I am about to take matters in their foreordained direction, when my alert senses detect voices growing louder in the hall. I have not been forewarned by the sound of nearing shoes, a puzzlement that immediately becomes an annoyance.
“Quick!” I hiss at the Divine Yvette, slapping the empty carrier farther into the shadows and pushing my companion rather rudely underneath the sofa.
Not a moment too soon. A trio of feet enter, two bare but painted with the gaudy color of the twenty-four-carat trim on a Cadillac Seville, the other wearing black sneakers. No wonder I heard no approach. Beside me, Yvette's airy whiskers tremble at the dust we have bestirred beneath the sofa, but I clap a paw over her nose before she sneezes.
“Here it is,” announces one of the barefoot girls with cheek of gold (from my position I can see more of the scenery than the Divine Yvette).
"Let me finish you off,” a new voice suggests.
I hear a plastic cap being unscrewed and am nearly leveled by a strong odor with an undertone of glycerine. Beside me, the Divine Yvette trembles in fear.
I begin to appreciate her reaction, for I do not like what is transpiring in the room beyond us one bit. The two girls talk, as girls will who are undressed and used to it, of many things.
“We have never argued like this before,” one says apologetically.
“That's because we never faced the past” the other answers.
“Your past,” the first says, “is not my past.”
A silence increases the tension. Then the second girl says, “Be sure to leave an apple-sized spot.”
And the first says, “Oooh, that’s cold. Oh, well, almost done.” And the second says, "I feel kind of... faint”
And the first says, “Gypsy?”
Next I hear the boneless thump of a body to hard concrete. The Divine Yvette’s body is plastered to mine. I can feel her heart beating like a berserk metronome. Peering out with my chin on the floor, I see a golden horizon of legs and arms and torso. Another golden girl bends down beside the first, utters a little Yvette-like cry, and crumples beside the first.
Beyond them stands Black Legs. I curse myself for not peeking sooner and tense to spring out for a good look. What can Black Legs do to me?
The Divine Yvette curls her long nails into my shoulders, clinging for dear life. If I shoot out from under the sofa now, I will scrape her off like yesterday's mud.
While I watch helplessly, Black Legs leaves on quiet cat feet, unidentified.
28
Louie Takes a Powder
Matt Devine was shadowboxing, Asian-style, by the pool when Temple returned to the Circle Ritz at four that afternoon.
She paused under the shade of the solitary palm to watch until he finished an arcane sequence, straightened and smiled at her.
“Did your regular caller reach you last night?” she asked.
He shook his head and walked over. His white exercise clothes were clean and unwrinkled. Nothing about him spoke of heat or effort. The man was supernaturally cool, Temple thought, not for the first time. Yet his face was troubled.
“She didn’t call. If she hasn’t—I doubt she will again.”
“What do you think happened?” Temple asked with concern. She hated people dropping out of her life before their stories were resolved. Matt made his living by dealing with such frustration.
Matt sat on the lounge chair, despite its dusting of wind-blown oleander petals. “What happened? Good or bad. Nothing in between. She could have solved her problem and left the abusive guy. She could have gone back to him, broken. I’ll never know.”
“You’re sure about that?”
“I’ve got a feeling. That’s what you go by when you counsel people over the phone, in the dark. Instinct. I feel that... she’s gone, one way or the other.”
“She was in an abusive relationship, but had hopes of getting out?”
“Yeah.” He regarded her with new curiosity. “Not a new story.”
“And she had called every day until, was it Tuesday night?”
“When I wasn’t there, right,” he answered a bit self-accusingly.
“Hey, she still didn’t call, even if you had been there. Ever think of it that way, Mr. Guilt Trip?”
He smiled ruefully. “You’re looking better, and you must be feeling better, if you’re delivering pep talks. When are you going to get serious about working out, learning some self-defense?”
Temple sighed heavily, then sat on the end of the lounge chair now that Matt’s weight stabilized it. The shade was pleasant, the sound of the muted traffic predictable, almost peaceful.
“When I feel up to physical education. Right now, I could use a pep talk myself,” she admitted. “They found two more bodies this morning.”
“What?” Matt sat up so quickly that the lounge foot almost collapsed.
“Hey! Yes, now it’s four dead in all. Not even Rambo could stop the national press from overrunning the event—although the organizers seem strangely indifferent to the notoriety. Molina and the Metropolitan police force are convinced they’re after a serial killer hung up on sexy women. They’ve got enough uniformed officers running around the Goliath to make them part of every act. Oh. And Crawford Buchanan showed up today. He’s doing just dandy, well enough to be out working on a sleazy tell-all about this mess for the Las Vegas Scoop.”
“What about your theory?”
“That,” she said darkly. “Molina gave me the birth dates for ‘fair of face’ and ‘full of grace,’ but now that ‘full of woe’ has been knocked piewacky—two dead at once and a day skipped—I don’t feel like pursuing my fantasies. At least I was able to help Molina.”
“That would be the day. How?”
“I’d talked to the victims—twin-sister strippers, who went by the names of June and Gypsy.”
“They were twins?”
She nodded. “Did an act in metallic body paint as the Gold Dust Twins. That’s what killed them, the paint. I’d talked to them about how lethal that stuff can be if you don’t leave a bare patch of skin somewhere to breathe. From what Molina said—and this was before the autopsy—there weren’t any obvious bare spots. And they knew better.”
“So the killer had to get close enough to paint them without their getting suspicious before it was too late?” Temple nodded, then bit her lip. “Unless... they’d been quarreling. Gypsy had invited their father to the competition without June’s knowledge. She claimed he had sexually abused her as a child, but June denied it.”
“Not uncommon. Denial is the backbone of the dysfunctional family.”
“But it would be weird, to abuse one twin daughter and not the other. Maybe the father told himself it didn’t count that way. Anyway, June was against Gypsy’s ‘statement.’ So one or the other of them could have painted her twin solid gold, waited for her to collapse, and finished painting herself completely then.”
Temple watched Matt absorb her somewhat confusing scenario.
“Murder-suicide. It’s possible.” Matt rubbed his chin, an unnecessary gesture. With his blond coloring, he’d never suffer from five-o'clock shadow. “Did you get the twins’ birth dates?”
“Why bother? Molina gave me the first two, but now my theory is impossible. Besides, Molina isn’t talking to me unless it’s an interrogation.”
“When has it been any different between you and Lieutenant Molina? In the meantime, why don’t you check on the birth dates you’ve already got?” '
“Is that therapy, counselor?”
“Common sense. Use what you have.”