Matt seldom saw Temple without any shoes on, and particularly without any shoes on that added height.
She looked shrunken and sad today, and the out-of-focus blur of her eyes alarmed him.
“Temple?” He followed her into the living room. “I’m sorry. I don’t know who Simon is.”
“Sure you do. You must have met him at the Maylords opening. You saw Danny there too, didn’t you?”
“Yes, but—”
“Well, I met Simon there. Danny introduced us.”
“I didn’t know that Danny . . . ”
Matt decided it was safer not to say what he didn’t know about Danny Dove. He knew three things, none of them apparently sufficient for this situation: that Temple had known the famed choreographer for longer than anybody in Las Vegas except Max Kinsella, that they were fond of each other, and that Danny was gay.
If Danny were dead, God forbid, he could understand Temple’s emotional state. But . . . who was Simon?
She shook her head. “How could you have missed him? Simon was way too good-looking to be let off a movie screen. Blond, like you. In fact, when I saw him, his body, at first I thought—”
“You saw his body?”
“It fell out of the Murano at Maylords during the orange-blessing ceremony.”
Matt couldn’t help looking completely lost, no matter how much he knew that it was important right now to look sympathetic and knowing.
“Murano?”
“That was the orange SUV crossover that’s the Maylords opening door prize, there by the entrance.”
“Oh, that’s what that orange thing is called. He died in the, um, crossover vehicle?”
Temple clapped a hand to her mouth. “You’re right,” she said through her fingers. “I guess it was literally a ‘crossover vehicle,’ all right. I’ll have to get him to replace it. Kenny Maylord. Get a new giveaway car. One nobody died in. Yet.”
“Hey, don’t get hysterical.” This sentiment seemed to require stepping nearer to Temple, and putting a hand on her shoulder.
That seemed to require her to look up at him through teary eyes and edge into an embrace.
Comforting the afflicted had never felt so good.
Matt cleared his throat. “You’d better sit down.”
Or he had better. He got her perched on the end of the couch and looked around for large black impediments before he sat beside her.
“Simon,” he said again. “The name doesn’t ring a bell, but I do remember some blond guy moving around opening night.”
“Like you.”
“Well—”
“At first glance he looked like you. When that . . . crossover . . . car door opened and he tumbled out onto the floor, I assumed for a moment—”
“He didn’t really look like me. Maybe similar hair color, similar height.”
“Maybe that’s enough! Matt, Kenny Maylord told me that at the hospital they discovered he had been stabbed in the back.”
Matt patted her shoulder. Why did people always pat people who were feeling sorrowful? Because of how mothers instinctively soothed infants? Did we try to mother others in times of sorrow? People who pat people . . . are not the luckiest in the world, maybe just the most inarticulate.
“What are you saying, Temple? That I was the target?”
“No . . . just that it’s odd.”
“Look. I’m tired of being a target. Anybody’s target. I never would have been anywhere near Maylords if it weren’t that—”
“That what?”
Matt sure hadn’t wanted to spell this out to Temple, of all people. “That I was there with Janice. She’s the Maylords connection. I was just a casual escort.”
“Casual? Didn’t look like she thought so.”
“We’re friends, all right?”
“Of course it’s all right,” Temple said. “Why wouldn’t it be?”
“It is. So this Simon was Danny’s—”
“Partner. Life partner. I know your Church doesn’t—”
“Spare me. You’re not talking to my Church. You’re talking to me. And you had to be the one to tell Danny? Why, Temple?”
“Who else was gonna do it? Some . . . I don’t know who they would have sent. Probably a detective. Would you want Molina telling you your life partner was dead?”
“She wouldn’t do that. Not herself. She’s an administrator.”
“Oh, great. So he would have gotten a what, a beat cop? Or some snarly old detective who thinks there ought to be a law against gay people?”
“You’re stereotyping the other way, Temple, but I can see why you wanted it to be you.”
“It was worse because I’d just found out about Simon, had just met him. Danny was letting me into a part of his life he didn’t open up to just anyone. It was much worse. They seemed so happy with each other.”
Matt could say nothing to that, so he just patted her back as she choked up and tried to stuff her feelings back down with a crumpled tissue and a fist at her mouth.
After a while he asked, “You don’t really think someone mistook him for me? She’s dead, Temple. Thoroughly dead. I saw the body in the morgue myself.”
“I don’t think it’s your stalker, no. We can’t blame ghosts.”
“Why would anyone at Maylords have it in for me? I’d never set foot there before, and I’ll likely never do it again.”
