Cat In A Topaz Tango

Molina dutifully called room service like the Zoe Chloe Ozone middle-aged flunky she was portraying while the girls shouted out their druthers for toppings. Like most hotel order-in pizzas these days, an outside franchise handled the calls, so the menu was pretty standard.

Except when Zoe Chloe Ozone ordered a custom shrimp, artichoke heart, and jalapeño one for her star-self alone.

“Any news on Sou-Sou?” the question came from kids and mothers alike.

Neither Temple nor Molina had gotten a good group look at the mothers. The overblown Smith woman was with her absent daughter, leaving only the two others present, since Mariah was serving as EK’s “manager.”

Patrisha Peters, the only African-American contestant, was a lean, leggy skateboarder, but her mother was a pleasantly plump, attractive woman with a calm manner. She introduced herself as Frances Peters. Meg-Ann’s mother wasn’t anything like her hard-driving soccer-athlete daughter. Angie Peyton was unpleasantly plump, her clothing straining at all the most unfortunate places, her hair showing dark roots, and her manner both harried and disinterested. In a sense she was the sloppy side of Yvonne Smith. Temple guessed she was underemployed and financially stressed, probably through no fault of her own but divorce and bad luck.

Snap judgments were often all wrong. Now was the time to ask the women to reveal themselves.

Zoe Chloe plopped down cross-legged (all the better to show off her skull-head white-on-black tights) on a sofa.

“This is my personal assistant, Vicki,” she said, waving at Molina. “I had her check with the staff backstage. What’d they say, Vick?”

As she’d hoped, Zoe Chloe had invented a name for Molina that the policewoman hated, from the expression on her face.

“Sou-Sou got a literal hotfoot from a substance put into her shoes,” Molina said, sounding way too copish with that “substance” talk.

“Then it was deliberate?” Frances Peters asked. “Sabotage? None of us here would do that.”

“That’s the thing,” Zoe Chloe said. “It doesn’t look good for any of the other contestants. So we gotta find out who and What everybody is, so we’re ready when the police get involved, if they do.”

“The police?” Angie Peyton asked, alarmed. “God, that’s just what our girls don’t need right now. They have enough stress.”

“Hotel security was talking about calling them in,” Molina, aka “Vicki,” put in virtuously, as if she wasn’t one. “Ms. Ozone is right. The more we know about the junior group, the more everybody will be off the hook.”

“What about that soap star whose heel broke?” Angie asked. “That was just an accident. Why isn’t this?” She seemed a woman born to be in denial.

“It could be,” Molina answered. “We’ve got to be ready if it isn’t. You know tabloid TV will be all over this.”

The girls remained listening, bright-eyed with curiosity and excitement at the mention of national TV exposure. The mothers’ brows were wrinkling with a realization of what bad press could do. Mariah was watching them all, not obviously. Even Ekaterina was serious and alert, trying to figure out what this meant.

Would a girl like EK, with so much riding on winning this contest, be the one to stoop to sabotage? Temple wondered.

“I suppose,” Frances Peters said slowly, “it’d be hard to say whether the girls or us mothers are the bigger suspects?”

Molina jumped in. “Everybody is suspect. I’ve spent years trying to spin good publicity from bad, and it can’t be done. Even Ms. Ozone is suspect. You moms are here to protect your daughters, but I’m here to make sure Ms. Ozone’s career isn’t damaged.”

Temple had to admire Molina’s gift for throwing a scare into people.

Meg-Ann and Patrisha exchanged the uneasy looks of kids who might know more than their mothers did, and Ekaterina’s waif-wide eyes expanded to pizza pan size.

Only Mariah remained unworried. She knew she was an undercover kid.

“So, anyway, peeps,” Zoe Chloe summed up, “things could get pretty unpleasant for all of us until someone finds out who put the hot sauce to Sou-Sou’s shoes. Hey, sounds like a funky song title. I say we can turn this into a fun gig and find out about each other and chill with some hot pizza and Dr Pepper.” She turned to her personal assistant. “You did remember to order Dr Pepper, didn’t you? That’s all I drink.”

Molina set her teeth and picked up the phone to order from room service, asking the other girls if they had any preferences.

Awestruck by the Zoe Chloe Ozone presence, they only wanted what their idol ordered.

Man, Temple could dig being a pop tart . . .

Forty minutes later, everyone was sitting on the carpet, dozens of cheap paper napkins unfolded, smearing a gloss of red pizza sauce over lipstick. A lot of chitchat and chatter had gone down with the pepperoni slices and melted cheese, but no clues that stood out.