Cat in a Topaz Tango

by Carole Nelson Douglas

  Rafi was whispering into the phone. “Check any domestic abuse trail, or gossip. Yeah? On it already? Jesus Christ!”

  Molina turned, frowning at the loud expletive.

  “Jesus Christ is comin’,” Hank Buck crooned, “comin’ on a snowy white cloud of smack for to carry me home. Why dint anyone tell me heaven was full of horse, huh?”

  She nodded Matt and Temple into the hall, Rafi trailing her.

  “Amateurs are out of here. You’ve got your answer,” she told Matt.

  “His wife is someone who called my ‘Midnight Hour’ advice line, who I told to leave an abusive husband?”

  “Before you try to say it’s your fault,” Molina went on, “this guy was going to blow anyway. Rafi, Alch tell you what I think he did?”

  “Yeah. He was already checking Buck’s personnel files and in touch with any family he could find. The guy’s sister-in-law reported her sister missing two weeks ago. No trace so far.”

  “So we’ve bagged a murderer?” Temple asked, appalled that a confirmed killer had been stalking the show and Matt.

  “You’ve got all the info you’re going to get,” Molina told Temple. “Both of you get outa here and those so extreme costumes. I don’t want to see anything more tonight but uniforms and hear anything but the location of that poor missing woman’s body.”

  She turned to go back into the greenroom.

  Rafi clicked the cell phone shut.

  “Well?” Molina barked at him. “You coming or not? He’s your boy too. We’re not done here.”

  She moved on, leaving Temple, Matt, and Rafi staring after her, stupefied.

  “Guess I’m on the team,” Rafi finally said as he shrugged and followed her.

  Topaz Tango

  The audience has finally emptied the house, the crew has left, and only the ghost light is on in the wings, along with the soft ambient lighting along the aisles.

  I sit center stage. Alone.

  Waiting.

  At last a lone figure comes slinking slowly down one aisle from a seat on the very back wall of the theater.

  Legs longer than yesterday. Doing the model walk, one lean smooth gam crossing in front of the other. Eyes glittering in the semidark, fixed on me, not on the ladder of steps she is descending. The jewels at her neck matching their color and fire.

  I was made for nights like these.

  I wait. Rock solid, holding my powerful limbs in check, no longer breathing hard from my earlier heroic exertions, breathing hard from expectation.

  I wait and she comes to me, crossing the wooden dance floor surefooted, never faltering even on the slippery section.

  She walks straight up to me until our blinkless gazes are only inches apart.

  At the last second she veers left, brushing my side, coiling her long black train around my powerful shoulder.

  I stand and look over my shoulder blade, her head is turned likewise toward mine.

  She executes a sudden spin and then stalks close along my side again, brushing her face fast against mine before she is walking away.

  I follow with one sharp step forward, catch her passing train and draw my mitt along it. She stops. Makes two dazzling shrugs with her sexy shoulders, then our feet are moving in the time-honored way of our kind, making impatient stuttering, kneading little steps, flicking around each other, between each other.

  She lashes her train high, letting it quiver in time with her steps.

  Our feet are silent, we are silent. The stage is silent for all the intense motion at its center.

  She spins away again, and I follow fast. She turns. I turn.

  She suddenly slides close along my side again and we turn and turn, our sides undulating together and apart, together and apart.

  After another intense round of these steps, she suddenly executes a slow slide down my shoulder and rolls on her back, her golden eyes never leaving my face, her lithe body curled into calculated surrender.

  I know this is the climax of the dance, that we will hold our triumphant pose for a few seconds and accept the silent applause of our kind that our routine has won for centuries.

  But this is the twenty-first century. Midnight Louie may be a fearless crime-fighter, conquering hero, and primal tiger of the night but he is also a canny suitor.

  I move to the side and pick up the small something I have been guarding ever since the stage finally cleared and I could find it. My many schemes to ID the perp for later plucking weren’t needed when he gave himself away but that is no reason to let a jewel languish underfoot, unclaimed by the jewel to whom it belongs.

