Cat in a hot pink Pursuit

just a quick casting call to the public at large, assembling a panel of experts, scouting a readymade site.
    From what Kit had said, why would Marjorie Klein have known about the show over three months ago? Because the note-writer was taunting her about appearing on it, was maybe stirred up by it. Was trying to scare her. And who took the folder out that had contained that letter? Someone who knew Marjorie and her anal-retentive ways.
    Someone who was announcing that he or she was aware of Marjory’s every move scarily soon. A stalker. Maybe that’s why Marjorie brought the lawsuit papers with her. She didn’t trust them left at home. Or she wanted to leave a clue in case anything had happened. Like the threatening note. Only the killer had taken the note. Or most of it. So the note had to be incriminating.
    Temple read it again. Looked over the suit document. The case had been filed in Salt Lake City. In the wrongful death of the late Chastity Cummings. The name seemed familiar, but Temple had heard so many new names here at the Teen Queen Castle. Including her own pseudonym.
    She pulled out the large white papers Mariah had been reading like a fractured fairytale. Newspaper clippings never presented the cleanest timeline. News reporting was staccato, it hit the highlights of action, not thought. Arrested. Makes bond. Autopsy results announced. Vanished. Anniversary of murder story. Wacky detective takes up case eight years later. Vanishes like the suspect, Arthur Dickson. House on the market. Doesn’t sell. Becomes private casino. Another anniversary story speculating on who actually did it. Noting how long the dead have been that way.
    Finally, it’s a twenty-year anniversary, MURDER STILL PUZZLES OFFICIALS. Arthur Dickson is still at large and missing. His bimbo ex-wife can’t be found. Her younger ex-boyfriend is a Hollywood stuntman who worked on Waterworld before his career sank. The wounded daughter? Died in an Oregon nursing home years before.
    Temple paged through the copies of the twenty-year-old photos.
    It was like a Greek tragedy: rich, older man; young wife with young daughter. Wedding. Spending. Publicity. That was the public part. The private? Drinking. Fighting. Divorcing. Money. Rage. Murder going ballistic one night. A mysterious masked intruder with a gun. Innocents wounded. The wife wounded but alive. The husband with an alibi just possible enough to ensure reasonable doubt. Still, he breaks bail and runs. Never to be found again. Everybody else left behind to start new lives or cope with what remained of the old.
    Temple stared at the old photos under the weak overhead lights they put in every bedroom, except maybe in expensive whorehouses.
    What if the house was not a reality show set because it was grand and vacant and notorious? What if the chicken came before the egg?
    She studied the photos again. Hey, this ploy had worked for Xoe Chloe, the undercover Teen Queen candidate with an agenda. Why wouldn’t it have worked for someone else? A murderer?
    Her forefinger speared one face in one photo, subtracting the negative, accentuating the positive past connection.
    Yes. Clever and chilling.
    She quickly grabbed a hot pink folder, either hers or Mariah’s, and doublechecked the morning schedule.
    If she worked it right, she should be able to hand Marjory Klein’s killer over to Detective Alch along with the borrowed baggie Molina had openly discounted.
    How sweet it is...



Conscentual Adults

    Miss Midnight Louise and I rendezvous in the kitchen at twelve o’clock high, a very appropriate time.
    Miss Louise is rude enough to suggest that the kitchen has become our favored rendezvous point because I have an eating disorder.
    I point out that it offers the advantages of being periodically deserted and that the black marble floor and black granite countertops afford us a degree of camouflage we can obtain nowhere else in this huge house.
    She sniffs.
    Which is exactly what we are here to discuss.
    When she showed up on the scene so unexpectedly (probably just to complicate my life), I was forced to come up with a task for her that would occupy her overbusy brain and yet keep her out of my way. (You can imagine how she would interfere with my necessary interrogations of the Persian girls!) I do believe there is a reason for the great detectives having a right-hand gal in the office, not on the mean streets with them. Dames do like to ride herd on a dude!
    So I had to share with her, by