Cat on a Hyacinth Hunt

by Carole Nelson Douglas

  "Temple," he said, "I understand why you want to avoid a medical record on this, but I'm not sure it's wise. It's not the mouth cut and the black eye. You could have a concussion; that's what worried Electra too."

  "Black eye! Where?"

  "Where they usually are. How are you feeling? Sleepy?"

  "No. Just . . . numb. All this ice--" She started to push the packs away, but Max stopped her hand again.

  "You need it. That's my job. If you won't go to the hospital, I'm here to see that you don't push off your cold packs and that you don't go to sleep."

  "Well, you were always good at that last part--ow!"

  "What's the matter?"

  "I guess I breathed too strenuously. And how come it feels like my mouth is stuffed with cotton wool?"

  "Swelling from the cuts to your inner cheek. When you're stable enough to standi you can rinse your mouth with warm saltwater. The icepack stopped the bleeding, so you won't need stitches. Lucky you. Inside mouth stitches are pesky."

  "Aw," Temple moaned, beginning to realize what an utter mess she was.

  "And don't flail your legs. Electra put antibiotic ointment on the cuts and scrapes."

  She sighed, and Max sighed soon after.

  His voice lowered to an intimate tone she would have called pillow talk except that there was no danger of any hanky-panky here and now.

  "Temple, I can't tell you how sorry I am that this happened again. Those first two thugs look like goners by now, and I was complacent enough to assume new goons wouldn't spring up to take their places. Electra thought you hadn't been under attack for very long when she got there, but two seconds is too long, as far as I'm concerned. Damn my past! I've no right to think you can have anything to do with me."

  It was a very nice speech, Max beating his breast with copious mea culpas. She was almost tempted to leave things as they were, nurse Kinsella clucking over her, the pet patient, and feeling so deliciously guilty. She deserved pampering and penitence for at least a few more minutes.

  "Oh," she commented astutely, making noise more from moral than physical discomfort.

  "This hasn't got a darn thing to do with you, Max, you conceited ass."

  "It doesn't? You were simply mugged? Any self-defense expert could warn you that you're most vulnerable entering and leaving your car, in parking garages, parking lots. ..."

  Temple was even more tempted to leave him there, stubbing his toes on his next half-baked conclusion. But her conscience writhed as much as her over sensitized skin.

  "Not exactly any old mugger."

  "How can one be 'not exactly any old mugger.' "

  "He can be a shady character known to someone of the victim's acquaintance."

  Max was silent, translating her reluctant, roundabout confession.

  "You knew the creep?"

  "Only by description."

  "Don't play with me, Temple." Max's lips brushed her unhurt cheek. "I'm tired of half-meanings."

  "This had nothing to do with you. At least not directly. It was. . . Matt's stepfather."

  "Cliff Effinger? But why would he mess with you? I know that Devine turned him in to Molina. ..." He moved his face parallel to her mostly immobile features. "He took it out on you, is that it, to get to his stepson?"

  Temple swallowed, then regretted it. All the muscles on the left side of her face protested major movement. Even talking was wearing her down. As was Max.

  "Was that it?" he persisted. "Just. . . blink your eyes 'yes.' "

  She tried to laugh, another painful procedure. "What's 'no,' then? Or don't you want to hear any of those?"

  "Effinger went after you in revenge for Devine's tracking him down?"

  "A warning, he said."

  "Matt Devine." Max savored the name as much as spoke it. His tone was not so much antagonistic as rueful. "His purely personal quest stirred up a hornet's nest, I'll give him that.

  And now the wasps are stinging everybody in sight. Nobody wanted to see Efflnger located by the police. Nobody," Max added in particularly grim tones.

  "Your eyes are green again," she said out of the blue.

  "What? Oh, I forgot. These are my Las Vegas eyes."

  "And your Minneapolis eyes. Maybe I'll try to lose these stupid glasses again, see if I can adjust to contact lenses. Give it another try. I could have kaleidoscope eyes then, too. A new color. A new me. What about. . . violet."

