“Welcome to the physically challenged ward.”
Molina’s quick eyes skittered over Temple’s belongings, missing nothing but dismissing everything. “Where’s the poster?”
“In the dark at the back of the closet.” Temple opened the folding doors—an exotic South American wood Electra had told her bore the poetic name of purpleheart. That was the award she deserved for putting up with Molina... a Purple Heart.
Rows of high-rise clear plastic boxes confronted Molina. “You could hold your own shoe sale,” the detective commented.
“Why would I? I want to keep every one. Now”—Temple dove into the closet’s far end, thrusting hangers aside and pushing between swaying curtains of blouses and skirts—“here it is.” She handed Molina a long, thin roll of paper.
The lieutenant uncurled the end, then paused to brace herself. Temple realized that she had never seen Max in the flesh tones. She watched Molina unroll the poster carefully, but quickly, as if eager to get the unveiling over with. Molina’s face showed virtually nothing. Virtually. Only long-practiced control kept her reaction so unreadable.
“Hair—is that really black, or dark brown?” she asked.
“Raven black.”
“And his eyes were really this green?”
“Like a cat’s. Could see in the dark, too.”
Molina grimaced slightly. “Height. Weight.”
“Six-four, and I never asked.”
“Any... identifying marks?”
“I said he could see in the dark. I never said I could.”
Molina cocked her head as she studied the poster. Her vivid blue eyes moved around the two-by-three-foot surface held taut between her extended arms.
She brought it to the bed, picked up a midheeled blue satin mule from the floor to anchor the top and pinned the bottom edge with the mate. Then she stepped back to consider the image.
“Did it ever occur to you, Lieutenant,” Temple asked in strained tones, “that it might be as hard for me to look at that poster under these circumstances as to hunt through the mug-shot book for the faces of the men who attacked me?”
. Molina whirled to face Temple, then her eyes dropped. “No. I’m sorry.” She turned back to the poster. “Quite... intense, isn’t he?”
“The present tense. You give me hope, Lieutenant, of revenge if not reunion,”
“You were right,” Molina answered absently. “He wouldn’t be easy to kill. Was he a good magician?”
“Unbelievable. He wouldn’t work with an assistant. Didn’t like airhead dollies, didn’t need anybody to distract the audience from him.”
“Didn’t want it,” Molina added.
“No.”
“Hmm.”
“You can have it copied?”
Molina’s dark, blunt-cut hair bobbed. “I’ll see they don’t damage it.”
“Why?”
Her head didn’t turn. “You kept it, didn’t you?”
“Stored it.”
“Hmm.” Molina lifted the anchoring slippers, let the poster slowly roll out of sight from the bottom, like a drawn shade. One of her fingers touched the bit of Magic Tape that had been pressed down on the back.
“Is that all you need?” Temple asked pointedly.
Molina turned. “Sorry. Did you keep anything else of his?”
“That wasn’t in the deal.” Temple sighed, then relented. She’d gone this far, and she was too tired to resist. “Only some CDs, and some clothes I hadn’t gotten rid of yet.”
“Clothes?” Molina’s head lifted like a hound’s.
“Back here.” Temple swept her own belongings to the left to bare the closet’s far, shadowed end where the odd shirt, sweater and jacket hung.
Molina stepped up and began paging through the clothes. She plucked out a sweater, a thick-woven wool turtleneck, and took it to the French doors for inspection. “Irish-made,” she declared, sounding as cut and dried as a customs official.
Temple nodded, not surprised.
“Odd for Las Vegas.”
“Winters can get chilly here. Besides, Max performed all over the country—Minneapolis, Boston—Europe even before that.”
“But he left this behind. Expensive. Might indicate... and blue. Beige and blue.” Molina grew so lost in thought she seemed to be mooning over the sweater.
“Lots of men wear those colors,” Temple said, aggravated that Molina would dismiss her clever “Monday’s child” murder theory, yet waste this much time on an abandoned sweater. “Ever notice that the manly among us are limited to a deadly dull and restricted palette?”
“No.” Molina cast Temple an amused glance as she stood there in her deadly dull navy suit. Navy or khaki or gray. Organization woman.
