Mariah’s gasp was audible, but she managed to ask, “Does that mean EK and the other guys can still finish out the show?” “Guys” stood for the teen girls and their pop star partners.
Molina nodded, once. “And then there are those Hermanos brothers to guard like British royals. Aii, carumba.”
“Tango’s the last dance,” Matt put in.
Molina’s glare was so toxic that he rose right away. “I’d better get along to the radio station.” He eyed Rafi. “Zoe Chloe is one of the ‘juniors’ you’ve sworn to protect, right?”
Rafi rose to shake Matt’s hand before he left. “Absolutely. Although I’ll probably need to protect Crawford Buchanan from her more than her from anybody else.”
“Crawford!” Zoe spat. “I can outemcee that dude in a New York, New York hotel minute. Talk about useless. I don’t even know why he’s here.”
“That’s a very good point,” Molina said after Matt left, staring at Temple. “He has a stake in the show attracting media.” She turned to her daughter and little pal. “Okay, kidlets. Time to hit the hay. Into your trundle beds and no whispering, giggling, or eavesdropping.”
The pair, ecstatic about the reprieve, hustled away, eager to engage in all specifically forbidden activities.
Temple and Zoe Chloe were a pretty tickled pair too. The so-called “trundle beds” were a pair of imported cots, and the staff had been disdainful to the max to import such homely items to a high-roller suite.
As the door shut on the kids, sounds of two forbidden activities trickled under the door, whispering and giggling.
“Mama” Molina did sorta know how to handle tweens.
At that very moment Mama Molina sat heavily and lifted a curled hand. “Some of that fancy freebie wine,” she ordered Rafi.
Amazingly, he complied, and poured glasses for Temple and himself. He delivered Temple’s next, with a wink.
It was just the three of them again, and that felt scarily right, Temple thought.
After all, they’d been in on this almost from the beginning.
“How many have access to Ma Jonz’s prop gun?” Rafi asked.
Molina said, “Anyone backstage, and anyone who wanted to wander backstage. You’ve got to plug those holes.”
“It’s a typical showbiz operation,” Temple said. “Even at a major regional repertory theater that I PRed, like the Guthrie in Minneapolis, putting on shows is chaos.”
“I know,” Rafi agreed. “Vegas is no exception, but ‘typical showbiz’ will kill us. Or someone else.”
Temple sighed heavily. “We’ve all got someone at stake here. We better solve this thing.”
“What if it’s more than one thing?” Molina asked.
Rafi turned a desk chair around to straddle it. “What have we got for incidents so far? Motives? Suspects?”
“You always wanted to make detective,” Molina charged. Remembered. Her tone had been dangerously . . . personal.
Rafi winced. Temple read his reaction. He was so far from that lost uniformed officer position. Molina was a lieutenant of detectives. He looked at Temple to escape staring the implications in the eyes.
“You have any ideas, Ms. Ozone?”
“Ah . . . yes.”
Crime Seen
“Something about these incidents is bothering me,” Temple said.
Rafi regarded her raptly, but only because he wanted to shut Molina out at the moment. Molina was frowning at her hotel notepad, doodling.
“Matt’s getting to be the only one who hasn’t had a personal mishap,” Temple noted.
“Other than getting engaged to you,” Molina put in without even looking up.
“Yet,” Rafi said.
“He’s the only celebrity who doesn’t have a visual presence in the media,” Temple went on.
“You mean he’s the most obscure and least celebrated,” Molina suggested.
Temple went speechless. Molina was in a major down-on-men mood.
“And the best-looking,” Rafi put in, “as if you hadn’t noticed.” He turned back to Temple. “You’re right. We’ve had enough ‘incidents’ to look for similarities and differences.”
“Unfortunately,” Temple said, “the contestants were chosen for their variety. Entertainers, athletes, and quasi-glamorous careers like chef and radio show host.”
“Except they are all celebrities of one sort of another,” Rafi added. “They have fans, and fans can get obsessed.”
