Cat in a Hot Pink Pursuit (47 page)

“The Clairol horde were thrilled at your exit and are so terminally pissed at your triumphal return that I notice they're shedding brittle hairs like a miffed alpaca. Negative emotions are so bad for one's looks.

“Mariah is feeling supergirly about her transformation but she missed showing off for you, Big Sis.

“Savannah Ashleigh's glowery bodyguard, that Heath
cliffy Rafi-guy, has been patrolling the halls and snoop
ing around like a cop on the beat, way beyond his blonde bimbo duties.

“So has that black alley cat mascot that showed up. He looks a lot like your Louie, but surely he's safe at home and I suppose all black cats look alike. Does that old gigolo have a harem, or what? There are these white and yellow Persians with him.”

Temple finally got a word in edgewise. "That is in
deed Louie. He's doing some investigative legwork for
me. And we say 'silver' and 'golden' in the Persian
game."

“
Well, la-di-dah. The fluffy black one must be an
`ebony,' then."

“She's not a Persian, just a long-haired American domestic. They call her Louise now, but I don't think she's Louie's girlfriend; she's way too independent."

“Well, call me a short-haired American domestic.

Does madame find favor with her wardrobe selections?”

“They rock, Kit! And so do you. Thanks a gadzillion!”

“Only if I make it on
The Apprentice
with Donald 'Mr.

Comb-over' Trump next. With my luck, I'd have ended
up on
The Benefactor
with that cheapo Mark Cuban
sports nut."

“
May the Force be with you." They slapped palms,
then Temple gathered up her garish armful and fled.

Mariah ambushed her again in the hall. "I need you to check out my performance outfit."

“In the bathroom, no doubt."

“Where else?”

They returned to the room, and Temple found she'd
been oddly homesick for it.

Steam heat was less welcome. Bleached blonde hair
had a tendency to frizz, but Ken Adair had handed her an arsenal of moisturizers, softeners, and conditioners for its
upkeep. Being a blonde was hard work, but Xoe Chloe re
made (and still reasonably disguised) was worth it.

Mariah sat Temple down on the closed bathroom
throne (Temple thought of Elvis's last hour) and grabbed her hands. "I was so worried."

“About me?" Foolish Temple. Teens were teens.

“
No, about me! What do you think? Do I look hot?
Will my mom kill me? Does this new haircut make my face look even more fat? What about these loser clothes they picked for me? What about my talent song? Is 'De
fying Gravity' too obscure, too dweeby? Whaddayah
think? Whaddayah think?"

“Chill, Baby-O. Xoe Chloe is on your case.
Wicked
is
the hottest musical on Broadway, and 'Defying Gravity'
is the current overcoming-teenage-angst anthem. Every girl feels like a misunderstood witch at your age. Plus the song's a showstopper for a darker voice, which you have in spades! As the song says, until you try, you'll never know. We'll run the wardrobe and the routine and we'll both come out smelling like, oh . . . Rose's green apple juice in a killer martini."

“Yeah. That's cool. Apple green. I saw those feathers. You'll knock 'em dead."

“Speaking of which—"

“The show's over, right? That's what my mom hauled you outa here to say. She always ruins it for me.”

Temple grabbed Mariah's plump little shoulders and refrained from shaking.

“Mariah. She does not. She's putting her shield on the
line to keep the lid on the murders here, just so you can
get up there and be shallow like all the other little 'Tween Queen wannabes.”

Mariah stared at Temple's sudden stern turn. Then her
eyes teared over. "I don't know what happens. Sometimes
it seems like everything's so endlessly awful."

“Sometimes it is. Not now. You're just feeling Wicked Witch of the Westly. The police aren't going to close the show down. They want everybody bottled up here while they do some very complicated background checks. And they've imported some undercover pros to prevent any more violence, so expect to see a couple new crew members. Your mom is following some very interesting leads, thanks to . . . us. We have to keep it together and let the
show go on until the police have enough evidence to
name and charge the person behind all this. We are . . . undercover distractions. We gotta be good at it, right? That's our real job. This stupid contest isn't the point. I'm not Xoe Chloe, and you're not Madonna, Jr. We're us, underneath it all, and we have more important jobs than winning this thing, right?"

“I guess."

“You guess right."

“But the talent show is tomorrow and then they judge and then it's all over."

“
Right. Then
we
judge and then it's all over. Capische?”

“
That is so
Sopranos."

“
And we are the contraltos, right? We are different.”

“
You
sure are." Mariah grinned.

“
Dare to be ... you and me," Temple finished. "Defy
ing gravity.”