  I pick it up delicately in my fangs and turn to Topaz.

  Those glorious eyes had narrowed at my seeming desertion at so critical a moment, but now they flare with understanding and renewed passion.

  She lies still as I approach her supine beauty. I bend down and with the most skilled ministrations of my teeth and tongue, reattach the precious topaz pendant on her collar so the set is whole again.

  Now the dance is truly over.

  Let the games begin!

  Ciao Ciao Ciao

  Max awoke, alive and well.

  What do you know?

  He awoke with Revienne draped over him, asleep and looking like a Botticelli angel. Of perhaps a couple dozen positions he could recall at this point, he was only physically capable of one or two so far. Apparently they’d sufficed.

  He felt . . . mahvelous. Rested. Relaxed. He’d managed to satisfy this gorgeous woman with two game legs and a memory that couldn’t access High School Seduction One, much less the Kama-sutra.

  He supposed, on reflection, that he owed an awful lot of that to her. As he owed his very survival. He felt the double afterglow of fulfillment and escaping mortal danger.

  Not that he could trust her any more than before.

  Still. He caressed her tousled yellow hair, kissed her pale temple.

  Temple. The word gave him a twinge of something. Guilt?

  Revienne stirred.

  “I’m going to have to buy you clothes today,” he murmured into her Venus-pink ear. “I sorta hate to do that.”

  “Sorta?”

  “I’m reluctant to do that right now.”

  She stretched, using him as a bed. “We could stay like this for weeks, couldn’t we?”

  “Weeks,” he whispered back. “I’d be getting stronger every day. You wouldn’t have to work solo to satisfy me. I’d satisfy you every day from Sunday.”

  “’Every day is nice, but why ‘from Sunday’? I do Sundays, Mr. Randolph. You can come with me after to church, to sanctify us.”

  He gazed into her changeable gray-green eyes. “You have no sense of sin?”

  “Over this? No. Do you?”

  He did a quick examination of conscience. Where had that phrase come from? Ireland, probably, and the Church. He was aware of bitter bile rising from his gut. Ireland. The Church. Examination of conscience. He knew Revienne the psychiatrist could make hay of these phrases if she knew their effect on him.

  An unwelcome thought, or maybe emotion, pricked his conscience. “You mean I could have been cheating just now, cheating on an unremembered woman?”

  Her fingertips stroked his frown lines. “A man like you must have at least one woman somewhere. Cheating would be a way of life.”

  “No. I can’t tolerate liars.” He frowned. “If there is such a woman, I’ll have to find her and find out if she and I can fall in love again.”

  “And . . . this, you’d confess it?”

  “Yes. If she asked.”

  “And if you did confess?”

  “If I’d been in love with her, she’d understand.”

  He shook away the thought of this hypothetical woman. “What did you mean, ‘a man like me’?”

  “Rich, clever, with enemies. Sexy even flat on his back with two broken legs.”

  He shut his eyes. He was more than the sum of all those enviable things, flattering as the last evaluation had been.


  If he’d been rich and powerful, as she’d assumed, his current situation had stripped any pride he’d taken in that anyway. He’d needed this encounter. Desperately. Needed her. A woman’s touch, and what passed for her love. He’d been wounded in body and mind.

  He would not apologize to anyone for the human connection and bliss and self-confidence he’d gotten from her this past night, whatever she was, whether her intentions toward him were for good or ill. Why did he have to have this suspicious core? Why couldn’t he take anyone or any act at face value? He must be a very lonely man. Rich, yes. And with that came certain kinds of power, probably overrated.

  He had the right instincts. Revienne had loved the expensive room service feast. Or had she loved his thoughtfulness, his thinking of her? That was free. That cost nothing but caring for another.

