Louie blinked and flattened his ears as she looked at him.
"I agree with you, boy. It's too much to keep up with. My Jersey Joe Jackson plans already sound like small potatoes, and I haven't even had time to write up a detailed proposal for the project. Nicky and Van are being very patient. If they knew I was out consorting with flamingos--!
"Hmm. Another drug bust on the north side."
She switched to the evening paper, scanning the front page, STAR FOUND DEAD IN HOTEL ROOM
caught her eye, but not as much as the word FLAMINGO in a below-the-fold headline.
Reading the bottom half, she saw that Domingo's first flamingo installation was already making waves. Vandals had removed or paint-spattered some already in place. Some Vegasites were calling them "an eyesore."
Well, Vegasites ought to know!
The police expressed concern that such a massive flocking of the plastic beasts would cause traffic accidents. And Domingo was quoted--she had to follow the jump to page six--as saying that the installation was intended to have an impact on casual spectators. That was the entire point of outdoor art. Were billboards distracting to drivers? No.
"A front-page jump story. Not bad, Domingo."
She was not the one who had gotten the coverage; her job, for once, did not include that.
Maybe Domingo was naturally newsworthy. Doing something loony in this town, even if you tried to dignify it by calling it "art," always caught the media eye.
Temple set the paper on the coffee table, so she'd remember to clip the story later, then recalled the tantalizing headline on the top half. What aging performer had died with his feet on the stage this time?
She retrieved the front page, flipped to the above-the-fold stories, and scanned the text.
When the name "Darren Cook" (they'd omitted the terminal "e"; so much for stardom) leaped at her, she jumped to her feet so suddenly that Louie, in midtoecurl, snagged her shorts. Temple didn't care.
She was reading avidly. "... found today after noon by a hotel maid." Then he died... "Police estimate death occurred after midnight Sunday." But, she had just seen him Sunday noon! "...
bullet to the head." Oh my! "Evidence of a last visitor, but the scene suggested suicide to the preliminary investigator, said a police source who declined to be identified."
Oh, yeah, the always-unreliable phantom source.
"Suicide!" she squeaked in disbelief at Louie, who looked utterly indifferent to her parroted revelations.
Why would a man as egotistical as Darren Cooke kill himself? Even if he were unnerved by letters from an unknown daughter? Even if he needed reassurance so much that he had hit on her, Temple.
Who had turned him down. Had she underestimated his sense of desperation? No! No.
Famous men did not commit suicide because little old her had rebuffed a seduction attempt.
Maybe no one had rebuffed him before. Maybe the letters had broken down his self-regard.
Maybe she was to blame.
Temple sat down again, slowly, forgetting to look for Midnight Louie. Forgetting Midnight Louie entirely, until his indignant howl as she squashed him reminded her to jump up again. She read the story once more, but the body had been discovered (by whom?) too late for many details to make today's newspaper.
What about Gangster's revue, she wondered? And the A La Cat commercial built around it?
She should call the director and see if tomorrow's location shoots were still on.
Temple scurried for the phone, the folded paper still in her hand. But when she began dialing, she found she was punching in Matt's number. Four-fifteen. He should be home. He should have about forty-five minutes before he left for work.
"Matt," she began as soon as the receiver was lifted. "There's been terrible news. Could you come down and help me interpret it? I'm pretty amazed, and dazed."
"News?" he asked. "From your family?"
"No, no, nothing personal. Not really. More professional. I just don't know what to make of it."
"I'll be right down," he promised, obviously having given up on getting any details over the phone.
Temple wandered to her door, reading the short article for a third time. She still shook her head in disbelief. She had seen the man only a bit more than twenty-four hours ago. It was hard to picture him dead. And if the suicide theory fell through, would anyone from the brunch remember that she had been closeted in his bedroom with him? Temple winced. What a compromising position. She wondered if she should have called a lawyer rather than an ex-priest.
Matt's knuckles rapped once and she had the door open.
"Thank you for not ringing the bell! I think it would have sent me up the wall. Here's the paper. That's the article. Come sit down, then tell me what you think."
He read as he walked, his white-blond brows knit into a small frown. Absently he bumped into the coffee-table leg, then just as absently compensated his direction to stumble around it to the sofa, where he sat.
This time Midnight Louie, also frowning, skittered away before anyone else treated him like a seat cushion.
Matt sat without incident, still reading, or rereading, the article. He looked up to find Temple sitting on the edge of the next cushion.
"This is the performer at Gangster's," he said.
She nodded gravely. "Imagine. I actually sort of knew the man. I almost feel guilty for turning down his proposition."
Matt looked shocked, perhaps as much by the circumstances as the fact of Temple's association with Darren Cooke.
"Look. He'd asked for my help."
"You never said what kind of help."
"Mystery-solving of a sort. Anyway, he took me into the bedroom."
"You went? And you never mentioned the bedroom before."
"He said he had something to show me."
"Etchings? Temple, I may have been out of the swing of things for years, but even I've heard of that old ploy."
