Minnie made a dismissive sound. "There's always enough young things around dumb enough or greedy enough to say yes. This trip I count three girls in the chorus, and maybe some dark horse from outside. She came and went too fast, though."
"Brown-haired girl, quiet except for a sassy miniskirt?"
"That's the one, Temple. I never forget a skirt like that."
"Maybe she wanted to be noticed," Temple speculated.
"Sure. Anybody who wear a skirt that short wants something to be noticed. I don't know about her. Could be a--what you call it?--red herring."
Temple smiled. Minnie was getting mystery fever.
"Wasn't that other one," Minnie muttered, "with the cat that was more stuck-up than her. I bet that woman's hair turned white from her looking in the mirror so often and scarin' herself."
"You mean Savannah Ashleigh."
"More like born Betty Lou Kravitz. Savannah's too nice a town to be associated with her. She was in and out for days, screaming and kicking. Then it was 'Poor Mr. Cooke.' I never seen one of his exes come round acting up before. And I been working all over this town, must've worked maybe eight of his other gigs. He was a favorite in Las Vegas, Mr. Cooke."
Minnie tabled her iron and lifted a creaseless garment for inspection. She frowned.
"One thing bother me. Day after he died, his wife came in for some of his things. She was a classy lady. I read about that, their getting married and having a baby. Why would that man keep on slipping around on the side with a famous model for a wife?"
"Habit. A habit as hard to break as heroin."
"Go on wi' you, Temple Barr. I don't believe that."
"But his wife was here? What time? She supposedly had just flown in from France."
"She was by about, oh, six o'clock in the afternoon. Before the joint really got jumping. Long, tall thing, my goodness! Not like you and me."
"What did she take from his dressing room?"
"Odds and ends. I moved out the costumes, but his makeup case was gone. That's all."
Maybe, Temple told herself, and maybe not. She jumped to the floor.
"You're not leaving?"
Minnie liked an audience, or liked giving audiences, rather.
"Yup. I have other errands to run. Thanks!"
Temple retraced her steps in a hurry. Her first date would be with the phone book--to find out what flights arrived from Paris on Monday.
Chapter 29
Office Affairs to Remember
Nobody was saying Darren Cooke had been killed, but Temple compiled a suspect list anyway.
Her home office desk was littered with papers, notes and the latest copy of Elle, which featured a full-page ad the color of a Midnight Margarita with Michelle Bonard's pale face as a centerpiece. The widow's long, graceful, sinfully toned arms were sheathed in elbowlength, indigo -blue velvet gloves. Her velvet fingers held up a crystal flacon of "Secret" perfume like an offering from--and to--the gods.
Temple sighed. Three of the suspect women were not the right age to be Cooke's daughter: Savannah Ashleigh, his ex-fling; Michelle Bonard, his wife; and Domingo's lost leech, Verina.
The library had produced an excess of birth dates for the cagey Savannah (who had greeted the world thirty-five, thirty-one or thirty-eight years ago, and those dates were probably shaved before they were allowed in print). Savannah Ashleigh could be past forty! Temple crowed to herself.
Michelle Bonard's true age and name were matters of record.
Teenage Michelle Bonard apparently hadn't expected the graying of America to prolong her modeling career, and had been honest from the outset. She was a wonderfully well preserved thirty-eight.
Darren Cooke was officially fifty-two years old, give or take two to four years more.
Entertainers are multiple personalities when it comes to reporting birth dates.
Even so, he would have had a hard time fathering a woman in her late thirties. The daughter must be younger, twenty-five to thirty-five years old.
Three pages of Temple's legal pad were scribbled from top to bottom with the things she hated most: numbers. Words were her bailiwick. Numbers were for the birds. For the flamingos!
She listed her mystery women, who all seemed to be twenty-somethings. A provocative finding. They were: assorted young things among Domingo's volunteer crew, Cooke's personal assistant and the mysterious brown wren in the checked miniskirt. The assistant could be checked out, but the brown wren .. .
She flipped a yellow, lined page, and winced. Lines and lines of flight times and time-zone calculations. Even looking at it made her head ache. While she was browsing the Yellow Pages of the phone book, she looked under entertainment.
After much reading of fine print, her forefinger pinioned an address on Charleston: Laughalot Productions. Darren Cooke's Las Vegas business office.
Her watch said it was only 4 p.m. If she hurried, she might find the assistant in and closing down the office.
She hurried.
***************
Traffic was horrible, but within twenty minutes the Storm had snuggled up to the parking block in front of the usual one-story Strip shopping center. They all looked alike, this one a close twin to Matt's home away from home, ConTact. Temple had never officially visited there, but had driven past out of rank curiosity. Or rank infatuation.
So why was she sitting outside the late Darren Cooke's office thinking about her love life?
Her potential love life? Get with it, girl! You're here to Nancy Drew.
She wondered if anyone had ever used a proper name as a verb before. She jumped out of her sleek little roadster, and approached the office of Carson Drew, her tall, distinguished father...
Darren Cooke had been neither particularly tall nor distinguished. The vertical blinds on his office windows were drawn against the late-afternoon sun, or against the casual observer.
Temple had parked beside a red Miata that she hoped belonged to the assistant, because she certainly didn't want to encounter someone official in the office. Maybe it was the wife, cleaning out, or cleaning up after her husband.
Her knock was ignored at first, until repeated enough times to show she wasn't going to fade away.
The door finally jerked open. Voila. The very woman, still as trim, fashionably redheaded and hostile as ever. The most unpersonable personal assistant.
"Hi. I'm Temple Barr."
"I remember seeing you Sunday."
"I remember seeing you too, but I didn't catch your name."
"It wasn't thrown."
"Well, maybe you'd toss it out now."
"Darby. Alison Darby. What are you doing here?"
"Actually, I'm on a mission of mercy for Mrs. Cooke. Michelle. I had dinner with her--and darling little Padgett, of course--Wednesday night. She asked me to see that her husband's affairs were wrapped up. Ooh, that was a bad choice of words, wasn't it? Affairs, I mean."
Alison Darby had grown visibly frosty as Temple gave her false credentials. She positively froze on the word "affairs."
"You should know," she snapped, still refusing to step away from the door.
Temple regarded her furious face. Why did the cool and aloof Miss Darby care who had vanished into Darren Cooke's bedroom of a Sunday noon? Besides, she should know there had been hardly time enough for even the most fast and fevered affair.
"No, I plead innocent," Temple said. "Mr. Cooke asked me to the brunch to consult with him on a personal matter--not between us, between himself and a third party."
"A third party?" Alison looked shocked. Her pale skin was white-marble against the burgundy tint of her salon-styled hair.
"The matter was confidential, and still is, even though Mr. Cooke is dead."
"What are you?" She backed into the room as if Temple were a ghost she feared would touch her. "I know everything about Mr. Cooke's undertakings. That was my job."