Cat in a Hot Pink Pursuit (15 page)

Matt fished for the car keys in his pocket, making leaving noises himself.

“Don't rush off:' she said, "right after I've drafted you for manual labor.”

Did she think Paddock might be waiting for him to go?

So he settled on the living room sofa and accepted a
tiny glass of Tia Maria liqueur and commented on the
cats until her unexpected visitor was long gone enough
so he could go too.

The night outside was as warm as a sauna. Larry, he thought later. New one. Matt got in the Crossfire, sitting
for a moment to lower the window for some breeze—now
they had a convertible version out—and to savor the newness of everything, the new-car leather scent, the dramat
ically night-lit dashboard, before starting the engine.
New Car Whine.

Carmen came running out of the house, her bare feet slapping concrete, and reached him before he could shift into reverse.

“Matt! Can you come back in for a moment?"

“What for?" Trust an ex-priest, on seeing a woman run after him, to know it was for some reason quite impersonal.

“To find out if I'm going freaking crazy or not."

Chapter 15

Sweet Tooth

Matt followed Carmen back into her house.

By the time he caught up with her, she was pacing
back and forth in the tiny fifties foyer like a tiger in a rabbit cage.

“
I can't believe it. While we were here talking! It had
to be."

“What?"

“You have to see it. Come on.”

He followed her through the living room and down the long narrow hall. Most of Las Vegas's older homes were one-story and built like rat mazes. What kept the sun out also kept the interiors dark and cramped. Matt had never been more appreciative of the Circle Ritz's round construction style. There, every unit had an outside wall of windows.

Matt was in her bedroom before he had time to think what a leap in intimacy that involved. He'd never been in any woman's bedroom before, except a guest room in a
convent, which hardly counted. And Temple's. But only
in passing.

This room wasn't such an exotic locale, after all. It was furnished with the usual suspects, in this case serviceable furniture store–style bed, dresser, and nightstand.

Molina was at her closet door, holding up a curtain of velvet for his inspection.

“
First this." She shook it like Exhibit A in a courtroom.
He went over to see it better, recognizing one of the dark velvet vintage gowns she wore to sing at the Blue Dahlia.
"These old evening gowns are beautiful. What's wrong with it?"

“
What's wrong with it is that I don't remember buying
it. I have a deep forest-green one, a wine one, a scarlet
one, and several black ones." She pulled the skirts of the
gowns in question out into the light to illustrate her point.
"I've never had a blue one."

“I don't see why not. It complements your eyes."

“You don't get it. This isn't a wardrobe crisis. I wasn't sure at first, but I never bought this thing. It just . . . appeared in my closet."

“
You're busy. Super busy. You must have forgotten.”

“
That's what I thought. Until this arrived.”

She threw the blue velvet gown across her bedspread and bent to pull a box from the lowest drawer in her nightstand.

Matt eyed the box. Not a simple square or rectangular box, but curvy. Candy-box shaped. He was beginning to get it. "How did it arrive?"

“Showed up on my bed. With a card.”

Matt frowned at the handwritten note through the plastic baggie that encased it, displayed like a fresh scalp in Carmen's uplifted hand.

“
'Sweets to the sour,"' she quoted the message inside. "The first really wrong note.""'Note' indeed. Sour note. You baggied it."

“
Yes, of course."

“
Like you bagged Temple's waylaid ring from Max,"
he couldn't resist adding. She winced at the comparison. "So someone's been snooping in your closet."

“And now this. The latest. Just now!" She handed him
a small plastic device, now bagged. It took him a moment
to recognize the late-model Game Boy. Except someone had stuck a Post-it note on it reading "Game Girl."

“I found this in Mariah's bedroom. Thank God she's away from it for a while."

“You've got a stalker," Matt said quietly, remembering his recent and violent liberation from one. "Why, do you think?”

Carmen wrapped her hands around her elbows and be
gan her Big Cat–pacing again. "I don't know, but who
ever it may be is circling closer and closer. Classic
pattern. Cowardly psychotic creep—!"

“I know. They're good at that. Sure can't be mine transferring affections to you."

“No. Nothing to do with you, except you were here
when that piece of slime snuck this last little token into
the house."

“Mariah's away, you said. How long ago could it have been left?"

“
Six hours, maybe? I checked her room for anything
she might have needed at the . . . at the place where she's staying. That little bomb wasn't there then."

“Where was it?"

“On her pillow."

“
You're right to be upset. Can't you, of all people,
arrange for surveillance?”

She stopped to hug her elbows to her rangy frame.
"No. No, I of all people can't do that. Not openly. Not officially. This . . . stuff could be from her father.”

Chapter 16

Monday Morning

Coming
Down

Xoe, aka Temple, arrived at Hell House, aka the Teen Queen Castle, first.

Cameras were rolling, and so was she.

In fact, she wore Rollerblades. And skin-tight capris, a sweatband reading
Go Gurrrrl,
and a hot pink sports bra liberally assisted by various boob-building devices.

