Cat in a Topaz Tango

by Carole Nelson Douglas

  There was a whole country full of suspects primed to slip some E. coli in Keith Salter’s personal appetizers. Especially before he made a public appearance on TV.

  It couldn’t have been in the buffet food, or several people would be tossing their cookies by now.

  Then she remembered glimpsing Salter in the men’s dressing room with his own special tray.

  He was too snobbish to eat hotel food from a buffet.

  And in a dressing room, his tray could be quickly doctored by almost anybody.

  It was time Zoe Chloe had another tête-à-tête with her new hottie hero, Matt Devine.

  Too Dead to Dance?

  She reached him on her cell phone and answered his “Hello?” with a breathy . . .

  “Ooh, Mr. Devine. I do so want a private quickstep with you. This miserable, unpaid show did give you a private room, didn’t it? If not the private star dressing room you so richly deserve.”

  “Listen,” he answered sharply. “I don’t know how you people get my cell phone number, but I’m here to perform for charity, not crazed fans. I can guarantee I’ll have a different cell phone number faster than you can quickstep off this line.”

  “Matt, no! Don’t hang up. It’s just me being silly.”

  “Temple! I thought they’d be keeping you on the set to figure out tomorrow’s show if Keith is too ill to dance.”

  “Or too dead to dance.”

  “He was in bad shape, and you can’t tell in these cases until the stomach pump,” Matt said grimly.

  “Ah, gross as that news is, I’m still waiting with bated breath to hear whether you bunk alone. We can’t do much confidential public consulting in our current personas.”

  “You’re the only one with a persona. You mean you’d desert your happy, high-square-footage home in a high-roller heaven with Molina and surprise family to visit my lowly plain hotel room?”

  “Oh, yes. It’s like rooming with Mothra and Godzilla up here, and Spawn and Friend have joined Mother Mothra.”

  “I bet Molina is a joy to associate with right now.”

  “You know what’s going on, don’t you, Matt?”

  “Some of it, maybe.”

  “That I’ll have to torture it out of you after this road show is over. So, do you want to meet Zoe Chloe in your room or not? And just how many fans have managed to snag your cell phone number?”

  “Zoe Chloe, no. Temple Barr would be welcome, but I’ve got to wash off my makeup and peel off my costume and shower first.”

  “First? Sounds like you could use a dresser. Or an undresser, rather.”

  “You want to talk, or something else?”

  “I’ll take both when I can get it.”

  “Room twelve thirty-four. I do have to leave for the radio station by eleven thirty.”

  “Don’t worry, Cinderfella. I’ll be through with you by then.”

  Temple snapped her cell phone shut. She wasn’t kidding about the undressing part. Zoe Chloe was such an impetuous little gangsta girl. They’d have plenty of time to talk after.

  There was something about being naked in bed in a hotel room that was sinfully stimulating.

  Temple and Matt each leaned against their two fat piled-up pillows, the heavy hotel bedspread tucked discreetly under their armpits.

  “You have to slip my costume back onto the dressing-room rack tonight,” he said. “Show rule. I really shouldn’t have worn it up here to my room.”

  “You can always plead being rattled by the emergency situation, although you never are,” Temple said, studying the formal white tie tossed on an armchair, the satin-striped black trousers draping the desk chair, the white tucked-front shirt sprawled like a ghost over the ottoman. “So why didn’t you change first before I came up? Or down in my case.”

  “You were in a hurry to meet. And . . . you kinda seemed genuinely interested in acting as my undresser.”

  “That was Zoe Chloe talking. She is such a sexpot.”

  Matt eyed Zoe Chloe’s scattered accoutrements, from striped thigh-high stockings to miniskirt to puffed-sleeved Victorian jacket to sequined tube bustier.

  “She has the fashion sense of a yard sale after a tornado,” he said, “but she’s pretty adorable anyway.”

  “And that spray-on tan really looks good on you. And it stays on really well too. Passes the taste test.”

  She’d finally pushed him out of his comfort zone and he looked uneasy. Matt hated the artificial, and now he was one.

  “Leticia is having a hoot giving me a hard time about this at work,” he admitted. “Says I’ll be her color by the time the dance show ends and we can go on the road with a soft-shoe act.”