  "Lovely." Max's finger touched the tip of her nose. "But not you."

  "Who says? Mr. Chameleon the shape-shifter?"

  "True. I'm no one to discourage a changed appearance." His fingers toyed with her hair again, as his mouth nibbled delicately at the good side of her face. "You'll be better by morning, Temple, and then you can make appointments with your dentist and optometrist. At least you should be pretty well healed by New Year's. We'll go out, in disguise and dark glasses, someplace extravagant to see the New Year in."

  "Ummm," she agreed, distracted from aches and pains and everything else by Max's minor amorous attentions. She was definitely not up for the majors this evening.

  Then her sedated memory and its coconspirator, guilt, kicked in again.

  "No, Max, I can't go anywhere with you New Year's Eve, not even with dark glasses!"

  "Why not?"

  "Urn, I have an appointment."

  "An appointment on New Year's Eve?"

  "A meeting."

  "With whom?"

  "You're so grammatical in crises; I should have known there was something suspicious about you from the first."

  "Forget the first, what about the first of the New Year?"

  "I'm going out. With Matt."

  "Devine?"

  "The very one."

  If she had not been banged up, he would have dropped her like a hot potato, his shock was that palpable.

  "Why? After New York--"

  "This is to finish up before New York business. Matt asked me as soon as I got back. I haven't heard the gory details of his track-down of Effinger."

  "You have plenty of gory details relating to Cliff Effinger yourself. If that's why you were attacked, why hang around the cause?"

  "Because. I haven't told him yet."

  "About us. Simple. There's a phone right on the nightstand. Call him and tell him."

  "Max! I can hardly talk right now."

  "You won't be that much better by New Year's."

  "You just said--"

  "That was before I knew you had other plans."

  "I'll feel better if I'm with you?"

  "Yes! And you'll be safer too."

  "I don't know. You two are about even when it comes to safety factors."

  "My wasps are dead."

  "Presumed dead. Some of them. Should I, like, tell Molina about this?"

  "God, no! Your instincts about the police are dead right. Otherwise I'd never let you sweat this out at home."

  "Freeze is more like it."

  Max sighed at the reminder and drew closer. "I shouldn't agitate the invalid."

  "Exactly. Especially if you intend to hang around all night."

  "I do."

  "Whatever happened to Louie?"

  "He dove over the side when I showed up."

  "Oh, poor guy, he's feeling shunted aside."

  "Poor guy is pretty bright."

  "He's used to sleeping next to me."

  "Funny, I'm used to not sleeping next to you. Guess we'll have to work it out."

  "He'll think you're moving in on him."

  "I wish I could, but it's better I stay under the radar for now. I'm still partially responsible for your problem, Temple." Max rested his chin oh-so-lightly on the top of her head. "Effinger is one of my problem players too. He doesn't just belong to Matt Devine. And neither do you."

  "I don't 'belong' to anyone."

  "I know. But let's pretend."

  "Urn, Max. I'm not supposed to do anything strenuous."

  "Nothing strenuous," he agreed, as incorrigibly amiable as always.r />
  Chapter 4

  The Bums Rush

  I knew something fishy was afoot.

  And I am not referring merely to the stocking-clad human foot that has been well aged in Bruno Magli footwear.

  I knew it before I was fully awake, when I felt my muscular form being shunted aside by a force dark and vast and as elemental as the universe.

  In this case, by the time I opened my eyes to observe the cataclysmic change in my situation, I had identified the Force's current manifestation as the Mystifying Max. (And I was much faster at this elementary deduction than my dear Miss Temple Barr was a few minutes later when she opened her baby blue-grays to the Change.)

  I cannot say how it happened, save that I was supplanted in my slumber. Swept aside by mere sleight of hand. Slid out of my accustomed place before I had blinked the sleep from my eyes. Left the lower corner of the coverlet for my reduced lot. Claim-jumped.

  Of course I could not accept this vastly reduced territory.

