Cat in an Aqua Storm

by Carole Nelson Douglas

  “Uh, Sharon Stone,” suggested Temple, coming to the rescue again. She hadn’t seen Basic Instinct, either. Now she wondered if a man-stabbing lesbian made a suitable role model for a stripper, but it was too late to backtrack.

  “Favorite fantasy,” Blondie prompted again, looking expectantly at Temple.

  “Don’t you have one?”

  Blondie tilted her head at the questionnaire and pouted her lips indecisively. “Beating the shit out of my old man.” She laughed, her eyes uneasy.

  Temple caught her breath at the unspoken volumes behind those few words.

  Blondie shrugged, as if dismissing herself, her notions, her past. “Being tied between two horses and ripped apart.” She laughed again.

  Temple remained speechless, more shocked by these words than she had been by anything she’d glimpsed yet in the world of sex entertainment. Classic clues to abuse and battered self-esteem had come tumbling out. Temple didn’t have to be a professional counselor like Matt Devine to know that.

  “Say,” said Wilma’s deep, motherly voice. “Why not write down Lady Godiva? You know, on the horse.”

  “Oh, right.” Blondie was happily diverted, her problem solved. “I can do something with that. Um, ‘Fantasy: To ride a horse naked through Caesars Palace.’ There. Done. Can you drop it at the DJ’s booth on the way out?” She thrust the flimsy paper at Temple. “I gotta finish getting ready.”

  Temple nodded automatically, and glanced at the sheet with its childish block printing. In her haste, Blondie had to cross out several transposed words and letters.

  “Let’s go, ” Ruth said uncomfortably between her teeth.

  In the silence Temple heard another suspicious thump, but Scarlet turned on her hair dryer and began fingering mousse through her kinky curls.

  Lindy crushed her cigarette out on the painted concrete floor next to a crumpled food stamp—Temple hadn’t noticed ashtrays anywhere—pushed away so hard that the locker door twanged like a drum, and led them back through the ladies’ john.

  Temple regretted her mission for Blondie. It forced her to slip backstage behind the waiting performers. Then she had to do an elaborate pantomime to get DJ Johnny’s attention. She finally eeled out between the seminude bodies crowded backstage.

  Ruth and Lindy waited for her near the door next to the stage. They wove their way through the tables again just as the DJ was announcing a fresh new talent, Little Sheba—Blondie in stage persona.

  Finally the trio stood on the sidewalk outside, adjusting to the shower of daylight.

  “Well?” Lindy demanded.

  “Sad,” Ruth said. “The false names and the faux glamour can’t hide the fact that they think so little of themselves that they have to display their bodies before men for money.”

  “Oh, come on!” Lindy’s fists clapped to her hips. “Who do you think gets rich off of those evil, exploitive men? The clubs and the performers. Those poor jerks put a lot of good money down those G-strings, and down their gullets in an afternoon or evening of drinking. The strippers control them, not the other way around. You saw that, didn’t you, Temple?”

  Temple looked from one to another, thinking. “I saw what you both saw, and something else. Strippers are performers who put their hearts and souls into their acts. Maybe it’s a neurotic need to manipulate the men who abused them when they were too young to fight back. It still adds up to a performance with personal significance. And that’s what all artists do.”

  “We don’t want to be called artists! We just don’t want to be called tarts!” Lindy said.

  “You can’t excuse what they’re encouraged to do by calling low self-esteem a royal road to self-expression!” Ruth argued just as forcibly.

  They were united in disagreeing with her. Temple stood between the two women feeling like the cat that ate the canary and followed it up with a sparrow chaser.

  “You know what I’d like to do? Book you two on some local talk radio shows. Pro and Con. And then I’d like to hear what the strippers say when they call in, and I bet they will, in droves. Are you game?”

  The two women regarded each other suspiciously, and then Temple, with dawning excitement.

  “Talk radio would really get the word out on the competition next weekend,” Lindy said first.

  “Radio is an excellent forum for WOE,” Ruth added, “and would be a lot less hot than stomping the pavement all day.”

