Temple couldn’t believe what a quick Tuesday afternoon stop at May-lords had netted her: Rafi Nadir cruising past before she’d made it out of the atrium and dropping several typed sheets into the Black Hole of her ever-present tote bag.
What a smooth snitch!
Temple had some free time. Perfect! No Wong events were scheduled until the arts council reception in the Maylords atrium tonight to celebrate Maylords’ support of local cultural issues. Now if only nothing scary and violent and worthy of a CS1: Crime Scene Investigation script happened. . . . No shot-out windows, no stabbed sales associates.
Even a seasoned PR person like Temple found it hard to believe the week’s schedule of events, with slight adjustments for murder and mayhem, just kept rolling along. A bunch of UFO fanatics had trespassed at Area 51, which swept Simon’s murder to a few short paragraphs inside the newspapers. A pop tart girl singer had French-kissed a boxer dog onstage at the Oasis, which pushed TV film of the murder Murano to a fifteen-second flash at the end of the news. She found Kenny Maylord happily watching Amelia Wong and assistants presenting one of their daily feng shui demonstrations to a standing-room-only crowd in the small auditorium off the café area. It was as if Simon Foster had never been part of the hoopla, as if he’d never been here, excited to debut his vignette designs, eager to adjust every picture frame and fluff every silk-tasseled pillow.
Even the Murano no longer stalled at stage center in all its gory orange glory. Kenny had wanted to replace the impounded vehicle with a new one, but the dealer wasn’t about to take back a murder car, even though the police said that Simon had been stabbed elsewhere and placed in the Murano long after blood had flowed. Temple had convinced Kenny to bring in an equally new and hot orange model: the Cadillac CTS.
Changing out vehicles didn’t shut out reality. Temple closed her eyes. This was all about Simon. The viewing was tonight. She’d have to leave the party, abstentemious, and rush, uh, drive safely to the funeral parlor. Matt had asked her, gingerly, about when and where the visitation would be and had offered to escort her. Temple had declined. Mostly because he looked too much like the dear departed, from the back.
Had somebody been after Matt all the time? Hard to believe, but then who would have believed he’d have attracted a homicidal stalker either. Although in that case he had only been a handy substitute for the real prey, Max.
Just then Matt’s seminary friend, Jerome, came shuffling by, toting something as usual, looking like a total flunky. Temple caught a glimmer of distaste in his expression as he passed her.
Why pick on her? She was nice to people. Oh. People included Matt. Strange places, those seminaries. Male clubs, really. Even though token women were now finally admitted, they couldn’t aspire to any real power. Matt had admitted as much.
In a sense, Matt had rejected Jerome. Would that merit a knife in the back, even if it was the wrong back? Underdogs could show surprising nerve . . . especially if the counterattack was cowardly.
Temple shook her head. She’d check out the ex-employees on Rafi’s list before speculating further. Someone who’d been let go so soon might have an even bigger grudge against those who’d stayed, and especially those who’d stayed because they were gifted at their jobs, like Simon.
God, she dreaded tonight.
Temple drove off the Maylords lot and stopped the Miata at a curb two blocks away in a pittance of shade under some overgrown oleander bushes.
She dug out Rafi’s papers, her fingers clumsy with excitement. Maybe someone on this list would have a clue as to why murder had become a key accessory at Maylords Fine Furnishings.
Jubilation was her first reaction when she scanned the list. It was blessedly thorough: name, address, phone number—even e-mail address—for each employee. Every newsie, every PR person’s heart rejoiced to see hard facts marshaled like little tin soldiers in black type on white paper.
She frowned at the cryptic words after each name. Avatar. Genji. Mongrel. Bebe. Whipped Cream.
Some names had been crossed out, with dates penciled next to the Xes.
Okay, she’d just have to ask . . . ”Caesar,” “Grandview,” and “Saltlick,” three of the former employees, what the nicknames meant.
Let’s see. Who was closest?
Temple pulled out her map of greater Las Vegas, and triangulated on the first target.
”‘Grandview’ it is.”
There had been an Art Deco-vintage movie theater in St. Paul by that name. Temple chose to regard this fairly remote coincidence as a good sign.
She put the Miata in gear and shot off to the Granada Apartments. Surely a recently unemployed person would be at home, sending résumés via the Internet.
The Granada Apartments were thirty years old, not quite antique enough to be chic. Lord, Temple hoped that description did not describe her! Then she felt an instant pang as she recalled Danny Dove’s enthusiasm for moving into the Circle Ritz with Simon.
One moment, a stable happy life. The next, history. She tried to imagine how she’d have felt if Matt had fallen victim to his stalker. Do not go there. Or if Max had lost to Molina, and was facing decades in prison on some trumped-up charge. Do not go there.
