My Miss Temple is no slug herself when it comes to slingbacks. She has a world-class high heel collection, including one covered
with diamond-bright Austrian crystals. These updated Cinderella slippers bear my likeness in coal black crystal on the heels, so you could say they come with a Prince Charming attached. You could say it. I cannot, without sounding conceited. I guess the true Prince Charming in this case is Mr. Stuart Weitzman, who designed the fabled footwear.
But, hark, my Miss Temple addresses the mirror one last time.
“Well, I cannot dally.” She spins from the mirror to snatch up a burgundy patent-leather tote bag that matches her burgundy patent-leather Nine West clogs. (Now that Miss Temple has discovered platform clogs increase her height by two to three inches without the need for stiletto heels, she reserves her high-rise shoes for dress-up.) Also, she can outrun crooks better in clogs, crooks being a little hobby of hers ever since I have known her.
The fact is that I am the pro PI in our m�nage a deux here at the Circle Ritz. Still, Miss Temple is racking up quite a crime-busting r�sum� of her own … for a two-footed amateur sleuth.
Mind you, she is cute (which some benighted souls have erroneously said of me, to their regret) and smart. But I never like my mysteries dominated by little doll amateurs, even if those little dolls are my own personal property.
I hear Miss Temple scrape the car keys off the coffee table in the living room. A moment later the door plays patty cake with an open-and-shut case. I am alone in our digs at last.
I jump down from the zebra-pattern coverlet that is such an excellent backdrop for my midnight good looks and pad into
the living room.
The Las Vegas papers, both morning and evening, are splayed open on the coffee table. Both feature ballyhoo about the imminent advent of the “dowager empress of enterprising interior designs, Amelia Wong.” The accompanying photo pictures a domestic dominatrix of sleek but severe expression. I would not want to meet her in a dark disco.
Hmmm. I wonder briefly if I should tail my little doll to her meeting with this media Medusa. But, no. She is thirty now. It is time I let her face the big, bad world on her own occasionally. Since she is an ace PR freelancer with enough charm to sell Cheerios
to Eskimos, I am sure she will handle the upcoming challenge with almost the same skill I would.
I settle into my favorite snoozing spot on the couch … dead center, stretched full out, so no one can sit there until I vacate the
premises, and especially not if I garf up a hairball … and soon tiptoe through the catnip-dusted tulips of dreamland.
Chapter 3
Live at High Noon
Temple parked her so-new-it-squeaked red Miata convertible behind Gangsters Casino, a three-story building designed to evoke a Prohibition speakeasy.
She didn’t have to put up the car’s top because it had never been down. Wouldn’t want to ruffle her hair-sprayed headful of natural curls before she met the great goddess Wong.
It wasn’t as if Temple was part of the Wong entourage and needed to meet and greet the incoming party. She was strictly a local liaison. But the first Wong media appearance was at a TV station where Temple, as a local public relations freelancer, was definitely persona grata. So she was here to grease everyone else’s wheels, and this rendezvous had been prearranged. She would ride alone in the limo to the airport. There she’d meet Wong and entourage in the private jet area. Then they all would wheel away to a full day’s program of promotional appearances.
Temple was uneasy with the arrangement. First, she liked to drive more than she liked to be driven, even in a block-long limo. And in Vegas, where the blocks were as long as the latest luxury hotel-casino grounds, stretch limos looked like they’d got their lube jobs on a medieval rack.
If you absolutely had to use a limo, though, Gangsters was the place to put up with. The stand-alone casino, having no attached hotel rooms to provide a gambling base, made its mark with a clever gimmick. It ferried customers to and from the major Strip hotels in an array of custom “gangland” limos.
The fanciful stretch limos and their gangster-suited chauffeurs had proven so popular that a separate limo biz evolved:
Gangsters Legendary Limos.
Temple walked in the warm morning sun to the small rental office, passing an awesomely long lineup of limos.
The Elvis model was a hot pink 1957 stretch Cadillac burnished with a hunka-hunka burning chrome. The Bugsy? That was a hump-backed black ’40s number emblazoned with real bullet holes. The Marilyn was a metallic platinum blond ’60s Chevy. And the Sinatra was a sleek ’70s felt-fedora gray Buick Park Avenue. Every limo was all-American vintage. No foreign models went on the rack at Gangsters.
More celebrity limos filled out the fleet, including the whitetiger-striped Siegfried and Roy, but today only these few sat idle on the lot, and the S&R model had been retired with honors after Roy Horn’s tragic onstage injuries a few months ago.
The limo Temple was to ride in had been selected for its feng shui political correctness: the Newman. It was the color of money, a green Lincoln.
This wasn’t an Irish green, or an olive green but a muted midtone green that Temple hoped would find favor with the feng shui maven. From her recent reading, green and blue both signified hope. Lord knew that Amelia Wong insisted on all the favorable signs for her expeditions.
Inside the air-conditioned building, Temple blew a soggy lock off her forehead. She approached the Edward G. Robinson clone manning the desk in a pinstriped dark wool suit despite the tropical-weight weather outside.
“I’m supposed to accompany the Wong party limo to the airport. My name is Temple Barr.”
“There are no wrong party limos here at Gangsters,” hecracked wise out the side of his mouth. “And Temple Bar is on
Lake Mead.”
“I am not the geographic Temple Bar,” she said. “I am the PR Temple Barr. Two r’s.”
He winked at her and checked a log book. “The Newman has been preempted by Warren Buffet, the financial whiz. You’re now in the Chan. Solid black. Around back?’ Hmmm, in the feng shui color system black signified power and authority (good), but also gloom and death (not good). Temple had read of a school called Black Sect Feng Shui, however, and hoped, greenly, that Amelia Wong liked it. Anyway, done was done.
Temple nodded and turned away. Then turned back. “Is that limo named for Charlie or Jackie?”
His shrug didn’t dislodge his Klingon-broad shoulder pads. “Black is for black belt. Who’s Charlie?”
“Never mind.” Temple hustled out into the heat again, carrying on a crabby interior monologue.
Who’s Charlie? Didn’t anyone watch vintage films anymore? Charlie Chan and his pithy Oriental wisdom and number-one son weren’t totally pass�. Hadn’t this skunk-striped bozo heard that Lucy Liu was going to star as Charlie Chan’s granddaughter in a new flick? Of course there’d be some Jackie Chan-style martial arts on display.
By now she was nearing the limo. The driver catapulted out of the front seat to hotfoot half a mile back to the rear door.
Somebody at Gangsters had tumbled to the Asian connection, but this driver looked Japanese. Uh-oh.
Temple ducked into the dim, cushy interior behind the India-ink window tint.
She was instantly tush-deep in kid-glove leather. Since she was so lightweight she couldn’t sink into beach sand with barbells on her ankles, this was some cushy cowhide!
The limo’s layout was fit for a rock band or a prom party. That meant seating in the squared round, like a ’60s conversation pit. Above Temple’s head was a limo-wide row of control buttons and LED readouts it would take a fighter pilot to master. Burlwood doors were sunk here and there into the limo upholstery. She was sure they concealed a TV, full bar, and plenty of snacks.