Cat in a Hot Pink Pursuit Read online

  If they made the show, Mariah would have to know that Temple was there as a stooge before the charade began. No way would she be fooled. Hey, the kid would probably get off on being part of an “undercover” team.

  How had a smart homicide dick like her ended up in such a mess? Daughter dearest and her mad, hopeful, predictable, determined desire to be somebody five years older than herself.

  Molina played her prime parental role: she laid plastic on a checkout counter and watched the LED numbers hit the mid four figures. Yikes.

  Temple Barr, she was pleased to note, had done as well. Molina supposed she should reimburse Temple but let that be a surprise after the ball at the Teen Queen Castle was over. If there was one for her.

  Molina checked her watch.

  “Done with still an hour’s time,” Temple chimed in, shooting a conspiratory glance at her pal Mariah. “Shoes, maybe?”

  “Actually, I need to make a stop,” Molina said.

  “Ladies’ room?” Temple asked.

  How heedlessly insulting. Temple Barr would make a fab teen queen. “No. Family members appear in the audience on the final show. I need something … less casual.”

  Temple eyed Molina’s jeans, moccasins, gauze cotton top, and suede bag. “I guess! Your cop shop pantsuits won’t cut it either. And I don’t suppose you want to trot out Carmen”—she cut off as Molina glared from Mariah to her—“a Carmen Miranda ensemble.”

  “Who’s Carmen Miranda?” Mariah wanted to know.

  Trust kids to sense when adults were getting their lies and deceptions in a wad.

  Temple vamped expertly into a diversionary path. “Oh, an old-time performer. Wore these tall, tall headdresses of tropical fruits. Sang, danced. One hot Hispanic chacha chick. The movies in the forties were big on Latin music and performers.”

  “The forties?”

  “During World War II.”

  “Latin was in?”

  “Olé! There were some great, fun movies, all black and white. You should rent a couple.”

  “Sounds coolio.”

  “As coolio as Julio Iglesias.”

  Mariah frowned. “Don’t you mean Enrique?” she said, mentioning Julio’s cleft-chinned singer-son in the sexy chip commercial. “To die for!” Nauseating sigh.

  “Right,” Temple backpeddled. “Enrique.”

  Molina feared that Temple’s love of vintage anything was giving away her age. This was definitely not an Iglesias, Sr. crowd. Molina would have to warn her about that.

  Temple turned a sharply focused eye on her. “Now. What does Mama Bear need? Something not too casual, not too formal but just right. For what reuse once the show is over?”

  “I don’t know.” Molina did know but she wouldn’t say that. “Something suitable for dinner at one of the big hotels. Maybe.”

  Temple reared back, obviously daunted by the challenge. “Let’s hit Ladies’ Dresses.”

  “I’m not much for dresses,” Molina objected. “They’re always too short.”

  “Not with long skirts so hot right now.” Temple did the teen eyeroll like an expert. “If I don’t buy petite sizes I have to roll up the waistbands until I look like I’m pregnant.”

  Mariah giggled hard at this notion that her mother had hoped would never cross her mind under any circumstances, except when saying no to boys, until she was in college.

  What have I done!

  The stroll through Better Dresses was agonizing. Molina understood for the first time her Jekyll/Hyde clothing philosophy: slacks and jackets, jeans and tops for on- and off-duty. Vintage velvet for Carmen, a distant star who was seldom coming out at nights to sing these days. And in between these two extremes lurked a jungle of fussy, expensive clothing that did not scream “date” with a maybe man.

  Temple Barr, however, obviously relished the extreme challenge of making over Molina. Temple Barr thrived in the messy middle ground. She and Mariah ravaged the racks, then pushed Molina into the dressing room with armloads of improbable clothing.

  She ended up with an outfit chosen by their mutual consent.

  “Car-wash skirt, definitely,” Temple told Mariah.

  “Very cool,” Mariah concurred.

  “It looks like Jack the Ripper’s been at my hem from the knees down,” Molina grumbled.

  “Dangerous,” Temple said. “Ideal for a law-enforcement type. And not black. Deep, dark plum. Good contrast for your eyes.”

  “My eyes don’t need contrast.”

