Cat in an Aqua Storm

by Carole Nelson Douglas

  In the bedroom, Temple threw on her handy wraparound dress and low-heeled mules, then checked herself in the bathroom mirror. Nothing makeup could do for her now. The tuna sandwich had gotten soggy absorbing the hot water, and the ice had melted in the glass mug, creating an unappetizing liquid the color of pink lemonade.

  She opened the tub drain to let the water gurgle out, grabbed the paper by the phone on which she had scribbled down the rhymes, and hustled into the living room.

  Matt was standing by the French doors, arms folded and legs braced. From the back he was well built enough to pass for a Newd Dude, but less intimidatingly muscular. Self-absorbed bodybuilders were likely total losses as romantic interests, anyway.

  He turned. “I didn’t mean to wake you. I just stopped in to see how you’re doing.”

  “Okay. I spent two-thirds of the day at the Goliath and was more tired than I knew.”

  “I stopped at the penthouse to ask Electra to keep an eye on you, but there’s no answer.”

  “Oh, Electra... she might be doing errands, riding around. You know.”

  “No, I don’t. She usually sticks close to the Circle Ritz in case an impromptu wedding party shows up and she has to officiate.”

  “I’m sure she’ll be back later.” Temple felt it was Electra’s business to tell anyone what she was up to. And she was sure the landlady had a backup JP to cover the Lover’s Knot wedding chapel attached to the Circle Ritz building.

  Matt rotated his lightly tanned wrist to check his Timex. Temple saw a thin white line where it had shifted. None of the strippers, female or male, had tans with unwanted white lines, she would bet. She’d heard the women chattering of tan booths and untimely burns. Too bad they didn’t know that a touch of reality is so much more inciting to the imagination than premeditated perfection.

  “I just thought of something,” she said.

  “Yes?” Ever-helpful Matt, ever ready to listen.

  “I’ve been spending so much time among the strippers, and something about the men strippers just struck me.” She paused. It was probably a dumb question. “Maybe you’d know, being into physical fitness.”

  “Wait a minute. I like to swim and I’ve studied martial arts since high school. That’s not ‘being into physical fitness.’ ”

  “Well, being a man, then.” He couldn’t object to that. “These guys are really Arnold Jrs., overbuilt, if you ask me. But none of them have hair on their chest—and not much body hair anywhere else that shows. Is it because they take steroids, or what? Or do men who have no body hair become strippers? Fascinating, isn’t it?”

  Matt smiled. “I have to answer a lot of difficult questions at the hot line, but I’ve never gotten one like that. It could be steroids, Temple. And I’d guess that if they went to all the trouble to build that muscle, they wouldn’t want anything obscuring it. I’ve heard some guys who wrestle shave their chests, and even their legs.”

  “Their legs! You mean these big, macho guys go through the same rigmarole as women?”

  “So I’ve heard.”

  “Maybe they get it waxed,” Temple mused. “That would last longer than shaving such big areas. Can you picture these guys lined up in a salon covered in hot wax?”

  “No, but evidently you can.” Matt was laughing. “You don’t miss anything, do you?”

  “I’m just curious about people, and being around so many professionally pretty people is mind-blowing. I wonder if men really find women who work at being that calculatedly ‘female’ attractive? Frankly, the guys’ overinflated muscles and bulging veins and jeans turn me off instead of on. It’s all too-too. Is that terrible of me? Am I not with it?”

  “Just sounds to me like you know what you like.”

  “Real people,” she said promptly and firmly.

  He was quiet for a moment, his eyes sobering. “Then the magician’s disappearance must have been quite a shock.”

  “Oh, yeah. But then, who is real? As I get to know these women strippers a little, I see their toughness and their tragedies, and I like them. They may be selling a perfect fantasy, but they’re far from perfect, and they know it. I don’t understand if the skin game is kicky and liberating, or a symptom of repression and oppression and obsession and all those other big words. Maybe I don’t understand it because I never qualified for it.”

  “What do you mean? You’re attractive.”

