Cat in a Red Hot Rage

by Carole Nelson Douglas

Temple lay awake in bed, running the events and questions of the day through her head, when she heard the floor above her creaking as Matt came home.

  Late. Three-thirty.

  She wondered what had kept him out. Whatever it was, he must be wide-awake still, like her.

  She’d heard the sounds of his movements above her rooms before. This was an old building; floors creaked, faucets squeaked. Now the sounds of his motions drew her. She’d fought so hard for months to ignore their attraction, to not think about him. Now she didn’t have to. She could lie here getting turned on. She could think about doing something about it.

  When she spun her legs out of the bed to the floor, Louie, arrayed by her feet, meowed his protest.

  “It’s all yours, fella. Spread out and enjoy.”

  She was wearing her favorite sleep T-shirt, which was as unflattering as a Mother Hubbard dress. But she didn’t plan on keeping it on long anyway.

  She ran barefoot up the stairs and knocked on his door.

  It took a minute or two to open. He must have been in the bedroom already.

  No, he still had his open shirt and Jockeys on.

  Not for long.

  “Hi, I’m your nonaddictive sleeping pill,” she said. “Better get in bed and let me start acting on you.”

  “Temple!” He was laughing as she backed him up into the bedroom, onto the bed.

  “What? I’m too much for you?”

  “Never,” he said fervently. She liked fervent. “It’s just that I never dreamed that you’d come up here like this, to visit me.”

  “What did you dream?” Temple asked.

  “Oh, God. That you’d suddenly really look at me. See me. Love me. I was needy, I guess.”

  “I don’t think so, Matt. I think you were hot. That’s the way it starts when you love someone. You want them too.”

  “One? Them?”

  “Making general subjects agree with verbs is the writer’s worst chore. Cut me some slack.”

  “I don’t want to cut you some slack,” he quoted her. “ ‘Not one bit. I want you on your toes,’ working your heart and soul off, ‘to make me a very happy’ guy.”

  “There’s no way we can be on our toes in this position,” Temple pointed out, wriggling her bare ones.

  She knew she shouldn’t tease him. He buried his face between her neck and shoulder. She giggled.

  “That tickles!”

  “This is bad?”

  “This is good.” Temple sighed.

  She felt a little guilty. Not about Max, for once, or about luring Matt from the rules of his church.

  She felt like an older woman. My God! Her. She, the woman, was the more experienced. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. The woman on top. Society said there was something unnatural about this inversion of the “natural order.” Women were supposed to be anxious and ignorant. Innocent, they called it. Duped, others might call it.

  But it was her responsibility now. To be gentle with him. To admire and encourage his intensity, his unfurling lust. Whew. She could shatter him with a careless word or gesture. Make him doubt himself, what he felt. It was a tremendous responsibility.

  And . . . wow, really exciting.

  He was responding with even more intensity tonight, kissing her, covering her. Matt was tireless, passionate, in love with love.

  First love. Could it really be only love? She wished, wished, wished that was so. It would salve his always raw Catholic conscience. God must have wanted this, because it was so exulting, so personal, so ecstatic. God needed sex, or else there’d be no universe, no natural world, no creatures great and small.

  And Temple believed that when they were together, as she never had before. She knew love; she knew sex. Max would have been enough, had his world let him be.

  She was everything to Matt, as he was to her now. And so far the world was letting them be.

  And it was . . . divine.

  Chapter 44

  Red Hot Mama

  “Step into the light or I’ll shoot,” she barked out, although if he was armed he could have shot her anytime before this.

  That he hadn’t was promising.

  The knife assailant was history, though.

  “Now,” she said in the same brusque, mean-business tone. That didn’t mean her heart wasn’t pounding from the attack, the escaped perp, the new mystery.

  He obliged.

  Oh, my God.

  Not Max Kinsella, at least, but the only other man capable of laughing at her when she had a Beretta aimed at his heart.