"Oh, the proposition was probably just an afterthought. A tension-reliever after the main course proved unpalatable. Because he did have so mething pretty serious to show me. I guess I can tell you now."
"What?"
"I don't know whether to call them blackmail letters, or threatening letters. They were from a young woman who claimed to be his daughter. As far as he knew, he'd never fathered a child, but given his impressive list of women seduced, it's possible one gave secret birth to a child."
"What did this ... child want?"
"Hard to say if it was recognition, or money eventually. She seemed disturbed. It's even possible she's an adoptee who fantasized that Darren Cooke was her father."
"So how could you help him?"
"I couldn't. Or I did, by telling the truth. I told him this was a job for the police, or for a discreet private detective. He didn't want to hear that. When I tried to leave, he suggested I stay for horizontal consultation."
She glanced apologetically at Matt. "I'm sorry I didn't take your own recent encounter with seduction more seriously. Women get to expect it, but in this case I found it insulting. I mean, I shouldn't have; there I was, this nobody turning down this famous performer. Except I felt used; that pretext about me helping him, it was all so manipulative. I think he would have gladly taken any solid suggestions I had. But the bottom line was still... my bottom line."
Matt smiled. "You warned me that I was unlikely to correctly interpret Janice's motives. Now I'll tell you the same thing. Sounds like Darren Cooke was under a lot of pressure. I'd bet he wasn't as debonair a proposer as usual."
"Maybe." Temple sighed and clasped her upper arms. "But now I've got to wonder if I--my rather uppity turndown--contributed to his death."
Matt had bent his head to read the article again, searching for revelations among the tersely worded statements. That wasn't going to happen, but she smiled at his earnest profile, the boyish way his blond hair brushed his forehead. He looked like a dedicated student puzzling out a particularly difficult problem.
&nb
sp; Sensing her observation, the schoolboy looked up to reveal the dark pessimistic expression of a thousand-year-old man.
"Temple, if you were right, and my mysterious caller were Darren Cooke, I may have been the last person to speak to him alive. I may have heard him inviting the woman who drove him to suicide, or was his killer, into the room."
"You!"
"My caller got through to me around midnight. He was railing as usual, gibing me, in a really foul mood. I sensed that I shouldn't let him off the line, despite the abuse, and then he had a visitor. I heard him walk to the door. He sounded... pleased. Invited her in and hung up. Now I've got to wonder if something I did pushed him into an uncustomary vulnerability."
"Matt! You're saying we both might have had a hand in Darren's death! I asked you down to ease me off this guilt trip, and you heap a bigger one on yourself!"
His twisted smile was still engaging. "Yeah. I'm a real success as a counselor. Should we tell Molina or somebody?"
"No! God, no. It's speculation on both our parts. Someone else may have been calling you.
Maybe it was Darren's lost daughter's call that drove him to self-destruction. Those letters of hers did not sound well balanced. We'd be nuts to insert ourselves into this case on hasty conclusions."
"Maybe the police could allay our suspicions."
"Right, and charge us as accessories before the fact, or something. I do not trust the police to put our guilt trips into perspective. They don't have the time to take weird little exercises in blame into account."
"But we'll probably never know if our suppositions are right if we don't present them to the police and get their reactions."
"As for me, I don't want police reactions in a sticky celebrity death, do you? It wouldn't help your counseling career."
"Maybe not, but that job is worth nothing to me if I blew it and drove a man to suicide."
"Matt, I'm sure you didn't. You're much too conscientious for your own good. You said your caller sounded happy about his visitor. That doesn't sound like an imminent suicide victim."
"Nooo--"
"And maybe you could say something cheering to me now, like I should take it as a compliment that Darren Cooke asked me to do the bedroom tango. Like ... he reall y had been turned down before, and so just laughed at my indignant act. Besides, he didn't die until twelve hours after I kissed him off. It's obnoxiously self-important to think that what I did and said at noon would kill a man at midnight."
Matt was smiling again. "I don't know why you called on me. You can talk yourself into something better than anybody else. And, in the meantime, you've also managed to convince me that the coincidence would have been too much. I couldn't have been talking to Cooke.
There must be thousands of sex addicts in this town."
"Right," Temple said with a brisk nod. "And thousands of eager flamingos in the flock for Darren Cooke. No sense brooding over the one that got away."
"I'm glad you got away."
"Ditto."
They smiled at each other.
"I suppose you have to rush off to work now."
He checked his wristwatch. "Yup."
"Darn, no time for seduction. It'll have to wait until later."
Matt stood. "Still, I'll be waiting for another call from my man. If he never calls again--"
"We can't second-guess the living any more than we can the dead."
"I've certainly seen that in the case of Cliff Effinger. Can you get me a copy of that clipping?"
"Sure. I'll keep a few for myself too."
"Molina might--"
"No. I especially don't want Molina to know I walked into that Cooke setup thinking I was Nancy Drew."
"It'd be handy to know what the police were thinking."
"You think you can get that out of Molina?"
He shrugged. "She did suggest I contact a police artist about Effinger."
"And look how that turned out! About as well as my going to Darren Cooke's brunch and listening to his tragic tale of the letters from an unknown daughter."
