Cat in a Jeweled Jumpsuit (51 page)

“
And his killer. Good thing you didn't wander back
here
too soon.”

Temple had thought of that. Lyle must have been
killed as soon as the stage was clear: lassoed from be
hind with the scarf, disabled and silenced by strangula
tion,
and then held in thrall until dead.

It would take a strong, tall person to dominate a big
guy
like Lyle. A man, of course. Or a woman like Velvet Elvis.

“
What do you think is going on with the Priscilla
thing?
A deranged fan?" the detective asked.

“
They do dislike her, but—don't you think it could
be
some other agency?"

“It's
some other agency that's putting the jinx on our investigation, all right.”

Temple detected something besides bitterness in his
voice. "You don't mean . . .
Twilight Zone
stuff?
Like
Elvis sightings."

“
Don't I wish." He slapped the notebook shut.
"We
could all live with a little
tabloid ridicule. It's the hush-
hush
that kills an investigation, not the yellow journal
ism. Speaking of yellow journalism, you know a guy
from the
Las Vegas Scoop?
Crawless
Buchanan? He's
been chomping at
the bit to interview you. I had to have
a uniform restrain him, he was that hot to see the body.
Some
of these guys are really ghouls."

“
Crawless. Yeah, I know him. He was at the other
death
scene too."

“He
was?" The notebook flopped open.

Temple nodded solemnly. "He was so eager to ex
amine
that corpse he jumped into the pool with it."

“That
creep!" The notebook snapped shut again.

This
was starting to look like an open-and-shut case, Temple thought.

The detective stood. "Maybe you'd give him an in
terview.
Get him off our backs."

“You're
asking
a
lot." She glanced
beyond Detective Stevens's dark coat sleeve to the sight of Crawford prac
tically slobbering with eagerness twenty feet away.
"Are
you sure you can't pin anything on him?”

Then
it struck her. Crawford had not only been at each death scene, he was Quincey's
stepfather. He could have
popped in and out
of her dressing room, spreading
havoc, without much comment.

She feared her speculations were running rampant
across
her expression, but the detective had turned away already, eyeing the Crawf
with distaste.

“
Pin anything on him? A new haircut would
help."
He stuffed the notebook into his side coat pocket and
returned onstage to the cluster of white-gloved people hunkering over the dead
man like abducting aliens.

Crawford
sprang toward Temple like a spaniel. "T. B.! Thank God they didn't arrest
you!"

“What
would they arrest me for?”

He brushed off the question with a gesture. "It's
not
that Purvis guy
dead, is it? Tell me. They won't let me
near enough to see the body. It can't be him. He's just
not around downstairs, right? Maybe he didn't come in
today at all. His rehearsal was yesterday. What would
he
be doing here today?"

“That's
a very good question."

“Then
. . . he was here today?"

“Yup."

“But
he left."

“Oh,
yes.”

Crawford
slumped into the dark lines of his Memphis Mafia suit. "Thank God."

“
Well, he left, but, like Elvis, he's not completely
gone. Something remains.”

Crawford's
expression turned sick as he glanced at the
assembled
officials. Talk about "ring around the collar:"
a noose of Memphis Mafia suits surrounded them as
thoroughly
as they circled the corpse.

“Oh,
God.”

Temple
was actually moved to put out a hand in case
Buchanan
folded. "It is Lyle. Why are you so upset? I
didn't know you were
friends."

“
Friends?" Crawford's normal sneeringly sure
look
had melted away like a wax
dummy's expression in the
face of a
forest fire. "God, no. He couldn't stand my
guts.”

When she said nothing, he added, "What's new? Who
can?"

“
Whew. You
are
in bad shape, C.B.
Here. Have a
chair." She pushed down a fold-up
theater seat with her
foot. Crawford
Buchanan, in any shape, was not some
one she cared to bend over near.

He collapsed into the seat, patting the backs of his
hands over his face as if wiping off invisible beads of
sweat. His normal pasty face had gone as green as spin
ach
fettuccine.

In a moment his face was in his hands, and he was
rocking
to and fro.

Temple
looked around for witnesses. This was embarrassing.

“
He's gone," Crawford wailed softly. "My
God, my
God. He's gone."

“
He seemed like a nice man," Temple said inade
quately. What else could you say about someone
you'd
only met once. "And a damn
good Elvis tribute per
former."

“
Oh, don't use that stupid euphemism!" the
Crawf
snapped. "Impersonator is
an honorable word. And in
his case, it wasn't even an act. Don't you
understand?”