  Temple laughed. “She’s a grand lady. That filmed segment of her church choir coming in to lead you in the rhythm chorus was just . . . wonderful. She’s never come out from behind her radio persona as Ambrosia before, has she?”

  He shook his head. “That took guts.”

  “What you’re doing takes guts.”

  “What you’re doing takes even more guts. I can’t believe this Zoe Chloe persona. She’s a pistol. I can see why the Internet dweebs adore her even though I feel a little predatory when she wants my spray-tan body. Where’d that come from? Seriously, Temple.”

  “Maybe we all need an outrageous alter ego. I don’t think I would have pursued coming up to your room tonight. At least not all the way.” She wiggled her toes under the bedspread. “But it was hot, wasn’t it?”

  “Oh, yeah. But now’s the talking part. Keith may be seriously, even mortally ill.”

  Temple nodded, sober and her full self again. “I’m trying to put this together. Hot pepper in Sou-Sou’s dancing shoes. A chef stricken by gastronomical problems. There’s an odd foodie element here. I don’t like that the mishaps bridge the adult and junior casts.”

  “Glory B. fell from a defectively assembled jungle gym in a rehearsal room even before these incidents,” Matt told her. “Danny and I were there but he thought it was just a rehearsal glitch. Now it could look deliberate.”

  “Sure could.”

  “The dancing shoes had to be sabotaged by someone deliberately,” he pointed out. “Keith’s condition could be accidental.”

  “What’d you think of him?”

  Matt clasped his hands behind his neck to consider while Temple gaped appreciatively. That spray tan went on everywhere. She used spray sunscreen, but maybe she should try a tan. Looking different in someplace different was a total turn-on. And if she got a teeny-weeny yellow bikini . . . .

  “Chefs are a breed of their own,” Matt mused. “Culinary prima donnas. The kind of grown men who have tantrums. He insisted on his own chair before his own spot along the makeup mirrors, his costumes always at the right end of the rack. His meals had to be absolutely prepared to his specifications, fresh from the kitchen, brought and served by an under-chef. He’d never touch the common buffet table for cast and crew we all ate from.”

  “Was he a tyrant, or was he afraid of something?”

  Matt sat up, rethinking the man’s eccentricities. “Was he persnickety, or was he paranoid, you’re thinking. And rightfully so. Could be.”

  “Who would hate a chef?” she mused. “Other than his kitchen staff?”

  “Keith Salter? Plenty. He had that reality TV show, Butcher’s Holler, where he anonymously ate at restaurants all over the country and then tore the menu, food, and service apart.”

  “Could Keith Salter be why Dancing With the Celebs had death threats before it even aired? Everybody in Vegas would figure the Cloaked Conjuror for the target. He’s had local death threats since he opened his Goliath show exposing the other magicians’ stage tricks. That might have led the authorities astray. It could be someone from out of town, following Keith to kill him.”

  “You think like Agatha Christie,” Matt said. “Now that I rethink it, Keith could have been scared, not just a snob. He didn’t have much to do with the rest of us.”

  “What are ‘th
e rest of you’ like?”

  “José has the drive and dedication of an Olympic athlete. If I’ve got a rival in this thing, it’s him. But he’s fanatic about winning, and I’m not. I lack his Latin fire, but I have a certain ease of self and lightness of heart he could never master. I mystify him. I suppose I’m the most laid-back of all the contestants. I don’t have anything to prove. Keith must, or he’d have never made a career out of exposing and disparaging his peers. The Cloaked Conjuror has given up fellowship with his peers for im mense amounts of money, but has to endure anonymity and hatred, the worst of both worlds.”

  “Hmm. Incisively put. I think I’ll keep you. What about the male and female dance pros who train you?”

  “They’re doing this because all dancers wear out their bodies in a few years. Founding a studio and teaching and doing choreography is the next stage in their impassioned careers. And they are impassioned about their art form. I get that. I get the dedication of a true vocation. That’s why the kids’ competition is important. Start young, make hay while your legs last, or forget it. Olympic performers have that same pressure. Chefs and ex-priest radio shrinks, not so much.”