"People do catch you up in their own agendas, don't they?"
"And you better realize that Molina is better at that than most. Why'd she point you to a police artist? She wanted you to do her footwork for her."
"But I might have heard something on the phone Sunday night that means more than I could guess."
"Do what you want. But don't expect to get from Molina anything like what you give to her."
"You're probably right. I wish I'd heard the mystery woman's voice."
"No, you don't. Besides, you can't get a sketch on the evidence of voice alone."
Matt stood. "Looks like we're stymied."
"Stymied, stalled and hip-deep in slush," Temple summed up as she walked him to the door.
There he turned to her. "Don't worry. I'm sure you had nothing to do with Cooke's suicide."
His hands rested on her shoulders.
"I'm sure you said nothing to encourage his self-destruction, either."
"We're both absolving each other," he noted.
"That keeps it between friends, at least."
His hand lifted from her shoulder as his face bent down. Temple expected a religious gesture, a blessing, even a sign of the cross.
She was confused when his free hand cupped and tilted up her chin, even more shaken when he kissed her. Not the way Max kissed her, but long and sweet and so deliberately she thought it would never stop, which was fine with her.
But it was over, and he was gone, in the same empty instant.
She had really hamstrung herself between two men, between two hot-and-cold-running relationships, Temple thought soberly. She felt like one of those insipid classical ballerinas, tippy-toeing en pointe from one side of the stage to the other, from one male partner to another. Back and forth, to and from. Make your mind up, girl! she admonished herself, always a fruitless exercise.
Kisses only confused her more, like too many hors d'ouvres before the main course. She would have to put her little arched foot down someday soon, stamp a definitive high heel and choose a dancing partner for real. But then somebody would get hurt, and she couldn't abide the idea of leaving either man out in the cold.
Brrrr. Temple shivered with indecision and self-disgust. She shut and locked her door as if to bar the north wind, then wandered into the living room. Louie had resumed full possession of the sofa, stretching out over all three cushions.
Temple picked up the newspaper again. Nothing in the story had changed. Darren Cooke was dead, and she was sorry. Matt's conversations with his mysterious caller might be over as well. Temple was sure that he would be sorry on some level too. Their separate but similar guilt probably made them the best mourners Darren Cooke would ever have.
Chapter 19
Gossip Never Dies
The next morning, Temple returned to Gangster's, Louie in his carrier beside her.
She was on time, 11:30 a.m., but she didn't expect to see much action today. Surely they would have to reshape the commercial tied into Darren Cooke's opening number.
She had not taken into account another famous musical number:
"The Show Must Go On."
Everyone was there: the chorus line, the choreographer, the commercial director, even the Divine Yvette in her pink tote bag, with her airheaded mistress, Savannah Ashleigh.
Savannah looked as shaken as anyone with so much plastic surgery could. The apples in her cheeks had slipped and the sagging skin around her eyes, normally drawn back into a slightly Asian tilt, looked as if it had been carved from sun-melted suet.
**********************
"Don't look glum," Kyle counseled Temple. "The show's not down yet.
Gangster's is negotiating with a substitute."
"Are there any substitutes for the likes of Darren Cooke?"
"How about Steve Martin?"
"Steve Martin? Really?"
"This is Las Vegas, dearie. Dreams come true here, especially after nightma
res."
"On such short notice?"
"Not Martin Short; I said Steve Martin. All show biz thrives on short notice."
"I heard the name right the first time. He's a bigger star than Darren Cooke."
"Extreme emergencies require extreme solutions. Gangster's is not about to choke on spending money for its first revue. When fate hits you in the guts in show biz, you've got to bounce back swinging."
"And the cat commercial?"
"Same deal as before. Today we'll get some establishment shots in the car museum. Want help toting your cat back there?"
Temple actually didn't feel like going it alone today. She nodded, so Kyle whistled over the cat stylist. The trainer was watching sullenly from under her Nazi-like hairdo, definitely not a willing cat-toter.
"Gosh," Marcy said as the carrier exchanged custodians. "I swear this guy gains weight between assignments just to be ornery."
"Louie is never ornery," Temple said, defending her mute young. "Sometimes he's just too big to move easily."
"Let's go," Marcy said with a laugh. "This big guy gains weight just by sitting here, wishing."
She was off, the carrier bumping her jeans-clad legs on every step.
Temple hustled after her, glad to be leaving the theater behind, where the ghost of Darren Cooke had sat beside her, requesting help. Maybe she should tell the police about the letters from his reputed daughter.
It was while the commercial crew was parading through the lobby on the way to the old-car wing that a briskly moving figure intercepted them.
"Miss Barr," came the salutation of a familiar voice.
The entire party stopped to stare at Temple.
"Lieutenant Molina, Las Vegas MPD," the tall, advancing woman in a navy pantsuit added, producing a verifying badge. "I understand you cat-commercial people had brief encounters with Darren Cooke in the past few days."
Molina included them all in her roundup glance, but her eyes ultimately fixed on Temple.
"He came down to the seating area to welcome us," Temple conceded.
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