Even if Beth’s hyper-happy exterior hid a vengeful heart, there must have been some healing energy there somewhere. The bald head under the wig screamed “cancer.” Knowing you were likely to die might make the most stable person a bit crazy, maybe even for, or especially for, a long-delayed vengeance.
“You ready to wow them?”
Temple grinned at her aunt. “I’m ready to do the most unwinning act you ever saw. Get out your pencil and prepare to draw goose eggs.”
“You should give it a real shot. I think Xoe Chloe could hit as one of those alter-ego personalities. Like Martin Short in the fat suit as Jimmy Glick on TV.”
“Oh, Lord, no! There are enough closet performers in my circle.”
“You mean Max?”
“Ah . yeah.” She’d meant Carmen Molina but why confuse her aunt.
“Anyway,” Kit said, squeezing her arm. “I think you underestimate Xoe’s Midas touch. Break a leg.”
On that contrary show biz good wish, Kit disappeared back inside like a fairy godmother off to minister to other Cinderellas.
Temple regarded the beautiful scene, not fussing about her little upcoming roller-rap routine, but about how to trick a killer into the open.
Beth Marble had dreamed up this entire event just to lure and kill a woman who had failed her daughter.
Who had penetrated Beth’s carefully applied fake identity and used the hunter’s trap to kill the hunter?
“Is she there?” Mariah tugged on Temple’s ostrich-feather fringed sleeves, long enough for a medieval minstrel.
Temple pulled back from the crack in the side curtains. “Yes. Your mother is about two-thirds of the way back, wearing ‘our’ outfit, with some guy.”
“She’s with some guy? That must just be Detective Alch.”
“Alch is sitting elsewhere in the audience.”
“Then it’s some other girl’s father or something.”
“They were whispering with their heads together.”
“Must be a cop.” Mariah stuck her head through the curtain. “Must be … oh, gross. They’re, like, laughing.”
“Mariah. Audiences have a lot of time to kill. They do things like that.”
“Where’s Matt?”
“Out of town, I think. The guy does look like a cop, though. I wouldn’t want to mess with him.”
“That’s not Xoe Chloe speak.”
Temple pulled Mariah back to check out the open bar and the three bartenders. One of them was Su.
The videographers prowled the perimeter like hungry wolves, filming the audience, the scene, even the cat who dogged their footsteps, Midnight Louie.
In fact, he was doing more than dogging their footsteps, he was sniffing them, like a dog.
She spied Crawford Buchanan on the sidelines interviewing a Teen Queen candidate so tall he could look up her skirt by pretending to drop his notebook, which he was bending to pick up at the moment.
Creep.
Louie, perhaps drawn by the rolling pencil, had rushed over and was now sniffing his shoes.
Must be the muck that stuck.
“What’s my mother doing now?” Mariah asked. “She’s, ah … pulling out one of those little mirrored lipstick holders and putting on lipstick.”
“What? She never wears lipstick. It must be a secret signal.” Mariah pushed past Temple to peek again.
“She is! And that guy is watching her. Ick! That is way too … too.”
“I’m sure it’s a signal,” Temple said confidently. That was the truth. Public lipstick applying could be. But she looked again. Yup. The guy was watching Molina’s every move. That kind of signal didn’t usually bring on the tactical squad.
“Listen,” she told Mariah, feathering her fingers through the new haircut for maximum “perk.”
“Just think about getting up on that stage without tripping and doing your talent routine. That’s our job tonight. Let the police and your mom do their jobs.”
“I wish Matt was here.”
“I don’t.” Temple put a hand to her straight blonde hair, the lime green ostrich feathers on her long sleeves fluttering like wings in the corner of her eye. He’d have a bird!
“You look really … different.”
“Higher praise I could not get. Now we better get into our lines and get ready to suffer through twenty-eight three-minute presentations. You know how long that is, counting applause, if we get any?”
That forced Mariah to think and get her mind off her mother’s performance in the audience.
That’s what it had to be, Temple decided. No way Molina was flirting. No way.
“Sixty,” Mariah was saying, “an hour. And … twenty-four minutes.”
“Add another forty minutes for the judges to score each act and for people to waste time getting on-and offstage.”
“We’ll be here forever!”
“Certainly will feel like it.” Temple pinched the curtain shut and prepared to be trapped backstage while all the action was going on out front.
Theater was like that. She just hoped the police found some likely suspect for the string of murders that had wiped out three generations of one family so far, a family already decimated by a miscarriage of justice that never ended.
Every blonde seemed to be ahead of Temple on the play list and every blonde seemed to do a Britney Spears song with every Britney Spears move ever patented.
The program alternated ‘Tween and Teen Queen candidates, and Xoe Chloe was programmed dead last … wonder how that had happened, Temple thought, eyeing Dexter Manship at the judge’s table. The peeping place she’d found was far stage left, behind a gargantuan array of gladioli spears. Nobody backstage or in the audience had spied her, so she was able to watch her competitors swivel and shake their way to true mediocrity.
When Mariah came through the curtain, it was like watching a tennis match. Snap her head to check her roomie’s poise. Great. The judges. Positive. Mama. Stunned. The guy with her had to put a hand on her arm to keep her in her seat, or maybe to keep her from going for her semiautomatic.
Mariah looked, what? Girly grown up without seeming trashy. She looked all of nifty fifteen. She let the music precede her, as opposed to walking up to the mike and waiting like the other girls had, amateurs all. Make ‘em wait. Then she began the strong yearning song of the lonely young Wicked Witch of the West from the Broadway hit, Wicked. Lyrics and melody showcased Mariah’s girlish contralto. Even Molina was relaxing, tilting back in her chair. Shocked, awed, and smiling. “Defying Gravity” along with her daughter.
Way to go, roomie!
Temple joined the applause and watched the judges’ pencils scratching high on their rating forms.
Somebody poked her in the back.
“Who is that?”
She turned. Rafi Nadir loomed over her and did not look happy.
“My roommate.”
“Not the kid. She did okay. Who’s that with—?”
He wasn’t going to say but he was glowering at the unidentified man with Molina. Or maybe he was glowering at Molina.
Rafi did not know that Temple knew their personal history, so she just played dumb.
“Who?”
“Never mind. I’ll go check the crowd.”
He eyed Savannah Ashleigh, who had both cat carriers at her side. She’d take one or the other cat out from time to time and pretend the kitty was writing in the scores. Of course, she got lots of closeup camera attention every time she produced one of her gorgeous Persians.
Rafi vanished without another word, leaving Temple time to look around for Louie. Louie loved Persians, from her observation.
Yup. He was under the judges’ table, the old dog! And snuffling at Dexter Manship’s shoes. Maybe the old boy’s sniffer was getting a little dull, to be diverted from nearby unfixed Persian pheromones to a neighboring guy’s shoes!
Now he was nudging the Elvis impersonator’s boots.
Louie must be losing it.
Oh, well, it happened to the best of them. Who knew how old he really was? Right now she herself felt about forty.
And nothing was happening.