  Matt finished with a self-deprecating grin.

  “And the women?” she asked, astonished by his insights.

  “I don’t share a dressing room with them. Only you.” His voice had lowered on the last two words, and an intimacy break was definitely in order.

  “I’m glad you came,” Matt whispered as they took a breather.

  She decided not to comment on the double entrendre. Zoe Chloe Ozone had been hired to be a G-rated act.

  “The women,” Matt said, now fully cerebral, lying back again and staring at the white ceiling. “I really enjoy dancing with Olivia. She feels she has a lot to prove, works hard, and I like helping her look good. Neat lady. Dotes on her grandchildren. Pretty amazing for an aging femme fatale on the soaps. She knows she’s an anachronism, but loves her work. Maybe it’s just a job for her now, but she has her pride and she needs the income. The soaps are dying. Not Olivia.”

  “You made her look twenty-eight tonight.” “She made me dance like I was still twenty-eight. Olivia made Olivia happen. She’s a pro.”

  “Glory B.”

  “Makes you want to hug her sane. So much talent. So much pain. She knows she’s almost totally blown her career, and is so scared she rushes to the one real worst thing to do like a lemming to a cliff. I’d like sixty counseling hours with her, but I only get a few hours of rehearsals.”

  “She was the first one hurt in rehearsal.”

  “Maybe a real accident? She’s accident-prone. Look at her driving. I honestly think she’s been driven so hard since her TV commercial days at ages six and seven that her body and mind haven’t kept up with the career push. She works harder than Olivia, and it’s harder on her. And she’s only sixteen.”

  “Motha Jonz?”

  “I haven’t worked with her yet.”

  “Not a clue?”

  He shook his head. “That hip-hop, gangsta, drug and glitz world is so alien to me. The materialism outdoes the greedy corporate executives. I don’t see where women fit there, except as victims. Motha Jonz’s ‘man’ was gunned down in Vegas by any of a dozen so-called record executives, rappers, media ‘starz.’ It’s its own little gold-weighed-down, diamond-ear-studded, fancy-ride-driven alternative universe.”

  “She was literally caught in the crossfire when D’mond J supposedly offed QuE2 here in Vegas a couple years ago.”

  “I looked it up before I came to this competition. She was riding on the passenger side in the back of D’Mond’s limo. She was found to be carrying a pearl-and-diamond-handled .22 pistol, like something out of the musical Chicago. A messenger boy, just a teen, white, was shot and killed in the exchange of bullets. The bullet went right through and was never found. She might be a murderer. She certainly was hooked on drugs then.”

  “The authorities didn’t settle this case?”

  “It was one of those guns and drug cases where everybody was so guilty it was hard to pin anything on anyone. The men are still fighting legal battles. Motha Jonz has been out on her own as a performer ever since, but she’s not making it. That’s why she’s on this show.”

  “Someone helped fill you in on all this.”

  “Leticia keeps her ear to the hip-hop underground.”

  “And she told you all this?”

  “She told me to watch my back around Motha Jonz. Maybe not so much because of her pearl-handled piece, but because of her former associates. If she wasn’t a perp, she was a witness.”

  “God, Matt! She could have a hit out on her. You could be dancing the jive with her and playing a target at the same time. In a crowd like the audience for this, it’d be easy to take out any one of you.”

  “Right. Thanks, coach, for the career advice in getting me here.”

  Temple clapped both hands over her mouth.

  “Lordy. I had no idea what I was sending you into gang warfare and spray tans. I’m going to have to solve this thing for Molina just to get you off the hook.”

  “You need to watch your own back.”

  “Zoe Chloe doesn’t have an enemy in the world, except Crawford Buchanan.”

  “She’s lucky,” Matt said sourly. “That doesn’t seem to be the pattern around here.”

  Pasodoble Double Cross

  Sometimes the show seemed like a guided trip to Europe. If it was Tuesday, it was Spain and pasodoble night.

  Temple had to choose a new Zoe Chloe wardrobe fit for an emcee role, which was getting tedious. It was hard to be a clotheshorse. Who knew how much effort pop stars must put into looking outrageous? Luckily, the show costumers were into the ZC look and welcomed her to their rack of castaways and boxes of accessories and trims.

