Chapter 49
House of Dearth
Temple was emotionally exhausted the next day. (She certainly wasn’t physically exhausted. Wonder why not?) First she had to buzz by Maylords. Damage control. Not even the best PR ace could put a good face on a double homicide on the same scene.
The place looked deserted, and any staff she ran into wouldn’t meet her eyes. It wasn’t her. It was the miasma of suspicion and anxiety haloing Maylords like a New Age aura.
She met with Kenny Maylord and Mark Ainsworth. One had no clue, the other was arrogantly indifferent.
“We need to concentrate on the Wong factor,” she told them. “Amelia is a symbol of interior peace, of spacial harmony.
We need to emphasize her shtick. Maybe another blessing ceremony. I don’t know! We’ve got to get beyond reality.”
“Amen,” Ainsworth sneered. “I guess all PR people can offer is pie in the sky.”
“It’s better than Murder in the Model Rooms, which is what you’ve got now.”
“We’ve,” Kenny Maylord said, looking both pouty and threatening. “We’ve.”
“I guess,” Temple said, “in the design field you figure out early that you can’t make a silk purse out of a boar’s ear.”
“That’s wrong,” Kenny said, vaguely, because he hadn’t quite tumbled to how or why.
“I don’t do sows,” Temple said, and left the meeting.
She knew, though, she had a tough obligation she couldn’t dodge: paying a call on Danny Dove. She hadn’t confronted feeling like a third wheel on a gay community bicycle built for two, and Danny deserved better of her.
He would not be back at work yet, but Temple knew where he lived. The paper had done a big feature spread on the place only months ago.
How sad to realize now the obvious reason for the article about the usually superprivate Danny Dove. His newly redecorated house. Decor by that dazzling young talent, Simon Foster. Temple hadn’t known about Simon’s place in Danny’s personal life when she read how he had transformed Danny’s vintage house into a contemporary showplace. Now she understood why the sudden publicity peek into Danny’s lifestyle.
The article wasn’t about Danny and his wealth and success but the little-known Simon, and his talent and designing future. Danny had opened the doors to his life only to get Simon’s interior designs some local recognition, and clients.
The Las Vegas opening of an upscale design/furnishing operation like Maylords must have seemed like manna from heaven for Simon’s future.
Temple shook her head as she guided the Miata down the winding streets of the city’s most established area where huge, two-story houses dated to past decades. These old places were the estates that time had forgot.
Nowadays, Las Vegas personalities who liked privacy would buy them quietly and redo them. And Simon would have had a whole neighborhood to reinvent.
Temple loved vintage architecture-Mediterranean, provincial French, Italian villa. She had cruised by this area morethan
once just to glimpse the stately terra-cotta tile and slate roofs.
So she knew right where Danny’s place was. Because it was her favorite. Or at least the roofline was: ’40s moderne, all angles and no visible roof at all, just pure geometry in blazing white stucco with black marble trim.
She didn’t know if Danny would welcome visitors yet, even her.
Most of these homes hid behind high solid walls. Danny’s was a ten-foot-high wash of stucco reminiscent of Siegfried and Roy’s poured-concrete compound, a Taj Mahal built to house themselves and their regal white tigers and lions, and now a memorial to an outstanding career cut short.
Temple sat in the idling Miata before a wide black wrought-iron gate, looking for the security box.
It was, of course, too highly placed for her to use without getting out of the car that was as short as she was, automotively speaking.
Even standing nose-to-nose with the stucco pillar she had to stretch to push the button.
The box remained silent. She waited a decent interval, then pushed again.
A voice answered, either hoarse or distorted by static. “Yes?”
“Temple Barr to see Danny Dove,” she told the sun-bleached, painted steel box that acted as major domo.
Temple always felt like an imposter using one of these screening devices. As if she were a demented fan desperately seeking an idol, or some flunky delivering garlic. As if even someone who knew her wouldn’t possibly admit her to an inner sanctum.
The gates clanged as an electronic link ordered them open. It seemed a long time before they swung wide enough to admit even an automotive midge like the Miata.
Temple jumped back into the sun-warmed leather seat and nudged the gas pedal down as soon as the portal was wide enough.
The house beyond was a two-story fantasy domain. Assorted white stucco wings studded with rows of glass blocks turned it into an albino Mondrian painting. Since Mondrian paintings were usually colorful, it was like viewing a ghost … a ghost painting, a ghost house.
The greenery along the driveway and around the house was clipped like an Irish poodle into topiary shapes set off by the house’s sun-washed walls.
Despite the place’s post-Art Deco geometry, it also felt very Mediterranean. And the rectilinear lines couldn’t help but remind Temple of white-marble graveyard monuments and mausoleums.
The Miata stopped before the low steps leading to the entry. Ever the photo stylist, Temple knew the car’s shiny red silhouette would gleam like a ripe tomato against the greenery and white stucco, creating an Italian flag color scheme.
She also knew that the inside of the big white house held nothing lively now, only the depressing aura of recent loss and death.
Glass blocks bracketed the sleek double doors. She sensed watery movement behind them before she could knock or ring. Then, one door opened.
She didn’t know what she expected. Not Danny himself, wearing a black silk turtleneck with the long sleeves pushed up to his elbows, and black denim designer jeans.
“Come in.” He pulled her inside with one hand. One cold hand.
The foyer was two stories high, all white and silver and black, with filtered sunlight pouring through glass blocks along a stairway that curved up one wall, a sinuous brushed steel railing snaking alongside it like a platinum anaconda.
The floor was blackand-white marble and the effect was spectacular.
She didn’t dare say so to the ghost of Danny Dove who had greeted her, his Harpo Marx blond hair looking as dry and gray as a steel-wool pad against his ashen skin tones.
Still, his hand squeezed hers. Hard.
“You are a ray of red in a monochromatic life,” he said. “Thanks for coming to the interment. I didn’t have a chance to say so before.”
Temple had been an awkward mourner at a mostly gay community ritual. The others had seemed inured to early death, thanks to the AIDS epidemic. She had been there, paid her respects, and left quickly.
“All that golf-course-tended sod must have been hell on your Via Spiga heels,” Danny added.
Temple almost gasped. “You noticed?”
“You were the only one there in heels smaller than a size ten. You were no ‘darling Clement-turned-Clementine in big old bootsies number nine!’ Don’t think I didn’t appreciate it. Cross-dressing may be amusing, but it is damn out of scale. You are a perfect size five, right?”
Temple just nodded. She hadn’t expect Danny’s trademark acerbic wit … not yet.
“Everyone is avoiding me like the plague.” He led her into a vast two-story living room. “You’d think I was HIV positive instead of suffering only from the fact that life is a bitch, and sudden death is infinitely worse and there ain’t no overtime for the survivors, no matter how much we might wish it.”
While Temple perched on the spindly-legged moderne sofa he led her to, Danny turned his attention on a steel-and-glass bar cart accoutered with authentic ’20s cocktail glasses and a chrome soda siphon.