The hall she entered was plain in comparison, although eastern fretwork shadowed the walls of many doors. Doors were fewer and farther between on these elevated levels than on the steerage floors below, which packed in tourists like desk keys.
A door announcing itself as THE TAJ MAHAL SUITE bore the right number. Temple looked for a bell before she knocked, and found a gong affixed to the wall, with a mallet attached by a rawhide string.
A modest rap produced a deep, mellow call. . . and no answer at the door. She could hear nothing through it, either the result of the Oasis's superior construction or evidence that she had gotten the date, time or room number wrong (or all three).
Oh, great. Temple hit the gong again, harder.
The door parted, then paused. A subdued clink and chatter leaked through the inch-wide opening. Then a hand with very long, very thick fingernails painted Passion Fruit Purple undulated through.
Oh golly, Miss Germaine Monteil! She had forgotten that the fashionable set these days was wearing weird-colored nail enamels; her fingernails were a discreet flamingo tint. How remiss.
The door widened and Savannah Ashleigh's face peered out.
"Oh, it's you. Dare wanted me to see who it was." With that she shut the door.
With that, Temple reopened the door and stepped in, ready to dip her flamingo polis h in Ashleigh blood, which was probably purple to match her nails.
Since the one person in the room Temple knew had vanished, she edged along the room's fringes until she got her bearings. There was a good deal of gel- and mousse-mussed hair going in all directions and a lot of heavy metal masquerading as jewelry on both sexes. Actually, Temple realized that she should think in terms of all sexes, as in he, she and it. For besides the apparent hetero- and homosexuals present, another rara avis pecked around the premises, the anorexic, androgynous figures Temple saw in fashion magazines, either boys in makeup or muscular girls in tattoos.
The older set, of course, was much more conventional and therefore much less interesting.
Some men actually wore blazers, in such succulent desert tones as melon and sage green, with open-necked yellow shirts. Some of the past-forty women sported diamond jewelry instead of the usual toolbox accouterments.
Then Temple spotted an old friend she recognized from many a press party and made for that spot like a camel in need of an oasis at the Oasis.
The buffet table. Here the scene and activity and dramatis personae were old pals. Plates, paper napkins, platters full of . . . European crackers and beady black caviar, lox and olives, layered extravaganzas of tomatoes and capers and sour cream and chutney, everything that would look absolutely awful if it dropped on a Big White Shirt.
Temple didn't care for caviar (too fishy) or chutney (too sweet-tart) or dry-cleaning bills, so she poured herself a ginger ale and nibbled crackers and waited to figure out what she was doing here.
As she studied the room, which was much like Domingo's suite down the Strip: large, furnished with bland Hotel Ritz, walled with windows that showed only the blue-pink distance unless you went right up to them and looked down, she realized that the host was missing.
Temple eyed the other guests again. No one was better at barging in and making herself at home than a PR woman, but these people were grouped into tight twosomes, like sets of Ken and Barbie. Savannah Ashleigh was negotiating an intense tete-a-tete with a partially shaved guy in his mid-twenties who wore jeans and a spruce leather jacket with no shirt under it.
Just then someone sidled up to Temple.
"I'm Mr. Cooke's personal assistant. I don't believe we've met."
The tone implied accosting a gate-crasher. The speaker was all of twenty-five herself, a tall, willowy young woman with artificially wine-red hair wearing a strapless spandex tube dress with a safety-pin dog collar. One multi-pierced ear dangled a cascade of silver charms to her collarbone. Yet despite the theatrical getup, she seemed all business.
"I certainly would have remembered," Temple said with her most charming smile. "I confess I'm new to the Sunday-brunch set. Mr. Cooke invited me only yesterday at Gangster's."
Two tiny frown lines defaced the pale complexion. "He never mentioned you."
"How can you be sure? You don't know my name."
"He tells me everything," she began, with an odd combination of stridency and uncertainty,
"but he's been on the phone in the master bedroom for, oh, minutes and minutes."
"I suppose it wouldn't hurt anything if I waited until he came out."
"Only . . . you don't know anyone here."
"Only ... Savannah Ashleigh. And I see she's lost in conversation with that yummy young mugging victim in Claude Montana leather."
The girl jerked her messily teased red poll in that direction. "That's Mosh Spiegel, the famous dirt biker."
Temple had never heard of any famous dirt bikers, unless you counted Evel Kneivel.
"Well, I'm Temple Barr, and I'm here at Mr. Cooke's request. I'll just have to entertain myself while I wait for him, unless you want to entertain me until he comes out."
"Uh, I have things to do." A long, bony hand with gnawed fingernails waved toward the buffet. "Eat something, or... whatever."
Whatever seemed the only option, so Temple prepared herself to hold up the wall for some time. Sitting solo in a standup crowd like this was isolating and awkward. Most guests were either very young (which meant even younger than Temple) or quite middle-aged (which to Temple meant over forty-five). But that made sense. Darren Cooke was easily in his early fifties, no matter how much the plastic surgeons pinned his ears back year after year. Of course he would still attract the young and trendy; all stars did, even when their twinkle was mostly in the surgeon's laser-light.
Temple nibbled on what resembled a mutilated carrot. She hoped it was a carrot. She switched walls. Then she ambled to the windows to look out. Usually at a party, looking out attracted another looker-outer. Not here. She could have been invisible, in fact, was, because she was unknown. Should have brought Midnight Louie. He was a great conversation-starter.
And then, staring at the great nothingness beyond Las Vegas, at unchanged easygoing mountains whose brown summits snagged clouds as airy as biplane pilots' long, fringed white silk scarves, Temple realized the obvious.
Darren Cooke had consulted his "Nancy Drew" because something in his life disquieted him.
Why wasn't he coming out?
Temple set her ginger-ale glass on a table and turned toward the closed door at which the personal assistant had cocked a dyed-red eyebrow.
She met the assistant on an intercepting path.
"You can't go in there," the woman said.
"You ever wonder why he's left his guests alone so long? Mr. Cooke didn't strike me as the reclusive type. Not at his own party."
The frown returned, rather deep for such a young forehead. "He did seem .. . surprised by the call."
"Maybe you better check on him."
A blank stare.
"A shocking call. Heart attack maybe."
"No." The young woman seemed truly alarmed. "Not a heart attack. He's too young--" She turned and ran for the door.
Temple shook her head. Darren Cooke was way past "too young" for a lot of things. She discreetly followed the woman. No one else noticed; they were too busy performing the latest chitchat.
Temple paused outside the ajar door. Only silence seeped through. She pushed it slightly, encountering a barrier.
The girl was standing two steps inside, frozen.
Oh, my god, Temple thought. Not at his own party.
She pushed the door until it butted the girl, then pushed harder, until the girl gave way.
Temple stepped in, shutting the door behind her.
She didn't see what she expected, but neither had the personal assistant.
Darren Cooke was alive and well, sitting on the massive emperor-size bed, by the telephone.