Cat in an Aqua Storm

by Carole Nelson Douglas

  “That’s true,” Temple agreed. “How sad that those women won't be here to perform tomorrow. And they all celebrated birthdays so recently.”

  I remember doing cakes for them, but were their birthdays that recent?”

  Temple ticked off the dates on her fingers. “Dorothy/Glinda was March. Kitty was April. And the twins were June—Gemini like me. Isn’t that odd?”

  Wilma shrugged and tied off a knot. She picked up a polished chrome sewing shears to cut the thread. “Everybody has to be born sometime.”

  “But isn’t it odd that the victims’ birthdays are almost in sequence through the calendar: March, April, June. Except that May is missing.”

  Wilma paused to think. “No, it’s not.”

  “It’s not? You mean that there’s another victim nobody knows about?”

  Wilma pursed her lips. “You had to know the girls. You had to be around to listen. Gypsy and June. Everybody knew they were stage names. Everybody figured they referred to those famous strippers, Gypsy Rose Lee and her sister June Havoc.”

  “They didn’t?”

  “Yes, they did, except that June was June’s real given name to begin with. You see?”

  Passing laughter reverberated in the hall for a moment as a last gaggle of strippers rushed upstairs. Wilma rose and drew the dressing room door shut on the sound.

  Temple’s mouth opened and her hands clenched. “I don’t see anything,” she admitted.

  “Maybe I shouldn’t tell you this.” Wilma resumed her chair but set her sewing things aside. “They hated it themselves, and tried to forget it. Sometimes twins are funny about things. June and her sister were born a few minutes apart.”

  Temple nodded. “On June 1, 1967.”

  “No.” Wilma was definite. “I heard it from their own lips. June was born on June 1, 1967. At twelve-thirteen a.m.”

  “And—omigod. Gypsy was born earlier, the night of May 31st, and christened... May!”

  Wilma smiled fondly. “They hated all the school jokes about ‘May’ and ‘June.’ I think they even hated being separated by as much as midnight. Those girls were so close. It would have been cruel to kill one and leave the other.”

  An ugly thought trespassed in Temple’s mind. “Just as it was the height of cruelty to abuse one, and not the other! Gypsy was right. Her father had victimized only her to intensify his manipulation of the girls. And she’s the one who changed her name, May, because she had come to loathe the man who called her by her birth-name only to violate her.”

  Wilma’s face wore a prudish expression. “I wouldn’t know about that, except that Gypsy was set on inviting their father to the competition. I wonder if he knows they’re... gone? I wonder if he’ll find out when he comes?”

  “More to the point, would he even care?”

  “No. If he cared about anything other than his sick needs, he wouldn’t have done what he did, hurt his girls beyond fixing. You can break human beings, but you can’t mend them. You can’t baste them together again. Nobody takes care of the broken ones. I gave the twins their cake June 1st. May yearned to be June. Maybe she wanted to share her sister’s innocent memories. Now they won’t have to remember anything ugly.”

  “So May 31, 1967, had to have been a Wednesday,” Temple mused, drawing her forefinger through the glittery line of opalescent powder that Wilma sold and that Dorothy, Kitty, June and Gypsy had used. All gone now, dust from a dead butterfly’s wing. Beautiful, fragile fairy dust, like Tinker Bell’s. Temple had seen that sheen somewhere else... on a powder puff. Savannah Ashleigh had used the same stuff on Yvette. And had bought it from the same source. And Midnight Louie—

  “Gracious!”

  Wilma’s exclamation made Temple jump. The woman was squeezing her fingertip until it reddened. She had pierced her finger with a needle.

  “Have you got a kerchief?” Wilma asked.

  “I’ll look.” Temple, confused, her heart pounding, trying to think when all that came into her mind was the unthinkable, lifted the tote to the countertop and slapped its contents to the Formica piece by piece until she delved deep enough to find out.

  Her clutch purse with its cargo of cash, credit cards and driver’s license was the first item out, then her bulging day arranger and address book, then her cosmetic bag, then...