“Not even to see Janice?”
“I can see her other places much better.”
Oops. He wished he could swallow that reassuring comment gone terribly wrong. Why? Why should Temple care? She had Max. Didn’t she?
Temple grew quiet, then blinked and shook her head as if shrugging off the tears.
“Still,” she said. “It’s odd that you two looked alike.”
“We didn’t look that much alike, did we?”
That forced her to really look at him, forced her out of the black box inside her. “No . . . you didn’t. But didn’t someone at the opening mistake you for another man?”
“Only from behind!”
“Simon was only stabbed from behind!” she reminded him.
“Will you forget that? I haven’t got a mortal enemy left in the world, now that the two worst ones are dead. Come to think of it, I’m pretty hard on mortal enemies, rather than vice versa.”
She smiled thinly at his reassurance. “Anyway, it’s lucky you didn’t manage to attend the orange blessing. If the police had spotted any resemblance between you two you’d probably still be downtown having a tête-à-tête with Molina and her minions. Where were you, anyway?”
Matt didn’t know how to say what he needed to without sounding terminally shallow. “I did stop by. So late that nothing was left but the orange peels. No wonder the place seemed deserted. I was late because . . . my booking agent called and there were a lot of dates he had to cross-check with me.”
“Speaking dates,” Temple said.
“That’s about the only kind I have time for these days.”
“I’m sounding stupid. Sorry. All I knew about Simon was how important he was to Danny. Seeing him dead, and then hearing how afterwards . . . Who’d want to kill someone as amiable as Simon? He was new to the staff, everybody was. No time for murderous hatreds to develop.”
“Turning the place into a shooting gallery opening night sounds like a pretty murderous hatred.”
“That had to be someone outside Maylords. Literally. Given the elements inside and outside the store, one might suspect some sort of gay gang war. But a stab in the back is as up close and personal as murder can get. It doesn’t make sense.”
“It’s not sudden death’s job to make sense. It’s our job to make sense of it for ourselves. What does Kinsella think about this Maylords mess?” he asked.
She leaned back and away, shrugged. Temple was never offhand. He read the truth instantly.
“You haven’t told him yet, have you?”
“No,” she said. Shortly. Everything Temple did was shortly, but he liked it.
He stared, watching her momentary high color fade. It was odd how paper white redheads could go under stress. Even if they had few freckles, like Temple, stress brought out every one. Not that he objected. So she hadn’t told Mr. Undercover about this latest trauma? Max Kinsella had always been Temple’s partner in crime solving. Had always been her partner, period. Even when he had vanished for months without explanation, Temple’s loyalty remained hard-rock solid.
But this time she hadn’t told Max. This time Matt was on the inside, not the outside. How really great he felt about that sudden switch was a good indication of just how dangerous this was. Even Janice had nailed, in a split second, the subterranean sizzle between Temple and himself. None of his Las Vegas adventures, even when they had been somewhat lurid, had prepared him to confront something as simple as what he really wanted. And maybe act on it. Irrevocably. But . . . baby steps first.
“I suppose,” he said, treading lightly on the new and unstable ground he sensed had opened up between them, “Janice might have some insights. I suppose, you . . . we, owe it to Danny to find out.”
Temple’s head was nodding up and down like the little chihuahua on a low-rider’s dashboard.
“I owe it to Danny to find out,” she mumbled, catching on to the one course she could act upon. “And I owe it to Maylords to do damage control and keep the bad publicity to a minimum. There’s got to be a way I can spin it and still stay honest, and somehow . . . save the day. I’ve got to go back, find out what was going on. I will do that. I owe it to my profession, and, most of all, I owe it to Danny.”
Matt remembered how Danny Dove had come to her rescue during a dangerous investigation a few months back.
And now he recalled his one glimpse of Simon Foster at the Maylords opening, who had seemed an innocent figure of light in an environment of dusk and shadow. Matt had sensed fear in the festive atmosphere. Something dark. Darkness he knew a bit about. And strong emotion, hidden agendas, lies. Not sex and videotape, though. He hadn’t gotten to that stage. Yet.
He didn’t particularly want to go gently into that dark night of ugly human behavior where hidden motives become unholy murder, that he knew.
But he would.
And so would Temple.
Neither of them could help it now, she for Danny’s sake, he for the sake of every seen and unseen freckle on her body.
Her teary interlude ended with a hiccough and an expression of true grit.
Janice was right. He thought it was adorable.
Uh-oh