Выбрать главу

“What happened?” she asked Molina as she stepped down.

“Your theory got blown to Vancouver.”

“By another murder?”

“Two,” Molina said succinctly, starting down the hall.

Two, Temple thought. How did a killer mimic a one-a-day nursery rhyme with a double murder? He didn’t.

Temple hated the fact that she always had to trot to keep up with Molina. Down here on the concrete floor, her two little tootsies sounded like a convention of high-stepping hackney horses.

Molina led Temple to a dressing room across the hall from the ones she had visited. Temple noticed that the door to the big one was open, but the private one was shut.

This door was ajar. In the mirror Temple glimpsed something old—the Ashleigh mane of platinum blond hair... something new—the glitter of an evening gown draping the actress... something borrowed—a white square of handkerchief linen that could only belong to someone sensible. And something pink.

The woman was not so much sobbing as gasping for breath “Gone,” she wailed. “Just gone.” And then she gave a long, whining moan.

“Did she know the victims?” Temple asked in surprise.

“You tell me. They were found in her dressing room.”

“Who were they?”

“We’re still checking. Sister act.”

“Not... twins?”

Molina nodded. “Know them?”

“Met them. June and Gypsy... gone? How?”

“We don’t know yet.”

Temple was going to ask another question, but Molina forestalled her. “Look, they were found dead, naked except for a thin coat of gold paint. Identification’s been a little slow. Tracing the path of that gold paint down here has been a lot slower.”

“That’s why the area’s barred.”

“Right.”

“And Savannah Ashleigh found the body? Bodies.”

“Dialed nine-one-one. A perfect witness. Too shaken to leave the area. The first squad on the scene found her in the dressing room, like this.”

“Gone,” Savannah wailed again, in utter bereavement.

“I had no idea that they were that close,” Temple whispered.

“Whatever. See if you can settle her down. We can’t interrogate a siren.”

Temple edged into the room, seeing her cheerful outfit in the mirror. She felt like a clown, but there was no way to approach Savannah gently, not with these heels on this floor.

She slipped the shoes off and left them by the door. She could see in the mirror that, behind her, Molina lifted one eyebrow in mute surprise, like Mr. Spock. Come to think of it, they had a lot in common.

Temple approached Savannah. “Miss Ashleigh? Miss Ashleigh?”

At the sound of her own name, the panting picked up tempo. Savannah’s eyes were wide open and dazed, as was her mouth. Her long-nailed hands clutched the pink purse on her lap, twisting its straps, tightening on its sides as if it were dough she was kneading.

“Gone,” she repeated.

If Savannah Ashleigh had been able to put the variety of tone and inflection into her film lines that she put into that one word here, she would have had a remarkable career.

“Yes,” Temple said, “sometimes people are gone. But we are here.”

Savannah Ashleigh stared at her blankly.

“I’m Temple Barr, the new PR person. We talked Tuesday, remember? A lot of the national media is coming in for the show, did I tell you?”

Savannah’s head began shaking in petulant denial. “Media? What do I care? Gone! Gone, gone, gone!”

“I know it’s upsetting. I found someone dead once myself.”

“Dead? Dead... dead?” Her wide eyes went wild as her voice hit the high notes of hysteria. “She’s dead?”

“Both are dead.”

“Both. Both?”

Temple could see why Molina had let her talk to Savannah. She tried to picture the lieutenant subjected to one-word answers, repeated noisily and ad nauseam.

“That’s what the police say,” Temple said.

Savannah’s head bowed over her lap, over the pink bag in her lap. Her glamorous bleached platinum hair looked like an old woman’s disordered mop. And then Temple understood. She reached for the bag, but Savannah wailed and clutched it closer.

“Dead. And gone.”

Temple was at least able to pull off the woman’s hands and brush away enough hair to glimpse the “Yvette” sewn atop the bag—not a purse, but a cat carrier. From the crushing way the actress clutched it, the contents were obviously absent.

“What happened?” Temple asked. “You came in, went down to the dressing room, left Yvette and went upstairs again. When?”

The word “Yvette” worked wonders. Savannah looked up, her face as radiant with shared knowledge as young Helen Keller’s at the breakthrough moment in The Miracle Worker. No one had been speaking Savannah’s language before. She had been shocked to discover the bodies, but what had devastated her was simultaneously discovering the absence of her cat.

“Yvette,” she repeated in heartbreaking tones. “Who? Why?”

“Am I right? The dressing room was fine when you came in, changed and left Yvette?”

Savannah nodded through tears that would not fall, her face twisted into a mask of tragedy.

“What time was that?”

“Nine,” she wailed.”

“And when you came back?”

Savannah shook her head. Time was not a priority with her. “Later.”

“And the bodies were there, dead.”

Savannah nodded ponderously.

“You called nine-one-one?”

Another lethargic nod.

“And then you remembered Yvette and went back? That was very brave. But Yvette was gone.”

“Ye-es. Gone. You say dead—”

“Not Yvette. Not... yet. How could she have gotten away?”

Savannah’s Hollywood-white teeth bit her bottom lip until it matched their pallor. “I left her in her carrier and shut the door. I thought she was safe.” The sentence ended on another long wail. “Safe... safe,” Savannah repeated like a mantra, rocking. “What will... the killer do with Yvette? Do to Yvette? A killer’s got her!”

“Maybe Yvette ran out when the women or their murderer entered. Yes! She could be hiding among all the costumes down here. You know how cats are: won’t come out even though you beg and plead. Give it time. I’m sure she’s all right. Who would hurt a cat?”

“Think so?” Savannah was sniffling slightly now, a good sign that the hysterics were ebbing. She pressed the police-issue handkerchief to her delicate nose, then recoiled at the stiff linen and tossed it onto the dressing table.

“It’s the likeliest scenario,” Temple said. “Cats are too clever to get caught by anybody, even a murderer.”

“Yvette was so sweet, so trusting—”

“She’s still a cat, and you don’t often catch a cat napping when it comes to crime.”

Savannah nodded with childlike trust. Temple peeled her rigid hands away from the crumpled carrier.

“Yvette will need this when she comes home. Why don’t you leave it open down here? Give her a chance to come back and curl up when it’s quiet again. It’s only a matter of time.”

“Promise?” Savannah beseeched, her big hazel eyes floating in a pond of tears. “Promise she’ll come back?”

Oh, great, Temple thought even as she nodded reassuringly. Now she had to produce another missing cat at an event she was running, as well as face up to the fact that the puzzling and terrible death of two more women had proved her fiendishly clever murder theory was nothing more than child’s play.

27

Louie in a Jam

I am no Einstein (and would never allow my hair to go so obviously untended) but even a Roads Scholar of the self-made variety can see that the dressing rooms and ballroom of the Goliath Hotel are no fit environment for the likes of the Divine Yvette.

In fact, nothing would get me within one hundred yards of this scene of dirty dancing and naked death, were not this sweet little doll of my acquaintance in the vicinity. From the first, the Divine Yvette has been forced into a position that offers the worst of two worlds. She has been left untended, yet confined to a canvas cage. She had been abandoned and trapped at one and the same time.