  “Absolutely right,” Temple said. “Just a little mascara—you do use mascara? No! Makeup counter’s on the way out, Mariah. Take that down. Lash Out, just the thing.”

  Mariah meekly wrote that at the bottom of her clothes sheet.

  “An eyebrow waxing would be a gift from heaven,” Temple mused.

  “I’m not going to go through that sort of ridiculous assault in the name of female exploitation.”

  “Too timid for a little pain in the name of self-improvement, Mariah. So like a guy! Add a Tweezerman to the cosmetic counter list. You might be able to sneak up on her when she’s asleep and pluck.”

  “Scratch that!” Molina ordered. “Or I cancel the credit card charges.”

  Mariah did as told.

  But Molina had been conned into the skirt with the shredded hem, $128.00. A black sleeveless top shaped from bands of ribbons. And a net shawl of purple, black, and turquoise iridescent beads.

  “That is so cool, Mom,” said Mariah, who was sold on the outfit. Mariah had never seen Carmen.

  “This may be a little dressy,” Molina said with a frown, eyeing herself grudgingly in the mirror. Short, tiny Temple had a feel for supermodel togs.

  “You’ll need heels,” Temple decreed.

  “No. You do heels. I don’t do heels.”

  What, Temple had been about to say, about those vintage forties platform heels Carmen wears?

  Molina could read the entire sentence as it formed in her mind and her eyes. But Carmen did not exist here, and besides she stood solo on stage and sang. She didn’t have to worry about dwarfing some insecure man from the stage.

  Not that she had an insecure man in mind when she rejected heels. She just had an insecure woman in mind, who had minded these things since the eighth grade.

  “Shoe department,” Temple said in a threatening tone.

  Actually, it had been an anticipating tone but Molina found that threatening.

  There, Molina held her ground. She would not wear so much as an inch-and-a-half-high heel.

  Mariah, trying on every tarty spike she could find, pled with her. It was sad to see how much a teen girl wanted a glamorous mother. Molina almost caved.

  Except that Temple, of all people, gently praised and prodded Mariah into demure slides with small, low heels.

  “She’s too heavy for those spikes,” Temple commented as Mariah pranced before the mirrors in her petite princess shoes, feminine to the max. “Maybe later, when the baby fat goes.”

  “You don’t want me to wear them?”

  “Carmen’s vintage platform forties heels, with all those industrial-strength straps, scream sturdy as much as sexy. They’re fine on someone of your height. But these stilettos aren’t. You’d wobble. And I bet you’d hate to wobble. High heels should look able to support their wearer.”

  “I’m amazed. You make shoe selection sound like an art form.”

  “It is.” Temple frowned at Molina’s size nine feet. “I’d like to see a tiny heel, but since you won’t have it … .”

  She darted away like a dragonfly with no credit card limit.

  Moments later she returned with an utterly flat shoe, a thong sandal with a beaded triangle over the instep that perfectly matched the shawl.

  Like a dragonfly, the improbable sandal reflected the light.

  “Oh, Mom, that’s perfect,” Mariah pleaded.

  Mariah wanted her to sparkle because then that meant she could too. Like mother, like daughter.

  Molina bought the d
ragonfly sandals, not sure whom they would remind her of more—Mariah the would-be Cinderella, or Temple Barr, the reluctant fairy godmother.

  Later, she and her daughter celebrated their first mutual girly occasion (for Molina, it was her very first girly occasion): they whisked out their purchases in the living room, while Caterina and Tabitha gamboled on fallen pieces of colorful tissue.

  “This is so cool, Mom. Thank you! I know I can win.”

  “It doesn’t matter if you win. It matters if you have fun, keep your head, and … stay safe.”

  “Temple is so cool.” Mariah, head bent, held up some ridiculous glitzy top to her underdeveloped breasts. “She hardly acts like an old person at all.”

  “I really hope so, honey.”

  Mariah looked up, catching her change in tone.

  “Because we three have a secret, and it’ll be up to you to help carry it off.”

  And then she told Mariah that Temple was working undercover to trap a potential perp, and Mariah would have to help her carry off the masquerade.

  Mariah the cop’s kid looked even more amazed and happy than Mariah the potential ‘Tween Queen.

  Chapter 10

  Louie Goes Ape

  What has happened to my dear little roomie, Miss Temple?