  He looked at her again, remembering the moment of mutual orgasm. Thinking of hers, not his. How cool it was to be part of it, like he was rediscovering sex. Rediscovering himself.

  She opened her eyes as his fingers stroked her brow. Caught him unawares.

  “You are a very strange man, Mr. Randolph. You almost look right now as if you loved me.”

  “This is only a situational liaison,” he said, smiling.

  “Exactly what I’d call it, professionally. We are two, mostly healthy, heterosexual individuals forced by danger into close quarters. It is only natural that our will to live should manifest itself in an overwhelming attraction and sex. Classic.”

  “I’m glad you didn’t say ‘underwhelming sex.’ Classic feels very good.”

  “Yes,” she said. “It does. Are you still determined to be rid of me right away?”

  “What about your sexual liaisons? A woman like you wouldn’t sleep alone unless she wanted to.”

  “And what is ‘a woman like me’?”

  “Intelligent, beautiful, sophisticated, compassionate.”

  Her smile faded. She bit her lip on his last word. “You think this was a pity fuck.”

  “Where’d you hear that phrase?”

  “I’ve treated Americans before.”

  “In bed?”

  “Americans are not usually such a treat in bed. Nor Irishmen.”

  “Based on your wide reading, or personal observation?”

  “You think I’d tell a monogamous prig like you?”

  “We don’t know for sure that I’m that warped. Check it out.”

  “Again?”

  She did.

  He sat in the sleek Italian chair at the Hugo Boss Black collection shop in the Jamoli department store. This was where he’d bought his stressed champagne suede thigh-long jacket, to go with his slightly glossy gray casual pants and black silk T-shirt. The army-green silk shirt and toffee tie were in the Bally duffle bag at his feet. He’d been attracted to black, so avoided it. Might be a giveaway.

  He still carried the cane, more as a weapon than a crutch. Necessity and the mountain had made a molehill of the process of rebuilding his leg muscles. He’d not be doing acrobatics for some time, but they were definitely in his future, he thought with some regret as Revienne came out from the dressing room wearing a Hugo Boss Black silk suit. The cut and sheen were fabulous, but it wasn’t pink, like her ruined one. Only Parisian designers tried something as surprising as that. The Swiss liked the colors of money, muted tones that whispered of great wealth.

  This suit was a mossy mocha shade that made her gray eyes look almost green and her blond hair like saffron silk. It was belted, with a short, hip-hugging peplum and a neckline open to four inches above the belt. There was a large black-and-white photo of a runway model wearing it with nothing underneath, and not much of anything to show for so much exposure.

  Revienne had chosen a dull violet silk T-shirt that made her glossed lips look good enough to eat.

  He sighed. Enough of that nonsense. They had serious arrangements to make over lunch.

  They ate at the excellent department store restaurant, their table for two well isolated. The expensive, marble-clad décor made the place a discreet echo chamber where it’d be hard to bug a conversation.

  “You seem to have recovered from your scruples,” she said, tucking her box and bags against the wall. “Spending all these other people’s money, I mean, to see me off to the clinic.”

  “The credit cards I filched before in Alteberg were from tourists, maybe on a once-in-a-lifetime trip. Didn’t want to mar that too much. What I’ve taken here has been from millionaires, and probably predatory ones at that.”

  “Won’t it be suspicious if I come back looking like a million dollars?”

  “Au contraire. Here’s the story you tell: I’d had a bit of a paranoid episode and recovered enough of my memory to secretly call a driver. You didn’t think it a good idea to leave me in such a mental condition. So you accompanied me into Zurich, where I paid you royally for your trouble and the unexpected overnights and went off, refusing further treatment. I take it the clinic collects a portion of your fee, and it was prepaid?”

  She nodded.

  “There you are. If everyone is paid, no one is curious, unless they’re imposters. Stick to your story. Eccentric millionaire goes AWOL for a few days, treats you to dinner and a new ensemble, and drives off into the alpine sunset.”