Molina abruptly returned to the closet and replaced the sweater. She retrieved the rolled-up poster from the bed. “I’ll get it back to you as soon as possible.”
Temple nodded, impatient for her to leave.
For once, Molina took the hint and stalked out of the bedroom into the light-drenched living room. She looked around as if memorizing it, then turned to Temple. “This neighbor of yours, Devine. Was he living here when Kinsella disappeared?”
“No. Why do you ask?”
“You two seemed to get along. I wondered if that was something new.”
“Awfully interested in the men in my personal life, for a police-person, aren’t you?”
“Maybe I’m just envious,” Molina said.
“Why?”
“Short women get all the tall men.”
“Matt isn’t that tall.”
“Tall enough.”
Temple’s mind flashed back to a mental picture of Matt rising to meet Molina at the emergency room. In her low work heels, Molina stood taller than his five-ten-or-so. Barefoot, they’d be dead even.
“Oh, come on!” Temple found herself saying disdainfully. “You beanpoles have nothing to complain about. You get to play basketball and be models.”
“Short girls get to be cheerleaders and prom queens.”
“I never was!”
“I never modeled.”
“That’s only because you never plucked your eyebrows!”
Molina reared back in surprise. “The natural look is in.”
“Not that natural. And not back then. Even with Hairy Ape eyebrows, tall girls get taken seriously and get voted to be class president and they marry basketball players! There isn’t one thing about short girls that tall girls envy, admit it!”
Molina considered, then shrugged. “Short girls get to wear high heels.”
Temple, speechless, stared back. Then she clapped her hand over her mouth before she began laughing.
Molina didn’t laugh... not quite. She waved the long white roll of the poster. “Thanks for the loan. Watch your step.”
Molina let herself out before Temple could pull herself together and do it. How did they get into eyebrows and high heels? And Matt as well as Max?
She looked around. And where the heck had Midnight Louie gone now? She could use some feline aid and comfort.
25
The Kitty City Connection
The phone on the nightstand had an electronic panic attack, jolting Temple wide awake. New-fashioned phones rang like a hysterical Moog synthesizer being choked off in the middle of an aria, she thought, grabbing the red plastic high-heeled shoe masquerading as a telephone. According to the amount of light filtering through the miniblinds on the French doors, morning had arrived.
Temple cradled the heel against her ear, hopeful that Molina had reconsidered and wanted to know more about her theory.
“Hi, kiddo!”
“Electra? I called you last thing last night, but you weren’t home. I was worried.”
“Piffle. You think anyone would give me trouble in that biker babe outfit? When did you do your last thing last night and call?”
“Nine-thirty. I was a little tired.”
“Heavens to Boadicea, dearie! I wasn’t done gossiping until midnight. W
ant to come up for some whole-wheat pancakes and tofu?”
“Yeah!” Temple’s enthusiasm expressed a hunger for the forthcoming information, not the menu. “I’ll be there as soon as I’m dressed.”
“Don’t bother to dress for breakfast.” Electra chuckled. “After a few hours in the Goliath dressing rooms and at Kitty City, clothes seem downright unnatural.”
Getting into them had struck Temple as unnatural lately, she told herself after she hung up and jumped out of bed. She was slightly cheered to find her right shoulder loose enough to wiggle into a pullover top.
Louie awaited in the kitchen. He lay on the black-and-white tiles making like a grinless Cheshire cat: parts of him faded into the black and stood out against the white. At his length and width, he sprawled over several tiles.
“How about some almost-fresh tuna on your Free-to-Be-Feline?” Temple scraped the last of the can’s contents atop yesterday’s allotment of dry food.
The cat leaned his nose nearer to sniff, but did not deign to rise.
“Louie, you need a better diet at your age! The vet is going to think you’re an incorrigible case.”
Taking her own nutrition lecture to heart, Temple swallowed her regular regimen of bullet-sized vitamin pills with a glass of tomato juice before snatching today’s fire-engine-scarlet patent-leather tote bag from the sofa and racing up to Electra’s penthouse apartment, her heart going pitty-pat. She was not only about to get inside information on the competition from a source she could trust, she would finally see the inside of Electra’s place. Even Max had never broached this holy of holies.