  I immediately leaped to the bedroom floor, playing into the usurper's hand, and stalked to a corner of the room to consider my retaliation under the guise of grooming my ruffled fur.

  Naturally, no one noticed.

  Had Miss Temple been in her right senses, I have no doubt she would have observed my ousting and repaired the damage.

  As it was, she was in no condition to come to my defense, having so recently--and so ineffectively--come to her own.

  I cannot blame her for this dereliction of duty. Nor can I blame the Mystifying Max for exercising his territorial imperative. That is what we guys do.

  I do blame myself for catnapping at a crucial time, when the balance of power was up for grabs. And I do blame that handy goat for all things grungy and inglorious: Cliff Effinger. I am getting sick and tired of this creep messing up the calm domestic lives of me and mine.

  Someone will pay for this unseating, and it will not be feline.

  Count on it.

  Chapter 5

  New Year's Irresolution

  Temple stared into the mirror over the bathroom sink, looking like a hungover detective from a vintage film noir.

  Her small, nineteen-fifties bathroom mirror was made to enhance that effect. It covered a built-in medicine cabinet, and was lit from above by a flickering, buzzing wand of blue -white fluorescent bulb.

  Knowing this, Temple never looked in her bathroom mirror. She used the incandescent-lit looking glass on the bedroom wall above her bureau-cum-makeup table. But she needed to pass critical muster tonight, and figured that the only mirror on the wall that would judge her camouflaging makeup job as "fair" enough was this one.

  The brutal downlight aged her ten years and even then she barely looked twenty-five. Cruel shadows played pocket-pool with her facial planes, but she still only resembled an unmade bed, not an assault victim.

  Temple nodded at herself. Her head no longer ached at such violent movements. Good.

  Even under this pitiless light she passed for healthy. The only sign of Efftnger's attack two days ago was a tendency to mumble. Her cut mouth and sore jaw refused to let her tongue tap-dance at its usual articulate speed.

  But this was New Year's Eve, right? They would be eating (mush for her) and drinking, right?

  She wouldn't be expected to sound like an elocution student with a fistful of glass marbles in her mouth spewing out consonants with spitball precision.

  Temple glanced at the dainty bangle of evening watch on her left wrist, blinking while the temporary soft contact lenses floated like dead jellyfish skins over her eyes. The optometrist had said they were close enough to her forthcoming prescription to do everything but drive with, and she was not going out for her gala New Year's Eve date with Matt Devine (during which she would have to confess that she and Max were an item again and good-bye except for some neighborly schmoozing now and then) wearing those groady eight-year-old round frames: yuppie plastic tortoiseshell. How had she ever been hyped into choosing the East-coast owl look? Stupidity of the sweet bird of youth (probably an owlet), she guessed, as opposed to the stupidity of young single adulthood.

  Temple stopped her antsy mental monolog, stopped moving. This was all an act, like dressing for the performance of a play. Concentrating on hiding the results of his stepfather's attack from Matt kept her from thinking of the emotional assault she would make sometime tonight on Matt himself: admitting that she and Max were together again. Their own recent relationship had been unspoken, but warm and even tender. Now that would have to stop. She didn't want to reject or hurt Matt, and she knew he didn't approve of Max, just like her family.

  She put cold fingers to her warm cheeks, feeling like Scarlett O'Hara not wanting to think about it until tomorrow. Frankly, my dear, I do give a damn. I'd give up Tar a not to have to. . . .

  Temple rushed back to the bedroom, grabbed her quirky little evening bag (Temple owned two sizes of purse: huge and lilliputian) and paused before the bedroom mirror. Of course, the brittle Cosmo Girl's number-one ground rule for telling a guy that everything was kaput was to look especially fabulous. The eat-your-heart-out look. But Temple had no need, intention or desire to have Matt cannibalize his cardiac organ. She just wanted to exit from his personal life on an optimistic note, not like a beaten puppy. And she certainly didn't want him feeling guilty about Effinger turning on her, when she was the guilty one for letting any relationship flower between them when her heart, body and soul were still mortgaged to the Mystifying Max Kinsella.

