Cat in a Jeweled Jumpsuit

He might as well have been a dead god for anything material of him that survived in this mausoleum of ersatz mementos.

Above the roar of moving, talking people, a sound expanded like an invisible cloud over all their heads. It was not rock 'n' roll, although it was as hard to ignore.

High, piercing female shrieks.

Holy Hunk-a Burning Love! The hotel designers had even imported Elvis's screaming fans! Temple clapped hands to ears. In this vast, marble-lined stadium, shrieks bounced off every hard surface, and the only softening surfaces here were the plants and the people.

The hubbub troubled no one else. Las Vegas tourists had long since learned to tune out programmed sights and sounds if they were discussing vital issues like the locations of loose slot machines, or looser women.

Temple hurried toward the stage where the sound probably originated, on the theory that it could only be better close up.

But when she arrived at what would be the mosh pit nowadays, she looked up at a dark and empty stage. No show at the moment, no screeching fans.

She released hands from ears. The screams had subsided.

Just when she thought it was safe to breathe normally again, shrieks resumed, so loud that the set of cymbals near the unattended drums vibrated in sympathy.

The sounds were coming from behind, and below, the stage.

Temple knew theatrical geography. She darted up the dark stairs at stage right, then dodged walls of ponderous velvet curtains and the toe-stubbing array of fly anchors in the wings behind them. She flailed in the dark until she found a stairwell leading to the dressing rooms below.

In that narrow, dark passage the screams turned positively painful. Temple burst into the bright light of a deserted hallway and followed the sounds to a dressing room.

And there, dead ahead of her, she found him dead: Jumpsuit Elvis, face down on the bare cement, a rampant rhinestone stallion on his back stabbed through the shoulder with a gold-studded dagger haft.

The screamer was reflected in the dressing table mirrors opposite Temple: a white-garbed Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, whose midnight tresses writhed like Medusa snakes against her long, flowing temple-virgin gown as she continued screaming.

Temple had either stumbled onto the set of a Roger Corman horror flick, or the scene of a crime. Given her past performance record, she'd opt for the scene of a crime.

Chapter 9

Paralyzed

(Otis Blackwell wrote the song for Elvis, and it was recorded in 1956)

"Thank God you're here!”

Temple had no idea she was expected.

The white witch in the corner stared at Temple through the black holes of her makeup-charred eyes. Splayed fingers behind her hugged the wall as if it were the gates to Hades and the fallen figure on the floor were King Kong.

Come to think of it, the parallel to Elvis was not farfetched.

Temple did not like the way the fallen man's limbs lay. Living flesh would not tolerate those straw-man angles of muscle and bone.

She stared at the viscous red liquid pooling between the winking rhinestones of the horse's bejeweled trappings. Red blood. Fresh.

Then she reached into her tote bag for her cell phone.

This was a job for Crimes Against Persons, not PR persons on holiday.

“What's going on here?”

The newcomer was male, middle-aged, and dressed in faded work-shirt blues. Stage hand or maintenance man.

“Nothing we should mess with," Temple mumbled, scrolling through her computerized directory of key phone numbers, which just happened to include that of a certain homicide lieutenant.

The guy eyed the body, not moving. Then he took a step toward it.

“I'm not kidding," Temple warned. "You could contaminate the crime scene.”

He glanced at her, baby-blue eyes puzzled under a worry-corrugated forehead that extended into thinning silver-blond hair. "It's just that I recognize something."

“The dead man?"

“No--”

Before Temple could issue another warning to leave the scene untouched, he darted forward, bent down and snatched something from the end of one twisted arm.

In fact, he snatched a forearm from the end of one twisted sleeve, now an empty twisted sleeve.

“Groossss!" wailed the vixen impaled against the wall.

Temple couldn't decide whether to (a) scream too, (b) lose her Oreos or (c) jerk the idiot back with a well-executed martial arts move, of which she had mastered very few.

Then he held up his trophy: a long rolled oblong. Bone . . . ? Yuck. Or ...

“That's nothing but a roll of paper towels," she said.

“Yeah." The guy's voice was taut with anger. "My cart got ripped off yesterday. A whole twelve-pack of goddammed paper towels.”

Temple stared down at the spread-eagle Elvis suit. "He's just a straw man? Pardon me"—she glanced at the textured paper cylinder in the man's huge hand—"a Brawny-brand paper-towel man? And the blood?""You tell me, lady. Paper products is my job. Blood's another ball of wax.”