Temple hesitated. "Let's see. The murders I've seen were definitely done by personally involved killers, though in more than one case the murderer had never met the victim until he zeroed in for the kill."
"Then why kill them?" Kit looked even more shocked by Temple's calm dissection of a murderer's modus operandi.
"Revenge for ancient wrongs. It was good enough for the Greeks."
"I'll say. Enough to spawn dozens of endlessly long tragedies, some of which I had to appear in. On stage. In front of people."
Temple studied the photographic faces again. "Not one of these ladies looks mean enough to stab a Thanksgiving turkey with a thermometer."
"Looks are deceiving. That's why these lovely ladies are suspects." Kit plucked a cover from the crowd and held it up for Temple's closer inspection.
This woman, Temple decided, was the torchiest-looking: acres of curly blond hair like a cloudy halo, a dab of decolletage, mouth ajar in the professional model's about-to-suck-a-persimmon pose.
Kit tilted her head at the photo. "Some romance writers-- usually the younger ones who have the most natural qualifications--cultivate a sensual image. They want you to think that they could pose as the heroine of their own book covers. Maybe they occasionally delude themselves into playing that part.
This is Ravenna Rivers, the one rumored to have cozied up with the Homestead Man on tour last winter.
Her husband always escorts her at conventions, and should be here. So should the Homestead Man. By the way, her books are the 'spiciest' of the lot, with a bit much S&M for my taste."
"How much is a bit much?" Temple wanted to know.
"Any at all. Sado-masochism was more common when the sexy historical romance got hot in the seventies. A lot of overprotected women in those days didn't know what was sexy unless it came home with their husbands in a brown paper wrapper, and a lot of male pornography depicts S&M. There's less of that stuff now in historical romances, but the underground appetite for kink, and for one's own worst interests, still keeps some practitioners of the art selling lots of books."
Kit tapped another author photo, a sixtyish woman with over-styled suspiciously raven hair. "This one is rabidly opposed to the hunkification of romance cover art. Mary Ann Trenarry. She started a letter-writing campaign against model-author contracts to the publishers involved and the media. I admire her guts, because the backlash could hurt her book sales. The rumor is that she can't sell her new books to anyone. Maybe a crusader scorned would want to sabotage the pageant."
Kit selected another photo with an odd smile. "And here we have Sharon Rose, a simple woman she would have you think, who just happens to be the Rasputin of the romance industry."
"This moon-faced, grinning woman in the dated bubble cut? Mrs. Girl Scout Mother incarnate?"
Kit nodded. "Makes Shannon Little look like Cruella de Vil, doesn't she? I told you appearances were deceiving. Her books are sentimental melodramas, and her fans adore her, but in real life she's a piranha in polyester. Also the biggest bestseller in the bunch. She had her own sister, a new author at the time, drummed out of her publishing house because she didn't like the competition. Poor woman didn't sell anywhere else, either. No one has heard of Jessica Rose since."
"If this woman is that filthy rich, why on earth does she wear polyester?"
"Because it doesn't wrinkle when she travels, dummy!"
Temple eyed her aunt's smashingly simple, simply smashing dinner suit. "Yours will wrinkle like a prune. That's silk shantung, probably designer."
"Indeed. Bought off-price, of course. We poorer souls have to dress for where we want to be. Some of the folks already there wouldn't know silk if the worm came up and mugged them. There is no justice.
All the people you know who get rich never spend their money the way you would."
"At least you don't have to pine over what they've got," Elec-tra said briskly. She turned her Technicolor head from side to side. "What do you think? As an aspiring writer, I want to get noticed at the opening ceremony, but is this too much?" Before either Temple or Kit could reply, Electra posed her real question: not if, but how much. "Should I blend the edges or go for the shock effect?"
"Blend the edges," Temple and Kit replied as one.
Nobody organized special events like the Crystal Phoenix. Fantasy potted palms of white metal and brass ringed the ballroom. The convention decorating committee had taken the decor-- eighteenth-century French palatial, with pale-painted wood paneling and discreet touches of gilt--and swaged it with such airy, fairy fabrics as iridescent netting and metallic lace. Temple definitely felt that a troop of fairy godmothers should assemble soon to inspect the royal newborn and confer good wishes.
But somewhere around this hotel, if not in this crowd, lurked a wicked fairy whose wand had been a fatal arrow. Cheyenne's sleeping beauty would not awaken at the kiss of a lovely princess. Interesting, Temple mused, had anyone tried writing a role-reversal romance version of Sleeping Beauty? Eeek! She had been reading too many romances for homework lately; she was getting ideas. Her mind should be on mayhem and murder, not tulle and roses and . . . hissss . . . men.
"Those are some shoes." In the hustle of separating Electra from the hair sprays, Kit had not noticed Temple's feet. "They could double as a weapon."
"Steel heels, Weitzman. Clawed cousins to Louie's shoes." Temple spun to show off the wavy prongs of pewter-colored metal on which she balanced. They added kick to her primly styled sixties platinum-metallic suit.
"Where did you get that outfit?"
"A resale shop called Reprize. Some of this ancient stuff is actually neat."
"Some of this ancient stuff, baby, was neat, and new, when I wore it." Kit's wry expression as she viewed the resurrected fashion ghosts of her youth turned into a smile. "I really had concluded that all that stuff from my era was absolutely horrid, but you look so cute in it."
"Don't call me 'cute,' " Temple warned. "That's one of my button-pushing words."
"Oh." Kit grinned. "I see, as in your 'cute, button nose'?"
"Were you always mean?"
"Only since I left Minnesota."
"The real show-stealer to swoon over is Electra."
They turned to their companion, who was obliviously craning her neck to see the crowd as the crowd craned its necks to study her hair.
Instead of wearing her usual muumuu, Electra was swathed in an electric-blue lame pantsuit, and wore shoulder-dusting, pink-fluorescent flamingo earrings.
"She's really serious about this romance-writing bug, isn't she?" Kit asked in a whisper.
"I guess so. Any hope of real money in it for newcomers?"
"Virgins, you mean? Sure. As there is in anything. It's just that so few get it. Why?" Kit cocked her a shrewd look. "Are you thinking of turning your personal woes into bestselling fiction?"
"Except that my story would be sold as 'true horror.' Is there such a category?"
"Not... yet," Kit said. "Although paranormal, or what we call New-Age themes, are hot in romances now."
"What sort of books are those?"
"Oh, vampire heroes, angel heroines, time-travel and futuris-tics, which are set in space."
Electra's flamingo earrings jangled in their direction as she heard her own trigger words. "New Age!
Right up my Ouija board," she said gleefully. "But I'm confining myself to a simple historical romance for the contest. Nothing fancy to distract the judges."
"Good idea." Kit was searching the crowd now. "Keep it simple when you're starting out."
"Maybe it is simple," Temple mused. "Even I had an idea for a romance novel just now."
"Watch out!" Kit made like a goblin, startling Temple into jumping to look behind her. "The big-time romance-writing blues are gonna get you."