  “Red, black, and purple tonight,” Temple told them when they had attired their charges and were relaxing with sodas and cigarettes.

  “Kinda Red Hat Lady-delinquent-Goth?” asked Brandi, a gamine-haired sprite who looked much younger than she was thanks to a hip wardrobe.

  “Got it.”

  “You seem edgy tonight, Zee,” Manda mentioned after Temple had rejected three choice looks.

  “Yeah. The improvisation when things go wrong is getting to me.”

  “We’re glad our deadlines are backstage.”

  “How’d it go?” innocent Zee asked. “Who are your odds on tonight?”

  “The pasodoble always makes or breaks the guy,” Brandi declared. “I mean, you either break hearts or break wind out there.”

  While everyone giggled, Tee in Zee guise probed further.

  “Which guy, then, will win?”

  “José is in the zone, and the ethnic bullring,” said Yolanda. “Olé!”

  “The Cloaked Conjuror will comport himself well, as usual,” the older Manda said.

  “Salter is gone! History in haut cuisine.” Brandi was the group’s talker. “And wait’ll you see what we did to the blond. He is locked and loaded. All he has to do is deliver.” Her eyes rolled with wicked anticipation.

  “Really?” Zee Tee squealed, hoping for more racy girly tidbits.

  She was disappointed. They returned to critically eying her getup, adding a large scarlet silk rose here, pinning up her full skirt with one, judiciously ripping her fishnet hose, adding temporary tattoos and a red feather boa. One thing about Zoe Chloe Ozone. She could never be overdressed or overexposed.

  Well, Zoe Chloe Ozone would certainly get a breathless play-by-play from the dancing tweens, if not the jaded young Los Hermanos Brothers who’d mastered their own dance routines. She left the costume room to hang with her crew in the greenroom.

  There she found that Zoe Chloe’s “posse,” Rafi and Molina, had joined the group, next to Mariah and EK. A little parental rivalry there? She sat on the long couch between the exes, on principle, and to make someone else as uneasy as she was tonight. Rafi and Molina scooted over to avoid crowding, but wanted some w
hispered guidance on the night’s program.

  “What’s the dance?” Rafi asked Temple.

  “Pasodoble.”

  “Paso what?”

  “Spanish for ‘double step.’ Inspired by the bullring. Matador, cape, bull.”

  “So what’s a girl doing in that dance?”

  “She’s either the cape or the bull. Gets tossed around a bit. It’s a sexy, intense confrontation.”

  “ ’Tossed around,’ ” Rafi repeated, looking at Molina. “Sounds like someone could get hurt.”

  “Nobody’s gone after Motha Jones yet,” Molina speculated.

  “Or Wandawoman.” Rafi rolled his eyes, as if he doubted anyone would.

  “Or Matt,” Temple finished up.

  She was still alone with her secret Temple Barr anxieties.

  No way would Zoe Chloe Ozone be able to hold a mike tonight to introduce this day’s junior performer and her partner at the end of the four adult dances. Her Kool Kid palms were oil-slick before even the first adult performer had been introduced in the overdone fashion of Crawford Buchanan.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” Crawford’s deep baritone oozed into the mike, amplified all through the set and the live audience and the greenroom.

  “Crawford Buchanan is da bomb!” Meg-Ann declared.

  “Da stink bomb!” Sou-Sou trilled, trying to ditch her prima donna image.

  How sweet it was to hear a new generation dissing Vegas’s answer to a walking, talking oil slick.

  ZC sat back to watch and shutter her ears against screeching teen fans. At least she could “hang” with her adult “posse.” Mariah and EZ next to them were fairly mature and quiet, allowing Temple to indulge a long internal arpeggio of anxiety and regret.

  This evening’s dance was true adult entertainment. The pasodoble. “Double step” was the literal translation.

  This was where the rubber met the road in the ballroom dance world.

  Along with the tango that ended this competition Thursday, the pasodoble was the most demanding and dramatic dance. It didn’t call for lifts, but it required slides and drags. The woman was the slidee and the dragee.