Molina turned in her chair to face them fully again. “That’s what I meant. You’re assuming that one mischief-maker is at the root of every troubling incident. What if more than one motive and one person were behind these ‘accidents’ that are coming too fast to be accidental?”
“It would have to be somebody involved in the show, near it every day,” Temple mused. “Or who could seem to be legitimately near it. You’re saying there are several freaked-out fans here all at once?”
Molina was unshaken. “This is a variety show as far as the competitors go. Why not a surfeit of suspects all working separately?”
“That’s an Agatha Christie novel,” Rafi said sourly. “Murder on the Orient Express. It narrows down nothing.”
“You read Christie?” Molina pounced.
“They make movies,” he retorted. “Look. The Oasis Hotel is one huge interior metropolis of support staff and the public milling around together. Temple is right. Looking for suspects starting from the outside in is futile. We’ve got to work from the victims out. There are five of them.”
“And only three who haven’t been victims,” Molina pointed out, “which may be more telling.”
“Let’s go through the possible attacks,” Temple suggested. “First would be Glory B.’s jungle gym fall.”
“Pure accident,” Molina said. “She’s a kid practicing new tricks.”
Temple disagreed. “Danny Dove tested that equipment and took it apart. He said it could have been rigged and if anyone in Vegas knows stage equipment and rigging, it’s Danny Dove.”
“The second was Olivia Phillips,” Molina said.
“Nothing suspicious there,” Rafi said. “How do you figure that?”
“You’re the assistant security chief here. Guess, or figure it out yourself.”
“He’s a guy,” Temple told Molina. “He’s handicapped.” She eyed Rafi, who was starting to look steamed. “Olivia Phillips’s wardrobe malfunction, when the heel of her pump collapsed. It could have been rigged too.”
“Was rigged,” Molina corrected.
“A guess?” Rafi jeered.
“I checked it after the show, and bagged the shoe for evidence. They were faint, but forensics found half-moon imprints in the red satin: a small hammerhead hitting the inside of the spike heel. The nails holding it on were weakened, and it snapped. Next?” she suggested, consulting Rafi.
“The most blatant case of tampering so far involves the chef, Salter,” he said. “Appropriate name for a cook, huh? Poisoning is the easiest method to pass off as an accident unless you can identify the toxic substance, and the toughest to bring home to any one suspect.”
“You do read Christie,” Molina pounced again.
He shrugged. “Had to do something on all those sit-down security jobs after I left the L.A. Police Department.”
She was smiling like the cat who’d nailed the Camembert.
“Okay,” said Temple. “Agatha Christie is not going to solve this thing for us, no matter who reads her, including me. It’s interesting that Salter is such a persnickety chef he didn’t eat from the buffet the hotel provided the cast. He would be easy to poison without hurting anyone else.”
“A suspect with a conscience?” Molina asked. “No collateral damage.”
“Or,” Rafi said, “a suspect who wanted to make dead sure he or she got the intended victim. Any diagnosis yet on the cause of Salter’s tummy upset?”
“The forensic staff is overworked, as usual here.”
“L. A. East?” Rafi sug
gested, almost sympathetically.
Molina sighed, and nodded.
Hmm, Temple thought. “Okay,” she said. “The first two cases are iffy as official ‘incidents,’ but Salter did collapse of food poisoning, Wandawoman did pass out from drugs, and someone substituted real ammo for the blanks in Motha Jonz’s garter gun.”
“‘Ammo’?” Rafi echoed her with amusement. “Sounding real cop shop there, kid.”
“Zoe Chloe gets around.”
“Can we keep on track?” Molina said. Ordered.
That was the real Molina, too. All work and no idle talk. No wonder she didn’t get along with anyone.
Temple shrugged. “All the dancers are responsible for keeping track of their costume pieces, but the costume and prop people are all over the dressing rooms. It would be easy to do the switch. I could have done it.”
“It was a revolver,” Molina said. “Only three of the bullets were live.”
“That conscience again,” Rafi noted.
“One could kill.” Molina was adamant.
“But Motha Jonz wasn’t aiming for a vital organ,” he said.
“Could have hit one so easily.”