It did occur to her to wonder why all the men in her life . . . well, both. . . well, the one man in her life and the runner-up . . . faced mortal danger so often. Was she possibly an unlucky omen?
Do not go there.
Temple pulled onto the cracked concrete parking lot of the Granada Apartments. Three stories. Beige stucco. Ticky-tacky tiny balconies just big enough for a discount-store fold-up chair and a geranium planter. Genteel getting by.
Temple checked her list. “Grandview”—Glory Diaz was the name—had been fantasizing if she’d come up with that word while looking out from her balcony here. Who could blame her for dreaming, though?
Temple hustled out of the Miata (newest car on the lot) and hurried to the second-floor unit.
The unit’s doorbell didn’t give when pushed, so Temple knocked. And knocked. Until her knuckles stung. From inside came the strains of ’40s swing music, which Temple normally liked, when it wasn’t interfering with her pursuit of a victim, witness, or suspect. Listen to her: Nancy Drew on Xenadrine.
Finally, she heard the chain lock scraping open. The doorknob turned.
There stood Glory Diaz, a bottle blonde wearing dead-hooker black Maybelline eyeliner. Makeup caked in the furrows of her face despite the glamour look: her chorus-girl height was enhanced by strappy high heels from Wild Woman cheapo shoe store in the mall. Platinum hair and leopardskin-print spandex skimpy in all the wrong places finished the look, and how!
Temple felt “Grandview” didn’t have much of a future vista.
In fact, she couldn’t imagine Maylords hiring this hard-edged dame in the first place, despite her very passing resemblance to a worn-out chorine. Still, one had to make the best of a bad deal.
“Hi! I’m Temple Barr. I’m doing publicity for Maylords. Some bizarre things have been going on there. I thought that you, as a former employee, could clue me in on a thing or two.”
“Honey, have I got news for you! Come on in. Would you like some Pernod?”
“Uh, no.” Temple had never figured out what exactly Pernod was, so she decided she was best off avoiding it at all costs. When in doubt, don’t fake it.
Glory Diaz, who must be brunette under that Marilyn Monroe coif—was it a wig?—tsked like a grandmother, then licked her exaggerated lips. “Lime Kool-Aid, then?”
“Cool.” Temple stepped onto the orange shag carpet. Ick. Whatever marketing guru had decreed orange temporarily chic again had been temporarily insane.
Temple took the offered seat on a long, terminally floral sofa. It made Electra Lark’s Hawaiian muumuus look restrained.
Glory sat, her own floral sheath shifting well above her bare, Mystic Tan-tawny, albeit knobby, knees.
Her shoes were Plexiglas spike platforms that Temple had never seen outside of a Frederick’s of Hollywood catalogue. Hey, everyone has a secret vice or two. Hers were catalogues and fairly adventuresome shoes, so she couldn’t be too hard on Glory’s fashion sense.
Glory was busy pouring limeaid from a plastic pitcher on the coffee table into clear plastic glasses with paper cutouts of butterflies embedded between two clear layers. She either kept it ready for company or had been drowning her unemployment sorrows in a poison-green sugar OD.
“So you’re the PR gal. Aren’t you the cutest thing?”
No, Temple thought. I’m not. Not a “gal,” or a “thing” and not cute! But these darn butterfly glasses sure are!
Glory Diaz was one of those sad women with absolutely no feminine physical graces who dressed like a Barbie doll.
Temple had often cursed the inescapable femininity of a short, small woman bequeathed to her by some Billie Burke, Good-Witch-Glynda-style godmother, but she’d never felt like a caricature of it, the way Glory looked.
This woman had been way too obvious for the Maylords corporate culture. Maylords hired few women: Janice, several understated female interior designers uniformed in smooth bobs and low-heeled pumps, and of course that witchy woman Beth Blanchard, another Human Resources Department mistake.
And then there was the exhibitionism rumor. No wonder Glory had been fired while her orientation seminar seat was still warm. Apparently very warm.
“So,” Temple said, never one to beat around the er, bush, “who hired you and who fired you?”
“I wasn’t fired. I left.”
Temple nodded, then sipped mouth-curdlingly tart-sweet limeade. “So who hired you?”
“Mark Ainsworth, that rascal.” Glory had simpered on the word “rascal.”
The only “rascal” Temple could picture the anxious, snobby manager playing was the role of weasel.
“And why did you decide to part ways?”
Glory, coy, leaned back into the couch corner. “Darling? Can’t you guess?”
“No—”
“Maybe you don’t know Maylords’s nickname among the initiated.”
“Maybe I don’t.”
Glory simpered again. “Gaylords, darlin’.”
