Cat in an Alphabet Soup

by Carole Nelson Douglas

  The Baker & Taylor booth was just ahead. Temple stepped more measuredly, crossing onto the carpeting that defined the B & T area as soon as possible.

  The silence was stunning. Her steps had hailed on the hard floor. Now, not even an echo rattled in the steel rafters above. Light reflected from the Plexiglas sides of the Baker & Taylor cat house. Temple saw indistinguishable humps within—real, or Electra’s handiwork? She edged closer, hoping, really hoping.

  It was too dim to tell; her own reflection jeered back at her, an out-of-focus doppelganger. Temple leaned her face against the transparent plastic. Come on, Baker, shake a leg! All right, Taylor, do something. Twitch a whisker or wash an ear....

  No. Nothing but a pair of pillows. A flicker of motion in the murky Plexiglas mirror. Something behind her—

  Temple whirled. Something struck her, pushed her into the display case so hard she would have fallen if it hadn’t been there. Her stomach hurt, possibly because her bulky tote bag had knocked into her ribs with tremendous force. She couldn’t catch her breath, and then it exploded free.

  Temple scrambled away, around the booth. She saw no one now, but remembered a presence caroming by, definitely human, not feline.

  The carpet continued for the length of a half-dozen booths. Temple edged along on it until she could duck behind another display piece, an island of Formica in an uncertain sea of darkness and silence and danger.

  She pulled off one high heel, then another, and jammed them in her tote bag. Her hand brushed the bag’s outside and stopped. Something was wrong. There was a hole in the front surface of the bag. Her fingertip circled it in the dark, the jagged place where the tough fabric had given. It was a Goldilocks kind of hole, too small for a bullet and too large for a moth, but just right for... a knitting needle!

  Temple dug a shoe from the bag and held it by its toe. Its heel made a better weapon than wishful thinking.

  She slowly pushed herself upright against the display unit. Playing hide-and-seek as a kid, she recalled, she’d panic as the seeker passed within inches of her hiding place. She’d also believed that if she said “invisible, disappear” often enough, fast enough, she would.

  Not here.

  Here she’d have to find a way out. Here she’d have to gamble on where would be safe and the best route to get there.

  First, no phones on the exhibit floor. Her office? Known to whoever had left the notes. The guards? Somewhere, but where at this exact minute?

  All the while thinking, Temple had been creeping in her stocking feet, tote bag over her shoulder and clutched to her side like the shield it had become, her shoe heel a sharp exclamation point in her fist.

  She heard nothing but her own unavoidable rustles; the rasp of her breathing. Perhaps the person had gone. But why? She was still helpless, alone, in the dark. Only not quite alone, as Chester Royal had been not quite alone just four days ago.

  He had not struggled. Perhaps he hadn’t expected a blow. Temple expected one every second. Knowledge is power, but this was a paralyzing knowledge, a knowledge of terror. Temple forced herself to keep moving into uncertainty.

  She avoided the rear service areas. She would be expected there. As she plunged deeper into the dark of the convention center she rifled her mind for any memory of a way out. There was always the Rotunda reception area, but it offered no concealment.

  A poster flapped not far away. Someone’s passage had stirred it. Did he see her? Was it a he? Irrelevant. The person she sensed brushing against her had seemed large, but everyone did to her. The blow had been strong, though. Tightening the grip on her tote bag, Temple’s fingertips worried the ragged interruption in the fabric. It was like picking at a scab. She could picture a thin steel needle piercing her flesh and angling up to her heart.

  And then she confronted a choice. Stay here in the vast outer limits of the hall, or take the corridor that had just opened up beside her. Trap or escape route? Time would tell.

  Temple put her left shoulder to the corridor wall and ran along it, feet shuffling along the floor. No slips. No sounds. No panic. Delete that. No more panic. No, stet that. Panic!

  A soft sound, gentle as a muffled cough, came from behind her. The corridor offered a left turn. She took it. Where was she, damn it!

