Cat in an Aqua Storm

by Carole Nelson Douglas

  “You? A murderer?” Temple hovered on the brink of laughter. “Victim, maybe, but perpetrator—”

  “Listen, T.B., you’ve been where I’m sitting, or lying, rather. I found the goddamn body! You know how that looks.”

  “PR people may kill stories, but they don’t kill people. Nobody could seriously suspect you.”

  “How about Lieutenant Too-tall Molina?”

  “She is the suspicious sort,” Temple conceded.

  “Listen. I want you to take over for me.”

  “No way! I turned the job down, remember? Why should I take it now that it’s a hot potato? Besides, Molina doesn’t like me, either.”

  Even in a hospital bed Buchanan managed to preen. He rolled his big, cow-brown eyes. “Oh, she likes me, all right. She just suspects me, too.”

  Temple strangled a groan in view of the surroundings. “Why? Lieutenant Molina may have a suspicious nature by profession, but what would make her think you particularly would kill a stripper? And how was it done, anyway?”

  He paled, if that was possible. The pallor emphasized his dark, thick eyebrows and the languid-lashed eyes as melting as a panda’s. His hand clenched the slack sheet over his chest.

  “She was in the dressing room. Alone. Very alone. I took her for a costume at first... only the lights around one mirror were on and all the costumes glitter so you can’t tell what’s real from what’s unreal. She was hanging—”

  He stopped, shut his eyes, the lashes resting on the puckered bags beneath them. Temple kept quiet, moved despite her dislike of Buchanan, recalling the moment a few weeks before when she had found herself sprawled across the corpse of Chester Royal in the Las Vegas Convention Center booth.

  “How... how was she hanging?” Temple made herself ask.

  His eyes opened slowly, but the words came out staccato. “G-string. Rhinestone. G-string.”

  “How? From... what did it hang?”

  “I don’t know! You think I looked that close? I’d gone nearer to see what was wrong, what—it—was that was turning there silently like a becalmed wind chime. Feathers fluttering, rhinestones twinkling. Looked like a damn Mardi Gras figure on a float. An animated costume. But it wasn’t—animate or a costume.”

  Temple sat down on the varnished wooden seat of the tasteful Swedish modem visitor’s chair, the shape and surface so conspiratorially slick that she thought she might slide right off it onto the floor. She’d seen a lot of dressing rooms at the Guthrie Theater and, before that, in amateur theatrical playhouses. She understood the dramatic quiet of an empty dressing room and its eerie occupation of hanging costumes. But this costume was empty only by virtue of death. She realized she was shaking a little, like a hanging costume in the stuffy, backstage air. “Who was she?” she asked.

  “Just a stripper.” Buchanan’s answer shocked Temple out of her newfound empathy. “One of the girls.”

  “Why should Molina suspect you of doing it, even though you found her?”

  His languid eyes eeled away from her direct gaze. “I... might have... asked her out.”

  “Asked her out? Or picked her out? Did you walk up and ask her out, or did you sidle by and play with her hair, the edges of her feathered costume, then glide away before she could object? Did you hang around, annoy her, make a nuisance of yourself? Get noticed by everyone else?”

  “What are you trying to do? Turn a few friendly overtures into a sexual harassment case?”

  “Listen, C.B., your idea of friendly overtures to the opposite sex falls somewhere between a boa constrictor’s and a caveman’s.”

  The heavy hospital door hushed open. Temple whirled, hoping a nurse hadn’t caught her being unsympathetic with a sick man.

  The overhead florescent pulled the features of the dishwater-brunette who entered into a lugubrious mask, but she was no nurse. A teenage girl with a sullen, pimple-dotted face shadowed her.

  The two advanced to Buchanan’s bedside.

  “Merle,” he introduced the woman, as if her first name were all that was necessary.

  “We’d gone to the cafeteria for a bite,” Merle apologized to Temple. “I came straight from work and never stopped at home.” She glanced with quick concern to Buchanan. “What about your fish? When should I feed them?”

  “Tonight when you get home will be fine,” he said shortly.

  The silence stretched out like a patient anesthetized upon a table. Temple studied the mousy woman across the white sheets. A pleasant, not striking face. Little makeup. Why did downtrodden women always seem to have pale eyelashes, so their sad eyes floated in a flesh-colored aspic that emphasized their bland passivity?