  Her eyes began to adjust to the bright headlights of the table lamps. If this man was an enemy, he was one who relished her discomfort more than her death.

  “I like you even better in this outfit,” Dirty Larry said from the dark side of the living room. “You are a lady with more secrets than a Swiss bank account. Maybe now is the time to tell me some.”

  “What are you doing here?” she demanded, just as brusque, even if a bit relieved.

  “When a woman leads me on and then ditches me, I find out why. I’m a cop, Carmen. You can’t play me like a junior-high swain.”

  She lowered her gun, and tried to calm her pulse.

  The uplighting from the table lamps cast Larry Paddock’s face into a creepy, half-lit mask.

  “So you’re really ticked?” she said.

  “No.” He sat down in the chair. “I’m turned on. Always love a good chase. And curious.”

  She edged nearer, the gun lowered but still clutched in both hands, although the knife wound was starting to throb now.

  “So you let a perp escape to get one up on me?”

  “The fence is a cinch to scale. You know that; I know that. I’d just got in the front when that scuffle broke out in the hall. That was one gone break-in artist. Besides, I was more curious about why you were here than he was.”

  Dirty Larry stood and came toward her. “And I was really curious about if you would actually deliver what you were promising tonight if whatever this was hadn’t been on your mind. So I really came here after you.”

  His words and tone could have been sinister or sexy. Molina wasn’t sure which motive was scarier. She was sure her heart was still beating like the proverbial trip hammer and it should be slowing down by now.

  Was it Dirty Larry or dirty tricks?

  The two table lamps were beginning to spin around each other and the gun was sliding from her hands. She managed to push the safety on as the bright lights circled her head. That damn knife wound must have been longer and deeper than she’d thought.

  “Jesus,” she said, meaning the prayer.

  “Christ!” she heard him say, meaning the swear word.

  And then she went to heaven.

  Molina woke up, immediately aware that she’d passed out and not happy about it. If word about the “swooning lieutenant” got around the department it would be way worse than being outed as the “crooning lieutenant,” fourteen years of blood, sweat, and rank were cooked.

  She was on her back.

  Bad.

  On a bed.

  Worse.

  On a strange bed.

  Worst.

  Maybe on Max Kinsella’s bed.

  Unthinkable.

  She focused slowly, ignoring the burning pain in her side and the ugly pull of adhesive tape along her ribs.

  The nightstand lamp was blinding her, but she made out that old devil silhouette in a chair by the wall.

  Dirty Larry.

  He lifted a forefinger to catch her attention. It was hovering over an open cell phone.

  “One button punched,” he said, “and the EMTs come to deal with your knife wound. You want?”

  “No!”

  “Okay, it’s your funeral. I don’t think the wound is that bad, but you should get better medical attention than me.”

  Molina patted her side. Her turtleneck sweater was down and her yoga pants were up, holding on a long expanse of gauze and tape, but they certainly hadn’t been
while she was out cold.

  “You can carry a lot of dead weight,” she told him.

  He chuckled. “More like drag, but you didn’t know the difference at the time. Whoever lives here has a hell of a lot of first aid stuff in the bathroom, which looks like the ones at the Luxor.”

  “You mean like a fancy, dark tomb fit for a pharaoh?”

  “Right.”

  “Figures.”

  “You know the resident?”

  “Maybe ‘knew,’ maybe ‘ex-resident.’ A magician.”

  “Yeah, that was a magician’s bathroom. It felt like being pent-up in one of those tricky disappearing boxes. So. How do you feel?”

  “Still woozy.”

  He lifted a glass of water. “Here’s some Tylenol. Sure don’t want to give you aspirin. Can you sit up to take it?”

  “Sure,” she said, then tried. “Oof.”

  He came over to pull her upright against the pillows. It hurt.

  “Sure you don’t want medical help?”

  “Would you?”

  “No.”

  She took the pills and the water glass and choked down the three caplets. Then she swung her legs to the floor.

  “You ready already?”

