Cat in an Orange Twist

by Carole Nelson Douglas

  Matt looked uncomfortable. “I had the name of a personal reference too.”

  “Personal reference?”

  “Molina.”

  “Molina? She’s the enemy!”

  “Not when she’s a homicide lieutenant and you need a favor. Besides, it’s Kinsella she’s after.”

  “As I recall, she had her sights on you as a suspect in the call girl death.”

  “I pretty much cleared myself.”

  “You did? How? When? How come I don’t know anything about it?”

  “Maybe because it wasn’t your business.”

  Temple mulled that one in silence.

  “Don’t look like a kicked kitten,” Matt told her. “Carmen didn’t want me to broadcast the facts, mainly because the case is still open, even if it’s no longer open season on me.”

  “Or Max?”

  “He’d been caught on surveillance tape at the Goliath Hotel front desk earlier that evening, but he claims he was just looking out for me. I seem to have had a lot of people on that detail lately,” he added pointedly. “But even Molina can’t connect him to anyplace else in the hotel that night. Besides, a ‘Midnight Hour’ listener is a counselor. She let me know that she got a call from the victim’s cell phone moments before the death.”

  “Call girls have counselors? And Molina believes her?”

  “Has to. Their conversation stopped suddenly and the cell phone was found when the police checked the counselor’s story. Carmen’s hands are pretty much tied.”

  “ ‘Carmen,’ huh?” Temple was miffed enough about that to not spare Matt her next question. “You do lead a charmed life. So your close encounter with a call girl had her phoning for help the minute you were gone. I assume you left, covered in glory, if not success.”

  “I shouldn’t have told you that,” Matt said, flushing slightly. Temple thought it was more from annoyance than embarrassment, which was a new mode for Matt.

  “Great! Then I’d really be in the dark. If your friendly neighborhood stalker weren’t out of the picture, I’d almost make her for this Maylords attack.”

  “Assault rifles? Come on! She was just one woman, no matter how warped. And she is out of the picture. Permanently.” He flinched a bit, reminded of someone else. “I’m thankful I didn’t have to see that poor call girl dead. Listen, it’s true that someone could have come along and pushed the woman over the edge, but the social worker didn’t hear anything but the phone cutting out . . . no sounds of surprise or struggle. Nothing.”

  “Why would she fall?”

  “Deborah, the counselor, says Vassar was . . . agitated, hyper, probably pacing on those sky-high heels of hers. That rail is only four inches wide. Maybe she’d perched on it to talk. Just lost her balance. It’s a mystery!” he finally said, exasperated. “You can’t solve them all.”

  “It seems to suit everybody to lay one poor dead call girl quietly to rest. What I don’t understand—”

  “What?” Matt asked, coming around the car.

  She lurched a little with fatigue, but that was her body, not her mind. “I don’t get why Vassar felt like calling a therapist immediately after an assignation with you.”

  Matt’s footsteps stopped cold. She immediately regretted being petty at a time like this, but she was so exhausted she felt surreal and annoyed at everyone who told things to other people behind her back.

  Matt grabbed her upper arm to steady her. “Maybe you should try it sometime and find out.”

  Whoa! What had they just been talking about? Maybe Matt the churchly celibate had made more time with the late call girl than he had let on to anyone.

  Temple blinked, then found it hard to open her eyes again.

  “You’re dead on your feet.” It sounded like an apology. He turned her toward her car.

  “Better than being dead off your feet, like Vassar.”

  “Temple, just shut up. You don’t know what you’re saying right now.”

  She sighed and nodded. “I’ll put the top down. My mind could use some fresh moving air.”

  Then she realized something, almost with a sense of panic about something, someone, totally forgotten.

  “What about Janice?” She looked back to the cool beige building, glowing faintly pink in the dawn.

  “We left early, remember? I followed her home before I went to WCOO. She’s fine.”

  “And you came back here? Why? It’s almost morning.”

