"Maybe." Molina was not convinced. "I don't see a motive. Well, I see a motive, but I just don't believe anybody will kill someone for being annoying."
Temple ignored the gratuitous put-down in the face of an inspiration. "Wait a minute! Who had Danny really assigned me for that time? Why didn't he show up as scheduled?"
Molina examined her notes. "A Jake Gotshall."
"Oh, no! Mr. Comedy Central. What happened to him?"
"Someone had 'borrowed' the bottom half of his costume."
"Or stolen it, so he'd be late. Ah, what was the bottom half of his costume? I need to know what I. . .
missed."
Molina's intimidating blue eyes stayed on her notebook pages. Temple had a feeling that she was trying very hard not to laugh. "Fur shorts."
"Fur shorts? What was he dressing up as?"
"Every woman's secret fantasy, he claims: Santa making a special Christmas Eve delivery to the lady of the house. He said he planned to wear nothing but white fur shorts and a white wig and beard. And some mistletoe in appropriate places."
"Ooohh," said Temple. "He would have tickled!"
"I've never heard of anyone being tickled to death. Yet," Molina added cautiously. "I'm sure you'll run across one of those someday. Anyway, Gotshall couldn't go on without the key part of his costume and was scrambling around the dressing rooms looking for a substitution. It was just a dress rehearsal, and he figured the fur shorts would show up."
"So Fabrizio stole them to make Jake late." Temple put a hand to her neck.
Talking hurt her throat, and Fabrizio's last manual contractions hadn't helped. It was hard to prove that he had meant to hurt her, instead of simply blundering over to her and lashing out in his death throes. He certainly knew who she was. Why else say he was sorry?
Temple glanced at a coterie of supporters sitting in the theater's front row: Danny Dove, immobile for once, Electra and Kit huddled like fairy godmothers bereft of their magic wands and even Midnight Louie, lured away from his platinum ladylove by a roommate in distress. Word had gotten around fast.
"Why would Fabreeezio attack you?" Molina asked again.
Temple put a hand to her throat. It didn't help. "Maybe ... maybe he knew that I knew his costume included a glove."
"Glove?" The glitter in Molina's eyes showed her instant grasp of its significance.
"The only pageant competitor," Temple said, to make it plain, "who was wearing anything on any hand onstage during the cover costume segment."
"A glove wasn't on the body."
"Exactly. He never wore it onstage, not even in rehearsals, but it was part of his costume originally.
His costume. There wasn't much to it--tight pants, wrestling championship-size belt, long hair and one black leather glove. He was planning to enter with a hawk on his wrist."
"A live hawk?"
"A dead one wouldn't sit up straight."
"Which hand?"
Temple shook her head. She didn't know; besides, weren't the police supposed to find those things out?
"You'll have to come down to headquarters," Molina said, standing.
Temple remained sitting on the black velvet cushion she had once considered a scene of the crimes of the heart, not of homicide.
"Why?" she asked.
"We'll need your fingerprints. At least. Got someone to drive you?
Oh, Lordy, she was a wanted woman. Temple stared toward Electra, Danny and Kit. She almost jumped out of her skin, or, rather, her decolletage. Matt Devine had materialized next o Electra. Was he starting to develop traits like the Mystifying Max's? She glanced back at Lieutenant Molina, who was noting Matt's presence with interest.
"Drive me? You mean I might be . . . edgy. I suppose so--"
"I'd expect some prints on the hilt, after the way you were flailing around, according to witnesses. I want to make sure I know whose prints are whose. You didn't know what you were doing, did you?"
Temple couldn't claim that she did, so she said nothing. She had a right to keep silent. She had a right to an attorney. She had a right to run for her life, but she wouldn't.
She begin to understand how Max might have felt if he'd found the body in the Goliath ceiling first.
What's to say about being found hand-in-glove with a corpse? Better to skedaddle first and answer questions later, or never.
"Am I under arrest?"
"You just get right down to fingerprinting and let me worry about technicalities. I'll tell 'em you're coming."
"Thanks," Temple said faintly, rising and walking across the stage as if it were covered in seashells.
Fabrizio's body still lay faceup, worthy of a bestselling cover. Temple remembered the line from The Duchess of Malfi: "Cover her face. Mine eyes dazzle. She died young."
She averted her eyes and went to the runway's end. Nicky Fontana and Van von Rhine had joined the charmed circle, so a spate of human friends waited to help her down the stairs.
"Anybody got a Black Mariah?" she joked in a shaky croak from the runway. "I need a ride to headquarters."
Matt insisted on driving Temple. After all, he had said, ending the friends' debate, he wasn't involved in whatever this convention was, and could spare the time. Danny had to stay at the theater to insure that the investigation did not disrupt more than it had to. With the pageant scheduled for the next evening, the situation was critical. Nicky Fontana grudgingly agreed to Matt's acting as Temple's chauffeur; Temple knew he was aching to hot-rod to police headquarters in his traffic-cop-spurning silver Corvette.
Temple insisted on her own imperatives. First she went to the dressing room. Quincey was there, smoking a cigarette she had borrowed from someone. She tamped it out hastily in a makeup tin cover.
"Gosh, are you all right?" she asked, jumping up, big-eyed.
"Sort of," Temple said hoarsely. "Can you help me out of this rig? I've got to go to police headquarters."
"Oh, God!" Quincey's fingers were ice-cube cold on Temple's back, shaking as she undid hooks and pulled open underlying corset lacings. "That creep Lacey was telling that scary woman lieutenant all sorts of stuff about you and Fabrizio, about how he tried to force you into posing with him until Danny Dove stopped him. Rotten snitch!"
"It's okay. The lieutenant knows me. She wouldn't believe I stabbed him."
"You didn't, then?"
Temple turned to regard her emergency undresser. "No! If I were going to kill someone, it would be for more serious crimes than attempted sweeping off the feet."
"I don't know--" Quincey's hands grew still on the lacings. "Some men keep making slimy remarks and treat the women they're with like dirt while ogling every other woman around . . . or girl. You could kill them."
Temple turned, jerking the laces from Quincey's nerveless fingers. "No," she said very definitely. "Not just for being creeps, or sexists. I wouldn't do it, and you wouldn't."
"I-I guess not. But... oh, what a groady mess this Incredible Hunk thing is! I thought doing this would be cool, glamorous, something, but I just feel... yucky."
Temple grinned. "It's not easy to be a femme fatale --oops! I didn't mean that literally. Everything will be okay. Only one more day until the pageant, and then this show is over forever." Temple slapped her bra to her newly useful chest (for holding up gowns) while her ebbing costume sank around her feet to a lavender cloud on the floor.
She stepped out of it as if avoiding dog doo-doo. "I hope I never have to wear this dopey costume again."
Quincey's pale smile looked automatic. She was scrounging the dressing room for a match to relight her crushed cigarette butt by the time Temple was dressed and ready to leave.
Matt was waiting upstairs, alone, a gilt vision in yellow sports shirt and buff slacks.
"Everybody did as you said and went about their business," he told her.
"Even Louie?" she wondered with a smile.
"He dashed off the minute you left us. Maybe he had urgent business downstairs, too."