Free Cat in a Jeweled Jumpsuit by Carole Nelson Douglas Page A

trouble of offing the
mannequin of a dead man. Pretty soon there will be a computer game available for this scenario.
    But for now, the outré
spectacle of a murdered cos tume is real-time, in the here and now.
    Only in Las Vegas, of course.
    Chapter 11
    Any Way You Want Me
    (A
million-selling hit Elvis recorded in his Golden Year of 1956 at RCA)
    A
head poked around the dressing room door.
    “ I heard about the deceased jumpsuit and came to see it if was one of mine.”
    The
face was cherubic under a gleaming helm of high, wide, and handsome dark hair,
with the heavy sideburns resembling the
hinged metal side-flaps on a knight's hel met.
    Temple had never pictured Elvis Presley as Sir Lan celot, but these stylized wigs sure made the comparison apt. The hair looked lacquered enough to resist a direct hit
by a medieval mace.
    “Hi,
Kenny," Quincey greeted him.
    The Elvis imitator sashayed into the room, still gazing at the fallen jumpsuit with fascinated disbelief.
"Man, that's one of those wool-gabardine
numbers out of De- troit. Must be worth three grand ... or was before
the blood got on it."
    “ Nail polish," Temple said, drawing his
attention for the first time.
    “ Say, this must be a shock for you, kid, coming over to visit your classmate and running
into a ruined Elvis suit.”
    Most gainfully employed women of thirty would be thrilled
to be taken for a high-school senior. Temple, at five-feet-three tops in high heels, considered it a decla ration of
war.
    “ I do PR for the Crystal Phoenix," she said as
crisply as a military officer giving
rank. "We've had a ... man ifestation
at a construction site and I came over here to look into it.”
    Kenny
frowned, which did not budge his hairline a centimeter.
"Why would you come over here to check out a problem on a work site all the way over at the Crystal
Phoenix?"
    “ The disruption was
apparently an Elvis sighting."
    “ Whoo, boy! There's a
few of those in town right now, and I
bet that's always happening." He nodded at the suit. "Wow.
This thing has been laid out, excuse the expression,
in the position of a chalk body outline from a crime show on TV. D'you suppose the suit was out for an unauthorized walk, got attacked at the
Phoenix, and made it back here before collapsing?"
    “ Anything is possible,"
Temple said, meaning it.
    Standing
here talking to a five-feet-six Elvis clone (the real one had been around six feet, she guessed) with a sixties Priscilla Presley looking on was more than
a trip down memory lane, it was a
trip, period. And trips like that,
Temple had supposed, were mostly of seventies vintage, when LSD was the
operating system of choice.
    Quincey must have decided that too, because she sat down
and returned to arranging her layers of false eye lashes
in the mirror, using a straight pin to strip the ex cess mascara off each one. There was a lot of excess mascara to
lose.
    Kenny shook his head sadly at the dead jumpsuit. "I'm glad it isn't one of mine. Bet it wasn't
insured either. We put a
lot of time and heart and soul into our acts, but we put our cash into the jumpsuits. And the hair."
He pointed upward, as if anyone could miss the Hair.
    “ So word about the ruined jumpsuit is getting around,"
Temple said, encouraging further confidences.
    She wanted to figure out if there was any reason an Elvis imitator would make an unscheduled appearance at the Jersey Joe Jackson Mine Ride-in-progress. Or if anyone might have a motive for laying someone's ex pensive
costume low. Anything that touched the Crystal Phoenix was her business.
    Kenny pulled out a wooden chair, flipped it around and sat so he could cradle his forearms on the back. He was a bantam Elvis, chunky, with overdeveloped mus cles
rather than fat, his high hair like a brunet coxcomb. Despite his rounded features, no one would mistake him for a high-schooler. Temple guessed that he was a
de cade older than she.
    “ Word gets around," Kenny admitted. "We
all watch what the others are