Temple nodded. Slowly. Trying to decide if this was rampant homophobia or . . . a clue.
“I should tell you I’m a friend of Danny Dove’s,” she said.
“Oh, what a sweetie! Always so respectful, but very hip, if you know what I mean.”
“Oddly enough, I do. How did you meet him?”
“He came around a lot during orientation to visit Simon. It’s hard to miss star power on that level! DD was so charmingly proud of Simon. Poor boy. Never had a chance. I read in the paper what happened to Simon, though I’m not surprised.”
“Not surprised that Simon was killed?”
“That somebody was killed. The way that place is run is murder. Dear Simon. Such a doll. And Danny was so nice to me when he came in. A class act. More than I can say for Mark Ainsworth. Probably because I wouldn’t give out. I have my standards.”
“Wait a minute. You wouldn’t ‘give out.’ But . . . you just said, ‘Gaylords.’”
And now that Glory Diaz had mentioned it, Temple had to agree that a lot of the store’s staff was gay. It had never occurred to her, maybe because she’d always worked in the arts. So . . . Gaylords. More gay men on staff than in any artistic endeavor? Maybe. Funny. Kenny Maylord didn’t look or act like Mr. Liberal. Temple would bet he was straight, although having a wife and kids didn’t always prove it.
A pattern was trying to form in her mind, but something in her fought it. Something was keeping her from getting it. . . .
She glanced at Glory, whose long-nailed fingers were fanned on her knee, ruffling the hem of her skirt, which was retreating upward.
And got it. The woman exhibitionist who had been quietly fired after the first days of the training sessions.
Grandview, of course!
“Does the name ‘Grandview’ mean anything to you?” Temple asked.
“You little minx! How did you find out my computer password?”
“Computer password?”
“For Maylords, for as long as I was there, which wasn’t long. That was my password. I picked it myself. We all did.”
“What did you put on the computer?”
“Oh, any possible friends or clients I knew who might patronize Maylords. I put in the entire cast of La Cage au Folles and the Shemale Celebrities Revue at the Oasis Hotel. Judy and Joan and Marilyn and Madonna. It was all pretty sketchy, dear. Most of my friends don’t have the money to buy those Maylords things. They’re all putting it into wax jobs and laser hair removal and boob jobs and hormones, honey. You do know what I mean by hormones?”
Temple was speechless. “You’re . . . in transition, aren’t you?”
“How nice of you to put it so dellll-i-cately. Indeed diddley-oh-doo, darlin.’ I am not to the manner born, believe it or not.”
“You’re a transvestite.”
“Oh, my, no. I’m so much more than that.”
“An exhibitionist transsexual?”
“If you think so.” Glory snickered and pulled her hem up a discreet two inches more. “We are so misunderstood.”
“Why did you take a job at Maylords, and then blow it, by playing with your skirt at the orientation sessions?”
“Oh! You’ve heard of me. I created a stir. That rascal Ainsworth acted as if I hadn’t raised an eyebrow. Just dumped on me after leading me on.”
“Leading you on how?”
“Giving me this pitch about what a ‘special’ environment Maylords is. How certain lifestyles are fine there. I think he got miffed when I wouldn’t let him into my Olgas on the first interview. I was dead meat after that. And I only lasted a few days more, which is probably eons more than that Ainsworth wuss would have lasted in any interesting sense of the word. A bunch of cowards, if you ask me. Pretend to be so with it, and such simps anyway.”
Temple considered all she didn’t know about the gay world, the lesbian world, the transvestite world, the transsexual world. It would fill Lake Mead.
Temple wondered again if Simon had been killed because he was gay. Not just because he was gay but because he didn’t fit into this particular gay world. He was basically invulnerable to the kind of pressure that seemed to rule Maylords. He had a protector, Danny. How awful if Simon’s very relationship with Danny had doomed him! The protector had been a liability.
And why hire a transvestite, and fire her? Him. Almost immediately. Temple didn’t believe Glory had quit. She had to have been ousted. Just a power play? Maybe it was all about power, which would explain the illogic. Control was a terrible thing to waste.
“Honey, you are lookin’ in need of something stronger than Kool-Aid. I have some very nice Pernod absinthe, lovely licorice taste and divine poison green color, like lime Kool-Aid crossed with Kickapoo Joy Juice.“
They were back to another world Temple knew little of: the snobbery of alcohol consumption combined with abstruse pop culture references she knew nothing about.
She shook her head. “No. But what about the straight men and women on the staff? There must be some.”
“Oh, a few. But they’re birds of passage. Once they’re sucked dry, they’re outta there.”
Temple was afraid to ask, but she did. “ ‘Sucked dry’?”
