The cat unloosed a long rouwwwl of welcome. Temple watched it stalk past her, pause, then thread itself around Van von Rhine’s legs before giving Nicky Fontana a greeting nip on the knee.
“Hey, those are my best Italian silk-blends!”
Van von Rhine squatted before the huge cat. “Louie! You’re famous now, but how on earth did you get into the convention center? Where have you been all week? We missed you!” She looked up at Temple through limpid blue eyes. “I really did panic when he hadn’t been seen for a while—imagined he’d been run over or worse. I guess it’s from having an infant around. Mother’s nerves.”
“Father’s nerves,” muttered her husband, “aren’t too calm at the moment, either; must be those nighttime serenades. We’re sure glad we found Louie. We’ll take him from here. He eats a ton, not to mention weighs one. Thanks for looking after him.”
“Sure.” Temple’s weight shifted from foot to foot. Her precarious high heels felt like true needles, as if they would puncture the floor and drop her another six inches.
The cat obviously knew the couple, was glad to see them, glad to be out of the storage closet, her apartment, her life, the limelight even, who knows what a cat thinks? Temple knew what she thought. That it was ridiculous for an almost-thirty-for-heaven’s-sake career woman to be standing in front of strangers with a sock-size lump in her throat.
“Wait!” she said past the sock. “The cat’s been really important to the center. The publicity he got took the spotlight off a rather unfortunate event here. I’d like to keep him a while, until I’m sure we won’t need him anymore.”
“You don’t understand,” the woman said gently. “Louie’s not a pet. He adopted us, to tell the truth, and the whole hotel to boot. Everyone from bellboys to visiting celebrities expects to see Midnight Louie around.”
“He’s an alley cat, Miss Barr,” the man added with a glance at the nameplate on the desk. “He needs to come and go as he pleases. Sure he’ll cadge what he can from the staff or raid the carp pond in the hotel gardens if he can get away with it, but he’s not really domesticated. He’s not used to being”—Nicky Fontana eyed the empty cat carrier with distaste—“kept. It’s not fair to him.”
“Did I say that? No, of course not.” Temple’s voice sounded forced. “I understand.” A sinuous form wove against her legs. She bent down to stroke the glossy black fur. “Well, Louie, thanks for helping save the day. Take care of yourself, you big lug.”
Temple straightened and turned quickly to get the carrier.
“Naw—we won’t need that,” Nicky Fontana said. “It won’t fit in my ’vette. Louie’ll ride in the rumble seat, right, fellah?”
Temple turned back to see the cat occupying most of Nicky’s arms, being borne away like a big, black, furry baby.
Van von Rhine’s blue-sky eyes had clouded with knowing sympathy. “Don’t worry. I’ll call and let you know how he’s doing. You can always come to visit him.”
“I will.” Temple saw them to the door, the cat’s green peepers regarding her soulfully as its huge head lolled over Nicky’s elbow. Louie looked supremely comfortable.
Temple closed the door as soon as polite goodbyes had been said. She couldn’t stand to watch the couple shrink down the hall, even the big black form of Midnight Louie shriveling at last.
“Dumb name!” She kicked the wastepaper basket, paused, then bent to stuff papers, paper clips and candy-bar wrappers back in one by one.
Finally all that was left to do was to collect her tote bag and go home. On the way out she hesitated. A stack of newspaper second fronts sat on the secretary’s desk, ready for clipping and saving. Trust Valerie to remember.
“Well.” Temple slipped a copy off the pile and stared at the too-cute pose of the recently reclaimed Midnight Louie. “I guess our sleuthing days are over, Sherlock.”
She wasn’t burdened by a cat carrier and its eighteen-pound resident when she arrived at the Circle Ritz, but Temple felt as if she were. The June heat welded her linen blouse and skirt to her body and turned her pantyhose into steaming spandex long johns. The sky was the deep, dark blue of Lake Mead, and the distant ruffle of burnt-sienna mountain ranges shimmered blue-purple in the heat.
Temple parked her aqua Geo Storm next to the Ford Escort that had taken the last shaded spot, unfurled her cardboard sun-shield over the dashboard and trudged to the building’s rear and through the wooden gate.