  “I’m okay. I like me. Some men like me. But I’m nothing to stop traffic, and I don’t try to be. A few of these women were born with breasts the size of watermelons, and otherwise slim. What are they going to do for a living in this society? I can see how they got there. It’s realistic, but at some time they must have suffered for being a different kid. And now their semi-freakdom makes them mucho moolah. Others... were made, not born, formed by abuse, yet stripping seems to free some of them, and to further degrade others. I’m confused. I don’t have a strong moral or philosophical position on the state of the art. Or even know if it is an art.”

  “At least you try. You question. Have you ever considered that black guys who are tall and can shoot baskets face the same problems? Should they use their natural advantages, make money young, and forget about whether they’re being exploited until they’re older?”

  “No. I never compared Playboy centerfolds, say, with big-money student athletes. But you’re right. They’ve both got something they can sell: being young and in shape. I should judge: I never had those temptations.”

  “Why not?”

  “Look at me! I looked twelve until I was past twenty, and now that I’m approaching thirty, I look twenty. Well? Don’t I?”

  He looked her over, so much more thoroughly than he ever had before that Temple regretted her impulsive challenge. Why draw anyone's attention to your perceived deficits? Bad PR.

  “What’s wrong with that?” Matt asked at last. “They sell expensive creams to get the same effect. Someday you’ll be seventy and look fifty.”

  “But I’m never taken seriously! Everybody’s always saying I’m too young or too small. They think that my brain matches my stature. They think I’m cute!” she snarled. “They especially think I’m cute when I’m mad.”

  He put up his hands. “Not me. Listen, Temple, I understand your frustration.”

  “Why? I’m sure everybody takes you very seriously. Face it, you’re one of the born-beautiful people, and you don’t even work at it.”

  Tactful, calm Matt Devine suddenly tensed. He turned away, hands in his pockets. “You say you don’t find the perfect bodies in a strip show real. What about the other way around? What if ‘perfect people’ never find anyone else real?”

  “Oh. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have personalized it. You know what I’ve been working against.”

  “You hate being typecast by your size. I hate my so-called looks. I don’t think of myself that way, but everybody else does. I have to wonder if they’re fooling themselves, and if they’re fooling me.”

  “I suppose,” Temple ventured, “that women have chased you since Day One.”

  He nodded, not happy at the memory. Was that how the women with big boobs felt? Valued for their outsides and not their insides? You could get cynical and use it. Or you could be honest and come to hate it.

  “Well,” she said, clearing her throat, “I might be tempted to try myself, except that I’m recovering from my own emotional Waterloo.”

  He turned back with a smile that would melt an igloo. “Why try? You have all those physical handicaps, remember?”

  “I am ‘cute.’ Some people find that appealing.”

  “And you’re fated to hate the ones who do.”

  She nodded. “Are you fated to hate the ones who are attracted to you?”

  “I hope not,” he said, just lightly enough that she knew the heavy stuff was over. For now. “Saddest of all are the people who hate themselves.” Matt glanced at his watch face, frowning.

  “Is something wrong?” Temple asked.

 
He went to sit on the sofa arm, then rubbed his neck. Maybe Cheyenne would come out to the Circle Ritz and give him a back massage.

  “I’m punchy from switching shifts,” he admitted. “And I didn’t remember until this afternoon that I have a regular caller who missed me last night when I was here instead.”

  “Oh. I’m sorry that I—”

  “It’s not your fault. She was on the brink in her personal situation—cutting it close, that’s all. Abusive boyfriend or husband, never said which. I’ll be at the phone again in half an hour, and she never calls until evening.” He paused, concern still puckering his face. “I just checked with my substitute, but she didn’t call at all yesterday.”

  “Maybe when she heard you weren’t in she rang off without leaving her name.”

  “We don’t use names, not even the counselors, only invented “handles,” like CBers. Sometimes they’re pretty revealing anyway.”

  Temple nodded. “Like stripper names. Pseudonyms say a lot. Can’t you reach her somewhere, somehow?”

