"Well, my books don't have semi-naked hunks on the cover," she said primly, "because I bother to insist that my publishers do them differently. My newest will have an embossed white tablecloth lace front cover, with a step-back painting of a charming picnic scene. I supervised the cover shoot myself in New York. I always do, so no lapses in taste occur. Cheyenne was quite handsome in a plaid shirt and jeans, and the heroine wore dimity. Of course, he did fashion work as well lately."
"Oh, yes." Ravenna smiled significantly. "Cheyenne was exceedingly versatile. He could do country or pop. He and Fabrizio made Vanity Fair at the Milan design expo, when they both wore aluminum-riveted space-age silver jeans. It's still the same old story, ladies. Skin sells. Sex sells.
You're fooling yourselves if you think anything different."
An unhappy silence ensued, during which Ravenna Rivers worked on her Scotch and Temple hunted for a question she wanted answered.
A knock at the door made them freeze like stalked rabbits.
Electra entered. "Ready for more?"
And in came carts of finger sandwiches, salad, fruits and pastries, wheeled by various brothers Fontana, all clad in the hunk uniform: tight blue jeans and form-fitting shirts with a closing problem.
And all in author-charming public relations mode.
"Here comes the champagne, ladies," sang out Rico, pouring and passing glasses as fast as he could. "Compliments of Fontana, Inc."
Temple put away her press kits, and tabled her curiosity with them. She would get nothing more out of these authors now. But she had two curious crumbs to consider. Ravenna Rivers obviously had known Cheyenne very well, as she did many cover models, and almost every author present had their names across a book cover featuring the dead man, even Sharon Rose, who publicly disdained the cover-hunk craze.
"Champagne, miss?" Rico asked, bowing and pretending to not know her. He was undercover, too, you know.
She took the stem in her hand and sipped.
Rico winked.
Chapter 29
Four Queens Get the Boot
"Hi!" Temple stuck her nose into the Four Queens' dressing room.
She wasn't visiting the downtown hotel of that name, but rather the Crystal Phoenix's quartet of showgirls known by the same name.
Darcy, Midge, Jo and Trish were all present that evening in various states of dress and undress, depending on how you viewed the' process of preparing for a Las Vegas revue.
"Can I ask you guys a question?" she continued.
Calling the quartet "guys" was akin to calling Eskimos Fiji Islanders, but none of the four showgirls took offense. All were too busy taking off what few articles of clothing remained on them.
"What's up?" Darcy asked, adjusting the ride of her rhinestone g-string.
Temple produced Exhibit A from behind her back. "This."
All four women glanced up, defying gravity and the double sets of long false eyelashes glued to their lash lines.
"Bitchin' boot." Trish, a big-boned blonde, swung an extra long leg over a wooden chair back, then flexed her knee and stamped her taps down hard on the seat while she adjusted a marabou garter.
Each dancer's fishnet hose bore the symbols of a different suite of playing cards: tiny red hearts for Darcy and diamonds for Midge, teeny black spades for Jo and clubs for Trish.
Jo, a statuesque redhead whose purple-mahogany locks made Temple's brighter curls seem garish, laughed as she applied a crys-tal earring that brushed her collarbone to her left earlobe.
"Temple, you cute thang. Your two feet could go in that big ol' boot and you'd still have room to swing a cat."
"Speaking of swinging cats," Temple said, "has anybody seen Midnight Louie around here lately?"
Darcy stepped back from her dressing table to reveal Himself sprawled on a red velvet pillow, one forepaw sweetly curled against his black velvet chest.
Someone had put a red satin bowtie around his neck, which he had managed to scratch off-center until it sat rakishly under one ear.
"Lord, he looks wounded ... or decorated!" Temple shook her head. "What's the big attraction for him down here?"
"Besides Trish's smoked oysters?" Darcy grinned, and then nodded at the boot. "So when is Big Tex coming to town?"
"That's what I'm here to ask. I found this stuffed under a costume rack in the hall and wondered if it was from a floorshow costume. I'm, um, sort of involved in the cover model pageant, and didn't want any of your essential costumes getting mixed up with theirs."
"Nice thought." Jo twanged the side elastic on her g-string. "But none of our costumes are exactly essential."
"Actually," Temple corrected, "they're the only essential things you're wearing. So, Nobody owns up to the boot."
"Let's give it a once-over," Darcy suggested. "It sure isn't ordinary streetwear."
They gathered around, their tap cleats ringing on the concrete dressing-room floor like horseshoes. Temple experienced a rare attack of claustrophobia as the showgirls closed in. With their heel-abetted height six feet-something, their plumed headdresses and the glitzy sway and clatter of their scanty harnessry, they reminded her of elegantly caparisoned circus steeds. She didn't know whether she felt more in danger of being crushed--or dazzled to death.
Since her Crystal Phoenix association had begun, she had often glimpsed these women from a distance, knew them by sight, had waved and smiled. Now, in their glamorous midst, they overwhelmed her as much as the equally large, bare and blatantly sexy male cover models. Why must erotic symbols always come in the Large, Economy Size, like the Wizard of Oz's false, inflated head? Great and powerful might seduce at a distance--and Temple was no subscriber to Dorothy, the meek and humble--but what was wrong with small and subtle?
"Nothing subtle about this-here boot." Jo took it from Temple to turn this way and that. "Talk about your Rhinestone Cowboy! Will you gander at these zit-size rhinestones caking the heel?"
"Gross!" Darcy's moan commented on both the rhinestones and Jo's inelegant comparison. "But this is all custom work, and that silver-leather flame design has been hand-applied. The tragedy is that someone paid major money for this pair, when it was a pair."
"Why did you think this gunboat might be ours?" Jo surrendered the boot with a wrinkled nose. "It's pretty big, but then so are you."
"Not that big." Trish peered down the boot's tall sides as if hunting hidden treasure. "No size stamped anywhere. Odd. But I'd call it a fourteen or fifteen, at least. Who's been hotfooting it through our corridors--Bigfoot?" She nodded authoritatively at Temple. "That there's a galoot's boot."
Temple sighed heavily. "I didn't want to hear that."
"Besides," Trish hefted her foot back onto the chair seat to display her size-ten silver pump. "All of us hoofers wear these regulation character shoes with two-inch Cuban heels and the Mary Jane straps. If we tried to tippety-tap onstage in those rhinestone galoshes, we'd break our necks. Check with the boys in the Incredible Hunk contest."
Temple watched them disperse to their makeup stations with a sense of relief. "You know about that?"
She hadn't expected them to notice. Showgirls were night creatures and birds of passage as well, with lives of their own far from the madding Las Vegas Strip. They did their grocery shopping at 3:00
A.M. and their nails at noon. They rarely had time or inclination to notice the gaudy male of the species Show Biz.
"Who could miss a convention of Conan the Barbarians?" Midge asked. "Especially when one of them gets knocked off so spectacularly. Died in the saddle, I heard."
"Not quite." Temple absently wrapped her arms around the boot and clutched it to her chest. It was less heavy that way. "He rode Native American-style. Bareback."
Trish shook her plumed head in mock mourning. "Dead so soon, half-naked on a naked horse."