Cat in a Topaz Tango

by Carole Nelson Douglas

  “How did you know?” Matt was astounded by Danny’s accuracy.

  “Temple is the sleuth, but I know dance. Tatyana, though petite, is an iron disciplinarian. I’d pair her with you myself, because you respond to structure and you’re attracted to small, feminine women with drive.”

  Matt raised his eyebrows. “I thought I was counseling you.”

  “That was on your turf; this is mine.” Danny’s analytical eyes narrowed. “You could learn something from her.”

  “I am.”

  “But on your terms so far, I’d bet. Let go, dear boy. Dance is an incomparably liberating art, but only if you sweat like a Clydesdale and aren’t afraid to float like a fool.”

  “Does Muhammad Ali’s ‘sting like a bee’ part come in anywhere there?”

  “Only if you become a judge.” Danny looked around again. “We need the just-right combo of personalities in the judging or this dance party show dies on its tootsies.”

  “The whole thing strikes me as a mad tea party.”

  Danny eyed the contestants. “A rather lethal tea party. I don’t know all these B-, C-, and D-list celebs, but I do know that Motha Jonz was lucky to avoid prison time when she shot a bystander during that limo hit on the hip-hop gangstas a few years back.”

  Matt whirled to eye the Queen Motha filling out zebra-stripe spandex with proud mounds of cellulite while Danny dished on the woman’s history.

  “Her ‘man’ was Mad Motown Guitry, record mogul and mobster. She claimed she was just defending herself with her little pistol when the limo was hit by a rival gang, but the car frame was full of cocaine. Guitry died. No one has ever been indicted, but when she lost his sponsorship her so-called singing career went down the drain.”

  His eyes returned to Matt’s shocked face. “There are a million stories in the naked ambition sweepstakes along the Las Vegas Strip. Yours just happens to be one of the more mild-mannered of them.”

  Mild-mannered. Matt chewed on that wishy-washy adjective after Danny danced away to pounce on other people he knew there, mostly the pro dancers.

  Mild-mannered was good enough for Clark Kent, but not Superman. Mild manners didn’t win ballroom dance competitions. Most guys not in the entertainment world would be afraid of looking like a wuss wearing Fancy Dan costumes and waltzing across the polished floor. He got what Danny was saying: do it and do a good job of it, or wimp out and look just like you’re afraid of looking.

  Kind of what Matt would advise himself. Admit it, Devine, he told himself. You want to perform up to the Max Kinsella standard for Temple. Play the hero. She was sure to return from her unlikely road trip with Molina’s wandering kid in tow. Then she’d get any DVDs of episodes she’d missed. He’d better come out looking like a combo of Gene Kelly and Sylvester Stallone.

  Think Michael Flatley. Bring on the slicked-down hair. The high-heeled boots. The attitude. Sword and cape and swashbuckle. It was now or never. Either be a lord of the dance, or a loser. In public.

  At least this was just a silly dance competition. Nobody’s life or death depended on it. You couldn’t get much more trivial than this.

  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.

  Celebrity Is the

  Cat’s Pajamas

  I am not surprised to hear that my svelte ebony image is receiving major online attention.

  While I usually shrink from the spotlight during my investigations, I have as much or more star potential than any human around.

  Until I was falsely accused of irresponsible littering with the Divine Yvette, I had a nice national TV pitch–cat career going for À La Cat and its healthful food product line, Free-to-Be-Feline.

  Those were the days! Being flown to New York City. Roaming the city sidewalks during the well-lit Christmas season.

  Getting “well-lit” myself once in the service of busting out of jail. Being the toast of Manhattan. (Well, sometimes that was closer to being toast, period.).

  Solving the usual murder. Watching my Miss Temple whisked off by a commanding Mr. Max for a night of sumptuous sin offstage. Darn!

  (Those intrigued by the above reminiscences should consult Cat in a Golden Garland, my only case occurring outside of Las Vegas. I believe PBS is considering offering it as a perk along with a golden oldie doo-wop promotion, but you will have to check with my agents about the progress on that. I have been completely unable to reach them lately.)

  In sum, I do have potent performing genes, even if they are no longer reproducible, and I will do my best to impersonate a big, lazy, cuddly pussycat for the Excess Hollywood cameras sure to be at the dance competition finals.

  I am also well aware that I am the key undercover operative in this funky little scam. Hotels have been my business since I started out as house detective at the Crystal Phoenix Hotel and Casino when it was being renovated from the old Joshua Tree.

  You talk Vegas hotel, and you talk Midnight Louie. I know the layout, the players, the personnel.

  If there is anything to these death threats at the dance show, whether against someone as big in this town as the Cloaked Conjuror or as petite as young Ekaterina from Chechnya, I will ferret out the villain and have him or her waltzing right into the Nevada prison system.

  Ta-da!

  Pool Shark

  After lunch break that day at the huge buffet table the hotel provided in the backstage area, Matt returned to his assigned rehearsal room.

  It was empty, but Tatyana had been there. Matt winced at seeing his namesake on the rehearsal-room floor, a padded mat.

  The rehearsal mat made an oblong pool of bright blue vinyl on the polished maple boards. This afternoon was “lift” practice. The mat reminded him of high school gym classes. Nobody wanted to be reminded of those days of infamy.

