They landed with only an instant to debark before the rope swung back. The captain escorted her to an empty seat with a bow ... which a mutinous crewman took advantage of, hitting the red bandana with a belaying pin.
While the captain kissed concrete, the first mate swung over to recapture the real fair maiden, who hopped aboard the rope like a pro, protesting all the while.
Temple slumped in her seat, her head spinning from the motion, the noise, the uncertainty. She sat still for the rest of the show, and applauded when the last "Avast, ye cowardly dogs!" had been shouted and the last crewman had taken a watery dive.
So she remained while Kit and Electra edged toward her as the audience filed out of the amphitheater.
"Are you all right?"
Either Kit or Electra had asked that question, and Temple didn't care which.
"Right as rum," she declared, standing and swaying slightly, as if still aboard a rope. "Except I think I'm seasick."
"You looked so cute swinging back and forth," Electra said. "Much cuter than that other girl."
" That other girl' is a gymnast," Temple pointed out. "I'm not. If I looked cute, I must seek more opportunities for sheer terror, then, and have my picture taken." Her usually gritty voice had been scared into a growl. "I should sue those swashbuckling goons."
She stiffened as one of the offenders bounded over: the first mate, his sword tabled and his grin more friendly than fiendish this time.
"Say, you did okay. I figured you would. We're supposed to interact with the audience, and you made a great target, sneaking a peak into our treasure chest. I hope you didn't mind the ride. It's pretty safe."
"Pretty?"
"And so are you," he said with a bow.
Smarmy talk would get him nowhere. Temple didn't respond.
"Why were you so interested in the chest, anyway?" he asked.
"Well." Temple paused. Her last attempt to explain a complicated situation had gathered a gaping crowd at the wedding chapel. Somehow she didn't think rhinestone cat shoes would fly here, even if she had. "I'm a high school drama teacher," she said, lying through her pirate-white teeth. "We're putting on The Merchant of Venice. I wanted some ideas for doing the three suitors' chests for the play."
"Cool." The first mate nodded, his long blond hair going along for the ride. He smiled dutifully at Kit and Electra, then bounded to wherever pirate scum go to wait for the next show.
"No shoes, huh?" Electra joined Kit in staring at the abandoned treasure chest.
"Nothing but some plastic pearls and a tin fork." Temple brightened. "Maybe I don't think big enough."
"This is a pretty big chest," Kit pointed out.
"Not the chest! The site. Where we need to try next is the Treasure Island Hotel. That place must be crawling with treasure chests."
"Not us," Electra said. "Our aged grandmotherly hearts can't take watching you swing from a poop deck."
"Also our aging great-auntly hearts," Kit added.
"Come on, I had to say something to earn audience sympathy!"
"Too bad you didn't get ours," Electra said.
"We need to get back to our duties at the convention." Kit looked speculatively at Electra. "Maybe we can find our own manly dope-on-a-rope who has a scissors phobia and a serious case of myopia." She and Kit turned to join the people shuffling out of the amphitheater. One was not shuffling. One had stopped by the entrance, hat in hand, to grin at the oncoming trio.
"Eightball! What are you doing here?" Temple asked.
"No need to ask what you're up to, is there? Thinking of joining the Big Top?" He gestured with his dapper straw fedora to the ship's mast-tops. "Circus Circus might have an opening. I know the security head there."
"I intend to keep my feet on the ground from now on," Temple said with grim determination.
"And I intend to make sure that she does," Electra added.
Eightball offered her a nod and a tight smile. Then he clamped the hat on his balding head and asked Electra, "That Hesketh Vampire still running smooth as polished steel?"
"Absolutely, when I've got time to take her out for a howl."
"Noticed you were away from the Ritz," he said.
"Did you?" Electra sounded unaccountably pleased. "How did that happen?"
Eightball's toe stubbed the damp concrete, which had been baptized by the buccaneers' shenanigans.
"Went to say hello to Matt. He mentioned that you and Miss Barr had headed for the hills. Didn't know where."
"Didn't he? I guess we should be pleased that he noticed we were gone." Electra winked at Temple.
"Well, I'm going to school at the Crystal Phoenix, and Temple is there to make sure that I crack the books."
"School at the Phoenix?" Eightball dislodged the hat to scratch his head. "This lady the schoolmarm?"
He nodded at Kit, who had been patiently waiting for an introduction.
"Kit Carlson." She extended her hand for a businesslike shake. "Mr.... Eightball."
"Heck, Eightball's my handle. Last name is O'Rourke."
"Eightball is a private detective," Temple put in helpfully.
Kit arched her eyebrows. "Really? Maybe you could drop by our romance convention. A lot of romance writers are moving into mystery and intrigue. You'd be a great visiting expert."
"No way, ladies. I don't have nothing to do with those books."
Mention of romance had Eightball backing away as if he had seen a snake. With a parting nod and an edgy adjustment of his hat, Eightball O'Rourke joined the crowds ambling through the theme park.
"You see what I mean," Kit said with a sigh.
Temple nodded. "Even the word 'romance' is poison to some men."
"They're just afraid to admit their romantic feelings," Electra added. "It's not macho."
"Except for The Bridges of Madison County," Temple said. "Maybe Clint Eastwood playing the lead made romantic love manly again."
"Don't mention that dirty rotten book!" Kit's face flushed with feeling. "One man writes a hasty, three-hanky romance glorifying adultery. Give it a nonromance title and it's suddenly respectable.
Booksellers who sneer at paperback romance fiction can't push it at their clients fast enough. It becomes a major bestseller. Hundreds of women have written romances celebrating monogamy and female empowerment, but they're chopped liver, even the megasellers, when it comes to respect. Besides, everyone thinks that silly Francesca was so noble to stay with her husband and kids after her fling with the traveling photographer ... but what happened after the f-stop was over and Mr. Snapshot packed up his light meters and moved on? She lived a lie with her own family for the rest of her life, presumably."
"Easy, easy." Electra patted Kit's shoulder. "The reviewers didn't much care for Waller either.
Speaking for myself, I can hardly wait to get back to the hotel and start my contest romance. But, say,"
she added, guiding Kit into the slipstream of tourists, "maybe I should consider using a male pseudonym now--"
Temple trailed them, momentarily immune to such issues as men and romance and money-making schemes. She was pondering where she should search for the Midnight Louie shoes next.
One woman's passion is another woman's feet.
Chapter 11
Blue Dahlia Bogey Boogie
Lieutenant Molina wouldn't have housed a homicide suspect in it, but Carmen loved her tacky dressing room at the Blue Dahlia.
It was only a large storage closet that the management had dedicated to her use. She had furnished it with a battered '30s Goodwill dressing table, the film-noir kind with a big round mirror centered between two low pillars of drawers. The maintenance man had scrounged a couple strips of makeup lights to act as sconces on either side.
A matching bench was too low for her height, and the lighting looked better than it lit, but the forties nightclub dressing-room ambiance tickled her fantasy. When she got out the Carmen paraphernalia, she felt like a big girl playing a little girl playing dress up.