"I'll wait," Temple said in a tone of self-sacrificing heroism. "My conscience won't rest until I know that hideous bug is gone. Besides, I need to sit down and compose myself." The women followed her like Mary's little lambs to a hall bench. "Maybe you should make sure whoever comes doesn't kill it," she whispered to the cashier on second thought. "Someone sponsors a 'World's Largest Cockroach' contest, you know, and the hotel might win big if it entered that one."
The cashier grew even paler. The moment Temple and a solicitous Kit had been seated, she raced to the phone at her stand.
"Temple, that was outrageous," Kit said as soon as they were alone. "There was no cockroach."
"What will it hurt?"
"You really are amoral when it comes to a pair of shoes. Perhaps you need a twelve-step program."
"The only twelve steps I need are the ones I take in those shoes."
The cashier was back, leaning over Temple with a glass of lemonade.
"Thank you so much. Will it be . . . long?"
"No, no. They're sending a security guard to take care of it."
"Good thinking, given its size," Temple said, nodding somberly. She shuddered again, taking care not to spill any lemonade.
Not long after a new clink came from the slot machine area, toward them. It was accompanied by squeaking leather and the jingle of keys. The security guard, in medium blue uniform pants and shirt, billed cap and a utility belt hung with a beeper, walkie-talkie and a holstered gun, walked up to them.
"You the ladies who saw the ... er, insect?" she asked.
Temple nodded, while Kit committed truth by doing and saying nothing.
"Don't you worry now. I'll get rid of it."
"You're not. .. squeamish?"
"Heavens to Betsy, no." The tall, solid, sandy-haired woman looked as if she could have driven a cab or even handled twenty-six three-year-olds on an outing.
She singled out a key tiny enough to open a suitcase from the riches on her crowded ring and bent down. The case unlocked at the rear of its base.
Temple edged over to watch.
The guard hesitated. "Now you won't faint, ma'am, if we find it?"
"Oh, no. I want to see that bug gone! It was right there, near that big lump of cotton." Temple crouched down, reached into the case and depressed the lump. It flattened instantly.
"Careful, ma'am! Better leave this to me."
Rising, Temple wobbled on her high heels, fell against the case and grabbed the bottom edge for support. In doing so, she managed to flatten the rest of the rumpled cotton batting, until it couldn't even conceal a toothpick.
"Here now." The guard took Temple's arm and firmly steered her away from the case. "I'll handle this."
Madame Security Guard then proceeded to shake, rattle and roll the abused fabric until a needle couldn't hide in its folds.
No shoes. Boo hoo.
"I can't understand it! The roach was right there." Temple pointed, now so entranced by her story that she almost believed it herself.
"Those big bugs are sneaky," the guard said. "They can slip in and out of places we'd never even notice. I'll spray the case." She viewed the deflated cotton batting, which looked more like stomped-on cotton candy than fluffy fake snow. "I suppose the exhibition director will be right irritated with my housekeeping talents."
She poked and prodded the batting back into place, managing to make it look like oatmeal.
"Anything else I can do, ma'am?" she inquired in a tone that implied additional pointless tasks were not welcome.
"Nothing at all." Temple's thanks were profusely enthusiastic. "Thanks ever so much for trying to nail that horrible bug!"
Kit, who had observed the entire scene from the bench, clapped slowly as Temple returned. "Brava.
Even I was beginning to believe in that bug. You could probably develop a profitable sideline winning nuisance suits by claiming to see roaches in the radiccio."
"I don't want ill-gotten gains. I just want those fabulous shoes, darn it! At least we've ruled this place out."
"Oh, we're not swinging up on the balcony like Tarzan to check out the Duke's footwear? After all, you can't see his feet from here--whoa, never mind, Temple! I was just kidding."
"I'm not." Temple looked ready to storm the upper level, now that Kit had drawn her attention to it.
"What the plate of petunias is Eightball O'Rourke doing up there?"
"That old guy next to Liza Minnelli? It's not Jimmy Durante? It's alive?"
"Not for long." Temple was pushing her sleeves up. "Maybe he's some maintenance person."
"Liza Minnelli's feet! That would be so perfect, since her mother wore the ruby slippers! Let's go."
Temple charged the stairs near the ladies' room, almost knocking the Ann Miller cardboard cutout into an unpremeditated tap-dance down the steps.
The second floor was a maze. Finding the entrance to the balcony meant opening many false doors: one to a room where a maid was cleaning; one to a closet where the maid that was cleaning the room got her cleaning supplies; one to a service stair that brought the cleaning supplies to the closet where the maid got them before going to the room that she was cleaning ...
"Sorry." "Oops." "Wrong door." Temple sang out the appropriate formula for whatever false lead she followed, until she opened a fourth door.
"Aha!"
"Temple!" Kit warned her from the hallway. "Everybody can see you. It's like being in a department store window."
Temple peered over the balcony wall. "Luckily, nobody is curious enough to look up, like me. Drat. I'm in the wrong balcony section, and there's a solid wall. Is there another likely door in the hall?"
"Dozens," her aunt sang back. "And I'm not going to barge into a damn one of them."
"Then I'll just have to--" Temple brushed by Sammy Davis, Jr. to peer around the narrow wall separating her from the next balcony compartment. "Eightball!" she whispered hoarsely.
His startled face (Temple would have described it as a "guilty mug") peered around John Wayne's broad shoulder.
"What are you doing to Liza?" she demanded.
"Nothing."
"Then why are you up here?"
"Uh ... for the view." He leaned over the balcony wall, spotted a security guard who seemed about to look up and ducked behind John Wayne.
Temple did likewise with OY Blue Eyes. Then she scraped her back along the wall until she was at the hallway door, and slipped through it.
Kit, and Eightball, were waiting for her.
"What's Liza got on those famous feet?" she asked him Eightball's well-seamed features screwed into chagrin. "Nothin'. Guess they figure no one sees them from below."
"You were looking for shoes, weren't you?" Temple said.
He shuffled, drawing attention to the battered penny loafers on his feet, which boasted shiny new dimes.
"Can't say," he answered. His faded straw fedora turned in his hands like an anoretic Frisbee.
"Why not? It's transparent as Plexiglas! You're hunting the Stuart Weitzman prize shoes. Why?"
"Goddakleyent," he mumbled.
"Once more, with articulation," she demanded.
"Gotta client."
Temple, shocked, leaned against the wall behind her. Actually, it was the door to the balcony, which eased open under her weight. She saved herself from falling over backwards, then tilted onto the balls of her feet and came out swinging, at least verbally.
"A client? You've actually been hired to hunt for the shoes? By whom?"
"Can't say."
"Can't say?"
"Client privilege."
"Someone has hired a private detective to find the shoes and win the contest? Such a person hardly qualifies as a 'client.' That is. .. that is low! Despicable. Beneath contempt. Like hiring a pro to take tootsie rolls from a tyke." Temple paced. "Besides, who has that kind of money to throw around?
Someone who could afford to buy the shoe, that's who. Eightball, you have sold your soul for a pair of designer spikes! You are overturning the balance of power in the footwear world. You are lending your abilities and your name to the shoddiest scheme ever to come parading down the Las Vegas Strip, and that's going some! I can't believe it." Temple stopped pacing.