A murderer may be among them. Need I say more?"
Temple shook her head.
"All right." Kit went on, talking a mile a minute. "The setup is you're a producer for Prime Time --
"
" Prime Time? You don't mean the network news show?"
"Right." Kit shoved a slippery stack of author press-kit folders into Temple's arms. "I grabbed these in the press room, so it looks like you've done your homework."
"Thanks for the big promotion, but I really can't pose as a Prime Time producer. That's...
actionable if anyone finds out. Impersonating a tabloid TV producer with intent to trap a murderer doesn't carry the same risks. Nobody in tabloid TV has much reputation to protect, but masquerading as network --"
"Cool it, kid. I admitted that you're my niece, so these authors probably assume you're just a lowly producer-in-training-wheels. And so young for such an important position, too."
She patted Temple's unruly curls into place, like a mommy readying her offspring for the garden club.
"Aunt Kit! You are the senior member here. First you suggest I offer myself up to some mysterious pageant ritual called a pose-down; now you arrange an audience with the queens of romance under childishly false pretenses. You said these women were mega-bestsellers. They'll be much too sophisticated to fall for me extorting information under cover of media blitz."
"Don't count on it." Kit was now patting her own unruly red-gray curls. "They'll cut you slack because you're a relative of a colleague. Besides, we poor romance writers have been the national media's whipping girls for so long that we've developed the pathetic optimism a single woman feels about another blind date. Maybe this time it won't be so bad."
"And maybe tomorrow is another day, Scarlett."
" Scarlett. " Kit's eyes squinched shut behind the sparkling picture windows of her glasses. "God, I wish, I wish I'd gotten that writing assignment! I'd have done a helluva better job, and I'd be squalidly rich by now."
" 'Squalidly rich' is an oxymoron, Auntie, as you well know from our earlier buzz session at the Debbie Reynolds' Hotel. What is it nowadays, with everyone and their first cousin writing sequels to classics by long-gone authors?"
"A dastardly trend," Kit said with a snarl. "Here's what it is: publishers . . . and agents . . . and heirs so remote they're almost invisible, all making easy money from dead writers by exploiting live writers as work-for-hire, sweat-shop labor to continue the 'sure thing' of the past. Forget about today's writers, and their present and future. Who are they gonna rip off forty years down the road if they don't let us writers get anywhere significant, huh?"
Temple seized an opportunity to segue into a touchy subject.
"You feel strongly about these publishing issues."
"I should. It's my livelihood."
"And you aren't crazy hot about the cover trend to feature semi-nude hunks."
"True." Kit, being an actress, had immediately read the underlying seriousness in Temple's voice.
She was waiting for the real question to surface.
Temple decided to end the suspense for them both. "Then why did you meet Cheyenne for a drink Wednesday night after I turned him down, and why didn't you mention that after he was murdered?"
Kit eschewed Jake's theatrics.
"Because I may not need hunks on my covers to sell my books, but I'm not opposed to admiring them in person," she said deadpan. "And then, of course, if I had murdered him, I wouldn't want to draw attention to our association."
"You had an 'association'?" Temple hadn't meant for her voice to rise an octave.
"Now, Niece, don't interrogate your old auntie." Kit smiled. "I didn't mention it because I was so damn embarrassed. I ran into the guy in the lobby bar after our expedition to the MGM Grand and dinner--and after you and Electra had gone to bed with visions of pirates swooping out of crows'
nests in your heads. We chatted and that led to a drink. I wondered why he'd wanted to talk to you, but I never found out anything, except that he was as charming as hell."
Nothing happened?" Temple demanded.
"Don't be so maternally vague. Spit it out. No, we did not go to bed. We did not even pass 'Go.'
We talked. We flirted a little.
I am single and past twenty-one. We said good-bye. Permanently, as it turned out. But I didn't want to look as if I'd grabbed your guy."
"As I recall, you liked the look of them, too," Temple noted suspiciously.
"Call it a postmenopausal speculation." Kit smiled again. "Once a woman reaches a certain age, she can get away with things men have been doing all along. Very liberating, really, and fairly harmless."
"Most of the author suspects are your age, or a decade younger." Temple, relieved, returned to her trail of pre-menopausal speculation. "Could one of them have actually done it?"
"Murdered Cheyenne?"
"Ultimately. But first, slept with him?"
"Anything is possible and maybe even probable. That's why I set up this interview, Niece. So you could study the prime suspects. Want to know if their position on cover hunks is righteously upright, or sleazily horizontal? Ask 'em in your own subtle way. Thanks to the cover controversy, they'll be so busy frothing at the mouth that they won't notice when you pose any not-really for-Prime-Time questions. And I know you'll pull off your impersonation with pizzazz. Not only do you have a legitimate news background, but you have the famous Carlson acting genes!"
Temple shook her head. "Name one famous acting Carlson."
Kit was stumped. "Well, since I retired from the stage--" Then she screeched out, "Richard!"
"Who is ... or was ... that?"
"Lord, give me patience with the child. Richard Carlson did some great grade-B sci-fi movies and lots of TV in the fifties. I Led Three Lives." Temple's expression remained unenlightened. "About the Communist menace in America." Temple didn't bat a press release. "Oh, and all those neat kiddie educational films for Bell Telephone Company, too, that we saw in grade school." When Temple still looked as blank as a ream of fresh twenty-pound bond, Kit added wistfully, "You have at least heard of Ma Bell, haven't you?"
"Just barely. Rings a bell. Okay, where am I to meet this posse of grand dames?"
"Electra said she'd arrange a private room with the hotel. In fact, she's seeing to the food and everything."
"Food?"
"You can't expect a major network show to buttonhole people in the corridors, can you?" Kit fumbled in her purse, then squinted at the neon pink Post-It note that emerged sticking to her forefinger. "Here it is. Room seven-eleven."
"Okay." Temple gamely turned toward the hotel elevators, then stopped. "Isn't that the . . . Ghost Suite?"
"The Ghost Sweet?"
"Never mind."
Temple trotted briskly for the elevators, as if she wasn't lugging six pounds of press kits. The seventh floor was purely residential, so it was quiet as a tomb when she stepped out of the elevator alone.
She advanced down the lush, recarpeted hall. Yup, 711 was the infamous Ghost Suite all right.
Temple paused to listen at the door. Faint laughter, but a clink of silver and crystal indicated corporeal life behind the sturdy wood door. Ghosts may snicker, but they don't eat. Although, Temple recalled, Jersey Joe Jackson's shade had shown a certain fondness for drinking champagne on one not-so-distant occasion. . ..
Temple shuddered and put her hand on the cold brass doorknob. Then she decided to knock, just in case any lively ectoplasm wanted to do some last-minute tidying.
"Come in!" Electra stood there, resplendent in a solid yellow muumuu, her hair a curled halo of reassuringly plain, past-sixty silver. "The boys have already delivered the first cart."
"Boys?" Temple muttered uneasily as she edged past Electra.
"You'll see. Meanwhile, your guests await."
Did they ever! Temple had never seen the Ghost Suite so definitely occupied. A flock of prosperous-looking middle-aged women perched on the authentic 1940s furniture. All were sampling hors d'oeuvres from glass and silver trays. A brass bar cart glittered with Baccarat crystal and decanters glowed with amber, topaz or diamond-clear liquors.