“Didn’t,” he said.
“Doesn’t prove anything,” she said.
Temple inserted herself into the verbal Ping-Pong match. “This is an odd incident. Was it aimed against José or CC or Motha Jonz?” she asked.
Rafi leaned back, arms folded as if Temple had just gotten off a killing salvo for him.
“Temple’s really hit the bull’s-eye, Carmen. The loaded stage gun hurt both of them, the Cloaked Conjuror physically, but Jonz . . . I guess in reputation and morally, you’d say. This incident will bring up her sordid past, and she easily could have been made into a killer.”
“Nothing new for her,” Molina said, “she hung out with enough of them.”
“The only criminally involved celebrity dancer,” Rafi pointed out, “involved with the most potentially lethal ‘prank,’ if you want to call it that.”
“She’d gotten away from all that,” Temple objected.
“But had ‘all that’ gotten away from her?” Rafi shot back.
Molina sat up, her vivid blue eyes flashing with speculation. She caught her breath as if she had a sudden stitch in her side as well as an inspiration.
Rafi’s eyes narrowed. “What the hell is really wrong with you, Carmen?”
“Shut up. I’m thinking.” She glanced feverishly from him to Temple, and back again, her tone rising as she began speaking. “That may very well be it. I don’t keep up with tabloid papers or TV gossip shows or online rumor. Barr! Just what all was Glory B. put into jail and rehab for?”
“Uh, I don’t exactly—”
“Think!”
“I don’t have to,” Temple said, turning to flip open her laptop. “I can do a search for it.”
She keyed in some words and then clicked through various sites. “I know Glory B. was DWI in her new Porsche and rowdy when arrested. She hit another car . . . here it is! Last year. Just had her license for four months. Leaving a nightclub. God, she not only let down her hair but the whole top of her dress and it didn’t have much to begin with. Anyway, the text says the car she hit was occupied by a mother and nine-year-old daughter . . . mother’s face hit by the air bag, daughter on passenger side had intrusion from the collision. Ooh. Both legs broken. Lawsuit. Hush-hush settlement. Glory B. did ten days in jail and three months public service, volunteering at an animal shelter, and required time in AA.”
Temple looked up. “And Glory B. could have broken both legs or her back if that jungle gym failure had been more . . . effective.”
Molina looked both grim and triumphant. “That is a triple-A class motive.”
Rafi wasn’t so sure. “That ‘dirty trick,’ if it was that, was lame. Glory B. was fine.”
“It was the first attempt, Molina said. “Practice makes perfect.”
“There’s an escalating element to the incidents,” Temple said. “Glory B. just had a minor fall. Chef Salter got really sick, and the Cloaked Conjuror could have been killed. That could show a variety of amateurs, some good, and some bad. At being bad, I mean. Nobody is good.”
“Or one person learning?” Rafi asked.
“Damn, we are good!”
Temple and Rafi turned to Molina to see a glitter in her eyes and fever spots on her dusky cheeks. Stick an orchid behind one ear and she’d look like Carmen the lounge singer.
“I mean,” Molina said . . . modified, “there might be some good ideas floating around there. Number one is we raise security on the show tomorrow night ten notches. Done deal?” she asked Rafi.
“Signed, sealed, and delivered,” he agreed.
Temple was just glad he hadn’t made it “delivered with a kiss.”
That would have been just too icky even for a post-tween like her.
Rehearsed to Death
“You sure this daily dance gig ain’t burnin’ out your baby browns, boy wonder?” Ambrosia asked Matt as they shut down their mics and she became just plain Leticia again.
He nodded as he yawned.
His “Midnight Hour” stint at WCOO-AM was over. Rehearsing dance numbers days to perform them live on TV evenings, then doing a two-hour live radio show at midnight was getting to him.
Leticia also passed him a yellow message form as soon as he had hung up his headphones for the morning. “Two A.M. and all is well, or not well?” she pressed.