She scraped a lounge chair into the palm tree’s shade and collapsed with a vehemence that made the lounge frame squeak for mercy. At her size, she didn’t often make such a big impression on inanimate objects.
“Another bad day?”
A familiar head had popped over the pool’s old-fashioned tiled edge. Temple mused darkly on the likely untrustworthiness of men who could look attractive even with their hair wet.
“Where’s the cat?” Matt Devine asked next.
“In the afternoon edition of the paper.”
Matt cocked an eyebrow and hefted his chest out of the water by bracing his elbows on the edge. “That’s bad?”
“That’s good.” She sighed.
Matt pulled himself all the way out while Temple tried not to watch. She’d once attempted to exit a pool the hard way and had ended up clawing at the concrete like a drowning lemming.
“Mrs. Lark made lemonade—want some?” he offered.
“Thanks.”
The glass—a tall, thin tulip-shaped vintage number with Saturn-like silver rings around the top—was stippled with water drops, and so was Matt. A delicate blend of jasmine, chlorine and sweat perfumed the air. Bees hummed in the oleander bush. Matt pulled his lounge chair into the shade beside Temple.
“How’d the cat make the daily news?” he wondered.
Temple unenthusiastically produced the second section she’d grabbed at the office. Matt carefully dried his hands on the towel draping his lounge chair and took it.
“Cute story—takes the heat off the news of the murder at the convention center. Your idea?”
She nodded disconsolately.
“Why so glum? Looks like your strategy worked.”
“Too well.” Temple sipped the lemonade—tart the way she liked it—and smiled just a little. “This couple turns up from the Crystal Phoenix down the Strip and claims the cat is some ‘house’ stray they’ve had around for years. So... bye, bye, Midnight Louie.”
“Midnight Louie, huh? Yeah, he’s the rambling, rogue feline type, all right. And you’d gotten attached to the cat.”
“Maybe I have a tendency to get inappropriately attached.”
Matt smiled at Midnight Louie’s likeness. “So do most people. Animals seldom make that mistake, and certainly not cats.”
“I was getting used to the clump of his big paws around the place. When you live alone....” She let it trail off, aware she was dumping her bad mood on a mere acquaintance.
“Have you always lived alone here?” The disingenuous tone to Matt’s voice in no way could be mistaken for a flattering personal interest in her answer.
“No,” Temple said.
“I’m not used to living alone, either.”
Curiosity killed the cat, she reminded herself, too downcast to inquire further into that intriguing confession.
“That’s why I like Mrs. Lar—Electra’s place here,” Matt said. “It feels like a community... I don’t know—like a campus dorm or something.”
Temple nodded. “Electra has a way of making her tenants feel at home, just like she makes the soft-sculpture people in her pews seem almost real. She even names them and accessorizes them down to their pinkie rings with estate-sale finds.”
“If only all congregations were so attentive.” Matt smiled wryly. “Just what are Electra’s ministerial credentials?”
“Frankly? The Church of Barely Respectable Mumbo-Jumbo. Some mail-order ministry that believes in assorted paranormal phenomena. Las Vegas boasts twenty-five wedding chapels, and half of the officiators are
women, but they’re all nondenominational. Luckily, you don’t need establishment credentials to marry people in Las Vegas, just a state license.”
Matt shook his head and sipped lemonade.
“Churches can be... funny things,” Temple found herself musing out of the blue—out of her prolonged blue mood, rather. “Religion can be dangerous.”
Matt kept a blandly neutral face. “What do you mean?”
“Oh, I heard something awful today from one of the ABA authors. This very out-of-it middle-aged lady writes novels about murderous nurses—medical horror, they call it. Anyway, she just told me her mother died from a botched illegal abortion back in the fifties.”
Matt winced. “Ugly. But it happened.”