Xoe!
Zowie!

The cameras followed her as she did a wheelie at the mansion's front door.

What an entrance. The doorway, not hers. Double
doors, of course, of embossed copper with pewter hard
ware. The effect was more like the entrance to a bank
vault than a residence.

She noted the security camera leering down from above
and blew a huge bubble of well-chewed pink bubble gum right at it before she entered. On Rollerbladed feet.

Beth Marble, the show's guardian angel, was waiting for her in the marble-tiled foyer.

“No edged instruments allowed inside the house. That includes Rollerblades."

“That also include fingernails?" Temple fanned her impressive ten.

“Fingernails are feminine. Allowed."

“That's what you think." Temple bent to detach the Rollerblades.

“You're an interesting case."

“I thought a case had an alcohol content."

“You're not as tough as you act.”

Duh!

Temple sneered. Being a
bad,
ballsy little broad, as Rafi Nadir had named her once, not mentioning the
bad,
was fun.

“
Here, honey." She handed over the heavy, bulky
blade set. "Hang this on your hope chest." She stared pointedly at the angel's decidedly flat version of same. "You need one.”

No hope there.

“Listen, kiddo," the woman said, dropping her voice
into a soft, warning tone. "I came up with the Teen Queen
concept. Consider me the show shrink. Part of your
makeover involves an improvement in attitude. If you
want to have a chance at the Teen Queen slot, you'll use your time here, with me, to get that beehive-size chip off your shoulder."

“We gotta see each other?"

“Every day for an hour. Be prepared to open up your
baggage or drop to the bottom of the first wave of
wannabes on Day Three.”

Xoe made a face but kept further comment to herself. Beth thrust a shiny hot-pink folder toward her. "Here are the house rules and your daily schedule of self-
improvement appointments. Remember, we work on
body, mind, heart, and soul, so be prepared to bare all four."

“You sure this is legal? A lot of these girls are underage.”

Beth's patient smile hinted at perennial martyrdom.
"We're well aware of that. We're assigning rooms on a Big
Sister/Little Sister basis, so roommates won't be competing at the same level. The name of your Little Sister is in the folder."

“A mini-me! How hip. Who
is
the little devilette?”

Temple let her long fingernails do the walking through the half-inch wad of loose papers inside the folder.

Mariah Molina. Her roomie. The gods, or at least the Great Goddess Cop, had smiled on her so she could ride shotgun with poor little Mariah.

Why any right-thinking kid would want to coop herself
up in a phony media circus like this was beyond Temple,
but then Temple was too far beyond the Teen Dream stage
to remember.

Beth Marble glanced around all sides of Temple and then nodded her satisfaction.

“Glad you're not dragging any more than your one bag
and your bad attitude in here. The 'Tween Queen branded sweat suits and other workout wear you'll be using during
your makeover are in your room, in the proper size. Your personal stylist will confer with your personal trainer on
your new wardrobe, when it's time for your 'reinven
tion."'

“
Meanwhile," Temple observed, "it's in the army now."

“
That's right." Beth's
Stepford Wives
smile never fal
tered. "You are a private and we are the commanders. We're here to help you but only if you're willing to commit to helping yourself. You may go to your room until our Cheering Session at five
P.M.
tonight."

“
It sounds more like PMS," Temple muttered as she shuffled off in her stocking feet.

“What?" Beth asked, a trifle uneasy.

“Nothing you're not too old for.”

Two faint frown lines on Beth's forehead indicated she might have sensed an insult.

Awesome! The woman seemed made of the same im
pervious veneer as the remade toothy smiles on the
women from the makeover shows.

The house was huge. It was a perfect pick for a castle because of the copper-topped towers that surrounded the huge copper dome at the place's center. These mysterious copper roofs glittered enough to be seen from the Strip.
They'd been treated to keep their bright copper-bottompan gleam and not age into a verdigris color with wear
and weather.

That new-penny look always bothered Temple when
she glimpsed the place. It was rather like Burt Reynolds during his cosmetic face-peel stage: so shiny and smooth that it gave you the creeps.

It especially gave Temple the creeps. Las Vegas was
the kind of high-profile place where new scandals and sensations constantly made yesterday's atrocity fade into prehistory. Yet she'd learned the horrific history of this
house when she'd first come to town two years ago. And a
good PR person never forgets.

Over the past twenty or so years, the house had been a white elephant, huge and impossible to reinvent. It had
been a Halloween spook-show place for a while. A theme
restaurant. (Middle-Eastern, with the Disneyesque Neuschwanstein castle towers appropriately repainted as
minarets.) A funeral home. That was the weirdest and
last incarnation. And lately, it had stood perilously empty, inviting vandals, until it had been turned into the set for a presumably hot reality TV show.

The first time it had made media news, it had just been
another sprawling tribute to big money and minuscule
taste.