Daniel Klein by Blue Suede Clues: A Murder Mystery Featuring Elvis Presley

Elvis’s head and tied it tight. “It’s wig time, sailor,” she said.
    Elvis opened his eyes to see himself in duplicate in Madge’s hinged mirror—that blond hillbilly, Jodie Tatum, again. So which twin was he? The one out in the world doing the right thing? Or the other one balancing the good deeds with iniquity.
    He rose from the chair, clutching the makeup towel around his neck. There didn’t seem any sense in pressing Madge any further about Connie Spinelli. Truth was, Elvis felt a grudging respect for her after all the blabbermouths who had served him a hamburger or filled his gas tank and then gone running to the nearest phone to call the newspapers and repeat every little word he had said to them.
    â€œThank you, Miss Madge,” he said, going out the door. He paced down the hallway toward the wardrobe room.
    â€œ Mr . Presley?”
    Elvis turned his head. For a fraction of a second, he couldn’t see who it was who had called his name. But then he spied a tiny Chinese woman huddled between the water cooler and the wall. She looked frightened.
    â€œMa’am?”
    â€œI know Connie,” the woman whispered. “I hear you ask.”
    Elvis walked up close to her. Now he remembered where he’d seen her before; she was in charge of clean-up detail in the makeup room.
    â€œDo you know where she is?” Elvis asked.
    â€œAtlanta. Atlanta, Georgia,” the woman replied, still whispering. “She work in beauty salon there. Don’t know name.”
    â€œHow do you know she’s there?”
    â€œShe send my boy a birthday card,” the woman said. “She love children. Very good person, Connie.”
    They both heard footsteps coming up behind them—it was a young man lugging an open box full of cowboy hats. He had that cocky air of most of the go-fers who worked on the lot, a look that said it was merely a matter of months before he’d be running the studio.

    â€œAlways happy to sign an autograph, ma’am,” Elvis intoned loudly for the go-fer’s benefit, patting the Chinese woman on the shoulder. He waited until the young man had passed, then thanked the woman for her help.
    She looked up at Elvis beseechingly. “Please, Mr. Presley,” she said. “Do not say I tell you. I need job very much.”
    â€œCross my heart,” Elvis said. “And God bless you, ma’am.”
    Five minutes later, Elvis walked on to Sound Stage G in full Jodie Tatum regalia. “Beg your pardon, folks,” he called out to the actors and crew who’d been waiting for him since morning. “Something came up.”
    A chorus of “That’s okay, Elvis” and “No problem” came back at him. They were an obliging bunch, even if a sizeable part of their goodwill came from the fact that they were being paid in full for loitering on the set half the day. The assistant director saluted Elvis and called for everyone to hit their marks for the first take. They were just going to do four pickups from the hoedown sequence for coverage, he said, then he signaled a technician to start running the playback so they could get the rhythm in their bones. And there it was again, that god-awful singsongy riff on a Virginia reel, but this time it didn’t grate on Elvis the way it had every time before; it was simply background noise for a job to get done and over with as quickly as possible.
    Wayne LeFevre was in army uniform playing Josh Morgan today. As he sauntered past Elvis to take up his position, he gave Elvis a sardonic grin and said, “Been playing hooky again, pal?” Then Gene Nelson stepped out from behind the camera and gave his pithy directorial instructions: “Listen up, people. Look happy as pigs in clover, okay?”
    They rewound the tape with the speakers still on; played backward, the piece had an eerie, Oriental sound—an improvement, Elvis thought, but nonetheless he readied