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face must have
betrayed her estimation of the hearer of that name. because Merle
hastened on, tripping over her own words like a nervous teenager.
    “ It was at the hospital.
When he was in for that hear trouble.
And you took over handling some event for him I don't remember
what."
    “ You're his . .." Oops,
Temple
didn't have a quick descriptive phrase at her fingertips. She should
never have started such a clumsy sentence.
    “Girlfriend,
I guess you'd call it. Insignificant other.' Merle's
laugh tried for self-deprecating and—like
Tem ple
's stir-fry dish—fell far short of expectations.
    “ I was going to say, Quincey's mother!"
Temple coasted on a saving burst of memory, trying
to lend the woman a more glorious role than
unsanctioned consort to
Temple
's
least-favorite male in the entire world. Ac centuate
the positive. "How's Quincey doing?”
    Merle's crumpled doily of a face collapsed into shat tered
silk.
    “Sit
down,"
Temple
insisted, finally hitting her stride, Solving
face-shattering problems was a PR woman's specialty, even if stir-fry was not. "I'll whip up what I'm really good at, instant anything, and you can tell
me all about it."
    “ This is really good tea," Merle said
enthusiastically about eight minutes later.
    “ It ought to be. The hot water's the only thing I
con tributed to it"
    “The,
ah, lime slices are an original touch.”
    Temple
decided it was better to accept undeserved praise
than to give it. "Thank you.”
    Now that Merle Conrad had shed her shapeless car digan sweater and had settled into the sofa, she looked more relaxed and less harassed. Maybe it was the com forting pillow of Midnight Louie that had curled up next to
her, gazing up at her pale face as if he were all ears.
    “What
a pretty cat," Merle said, patting his head.
    “ Pretty cat" did not
exactly describe twenty pounds of muscular, vasectomized tomcat, but
Temple
was just glad Louie was on his best behavior. He apparently
got along best with the female of the species, any species.
    Having given Louie his due, Merle turned sad hazel eyes back to
Temple
.
"Crawford keeps saying that you should come to work with him
at the Scoop."
    “ I left journalism a long time ago,"
Temple
said, po litely refraining from mentioning that the Las Vegas Scoop was to journalism
what lumps of coal are to di amonds.
    “ It's just a joke. Then, he says, you could have a column
called 'Scoop Snoop Sister.' “
    Temple
was not amused.
"Merle, is this about a .. . criminal matter?”
    Merle put her mug atop the morning paper on the coffee
table.
    “ It's about a worrywart mother, I suppose. But Craw- ford's dragged Quincey into another one of his
crazy schemes, and I'm worried about her.”
    Temple
had been worried about Quincey too. The sixteen-year-old
had a diffident mother who was under the
thumb of a pseudo-stepfather she loathed. Naturally, she retaliated by
acting like Biker Chick.
    “ I got to know her a little,"
Temple
said, "when we were
working in the pageant together last fall.”
    Merle nodded, frowning. "As 'pose-down models.' That
doesn't sound too savory, but I supposed if an adult woman like yourself was
doing it—"
    “You
didn't see the pageant?"
    “ No. Quincey said it wasn't
much of anything."
Temple
nodded, more to indicate information ab sorbed
than agreement.
    The romance cover-hunk contest had been something, all right, even without murder on the menu, which there had
been. The pose-downs involved steamy simulated embraces with ninety-nine and
forty-four one hundredth percent impurely
unclad male cover models.
Temple had wondered why any mother would let her teenagedaughter participate.
As for herself, well, she had been undercover at the time.
    “ But this new thing Crawford's got her into—"
Merle was saying.
    Temple
jerked her memory
back from that close en counter with actual death as well as virtual desire.
"What new
thing?"
    “ With the new
hotel-casino. Of course they're making ' a big to-do about it,