“You mean that sanctimonious guy is beginning to make strippers look sane and sensible?”
“Hardly.” Ruth leaned her sign against the building. “I’m the only WOE member in Las Vegas,” she said sheepishly. “It’s hard being a protest movement of one. I like your idea of duking it out over the airwaves instead of in the streets. Say, you look a little wobbly.”
Temple felt Ruth’s supporting hand on her elbow and realized that she was feeling dizzy and exhausted. In unspoken agreement, the two women sat on the small retaining wall that bordered an azalea bed.
“I am a little beat,” Temple admitted. “And—don’t spread it around—but there’s been another murder. In the ballroom. The police are there now.”
“Another? Not a stripper again?”
Temple nodded. “I even met her—just last night. Living proof of your theory that strippers were often abused as children. Some kids like that never develop the self-esteem to stop being someone’s victim. Katharine was a battered woman, but she seemed ready to split from the guy. I think this contest was her ticket out—out of the relationship, out of stripping for a living. She had this gag stripping service going—well, it’s a start!” Temple added when Ruth looked dubious. “Now she’s dead.”
Ruth shook her head. “Who could be doing it?”
“I thought you might give me a clue.”
“First off, there’s the guy who beat her. Maybe he figured out she was leaving. Abusers usually freak when they lose their victims.”
“But what about Dorothy Horvath, Monday’s victim? Katharine’s guy wouldn’t need to kill her, too,”
“Do you know anything about her?”
“Only that she had a gorgeous face and won the Rhinestone G-string two years ago. Katharine had a great body. I saw her work out. She was fantastically limber. She used this cat persona and she was grace incarnate.”
“Sounds like somebody didn’t like the competition.” Temple nodded, then glanced at the pacing man with the crudely lettered sign. “Or maybe somebody thought those women were damned anyway, and might as well be dead.”
Ruth shuddered in the hot shade of the copper canopy.
“God, I’d hate to be a religious fanatic. I hold some pretty firm opinions, but I loathe thinking someone could kill a human being for a political or religious position.”
“They’ve been doing it for millennia.” Temple stood. “Good luck on the talk shows. I’ve got to get back. Lieutenant Molina wants to question me.”
Ruth’s eyebrows lifted over the top of her sunglass frames. “Are you under suspicion?”
“Only of being a nuisance,” Temple answered, flogging her weary body back into the hotel’s icy air-conditioning.
20
The Sweet Smell of Success
My dear mama, now departed, although perhaps not dead, always used to say that I took after my father. In truth, I believe that she herself wished to take after my father, but he was nowhere to be found.
Suffice it to say that somewhere there is a handsome, black-coated dude who knows how to live the good life of fish, females and serenade. I often picture the old guy basking upon some yacht, preferably a salmon or a tuna trawler, the sun glinting off his distinguished graying muzzle, seeing the world and wondering once in a while about how his spitting image is faring in landlocked Las Vegas.
He would have a dog to know that his long-ago offspring is slinking about the shadows of the Goliath Hotel trying to catch a whiff of a dead woman disguised as a pussycat.
There is method to my madness, if not much redeeming social value. For the fact is the late, lamented lady by now is a stiff and about to be given the bum’s rush in a giant-size plastic baggie.
My olfactory mission is not based on mere morbidity, although my kind has been known to show a certain attachment to the aromas of dead fish, birds and mice.
No, it is not the scent of death that draws me, but a memory that teases at the edge of my awareness. It began when I examined the first victim of what has become a habit rather than an isolated tragedy.
I smelled something then that was so elusive, yet familiar, that I must satisfy my curiosity. Does this second dead little doll bear the same scent? It is not that I have never inhaled the fragrance of a human before, dead or alive. I will never forget the musty odor of the deceased ABA dude, which I took for bookish mildew.