  She was always a spirited, happy little human.

  She always got a kick out of life and having a humongous high-heel collection. She was perky but not sappy. Full of mischief but not slaphappy. Upbeat but not nauseating. Cute as a ladybug but not too girly to rock and roll.

  Now she has done a complete turnaround.

  I watch her upend about a zillion shopping bags on the bed I have honored with my reclining presence.

  I am adrift in a blizzard of mall-style plastic … the Gap, Victoria’s Secret, The Icing, et cetera. She has been on a shopping spree wild enough to smother me had I not beaten off a rain of plastic bags with the Ginsu knife shivs so conveniently attached to my extremities.

  “Oh, sorry, Louie,” she remarks offhandedly, trying on a faux-leather bustier over her faux-front gel cups in the full-length mirror on the wall.

  I am used to seeing my Miss Temple in a state of undress, due to our intimate relationship in the bedroom, i.e., we share my king-size bed.

  I am not used to seeing assorted tattoos and rings on her upper arms, ankle, neck, and the … gasp, small of her back, which is pretty small, her being a Lilliputian human.

  When did she go berserk at a piercing parlor without consulting me, I would like to know! Obviously, I have been derelict in my duty of shepherding her through life as we know it in Las Vegas.

  When she pulls out the Cher wig and tugs it on over her own tortie-red curls, I know I have to take action.

  She turns from the mirror, looking like something from the back of a squad car on Cops, the first and most-forgotten reality TV show.

  I am aghast to see that her eyes are as vibrantly green as mine … then I realize that she has borrowed Mr. Max’s performing trick: green contact lenses for that mesmerizing gaze. Trouble is, it works on cats and magicians but I am not sure it works for my Miss Temple.

  “Well, Louie, do I look like a reconstruction project?” She looks like an escapee from the city pound, especially with that rhinestone dog collar around her neck.

  “Am I ready to take on the world of reality TV?”

  Hmmm, I already observed that she looked like an escapee from Cops.

  “Am I post-’Tween Queen in the making?”

  ’Tween tweezings, I think to myself. Not to mention a ripe candidate for brain implants.

  “Do I look sweet, swingin’ nineteen going on Goth thirty?”

  Goth? As in I “goth” to get outa here?

  I take my own advice and retreat to the outer room but resolve to keep a very close eye on her from this moment on.

  Chapter 11

  Good Golly, Miss Goth Girl

  The mall was mobbed with ‘tween girls from just-thirteen to a tarty fifteen. And a few good legally blonde bimbos from sixteen to nineteen. The decibel level in the vaulted central atrium suggested a jungle of screeching parrots.

  Temple had never seen so much metallic and iridescent nail polish, so many spandex capris, thong flipflops, and belly buttons in one place since a Britney Spears concert. And she’d never seen a Britney Spears concert except in TV commercials.

  Temple glimpsed a shadow of herself in a Gap display window. It took her a moment to pick herself out from the crowd. She couldn’t believe she was doing this: standing in line, hiding her hair, and showing her belly button.

  This was the screwiest self-marketing job she’d ever done. She’d decided that the subject of a TV makeover show should require some major makeover, plus. And she needed to disguise herself enough to fool any possible acquaintances, so …

  She craned her neck to see if her little buddy—or was that “budette” in this case?—was anywhere around. But Mariah was not here. No. The Molina kid had made the smart move. Applied early. Before the humiliating cattle call. Mariah was less than half Temple’s age, and she was already a finalist, a contender. Temple was a raw recruit.

  Temple, aka Xoe Chloe—“pronounced just ‘Zoey Chloey,’ or ‘Chloey Zoey’ if you like that better,” she’d told the babe with the clipboard collecting their application forms—stared down the endless line forward, and then back along the endless line backward.

  It felt creepily like instant aging in a horror movie to be bracketed by so many genuine tender young things. Skin creamy as a South Beach diet ricotta cheese dessert. Zits, yes, but young, plump, cherry-colored zits, almost beauty marks, not the occasional pale pink spot staking a pallid postdated claim on the shoulder blade of thirty years’ duration.