The elevator was particularly cranky that morning, clanking up the three floors. It disgorged her with a final, miffed metallic squeal. Temple walked the few steps to Electra’s set of double doors and rang the mother-of-pearl doorbell. Craftsmen still used touches like that in the fifties.
The heavy wooden double doors muted a mellow echo of her own doorbell, but in a moment one swept open.
The day’s muumuu was yellow and violet, splashed with tasteful streaks of lime green and turquoise. It flowed, a Technicolor wave of polished cotton, from Electra’s neck to her bare toes.
“Come in!” the landlady ordered. “Don’t you look snappy today! Let’s see.”
“Thanks.” Temple had coordinated her red-and-white knit sailor top with a short navy pleated skirt and white, navy and red Charles Jourdan pumps. Her outfit could give Molina a lesson in how to wear navy-blue. She spun decorously, until the pleats fanned out.
“Lovely. So normal, after what I’ve seen lately. I decided breakfast on the patio would be nice. It’s still shady.” Electra took Temple’s wrist to lead her through the mirrored vertical blinds that lined the entry hall, creating a fun-house effect.
In a room beyond, Temple stared at the blond fifties television cabinet she had glimpsed once before. Atop it still stood a huge, green glass globe on a tarnished brass base, whose design represented either colliding Studebakers or copulating elephants, Temple couldn’t decide which.
Even as Temple followed Electra into the next room, she was aware of drawn-blind dimness, of massive shadowy pieces of period furniture—several sofas, for instance—and the evasive scent of eucalyptus.
A genteel thump in a farther room made her stop, resisting Electra’s firm pull. “What was that?”
“Nothing,” Electra said.
“But I thought—” A movement brushed along the baseboard edging the parquet floors. Then the bottom fringe on a buxom forties sofa undulated like a hula skirt. “Electra, do you have pets?”
“You cannot own an animal,” Electra replied haughtily.
“Pests, then?”
“What kind of a landlady do you think I am?”
“Then ghosts?” Temple suggested in exasperation.
“I’m afraid not. Not that I haven’t tried. Séances have been held up here in the penthouse since the building was erected in 1953.”
“That’s fascinating. I’d like to—” Temple was jerked through an open French door into the rude shock of daylight.
This high, on the fifth floor, the low-lying clutter of Las Vegas vanished as if it had never been. Only the tall towers of hotels probed the sky as the desert’s faded rose, gold, azure and green bled toward the horizon like running watercolors. The mountains, hazy blue in their serene distance from the hot, yellow-white hurly-burly of the city, kept company with frothy clouds tinted with the exact flattering shade of a baby pink spotlight.
The view was the least of it. The entire rooftop was upholstered in green—covered with potted topiary trees, beds of plump-leaved succulents and cacti with textures as weird and varied as anything on earth.
“Hurry,” Electra said, “you don’t want your pancakes to get cold.”
Temple eyed the only table. A large circle of glass rested atop an abomination: a ring of chubby, gilded plaster Oriental figures with raised hands that were either modeled on Wu Fat in Hawaii Five-O reruns, or the big-bellied Oriental god of luck reproduced in an infinitude of cheap versions.
Atop these gaudy, somewhat ungainly gentlemen—floating on the glass like lily pads on water—were rainbow-colored carnival glass plates, cheap giveaways from days gone by, now dear.
Temple regarded stacks of plump brown pancakes centered on the wavy-rimmed plates. A dollop of white stuff resembling sour cream or Zymonal reposed beside them.
At least there was coffee. She took a sip from a steaming Porky Pig mug.
“Chicory,” Electra announced as she sat, watching Temple fight not to spit out her mouthful. “Now try your wheat cakes. If you must have something unhealthy, here’s a tub of no-cholesterol vegetable oil.”
Temple eyed this concession warily. As far as she was concerned, butter was butter. Pretenders weren’t much tastier than axle grease, but the heavy-textured pancakes needed something. She used her knife tip to scoop out a blob of the pale stuff.
The tofu beside her pancakes shook like Santa Claus’s belly as she smeared her cakes and dug in. Not half bad, if you chewed fast. Electra was dribbling something that resembled rat droppings atop her cakes.
“Raw bran,” she explained.
“Okay,” Temple said. “What about the raw facts? What did you find out at the Goliath?”