  “What if I spy some suspicious behavior when I’m back there?”

  “I’ll get in touch with you in Paris when you’re back.”

  “You still don’t have a memory, and you’re running on stolen credit cards.”

  “I’ll be all right, thanks to you and mountain-training physical therapy school. Haven’t you realized I’m a survivor by now?”

  “Yes. And, more important, you have as well, Mr. Randolph, which is the only reason I can leave you in somewhat good conscience.”

  Their wineglasses were empty, a fresh credit card from an arrogant woman in the Hugo Boss Black for women department had paid for the lunch. They stood, and he took her hand.

  “It’s best,” he said, “that you return to your normal haunts and routines.”

  “‘Haunts?”

  “Places you usually go, in the pursuit of your work . . . and pleasures.”

  “What if my work and pleasures have come to . . . coexist?”

  Was she anxious at losing a lover, a case, or a target? Damn suspicion!

  “The only thing that coexists between us is danger. All mine. If I peel off, you’ll be safe.”

  “You’re so sure?’

  “No. So go immediately to be with colleagues. People you trust. Warn several to set up an alarm if you vanish.”

  “And you? Your safety? Your whereabouts, your well-being? I do not give up easily.”

  “I can contact you. And will. When it’s safe.”

  “I am to wait, that’s all?”

  Her fingers were curled into his suit jacket. When he left her here, at the department store, she wouldn’t know whether he was driving out of Zurich, or flying, or taking a train or another bus.

  “Do I strike you as a woman who will wait?” she pressed.

  “No, Revienne, that’s why I beg you to listen to me. I’m stronger for knowing you, for knowing you inside out.” That’s the closest he could come to love. He sensed he didn’t give love easily, to many. “You must keep yourself safe, give me a reason to keep myself safe. You understand?”

  She looked deep into his eyes. “You feel responsibility so strongly you can block out love. That is both admirable, and a curse.”

  “You don’t want to hook yourself up to a curse.”

  She got the “hook up” part.

  “No, but sometimes that’s not an option. Take care, whoever you really are. Live so that I can remember you, and not in vain. Come to me if you need to. And always remember what love we made. That was past the loss of your memory. You can never erase me and I will always remember.”

  He didn’t let himself say anything more, but he wished he could.

  “Au revoir, Dr. Schneider.”


  She smiled and leaned in to press her cheek to both of his in the French manner, and to nip one earlobe.

  “Au revoir, Mr. Randolph,” she whispered. “And if your uncle should inquire about you?”

  “Tell him where you left me.”

  “That’s all?”

  “He’s likely as much a survivor as I am.”

  He turned and strode away.

  He could hear her last, agitated words, but he didn’t look back.

  “Wait! You’ve left your cane.”

  Yes, he had.

  Both of them.

  For Her Eyes Only

  “I need to talk to you, privately.”

  Temple stared at Molina.

  “The Casablanca Bar okay with you?”

  “Uh, yeah, except I’m not sure Zoe Chloe Ozone is old enough to drink.”

  “Surely you’re carrying your own ID somewhere.”

  Temple nodded.

  “Then we’ll both have to visit the ladies’ room, but you to dig out your ID. You first.”

  Right. Separate visits. The idea of sharing a rest room with Molina was oddly appalling.

  Vegas hotel bars and restaurants did have nearby rest rooms but they weren’t always apparent. Temple left New Age Molina staring gloomily into the tent of exotic sheer draperies that was the bar while she went off to do her duty to her kidneys after all the excitement, and dig her driver’s license out of her Miracle bra.

  She paused before the mirror to make sure Zoe Chloe’s blueberry-colored lipstick wasn’t smeared. This would be almost goodbye to ZCO. Temple sighed. What a relief not to be “on” and in frenetic character every moment.

  It would also be a relief to get past this awkward semipalsy moment with Molina. Drinks at a bar? Why would the disdainful detective want that?