“Okay. There’s my money. Count me in.” The motorcycle moll moved on.
Temple backtracked, catching Lindy about to slip the entrant’s sheet into a red manila folder. “Who was that masked woman?”
“The one in the sunglasses? I don’t know. Never heard of or saw her before. That’s not odd. She’s in the Over-Sexty division.”
“What did she put down on her form?”
Lindy pouted in concentration. “This has gotta be only her stage name. That’s all we require.”
“Which is—?”
“ ‘Moll Philanders.’ I don’t get it.”
“I do! Any address?” Temple twisted to read it upside down. Then she cased the cocktail area, looking for a figure that reminded her of Elton John in drag.
The phantom contestant had settled at the Four Hunks’ table. Temple’s jaw dropped. The woman finally whipped off her seventies wraparound sunglasses to reveal green, snakeskin-patterned eyelids outlined in black glitter. The Fab Four obviously found the effect awesome. They were hooting and laughing and nodding their trendily styled heads.
While they were thus diverted, Electra Lark looked coolly in Temple’s direction and winked.
Temple turned again and hobbled out—yes, limping now, and so tired she thought that she saw a black cat dash from the shadow of one table-underside to another. Why .just “a” black cat. Why not...?
“Et tu, Louie?” she muttered darkly. She had been naive to think he would meekly go home just because he’d been discovered. Had she, when Molina had told her to? At least the lissome Yvette was zipped up tight for the night.
She sat in the Storm after she finally pulled into the Circle Ritz lot and turned off the motor, sensing the temperature change as the icy interior air slowly warmed to the hot sun.
Her face felt like an aching mask, her body like it wore an iron cast. She hated to give the Mother Machree of the LVMPD any credit, but she did indeed need a rest.
Temple extracted herself from the car, free to groan now that no one could hear, and stumbled inside. No one joined her on the elevator or passed her in the hall, but that was typical. Most residents had nine-to-five jobs that kept them away for predictable hours.
At the turn of a key she was home again. The condo was empty, cool, serene. She stood motionless beside the door, trying to sense any intruder. Then she slipped off her shoes and peeked into the office and the bedroom in turn, but the condo was secure. Hers alone. Sometimes that unplanned solitariness wasn’t too bad.
After rummaging in the refrigerator, she came up with a bacon-bit, tomato, lettuce and tuna sandwich. Had to polish off the open tuna can left over from—hah!—breakfast. A generous mound of Free-to-Be-Feline sat in the bowl, untouched.
She bent to haul the half-liter bottle of Blush Light from the bottom cabinet and pried off its metallic collar with her long, strong fingernails. Lacking the energy to stretch up for the wineglasses on the highest shelf, she paused. Inside the lower cupboard she found an odd, root-beer mug, filled it with ice and poured in the pale coral wine.
“So it’s crass to have wine over ice,” she told her ever-present Invisible Critic. “I am home alone, and I’m going to relax and enjoy it.”
She headed for the bedroom, dragging her tote bag over the crook of one arm, her hands full of tuna sandwich and a frosty mug of wine.
One high heel was left high and dry in the living room. The other was walked out of, left standing solitary in the bedroom doorway. The moment the tote hit the unmade bed, Temple pulled out the day’s notes. Cheyenne’s card fell to the coverlet. Did he do massages? Prob-ab-lee. She dropped the card on the nightstand and laid her glasses atop it.
The tiled bathroom awaited like a Big White Set from a thirties Astaire/Rogers movie—sleek, moderne and ready to reverberate. The elderly white porcelain tub was long, deep enough to drown in and had a divinely wide, old-fashioned rim.
She turned the faucets to the position where hot and cold blended into a pulsing stream of pure nirvana, set her sandwich and mug on the tub edge, and began peeling off her clothes—slowly, not like a stripper, but like someone whose muscles screamed at every motion.
For once Temple was grateful that the fifties bathroom did not, repeat, did not sport a full-length mirror. Temple leaned over the pedestal sink to check her face in the mirror-fronted medicine cabinet mounted above it. Thanks to the would-be Westmore brothers’ impromptu facial behind the Goliath, she could skip eye shadow for several days. Technicolor bruises tinted the skin around her eyes, and now were turning a rotten-banana yellow along the edges. Yellow Was a sign of healing, but also too ugly to disguise as a heavy hand with the magenta and purple eyeshadow.
She stood on tiptoe to peek at the bruises on her torso. Still at the blue-plum stage in size and color, ugly and deep. Temple winced to realize that, despite their best efforts, those men hadn’t really gotten around to seriously hurting her.
From the now-muffled rush of the faucet, she sensed that the bathwater was rising. She dipped in a toe, then climbed over the high edge and sat gingerly, her skin twitching at the sudden lap of hot water before settling into it like a nervous cat into a petting hand. Aaah. She lay back, munched some sandwich, sat up to chugalug a little wine.
She thought of Electra going undercover at a strippers’ convention, and laughed. Moll Philanders, indeed! Crazy old girl. And was Louie really still on the premises, or had she hallucinated him? Not to worry, not with two prime crime solvers like Louie and Electra on the scene in her stead. Sure.
Temple sighed as a sense of slow draining dripped down her arms like an IV of molasses-thick wine. Tension and worry were siphoning down her fingertips into the warm water. The tub was deep and long enough to float in when it was filled to the top. It would be, because she had bought this plastic thingamajig that sealed off the overflow drain, just so she could float like she had when she was a kid. The advantage of being petite.
So Temple drifted in the soapless, clear water like a fetus in amniotic fluid, detached, isolated, the seeds of future thoughts spinning disconnectedly around her.
This is Wednesday. The contest is Saturday, when Daddy Gold Dust is in for a big surprise. Three more days to get through before it’s all over. And it is all over for Dorothy and Kitty. Kitty. Another “y”-ending name. Had Kitty been the birthday girl on the cake? Was her real name Katharine? Sure. Katharine, that was what she had been called in grade school, the name that the scared kid peeking out from the costume niche had used. Kitty had come later, Kitty for short. Kitty was tougher, Kitty had reason to be. Poor kids. One dead on Monday, one on Tuesday.
Temple sat up with a splash. Monday’s death, and Tuesday’s. And Monday’s child is fair of face, but Tuesday’s child is... far to go? No. Works for a living? No. Monday’s child is fair of face, and Tuesday’s child is... all space. Ace. Mace. Place. Is bace/dace/face/gace/ hace/jace/case/lace! Is lavender and lace? Mace/nace/pace/ race/tace—trace/brace/grace. Grace.
Tuesday’s child is full of grace! Not anymore.
She leaned forward to jerk the faucets shut, then stopped, grabbing the porcelain tub grips, dripping onto her sandwich as she stepped down to the bath mat and pulled the towel off the chrome bar behind her.
The hotel-size Turkish towel swaddled her like a graceless sari. At six-four, Max couldn’t stand squinky towels. She waddled, wet and enervated, into the bedroom to dial the Goliath. Still knew the main switchboard number by heart.
She asked for Lieutenant Molina, and finally got her. Then she told her the theory.
Silence. “You think the killer is following this nursery rhyme?” Molina asked. “Just because you linked the two victims to the first couple lines?”