Likewise, the scent of these done-for little dolls suits their circumstances: it is light, sweet and feminine, and I have encountered it before. Perfume it is not. This is more subtle. How maddening to possess a first-class sniffer and not be able to determine the exact bouquet that tickles my nostrils, if not my memory!
This is why, despite a half-dozen flunkies of officialdom bustling around the body, I lurk literally under their busy, oblivious feet, awaiting my opportunity. Some accuse my kind of sneakiness, but it is survival instincts that direct me to be discreet The moment will arrive when a morgue attendant will turn aside, or a comment will distract their joint attention. Then I will dash in for the kill—or the diagnosis in this case.
Yet they are many, and no one leaves the body for a moment.
The fatal bag is produced, and I quiver in my boots. My sniffer is a world-class apparatus, but polyvinylchloride is one substance it cannot penetrate with any degree of accuracy.
At that moment, I hear the tread of large flat feet. A voice directs the assembled crew's attention to the body's former position, and the unearthly glow upon the noxious carpet that outlines the area.
For a few precious moments, little Miss Kitty is as unattended as a wallflower at the high school prom.
I seize the opportunity and run with it—run, in fact, toward her immobile body. My whiskers twitch with recognition. An insinuating scent wends its way to my flared nostrils. Miss Kitty has been branded with the same odor as her predecessor in death.
I pussyfoot out of sight, and hunker down under a banquet table swathed in white, floor-length linen. Beyond me, a crew of men bags the lady, and lifts her onto a cold metal gurney. She feels nothing, but my whiskers twitch in indignation.
I will not rest until I have traced this fatal scent to its origin. The killer.
Somewhere, on some forgotten swell of sea and salmon, the old dude would lift his venerable snout to the wind, and be proud of me.
21
A Walk on the Wild Side
The palace guard was loath to let Temple enter the ballroom again until she used the password of Molina’s name and rank. She doubted these private cops much feared the regular force, but they wanted them out of their territory as fast as possible.
Despite Molina’s grumblings, the crime scene was clearing. Nothing remained of the body but a faint powdery luminescence on the carpeting—fairy dust from a Tinker Bell whom no one had cared about enough to clap for.
Molina joined her, looking harried. “Tell me about your encounter with the victim.”
“Her name,” Temple said pointedly, “was Katharine. With an ’a-r’ in the middle. I picked that up from her pronunciation, so... precise. Like a child’s who is lost and wants to make sure you understand perfectly so you can get her home again.”
“Katharine? You’re sure?”
Temple turned at Molina’s sharp tone. “Of course. I hadn’t been knocked half silly yet.”
“I don’t mean to contradict you—” Molina frowned, whether at her own train of thought or at what she was about to tell Temple wasn’t clear. Molina consulted her notebook in the spotlight glare that was both too intense and too diffuse to read by.
“That’s odd.” She pursed her lips. “Everyone I talked to said her name was Kitty. Kitty Cardozo. She’s well known around town, worked here for years. Has a kid attending UNLV.”
“A kid in college?” Now Temple was puzzled. “She didn’t look a day over twenty-four.”
Molina’s eyes stayed on her notebook. “Thirty-five. Started young.”
“Stripping or having kids?”
&nbs
p; Molina sighed. “They usually start both too soon. Now tell me about her.”
“Did... anyone take off the mask?”
“For the final photographs, after the coroner arrived.”
“Then you saw—?”
“The bruises and contusions were present when you saw her, then—when was that?”
“Four-fifty. I was on my way out.”
“You stopped in the dressing room. Why?”
“Soaking up local color.”
“You seem to prefer your local color bloodred.”
“That’s below the belt, Lieutenant. Yeah, I was curious about the murder. I had a feeling—”
“Yes?”
“Something seems funny about it... them. Like they’re messages.”
“They’re messages that some sick men out there get off on killing women, especially those in sexually titillating lines of work.”
“You’re sure it’s a man?”
“Aren’t you?”