  She looked back, seeing only dim shapes, and her hip collided with an obstacle. A drinking fountain by the cool, smooth stainless steel under her hands. Temple’s mouth was parched. Her tongue was sticking to her upper palate; her lips adhered to her teeth,

  She moved around the fountain, then clung to the wall again. Looked back and saw a shadow growing, looked ahead to run—and saw it! The escape hatch she’d hoped for... a box on the wall.

  She ran, her tote bag slapping noisily against her side. The glass door yanked open more easily than she expected. The big red bar—she had no time to squint at the instructions and get it right—was stiff, harder to move than she thought, and she had only one hand because the other held the shoe uplifted.

  An overtaking shadow engulfed her just as the lever hit the backplate with a bang. Something was pressing Temple to the wall by her neck. Blood swelled and thickened to pudding in her ears. A horrible muffled clanging exploded all around. The Weitzman heel hammered down into flesh.

  Footsteps were slapping in between the constant clangs. The floor throbbed. The wall behind Temple throbbed. Her head and heart throbbed in ponderous four-four time.

  Then Temple was alone with the unholy clamor of the fire-alarm box, and someone wearing a billed cap was running down the hall toward her swearing vigorously.

  They were the sweetest four-letter words she’d ever heard.

  “I’m sorry, Miss Barr. I thought it was a prank.”

  Temple sat on a chair in the convention center offices while the same guard who had insulted her ancestry for several generations and in several anatomically inventive ways offered Temple a Styrofoam cup brimming with nice cold water. And ice even.

  “I wondered where the guards were hiding,” she croaked after a sip of glorious coolness. Her larynx sounded as if it had been operated on by a hacksaw.

  Temple swung her bare feet; they never quite touched the floor no matter the chair. She stopped swinging them when C. R. Molina came in with a uniformed officer.

  Sweet jumping Charles Jourdans, that had been Molina Temple had glimpsed during the chaos when the police had arrived (along with the fire department) only minutes after the guard had found her!

  She’d taken it for a post-throttling mirage, the Black Dahlia of Death or something come to carry her home, but no, here was Molina in the flesh, poured into an ebony crepe street-length number with a sweetheart neckline and copper sequins festooning opposite hip and shoulder like tarnished orchids. A vintage cocktail dress? C. R. Molina? Lieutenant Molina? On a date? The mind boggled, even if the throat was still sufficiently froggled to force her to keep mum momentarily. Temple sighed, punchy and knowing it.

  “So you’re the fire. I should have known.” The lieutenant sounded as crisply disapproving as ever.

  “How... how’d you get here? So fast, I mean?” Temple knew how George Burns must feel talking after about fifteen stogies. She tried to glimpse Molina’s shoes but couldn’t crane her neck without wincing.

  “You oughta know,” Molina said. “You rang. I was off duty.”

  “I... see.”

  “Apparently you set off the fire alarm.”

  Temple nodded.

  “Apparently someone attacked you.”

  Temple nodded.

  “You’ll have to talk.”

  “But how did you—?”

  “It’s not important, but when the alarm came in the fire department notified key convention center staff. Bud Dubbs immediately reported seeing you entering the building late. The police dispatcher rounded me up since this smelled of more dirty deeds at the center.”

  “All that hullabaloo outside was just to rescue me?” Temple was flattered.

  Not even the gua
rd had been able to restrain her from peeking out front where five squad cars had squalled up under the overhead racket of a police helicopter. That had been only minutes before. Even as they spoke, the convention center and environs were getting a good going-over.

  “I’m amazed myself,” Molina admitted with a wry glance from under one dusky eyebrow that still could use plucking. “Apparently you really did need rescuing.”

  “Apparently?” Indignation lifted Temple’s raw voice into an almost inaudible soprano.

  Molina eyed the adjacent desktops and finally hoisted an empty manila envelope. And something else.

  “Hey,” Temple protested. “Those are my best summer Stuart Weitzmans!”

  “Evidence,” Molina pronounced with visible pleasure. She studied the dainty shoes as a German Shepherd fancier might regard a Yorkshire Terrier, with amazed disdain. “We need to do lab work on the blood and hair on the heel. You’ll get ’em back. Sometime.” She jammed the shoes into the envelope.