  The young girl, the woman’s daughter by every other feature, on the other hand, burned. Burning, Blackboard Jungle teenage eyes missed nothing and judged everything. Everyone.

  The pitiful twosome should have strengthened Temple’s resolve to keep out of Buchanan’s business. Instead they sealed her fate.

  “Okay,” she told the man in the bed linens. “I’ll go on with the show. It’s being held at the Goliath, isn’t it?”

  He nodded.

  “My favorite hotel,” Temple added darkly. The Mystifying Max had just finished an engagement at the Goliath when he disappeared.

  She tried to edge inconspicuously out of the room, but Merle and daughter followed her out into the hall.

  “He says he’ll be all right,” Temple repeated dutifully.

  Merle nodded, her wan features slack with worry. “The heart attack was minor, although it’ll be an adjustment. The notoriety—”

  “He loves it,” the teenager put in.

  Temple searched discreetly for a wedding ring on Merle’s left hand and found none. The daughter’s ears dangled an intriguing array of silver scorpions, spiders and peace symbols. Her features were still blurred in her pale, blotched skin, but Temple discerned some fine bones and a future beauty peeking past the studied disdain that drew her youthful lips and eyes dolefully down.

  “Quincey—!” Merle admonished her daughter. “Crawford has had some terrible shocks. Can't you forget your everlasting wrangles even in the face of illness?”

  The girl looked down at her thin arms folded over her barely there breasts. She gave no answer except the unspoken “Oh, Mother...” screaming from her stance and expression.

  Sweet sixteen, and stuck with Crawford Buchanan for a stepfather of sorts, Temple guessed, for this gangly, tall girl could never be his natural issue.

  “Thank you, Miss Barr.” Merle ignored her daughter’s disregard. “C.B.’s spoken of you so frequently. I knew we could count on you.”

  “No trouble,” Temple assured her insincerely. She glanced once more at Quincey, who was leaning against the wan wall making Kim Basinger lips, then left on the echoing click of her high heels.

  A live-in girlfriend, she mused in disgust, but that didn’t prevent him making bachelor noises. Maybe this murder would scare Crawford Buchanan straight and make him stick closer to home. Not that Quincey would appreciate that.

  Temple reconsidered. There was something worse than having Crawford Buchanan for a quasiprofessional colleague. Oh, to be in the Terrible Teens and have Crawford Buchanan for a stepfather!

  8

  Dance of Death

  I have drifted off again, at which I am most adept, until I am unduly awakened by Miss Temple Barr's impetuous return.

  "Oh, Louie!” my little doll cries upon finding me ensconced on her queen-sized bed in a dark lit only by the night-light.

  It is not the greeting of joy and affection it should be, although she promptly sweeps me into her arms.

  “My Hanae Mori silk dress!" she wails, as little dolls will when they are irked for no good reason.

  I am deposited upon a cold, uncrumpled portion of the comforter while she snatches my warm, comfy resting place from the bed. She waltzes around the room holding it at arm’s length—first to the light switch, which she flicks on, the better to shrink my wide-open irises in
to thin, light-bedazzled slits.

  While I am blinking in confusion she is brushing at the garment in question and interrogating the air. “Why did he have to lie right there? Why did he have to paw it into a ball?”

  Miss Temple Barr may have her strong points, but an understanding of the masculine feline mind is not among them.

  She hangs the injured dress in the closet and takes off her high heels as if sinking three inches in height mirrors an inner droop. “I know it was not intentional, Louie,” she announces with a sigh, "any more than Crawford Bloody Buchanan meant to find a body and have a heart attack. But it is aggravatingly inconvenient.”

  Having expressed herself, she proceeds to disrobe while I take a gentlemanly clue and turn myself to face in another direction. Miss Temple Barr's dramatic return, and dislodging of myself, has reminded me of my own trauma of the morning.

  I picture my discreet arrival at the Goliath via the rear service entrance. The approach is the most delicate maneuver. My sable silhouette shows up to great advantage against the pale, sun-washed exterior. I pause in the shadow of a Dumpster and watch the door with narrowed eyes. Legs come and go, and finally one pair comes out followed closely by a linen trolley. Before you can say “Nostradamus,” I am darting past the racket of the wheels and merging into the interior shade.