“That’s the real game. People aren’t hired to do their jobs. They’re suckered in to get vamped.”
“ ‘Get vamped’? ” This was getting kinkier by the second.
“Drained, dearie. All those former sales staff and designers from the other, less upscale furniture palaces in town. What do they have that’s valuable?”
“They’re experienced professionals,” Temple said, merely to keep the dialogue going. She was beginning to get that qualifications were the last thing on the management minds at Maylords.
“Aren’t you the cutest thing! Especially when you recite that bullshit. You do see that’s the last reason Maylords would hire anyone.”
“I do?”
“It’s the designers’ contacts, dummy! Their mailing lists that they just so happily type into their Maylord iMacs, each one offered the color of his or her choice. What a classy operation! They’re so not used to the down-and-dirty retail world, and Maylords’s snob act has them fooled. So there they are typing their life’s blood into those treacherous little i-machines, professionally speaking, spilling decades of building a client list.”
“Which remains at Maylords when they’re let go after the first three months, as Ainsworth threatened would happen.”
“Those lists are sucked back out as soon as they’re entered, darlin’. Deliciously vicious, isn’t it? Not even a long, slow kiss-off. Just empty ’em out and shovel ‘em into the unemployment line.”
“I can’t believe all that evil energy would be expended on . . . selling furniture. I mean, Mozart had his murderous rival Solari and Snow White had her Evil Queen, but that was for really elevated purposes like art and . . . a beauty contest. But for furniture—?”
“ ‘Who’s the most beautiful bitch of all?’ Life is a bitch, darlin’, and I’m doing my best to become one as fast as I can.”
“Speaking of which, where does Beth Blanchard fit in all this? She acts like she has some secret inner track.”
“Have you ever heard of a fag hag?”
“I am from the midwest, but I wasn’t born in a cornfield. Whatever, I don’t see what’s in it for her.”
“She can be head bitch. And”—Glory sipped her Kool-Aid until her collagen-enhanced lips puckered—“like all of those delusional types, she was the devil in the heavenly chorus cherishing the notion of seducing a choirboy to the other side.”
Temple considered. “Which choirboy?”
But she already knew.
Who was the fairest of them all? Simon.
Glory shook her permanently curled poly-something locks. “Poor lad. Blind as a bat to that sort of predatory nuttiness. Polite, charmingly aloof, living in his own world, not understanding the chaos he caused.”
Temple squirmed on the floral poppies upholstering the sofa. That could describe Matt too. Both men attractive and too decent to use it. Both unavailable. Perhaps maddeningly unavailable to some. . . . Women had been suffering from that kind of problem for millennia. It was mind-bending to see that some men did too. Was it really getting to be an equal-opportunity world, even down to victimization?
“Oh, my dear girl. Don’t get weepy on Glory. The world is mean and man uncouth, or why would I want to be what I want to be?”
“That’s Brecht!” Temple accused.
“What! I’m not Brecht. What is Brecht?”
“That ‘world is mean and man uncouth’ line.”
“I heard it in a trans revue, dear. It could be Rod McKuen, for all I know. Or Shakespeare. Speaking of dear old Willie, that Blanchard babe is typecast for that play.”
Temple ran Glory’s wild free associations through her head. “ ‘Is this a dagger I see before me?’ ”
“Very good! You should try out for Attack of the Forty-Foot Woman or Invasion of the Booby Snatchers.”
“I don’t have the physical attributes for either role. You’re saying Beth Blanchard could have stabbed Simon?’
“Well, honey-dew, she did everything on earth a real shemale could do to seduce the poor bloke. And he turned her down, cold. I saw it myself. As they say, ‘Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.’ I can’t wait until I get there myself. I’m ready for dispensing a little fury, you see what I mean?”
“I do,” Temple said, standing up. “I really must be going, but thanks for clueing me in. On so much. And you’re really not bitter about being fired by Maylords?”
“ ‘Of all the gin joints in the world,’ it ran on pure venom. But it was a fun gig while it lasted. I shall always remember Paris. I wore my very best stainless-steel garters, specially purchased at a vintage shop to go with my pink Schiaperelli hose. One of my finer moments, despite the outcome. My dear, I adore your tangerine nail polish. It is soooo Maylords this month. Perhaps you should seek permanent employment there, but do beware.”
Temple leaned forward to lap up this last scoop.
“Do not pull your hems above your panty line. Not that you have a panty line. That I can see from here. Perhaps if you gave me a head start—”
Mortified, Temple blushed, thanked Glory for her candor, and got the heck out of there.
In the stairwell, she paused to jerk at her panty line. Maybe she needed to buy a thong to prevent further embarrassment.
Sure.