  Wilma had picked up the clutch purse and unsnapped the flap. .Temple was about to protest this incursion on her most valuables. Then she remembered the little plastic window inside that displayed her driver’s license.

  Wilma was smiling and nodding at that very item.

  The license, Temple recalled, listed her address, her number, and her DOB, as police shorthand put it. Date of Birth.

  Stricken, she stopped rummaging through her belongings to state at Wilma. Opalescent dust, even on a powder puff meant for a pampered pussums. Oh, Louie, that wasn’t a fuzzy “mouse” you dragged home for the heck of it, but a vital clue! The murderer had left a trail in powder. Temple’s renegade forefinger drew an exclamation point in the glittery dust that had decorated four dead bodies and one cat.

  She knew who the murderer was. Unfortunately, the murderer knew exactly who she was now, and that she knew.

  Wilma set Temple’s clutch purse aside to snap open the huge silver ring to release a spandex G-string. She was a beefy woman with strong hands and a mission. Temple realized that she had just made her hit list.

  31

  . . .Saves Nine

  “I really need to check what's going on upstairs.” Temple got up to step past Wilma.

  The woman rose like a double-knit wall and blocked her path. Temple glanced down at Wilma’s black slacks. Her thighs strained the fabric. Big rough hands closed on Temple’s fragile wrist bones.

  “You forgot your purse,” Wilma said.

  “It’s fine down here. You watch it.”

  Temple tried to move but found herself frozen by an unmoved, an unmoving, an unmovable counterforce. She looked into Wilma’s expressionless face, meaning to argue, and saw inarguable purpose.

  “No one will hit you again.” The woman’s promise was as vehement as a threat. “No man will abuse you. You won’t have to sell yourself on the stage because of what they did to you.”

  “I’m not a stripper! I’m a public relations specialist. I haven’t been abused, only mugged. Wilma, please—”

  “No one will come down here now. Too much of a show going on upstairs. Even the guards and the hotel security men stop to rubberneck. Nothing distracts men’s attention like little girls made to perform for it. No one saw me. Not once. No one hardly ever notices me anyway. Too old, too ugly, too useful. My girls won’t have to suffer anymore. All my girls. I’m sorry I didn’t give you a birthday cake, but I can’t let you go on. You might say something, and I can’t stop until I find my own girls. I’m fast, and strong. It won’t hurt. Try not to think about it, and it’ll all be over.”

  Temple quivered as she felt the bones in her wrist constrict within a relentless grip. The only thing that could still move was her mouth.

  “Wilma, that’s just what abusers tell their victims. It won’t hurt. It’ll be fast. Try not to think about it. You don’t want to be like them, Wilma!”

  “It won’t be like them. You’ll sleep. You’ll be at peace. You won’t ever hurt again.”

  “But life hurts! You can’t stop pain by taking lives. Kitty Cardozo wanted to live. She had plans. Glinda was hoping to get her kids back. The twins were working out their problem their way, and you denied them that. You denied them their triumphs as well as their tragedies.”

  Wilma’s strong hands forced Temple back into the chair by pulling her wrists down.

  “Listen,” Temple said. “You’ll ruin your pattern. It’s Friday. Friday’s child is—” She blanked on the next words. She blankety-blank blanked, just when she needed them most!

  “Friday’s child is loving and giving,” Wilma recited in a dulcet sing-song for her. “And you’re a Friday.”

  �
�How can you know? Be sure?”

  “I always had a head for figures. Not much school learning, and maybe not much sense, but numbers stick. I know the perpetual calendar like a nun knows her rosary beads. It’s all up here.”

  Wilma released Temple’s left wrist to tap her forehead and then reached for the G-string she had freed.

  No way, Temple thought. Her free hand flashed out, found the big shiny shears on the countertop and picked them up. She shuddered to imagine what would happen if Wilma got them away from her, so she slashed and thrust at the woman’s loose top like a mad Japanese chef, trying not to think of what she was attempting to do to flesh and bone.

  Contact. Resistance. The shears bouncing off something hard only to dig into something soft. Temple moaned. Her restrained wrist felt as if it were caught in a meat grinder. Wilma’s grip was forcing her out of the chair and to her knees on the floor, as the woman’s other hand drew back to slap the scissors from her grasp.