  “Don’t bet on that.” Temple, who had heard her share of talk radio shows on controversial subjects, felt obligated to warn Ruth. “But it would bring some interesting issues out into the open.”

  “The interesting issues are already out in the open,” Ruth pointed out as the door to Kitty City exploded open and a miniskirted stripper dashed out.

  Temple turned to watch the Zebra lady stride down the street on long, tan, bare legs. “Don’t count on it,” she advised, wondering exactly how much might come out if the strippers got revved up enough to speak for themselves—how much about their always-titillating profession, and how much about the murderer among them. The horrible death of Dorothy Horvath was not a debatable issue.

  As she watched, and just before the door swung shut, a black cat with ruffled fur slipped out, gave her a furtive green glance over one shoulder and trotted around the corner of the building.

  Temple opened her mouth, but the cat was gone.

  “What’s the matter?” asked Ruth, who had noticed Temple’s expression.

  “Nothing. I thought I recognized another Kitty City escapee.”

  Lindy and Ruth craned their necks to look around.

  “There ain’t nobody around,” Ruth finally said with rueful humor, “but us chickens. So let’s get out of here before somebody sees us and assumes the worst.”

  15

  Little Girl Lost

  The three women debarked from their cab—they had hailed one on Paradise—amid a flurry of cordial goodbyes. While Ruth headed for the Goliath valet stand to retrieve her sign, Lindy and Temple dashed inside.

  The lines were drawn, Temple knew, but at least the combatants were willing to talk turkey on the live airwaves. Meanwhile, Lindy led Temple to the second-floor hotel suite that served as competition central.

  Though the rooms were empty now, the normally neat furniture sat askew. End tables were littered with ashtrays, bowls of stale popcorn and paperwork. All Temple wanted was an empty chair and an unengaged telephone.

  She plopped down, dropped her heavy tote bag beside her and dug out her straining personal organizer. Phone numbers took up half the bulk. Time to play radio-station roulette. She dialed one string of numbers after another, quickly learning who was in, who was out, who was interested, who was too busy to talk.

  After forty minutes of nonstop calling, Temple had lined up three talk shows in the next four days and had four more shows scheduled to call her back, Whether producer or interviewer, the radio people she contacted loved the notion of strippers calling in and baring their souls instead of their bodies for a change. Las Vegas took its exotic entertainers for granted, but with guests lined up to debate the issue, stripping suddenly got a lot sexier, as far as radio ratings were concerned. Nothing made for good media like a major clash of opinions.

  Satisfied but talked out, Temple restored her precious sourcebook to the tote bag, then cruised the littered tabletops for something nutritious. She was forced to settle for seven stale pretzels and three green M&Ms.

  All the competition personnel, she decided, must still be down in the ballroom trying to whip lights, action and cameras into shape for the big show on Saturday night.

  Taking the elevator down, she found herself wondering why the murderer had killed his victim so early into competition week. Only half the performers had arrived yet. Only half the chaos was available to confuse matters.

  She charged through the teeming lobby, well aware that all Las Vegas hotel lobbies resemble sets for the film, Airport, with tour groups booking in and booking out in long, lugg
age-clogged lines... all Las Vegas hotels, that is, except for the unfortunate few that aren’t doing big-time business. Their lobbies resemble deserted bowling alleys.

  Pausing to glance into the ballroom, Temple viewed the same controlled chaos she had penetrated before. She hesitated, wondering if Ike Wetzel would make a good sparring partner for Ruth on the talk shows. No, too inarticulate. He was one of those maddening men who retreat to smug, smirking silence in the face of female outrage, like the ever-lovable Crawford Buchanan.

  She didn’t spot any reporters milling about, and sighed her relief. The murder had already run its sensational course in a town brimming with sensation and crime. All she had to do now was organize sufficient, sedate publicity and beat off any overeager news people.

  In that case, she could go home and pound out her radio schedule so far, or... since she was here anyway, she could check out the dressing room again. Alone. She headed for the back stairs, her mind manufacturing ways to justify her nosiness if anyone—say Lieutenant Molina—caught her snooping.