  Well, she had the right shoes. A girl could do anything with the right shoes: go to the ball, leave Oz, shave a decade or so off her age. Temple stared at her Heavy Metal Hot Pink Funk-painted toenails in their red rhinestone slides. Excellent color clash. The toe rings added a nice trashy touch. Her feet alone demanded a serious redo.

  Then there was the black, straight-haired Cher wig from the singer’s Cleopatra period. Las Vegas had wig shops galore filled with celebrity dos. Even Temple was amazed by how totally a redhead with short curly hair could vanish behind glossy dark eyebrow-length bangs and shoulder blade-brushing strands of thick black. A Maybelline black eyebrow pencil covered the last of Temple’s natural coloring. Any freckles disappeared under pale foundation and dead-white face powder accoutered with assorted magnetic studs and rings at eyebrow, nose, and lip, adding a modern touch to the Queen of the Nile. And she hadn’t forgotten the belly button ring, clipon. She was a fraud from sole to poll.

  Except for her long painted fingernails, each one a color of the rainbow. They were real under that lacquer.

  When she’d given her remade self a once-over in the bedroom mirror, for a surreal moment she was struck by the fact that she almost resembled the black-haired, rice-powdered persona of the evil she-magician, Shangri-La, who had kidnapped Temple and Midnight Louie months before. Now Shangri-La was missing in action and Temple was, ta-dah, suddenly a black-haired teen bad girl. Think the twisted slayer Faith on Buffy, the Vampire Slayer.

  But that was then, and this was now. Temple shuffled forward in the line. Her feet were killing her. Normally wimpy little inch-and-a-half heels wouldn’t bother her. But she was used to flying around, on the job. Standing, shuffling, on these aggregate-stone mall floors. Killer!

  She clutched the sheet she’d filled out in tilted block letters with the i’s carefully topped by circles as fat as a cartoon dialogue balloon. Favorite hunk. Favorite punk band. Favorite junk food. Favorite class to skip. Favorite cosmetic. Favorite fast food.

  She peered around the snaking line of bare shoulders and barely covered rears. Oh, at last! She glimpsed a long table at which people actually sat. They must be the interviewers, the American Idol-style judges who would say yea or neigh.

  Nay! This was not a hor
se race. This was an empowering opportunity for today’s savvy young women. Was she quoting the TV show propaganda, or what?

  Stand. Shuffle. Shuffle, shuffle, shuffle. Stand.

  Behind her, someone snapped her gum. A nauseous odor of banana-strawberry almost put Temple down for the count. A woman of thirty ought never have to smell that again!

  Suddenly … open air ahead of her. A table clothed in linen to the floor. Four adult humans sitting behind it. All looking at her.

  Four maybe-human adults …

  Because one of them was (gasp!) Savannah Ashleigh, fading film starlet and an acquaintance.

  Another was (gasp!) a very ripe Elvis impersonator, big and bellied, complete with tinted aviator sunglasses, long, dark caterpillar-fuzzy sideburns, neck scarf, glitzy white jumpsuit and more knuckle-buster diamond rings than Liberace. Well, she supposed Elvis had been an expert on teenage girls, including his almost-child bride, Priscilla.

  Another was (double gasp)—once you’re thinking in terms of cartoon bubbles you’re lost—her very own maternal aunt, Kit Carlson, aka the romance novelist Sulah Savage!!! What was she doing here, all the way from New York City?

  And the last (thank whatever gods may be!) was a Strange Man who looked like Simon Cruel, i.e., Cowell, on American Idol.

  Two of the four judges knew Temple Barr, for better or worse. Was this going to be a cakewalk or a shambles or what?

  More like, or what.

  Temple, ex-TV newswoman … ex-community theater thespian … former repertory theater PR woman … decided to regard this debacle as an opportunity to stretch her dramatic muscles, i.e., her I.Q. Insincerity Quotient.

  “Zoo-ee,” Savannah Ashleigh was reading from her cheat sheet with her usual skill at the cold read, rhyming Zoh-ee with gooey.

  “Zoh-ee,” Aunt Kit corrected. Smartly.

  “A zoo, all right,” the Simon clone bellowed loud enough to reach the back of the line. His diction was Aussie, not British, but just as scalding as Simon’s. “Child. Give those capris back to the zebras, there’s a good sheila. ’Twould be a mercy.”