  “I wanted to make sure you got home to the Circle Ritz. Temple, we’re neighbors, like you said. How am I going to head home and wait to see when, or if, you make it? I don’t have to drive.” She needed control of something tonight.

  “I just said that to get rid of the cop,” he explained.

  “Apparently everybody is ready to get rid of me tonight.”

  He came around the car, opened the door, and waited for her to get into the driver’s seat.

  “You probably shouldn’t drive, Temple, but maybe you need to concentrate on something.”

  “I speed.”

  “So I’ve heard.”

  “We might get arrested all over again.”

  “If they didn’t arrest you here, they’re not going to bother now. At least not for a while.”

  She turned to settle her tote in the Miata’s vestigial backseat. “I suppose you think this car is impractical, and uncomfortable.”

  She glanced over as he settled into the passenger seat.

  “Nope. Can’t quite stretch my legs out, but otherwise it feels fine.”

  Temple switched on the ignition and had a momentary blank about exactly where the drive position was.

  She shouldn’t be driving, but she’d be damned if she let on.

  She pushed the shift into reverse and made a sudden arc out of the parking space before hitting the brakes.

  Matt put a hand on her knee. “Relax.”

  And how the heck—?

  Temple shifted into drive and roared out of the lot, passing several parked squad cars and the SWAT van.

  No one bothered them, though, and the cool night wind whipped through their hair and sinuses.

  The streets and highways were still occupied, but not crowded. Temple settled down and drove like a sedate schoolteacher until she reached the turn into the Circle Ritz parking lot. She screeched up the small incline and whipped the Miata into a sharp ninety-degree turn to occupy its usual spot under the big old palm tree.

  The headlights flooded the palm tree’s crusty trunk with Hollywood-bright glare.

  She pushed the shift into park, then shut down. Her hands remained on the steering wheel. They were shaking.

  After a while, Matt reached over and turned off the ignition. He had to reach past her to push the headlight button off, and his arm brushed her body like an erotic push-broom.

  She shivered and crossed her arms to hold the heat in, or maybe keep the cold out.

  “Yeah,” Matt said. “A taste of battle fatigue, right here in Las Vegas. I feel like I’ve been up for five days straight.”

  “Somebody shot at us. Again and again.”

  “Not us, specifically.”

  “Whoever shot didn’t care who they, he, it hit. So they were shooting at us.”

  Matt’s fingers touched her upper arm. “I think you keep a mediocre bottle of whiskey in your kitchen cupboard.”

  “I do.” She tossed off some of the shock by shaking her head slightly. “Only it’s not mediocre anymore. Max left me the bottle of really good stuff you and he started.”

  Temple didn’t add that was the last time Max had visited the Circle Ritz, and her. Several nights ago. Where was Max? When he should be here with her? Protecting his turf. Keeping her from feeling uncertain and lonely. Was he involved in new mysterious missions of counterter-rorism, Mr. Magician-cum-spy . . . or was he just not interested in her enough anymore? They’d gone from months of living together to months apart and now to meeting clandestinely for almost six months. Wasn’t that all backwards? Shouldn
’t the clandestine come before the flagrant?

  Matt was watching her, surprised that she knew about the two men’s recent midnight tête-à-tête.

  “You remember,” she told him. “Max showed up on your balcony with an irresistible invitation: a bottle of Bushmill’s Millennium, which I gather is the whiskey of the gods. Imagine. You and Max sharing a drink instead of glaring whenever each other’s name is mentioned. Remember that night? When you were both mourning your lost youths and opportunities. He brought me the dregs. Of the bottle. Not of your wasted lives. Actually, the bottle was almost full. Guess you two are too mutually suspicious to even booze together.”

  Matt looked away. Out the window. Mentioning Max had made for three’s-a-crowd in the Miata’s cozy seating arrangement. Temple had to wonder if some reflexive impulse of survival instinct had made her do that deliberately.

  “He started that bottle without me,” Matt finally said, getting out to put the top up.

  Temple still couldn’t move, just sat there like life was a dream and she was sleep-walking through it.

