“Yeah, but the people who buried the suit might not have known much about Elvis fans.” Karate Elvis.
“Not like you, Miss Temple, who is always on top of everything.” Oversized/Aldo again.
“Yeah. I was even on top of that buried suit. From what you say about its location, Electra and I—and Crawford Buchanan—were sitting right near it when the body was found in the pool.”
Temple had a sudden epiphany, which was a fancy word for insight. Maybe it was an Elvis Epiphany. She could feel her eyes narrow. Rainbow Elvis sucked in their diaphragms in preparation for action.
“Crawford Buchanan!” She could feel the clues struggling to click into place. “Has he been heard from or seen lately? Could he have buried the suit? Could he be buried up there too? Too much to hope for, but he was acting very strangely when Electra and I found the body floating in the pool. Dove right in with it. Was he trying to save … the suit?”
“I understand these artifacts are worth a great deal, Miss Temple,” Aldo said.
Even Temple could tell he was agreeing with her wild theories simply because he was trying to be kind.
She took a few steps into Quincey’s dressing room and sat down, glad that Quin was not there to see Temple flailing for answers. That girl needed a strong role model, and a confused thirty-year-old was not it.
Jumpsuit Elvis stepped forward with the air of a man about to tell a tale or two.
“We have been making some inquiries,” he said gravely.
“Of whom about what?”
The brothers Fontana shook their dark-helmeted heads in awe, rendered speechless.
“Did you hear the lady?” Jumpsuit Elvis asked Karate Elvis.
“I did.”
“Of whom,” Jumpsuit Elvis repeated reverently. “Does anyone here doubt that this is the proper grammatical form?”
Heads shook in unity.
“Of whom.” Jumpsuit Elvis regarded her with the fond wonder of Columbo catching a murderer in yet another slick but useless lie.
“Awesome,” Motorcycle Elvis added.
Jumpsuit Elvis shook off his amazement to return to business. “We have been making inquiries,” he resumedhis speech with a politesse equal to Temple’s employment of the pronoun “whom,” “of those who might know or be able to find out who the stiff in the pool was when he was lucky enough to be breathing air instead of chlorine.”
“What kind of people are these?”
“Connections,” Karate Elvis said shortly.
“Friends of the family,” Rhinestone Lapels added.
“You mean, friends of your uncle Mario?” Their uncle Mario was Macho Mario Fontana, an old-time kingpin of Las Vegas when the only mafia in town had decidedly not been from Memphis.
“In a manner of speaking,” said Motorcycle Elvis.
“Let’s say they owe him,” Tuxedo Elvis added.
Temple nodded. Since she didn’t have an in, or even an out, with any official police personnel on this case, it was handy to have sources on whom one could depend on the other side of the law.
“So, who was this guy?”
Tuxedo Elvis shimmied his shoulders inside the formal jacket. “Well, actually, the bigger question is … the suit.”
“The suit. The jumpsuit?”
“Right. See, it isn’t a tourist-shop number.” Tuxedo’s dark blue eyes made quick contact with his brothers’.
“And it isn’t from the big-time Elvis outfitters around the country,” Karate said, making a move appropriate to his name.
“Nor is it from the twinkling needles of any show costumer like Miss Minnie.” Oversized.
“And it certainly isn’t from any collection of the real jumpsuits—” Blues Brothers Elvis.
“So you see our problem.” Oversized again.
Temple looked from Blues Brothers Elvis to Fifties Elvis to Karate Elvis. For once Quincey was right: they were all scrumpdilliscious. But they were also all as aggravating as … Elvis.
“Let’s try another tack,” she suggested. “Who’s the dead guy?”
“Some loser who used the name Clint Westwood.” Fifties Elvis curled half his upper lip at the obviously phony moniker.
“Used the name?”
Karate Elvis shrugged. “He’d been arrested for petty this and minor that for so long that ‘Also Known As’ was closer to his name than anything else.”
“Just a local deadbeat.” Tuxedo.
“A nobody.” Rhinestone Lapels.
“Rumor had it he ran errands for Boss Banana twenty years ago.” Oversized.
“Some old guy. In his sixties.” Fifties Elvis. “Should have been wiped years ago, but he slipped through the cracks.” Karate.
Temple interrupted this epitaph for a petty crook. “Kind of like the dead bodies slipped through the cracks of the Goliath and Crystal Phoenix ceilings in the last couple years?”
Throats cleared and cheeks pinked on a ripple of Elvis visages. Sideburns even shifted, as small cigars were moved from one side of the mouth to the other. At least they were all unlit. So far.
“Kind of,” Cape-and-Cane Elvis finally said after removing the small cigar from his mouth. Elvis and his Tampa Jewel cigars. C-and-C Elvis resembled a Western novel dude gunslinger and coughed as discreetly as Doc Holliday. “This was a Man Who Did Not Matter, that’s the main thing. No one would miss him. Not the police—”
“Not the criminal element,” Oversized gave the man his epitaph.
“So why was he given this really classy sendoff?” Motorcycle Elvis asked excitedly.
Temple had to clarify things. “You consider an undetermined death in an ersatz Elvis suit in an Elvis ersatz-garden classy?““For a guy like this? Yeah.” Motorcycle also twitched his shoulders clad in a black leather jacket.
Apparently the brothers Elvis were itchy-twitchy today.
“The snake,” Oversized Elvis added, “that was an inspired touch. Can you imagine what the police are trying to make of that?”
Temple had to admit that the notion of Lieutenant C. R. Molina contemplating an AWOL anaconda, a slightly larcenous corpse of no importance, and a soggy Elvis jumpsuit of original design might be a sight for sore eyes.
Hers.
Chapter 46
Today, Tomorrow, and Forever
(Elvis sang this song based on Liszt’s “Liebestraume” in Viva Las Vegas in 1964)
Temple turned the glass canning jar in her hand, worrying about the ring its condensation-dewed sides were leaving on the wooden tabletop.
It wouldn’t be the only dark circle on a surface that sported more rings than the planet Saturn.
The dark brew inside was Pepsi-Cola, of course, Elvis’s favorite beverage.
You could get anything you want, except Coca-Cola, here at Gladys’s Restaurant.
The wooden, high-backed chair was hard on Temple’s bony derriere. She fidgeted, slicking her palm with dew drops, and glanced at the long chromed lunch counter with its dotted line of swiveling stools, upholstered alternately in black and pink vinyl.
The jukebox was playing “Johnny B. Goode.” Hokey as the environment was, it made it easy to imagine a teenage Elvis sitting here, drinking pop and dreaming the dreams harbored by pimply kids with no money and less self-confidence everywhere.
“Hey!”
Temple turned. Electra was waving at her from the door.
Temple blinked.
Electra wasn’t wearing a muumuu.
Electra’s hair wasn’t sprayed a wild and wacky color. Electra’s hair was sprayed brown.
B-r-o-w-n. The one color no female influenced by Media America would ever want to own up to. Plain brown.
It was up in a saucy ponytail, and a hot-pink chiffon scarf was knotted around her throat. She was wearing a blackand-white checked circle skirt and a black sweater. A hot-pink patent-leather belt, wide, circled her lessthan-svelte waist.