  Temple steeled herself and drove the blades toward the oncoming palm.

  Then, plummeting from above, came a black tarantula, all dangling legs and falling furry bulk, plunging directly atop Wilma’s head.

  Wilma screamed. Temple screamed. The tarantula screamed.

  With a crack like a firing rifle, the closed dressing room door sprang open under the bulk of a man’s body. Two men’s bodies entered, followed by a familiar woman’s body.

  Temple was sitting on the floor, holding her wrist.

  The men had jumped Wilma, bearing her down beside Temple and pinioning her wrists. The shears lay—open and innocent of anyone’s blood—a short distance away.

  Wilma’s face was bathed in bloody rivulets, though. Scarlet threads ran into her eyes and gasping mouth, soaked into her pink top.

  Lieutenant Molina was standing in the doorway, a semiautomatic in her hand, looking very worried and a tad guilty.

  The tarantula uncurled from its sinister ball-shape and strutted over to Temple, albeit a bit stiffly. One of its five furry legs hoisted aloft to brush Temple’s face as Midnight Louie rubbed back and forth along her shoulder, back and forth.

  “Is she all right?” Molina asked her men. She was eyeing Temple, so they did, too.

  “Looks okay,” one said, before grunting and bearing down on Wilma, who was fighting his partner’s handcuffs.

  Midnight Louie began purring loudly enough to attract everyone’s attention.

  “Give that cat a badge,” one of the men suggested out of the comer of his mouth.

  Temple stared at the cat, then threw her arms around him. “Oh, Louie, I can’t believe I almost had you declawed!”

  “Poor baby,” Electra crooned. “I brought you a Black Russian.”

  She set the drink, which looked like motor oil on ice, on the counter and glared at Lieutenant Molina, as if daring her to object.

  Temple sat in the same fatal chair that had originally been Wilma’s, her wrist wrapped in the G-string meant to throttle her. Thin strips of leopard-pattern spandex made an excellent support bandage, and Molina, born camp counselor that she was, had done the honors.

  Louie, basking in the warm glare of the makeup lights, sprawled atop the counter, looking regal. The only trace of his recent heroic measures was the dried blood faintly visible on his claws, which were flexing in and out in perfect time to a soft baritone purr of satisfaction.

  “I can’t believe”—the Lieutenant looked at Temple again—“that with all your fiddling with birth dates and birthday rhymes you never checked out your own.”

  “I was too busy to fool around with that stuff.”

  “I can’t believe,” Electra put in, glaring at Lieutenant Molina, “that you would set up Temple as a sitting duck down here.”

  “I can’t believe”—Temple finally got her two cents in—“that Officer Choi was just a cat in wolfs clothing, an honest-to-badness double decoy.”

  “I can’t believe,” Molina said in her turn, “that your cat is really going to drink that Black Russian.”

  “Oops!” Electra pulled the glass away, but not before Louie’s whiskers had received a chocolate-colored coating.

  “He deserves it,” Temple said stoutly, but she sipped the drink Electra put into her right hand. “You really had this place bugged?”

  Molina shook her head. “Wasn’t necessary to bug it. The two-way system was already in. We just patched it into Savannah Ashleigh’s dressing room. And waited.”

  “And waited until I was at death’s door,” Temple said. “A good thing Midnight Louie had decided to camp out here.”

  “Cut the theatrics. We would have been in time,” Molina said. “We did need conclusive evidence.”

  “Conclusive to me!” Temple objected. “I don’t get it. How did you know what to expect?”

  “For one thing, you can be sure that I never would have seriously gone for the corny Catwoman decoy trick you two came up with. As it is, it’ll take years to live that one down in the department.”

  Molina sat on the countertop and crossed her arms. “You’re a born magnet for murderers, Miss Barr. I figured that if I let you go about your unauthorized business, someone would get annoyed enough to try to off you.”

  “Temple came too close,” Electra put in. She looked fierce in her fringed leather chaps and motorcycle jacket. “That’s her secret for attracting murderers, outsmarting them.”