  She figured that the police had been over the dressing room with a forensic fine-tooth comb by now. She should have the place to herself, and, without Lindy present, something about the murder scene that nagged at her might become clear.

  Her heels clattered in four-four time down the concrete stairs. No one had seen her, proving that the murderer hadn’t needed to be clever, just lucky. The Goliath was a massive beast of a hotel whose functional underbelly was often deserted if you knew when to explore it.

  In the nondescript corridor narrowed by racks of muslin-covered costumes Temple tried to muffle her ringing footsteps. Just because the place was deserted was no reason to announce herself to ghosts.

  One ghost haunted a different dressing room. She paused, then pushed open a door she had entered many times before.

  A glamorous wardrobe of glittering gowns occupied the costume niche where Max’s deliberately subdued performance clothes had hung not many months before. Either a female impersonator occupied the room now, or some glamour-puss songstress.

  Temple advanced to the mirror, saw herself looking perfectly respectable and as guilty as any trespasser. Cosmetics spewed across the glass-topped Formica counter, and none of these makeup bulbs showed the tattletale gray of burnout.

  She almost expected to glance down and find Max looking back at her in the mirror. Funny how you conversed with a person’s image when he was using a mirror, as if he really were on the other side of it... already. Was that where Max had gone? Behind the illusion of his own image?

  Temple eyed the distinctly female cosmetics, an odd combination of expensive Borghese eyeshadows and inexpensive Maybelline products. Although the room’s fixtures and furniture remained the same, it had been essentially transformed somehow. The magician had changed it into something else by making himself disappear. It held memories that smelled faintly stale.

  Temple shook her head, at the room and at herself. She was about to back out, feeling like an intruder who had stumbled onto a stage set for a play she wasn’t in.

  Then her mirror’s-eye view spotted something odd atop the wicker sofa on the opposite wall. How often had she perched on its chintz upholstered arm after a show, waiting for Max’s makeup to come off, ready to keep him company until he came down from the exuberant high of performing? Stop it! she ordered herself, and walked over to the sofa to inspect the anomaly.

  A pink gym bag. That fit the overfeminine, slightly junky touches in the room. The mesh side insets, Temple thought, must help air out soggy exercise wear.

  Something moved behind that pastel barrier.

  She jumped back, her heart beating, the heavy tote bag swinging hard into her hip, once, twice.

  “Ow.”

  The contents of the bag echoed her complaint. Only its cry of protest sounded more like “Wow.”

  How had she forgotten the unforgettably feminine feline darling? Certainly she hadn’t paid much attention to the cat carrier at the time. Temple crouched down until the mesh was on eye level and peered inward. Two gleaming round eyes gazed back. Long spidery silver hairs brushed the mesh.

  “Aren’t you the natural beauty! Of course. Yvette. Savannah Ashleigh’s pampered baby cat.” She could see the same unreadable silvery script embroidered across the bag’s top. As Temple’s forefinger scratched the mesh, Yvette’s delicate pink nose outlined in flattering black tilted to sniff it.

  “Well. I hope your mistress comes back soon. We don’t want you all alone down here witnessing any more murders—like mine!”

  Temple stood, aware of the deserted dressing rooms surrounding her, of the recent, nearby violent death lingering with a kind of half-life. Even if Max’s strong personality had left no aura in this room, perhaps the dead dancer’s brutal passing had managed to haunt the entire area.

  Temple hurried out of the dressing room, embarrassed by the thought of explaining her presence to a suddenly returned Savannah Ashleigh. She wouldn’t even want to explain it to herself.

  Down the hall, the door to the murder scene stood ajar. Temple halted, even though she knew that doors are always ajar in deserted dressing rooms. The last thing weary, absconding performers want to deal with is closing doors behind them.

  Still, she tiptoed closer, managing to keep her reverberating heels just off the floor. She eased inside without having to push the door further open. The cloak-shrouded end wall caught her eye instantly. Had the victim been posed there deliberately, she wondered, like dead meat on a hook? Cruel and crude, but then so was using the woman’s own prize G-string for a hangman’s noose.

