“And we are the contraltos, right? We are different.”
“You sure are.” Mariah grinned.
“Dare to be … you and me,” Temple finished. “Defying gravity.”
Chapter 53
Tailings
The hour is once again my namesake one and I am stationed outside the Ashleigh suite trying to figure out how to get in.
This is when Miss Midnight Louise happens along. Yeah. Like she is following me.
“What ho, Romeo?” she inquires in the acid tones granted only to the female of the species, any species, and guaranteed to shrivel the cottontail off a bunny rabbit, not to mention other attachments of which I am unduly fond.
“Stalking the Ashleigh girls again, I suppose,” she adds. “When are you going to get that those snooty purebreds are too good for you?”
“When I lose my self-esteem, which will be never. So. You are emulating the Crawfish and descending to domestic snooping.”
“Just wondering why you were slacking off on the job.”
“I am not slacking anything, Louise. I need to gel through the looking glass again.”
“You and little girls named Alice.”
“You recall that one of ours started her on that famous adventure. Holy Havana Browns! How am I going to get in there without Miss Savannah Ashleigh seeing me?”
“I do not see why you cannot rely on your dubious inside connections. Of course, neither one of them would come if you came calling.”
This gets my goat, and my llama too. I stick a mitt under the bottom of the door, shoot out my shivs, and make what pathetic scratching noises I can.
Sure enough. In thirty seconds flat, I am playing pattycake with a set of soft, moist pads from the other side.
Throwing Louise a superior gaze over my shoulder, I hunker down for a game of whisker teasing and whispering via the quarter-inch crack.
In a minute, I have convinced the Ashleigh girls to make a heck of a commotion in the service of getting me into the secret passage. They are quite aware of this area, especially Yvette, as she is wont to play with her own image in the mirror for hours, Solange informs me. But she thinks she can tear Yvette away from herself long enough to do what is needed.
Miss Louise and I retreat against the opposite wall and wait.
Not for long.
The shrieks, human and not-so, emanating from beyond the door result in an adjoining door slamming open against the hall wall, and Mr. Rafi Nadir, clad only in unzipped jeans and sneakers, charging down the hall and through the door like a cannonball.
Louise and I exchange a look, then shoot through on his sneaker heels. Well, sneakers do not have heels,as such. Suffice it to say that we are in like dingleberries dangling from a shih tzu’s tail.
There is a lot of fluffy pale hair flying in the room, part of it Persian and the other part of it Horst of Beverly Hills, and most of it eiderdown from some terminally clawed pillows.
Quick thinkers, these Persians. They have staged the Mother of All Pillow Fights to upset their mistress and bring the troops running.
While Mr. Rafi Nadir inserts himself into the pile of flying fur, shrieks, and flailing claws both human and feline-I admit that even I would quail at such a task-I hurl myself at the pressure point that turns the mirror into a revolving door, and Louise and I whisk into the dark beyond, pausing to pull it shut behind us with paw power times two.
“So this is what you wanted?” she asks in the absolute dark.
I wait for my eyes to acclimate. That probably takes a little longer than for her, but I do not wish to make this obvious.
“Shhhh. I am thinking.”
“I can see you would need absolute quiet for that. Why did you want to be here?”
“Is it not interesting that this house has been honeycombed with hidden passages since the time it was built?”
“I have heard that creepy Crawford dude prattling about the big shootout here into his microphone. No doubt these passages made the escape of the masked killer easier twenty years ago. Everyone thought it was Arthur Dickson himself, and no one could prove it. But what does a long-dead scandal have to do with teen queens today?”
I am about to tell her, which would be interesting as I do not know yet myself, when there is a cracking sound and a vertical bar of light appears behind us.
That is how I first saw Elvis, as a narrow bar of light in the Action Jackson attraction tunnel under the Crystal Phoenix a few months ago.
I am eagerly awaiting a return engagement of the King when the light vanishes with a click and another click brings a swash of light into the tunnel.
Louise and I plaster ourselves to the dark walls, avoiding detection but not avoiding the fact that it is Rafi Nadir bearing a flashlight into our midst.
I also glimpse shadowy forms by the now-closed mirror-door.
In sum, we are not alone, times three.
Louise has dashed across the aisle in the darkness and now brushes against my shoulder. “Great. We are here but so is the hired bodyguard. What do you suppose he wants?”
“Whatever he wants, it is worth tailing him. And keep your nose alert for that noxious sweet scent I mentioned the other day.”
“Shhh!”
Rafi turns and sweeps the flashlight over the unadorned wooden floor, missing us by that much.
We open our eyes once the searchlight has passed. I hear slight scrabbling sounds behind us.
“Mice,” Miss Louise dismisses them. “That is what we are dealing with, not a murderer.”
“A murderer is still in this house. We could, in fact, be tailing him now.”
This snaps her to literal attention.
“Rafi Nadir has the scent on his shoes?”
“Yes, but he could have picked it up out by the pool. The hot sun had melted what traces of it I found that day, so anyone could have accidentally stepped in it.
Except myself, of course. I have been certain to keep my toes well out of it.”
Louise’s tail is hitting the wood planking like a woodpecker’s beak, hard and fast. That betrays her thinking. “So. This substance is a sure link to another murder scene … and to the mischief here, but like rabies it has spread to innocent carriers. Still, we might learn something by tracing every one who has spread it.”
“Exactly.”
“I admit that this Rafi Nadir has been showing up at every recent murder or crime scene for some weeks now.”
“Agreed, yet I hate to suspect him. He treats my Miss Temple right, in his way.”
“So he could not possibly be a killer,” she concludes sarcastically. “Perhaps he is stalking your precious Miss Temple.”
“I do not think so but I have detected the sticky substance on some others who might be.”
“Such as—?”
“Do not forget the cameraman who tried to kick me when I first arrived.”
“Right. I was not here then. I missed that. Pity.”
“And Ken Adair, the Hair Guy.”
“That could merely be some stinky hair gel that got on his shoe.”
“True. Most of these girls would put recycled bubblegum on their locks if a beauty consultant told them to.”
“Any other suspects?”
I hesitate.
“Spit it out, just not literally?’
“Miss Sulah Savage, aka Miss Temple’s aunt from Manhattan, whom I bunked with at Christmastime, Miss Kit Carlson.”
“Whew! I did not guess the relationship. This place is a snarl of hidden relationships as well as secret tunnels. Miss Sulah Savage has been most generous to me with tidbits at mealtime. She could have innocently walked through a bit of it herself.”
We hear a crack of something opening or shutting far down the corridor of darkness.
“Quick!” Miss Midnight Louise is all tracker now. “I do not want to lose Mr. Rafi.”
We take off and there is a double echo of pad thumping wood behind us that only I hear, because I am listening for it.
We hit a hidden flight of stairs and go streaking down it too fast to stop. More dark hallway. Our whiskers ease us through, warning us before we slam our pusses into solid wall.