“Whew. You heard it all. What about Katharine—Kitty Cardozo? She wasn’t like poor Glinda North. She had nothing to lose, except a woman-beating man worth getting rid of. She had her own business—”
“She got the business, Temple, just like Glinda. Wait’ll you hear the stuff I dug up. That’s why I was at Kitty City. Who do you think it’s named after?”
“Lots of strip joints play on cat names. The Pussycat Lounge down Paradise, Le Chat Noir—”
“Only one is named Kitty City, and that’s because Kitty—your Kitty!—started it. Or her then-husband did. Twelve years ago. Named it in her honor. She was the star. Then they split. Kitty claimed she owned half, but had no papers to prove it. It seems she trusted them to the office safe, and guess who got custody of that when she walked out?”
“Her husband?”
“The one and only. What a sweetie. Say, I might have a new career. Kitty City doesn’t use novelty acts, but they’re willing to let me try out.” Electra tossed her head. Not much of her moussed midnight-black hair moved, but her earrings shimmied like everyone’s sister Kate. “The Vampire and I just might blow their carburetors.”
“You’re kidding!”
“Swear to Sally Rand! I’m telling you, I could have a sixth career here.”
“Speaking of which, what about your wedding chapel clients while you’re tripping the light fantastic?”
“Listen, there are two dozen wedding chapels in Vegas. Let ’em eat rice cakes somewhere else for a couple of days. The Lover’s Knot will still be here tomorrow. This is fun!”
“I'm glad you’re enjoying yourself. You certainly got a lot of information. I bet Molina would give her best penny loafers for half of what you know.”
“Don’t count on it. That woman is all over that place like a bad dream. I’ve been interviewed by one of her associates already.” Electra paused. “Not bad. About fifty-three. Decent build. Cute little bald spot.”
“Electra! You’re beginning to sound like one of the dancers. Keep your mind on business.”
“Okay. Here’s something I kept hearing, and finally this little voice starts ringing in my ears, sort of breathy, like Marilyn Monroe. Maybe I’m channeling her, who knows? Anyway, it keeps saying: What name keeps coming up, dummy, in all the gossip? And guess what does?”
Temple was at a loss, especially after the Marilyn Monroe allusion out of left field. “Joe DiMaggio?”
“No, silly! Even—get this!—even Savannah Ashleigh has a connection. The word is she’s judging this competition because, if she doesn’t, some photos from her past might show up in the North American Examiner.”
“That supermarket rag!”
“Yes, well-read but not good for the career in ‘filmah.’ ”
“You talked to Savannah Ashleigh, too?” Temple was impressed. Electra knew how to get in there and boogie.
“Oh, yeah. She admired my earrings. I promised to make her some. Glinda did a stint at Kitty City, too. And that’s where Savannah got her start more years ago than she’d care to let on. Supposedly, some sleazy photos of her would have hit the street if she hadn’t agreed to judge this year’s competition. Actually, everyone thinks that some scandalous photos in the right places could jump-start her stalling career, except hers are so old that she no longer displays the top form she used to, and the contrast would be shocking.”
“So Savannah, Glinda and Kitty all worked, even began their careers, at Kitty City?”
“Them, and more. It’s a big club, in a big-club town.”
“You’re not saying that the same man who cheated Kitty of her interest in the business and is blackmailing Savannah, who gave Glinda her start and who wants you to audition is—”
Electra nodded. “The one, the only, and the oily. Ike Wetzel.”
26
. . . All Must Come to Dust
The aqua Storm sprinted through the colossus’s braced legs like a cartoon car—bright and fast. As it pulled under the hotel’s metallic entrance canopy, a parking valet came scampering in his Ramses kilt to open the driver’s door. Temple was happy to exchange a dollar bill for the precaution of avoiding the parking ramp.
She faced her reflection in the Goliath’s mirrored revolving doors. She felt less stiff and sore today, and even looked a little more... perky. Too perky. Her impromptu outfit made her resemble a patriotic tap dancer, she thought, whisking into the midst of her reflected spinning selves, then around and out into the Goliath lobby.
Today she was going to take this town by the tail and whip the convention PR into apple-pie order. The ballroom would be open again, the troops gathered, and she had lots of juicy new information to confirm and expand upon. Best of all, Electra would still be undercover.
The landlady had told Temple she had resolved to continue her charade “as long as it takes” to clear the competition of the pall of bad press. Temple was relieved to have a reliable inside source, but had wondered aloud just how far Electra was prepared to take her stripper persona.
“To the limit the law allows,” Electra had declared doughtily. She even refused Temple’s offer of a ride to the Goliath.
“I’ve got to take the Vampire in for a tech rehearsal. We got the music keyed in yesterday.”
“What music?”
“The music for my routine,” Electra said indignantly. “ ‘Born To Be Wild.’ You don’t think you can just show up and claim to be a stripper without an act?”
“I didn’t think about it at all.”
“Hmph. Good thing I’m the undercover operator.”
“I think the word is ‘operative.’ ”
“Whatever. Don’t worry about me. I’ll be in later. Strippers sleep late. You don’t want me to blow my cover, do you? You’ll hear me coming.”