Tears
stood in his large, cappuccino-dark eyes.

Temple
sat on the seat next to him out of sheer, mute amazement. "You really cared
about this guy."

“
Why shouldn't
I? I
found him. I found him
out! And
then he exits on me." The Crawf slapped a palm to his
forehead, so hard that Temple winced.

“
Crawford, you don't—You couldn't think ... It's
crazy."

“He.
Was. The. King. I know it."

“That's
your story that was going to shake the world?" "Was!" The word
came out half a cry of rage, half a
bawl. "I was
so close. This would have made me."
"What about him?"

“
Huh?"

“
What about . . . Lyle. Did he want to be the means
of
your getting made?"

“No,
but I could have talked him into it."

“You
told him your suspicions?"

“Of
course. It wouldn't work unless he cooperated and went public."

“And
he didn't laugh you off."

“At
first, sure. Why not. He was in denial."

“In
denial."

“
Wouldn't you be if you'd done such a good job of
hiding
your identity that no one would ever suspect?"

“
But Elvis tribute perform—" Crawford was
looking
not only bereaved but
homicidal, so Temple back
tracked.
"Impersonators are always suspected of being
the real thing. It'd be the worst place to hide,
because
it's the most obvious."

“You
said he was good!"

“Not
that good."

“
How good does a sixty-four-year-old man who's
been out of the limelight except for the odd Elvis
contest
have to be?"

“What
kind of evidence have you got?"

“Him!
And now he's dead.”

Temple scratched her neck. "Listen, Buchanan, you
didn't arrange for those attacks on Quincey as part of
some
scheme to get Lyle worried and reveal himself, did you?"

“
No." He sighed. "I thought of it after
the first attack,
that seeing
'Priscilla' in danger might shake him out of
the denial of his new persona. But, face it, Elvis had
gotten over her by now. And Quincey may have a
punker's heart, but she's not a very convincing
Pris
cilla."

“
I thought she was doing a
really good job!" "What do you know about all this?"

“
More than I used to
know. So I'd be very hard put
to buy that Lyle Purvis was Elvis Presley.
Where's your evidence?"

“
You agree that he's the best Elvis impersonator
you've
ever seen."

“I
do, but I haven't seen very many, just the ones here. That new guy this
afternoon was pretty good, but he's
way too
young to be really Elvis. So stomping the stomp
and shouting the shout
are not evidence enough."

“Purvis
had lived in Las Vegas for several years, had enough money to afford a pretty
big house with a copper
roof and a six-car
garage. You never saw him except at
night. He didn't smoke, or drink, or
gamble."

“There's
a pit boss at the Crystal Phoenix who doesn't
smoke,
drink, or gamble, and you only see him at night.
That doesn't make him Elvis, and that isn't as uncom
mon in this town as people think. Las Vegas is
famous
for churches as well as casinos."

“Okay,
but when I first got suspicious about who Lyle
really might be, I
started checking his background."
"Any good, or
bad, reporter starts there. So?"
"So . . . Lyle doesn't, didn't have any."

“
You just said he'd lived here for several years."

“
Right. Did Elvis gigs around the country, had an
act
at a small club for a while, but
before that . . . zero. The
man was
fifty years old, at least. He had a driver's li
cense, but I couldn't find a Social Security number on
him, a credit record—he paid everything with, get
this,
cash."

“Maybe
he had a history of credit-card abuse.”

Crawford's mournful dark eyes sharpened through
their
residual mist of emotion. "Exactly, T.B.! Once a
spendthrift, always a spendthrift. There are certain habits
so ingrained you can't ditch them, even if you're
living
in another place under another name."

“Even
if you're Elvis, you say."

“Especially
if you're Elvis."

Chapter 50

Big Boss Man

(Elvis
swung out in a 1967 Nashville session
that was bedeviled by the usual
personal politics
among
his associates)

"Mr.
Midnight, I presume.”

Matt
froze.

He wasn't used to getting radio show calls at home.
He wasn't used to getting phone calls at home, period.
But
he wouldn't put anything past his mysterious caller. His heart accelerated
despite himself. Had "Elvis”

become
a stalker?

“
Don't freak out," the man's voice urged,
laughing.
"It's just Bucek."

“
Ah . . . Frank?" Matt's mind once again had
to merge
the image of his long-ago
spiritual director in seminary with the FBI agent he had become on leaving the
priesthood. That always took a leap of the imagination, if not
of faith.
"I don't get it. Why are you—"