  “I’ll have to be by tomorrow morning. Might as well be now.”

  “What’s the deal here?” he asked. “This is the house I tailed our little former redhead to. Now I tail you here.”

  “I thought the person who lived here might be my stalker. I decided to find out.”

  “Who lived here?”

  “A missing magician.”

  “Isn’t that redundant?”

  “Not in this case.”

  “So who had broken in before you did?”

  “I don’t know.” Molina put down the water glass. She wasn’t sure if her attacker had broken in before, or after, her. “Help me up and let’s go see.”

  He came to pull her up. It got as near as close dancing, and he enjoyed that.

  “You like having the upper hand, don’t you?” she said.

  “Always.” He leaned near and whispered in her ear, “I’ve seen London, I’ve seen France, I’ve seen—”

  She laughed. “Shut up.” But she thought: Sinister, or sexy? Somehow that question seemed even more appropriate in Max Kinsella’s ex-house.

  Because he was gone for good, one way or another; that she knew now, no matter the props still stored here.

  Able to lurch around on her own power, she first visited the room across the hall from the closet where she’d hidden.

  She paused in the doorway to aim her high-intensity flashlight over the huge piece of furniture looming against one wall, almost a room in itself.

  “What the—?”

  Larry ambled into the flashlight beam to eye it up close. “Shit! This is right up my alley.”

  “What do you mean?” The flashlight illuminated a vivid brocade surface, fret-worked uprights, and a brocade canopy.

  “Opium bed.” Her light caught his grin. “Now that’s a crib fit for taking one of your velvet gowns off in, Carmen.”

  She ran the light over the massive outlines, grander and larger than a four-poster bed. A small flare in the pit of her stomach said he was right. Madre de Dios! What she didn’t need to deal with right now was a crazy UC guy for a lover. But she sensed something perversely sexy about getting it on with Larry in Max Kinsella’s abandoned digs, and Larry was picking up on that like a good cop should.

  In fact, the place reeked of hidden sex. She was sure Temple Barr was a phantom of the erotic opera that had occurred in some of these over-the-top rooms. Now the rooms held a darker ambiance. Whoever had broken in tonight had broadcast a subtle, homicidal presence. And that wasn’t sexy, just sick.

  She limped over to the wall of doors and jerked back the first of several mirrored sliding doors.

  “Oh, my,” Larry breathed in her ear, having followed her. “Lions and tigers and bears have been busy in here.”

  She instantly saw what he meant. The ranks of solid black clothes inside had been shredded into clownish tatters, some dangling from their padded black satin hangers, others fallen to the floor in piles like charred autumn leaves.

  Larry bent to run his fingers through the ruins.

  “Cashmere. Silk. Italian wool. This guy knew how to dress.”

  “Yes.”

  “The magician?”

  “Yes.”

  “And the slasher was—?”

  “I don’t know who, but let’s check out the kitchen next.”

  When he stepped close and put her good arm around his shoulder, she didn’t object. Her other side was on fire. She needed more than Tylenol, but she wasn’t going to get it just yet. She couldn’t contain a small moan as she felt her lifted arm stretch the wound on the opposite side.

  “Scars give a girl that lived-in look,” he said.

  “Don’t make me laugh. It hurts too much.”

  He ran a finger down her good side. “I think they’re sexy.”

  “Everything hurts too much right now for nonsense, Larry.”

  But he was right. She’d have a helluva scar from this. That reminded her of the thin straight razor scar Matt Devine’s manly side carried, courtesy of the woman Temple Barr had christened “Kitty the Cutter.”

  Payback time. Now Molina had her own Cutter Anonymous. Could the home invader here be her stalker? But what link did she have to Max Kinsella other than an itch to pin some crime or other on him?

  When she and Larry shuffled into the kitchen, he turned on the overhead fluorescents. No point in being discreet. That time had passed long before.

  He spotted the knife block. “One gone.”