  “You don’t need both of them.”

  “What are you going to do with one high-heeled shoe?”

  “Well, don’t scuff ’em.”

  “Now”—Molina sat on the desk beside Temple—“it’s time we had a serious interrogation here.”

  Temple summoned her huskiest Kathleen Turner voice. “Not a word. Not a syllable. Not until I get to the pound and see if Midnight Louie’s there and all right.”

  “The cat?”

  “I think he’s at the pound, but it’s closed for the night. The attendant is leaving at seven, and they might accidentally kill him. It’s happened! I won’t cooperate otherwise.”

  “We can take you into protective custody and take you downtown.”

  “Why? You won’t get a word that way, either. The pound.”

  “This is ridiculous.”

  “It’s my cat—kind of. Besides, he’s a material witness.”

  “You’re more material. You can talk. And you don’t even know the damn cat’s there.”

  “I don’t know he isn’t—and until I do I don’t tell you so much as my Social Security number.”

  Molina’s eyes narrowed to cobalt slits. “You won’t have any social security if you give the police a hard time.”

  “What hard time? I’ll tell you everything I know on the way there.”

  “I’d rather get it downtown, where it can be recorded.”

  Temple smiled. “Then we’d better hurry to the pound before my short-term memory starts fading out from stress.”

  The guard and the cop, both wearing billed caps with shiny reassuring badges on them, regarded Molina expectantly. Temple, sure of victory, took the opportunity to check out Molina’s shoes—black suede pumps that didn’t disgrace the vintage dress, with two-and-a-half-inch heels! The nerve of some tall women!

  Molina stood, looming even higher above Temple. Despite her civilized appearance, she spoke in her usual professional monotone—flat as a stiff’s EKG. “This case has been an operetta since you and that damn cat did a pas de deux with the body on the convention floor. Might as well end it with a wild-goose chase.”

  Temple rose, barefoot. That made Molina tower like a redwood. She consulted her watch—only 6:53, could you believe it?—and slit her eyes to match Molina’s steely blue stare.

  “I want to get there by seven, Lieutenant.”

  “Rawson,” Molina instructed the uniformed officer with weary resignation. “We’ll use the siren.”

  22

  Temple on Ice

  Temple sat alone in a tiny room equipped only with table and chairs. The sole door had a window in the upper half, smudged as if a lot of noses had been pressed against it. Chicken wire reinforced the glass on a diagonal pattern, looking like fishnet hose.

  The dreariness of her surroundings matched her mood. A noisy and speedy arrival at the city pound had found the cupboard bare of Midnight Louie. The surly attendant swore a big black cat had been there, but the indicated cage was empty. Temple believed in her heart of hearts that Louie had been prematurely put to sleep, even though the attendant swore no “terminations” had occurred that night. Whatever the reason, Louie wasn’t there.

  Temple and Molina had both looked like prize fools, something Temple felt far too depressed to worry about. Surely Molina wasn’t.

  As the detective entered the room, her impressive brows collided in a frown, reminding Temple that publicly embarrassing a police lieutenant was not a good way to preface an interrogation.

  Molina had vanished without a word after their arrival at the police station. Now she again wore her khaki poplin slacks and blazer. The warm interrogation room quickly encouraged her to doff the jacket, revealing a short-sleeved red polyester blouse with a V-neck, in the style called a camp shirt.

  “Do I need a lawyer or something?” Temple asked nervously.

  “You’re not being charged with anything,” Molina said. “There’s no statute against stupidity.”

  “Are public servants supposed to resort to name-calling?”

  “So sue me.”

  Molina sat across the scar-topped Formica table from Temple, who felt reduced to an unhappy twelve-year-old called in for a lecture by the big-girl camp counselor. She swung a nervous foot.

  She’d been allowed to dump off Lorna’s book bag and grab a pair of shoes at the Circle Ritz on the way back to the station. At least this was just an interrogation and she hadn’t been fingerprinted and put into jailhouse baggies.

  “Why were you coming in so late at the convention center?” Molina asked first.

