“Just a stripper.” Buchanan’s answer shocked Temple out of her newfound empathy. “One of the girls.”
“Why should Molina suspect you of doing it, even though you found her?”
His languid eyes eeled away from her direct gaze. “I... might have... asked her out.”
“Asked her out? Or picked her out? Did you walk up and ask her out, or did you sidle by and play with her hair, the edges of her feathered costume, then glide away before she could object? Did you hang around, annoy her, make a nuisance of yourself? Get noticed by everyone else?”
“What are you trying to do? Turn a few friendly overtures into a sexual harassment case?”
“Listen, C.B., your idea of friendly overtures to the opposite sex falls somewhere between a boa constrictor’s and a caveman’s.”
The heavy hospital door hushed open. Temple whirled, hoping a nurse hadn’t caught her being unsympathetic with a sick man.
The overhead florescent pulled the features of the dishwater-brunette who entered into a lugubrious mask, but she was no nurse. A teenage girl with a sullen, pimple-dotted face shadowed her.
The two advanced to Buchanan’s bedside.
“Merle,” he introduced the woman, as if her first name were all that was necessary.
“We’d gone to the cafeteria for a bite,” Merle apologized to Temple. “I came straight from work and never stopped at home.” She glanced with quick concern to Buchanan. “What about your fish? When should I feed them?”
“Tonight when you get home will be fine,” he said shortly.
The silence stretched out like a patient anesthetized upon a table. Temple studied the mousy woman across the white sheets. A pleasant, not striking face. Little makeup. Why did downtrodden women always seem to have pale eyelashes, so their sad eyes floated in a flesh-colored aspic that emphasized their bland passivity?
The young girl, the woman’s daughter by every other feature, on the other hand, burned. Burning, Blackboard Jungle teenage eyes missed nothing and judged everything. Everyone.
The pitiful twosome should have strengthened Temple’s resolve to keep out of Buchanan’s business. Instead they sealed her fate.
“Okay,” she told the man in the bed linens. “I’ll go on with the show. It’s being held at the Goliath, isn’t it?”
He nodded.
“My favorite hotel,” Temple added darkly. The Mystifying Max had just finished an engagement at the Goliath when he disappeared.
She tried to edge inconspicuously out of the room, but Merle and daughter followed her out into the hall.
“He says he’ll be all right,” Temple repeated dutifully.
Merle nodded, her wan features slack with worry. “The heart attack was minor, although it’ll be an adjustment. The notoriety—”
“He loves it,” the teenager put in.
Temple searched discreetly for a wedding ring on Merle’s left hand and found none. The daughter’s ears dangled an intriguing array of silver scorpions, spiders and peace symbols. Her features were still blurred in her pale, blotched skin, but Temple discerned some fine bones and a future beauty peeking past the studied disdain that drew her youthful lips and eyes dolefully down.
“Quincey—!” Merle admonished her daughter. “Crawford has had some terrible shocks. Can't you forget your everlasting wrangles even in the face of illness?”
The girl looked down at her thin arms folded over her barely there breasts. She gave no answer except the unspoken “Oh, Mother...” screaming from her stance and expression.
Sweet sixteen, and stuck with Crawford Buchanan for a stepfather of sorts, Temple guessed, for this gangly, tall girl could never be his natural issue.
“Thank you, Miss Barr.” Merle ignored her daughter’s disregard. “C.B.’s spoken of you so frequently. I knew we could count on you.”
“No trouble,” Temple assured her insincerely. She glanced once more at Quincey, who was leaning against the wan wall making Kim Basinger lips, then left on the echoing click of her high heels.
A live-in girlfriend, she mused in disgust, but that didn’t prevent him making bachelor noises. Maybe this murder would scare Crawford Buchanan straight and make him stick closer to home. Not that Quincey would appreciate that.
Temple reconsidered. There was something worse than having Crawford Buchanan for a quasiprofessional colleague. Oh, to be in the Terrible Teens and have Crawford Buchanan for a stepfather!
8
Dance of Death
I have drifted off again, at which I am most adept, until I am unduly awakened by Miss Temple Barr's impetuous return.
"Oh, Louie!” my little doll cries upon finding me ensconced on her queen-sized bed in a dark lit only by the night-light.
It is not the greeting of joy and affection it should be, although she promptly sweeps me into her arms.
“My Hanae Mori silk dress!" she wails, as little dolls will when they are irked for no good reason.
I am deposited upon a cold, uncrumpled portion of the comforter while she snatches my warm, comfy resting place from the bed. She waltzes around the room holding it at arm’s length—first to the light switch, which she flicks on, the better to shrink my wide-open irises into thin, light-bedazzled slits.
While I am blinking in confusion she is brushing at the garment in question and interrogating the air. “Why did he have to lie right there? Why did he have to paw it into a ball?”
Miss Temple Barr may have her strong points, but an understanding of the masculine feline mind is not among them.
She hangs the injured dress in the closet and takes off her high heels as if sinking three inches in height mirrors an inner droop. “I know it was not intentional, Louie,” she announces with a sigh, "any more than Crawford Bloody Buchanan meant to find a body and have a heart attack. But it is aggravatingly inconvenient.”
Having expressed herself, she proceeds to disrobe while I take a gentlemanly clue and turn myself to face in another direction. Miss Temple Barr's dramatic return, and dislodging of myself, has reminded me of my own trauma of the morning.
I picture my discreet arrival at the Goliath via the rear service entrance. The approach is the most delicate maneuver. My sable silhouette shows up to great advantage against the pale, sun-washed exterior. I pause in the shadow of a Dumpster and watch the door with narrowed eyes. Legs come and go, and finally one pair comes out followed closely by a linen trolley. Before you can say “Nostradamus,” I am darting past the racket of the wheels and merging into the interior shade.
My feet have pounded most of the Strip's hardest and hottest pavements, but they are not too jaded to appreciate a cool expanse of vinyl tile. I pussyfoot down the hall, my nose for news leading me past the clattering hotel kitchens and into the guest areas. Here my already silent steps are buffered by plush, well-padded carpeting in a pattern I can only describe as “Hairball Revisited” or “Goliath Buffet Regurgitated.” It is a good thing that my breed is not fussy about colors (except in the instance of choosing flattering backgrounds), or I would be seasick and add to the psychedelic ambience underfoot.
No one notices my presence. I am a past master at darting into the dark side of a cigarette stand, into the shadowy underside of a potted palm, around the nearest corner.