  He shook his head. “Anonymity is the heart and soul of a hot line. I can’t find her, she can’t find me.” He sighed. “She’s probably all right. Just like you.”

  “Yeah.”

  “So tell me about the second murder?”

  Temple sat on the matching arm. “Terrible. I know now how you must feel about your clients, because I met this girl last night just before I left the Goliath and had my head-on with the Goon Squad. She was in a bad way, but I thought I’d cheered her up. This morning, she was found dead. Strangled with her cat’s tail.”

  “Her what?”

  “She was costumed as Catwoman. Someone ripped off the tail and strangled her.”

  “That’s a lot kinkier than the ABA murder.”

  “Maybe book people are better at writing and reading about murder than doing it.”

  “Crawford Buchanan handed you a hot potato, after all.”

  “Don’t remind me! But I did get a crazy idea, at least Lieutenant Molina thinks it’s crazy.”

  “How crazy?”

  “That the murderer is following that old rhyme about ‘Monday’s child is fair of face.’ Monday’s victim had a face to die for. The girl yesterday was a magnificent gymnast—‘full of grace.’ ”

  “You think that there’ll be more murders?”

  “Molina doesn’t. She says that everybody over there is fair of face and full of grace, even the men.”

  “Lieutenant Molina doesn’t look like the type to be grading men.”

  “I added that part, all right? But no men have been killed. Yet.”

  “Just what you don’t need, Temple, all that sensational publicity when you’re recovering from your own troubles.” Matt shook his head. “You could have knocked me over with a feather when Lieutenant Molina came up to us in the emergency room. From what you said, I pictured some beefy veteran who liked throwing his overweight around against defenseless solid citizens like you.”

  “Don’t let the navy-blue pants suits fool you. She may dress like a nun, but I bet Molina can be meaner than a K-9 attack dog.”

  “Not to you?”

  “She doesn’t cut anyone much slack.”

  “That’s not her job. You and I can afford to be bleeding hearts. We’re removed from the misery and danger out there. I’ve got my phone line and—when you’re not stumbling over bodies-—your work concentrates on good news, not bad.”

  “Not lately,” Temple said glumly.

  Matt stood and yawned. “I’d feel better about leaving for work if Electra were here.”

  “There are other tenants.”

  “But none who know what you’ve been through. Here.” He reached in his shirt pocket and pulled out a card.

  Must be her lucky day, Temple thought. This card had no name on it, just a number, a 731 exchange, and a word: “ConTact: Crisis Intervention for the Nineties.”

  “What kind of callers do you get?”

  “Everything imaginable. Rape victims. Physical-and sexual-abuse victims. Alcoholics. The suicidal. Compulsive drug addicts and gamblers. The mentally distressed.”

  “How awful to hear so much grief.”

  “It can get intense, but the counselors are insulated by the phone, and by the anonymity. We hold the fort until we can put them in touch with the community agency that can help them in the long term.”

  “You said every kind of caller imaginable. That include obscene callers?”

  “Not yet, but we get some pranksters, kids killing time. They don’t fool us. It’s hard to mimic real misery.”

  “Amen,” Temple said, accompanying him to the door. “Maybe I should lighten your load and give you a naughty call now and then.”

  She had meant it as a joke. Like a lot of jokes it struck closer to home than was meant.

  Matt’s ears reddened suddenly. Temple could see that even from behind. Wow, she thought. For some reason, that comment had pushed his buttons.

  By the time they reached the door, the moment had passed. He held it open for her to pass through.

  “Oh, by the way,” she said, smiling. He looked perfectly collected. Too bad. “Thanks for fixing the shoe. I felt like Cinderella when I found it in the morning.”

  “Shoes are easy to fix. Souls are harder.”

  “Matt, I hope she calls. I hope she’s all right.”

  “And I hope that your theory about the murder pattern predicting more deaths is wrong, but you have an uncanny sixth sense about these things.”

  “Molina says I’m crazy and now you say I’m psychic. I’m not sure which is worse” was Temple’s mock-glum comment as she closed the door.

