"Miss Ashleigh." Molina's smile was so tight it resembled a rigor-mortis grin. "If you were truly getting the dreaded 'grilling,' it would be downtown in a bare, tiny room and no cats would be allowed. Keep Yvette with you, if you wish. But I will accept no whining and screaming from either of you."
"Oooooh," Savannah's shaky little moan came perilously close to a whine.
Temple waved Louie and his carrier on. He didn't like incarceration, but he was a perfect gentleman about it: no howling, hissing or pissing.
The group drew up chairs around an empty table for six. Molina plunked her notebook on the table and drew out a tiny pocket recorder.
"I'm compiling a roster of who was with the deceased the past few days. Since he entertained so often, it's hard to get a complete guest list. If any of you recall other attendees you knew, I want their names. This is all routine, I assure you."
Yeah, Temple thought. A homicide lieutenant on a suicide investigation. If suicide were the cause of death, with no reservations, Temple doubted Molina would even be here . . . unless to harass Temple.
Paranoia, Temple reflected further, was the curse of the thinking class. Like Hamlet, she thought too much, and look how that had ended!
"Mr. Conrad." Molina began with the director. "I understand you were present at Mr.
Cooke's Friday-night cocktail party at his hotel."
"Yes, purely a professional courtesy. I only met him when we began working on this cat commercial. He was a generous man, and so included me on his guest list. I was hardly on a level with most of his guests, who are recognized 'names' in the business."
"Was anyone else from the crew or associated with the cat commercial present that night?"
Kyle eyed the table as if to refresh his memory. "Only Miss Ashleigh. But she had known him for years."
"For years," Molina repeated unnervingly, jotting the information down.
"Not that many years," Savannah corrected. She had removed Yvette from the canvas carrier and was holding the slim little cat to her chest and cheek as a child will cuddle a favorite teddy bear.
"How many?" Molina was as cool as a frosted beer mug.
"Years? Well, I don't know exactly. I first met him when I was doing House on Heavenly Isle.
That was released in nineteen eighty-four, so . . . eight years ago or so."
"At least twelve," Molina corrected.
Savannah puckered her blond eyebrows and rubbed her prominent cheekbone (probably an implant) against Yvette's pretty Persian face. Yvette rubbed back.
"I can't be sure. I'm only thirty-six and I'm sure I made that film when I was about twenty, maybe?"
"We can check the film dates," Molina said, hiding a smile by forcing her mouth corners down.
Obviously, Savannah Ashleigh was so used to manipulating dates in her favor that she was hopelessly lost in a tangle of wishful lies when she discussed her career and its longevity.
"And you are--?" Molina asked the animal trainer.
"Sharon Hammerlitz. I train animals. I never knew Cooke before this project. I don't know why he invited me to his Friday-night party, but it was too good an opportunity to miss. We animal handlers are rarely invited to high-level parties, or any parties at all."
"So you went out of curiosity?"
"Like a cat." Sharon smiled for the first time in Temple's memory.
"You didn't sense that Mr. Cooke took a personal interest in you?"
"Me? I'm just a twenty-four-year-old animal trainer. What would a famous older man have an interest in me for?"
"You're attractive. Mr. Cooke never failed to notice an attractive young woman. How did he happen to overlook you?"
"Dozens of prettier types at the party; real starlets. I was just a lowly extra. I drank one margarita, nibbled some crackers and crab and left by nine."
Molina lifted an eyebrow at Kyle Conrad.
"True. I hardly saw her, and only stayed until ten myself. Nobody was much interested in talking to me. It was a closed crowd. They knew each other."
"I'm impressed by all your moderate hours and abstemious ways. And was Miss Barr present?"
Kyle and Sharon exchanged glances, shaking their heads in tandem.
Molina's eerily blue eyes finally rested on Temple again. "You weren't i nvited, Cinderella?"
Temple shook her head, wondering if she should volunteer her presence at the Sunday brunch, a much more incriminating day.
While she debated, Molina snapped her notebook shut and turned off her tiny tape recorder. "Just checking on the decedent's last days. He strike any of you as suicidal?"
More head shakes, very definite.
Temple sat there biting her tongue. If she didn't volunteer her presence in Darren Cooke's suite, admitting it later would look very bad. Perhaps if she had a private word with Molina --
But the lieutenant had stood and was thanking them perfunctorily for their time. The chance, now lost, would be awkward to reclaim.
"Well, are you coming?" Savannah Ashleigh demanded beside Temple. "We're back in business as usual, and your big tomcat must be gnawing at his carrier grille to get another chance to sully my little Yvette."
"Louie doesn't sully anything," Temple answered, hastening after the others and leaving Savannah to reinsert Yvette in her carrier, zip it up and come trailing after.
Chapter 20
Louie Goes for a Ride
I am a tad peeved with Gangster's.
Their advertisements claim they will pick up anyone anywhere in town. They certainly pick up Miss Savannah Ashleigh and the Divine Yvette, and bring them to the set every day that we are shooting. They certainly return Miss Savannah Ashleigh and the Divine Yvette from whence they came at each day's end.
Why, then, am I suffered to be "dropped off' and "picked up" by Miss Temple Barr? It makes me sound like dirty laundry. Of course, I realize that Miss Temple is a working mother (so to speak, especially if it is Savannah-speak, though Miss Temple has never called me "Mummy's little darling baby." Thank Bast!).
Still, I think I would look most elegant arriving in the passenger seat of a long, black limo.
And it appears that I am finally going to get my due. The Divine Yvette and I are about to be portrayed as passengers of some fancy vintage mobmobile. We are also going to be fed again (the best part of the commercial racket). As I overhear it, this sequence is a takeoff on that mustard commercial where two old British snobs roll up to the stoplight in their chauffeured Rolls-Royces, each of them slathering something they call Great Poop-on on their wienies. This strikes me as a strange name for a product meant for public (if not proletariat) consumption, but those Brits have some weird names for things and I do not always hear too well as I snooze during every commercial I am subjected to.
I do not get to slather Great Poop-on on my wienie for this commercial. I must scarf down more A La Cat from a sissy dish without a dab of Great Poop-on to make it palatable. (This Great Poop-on has a spunky, spicy taste, though its name is for the birds, or rather something that went through the birds. I think it is the same "Poop-on everything" they are always asking people for in the advertising biz. If these Madison Avenue hucksters can sell that poop goop, they can certainly unload a lot of A La Cat with two glamorous types like myself and the Divine Yvette hyping it from here to cat heaven.)
The car the Divine One and I will share is no limo, but one of those cavernous, beetle-back black numbers from the thirties. We do at least have a front-seat driver, a dude who looks like he escaped from Alcatraz. Dis is one tough-looking dude, let me tell you, and the Thompson submachine gun poking a steel nose under his zoot-suit lapel only adds to the ambience.
We are stuffed in the backseat, which is then hit with about two million kilowatts of spotlight. Now I know what they mean by the phrase "being on the hot seat," for those lights could broil an ice cube. I inquire whether my lady friend is suffering due to the heavy fur coat she wears at all times.