Cat in a Hot Pink Pursuit (46 page)

"What did you think you were doing?”

Molina didn't waste words. Temple was in her office, which was a good sign. She doubted it was bugged but couldn't be sure. After living in the Teen Queen Castle, she was fairly paranoid. Police had a license to be tricky.

“I thought I'd lead Detective Alch to the person who'd killed Marjory Klein."

“Oh, you led Alch to something, all right. Another murder. And what the hell is going on with my daughter? You were supposed to protect her. Instead, your pet sleazebag is running loose on the premises and a pretty prime suspect for any and all of this."

“
I didn't know Rafi would be there. Savannah Ashleigh
hired him as a bodyguard. And Mariah's fine. Neither of them has a clue as to who is who. You really pulled the wool over Rafi's eyes. If he found out he had a kid, he'd probably stroke out and your problems would be over. In
fact, that might be a nice sneaky way to get rid of him for
ever."

“I wouldn't count on convenient acts of God to get you out of this mess. Some amateur sleuth you are. You just led Alch to Beth Marble. This woman turned out to be a victim, not a criminal."

“Why does her killer have to be Mrs. Klein's killer?"

“
We have a serial situation here. There was a young
girl killed in the parking lot outside the shopping mall where you and your . . . peers auditioned two weeks ago. We've found defaced posters of the show flyer all overthe place. Someone is targeting the competition and its entrants.”

Temple absorbed this, even the additional details, with no surprise. "Those were the arguments you used to blackmail me into becoming Mariah's chaperon. You've always suspected an outside stalker.”

Molina, her face sober to the point of grimness, nodded.

“
Look. I don't for a minute believe that you'd stab anyone in the heart . . . unless they were going after your
sainted
Max
Kinsella. You can bet I'd never turn my back
on you in that regard. But you've put me in an impossible
position. You were found where you were found. I had to
abstract you."

“'Abstract?' Like I'm a hologram you erase?"

“Abstract like 'take out' before you're taken out. First, I'd like to know why you thought Beth Marble killed Marjory Klein. It's quite a leap of logic."

“Who do you think killed Beth Marble?"

“Haven't a clue yet. She apparently was not only the mastermind behind this piece of reality TV tripe but her personality was all grins and roses. A cloying personality type, I grant you, but why target her as a killer?"

“Why should I tell someone who ridicules my deductions and jerks me around like a puppet?”

Molina leaned back in her skimpy executive chair, not
even big enough to hide a dead body. She tapped a pen on
her desktop.

“You build a good case, I'll buy it."

“And that's worth something?"

“
It's worth our deal about Kinsella continuing.”

“Okay. My reasons aren't entirely logical—"

“
So I've been telling you about Kinsella. But go on.”

“I just . . . felt from the first that the house's history
had something to do with the sinister goings-on now.”

“
'Sinister goings-on.' Very good. Very Agatha.
Go on."
Molina was always a hard house to play. "I think, from the old photos in your fairly lousy news-clipping copies, that Beth Marble was really that blonde trophy wife of yore, Crystal Cummings.”

Molina neither moved nor spoke.

“
After all, she didn't die in the attack years ago. She
just went off the radar after all the court trials and hoopla and her estranged husband's disappearance. So did her seriously wounded teenage daughter. They became the forgotten victims."

“
Have you any idea how many cold case files there
are? How many suspects and almost victims drift off into the great anonymity of modern life? It's easier to lose people than to find them."

“Exactly. But I figure that this poor kid, Crystal's
daughter, she would have had enormous emotional
trauma. Maybe enough to create an eating disorder,
which is a cry for control. Enter Marjory Klein, an inflexible, doctrinaire therapist. Believe me, I had to sit in her
office swallowing her legume regimen, and poor
Mariah—"

“What about 'poor' Mariah?"

“
You know Mrs. Klein was hard on her weight issue.”

“
Hispanic girls often have baby fat but they get it off later."

“
Right. A Weight Watcher would know, wouldn't she?”

Molina's face darkened but she didn't say anything.
Kids will blab. Temple felt her ground hardening under her.

“And you're only her mother and Mariah was only in Mrs. Klein's hands for a few days and I did tell her to ig
nore the woman . . . and already the veins are standing
out on your forehead."

“They are not."

“They would be if you allowed them to. So figure it's not just a few pounds and
your
daughter but Crystal Cummings's teenage daughter with a serious case of traumaticanorexia or bulimia brought on by the attack in the Dickson house.

“
So she eventually dies, the daughter. Cummings
would be her last name. Or maybe she'd have the last
name of her actual, forgotten father. But maybe Crystal just used her mother's own last name. I hear that sort of
thing happens all the time. Much cleaner, especially if the
father has abandoned the child." Molina's face was get
ting grimmer by the second. "The point is, this young girl was only a stepdaughter to Dickson. That was the tragedy
of her getting hit by one of the bullets. She was a truly innocent bystander.”

Molina started shuffling papers on her desk like a madwoman.

Finally, she pulled one out and leaned back in her
chair. "Tiffany Cummings."

“No, that wasn't the daughter's name. The articles said she was called Chastity."