  Matt opened the driver’s-side door and put out his hand.

  “Wait a minute,” she said. “What about your car?”

  “I left it in the Maylords lot, remember? You can drop me off there tomorrow. Well, later today. Much later today.”

  “Oh.” Temple put both feet on the asphalt, observing the glitter of the Midnight Louie shoes with an odd third-party sort of detachment.

  Matt took her hand and pulled her upright, shut the car door, hit the lock button on the key chain.

  “What’s the matter with me?” she wondered with small interest.

  “Shock and exhaustion. Come on, I’ll walk you in.”

  “It feels like I’m really drunk without the buzz.”

  His arm around her shoulder steered for the building’s side door.

  When they got there she shook herself alert. “I’ll take the keys. I’m awake and singing now.”

  But the key tip stuttered in the lock before she finally found the right touch. And when they took the elevator up a floor and got to her front door, she fumbled the keys again.

  “You’re still cold.” He took the keys from her fingers to unlock the door.

  “How come you’re Mr. Steady as She Goes?”

  “I had to go on the air live to do my show tonight. Sobers the emotions right up.”

  “The show must go on. I used to know what that meant.”

  She flicked the light switch by the door, then gazed into her living room, dead ahead. It looked so normal, especially the newspaper sections tossed all over.

  In a couple hours the Las Vegas Review-Journal would be in the same place, full of front-page news and photos of the shooting spree at Maylords. Oh, her aching PR-person head!

  “I’ve got to get on this first thing tomorrow,” she said, mostly to herself. “Today.”

  Matt steered her into the kitchen. “Where’s that Kinsella firewater stored?”

  “Cabinet under the coffeemaker. Maybe I should have caffeine.”

  “No. One nightcap and you’ll sleep like a baby. Caffeine first thing in the morning, which will be about noon for you.”

  Temple nodded, almost nodding off. Matt lifted her onto a kitchen stool to get her out of the way. That brought her head on a level with his and their glances crossed for the first time since leaving Maylords.

  She swayed toward him. He hesitated, then brushed his lips across hers, more hit-and-run than kiss, but they didn’t . . . hadn’t . . . kissed casually before. Temple was feeling anything but casual, yet this moment seemed too natural to comment on.

  Now Matt was squatting in front of the cupboard, shoving aside the Old Crow bottle for the tall, dark, and expensive model beside it. Kinda looked like Max himself.

  Matt rose, poured it neat into two glasses from the cupboard, Irish cut crystal, and handed her one, curling her fingers securely around the wide, low glass.

  “To the end of all bad things.” He raised his glass.

  Temple couldn’t help feeling it was a toast to all the undear departed who’d made all their lives so miserable, from Matt’s evil stepfather to Max and his stalker. But not even they could have been behind the terrifying attack on Maylords. They were so very dead. And Temple was dead tired.

  She sipped the fiery gold liquid. It cleared her sinuses like Chinese mustard.

  “Kickapoo Joy Juice.” She blinked tears out of her eyes.

  “What an irreverent name to call one of the world’s choicest whiskies. I really don’t like hard liquors straight. You don’t have to drink all of it. You look a lot better already.”

  “How?”

  “It’s true you don’t need much help in looking better usually, but you were pretty pasty-faced.”

  “I think that was a compliment. The first part. Not the pasty-faced part. Unless you like pasty-faced.”

  “I like someone who looks like the blood is running through her veins again. You and Danny were right on the lights thing, but I bet the long wait for the police interviews was more wearing than anything else. Did, ah, Molina make it out there while I was off being Mr. Midnight for WCOO?”

  “No. Not a rhinoceros-thick hide in sight. You were lucky they questioned and let you go early. Not only because you made your showtime but you avoided the stultifying tedium of that many people being interviewed, very sympathetically, by the police. I can’t believe the police actually can have a heart. Maybe it was because Molina wasn’t on the case. It’s hardly homicide.”

  “But it could have been. Still, it was obviously a random attack.”

