Cat in a Hot Pink Pursuit (21 page)

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 inter
cept 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 whis
pered.

“Just to be safe, sweetie." Kit sat on the broad tub surround and kicked off her shoes, a pair of svelte but sensi
ble 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 Good
son, 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 mak
ing
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 Man-ship'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 mir
rored 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 min
utes 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 lit
tle 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 fra
grance 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 hair-sprayed 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.