“Tiffany Cummings was the name of the seventeenyear-old who was accosted in the mall parking lot during the Teen Queen tryouts and stabbed to death with a screwdriver."

“
Ouch." Temple was stunned into silence. She kept quiet
to think. For once, she and Molina were in perfect sync.

The notion of two young girls with their lives ruined and cut short so violently was appalling. Had Chastity survived just long enough to bear a daughter? Maybe
postpartum depression had pushed her into anorexia. And
maybe Tiffany was Crystal Cummings's granddaughter.
A far fresher motive for a killing.

“We haven't traced any relatives to the parking lot vic. If she wasn't a runaway, she lived a gypsy life.”

Finally Temple spoke. "If Tiffany Cummings was the first victim, Marjory Klein was the second victim, and
Crystal Cummings masquerading as Beth Marble was the
third—?" She fell silent. "I've got a headache."

“It's probably an allergic reaction to bleach. That dye job of yours is unreal."

“That was the idea, wasn't it? Just like the reality show was supposed to be unreal. Only it had ended up being a shadow of the Dickson house murders twenty years ago.
If Crystal, aka 'Beth,' killed Marjory, who killed her?
And why?"

“That's a very far-out theory of yours. We'll have to do a lot of checking to prove the entwined threads in this tangled web. Meanwhile—" Molina stood, towering like the Palms hotel. "You can go back."

“I'm disgraced. I was taken away by the police."

“
That should only burnish Xoe Chloe's sorry reputa
tion. Look. I don't want Mariah alone in that mess, and
you do seem to have some sort of whacked-out handle on things. Finish out the assignment and Max Kinsella is all yours, off my usual suspects list forever."

“He already is all mine."

“Maybe." Molina's electric blue glance met and held Temple's a trifle too long.

“What do you mean?"

“I mean that nothing's certain in this world but death
and taxes. Taxes I leave to accountants. Death is my beat.
Magicians are one step behind the Grim Reaper when it comes to surprise appearances. I wouldn't count on them. Not a one of 'em. Especially that one. Deceiving the public can become an addiction that leaks over into a private life. That's all."

“Cops can't always be counted on either," Temple said.

Whether Molina got the reference to her ex, Rafi
Nadir, or not, Temple left the office feeling she'd gotten a little of her own back.

But not nearly enough.

Chapter 52

Dress
for
Success

Temple finally understood Fonzie's appeal when she returned to the Teen Queen Castle.

The Fonz was the black-leather-jacketed "hood" on the
Happy Days
sitcom hit set in the fifties. The Bad Boy.

Xoe Chloe Ozone returned free and triumphant to the Castle.

Being taken away by the police, and released to return,
made her a model of Teflon charisma.

Eyebrows may have raised but they'd been lifted by botox or Dr. Perricone formulations anyway. Xoe Chloe was cool. Nobody could tie her down.

Except maybe makeover madness.

“
Where have you been?" Vanetta, who'd obviously had
her head in her makeup case all day, asked frantically when Xoe appeared. "We're pulling wardrobe for the
makeover debut and talent review. All the good stuff could
be gone by now."

“
That's all right. I'll take the bad stuff that's left over.”

Temple could not believe that with two rooms taped off
as crime scenes, the show would go on. But apparently it
was good to go, for reasons best known to Molina and Co.

Somebody shrieked at seeing her. A fireball rushed down the corridor and embraced her like an upright lobster.

“Mariah?" Temple had to detangle from the hyper teen to see her.

Whoa! The makeover team had been busy during Temple's unhappy interview with the maternal unit.

Mariah's shiny brunette bob with bangs (so reminiscent
of her mother's unfussy do) had been . . . well, further
bobbed. And cut. And streaked. With—what else?—
blonde.

It was still mostly brunette, though styled into one of those raggedly cheerful upflips so popular now. Oddly enough, the waifish cut emphasized Mariah's blackberry-
dark eyes and even some surfacing cheekbones, thanks to
a diet of beans and veggies.

“You look very cool," Temple told her.

Then she was yanked away into the adjoining library, which was filled with racks of clothing.

Kit Carlson came rushing to greet her, looking re
lieved. "I've saved some outfits for you."

“You shouldn't have," Temple began. But when she glimpsed the goulash of lime green ostrich feathers, sixties Op Art prints, and leopard skin draping Kit's arm, Temple knew Xoe Chloe had found her fashion muse.

Kit leaned close to whisper, "I wasn't wardrobe mis
tress for my high school production of
Hair
for nothing.”

While Temple tried on various combinations of hip-huggers and chunky jewelry that would have made rock-
star chicks look as staid as Laura Bush, Kit brought her
up to date on the mood inside the Teen Queen Castle.

“
The police are on us all like a cheap suit—that Detective Alch is sure kind of Columbo-cute—and the camera crew is eating it up. Our show has morphed into a combo of
Cops
and
Survivor

“
Everyone said you were a murderer when the police took you away, so the producers have been madly assembling clips of every inch of footage on you for a special
Xoe Chloe memorial montage. You are a
star,
kiddo!
Clay Aiken has nothing on you.