  My feet have pounded most of the Strip's hardest and hottest pavements, but they are not too jaded to appreciate a cool expanse of vinyl tile. I pussyfoot down the hall, my nose for news leading me past the clattering hotel kitchens and into the guest areas. Here my already silent steps are buffered by plush, well-padded carpeting in a pattern I can only describe as “Hairball Revisited” or “Goliath Buffet Regurgitated.” It is a good thing that my breed is not fussy about colors (except in the instance of choosing flattering backgrounds), or I would be seasick and add to the psychedelic ambience underfoot.

  No one notices my presence. I am a past master at darting into the dark side of a cigarette stand, into the shadowy underside of a potted palm, around the nearest corner.

  The unmistakable blurt of an audio tape and stop-and-go chatter of human voices leads me to a ballroom filled with scattered folding chairs, enough tangled industrial-strength electric cords to give Indiana Jones a snake attack and more long bare female legs of the human sort than have been seen since Busby Berkeley choreographed thirties musicals. Most of these unappealingly hairless gams are upheld by shoes of such skyscraper ambitions that my little doll’s collection looks like London flats.

  I dart from the safety of chair to chair, pausing only to sniff the smoke and sweat-perfumed air for a scent I will never forget: the faintly powdered pheromones unique to the Divine Yvette.

  And still the dames in high heels come and go, talking of feathers and furbelows. Then, while crouching nonchalantly underneath a camera tripod (nobody faced with a camera ever looks down), I find my heart doing a double axel. A piquant feline face haloed in rhinestones is nose-to-nose and toe-to-toe with yours truly. One inhalation and I know that fraud is afoot. This vision exudes an odor of well-worn Dr. Scholl’s instep liners. I see that the shining eyes and sleek body, the tail so cunningly curling up like smoke, add up to a mere satin doll. Like the faux Baker and Taylor, my nearby vixen is a dummy: a shoe masquerading as a fabulous feline. It turns in its sassy tracks and minces on.

  I proceed to make my weary way around the crowded room. By now the many scents pleasant and not-so have merged into one overpowering human stink. I retreat in my staccato way, from chair to chair, avoiding the sudden roll of equipment over any of my extremities. One chair proves my undoing when it becomes the center of a flurry of activity.

  "Here,” booms a deep male voice, picking up my shelter.

  I run along under it and just miss having my rear foot punctured when the chair is suddenly slammed to carpet again. I hunch beneath its shelter, ears and eyes alert for any other sudden dislocations.

  "You can sit here, Miss Ashleigh," the same loathsome voice announces.

  Ashleigh? What a sweet sound. A swirl of floral fabric tents me with blessed concealment. A pair of pearl-embedded Lucite wedgies come to a prim stop before my nose.

  “Thank you, luv," a purring contralto voice says. “Where is my margarita—?"

  “Here,” a female voice answers with a quick, oncoming shuffle of ballet-slipper flats.

  Feet dance attendance on the occupant of my chair, Savannah Ashleigh herself.

  I contain my own purr of satisfaction.

  “Ah,” Miss Savannah Ashleigh allows. The retinue holds a respectful silence.

  “These are, of course,” says the loudspeaker man, "tech rehearsals to familiarize the crews with the routines."

  A camera doilies over like a hungry mechanical mongrel. I sense Miss Savannah Ashleigh sitting up straighter, even as her voice burbles on.

  "Tech rehearsals are the best time to get the feel of a show,” she pronounces. "Some of my directors say I do my best work at the rehearsals." Laughter hearty, hers. Laughter polite, her attendants. Laughter silent and unconvinced, mine. "Do you want me to turn left? Right?” Her feet swivel so fast that one translucent heel nearly kicks me in the kisser. "Three-quarters is my best angle.”

  I hear the murmur of some camera jockey.

  "My—what? Hat. Oh, cat! Of course, my Darling Yvette. Yes, I still travel with her."

  I hunch forward, all ears.

  "Not here. She was sleeping. I left her carrying case in the dressing room. I could send someone for her—” Said hopefully, even as the camera dollies back and away. “Rats!” Miss Savannah Ashleigh hisses to herself, and inadvertently to me.