  “She almost outsmarted herself this time,” Molina retorted. “Okay. Same deal as last time. I’ll need a statement tomorrow morning. Think you can drive with that wrist? Or should I send a squad car to collect you?”

  “I’ll be fine,” Temple said. “Do you want me to bring Louie?”

  Molina stood. “That, thank God, won’t be necessary. Stay out of trouble until tomorrow. Please. We need your statement.”

  Temple sighed raggedly when she left. “Gee, Electra, this drink is hitting me like a freight train. Am I still here?”

  “You sure are, honey!” Electra hugged Temple’s shoulders, then backed off when she winced. “The wrist?”

  “The everything. I’ve had it. Can you get me home?”

  “Only on the Vampire.”

  Temple stood up. Her legs still worked. “What the hell, Electra. Let’s go.”

  “What about Louie?”

  Temple turned and looked at the cat, who winked one semihooded green eye. “Let him find his own way home. Apparently he’s better at a lot more things than we know.”

  32

  Louie Bows Out

  I am, of course, not invited to the finale of the stripping competition. At nine, I am considered underage for attending such adult shenanigans.

  In truth, I do not have the heart for It. The Divine Yvette has returned to her gilded cage. All right, it is pink canvas, but nonetheless a cage.

  As for my prescient presence on the attempted-murder scene, I admit that it is all a sham. I haunt the premises only because of my obsession with the Divine Yvette, who finds freedom a heavy burden to bear.

  Of course, my eleventh-hour dive atop the murderer's head makes me a hero in those blue-green eyes. Some may think that the imminent peril faced by my dear consort in accommodations at the Circle Ritz, Miss Temple Barr, has spurred my bold attack. Such persons are unaware that the hidden presence of the Divine Yvette is more to the point

  When the lady in question peeks out of her sanctuary behind the costume rack some time later, I am still reclining on the countertop, having given the abandoned Black Russian a couple licks in the dereliction of all human personnel. I am not worried about the caffeine content. Even Miss Temple Barr has granted me the right to come in as late as I like.

  Yvette lofts atop an empty chair and regards me with dewy eyes.

  Even now every sentiment she expresses rings In my ears as if it were an endless yesterday. “What a hero,” she informs me with a heartfelt sigh.

  I offer her a taste of the dregs of the Black Russian, but she wrinkles her perfect pink little nose. "No, Loui
e. I do not need any more stimulants—’’

  “Alcohol is a depressant,” I growl with my usual prescience.

  I can see who Is going to get depressed here already.

  "I must return to my mistress.” The Divine Yvette pushes a long silver whisker back from her gleaming black lips. Her eyes grow round and sorrowful. “I must admit that these have been the most... piquant days of my life, but I am not happy on your level, Louie, trodding the common pavement until my soft pink pads grow coarse, pushed hither and yon by whomever would brush against me. I am used to a life of international travel, to seeing sights uncluttered by grime and graft. I am used to the haven of my carrier, and the attentions of my mistress.”

  I have not the heart to argue. I could protect her from all she finds too crude, but she will not believe me.

  “It is for the best, Louie,” she tells me, her sad eyes growing greener by the minute. “My mistress is in a career slump. With my returned presence, she may manage a comeback. I am all she has. Return me.”

  It Is not as if Miss Savannah Ashleigh is about to discover a cure for cancer, much less feline leukemia. I shake my head sadly. Some might misinterpret the gesture as an attempt to dislodge a flea. The only flea in my ear is the plea of the Divine Yvette.

  “Louie, Louie,” she purrs poignantly. I recall a popular party song of that title, but am in no mood for partying. “Even though I must go, you must remember this: we will always have the Goliath.”

  I growl an answer. At such times, I am not articulate. Then I remember our stolen hours on the premises, the three a.m. glide on The Love Moat, the scent and sight of her opalescent powder in the almost-dark of the cavern, when we exchanged more than whispers. She was always afraid of water, of motion under her own power, of independence.

  “Please,” she rumbles throatily, and what is an honorable dude to do?

  I leap down to the floor In one bound, and assist her off the chair.