  At least he was laughing when he left. And so was Temple, until she remembered that Lieutenant Molina, her own personal Rumplestiltskin, was stopping by at seven o’clock to collect what Temple had promised.

  24

  Poster Boy

  Molina was right on time. She arrived about twenty minutes after Louie had lofted down from the bathroom window and stalked with bored, stiff-legged laissez-faire for the one piece of furniture upon which his black hair would leave the most obvious trail, the off-white living-room sofa.

  Lord knew where Louie had been since the Goliath, but Molina must have come straight from the hotel or headquarters downtown. She was still wearing her dreaded pants suit, this one khaki. If Temple saw another unbecoming color on Molina, she’d scream.

  “An unusual building,” Molina remarked when Temple opened the door to her ring. Molina’s routine glance around ricocheted off the interior angles of the pie-shaped rooms, off the subtly vaulted white plaster ceiling so soft and cool it seemed like the top of a sensuous silk tent.

  Molina teetered on the entry-hall parquet, uncertain which way to move. Temple could tell that the unpredictable slice-of-pie layout upset her four-square investigative mind. The chessboard-tiled kitchen floor, a symphony in black and white eerily accented by a pink neon clock and radio, didn’t help.

  Feeling smug, Temple clicked down the hall to the living room, all business. She really hated Molina’s being here, inspecting the space she and Max had shared, making comparisons and inferences and judgments. At least the place disoriented the policewoman more than anything Temple had yet seen her confront.

  Turning by the cocktail table, Temple caught Molina jerking with surprise when Midnight Louie vaulted off the pale sofa onto the floor, looking miffed, as if offended by the very proximity of the law.

  Of course it was only some arcane feline reaction, but he certainly did not seem to be unrolling a welcome mat for Molina. Temple was relieved that the scamp had finally bothered to come home from the Goliath.

  “That’s the cat from the ABA,” Molina noted.

  “Brilliant deduction. But Louie was never from the ABA. He was just visiting, like the rest of us.”

  Molina watched the cat swagger slowly to the French doors and sit to lick a front paw. “He sure is a big bruiser.”

  “Watchcat,” Te
mple said smugly. “Did you learn anything important at the murder scene? Anything I should know about when the press comes hounding around?”

  “Not much,” Molina said briskly. “I brought the birth dates of the two victims, in case you want to play some more with days of the week.”

  “Thanks.”

  Temple accepted the gaudy piece of Goliath notepaper—an embossed gold pyramid straddled by guess what? It looked like a cross between legal tender and a Charles Atlas ad—and tried not to smile. Molina’s handwriting was like a doctor’s, loose and hasty, but she could at least read the numbers.

  Time for a payback.

  “The poster’s in the bedroom,” Temple said. “I’ll get it.” She hadn’t expected Molina to follow, but the detective did. The nerve of some people! Give them a badge and they think they can barge in anywhere.

  Temple turned. “If you want to wait in the living room, I’ll be right back.”

  “I don’t.”

  “Well, you ought to. I didn’t offer you a guided tour.”

  Molina’s smile, being rare, seemed suspiciously disarming. “This place is fascinating. Psychologically, I mean. You said once that Kinsella found it?”

  “Yes, but I approved it.”

  Molina looked around with Midnight Louie’s expressionless curiosity. “Not a right angle in the place. Interesting.

  “You don’t need to trail me into the bedroom.” Molina leaned nearer, lowered her bitter-chocolate voice even further. “Clues,” she whispered darkly, mockingly.

  Temple hadn’t thought the woman capable of such drama. “What do you expect to find? Colonel Mustard with a meat-ax in the boudoir?”

  Molina shrugged. She wasn’t retreating, and at her size that alone made a massive statement.

  Temple turned and marched on, wishing looks could kill because then she’d turn and do the dirty deed with a grimace in the front room.

  She hadn’t felt up to bending over and making the bed that morning, of course. Nor could she hang up her clothes with her bum shoulder.