  Or rather, to my decamping posterior. I, too, am dollying away, slinking among the oblivious feet and chair legs, heading for the dressing room and my own particular Sleeping Beauty. I am a habitué of the chorus girls' dressing rooms at every hotel in town. Nobody is as generous as a hoofer, especially to a dude who has to pound the pavement day in and day out with four feet instead of two.

  So I am down the back stairs before you can say “Stage door Louie.” No guard is on duty yet: the show doesn’t start until seven p.m. Since everybody else is beating their feet on the ballroom floor, the windowless depths beneath the stage are dark and deserted, except for muslin-shrouded costume racks lining the concrete corridors, I stick my puss in a few dressing rooms and encounter—more shoes, these in a scattered, unpaired condition... more chairs askew... the poignant twinkle of sequin and rhinestone on abandoned headdresses... the tremulous nod of ostrich feathers dyed a color no self-respecting ostrich would claim.

  At last a sound draws my alert ears to another dressing room. I hear a shoe scrape across the bare floor—no sense carpeting a room where spilled cosmetics will soon make it a twin to the deliberately nauseous carpet upstairs. I also hear the apparent gargling of a parrot—ugly birds with uglier beaks and claws.

  I dart inside the door and shelter under a row of identical magenta sequined Flamenco gowns with turkey-feather ruffles. A feather tangles in my eyelash, then tickles my nose. I am about to sneeze when I spot a pink canvas bag under the opposite chair. In emblazoned silver letters, I read the name “Yvette.” Behind the pink mesh side lies a dim form.

  I control my impending sneeze. No princess wishes to be awakened by an asthmatic prince.

  Then the idiotic parrot squawks again and a scuffle erupts in the dressing room's far corner. How dare a scaly, foul-mouthed bird disturb the Divine Yvette’s rest? I turn with a swallowed snarl to the site of the disturbance to see two pair of human legs, dancing. They are doing what is known as an Apache dance in chicer circles than I move in, for the black-clad legs are moving purposefully, with vigor. Her naked gams, however, hang mostly limp, kicking idly at the black-garbed shins.

  Then I look up, through an undergrowth of fuchsia feathers and past the constellation of sequins. They are not dancing. I glimpse the woman's face, painted into a slightly iridescent mask of beauty that Miss Savannah Ashleigh mig
ht envy. Her head is at an odd angle and her apparent partner has lifted her high in his arms, as if she were a ballerina. She seems to be hanging from a necklace of stars with a sad, forlorn tilt to her motionless mask of a face.

  Her partner—only a vague back and black legs—scrabbles away, yet she hangs there, swings slowly, idly from an invisible hook. I smell not only the faint, sleeping fragrance of the Divine Yvette but the slow heavy odor of fear. And death.

  I duck back under the feathers, Black Legs scissoring past me so fast that a black sneaker as silent as the Grim Reaper stubs its toe on a chair leg. The chair screeches across the concrete, like chalk on a blackboard. Black Legs curses softly, lurches toward the pale pink ark in which slumbers the Divine Yvette, then kicks—kicks!—the Divine Yvette’s sanctuary into the wall and runs from the dressing room.

  I am across the floor in one mighty leap, pawing the pink canvas away from the wall. I hear a plaintive, sleepy cry from within. Had the Divine Yvette not been curled up in utter relaxation, such a blow could have been devastating.

  The dim light reflects from a dawning glimmer of opening eyes. A cool pink triangle of naked skin presses against the barrier mesh. We inhale deeply, knowing each other in an instant.

  The Divine Yvette calls my name in a dazed, bewildered voice....

  I can resist no longer. I must sneeze. Being the gentleman that I am, I turn my head—and look up to see the dancing woman suspended above me, her melancholy, tilted face looking down on the reunion of Midnight Louie and the Divine Yvette with the open, empty eyes of a forsaken puppet.

  The puppetmaster who abandoned her will rue the moment he meddled with the Divine Yvette, or my name is not Midnight Louie.

  9

  Perfect Recall

  “Brother John, I’m scared.”

  “So am I. You’ve got to leave.”

  “Five more days. If I can just make it for five more days! I’m trying to be so quiet, so perfect, but sometimes that makes him worse.”

  “You can’t win with him, whatever you do. Except by leaving.”