Matt only noticed then that Three O’Clock had settled on the brick skirt of the fireplace and was watching them through slitted eyes.
Despite the half-full dining room, he felt that here even the cats had ears, and lowered his voice. “That’s the second guy to die at the Kingdome.”
“Don’t I know it. The first wasn’t a real tribute performer, just some petty crook in a cheapo costume. Not a truly cheap costume, but not up to what Elvis had ever worn. That guy was drowned, as far as the police are saying. Lyle was killed onstage, strangled with a white silk scarf.”
“Aren’t women usually killed by strangling?”
“True. Maybe because they’re easier to overwhelm from behind. That’s what bothers me about this murder. Lyle wasn’t quite as big as Oversized Elvis, but he was no bantamweight. It would take a lot of force to bring him down with one silk scarf.”
“Bizarre. And this happened—?”
“Yesterday.”
“The night Elvis didn’t call. The night after our big on-air showdown. I hope I didn’t drive the guy away to do something foolish. I assume you haven’t been following my nightly channeling sessions.”
“Not recently.”
“I could leave a set of tapes at your door. You think—?”
“I think what you think: something awfully close to Elvis has been going on here. After all those jokes about Elvis playing one of his own impersonators. I must say that Lyle was an impressive Elvis impersonator. He looked closer to fifty than to sixty-four, but plastic surgery nowadays can make even a Savannah Ashleigh look fifteen to twenty years younger. Elvis had already had a facelift when he died, although his associates said he really hadn’t needed it. Poor guy, age and prescription abuse were catching up with him and he was trying to stem the tide—he really was a great-looking man, almost to the end. It must have hurt to see that sliding away.”
Matt nodded. “You could come to take it for granted.”
“Oh?”
He found Temple regarding him with interest and realized that he had never before spoken as if his own good looks were a given. Maybe the midnight groupies had converted him. Maybe he was making as much progress in self-acceptance as the call-in Elvis had been.
“What can you do about this man’s death?” Matt asked. “You’re not really involved. You should stay away from that Kingdome place. And what was Louie doing there?”
“I don’t know. He tends to tail me, excuse the expression.”
Matt glanced at Three O’Clock, his forefeet tucked under him like a Chinese mandarin’s hands slid into his sleeves. The posture made the venerable cat into a feline sage.
“These cats have a way of looking like they know as much—or more than we do. I don’t know if I could live with that. I like dogs; at least they look a lot more anxious and dependent.”
“Can’t take an equal animal, huh? I love the way Louie seems to get one step ahead of me sometimes. I know I’m reading things into simple feline behavior, but it’s fun to pretend.”
“Finding corpses should not be fun, Temple,” Matt lectured. “What about what got you to the Kingdome? Anything new on the Elvis apparition at the Crystal Phoenix?”
“Not a word.” She took a disgruntled swig of beer. “But I feel responsible for Quincey, especially now that her Priscilla wedding gown has been trashed.”
“You should get out of the picture. You and Louie should get back to the Phoenix and to harassing goldfish and the ghost of Jersey Joe Jackson. I’d feel a lot better if you did.”
“So you think your gorgeous, intelligent, pleading brown eyes are gonna cut it with a cat person?”
Matt shook his head. “Nope. I know your weakness for the aloof and mysterious feline and that, against that competition, I ain’t nothing but a hound dog, cryin’ all the time. It’s just that advice is my business nowadays. I may have exorcized my Elvis forever. Time you exorcized yours.”
“Don’t be cruel,” she answered with a mock pout. “We could go on forever in Elvis-ese.”
“There is an Elvis for every occasion.”
“Even murder, apparently. I mean it, Temple. I’ve only had to deal with Elvis long-distance. You’ve gotten much too up close and personal. Time to pull back.”
She nodded, serious. “You’re right. I don’t even have • a link to the crimes against persons unit this time. Molina could be on the moon for all I’m hearing from or about her.”
“You miss her?”
“Lord, no! It’s nice to be an innocent, anonymous witness for a change, with the detective on the case just shaking his head at my unsuitability as witness or suspect. I could get used to playing Susie Citizen again.”
“Take my advice, and try it.““Got a Lot 0’ Livin’ to Do,” Temple agreed.
“I hope so. It Wouldn’t Be the Same Without You.” They both had been studying way too many Elvis books.
Chapter 52
That’s Not All Right (Mama)
(Elvis’s breakthrough song, recorded during his first session at Memphis’s Sun Records, July 5, 1954)
Temple returned to the Kingdome aflame with righteous resignation.
Matt had convinced her: she was out of the Elvis business.
Apparently no one else was, because acts were lounging about the vast stage on which Lyle Purvis had died so recently, rehearsing for the competition tomorrow night.
In fact, Purvis’s death had thrown expectations into turmoil. It seemed that a whole lotta shaking was going on now that the King of Kings was out of the picture. A lot of the other candidates had a decent chance.
Could the Elvis murders be the ultimate answer to performance anxiety? Temple also noticed that the Memphis Mafia numbers seemed to have tripled. Men in black suits were everywhere, watching rehearsals like competing Hollywood agents, and flocking in the hotel’s vast lobby.
Temple even expected to see them lurking like Cold War spies behind slot machines, jotting down notes and talking into shoe-cell-phones.
The Kingdome’s general air of high intrigue may have been why she wasn’t surprised to hear piercing screams issuing from the backstage dressing rooms again.
She joined the stampede to get there, a force divided almost equally between the sublime (Elvis tribute performers mostly in jumpsuits) and the ridiculous (the dudes in black mohair suits).
For once a conservative mode of dress looked far more self-dramatizing than wall-to-wall jeweled jumpsuits.
Alas, the shrieker was the usual suspect.
Quincey, this time wearing civvies (hip-slung black vinyl pants and a skimpy shrink-top in neon leopard-print), sobbed and thrashed like a punk banshee.
This time, the person harassing the much-tried Priscilla performer was … her mother.
“I don’t care how much faster the world will end if you leave the show. You’re leaving it.” Merle Conrad finished her declaration by folding her arms over her low-profile chest. Her daughter’s high-profile edition, emphasized by skin-tight Spandex, heaved with disappointment.
“This’ll ruin my life!”
“Maybe,” Merle said, faintly but firmly unshakable. “At least you’ll be alive to have a ruined life. This is it. You’re out of the pageant. Or contest. Or race. Or whatever it is.” Her darting dishwater-hazel eyes fastened on Temple. “It’s time, isn’t it, to take Quincey out of this terrible place where people are dying?”
“The Elvises are dying,” Quincey wailed. “There’s only one Priscilla, and all I’ve gotten is spooked a little.” “A little spooking is too much.” Merle grabbed her daughter’s skinny arm. “I’ll get the hotel to stand behind me, if I have to. Enough is enough. Two men are dead. You have no business being here.”