Cat In An Aqua Storm

“You’re not saying that the same man who cheated Kitty of her interest in the business and is blackmailing Savannah, who gave Glinda her start and who wants you to audition is—”

Electra nodded. “The one, the only, and the oily. Ike Wetzel.”

26

 . . . All Must Come to Dust

The aquaStorm sprinted through the colossus’s braced legs like a cartoon car—bright and fast. As it pulled under the hotel’s metallic entrance canopy, a parking valet came scampering in his Ramses kilt to open the driver’s door. Temple was happy to exchange a dollar bill for the precaution of avoiding the parking ramp.

She faced her reflection in the Goliath’s mirrored revolving doors. She felt less stiff and sore today, and even looked a little more... perky. Too perky. Her impromptu outfit made her resemble a patriotic tap dancer, she thought, whisking into the midst of her reflected spinning selves, then around and out into the Goliath lobby.

Today she was going to take this town by the tail and whip the convention PR into apple-pie order. The ballroom would be open again, the troops gathered, and she had lots of juicy new information to confirm and expand upon. Best of all, Electra would still be undercover.

The landlady had told Temple she had resolved to continue her charade “as long as it takes” to clear the competition of the pall of bad press. Temple was relieved to have a reliable inside source, but had wondered aloud just how far Electra was prepared to take her stripper persona.

“To the limit the law allows,” Electra had declared doughtily. She even refused Temple’s offer of a ride to the Goliath.

“I’ve got to take the Vampire in for a tech rehearsal. We got the music keyed in yesterday.”

“What music?”

“The music for my routine,” Electra said indignantly. “ ‘Born To Be Wild.’ You don’t think you can just show up and claim to be a stripper without an act?”

“I didn’t think about it at all.”

“Hmph. Good thing I’m the undercover operator.”

“I think the word is ‘operative.’ ”

“Whatever. Don’t worry about me. I’ll be in later. Strippers sleep late. You don’t want me to blow my cover, do you? You’ll hear me coming.”

What have I wrought? Temple asked herself, pausing before the ballroom doors as she remembered Electra’s parting words.

Today no security men were plastered against the doors, legs braced and faces sterna, like miniature colossi. Better. Normalcy was returning. Temple sailed inside unchallenged, full of the spirit of Scarlett O’Hara. Today was not only another day, it was an unfolding origami paper sculpture, rife with surprise and elegance.

“Hi there, T.B. Coming in a little late, aren’t we?” Temple hit the breaks on her Jourdans at the sound of that ever-so-deep baritone, and turned in its direction.

Yes, Crawford Buchanan occupied a ballroom chair against the wall. He was riffling through some papers as pale as his silk-blend oyster trousers and yuck-yellow shirt. A straw fedora hid most of his silver hair and a brass-headed cane leaned against the wall beside him. He looked like a decadent English invalid.

“What are you doing out of the hospital?” she demanded, not meaning to sound as annoyed as she did.

He tremulously patted the left side of his chest. “The boy is better. They released me, with odious instructions on diet and exercise. I decided to begin my new physical-fitness regimen by ambling over here and seeing how you were doing.”

“Just dandy until now.”

Buchanan fished a folded newspaper tear sheet from among his papers. “Actually, ‘dandy’ doesn’t appear to do justice to such happenings as a double murder.” He flashed the Las Vegas Scoop’s front page with ten double-column bylined inches on “Jack the Stripper-ripper Strikes Again at Goliath.”

“I’m doing this PR job because you keeled over, and you’re knifing me in the back with sleazy stories on the tragedies?”

“Now that I’m no longer handing PR, the stress is gone,” Buchanan said. “No conflict of interest, I think you’d say. I did the first story from the hospital,” he added modestly. “You mind checking it to see if all the facts are right?”

She snatched it from his hand and read the first lurid subhead. “ ‘A Comely Come-on from an Ecdysiast’! Crawford, even you admitted that the poor Horvath woman wouldn’t have given you the time of day in a Swatch factory.”

“I wanted to convey a feeling for the victim when she was alive and beautiful. Haven’t you heard of the New Journalism?”

“ ‘She eeled past me in a scent of roses and regret’—oh, God! You don’t even get to the first murder until the fourth paragraph. And the last subhead, ‘Catwoman Caught by Batman’? Crawford, this is salacious, self-aggrandizing and totally fictional.”

“Thank you,” he said complacently, reaching to take his treasure back. “Don’t wrinkle it.”