  The soft-focus bedroom mirror told her that the foundation caked on her left cheek and eye socket as thick as burn camouflage worked like gangbusters. She practiced a smile. The left side lagged behind the right, but in a dim-lit restaurant that would only look like dramatic lighting.

  Otherwise, she was up to snuff: the same silver-beaded dress Matt had seen before, so he wouldn't have any illusions she had, like, gone out and bought something special for this evening to remember, poor man . . . the Midnight Louie heels flashing their Austrian crystal brilliance everywhere, except on the glittering black silhouette of a green-eyed cat atop each high heel.

  Temple twisted her torso to view as much of her rear as possible. Silvery gray panty hose covered her bruise-tattooed legs, but too bad she wasn't wearing hose with seams. The way the cat's front paws reached up the back of the shoes, Louie could almost be construed as straightening invisible seams. So forties noir. Too bad Louie couldn't straighten the seams in people's emotional lives. . . .

  The real Midnight Louie, in the all too, too solid flesh and fur, lay stretched out horizontally, not vertically, on the bed's Zebra-pattern coverlet.

  Temple blinked again. Not tears. No tears. Her sensitive eyes were tolerating the lenses better than they had earlier unsuccessful attempts at wearing soft contact lenses, but she was having trouble focusing through these Saran-wrap windows.

  Louie yawned, displaying so much deep pink mouth and tongue that she couldn't miss the gesture.

  "I won't be back until late, Louie. Real, real late."

  She checked her watch again and grimaced. Eight-thirty. A nine p.m. dinner reservation at New York-New York Hotel and Casino, then hanging out until midnight to see the New Year in.

  After that, Matt wanted her to stop and view the red sofa in his apartment. She'd said she'd be too rushed before, that they could do it after. So that would be the scene of the coming crime: his place, in the wee hours of the New Year. She would tell him that she was once again previously engaged. Sort of.

  "I am a worm!" she told Louie in heartfelt tones.

  He did not disagree.

  ****************

  Despite her physical and mental preparations for the coming ordeal, Temple still jumped when her mellow doorbell chimed.

  She clattered to the front door over the parquet floor, pausing to look through the peephole first. No more surprise carry-out boys for her!

  The tiny convex glass conveyed a travesty of fuzzy, foreshortened image, but there was no m
istaking that butterscotch-blond head.

  Temple flung open the door, always prone to overreact under stress, and prepared to chatter away despite the risk of revealing her mandibular difficulties. Instead she was struck dumb.

  Well. Wow. What could she say? He stood there looking like the perfect prom-date-cum-Greek god, wearing some sort of bronze-sheeny jacket over an ivory turtleneck that turned his hair to spun gold and his warm brown eyes to the richest, smoothest, most self-destructive chocolate mousse you ever wanted to drown in.

  And she had thought Max had a certain stage presence.

  But it wasn't just the clothes or Matt's always enthralling looks. Matt was different, very different. Somehow, he had changed more than she had over the Christmas holidays, during their separate missions.

  He stepped in without being asked. "You look fabulous," he said, as if on cue, and with sincerity.

  "Oh, this old thing. You've seen it before. I wore it to the Gridiron dinner."

  "It looks even better now."

  "Look who's talking."

  "Maybe this is a bit much." He glanced disowningly down at his brandy velvet sleeves.

  "No. Perfect. But you reminded me. It is January, or almost January. I need a wrap. Rats. Be right back."

  Temple retreated to her bedroom to root through her closet. All the best-laid plans of mice and Minnies, and she had forgotten to find a suitable evening wrap. ... A loose-knit black wool capelet went flying over her shoulder to drape Louie. Too casual. A sheer jacket of black chiffon hit the bedspread next. Too cool.

  Finally she pulled out a black velveteen bolero and tore back to the foyer.

  Matt wasn't there.

  The door was now closed. Had he been kidnapped by his evil stepfather? Had he fled?