  “I sensed that coming in, but didn’t fully register what it meant until I heard those clothes being slashed, although I didn’t realize what that sound was until I saw the evidence.”

  “Yeah. Our minds are like cameras. They record everything on a crime scene, but the whole picture doesn’t snap into full focus right away. It’s pretty plain. You were right on his heels. Someone must have a real bad hex on this missing magician.”

  “The magician might be more than missing. He might be dead.”

  “Really? You don’t know?”

  “He probably is dead. He’d never allow his stuff to be trashed like this if he were alive. Let’s look around some more.”

  They visited every room. One bedroom was stuffed with stage props and conjuring chests. Larry looked around and sniffed hard in there.

  When Molina raised her eyebrows, he shrugged. “Checking to make sure no dead bodies are ripening here. This would be the perfect place to stash a dead magician.”

  “Yeah.” She could barely focus even though they had all the lights on. She still wasn’t sure the invader had arrived before her. Surely, she would have sensed movement from the git-go. Larry already had shown up inside. The slasher could have been him. “How’d you get in the front door?”

  “Drug lords use this same level of high security. If I didn’t know how to work it, I’d be dead.”

  “So this place is high-level secure.”

  “Right. Except that you got in the back. I got in the front, which was a lot harder, no offense. And an unknown actor got in somehow just before you did.”

  He sure kept stressing that. Police instincts, or planting his own scenario? It was hell to be too jaded to trust anyone.

  “That was—” she began.

  “What?”

  “Creepy. Like shadowing a snake.”

  “Sick. I agree. And whoever it was had a hankering to slice up a human as well as a high-end wardrobe.”

  “The resident vic was pretty hate-worthy.”

  “The magician.”

  She nodded.

  “You?”

  She nodded. “Among others.”

  “Anybody love him?”

  She nodded. “That little blonde you saw at Mariah’s Teen Idol gig, who I had you tail.”

  “She was maki
ng pretty innocuous rounds, but she led me—and you—here. And the tail was also pretty tasty.”

  “That is so sexist.”

  “Why? Because it’s not your tail I’m talking about?”

  “I don’t have one.”

  “Yeah, you do.” He grinned. “I just peeked.”

  With as much blood as she had lost, Molina had enough left to flush. “Not funny.”

  “I was being serious.”

  That was what she was afraid of. Thing was, Larry knew too much, way too much, about her recent, atypical acts of skirting the law, her own standards, everything.

  Thing was, she couldn’t decide whether that was sexy . . . or sinister.

  Chapter 45

  Toodle Who?

  I must say one thing for my partner’s basic instincts.

  She sure does have a female knack for uncovering a crime in progress, even if it is only some poor dude trying to take a catnap.

  I feel four shivs in my shoulder and hear a voice hissing, “Wake up, you layabout! I have been noticing some unwarranted activity around Mr. Max’s supposedly sold and occupied house.”

  “Are you still playing that sad old tune, Louise?” I ask, unrolling from a warm and comfy ball in my own previously private quarters, i.e., Miss Temple’s bed, sans Mr. Matt for once. “I thought we had decided to permit your Mr. Max to fade into the sunset until my Miss Temple’s current domestic and on-the-job problems were settled.”

  “Her worst enemy has been prowling about the premises while I had it under surveillance.”

  Well, that made me sit up and take notice. I cannot have mere shirttail relatives (maybe) taking over my primary job of protecting my Miss Temple!

  “I wish you would get off this Mr. Max crusade, Louise. Gone is gone. Even Miss Temple has accepted that.”

  “Not to mention accepting a shaded golden into her bed where you black-haired boys used to loll at your leisure.”

  “I wish you would not refer to Mr. Matt as if he were a certain color of Persian,” I snap. Literally.

  “Aha!” She jumps back like a ninja. “Methinks a certain color of female Persian has soured your milk. Your so-called Divine Yvette is a shaded silver.”

  “I call her the Supine Yvette now,” I say airily.

  “Not for her bedtime manners, I bet,” she answers.