“Both victims were serious contenders for winning the contest. Dorothy had won before and her face would launch a thousand flashbulbs. Katharine—Kitty—had a body that would freeze film into Playboy-ready shots, and the skill and grace to show it off.”
“So you think a competitor killed them. I suppose a physically fit woman could have killed either one. But I’m not interested in your theories, Ms. Barr.”
“Just the facts, ma’am.”
“Exactly.”
“Okay. I found Katharine—Kitty, in the dressing room. Actually, I heard her sob first. She was hiding among the costumes, pressed up against the wall like a hurt child. You know how an animal hides when it’s scared, with its tail or ears sticking right out in plain sight, as if you can’t possibly see them. That’s the way she was hiding. I saw her shoes first.”
“You would,” Molina interrupted.
“What’ll happen to those shoes, and her costume? They were so clever. Kitty made them herself.”
“Police property room, until after the trial, if there is one. Go on.”
“Anyway, I coaxed her out, and that’s when I saw her face. Little did I know my own would look a lot like it in a few minutes. Kitty was afraid of a man. She kept asking if ‘he’ was out in the hall.”
“There goes your jealous vixen theory.”
“Maybe. Kitty could have had two enemies. She said that she would he all right, that she was ready to make the break from this guy. That’s why he hurt her. He wanted to ruin her chances of winning the contest, because the money would help her get on her own. But she was going anyway. I know it.”
“How?”
“By the way she spoke about her plans, her business.
She called herself an ‘entrepreneur.’ She sounded like a kid selling lemonade.”
Molina’s gaze dropped to her notes again. “ ‘Grin ’n’ Bare It.’ ”
Temple nodded soberly. “A gag stripping business. ‘Good clean fun,’ according to Kitty. She was heartbroken to have her face ruined for the competition. Even makeup wouldn’t cover everything, she said. I can see now she’s right.”
“Yeah. Your dark glasses indoors are a nice punk touch,” Molina said, not unsympathetically. “Anybody else been bothering you today?”
“Only the police and the ballroom security guards,” Temple answered, deadpan.
“Go on.”
“That’s it. I suggested a cat mask to match the rest of the costume, and she lit up like a kid who’s getting a Nintendo for Christmas. I left her happy and high on her act, only—”
“Yes?”
“Only she wanted me to know that she hadn’t been crying because she’d been hit, but because it hurt her chances to be in the contest. I wondered then why it was so important not to cry when you’re hit.”
“And now—?”
“Now I know.”
“So. You left her with so much hope that she went out and made the mask, then she returned after regular hours to work with it—why?”
“Privacy. She probably needed to find out if it would handicap her vision, make her clumsy. She was poetry in motion. And she didn’t want anyone to know what had happened. If she performed smoothly in the mask on a trial run, she could show up in it for the rest of the rehearsals and no one would ever suspect it hid something.”
Molina flipped her notebook shut. “Stay out of my investigation. If you think of anything more, tell me. See the self-help group. Go home now.” Molina paused. Her next sentence came out of the blue of suddenly angry eyes. “I’m going to get this bastard.”
Molina marched back to the knot of police.
Temple, aching all over, was tempted to take Molina’s advice. That was the problem, she was taking Molina’s advice on too many things lately. Time for a little authority-flaunting.
She went back to the cocktail lounge, where idle dancers were starting to order lunches and drinks. The gathering had the halfheartedly festive air of a picnic forced indoors on a rainy day. they had to be here, they might as well make the best of it.
So should Temple.
She avoided Lindy’s table. It was too easy to gravitate to someone she knew. A guide to a new milieu was useful, but not if the escort kept Temple from taking chances and learning something not in the guidebook.
Temple paused beside the table of the only silver-haired woman in the area who didn’t owe it to bleach. “Mind if I sit here?”
“Go right ahead.”
Temple sat down and sized up her table partner: a grandmotherly sort, her hair tightly permed, wearing one of those plaid cotton dusters that don’t constrict the wearer and pass for street wear among the Golden Age set. Front buttons, decorative bias tape trim on the pockets and a Peter Pan collar kept it from qualifying as a muumuu, but just barely.