  “I had lots of messages to catch up on.”

  “Like this one?” Molina produced the catnapper’s second note, mounted on a larger piece of paper so no one had to touch it.

  “How—?”

  “The officers went over your desk while we were busy visiting the local pound. When a citizen is stalked through a public building after hours and apparently attacked, we investigate—seriously.”

  “What do you mean by ‘apparently’ attacked?”

  “Nothing more than careful police phrasing. The guard saw someone running away, although our officers found no one. I presume your story will corroborate this fact. So will an analysis of the human tissue samples on the heel of your shoe.”

  “Do you suppose—?”

  “What?”

  “Did I actually... hurt someone?”

  “Not fatally,” Molina said with little amusement. “Why would someone attack you?”

  “Like Everest—I was there?” Temple tried.

  “You were there because of this note. Mind explaining it?”

  “Yes, I do. It’s a sensitive matter.”

  “Cats are sensitive?”

  “These two are not just cats. They’re corporate mascots.”

  “Right now they’re in the middle of a murder investigation, as are you. Tell me about it.”

  There was nothing even faintly cajoling about Molina’s tone, just pure unleavened command. So Temple did.

  Molina was not a particularly encouraging listener, but seen across the table and judged as a person rather than an official, and in view of her startling off-duty transformation, C. R. Molina struck Temple as human for the first time.

  Her heavy almost blue-black hair, worn in an ear-covering blunt cut more serviceable than stylish, grew wispily around her hairline, an effect that might have been softening had Molina not brushed it brutally back from her face.

  Her strong brows were unplucked, but after all that was the current practice among fashion models; and yet Temple doubted Molina had noticed. She wore no detectable makeup, except for a wine-colored lipstick that added color yet didn’t even flirt with being seductive.

  She wore little jewelry, only a class ring on her right second finger, which indicated she had lost weight since getting it. Even seated, Molina was rangy and competent-looking; not awkward, but without fillips of expression or gesture to distract from her grim business. Until tonight, Temple woul
d have bet that C. R. Molina had neither steady boyfriend nor cat. Her bare left hand said she wasn’t presently married even though she must be pushing forty.

  “What?” Temple suddenly realized she’d been inventing a life for a person whose job was to probe her own situation.

  “I said,” Molina repeated evenly, “what made you and this Adcock woman think you could possibly handle this cat kidnapping by yourselves?”

  “The Baker & Taylor people weren’t sure at first that it was a kidnapping. They hoped that the cats had escaped during the hubbub of setting-up and—scared by all the noise—were hiding out somewhere. There’s a lot of building to hide out in.”

  “I know,” Molina said, “and so should you after tonight. So you got the first note—and I want that one, too—then hired this O’Rourke to see who picked up the money. How’d he do?”

  Temple thought it was mean of Molina to harp on what she’d been through as an interrogation tactic. “You know Eightball?”

  Molina nodded and shrugged simultaneously and slightly. “Harmless.”

  Not exactly what Temple wanted to hear about her chosen private operative. “Eightball called me earlier tonight. Said he’d trailed the pickup person to the Las Vegas Hilton, then lost her.”

  “Her?”

  “I was surprised, too. Maybe she was a shill?”

  “She was an aiding and abetting shill, if so. You gave up the money with no guarantee of the cats’ return?”

  “The nappers didn’t leave a calling card. When I got the second note, I figured they were playing fair, so I went down to the exhibit to wait for the return of Baker and Taylor.”

  “Instead the murderer came back for a second engagement. Is that what you figure?”

  “If you say so, Lieutenant. And he did jab at me with a knitting needle.”

  Molina’s luxurious eyebrows rose a millimeter. “Explain ‘he’ and ‘knitting needle.’ How could you know in the dark?”

  Temple sipped the diet cola she’d been given. Her throat felt bruised. Maybe she’d been wrong to refuse medical attention.

  “That’s a good question. I thought it was a ‘he’ on instinct—pure, blind instinct. The person was bigger than I am, but most women are, too. I just had a sense of being up against muscle mass.”