  He eyed his reflection in the mirrored wall: army-green T-shirt, khaki pants, black lace-up shoes made from leather soft enough to flex like cloth. Jazz shoes, they’d told him. His hair was still spiky from “product” the show’s hairstylists insisted on. It looked a lot blonder because of the portable spray-on-tan booth the contestants had to use religiously every morning.

  Its small dark space reminded him of an old-fashioned confessional, if one ever had to take all one’s clothes off to go to confession. It gave the stripped-naked soul a whole new look, not to mention the rhythmic sweep of cold dye as one assumed the position and turned.

  If the object was to be reborn looking like a Beach Boy, it had worked.

  Matt knew he’d hate this celebrity dancing show and all its works, but everyone, including Temple and his boss at WCOO-FM, hadn’t wanted him to miss this “opportunity.” An opportunity to look like an idiot in front of a local audience. If only the exposure was just local.

  Since this was Las Vegas and nothing in Vegas was really “local,” the half-hour Hollywood gossip shows were all over the rehearsals. He never knew who would burst through that closed door besides his drill sergeant, ballet master, and dancing partner, Tatyana Tereshchenko, aka Tatyana the Terrible, five-foot-three inches of wiry and wily Russian tsunami.

  She burst in now as if summoned by his thought, wearing a wispy tease of skirt over her lime-green leotard and tights, toting a bag for towel and bottled water.

  “Matt-eeeu, Matt-eeeu, Matt-eeeu,” she mispronounced his name in her heavy Russian accent. “Are you ready to lift Tatyana up to the heavens today?”

  “It’s just Matt,” he said. No point in correcting her. The long form of his given name was Mathias. “And I’m game for lifts if you are.”

  “Of course you are,” she said. Her teaching technique was the whiplash application of carrot-and-stick in rapid alteration. She came close, suddenly kittenish. “Such lovely strong shoulders. Svimming is the most vonderful sport for dancer. Makes long, lovely muscle, all over.”

  She accompanied this inciting conclusion with strokes and purrs, her position being that his ex-priest status had made him shy.

  With her, a Tasmanian devil would be shy.

  “But,” she added, drawing back and pulling herself up like a ballerina on pointe. “You have rhythm and we must pull that out of you before the competition begins, or Tatyana will not vin and one thing is sure: Tatyana will vin. Ca-peach? As they say on, on . . . These Three Sopranos!”

  “Capeach,” Matt repeated dutifully, amused by her slaughtering the language and the TV show name, which he took as a deliberate ploy.

  In a week of lessons, he’d learned Tatyana was a force of ego. She was the Yorkshire terrier that lived to boss around Great Danes. And she truly had a passion for dance, and for making him into a dancer.

  “Good. You learn. With Tatyana you learn to be dancer and love it. So. Today. Surprise.”

  He wasn’t surprised when the door opened again and a cameraman backed in, filming the incoming newcomers. Oh, my God! Surprise was right.

  In came Ambrosia, his nightly on-air predecessor host at WCOO and his “Midnight Hour” producer, wearing a leopard-print caftan and singing “Hey, Mr. Tambourine Man” while banging a jangling circle of wood and metal overhead.

  The cameraman kept backing up so far he almost tripped on the floor mat, just before Matt himself leaped forward to steer him around the barrier like a balky dance partner. He’d picked up a move or twelve from the driven diva who was his coach.

  The cameraman had backed up so far because Ambrosia was three-hundred-pounds-plus of quivering leopard-skin-pattern caftan, and she was followed by a chorus lin
e of women equally larger than life and as exotically clothed as she, or more so.

  They were not shy, that was for sure.

  Tatyana was grinning like a demon brat.

  “So, Matt-euw. You say as priest you like to visit these gospel music churches. Miz Ambrosiana has brought whole gospel group to rehearsal. You will no longer hide rhythm from those long, hot shoulder muscles and hips, right, Miz Ambrosiana?”

  “Right, girlfriend! We all gonna hip-hop today!”

  Ambrosia began by bumping hips with him, but not before he could perform an evasive maneuver that kept him on his feet.

  “Show us what you learned at dance school today, Beach Boy,” Ambrosia urged.

  Matt had heard her selecting songs that soothed and inspired her radio call-in listeners for months now. She was a wonder at massaging sad hearts and sore feelings back into some hope of functioning again. He knew her repertoire, and she knew he’d played the organ a little and liked Bob Dylan.

  So they could do a little act for the cameras, which was always what cameras demanded.

  “Shall we, Sister Ambrosia?” he said.

  “Shall we, Brother Matt?”

  “A little Dylan?” he suggested.

  “And a lotta rhythm.”

  After he led on the first line, she joined in singing the rollicking, feel-good anthem of “When the Ship Comes In” as if rehearsed, while the other women clapped their hands and tambourines and shook their booties and joined in.

  They formed a line to march around the room New Orleans funeral style, Matt turning to waltz Ambrosia in a circle, then do-si-do among a few women of the church choir, borrow a tambourine and do a little arms-raised hip-banging with a three-hundred-pound dynamo, then perform a dip with a tall, skinny woman playing the kazoo.

  By then the song had segued into “This Little Light of Mine, I’m Gonna Let It Shine” and Matt had circled into the center of the room to sweep Tatyana up into the alternating over-the-hip lifts of the swing dance they’d practiced.