“The fallout is that the people who reared Mavis—she was only a little kid—were Catholic, so Mavis feels she must morally condemn her own mother, who was probably just a terrified twenty-something with her hands full already. No wonder her novels depict berserk nurses—women who should nurture but who kill instead—even babies. We sit here smiling at tacky Las Vegas ministers, but so-called ‘respectable’ religion can be a lot more lethal, if you ask me. And if Mavis’s mother hadn’t been so ashamed of being pregnant, maybe she wouldn’t have tried an illegal abortion.”
Matt nodded soberly. “I take it you’re not Catholic?”
“Me? I’m not even a good atheist. Whatever you believe about abortion, that’s... politics. What’s really sad is to see a grown woman who believes that her mother was a monster rather than a victim. And now Mavis is another victim, but she doesn’t see it, probably because she has such low self-esteem as the daughter of a “bad” woman.”
“How is Mavis a victim?”
“That murdered editor at the convention center was the Rasputin type. He convinced his authors that their writing success depended on him. Mavis was his biggest patsy from what I can tell. He exploited her shamelessly; even now that he’s dead, she’s so sure that she needs him that she may never write again!”
“That’s not religion gone wrong,” Matt said. “That’s ego.”
“But the shame Mavis was made to feel for how her mother died makes her a perfect victim for everyday, secular exploitation. Do you see what I’m saying? Chester Royal manipulated her like Silly Putty. And if Mavis ever really saw how she’s been used—all her life—well, that’s when people get murdered, isn’t it? When someone near them sees for the first time what’s really been going on.”
“Most victims don’t turn victimizer,” Matt argued. “They strike out at themselves, if anybody.”
“Somebody struck out at Chester Royal with a number five knitting needle.”
“And you think it could be this Mavis—?”
“Davis,” Temple put in glumly.
Matt looked confused.
“Mavis Davis. That’s her name.” Matt was right. Temple did think that Mavis was capable of killing Chester Royal, and a knitting needle was the kind of flaky, genteel weapon a genteelly flaky person like Mavis would use. “And this Big-Girl-Lost routine of hers could be an act.”
“Whoa—if you’re going to play detective, you can’t get depressed every time you discover that someone is a good candidate for the role of killer.”
“I was trying to play detective,” Temple admitted, “and I’m too involved for it. One last reprise. You make a good shrink. Are you?”
He laughed hard enough to break Temple’s gloomy mood.
“I mean it,” she prodded. “I’ll bet you majored in psychology in college, right?”
Matt’s laughing face smoothed to neutrality. Temple felt like she’d stepped off the edge of a pool and only then noticed there was no water in it.
“More like sociology,” he said cautiously.
“Close.” Temple knew she’d been prying again. “Sorry. PR people are naturally curious.”
“Like cats.”
“Yeah.” She scraped a high heel across the hot cracked concrete rimming the pool. Louie was another reason for her flagging spirits. Matt’s toffee-brown eyes were watching her, warily. Temple wondered if he’d resurrected the subject of Louie’s loss to distract her from himself—from talk of college majors. Could that be? Maybe he hadn’t gone to college and was sensitive. Time to leash her curiosity and back off before Matt got spooked.
“What exactly do you do at your job?” she heard her irrepressible public self ask, even as her sensible private self urged restraint.
Matt produced a rueful smile that Temple liked very much. “I’m a telephone hot-line counselor.”
“Aha! Shrink!”
“Not really. I’m not... degreed.”
“But you’re a great listener. Sorry I was religion-bashing. You must’ve had some church exposure in your wild-and-woolly formative years, as the sociologists say,” Temple speculated. “You play a mean organ. That was a wonderful wedding march you did for Electra. I peeked in. What was it?”
His smile tiptoed around a mouthful of tart lemonade. “It’s not a march, and it’s not normally played at weddings.”
“But it was perfect! Slow and dignified and tender. I’d love to get it on CD.”
The smile had expanded into a grin. “Ask for Bob Dylan at the audio store.”
“Old Gravel-larynx? You’re kidding!”
“Swear to God. It was ‘Love Minus Zero—No Limit.’ Listen to it. Even the lyrics are hymeneal.”
“Huh?”
“An old Greek word for ‘marital.’ ”
“Oh, as in the Greek god of marriage.” Temple felt a flush coming on as she connected the god Hymen with the adjective made from his name and certain gynecological terminology also derived therefrom.
