Temple shivered. She thought she heard footsteps on the slick surface, felt disembodied heavy breathing on the back of her neck. At least she didn’t have to bring the news of this death to a loved one, like Danny.
All she had to do was remain calm and alert the authorities. But Temple suddenly felt so very alone by her trusty cell phone. She could call Max, but he wasn’t answering lately. She’d never called Matt much and hated to involve him further. Maybe Electra was right: she’d blown it. Two men interested in her, once so close and yet so far lately. Now this, the second murder on her professional turf; a dead body to watch twisting slowly in the wind of the air conditioning, and who was she gonna call? Ghostbusters?
Why not the police? They’d be more likely to come running than any significant other male recently, except for Midnight Louie. She had Molina’s number on her instant-dial list, but Temple’s finger just wouldn’t go running to Molina. She’d call the general number and let police routine have its way.
She didn’t want to attract Molina’s attention to her any more than she had to. Or to Matt, who had actually become involved with Maylords through Janet. Or to Max, though he was miles away from this crime milieu, unlike the last one they all had in common, thank God. She was looking out for her friends and lovers. Lover.
Where the heck was Max keeping himself these days any-way?
Chapter 40
Witless Protection
Program
Temple perched on the leopardskin chaise longue on the perimeter of Simon’s vignette, feeling more like prey than predator.
Beyond her crime-scene technicians videotaped and photographed the gruesome Halloween poster child that Beth Blanchard had become.
Opposite Temple sat two of C. R. Molina’s best: detectives Morrie Alch and Merry Su.
Their eyes were set in deep-purple bezels of fatigue. You could tell they’d been on the Maylords case-now cases-night and day.
Alch was a comfortably fifties guy. Not the era, the age bracket. He did not have abs or eye pouches of steel, but he broadcast a laid-back sort of humanity that was very refreshing in the 24/7 Las Vegas world.
Su … well, she was a shih tzu (not feng shui) on amphetamines. Pure canine tacking machine in a tiny overachieving body even smaller than Temple’s.
“Why did you come early to the Maylords reception?” Su’s black felt-tip pen was poised, like a dagger, to strike.
Alch wielded a pencil, a mellow yellow number two. And he seemed ready to cut Temple a break. “So you do PR for Maylords as well as the Crystal Phoenix?”
“Maylords is a new client,” Temple told Alch, ignoring Su. Probably not a good idea, but comforting.
“And you knew Beth Blanchard?” Su asked.
” ‘Knew’ is too strong a word. I ‘encountered’ her in the store, during the course of doing my job.” ” ‘Encountered.’ Was it friendly?”
“Absolutely, Detective Su. I’m a PR person. All my encounters are friendly, or I’m out of a job.”
“So it wouldn’t have been friendly if your job hadn’t depended upon it?”
Before Temple could rise to that occasion and protest too much, Alch intervened.
“Miss Barr means that she had no personal relationships with anyone on staff.”
Su’s face tightened into an I-don’t-believe-in-sugar-plumfairies visage. “I’ll be the judge of what Ms. Barr means.”
Uh-oh. Someone had been taking Molina lessons. Temple quirked a knowing smile at Alch.
He quirked back, which annoyed Su no end.
“Tell us,” Alch suggested, “everything about how you found the body.”
Temple told it.
Then they asked her about the deceased.
She wasn’t willing to cite Glory Diaz as a source. “Fag hag” sounded a bit prejudicial, to everybody.
“She had an abrasive personality,” Temple settled on saying. “How abrasive?” Su asked. Abrasively.
“Like number-thirty sandpaper.”
Su consulted Alch.
“The coarse-grained, really rough stuff,” he explained. “Will wear down steel.”
“What you say,” Su allowed, “agrees with information we got from other employees.”
“In fact,” Alch said, “Blanchard was a chief suspect in the Simon Foster killing.”
Su scowled at him like a foo dog on palace guard duty for revealing that.
“What motive?” Temple asked.
“None of your business,” Su said.
“Actually, yes, it is. I am PR maven for this enterprise. Do you have any idea of what having blinking police-car headache racks circling the front door and ambulances screaming away and crime-scene technicians crawling all over the expensive wool area rugs can do to a glitzy furniture store opening, and only me here to fend off every kind of media from the local sharks to Hollywood Access and Women’s Wear Daily?”
“My Jimmy Choos bleed for you,” Su said sarcastically.
Temple gawked at the detective’s size three feet (her own were a comparatively large five), but saw only Sam and Libby’s retro-Mary Janes, clunky but cool. Probably a kids’ size.
“Anyway,” Temple said, “it behooves me to help the police as much as possible and get this opening extravaganza done with as little bad publicity as possible while still keeping Maylords in the feature spotlight. So I need to know what’s happening to keep the media out of my hair, and yours. Getting back to Beth Blanchard. Are you thinking she was indulging in sexual harassment?”
“Obsessive crush,” Alch explained. “Discovered the object of her affections was gay.”
“That wouldn’t be front-page news around here:’ Temple said. “Straight guys are the exception.”
“Some women do have a habit of falling for the unobtainable.” Su’s dark eyes drilled into Temple’s as if she had secret information about her soul.
Tell me about it, Temple thought. “I believe they’re called fag hags,” she said instead. Demurely.
Alch’s shaggy pepper-and-salt eyebrows raised at her use of the term. Her father all over again!
Su zeroed in. “What might Amelia Wong have to do with this Maylords bunch?”
“Very little. She’s high-cost, hired-celebrity help. She comes in for an outrageous amount of money, does her media thing for a week, and is soon off to some other continent.““She has had death threats.”
“I’ve heard. So has every other media household name.”
“First a serious sniper shooting,” Su said, “that almost smacks of terrorism. Something distant and impersonal, more
directed against an institution, a building, than the people in it. Then a knifing and the display of the corpse in an outr� location. The prize Murano. Somebody was saying this Simon Foster was a prize nobody could have. So we’re talking a personal target, an intimate suspect. Love triangle maybe. Now a second stabbing, with an even more elaborate display of the victim. Plus the overkill of the knife and the picture wire.”
“You’re thinking Blanchard killed Foster, and then someone killed Blanchard? Revenge for the first killing?”
“Blanchard was … mounted in the late Simon Foster’s design area. Apparently she took it upon herself to rearrange the works of others. Now she herself has ended up ‘rearranged’ into a gruesome addition to the first victim’s interior design.”
Alch clapped softly. “Nicely done. A design for dying.”
Su did not pause for praise, but thumbed through her notes. “Are you familiar with a Janice Flanders?”
“I was familiar with her name, as an artist some friends of mine … admired. I only met her last week, here at Maylords, where she’s now an employee.”
“Apparently she was one of the people irritated by Beth Blanchard, but she was the only one to protest in a formal memo to management.”
“If you’ve met Janice, you know that she’s not afraid to speak out.”