What have I wrought? Temple asked herself, pausing before the ballroom doors as she remembered Electra’s parting words.
Today no security men were plastered against the doors, legs braced and faces sterna, like miniature colossi. Better. Normalcy was returning. Temple sailed inside unchallenged, full of the spirit of Scarlett O’Hara. Today was not only another day, it was an unfolding origami paper sculpture, rife with surprise and elegance.
“Hi there, T.B. Coming in a little late, aren’t we?” Temple hit the breaks on her Jourdans at the sound of that ever-so-deep baritone, and turned in its direction.
Yes, Crawford Buchanan occupied a ballroom chair against the wall. He was riffling through some papers as pale as his silk-blend oyster trousers and yuck-yellow shirt. A straw fedora hid most of his silver hair and a brass-headed cane leaned against the wall beside him. He looked like a decadent English invalid.
“What are you doing out of the hospital?” she demanded, not meaning to sound as annoyed as she did.
He tremulously patted the left side of his chest. “The boy is better. They released me, with odious instructions on diet and exercise. I decided to begin my new physical-fitness regimen by ambling over here and seeing how you were doing.”
“Just dandy until now.”
Buchanan fished a folded newspaper tear sheet from among his papers. “Actually, ‘dandy’ doesn’t appear to do justice to such happenings as a double murder.” He flashed the Las Vegas Scoop’s front page with ten double-column bylined inches on “Jack the Stripper-ripper Strikes Again at Goliath.”
“I’m doing this PR job because you keeled over, and you’re knifing me in the back with sleazy stories on the tragedies?”
“Now that I’m no longer handing PR, the stress is gone,” Buchanan said. “No conflict of interest, I think you’d say. I did the first story from the hospital,” he added modestly. “You mind checking it to see if all the facts are right?”
She snatched it from his hand and read the first lurid subhead. “ ‘A Comely Come-on from an Ecdysiast’! Crawford, even you admitted that the poor Horvath woman wouldn’t have given you the time of day in a Swatch factory.”
“I wanted to convey a feeling for th
e victim when she was alive and beautiful. Haven’t you heard of the New Journalism?”
“ ‘She eeled past me in a scent of roses and regret’—oh, God! You don’t even get to the first murder until the fourth paragraph. And the last subhead, ‘Catwoman Caught by Batman’? Crawford, this is salacious, self-aggrandizing and totally fictional.”
“Thank you,” he said complacently, reaching to take his treasure back. “Don’t wrinkle it.”
Temple refolded the tear sheet and slapped it atop the papers piled on his lap. “Stay home. Stay out of print. Stay out of my way, or I’ll see that WHOOPE sues you and your fish wrappings to kingdom come.”
“I got you a job,” came the injured whine. “Most people would be grateful.”
“Want to do something to make me really grateful? Retire.”
Temple stomped away over the black spaghetti of cables still strewing the carpeting. Electra’s pancakes were beginning to back up in her stomach, and she really didn’t want to taste them again. It would be a perverted kind of poetic justice if she ended up with a heart attack and Crawford Buchanan replaced her.
“Whoa—! You’re a real fireball today.”
Temple stopped by the smoke signal hovering above one of the scattered ballroom chairs—Lindy’s. Ike Wetzel sat in the chair next to her, puffing on a cigar.
“I’ve just had a chat with my predecessor,” Temple said. “He’s written a smarmy story about the murders for his scandal sheet.”
“I know.” Lindy waved some of her own smoke away and patted a vacant chair seat. “Sit down. We’re not worried about that. No one takes ‘Buchanan’s Broadside’ seriously.”
Wetzel brooded for a moment, then broke into the conversation. “Frankly, much as I hate to say it, the murders are getting us some big-league press coverage.”
“I was going to write a blanket press release,” Temple said, “then set up a system to funnel interviews and make sure that marauding press people don’t disturb the contestants.”
Wetzel laughed. “Forget it. Listen, strippers get so much bad press that all this attention for some plain old murders is gravy. These girls love to stop whatever they’re doing for an interview. Pictures are even better. Don’t sweat it.”
He rose, his cigar ash perilously close to falling off, and headed for the stage.
Temple watched him, an overbuilt short-legged man, a walking inverted pyramid of touchy pride and prejudice. His every word and mannerism made plain that he didn’t expect to have his will crossed. He could hit a woman he considered lippy.
“How long were Kitty and Ike married?” she asked Lindy, looking down quickly to judge the woman’s reaction.
Lindy drew on her cigarette until she frowned from the effort. “You’ve been busy. Maybe seven, eight years. They broke up about three years ago.”
“They couldn’t still have been seeing each other?”
“Never say never.”
“Did he... hit her?”
Lindy shrugged and screwed her cigarette butt into a slick of watered-down scotch at the bottom of a hotel glass. “Who knows? Could have. Ike’s a funny guy. Changes. Like he was always against his girls competing in the contest. Fired them if they took the weekend off to do it—that’s not unusual, a lot of clubs don’t want us to waste time on things like dreams. Just fling that ass and sling that booze at the customers. So Ike was real hard-nosed about WHOOPE, the whole deal. Then, this year, he lightened up. Got himself put on the board. Said we were gonna do it right. Strange guy.”
