YOU’RE A BUNCH OF BLOODY BITCHES the nail polish block letters declared. Well, sometimes. Yes. Mother Nature was like that.
Had Mariah done this? Not likely. Had Xoe Chloe sleepwalked and scrawled this angry comment on her competitors? Not likely.
Someone had been in here, though, appropriated Mariah’s nail polish, and gone to work behind the closed bathroom door with neither of them the wiser.
Or maybe not. Because Mariah was gone. The bed was flat, the bathroom was empty. The closet—Temple swooped the sliding doors open on a plethora of nauseous pink—was turned into a Stepford Wives zone and was empty of human habitation. Under the bed the cupboard was bare.
Mariah was gone.
Oh, bifurcated Barbie dolls! Temple’s prime assignment was missing in action.
She shoved her feet into a pair of low-heeled mules, pink, of course, but her own bunny variety from home, and headed for the door.
Ooops. First she doused the lights and felt her way back to her bedside, whisking her Cher hair off the lampshade and onto her head.
Outrageous is the best disguise.
She grabbed the key-chain pepper spray from her purse and burst out into the hall. It was as black as the bathroom had been before she’d turned on the light.
Someone was having fun with the mansion’s light board. And not a hidden cameraman. They craved light.
She felt her way along the wall, with no idea of where she was going, only that she’d trace the power outage to its origin.
The producers had been diligent in soft lighting every inch of the place so that their cameras could record every twitch of a contestant. Only the bedrooms provided absolute dark.
Mariah. Temple felt cold sweat break out all under the irritatingly hot wig. Her charge. The reason she was here. Gone.
And someone painting bloody threats on their bathroom mirror while they slept.
While Temple slept.
She began to appreciate the constant needle of maternal anxiety. It was a drug, being responsible for someone else, for a young, helpless, naive someone else. Mariah. A picture in Temple’s mind’s eye, teenage whining, painting her toenails fluorescent red.
If anything had happened to her … forget Molina! Remember Temple’s own panic.
Something brushed her legs.
She screeched and hugged the wall.
It brushed again.
Furry.
An eighteen-inch-high tarantula? She wouldn’t doubt it in this Hell House.
Some sound between the first low buzz of an alarm clock and a purr pushed against her bare legs.
High furry boots, or … Puss-in-Boots, Las Vegas style.
“Louie?” she rasped. Whispered. Ground out.
The feathery presence drifted away but a step caught up with it.
Okay. She was either tailgating an ostrich or following a fine-feathered friend who just happened to have a cat tail.
In the dark, all things being equal, it was probably a cat. Her cat. Hers not to question why. Hers but to do or die. Into the Valley of Doubt marched Temple and her phantom feline.
A slice of light beckoned in the distance.
Was this a trap laid by a sneak-thief psycho nail-polish correspondent? Or … enlightenment?
Temple felt another plumy brush against her bare calves and decided she need to be very Zen right now, right here.
She pushed toward the light, into the light … and through a swinging door into the mansion’s brightly lit and darkly designed kitchen, all stainless steel and black marble and granite.
And all … Mariah. Sitting on a black granite countertop in her pink Teen Queen nightshirt, sucking on a raspberry Popsicle.
“You total idiot!” Temple accused, knowing this was not the proper esteem-building tone but she had lost that concern. Funny that relief could be so enraging. “I was worried to death.”
“Around this place that’s serious,” Mariah said. “How’d you find me?”
“You’ll look terrific on spy TV.”
“One Popsicle. Sugarless. That’s the best they have in those three giant refrigerators. It’s not a federal case.”
Temple eyed the Popsicle stump. “Sugar-free, really? Where are they?”
“Bottom freezer drawer, fridge on the left.”
Temple eyed the black marble floor between here and there. Not a creature was stirring, not even the proverbial mouse. Or tarantula. Or cat.
“How’d you know where to look, really?” Mariah asked. She wanted an answer.
“Oh, maybe I was ready for a taste of faux sugar myself.”
“It’s fructose. Real fruit sugar. That’s better than added sugars or even artificial ones.”
Temple boosted herself up on the kitchen island beside Mariah. The black granite’s chill seeped through her thin cotton T-shirt.
“I’m sorry I was crabby,” Mariah said.
“That’s all right, kid. I get crabby too.” She leaned into Mariah’s ear. “You’ll be even crabbier when you know that someone used up your whole bottle of nail polish writing nasty notes on our bathroom mirror.”
“No!” Mariah looked around, her soft young features squinching into suspicion, and annoyance. “This place is getting off the wall. The show’s gonna be ruined.”
“Unless the Teen Queen slant was a front from the first, and the show was always intended to be an updated game of Clue.”
“What’s Clue?”
“Let’s shuffle off down the hall again. I think that’s safer than talking here. And we sure don’t want to steam up our bathroom mirror again.”
“Why not?” Mariah jumped down and actually held a hand out to help old Temple make the same leap.
“Evidence,” Temple whispered against her ear again.
She had a feeling the location of this last prank would merit some serious, and open, police involvement. And probably the presence of the one person that the two of them least wanted to see here: Mama Molina.
They sat up the rest of the night, leaning against the foot of the giant bed while Temple explained the game of Clue to Mariah, and Mariah explained current teen hotties to Temple.
All of their dialogue was suitable for public replay. Breakfast was served at seven, just like at camp. So once Mariah had been escorted to the ‘tween dining area, which was ashriek with excited girls having so little to chew on that they were chewing on each other, Temple headed for the Teen Team offices.
“Oh, Beth, thank God you’re here.”
The bustling, plump woman paused in pawing through an open file drawer.
No wonder. That had definitely not been a Xoe Chloe opening line.
“Why, Zoo-ey, what are you doing here, dear? You’re supposed to be at breakfast right now.”
“I kinda lost my appetite. Got a stomach full of red nail polish last night.”
“You … you drank some red nail polish! Oh, I knew you looked like a paint sniffer. This means expulsion.”
“Hold on to your granny panties, lady. The nail polish was the writing on the mirror in Mariah’s and my bathroom. Like the hot foam jobs on the yo-yo yoga mats in the patio area the other day.”
“Writing? Like—?”
“Like handwriting? Like graffiti. You know, nasty messages in public places. Only our bathroom is private. I thought.”
“I must see it … we must see it. At once.”
“Then you’ll call the cops.”
“The police? Oh, no.” Beth Marble paled, if that were possible for one so wan. “The producers don’t want them here.”
“Gonna be hard to keep them away. Better if you play Sally Citizen and call them before they call on you. Cops get agitated about the littlest things.”
“How do you know?”
“Well, I’m a little thing, right?” Xoe Chloe spun to indicate her punk but petite form.
“The police.” Beth Marble imitated her last name and plunked down into her chair as if the weight of Michelangelo’s David had suddenly descended on her from above. “Dexter will be so disagreeable about that.”
“What’s new? Besides, he doesn’t run the show. You do. Don’t you?”
“Yes. I’m head coach. The show was my idea. But Dexter’s the star.”