“Are you competing in the Over-Sexty division?” Temple asked politely, managing to not even stumble over the coy title.
The woman’s scandalized look quickly turned into a chuckle. “Heavens, no! I’m much too old and fat for that in any category. What are you thinking of, girl? These contests have some standards.”
“Sorry. I don’t know much about it. I’m doing public relations work and am trying to get oriented.”
“PR?” A gleam brightened the woman’s pale hazel eyes. “Well, then, you’ll want to know about my Kelly. Here she comes now.”
Temple turned to look in the direction that attracted her tablemate’s beaming maternal gaze.
A long-stemmed brunette was mincing between the crowded tables, carrying two glasses and two bottles of beer from the bar, and a small bowl of popcorn clenched doggy-style in her teeth.
The prodigally endowed daughter made a professional waitress dip at the table to disencumber herself of the food and drink, then glanced curiously at Temple through the black fringe of false eyelashes top and bottom.
Mama Kelly did the honors. “This here’s the competition PR lady, honey.”
“Oh, hi. Get us tons of publicity, hear? I’ve got a super act.”
Temple eyed Kelly’s blue-gingham pinafore and matching, supernaturally bright blue eyes. Molina’s eyes were arresting, but light enough a blue, however electric, to convince. This woman’s contact-lens-store teal clashed with her disingenuous air of Southern comfort.
“You’re mother and daughter?” Temple asked a bit uncertainly.
“I used to be darker and thinner,” the mother said wryly, chuckling again.
“I used to be shorter,” the daughter added with a wink.
Temple laughed. “And only Kelly goes onstage?”
Mama answered. “What do you think? I want to ruin her chances? Mildred Bartles is the name. How do you do?”
No one had said “How do you do” to Temple in a coon’s age. She found it charming.
“Temple Barr. I admit I’m astounded. I figured most mothers of strippers wouldn’t want to know what their darling daughters were doing.”
“Then they are dumb mothers,” Mildred answered genially. “Kids the
se days do what they want. You can either fight ’em, or join ’em.”
“But not onstage?”
“No, ma’am. I’m a backstage mother. I help her rehearse, I sew all the costumes. Travel around with her for company. Life on the road can get lonely.”
“Then strippers don’t date the men from the clubs.”
“Lordy, I should hope not!” The indignation came from the beauteous Kelly. Her cerulean eyes drilled into Temple’s. “No matter how it looks, stripping is a business and it pays pretty fair. All that happens between the customers and the strippers is what you see onstage or out front. A little tease, a little talk, and—hopefully—a lot of tips.”
“What if a man wants more?”
“Then I give him a freezing look and make clear he’s out of line. Some girls,” she added disdainfully, “are willing to be whores, but they don’t last. The clubs don’t want their dancers disappearing before pumpkin time, and the rest of us don’t want to ruin our reputations.”
By now, Temple didn’t find the notion of strippers preserving their reputations laughable. “But you must know the public is highly titillated by your occupation.”
“Titty-what, honey?” Kelly produced a dimple that proved she could tease offstage as well as on. “You got to ditch those big words. A lot of us didn’t go no further than high school.”
“People are curious,” Temple said, “about why you dance almost-naked for an audience of the opposite sex.”
“Oooh.” Kelly shook her long fingers to indicate a topic too hot to handle. “Well, if we were whores, like they thought, we’d wouldn’t waste our time and energy dancing first. We are performers,” she said matter-of-factly. “Some of us are terrific and some of us are stinko. We bust our butts giving a good show, and then we’re outa there. Listen, it beats waitressing, and I spent a lotta hours breaking my fingernails on trays loaded with forty pounds of restaurant ware. What’s the difference? You give service for a lousy wage and make your money in tips. Except the tips are a damn sight better for strippers.”
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