I do not like this one tiny bit, but what can I do when the resident cats are so naïve and keep their eyes and ears to themselves? There is something to be said for the School of Hard Knocks, of which I am a magna cum laude graduate.
Osama bin Laden could hide out at Chez Molina and go unheralded and unmolested if it were up to these striped feline couch spuds.
Twinkle, Twinkle,
Little Star
“Welcome to my little corner of MTV hell,” Molina said as Temple stepped into the bedroom. “Is it possible you’re still young enough to understand these teenagers nowadays?”
“Not really. I just look like I am. It’s one of my greatest crosses to bear.”
“‘Crosses to bear’? You get that talk from our favorite radio talk-show host?”
“Guilty.”
“Aren’t we all? I want you to sit down and look at this Web site I found bookmarked on Mariah’s computer.”
Temple did as instructed, noting Molina’s waxen, taut features under the atypical makeup. That didn’t get there in one night of panic about her missing daughter. She had been sick, very sick. And then this. Temple was ambushed by a pang of sympathy.
A click revealed Crawford’s smirking face. His dark hair with the silver froth at the neck had been pompadoured for the photo, giving him a shocking resemblance to Dick Clark, prestroke.
“Euw,” Temple couldn’t help muttering.
Molina literally hung over her, a hand on the back of her chair and another on the desktop. “My reaction exactly. Tell me he’s a harmless little worm.”
“Mostly. He’s a hustler when it comes to drumming up buzz for his PR business, and an old-style sexist, of course.”
“What do you mean by ‘old style’?”
“Harmless but annoying. Treating women with a wink and a nod, thinking he’s so suave.”
“His private life?”
“The usual mousy girlfriend. His stepdaughter is a heller, just barely the right side of being a candidate for juvie hall through high school. She has a yen to be a star.”
“Don’t they all nowadays. Damn American Idol!”
“You sing. Wouldn’t you have taken a shot if it had been around when you were young?”
“I was never young,” Molina said acidly.
Temple believed her, but wondered why that was so.
“What do you think of this ‘teen starlet’ site he has going?” Molina pushed.
Temple clicked on the interior pages, then checked out the mini-movies and the visitor stats at the bottom of the homepage.
“It’s cheesy,” she said, “but it’s hitting a nerve by tracking all the auditions and contestants for these national reality TV shows. The writers’ strike a couple years ago was a bonanza for reality TV shows new and old. Cheap to produce, with free ‘talent.’ This site is a Dream Machine for every wanna-be kid out there, with Buchanan pretending he can be the wish-granting genie. You think this is what lured Mariah away?”
“If she’s been lured, which I hope not, given the alternatives. It’s a pedophile’s dream site, isn’t it?”
“Maybe not. The girls and boys who posted photo bios here seem pretty sophisticated about selling themselves and their talents. Predators like greener pastures, as in naïve, don’t you think?”
“What makes you an expert?”
“You asked me here? Look. I have to keep up on pop culture trends in my business. I’ve got a brain. I used to report for the TV news. Kids, especially girls, are being pushed into premature speculations about their futures, their chances of being something special. I wonder where the kidhood has gone these days when JonBenét Ramsey looks more like a pioneer than a sad miniature imposter of a grown-up girl.”
“She was killed more than a decade ago and her murderer was never found.”
Temple bit her lip.
“Here.” Molina reached past her to click the mouse a couple of times.
Mariah’s face gazed up from a homemade glamour photo– style shot that was more laughable than alluring.
Temple sat back. “Ah. Reminds me of the time my best friend Amy and I took our own secret ‘portfolio photos.’ Nothing digital then. We had to have them developed on the sly and hide the snapshots.”
“All girls do this?”
“You didn’t? You’re a performer, for heaven’s sake, and a hell of a good one.”
A flush of color made the unheard-of cosmetic blusher on Molina’s olive-toned cheeks look downright feverish and her blue eyes absolutely electric. The woman should wear a little cream blush, at least after working hours. Or maybe she didn’t have any of those.
“I didn’t perform at that young an age, except in the school choir.”
“What I’m saying is that Mariah may look a little dopey, but this star thing is nothing any girl her age doesn’t dream of, or try nowadays.”
“For the big bad world to see?”
“That’s a danger. Kids being normal can be used and taken advantage of. Girls just want to have fun, but not every one is as sophisticated as Cyndi Lauper.” Temple eyed the site. “You think Mariah is out there chasing these auditions? There’s one in Arizona this weekend. Would she really run off and do this?”
“I’d say no, but she wasn’t unaccounted for then. There’s something else I want to show you.”
Molina grimly manipulated the mouse to another site, the Teen Queen house.
“The show Mariah and I crashed,” Temple noted. “I didn’t know they still had a site up.”
“And how.”
A few clicks brought up the mini-screen of an online podcast.
After a minute or so, Temple explored the site further, and gasped. A whole three Web pages on little her.
She could watch herself as Zoe Chloe Ozone being interviewed by judges, acting out, rapping out her number, doing the Gidget-gone-Goth-girl act she’d used to go undercover on the reality TV show.
Molina clicked farther down before Temple had time to enjoy her fifteen minutes of fake fame.
The cursor blinked on the stat logo at the page’s bottom.
“Six hundred and sixty-five thousand hits? Since a few weeks ago?”
“You’re a star,” Molina said, deadpan. “And you’re going out into the unreal world again to meet your rabid fans while you look for my daughter in this nutsy subculture before some murderous freak finds her.”
“You can’t make me.”
“Oh, I probably can, but I think you’ll want to do it. This is serious. I’ll provide protection, you’ll get a hell of story out of it for whatever, your PR business, your ego, your eagerness to make the world right for fools and dreamers and thirteen-year-old kids who need a friend.”
“Mariah’s absence is probably just a kiddish misadventure. You’ll find her safe and really sorry at some regional mall where she got brushed off.”
“Good. That’s the best-case scenario.”
“And the worst?”
“That the worst will find her before we do.”
We.
Temple got it. Zoe Chloe Ozone, unintended hottie Internet freak, could go anywhere on-and off-line, and snoop.
“The black wig, again?”
“Blond never did it for Zoe. She lost the competition’s final performance as a blonde. Black is the best disguise.”
Temple absorbed all the bad news. Given the prominence of teen and preteen female pop stars, it was only natural that talented kids like Mariah would want to try it. Back in the film industry’s silent days, pretty girls as young as fourteen flocked to Hollywood, snagging adult roles. Many had their mothers, as stage-happy as their daughters, along as managers.
Temple studied Molina, grim, hollow-eyed, strained. She’d obviously been ill, and now this. Of course, a starstruck girl would hardly want even a healthy police lieutenant as an accomplice. Mother and daughter’s common singing talent was working to separate, rather than unite, them. That was a pity. Or . . . could it ultimately carve out some common ground?