“No rest for the wicked,” he muttered, reading the name and phone number, then the message scrawled beneath them, and groaning. “So my Dancing With the Celebs taskmistress is insisting I need an after-hours, early-morning rehearsal to ‘brush up’ my tango footwork. I’m glad this is the last dance. You remember the formidable Tatyana?”
“You sure that’s all she wants?”
“Sure. This woman is all business.”
“All business shaking her jiggle parts.”
“You seemed to have that routine down too, when you visited me at the rehearsal,” he reminded her with a laugh. “No, life is all work and no play with Tatyana. The other prodance instructors lighten up a little, but never her. You’d think she wanted to rehearse me to death.”
“Then don’t go. You’re the ‘celeb,’ sweet boy. Show a little temperament yourself. You’re too easygoing, Matt. Always accommodating other people. I like that when I’m the ‘other people,’ but you need to put your foot down more.”
“Believe me,” he said, rising, “I’m putting my foot down plenty these days. Especially in those Spanish dances. It’s okay, Leticia,” he said. “You know it’s always hard to settle down after two hours live on the air anyway.”
“Yeah, you and Wayne Newton. Or should I say Elvis?”
“Haven’t heard from his ghost lately, thank goodness. No, I could use some exercise after hunching over a hot mike for two hours.”
He didn’t add that his fiancée was bunking in an alternate persona at the dance competition hotel and he had no one to go home to at the Circle Ritz. Odd how having that option had made relaxing after a show no issue at all. That’s why he’d taken the comped room at the Oasis all the celebs got.
In the mellow hot-fudge night outside, he smiled ruefully as he clicked his silver Crossfire unlocked under the lone blazing parking lot light, waiting to see Leticia’s silver Beetle pull safely out of the driveway before he left.
In an hour he’d be drilling with Tatyana in the empty rehearsal room far below Temple and Louie sleeping above in a giant suite with two tweens, Molina and her ex.
Politics wasn’t the only thing that made strange bedfellows.
Passing through the lights, noise, and action of the Oasis’s casino area a half hour later reminded him that Max Kinsella had played his last stint as the Mystifying Max at another Vegas hotel, the Goliath, and had lived up to his magician’s moniker by disappearing after a dead body had been found in the overhead spy spaces above the gaming tables.
>
Now Max was out of the picture again and Matt had performed here nightly—for almost a week. Life was crammed with ironies.
Coming here to rehearse at this god-awful hour actually kept Matt’s energy high and hyped. He relished burning off his frustration. He’d gotten used to living with and loving Temple, used to the summaries of their days, the companionship of their nights.
He was starting to think he needed a day job so they’d be in better sync. People would think him crazy to quit “The Midnight Hour” and its syndicated success, but relationships were more important.
This mini-separation had him thinking a lot of things. Like it was also crazy to delay marriage. The only reason he had was wanting Temple to be sure she wasn’t in love with Max anymore, wanting to be sure he was a good enough substitute, but nothing in life was sure.
All he knew was that he’d never been happier.
Maybe he could convert to a daytime show, television, or Web-based even. Talk shows were myriad and female-hosted these days, so maybe the field could use a new guy. Maybe Oprah could make him the way she’d made Dr. Phil .
He laughed out loud at his mental maunderings and ducked through the door leading to the maze of rehearsal halls ringing the ballroom set for Dancing With the Celebs. Just the word “celebs” was a clue to the essential sleaziness of the concept. Cheerfully admitted sleaziness.
Guess that made the world go ’round.
Matt moved down the dim hall and barged into “his” rehearsal room without thinking about it.
The place was as black as King Tut’s tomb.
He backed out, surprised, wondering if the message had been garbled. “See Tatyana at 3:00 A.M. to rehearse.” After work. Underlined. “Your tango footwork stinks,” had been added.
The insanely early hour was no surprise. She knew he worked nights. The bluntness was all Tatyana. Her sentences came as short and sharp as bullets.
He guessed he’d be entitled to hand her some bluntness for being late to a wee-hour meeting she’d called for. Guess that was what Leticia meant about him being too easygoing.
He reached in and patted the wall until he found the light plate.
Cat in a Topaz Tango Page 27