see through you all in a millisecond.”

“She did, but she likes it. Drama queen. We’re all going to share the multibedroom Zoe Chloe Ozone comped high-roller suite, except Mariah, who’ll bunk with the junior division competitors. So far Mama Bear has given her holy hell for taking off and Papa Bear has been introduced as an investigator from hotel security, which he is. We’ll all keep an eye on her, and she’ll keep her mouth shut because she badly wants her little friend to compete. Ekaterina is a Chechen refugee and a world-class dancer, apparently. What I’ve gotten out of the kids is that, caught between Russian troops and Chechen security forces, a new wave of Chechens have been immigrating since 2003, mostly to European Union countries and a few to the United States. EK could qualify as a cultural refugee with the right creds. Like winning this contest.”

“If this Barbie Doll Killer is branching out to auditions in New Mexico, the finals here would be a free-for-all for him and you are masquerading as a teenager, Temple. Now that I’m a fiancé, I’m saying you should forget it and go home for your own safety.”

“I’ve got two police types living with me, practically, and you’re booked into a room here, too, for contest week. And I’m key to the undercover operation. Or Zoe Chloe is.”

“You make this zany character sound almost real.”

“It’s scary how real she is to these teen fans. I needed a phalanx of hotel security getting to the private elevators. They were screaming and shooting photos. I felt like Marilyn Monroe come back from the dead. And Zoe Chloe doesn’t do anything, except broadcast attitude.”

“All this is supposed to reassure me?”

“My job is to stick with Mariah, and we’ll have Mama and Papa Bear all over us, believe it. It’s like they’re in a competition to safeguard Mariah.”

“Guilt.” Matt’s tone was grim. “They each need to prove they’re the perfect parent. I really hate you being caught in the middle there, Temple, whether it’s between dueling parents or a serial killer and his prey.”

“Is it because we’re engaged now?”

“It’s because you’re a target two ways: as part of an undercover police team with a known stalker on the loose, and as the crazy pop persona, Zoe Chloe, who attracts maniac fans. Max isn’t here anymore to play guardian angel. He did, you know, and he was darn good at it.”

Temple was stunned into silence. Matt was right. She’d always had her secret “shadow,” had unconsciously taken it for granted. Even now.

“I’m sorry,” he said finally. “It’s the truth.”

“I know. But I committed to this. Mariah’s a neat kid. Maybe her yen to perform is really an unconscious hope of pleasing an absent father. She did this not for herself, but to help another kid who could really use a boost. I don’t know what Molina told her daughter about her parentage, but I’m seeing something happening with Molina and Rafi. A coming to terms. Mariah, too. This enforced mission might even settle things with all three of them. I can’t bail.”

“And you don’t want to. You’ve always been hooked on investigating things, and now you’re hooked on being a teenybopper star.”

“I am not!” But the suite was cool and the masquerade got her old drama queen juices going. Besides . . .

“Don’t worry, Matt,” she said confidently. “I’m not only the apple of the LVMPD’s many eyes but Midnight Louie hitched a ride with us. The Hooded Claw is my bodyguard.”

“Ever since that debacle at the chicken ranch, I must admit Louie has a lot more street cred with me.”

“He saved me from a mob hit man.”

“I don’t give him that much cred. He was just acting out in the manner of his breed. He went a little crazy in a speeding vehicle, is all. Cats hate riding in cars.”

Sure. Temple eyed Louie, sprawled dead center of her huge, round, gold-satin-covered bed like a big, black, hairy, giant tarantula. His absinthe-green eyes squinted with mobster relish. He’d loved lolling in the big black SUV on the ride to Laughlin and back.

Yeah, baby, yeah.

Midnight Louie must have been exhausted by the roundabout trip to the hotel.

He didn’t budge for an instant from lying dead center of the mattress.

Since it was a round bed, Temple had to curl around him like a worm. So much for Internet stardom.

She had trouble sleeping, which might have been the position, or her, um, position.

She was now officially a fiancée acting against her intended’s better judgment. She hadn’t had to answer for her own safety to anyone since leaving her Minneapolis home almost three years before. True, she’d been living on her own since she was twenty-three, and she was pushing thirty-one now.

Temple tossed and turned, trying to track down the gnawing feeling of guilt taking nibbles out of her innards. She’d left Minneapolis with Max, which was hardly a huge independent step, although leaving her smother-loving family was a hard break to make.

Max had been concerned about her safety—he’d left her without a word for almost a year to lead some nasty hoodlums away from their love nest. Love nest. Temple smiled. Max was hardly the nest type. They’d lived together, but Max had always had a secret life she finally found out about. So he’d never moved back into their Circle Ritz condominium once he was back in Vegas and her life. They were both free to come and go.

Matt was a lot more conservative than Max. He worried about her unleashing Zoe Chloe Ozone again, even though the police were unofficially encouraging her to do it. Temple supposed a suspect nicknamed the Barbie Doll Killer might be a tad unsettling to a fiancé who wasn’t a secret agent on the side, like Max.

But she’d gotten attached to Mariah when she and Zoe had been roommates for the Teen Queen competition. Temple had only had older brothers in her family, always bigger, stronger, surer, “righter.” Mariah was like a little sister who needed advice on being girly, being a performer, being a snoop.

Temple grinned. How could she and Zoe be any safer? She had two relentless protectors in the form of feuding bodyguards, each competing to be the more perfect parent and police officer.