Cat in a hot pink Pursuit

in her private office.
    Mariah gasped, and Silver screamed until her hair should have turned white had she not bleached it that shade long ago.
    Temple gradually realized that the figure on the walker had pointed hands and feet. And then she saw that its bubble-gum-pink flesh, spattered with a measles of blood drops, was rather... rubbery.
    Footsteps were pounding into the room behind them and stopping.
    “She looks like a Barbie doll,” Mariah’s clear young voice said.
    Temple nodded. She’d heard of defaced and mutilated Barbie doll images showing up around town from Mariah’s mother.
    But this was worse. This figure was life-size.
    “It’s not a real person, it’s a blow-up doll,” Temple murmured.
    “What’s that?” Mariah’s dark eyes demanded an honest answer.
    “Later,” Temple hissed under her breath. “Cameras.”
    By now the kitschy security forces were pushing their way into the room... and coming up mortified at the scene they confronted.
    No way bronzed Greek god he-men were going to deal with butchered sex toys.
    Beth Marble had finally arrived. Her voice could be heard urging the girls to leave immediately.
    Temple went over to take Silver’s arm. “Easy. It’s just a doll. You can’t kill Barbie. She’s forever. Come on.”
    Silver moved in tiny baby steps like an old, old woman. Amazing how shocking unreality could be.
    Yet Temple couldn’t underestimate the sick mentality at work, or how bold it was. Someone knew the setup and was exploiting it.
    Someone? Anyone. The crew was an assemblage of workers from here and anywhere. The contestants were selected from anyone who chose to enter. Temple knew for a fact that being a finalist could be manipulated. This could be about more than a single demented prankster-cum-killer. It could be a conspiracy.
    The producers could have arranged it. Maybe this had always been more horror show than beauty/makeover pageant. American Idol-cum-Fear Factor.
    “I’m calling the police,” Beth announced from the hall when the room had been cleared and the double doors firmly shut on the bloodied doll.
    The bloodied life-size actual doll. The faux victims were getting bigger, and the “attacks” closer together and bolder. More personal.
    Temple was interested to see three nervous men she’d never spotted before, overdressed for members of the camera crew. Must be the “suits” from the producers’ office. They had to be lurking around here somewhere, clean-shaven bland-looking men whose ages were in the indeterminate twilight zone of forty to sixty. Two of them immediately nixed calling the police.
    Beth shook off their opposing voices. “Everyone go to your rooms and stay there until further notice.”
    Everyone but the suits was forced to drift away, whispering to one another despite the ever-eavesdropping cameras and mikes.
    “Scream Queen,” someone whispered before they all dispersed to their separate cells... rooms. “Silver should get a lot of screen time for this.”

    “So what got everyone unglued about that doll, besides the blood?” Mariah asked in the shower-steamed bathroom, while water pattered into the tub and down the drain. Xoe and Mariah watched from the center of the room. They would shortly be regarded as the cleanest candidates in the competition. “Sure it was gross, Xoe Chloe, but it was just a dead balloon. I mean, talk about airheads—”
    And what, Temple wondered, would Mama Molina think of Xoe Chloe (Mariah obviously loved the comic hook name) enlightening her sheltered daughter about sleazy ads in the back of men’s magazines?
    But she explained, as delicately as she could. She’d always heard that parents should be honest about sex education. Even dragooned in loco parentis types like herself.
    Mariah reared back. “Gross! Guys are so pathetic. And now gruesome too. Whoever is doing this is major sick.”
    “Some guys. And the red may not have been real blood. And the perp may be sick, or just pretending to be.”
    “What do you mean?”
    Temple mopped at her sweat-dewed brow. The wig was looking very natural thanks to all these steam baths. It was relaxing, growing just like real hair. Maybe someday soon she would become a real Xoe Chloe, like Pinocchio became a real boy.
    “These are flashy incidents,” Temple said, “designed to upset people and just begging to bring in the authorities. Maybe someone has it in for the show’s producers. There’s a point when too much freaky publicity hurts