“Were you a classics major?” Matt was asking innocently, as if his mind had eluded the natural but racier connotations.
At least he was interested. “Communications. I did some TV reporting, then ended up in public relations at a repertory theater company in Minneapolis. You tend to learn Greek gods’ names when the director favors five-hour revivals of Aeschylus. Generally in the form of ancient curses. But that melody is really Bob Dylan’s?”
“Really.” Matt pressed his hand to his heart.
Temple eyed the Devine physique. Talk about Greek gods.... Great-looking, good-counseling Matt. Honestly, this guy was too good to be true. Well, Max had seemed pretty spectacular at first. The trouble was that Max had seemed pretty spectacular at last, too. Damn Max. Damn runaway cats. Damn hope springing eternal....
“Thanks for the lemonade,” Temple said, standing. “I better see what that half-full open can of tuna is doing to my refrigerator.”
“Electra probably wouldn’t have wanted to set a precedent with pets, anyway.”
“Midnight Louie is not a ‘pet,’ ” Temple announced loftily. “He is his own person, free to come and go, as I was informed today. And I guess he’s gone—from my life, anyway.”
“Maybe you could get another cat. Mrs. La—Electra— seems something of a pushover.”
“You noticed that, huh? No, I work such long hours sometimes it really wouldn’t be fair. All’s for the best. I should be glad my brilliant idea for an article not only cooled the ABA murder, but got M.L.—as my associate Crawford Buchanan would say—back home.”
“Too bad about the murder. I don’t blame you for getting down about it.” Matt’s brown eyes narrowed against the surrounding sunlight. “An ugly thing: one human being feeling such hatred toward another that he—or she—would actually end the other person’s life. Have the police any theories?”
“They don’t exactly consult me, although I spent half the day in the custody of Lieutenant Molina of LVMPD Sex and Homicide.”
“Why was he bothering with you?”
Temple smiled. Matt Devine’s laudable care with the gender of the possible murderer had fallen victim to the automatic assumption that a sex and homicide detective must be male—but then, maybe C. R. Molina was, in a way.
“Lieutenant Molina needed
a tour guide to the American Booksellers Association convention. I learned more today about publishing than I want to know—and discovered even more reasons why an author might want to ax an editor than the ordinary reader would ever suspect. Remind me never to get the book-writing bug.”
“You’re not getting seriously caught up in the case?”
“No, I’m a definite fringe element, but I can’t help noticing things.”
“Leave it to the police; noticing too much might get dangerous.”
“Yeah, but it’s that communications major of mine. I have this insatiable need to know—and tell. Besides, people naturally seem to confide in me.”
“Not always an easy position to be in.”
“No.” Temple thought of Mavis Davis mauling her cocktail napkin not two hours before. “No.”
She couldn’t sleep that night. First she’d had a hot idea—she was always getting hot ideas after hours—and had consulted with Electra, who’d been only too happy to volunteer her talented fingers for a worthy project.
Then Temple had returned to her apartment and a sultry night alone. Visions of Matt Devine backing up Bob Dylan on an organ, wearing nothing but a pair of bathing trunks, revved her active imagination, along with scenes of Midnight Louie’s presumed triumphal welcome back into the bosom of the Crystal Phoenix.
And then there were the trio of authors she met that day. She hadn’t had a chance to talk to Lanyard Hunter, but he was scheduled for an interview tomorrow—today—and she probably could catch him then....
Could Mavis Davis really have smitten down Chester Royal? She was a sturdy-looking woman. A nurse would know how to manhandle large, inert bodies—and Chester Royal had been small-statured. Like Owen Tharp. No wonder they got along! Was Royal as controlling of Hunter as he was of Mavis Davis? Was it because she was a woman; or did Royal keep all his authors terminally insecure?
Temple had seen stage directors like that: men (and they always were; few women directed even nowadays) who used their entree to the artistic ego to twist it, to find and manipulate the self-doubting child that lurks in every adult. Such men were vicious egotists who claimed credit for their victims’ talent even while bending it past the breaking point.
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