Chapter 53

Tailings

The hour is once again my namesake one and I am
stationed outside the Ashleigh suite trying to figure out how to get in.

This is when Miss Midnight Louise happens along. Yeah. Like she is following me.

“
What ho, Romeo?" she inquires in the acid tones
granted only to the female of the species, any species,
and guaranteed to shrivel the cottontail off a bunny
rabbit, not to mention other attachments of which I am unduly fond.

“
Stalking the Ashleigh girls again, I suppose," she
adds. "When are you going to get that those snooty purebreds are too good for you?"

“
When I lose my self-esteem, which will be never.
So. You are emulating the Crawfish and descending to domestic snooping."

“Just wondering why you were slacking off on the job."

“
I am not slacking anything, Louise. I need to gel
through the looking glass again."

“
You and little girls named Alice."

“
You recall that one of ours started her on that fa
mous adventure. Holy Havana Browns! How am I go
ing to get in there without Miss Savannah Ashleigh
seeing me?"

“
I do not see why you cannot rely on your dubious in
side connections. Of course, neither one of them would
come if you came calling.”

This gets my goat, and my llama too. I stick a mitt
under the bottom of the door, shoot out my shivs, and
make what pathetic scratching noises I can.

Sure enough. In thirty seconds flat, I am playing pat
tycake with a set of soft, moist pads from the other side.

Throwing Louise a superior gaze over my shoulder, I
hunker down for a game of whisker teasing and whis
pering via the quarter-inch crack.

In a minute, I have convinced the Ashleigh girls to
make a heck of a commotion in the service of getting
me into the secret passage. They are quite aware of
this area, especially Yvette, as she is wont to play with
her own image in the mirror for hours, Solange informs
me. But she thinks she can tear Yvette away from her
self long enough to do what is needed.

Miss Louise and I retreat against the opposite wall
and wait.

Not for long.

The shrieks, human and not-so, emanating from be
yond the door result in an adjoining door slamming
open against the hall wall, and Mr. Rafi Nadir, clad only
in unzipped jeans and sneakers, charging down the
hall and through the door like a cannonball.

Louise and I exchange a look, then shoot through on
his sneaker heels. Well, sneakers do not have heels,
as such. Suffice it to say that we are in like dingleber
ries dangling from a shih tzu's tail.

There is a lot of fluffy pale hair flying in the room, part
of it Persian and the other part of it Horst of Beverly Hills, and most of it eiderdown from some terminally
clawed pillows.

Quick thinkers, these Persians. They have staged
the Mother of All Pillow Fights to upset their mistress
and bring the troops running.

While Mr. Rafi Nadir inserts himself into the pile of
flying fur, shrieks, and flailing claws both human and
feline-I admit that even I would quail at such a task-
I hurl myself at the pressure point that turns the mirror
into a revolving door, and Louise and I whisk into the
dark beyond, pausing to pull it shut behind us with paw
power times two.

“
So this is what you wanted?" she asks in the ab
solute dark.

I wait for my eyes to acclimate. That probably takes a
little longer than for her, but I do not wish to make this
obvious.

“
Shhhh.
I am thinking."

“
I can see you would need absolute quiet for that.
Why did you want to be here?"

“
Is it not interesting that this house has been honey
combed with hidden passages since the time it was
built?"

“
I have heard that creepy Crawford dude prattling about the big shootout here into his microphone. No
doubt these passages made the escape of the masked killer easier twenty years ago. Everyone thought it was
Arthur Dickson himself, and no one could prove it. But
what does a long-dead scandal have to do with teen
queens today?”

I am about to tell her, which would be interesting as I
do not know yet myself, when there is a cracking sound and a vertical bar of light appears behind us.

That is how I first saw Elvis, as a narrow bar of light
in the Action Jackson attraction tunnel under the Crys
tal Phoenix a few months ago.

I am eagerly awaiting a return engagement of the
King when the light vanishes with a click and another
click brings a swash of light into the tunnel.

Louise and I plaster ourselves to the dark walls,
avoiding detection but not avoiding the fact that it is
Rafi Nadir bearing a flashlight into our midst.

I also glimpse shadowy forms by the now-closed mirror-door.

In sum, we are not alone, times three.

Louise has dashed across the aisle in the darkness
and now brushes against my shoulder. "Great. We are
here but so is the hired bodyguard. What do you sup
pose he wants?"

“Whatever he wants, it is worth tailing him. And keep
your nose alert for that noxious sweet scent I men
tioned the other day."

“
Shhh!”

Rafi turns and sweeps the flashlight over the un
adorned wooden floor, missing us by that much.

We open our eyes once the searchlight has passed.
I hear slight scrabbling sounds behind us.