“Lots.” Electra tilted her head as she chewed a bite, toying with her shoulder-dusting earrings, a cornucopia of apples, cherries, bananas and pineapples so appropriate to the breakfast hour. “What do you want to know first?”
“About Dorothy Horvath. I actually met the second victim, and saw for myself that she had an abusive lover. But Dorothy was the first, and she’s still a mystery to me.”
“Dorothy—oh, you mean Glinda. Yeah, they all knew Glinda.” Electra pushed the half-dozen colorful wooden bangles ringing each arm up like sleeves as she braced her elbows on the cool glass tabletop and leaned forward to tell Temple all.
“A lot of these dancers live on a very simple level. They don’t worry about who’s gonna be president, or pollution in Mexico City, nothing global or political. Survival is their prime directive, as they say on Star Trek. The only higher education they got was in the College of Carnal Knowledge, and that too early. They figure the world handed them a raw deal, and they’re going to make the best of it. A lot of them pick bad boyfriends and make bad loans. A lot live from day to day, and blow any windfalls on froufrou for the stage, or lots of cheap civilian clothes, or drugs. Or on bad boyfriends again. A lot are what you’d call single mothers—not like Murphy Brown. They had kids when they were still kids themselves. If they’re working for anything besides the bright lights and a G-string full of tips, it’s to keep those kids from getting the same raw deal they got. But they still pick bad men—bikers, the big bad wolf kind, smooth-talking club owners who run their joints like a company store and bleed the girls by fining them flat. Abusers.”
“I get the picture,” Temple put in.
“I don’t want to sound like I’m putting them down.
They’re doing their best with a bad deal. Poor Glinda—that face of hers was worth a million bucks, but the brain behind it wasn’t worth enough to make a local call at a pay phone. They say she acted like a ten-year-old. Never quite understood what happened to her—or why, or why it kept happening again and again. She could move on that stage like liquid lightning, but she was a patsy for any smooth operator with a rough reputation who came along. She was going to lose her kids to her first husband, an upright type whose contempt drove her into exotic dancing and who was using her work as a reason to get custody of the kids. Some of the dancers are fighters, some aren’t. Glinda wasn’t.”
“Maybe that was why she based her act on The Wizard of Oz. She wanted to be whisked away to a better world.”
“Or she wanted to go home to a place like Kansas that she never had. Sad story. Sad girl. Guess hubby has the kids for sure now.”
“What about him? Where does he live? Could he have—?”
Electra fanned her hands to stop Temple’s jackhammer questions. “I thought of that, too. Still stationed abroad after the Desert Storm call-up. And he was a shoo-in to get custody anyway, from what the other dancers told me. Glinda kept missing her court dates, so afraid the system wouldn’t help her that she made sure it didn’t.”
“It’s hard to understand self-esteem so low that it can be that self-destructive,” Temple said. Her fork skated a bit of pancake into the pile of tofu. “I can see it, from my one encounter with the kind of a world that sticks out a fist and strikes you down every time you move. Eventually, you’d stop moving.”
Electra patted Temple’s hand to the accompaniment of jangling bangles. “Glinda hoped, in that loony, kiddish way of hers, that winning another Rhinestone G-string would establish that she was an artist, an entertainer, that it would help her get her kids.
“That’s what I was trying to say, these dancers aren’t fools, but they fool themselves,” Electra went on. “They can use the business, or the business can use them. Some girls barely eighteen perform for ten grand a week at uptown clubs. They don’t have to take tips or talk to customers or touch them. They’re exotic dance queens like in the classy old burlesque days. Other girls the same age are bussed around from town to town and dump to dump, paid ten bucks a night and all the tips they can writhe out of men, no more than bar girls selling drinks with their bodies. The sleazy club owners fine them their tip money for so-called ‘infractions,’ and then fire them if they want to develop their careers by taking time off to be in a contest like this. Some club managers are little more than pimps, forcing green kids into dancing until they’re afraid they can’t do anything better. Then there are the seasoned ones, the hardheads. Nobody does them out of their pay, they come and they go of their free will, and essentially take the money and run. Most of them run back to stripping, though, because no other job they could get pays those kind of tips, or offers that kind of spotlight.”
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