“Strange business,” Temple added. “Don’t any women own clubs?”
Lindy’s dark eyes widened. “Say, you read my mind. I’d like to get something like that going. But clubs cost money. A night’s lights can run twenty-five hundred dollars. Rent, three grand a week and up. Then there’s liquor trouble, fight trouble. Clubs need bouncers. It’s a man’s game.”
“Do you know who Kitty was seeing recently?”
“Some guy.”
Lindy’s disinterested tone promised no new revelations. Temple had heard the dancers confiding every fact of their private lives:
“I’m in love with this neat guy.”
“My kid got ninety-three on his math test yesterday.”
“Hey, hon, I’m so worn out from last night I don’t even want to wiggle my butt.”
“I’d like to beat the shit out of my old man.”
Dressing-room girl talk revolved around guys and kids and bum pasts, all generic, like the customers. Facing such a transient, casual milieu, even Molina would have a hard time solving a murder times two.
Temple had watched the action near the stage while brooding on the frustrations of getting juicy gossip from a rolling stone.
“At least you all have access to the stage setup again,” she said. “The prelims are tomorrow, and showtime is only fifty-some hours away.”
“Yeah. Except now that we have the ballroom back, the cops have banned us from the dressing rooms.”
“What?”
“Just this morning. We got here around ten to find yellow tape stretched across the hall. Everybody’s been changing in the wings.”
“Crime scene tape? But why now—?”
“Yeah. Took ’em awhile to get around to putting it up. Cops must be like the lazy stripper—a little behind in their work.”
Temple glanced quickly to the ballroom wall. Buchanan’s chair was empty, the cane gone. She scanned the room, trying to see past all sorts of arresting getups. There—the would-be Mark Twain garb. Luckily, pale colors stood out in a crowd, especially one where the dominant color was black.
Buchanan was wandering around the floor ogling the female strippers. No doubt his press credentials aided and abetted. She assessed the acts available, and hoped they would suffice to keep the miserable weasel occupied while she headed downstairs to find out why the police would waste their time putting up crime tape two days too late.
Lindy was right. The back stairs were no longer the discreet, deserted route they had been. A yellow tape blocked the bottom, and beyond it stood a uniformed officer.
Temple descended anyway, wishing that her high heels were not so percussive.
“You can’t enter, ma’am,” the officer told her when she paused on the bottom step.
She liked the additional elevation. “Can I at least ask what’s going on?”
“You can ask,” he said.
“Isn’t it odd to cordon off a crime scene after the lab people have been and gone?”
“They haven’t,” he answered.
Temple opened her mouth to ask another unwelcome question when the rising wail of a distraught woman interrupted her. Obviously the woman was deeply anguished.
Temple stared at the officer, puzzled. “Is Lieutenant Molina—?”
Molina herself suddenly stepped into the picture, like a magician, all at once. Temple jumped, even though she knew Molina had merely been out of sight down the hall, and had stepped forward when she heard Temple’s voice.
“You know a Savannah Ashleigh?” Molina asked.
Temple nodded, recognizing the exasperated note in her voice despite the official monotone.
“She’s hysterical. Do you think you could get a sensible word out of her?”
Temple shrugged slowly.
“Let her through,” Molina told the officer.
He pulled the tape free of one wall.
“Well, come on,” Molina said.
Temple hesitated a moment longer. With her high heels and six inches of riser, she was exactly Lieutenant C. R. Molina’s height. She hated to abandon such a rare advantage. Muffled wails were too great a temptation to resist, however, especially when they were movie-star muffled wails.
“What happened?” she asked Molina as she stepped down.
“Your theory got blown to Vancouver.”
“By another murder?”
“Two,” Molina said succinctly, starting down the hall.
Two, Temple thought. How did a ki
ller mimic a one-a-day nursery rhyme with a double murder? He didn’t.
Temple hated the fact that she always had to trot to keep up with Molina. Down here on the concrete floor, her two little tootsies sounded like a convention of high-stepping hackney horses.
Molina led Temple to a dressing room across the hall from the ones she had visited. Temple noticed that the door to the big one was open, but the private one was shut.
This door was ajar. In the mirror Temple glimpsed something old—the Ashleigh mane of platinum blond hair... something new—the glitter of an evening gown draping the actress... something borrowed—a white square of handkerchief linen that could only belong to someone sensible. And something pink.
The woman was not so much sobbing as gasping for breath “Gone,” she wailed. “Just gone.” And then she gave a long, whining moan.
“Did she know the victims?” Temple asked in surprise.
“You tell me. They were found in her dressing room.”
“Who were they?”
“We’re still checking. Sister act.”
“Not... twins?”
Molina nodded. “Know them?”
“Met them. June and Gypsy... gone? How?”
“We don’t know yet.”
Temple was going to ask another question, but Molina forestalled her. “Look, they were found dead, naked except for a thin coat of gold paint. Identification’s been a little slow. Tracing the path of that gold paint down here has been a lot slower.”
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