  Was there a message in the manner of death, the place of death? Temple thought so. Maybe if she stood very still and emptied her mind, an intuition would creep in.

  A strangled whimper ruined her concentration.

  Temple’s eyes jerked from the wall of gaudy cloaks to the opposing rows of mirrors and chairs that lined the dressing room. Empty. She turned. Only lockers stood behind her, pushed up against the wall with some of the doors sprung, the shiny gray enamel paint chipped off like cheap fingernail polish.

  No one could hide in a locker. Not a murderer then. Not even a figment of her imagination now.

  Yet, she had heard a noise, very near. She wasn’t hallucinating. Temple looked around again, methodically: along the ceiling line, down the row of chairs. Last, she examined the hanging costumes—from the fuchsia turkey-feather numbers jammed together at the far end to the equally imaginative exotica imported by the visiting strippers, and the truly tasteless high heels and boots lined up under them.

  A muffled hiccough. The last gown on the left, a scarlet-sequined bodice with a ruffled Flamenco skirt, trembled.

  Temple looked down again, below the froth of glamorous hems. This time she spied a jazzy satin pair of spike heels with a rhinestone-framed cat face on the toe. They were inhabited by real feet and legs.

  She strode over and pushed back the scarlet costume. The hanger screeched against the rod like a scalded cat, making Temple jump along with her discovery.

  A petite, dark-haired woman huddled against the wall, hands over her face, shivering, as well she might in her black spangled T-back bikini bottom and strapless bra.

  “Pm sorry,” Temple apologized. Nothing was more embarrassing, for both parties, than finding a stranger crying.

  The woman shook her head, too distraught to speak.

  “Is there anything I can do—?” Expecting a negative answer to that inanely ineffective question, Temple retreated, prepared to tiptoe out again.

  A hand left the face and then seized her wrist. “Is he still out there?” the woman asked. Her voice was strangely low and hoarse for such a small woman, choked with emotion and something else. Fear.

  “He?” Temple repeated.

  The hand tightened painfully on Temple’s wrist bone. “The man! A man. Any man. Is he out there?”

  Temple shook her head. “No one was around but me. And a cat.”

&n
bsp; Relief allowed the woman’s hunched shoulders to drop two inches, but she kept her face and body pressed to the wall. One hand still covered her eyes, as if to keep them from seeing something horrible.

  “Hey,” Temple said gently, “I sometimes look pretty awful in the mornings, but I’m really not a scary person. Come on out. It’s just us two down here, honest.”

  The woman laughed tentatively, peeking at Temple through spread fingers, like a child. “You’re not... with the show.”

  “I’m doing public relations for it.”

  “Why are you down here?”

  “I came to check out the murder scene,” Temple admitted sheepishly, her eyes flicking to the far wall. “I’m congenitally curious.”

  “Oh.” The woman sighed instead of sobbed this time and turned around to put her back to the wall.

  She may have been tiny, Temple noticed, but she had a dynamite hourglass figure. Her vivid coloring suggested the Hispanic, or Italian.

  “What’s your name?” Temple asked.

  The woman’s long dark lashes fanned up and down behind her hand as she studied Temple’s linen suit, tote bag, high heels and, finally, her face.

  “K-Katharine,” she said in a subdued, shy tone.

  “All right, Katharine, why don’t you come out of there? Those ruffle sequins must scratch! I’ll prove that there’s no one here but me.”

  Katharine edged out like a child from a closet, a bizarre image when combined with her seminaked, fully female form.

  “Those are downright awesome shoes,” Temple said with sincere admiration. “I’ve got a cat with big green eyes almost as bright as those rhinestones.”

  “Thanks.” Katharine turned one foot so Temple could admire the shoes fully—see how cleverly the shape mimicked a cat stretching. The high heel was its hindquarters raised in the air, the sole its ground-touching belly. The toe formed its extended front legs. A twining ankle strap mocked a tail.

  “Darling outfit!" Temple pronounced. “Did you think that up yourself?”

  Katharine nodded solemnly. “You’re sure no one’s out there anymore?”