Cat in a hot pink Pursuit

one of the bullets. She was a truly innocent bystander.”
    Molina started shuffling papers on her desk like a madwoman.
    Finally, she pulled one out and leaned back in her chair. “Tiffany Cummings.”
    “No, that wasn’t the daughter’s name. The articles said she was called Chastity.”
    “Tiffany Cummings was the name of the seventeen-year-old who was accosted in the mall parking lot during the Teen Queen tryouts and stabbed to death with a screwdriver.”
    “Ouch.” Temple was stunned into silence. She kept quiet to think. For once, she and Molina were in perfect sync.
    The notion of two young girls with their lives rained and cut short so violently was appalling. Had Chastity survived just long enough to bear a daughter? Maybe postpartum depression had pushed her into anorexia. And maybe Tiffany was Crystal Cummings’s granddaughter. A far fresher motive for a killing.
    “We haven’t traced any relatives to the parking lot vie. If she wasn’t a runaway, she lived a gypsy life.”
    Finally Temple spoke. “If Tiffany Cummings was the first victim, Marjorie Klein was the second victim, and Crystal Cummings masquerading as Beth Marble was the third—?” She fell silent. “I’ve got a headache.”
    “It’s probably an allergic reaction to bleach. That dye job of yours is unreal.”
    “That was the idea, wasn’t it? Just like the reality show was supposed to be unreal. Only it had ended up being a shadow of the Dickson house murders twenty years ago. If Crystal, aka ‘Beth,’ killed Marjorie, who killed her? And why?”
    “That’s a very far-out theory of yours. We’ll have to do a lot of checking to prove the entwined threads in this tangled web. Meanwhile—” Molina stood, towering like the Palms hotel. “You can go back.”
    “I’m disgraced. I was taken away by the police.”
    “That should only burnish Xoe Chloe’s sorry reputation. Look. I don’t want Mariah alone in that mess, and you do seem to have some sort of whacked-out handle on things. Finish out the assignment and Max Kinsella is all yours, off my usual suspects list forever.”
    “He already is all mine.”
    “Maybe.” Molina’s electric blue glance met and held Temple’s a trifle too long.
    “What do you mean?”
    “I mean that nothing’s certain in this world but death and taxes. Taxes I leave to accountants. Death is my beat. Magicians are one step behind the Grim Reaper when it comes to surprise appearances. I wouldn’t count on them. Not a one of ‘em. Especially that one. Deceiving the public can become an addiction that leaks over into a private life. That’s all.”
    “Cops can’t always be counted on either,” Temple said. Whether Molina got the reference to her ex, Rafi Nadir, or not, Temple left the office feeling she’d gotten a little of her own back.
    But not nearly enough.



Dress for Success

    Temple finally understood Fonzie’s appeal when she returned to the Teen Queen Castle.
    The Fonz was the black-leather-jacketed “hood” on the Happy Days sitcom hit set in the fifties. The Bad Boy.
    Xoe Chloe Ozone returned free and triumphant to the Castle.
    Being taken away by the police, and released to return, made her a model of Teflon charisma.
    Eyebrows may have raised but they’d been lifted by botox or Dr. Perricone formulations anyway. Xoe Chloe was cool. Nobody could tie her down.
    Except maybe makeover madness.
    “Where have you been?” Vanetta, who’d obviously had her head in her makeup case all day, asked frantically when Xoe appeared. “We’re pulling wardrobe for the makeover debut and talent review. All the good stuff could be gone by now.”
    “That’s all right. I’ll take the bad stuff that’s left over.”
    Temple could not believe that with two rooms taped off as crime scenes, the show would go on. But apparently it was good to go, for reasons best known to Molina and Co.
    Somebody shrieked at seeing her. A fireball rushed down the corridor and embraced her like an upright lobster.
    “Mariah?” Temple had to detangle from the hyper teen to see her.
    Whoa! The makeover team had been busy during Temple’s unhappy interview with the maternal unit.
    Mariah’s shiny brunette bob with bangs (so reminiscent of her mother’s unfussy do) had been... well, further bobbed. And cut. And streaked. With—what else?— blonde.
    It was still mostly brunette, though styled into one of those raggedly cheerful upflips so popular now. Oddly enough, the waifish cut emphasized