  “Was it? I mean, how do we know someone special wasn’t the target? Like Amelia Wong.”

  “Because nobody was hit, which is downright miraculous in a mob like that. The police seem to think it’s malicious mischief, attacking the building, not the people in it. They said the land the store is built on was a vacant lot for a long time.”

  “I didn’t know.”

  Matt nodded and sipped his drink, leaning against the kitchen counter. “That’s what they told me. A lot of the local hoodlums liked doing target practice on the site. Probably resented that Maylords took their fun away.”

  “I’m relieved to know that, and glad that you could see me home, but I feel kind of rotten about abducting Janice’s escort for the evening.”

  “The evening is over, or hadn’t you noticed?”

  She checked her watch. “Five A.M., good grief! It’s hardly worth going to bed.”

  “This is when I usually do.”

  “This late? I mean, early?”

  “I get home from the radio station about three, unwind a bit and presto! Five o’clock in the morning.”

  “At least you’re in no danger of waking up with the three A.M. blues.”

  “No. Are you? I can stay.” He nodded to the living room sofa.

  “Matt, what about Janice?

  “Shouldn’t you be asking what about Max first?”

  “Is this like a game Concentration? Which cards are two of a kind? Max. Janice. They’re . . . both not here.”

  “But I am, and I don’t want you waking up scared and alone.”

  She almost pushed it by answering, “You don’t want me?”

  But then they’d both be stuck with whatever he answered.

  “I don’t need baby-sitting.” She pushed herself off the support of the kitchen countertop. Surviving a mass attack was like getting very drunk very fast. “I’ll have you know I’ve been called a ballsy little broad by a professional bodyguard.”

  “My phrase for it would be stubborn and proud.”

  “I don’t believe that stubbornness is one of the Seven Deadly Sins.”

  “It could be.” Matt shook his head. “Just call if you can’t sleep.”

  He went to her door before she could summon an answer.

  “I’ll sleep,” she called after him down the short entry hall. It sounded like an afterthought. Like bravado.
>
  I just hope to Hannah I don’t dream, she told herself as she turned the key to lock Matt out and herself in. Locked in.

  She had hoped Midnight Louie would have been home to greet her, but when she reached her bedroom there was no sign of the big black cat . . . except for several black hairs on her comforter. Were any of them Max’s? she wondered.

  Here yesterday, hair today. The story of her singular single life.

  Mad Max

  Gandolph the Great stood by the kitchen island literally whipping up a magical postmidnight snack of crepes à la Orson.

  Max Kinsella watched his mentor’s sleight of hand with the wire whisk. Gandolph still had the dexterity for cooking gourmet dishes, but his age-thickened knuckles were past their prime for magical illusions one couldn’t eat.

  “Temple,” Max observed, “can’t cook.”

  “Won’t cook. Everyone can.”

  “But not exquisitely. She has always appreciated the few simple kitchen tricks I learned from you.”

  “I wish I could meet her.” Garry Randolph, the man behind the stage name, looked up from under bearish eyebrows. “Being presumed dead can be damned inconvenient. I never thought you’d settle into any kind of domestic arrangement, not with the tigers you had on your tail.”

  Max sat on a sleek aluminum-and-leather stool. “I shouldn’t have.”

  “But you did even though you shouldn’t have. What kind of siren is this Temple Barr, anyway?”

  That question made Max smile. “Remember Charlie Brown’s ‘little redheaded girl?’ She’s like that, only all grown up, with sense and spirit.”

  “Hmmm. And she knows about your past?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “Never all, though. We can never tell all.”

  “No.” Max pulled an apple, a red Roman Beauty, from the wire fruit bowl playing centerpiece on the cold stainless-steel countertop. He balanced it on his fingertips for a moment, as if contemplating making it vanish. Instead, he bit into it.

  The crisp sound echoed in the hard-surfaced kitchen.

  Garry turned to the huge industrial stove to pour batter into a copper-bottomed pan sizzling with melted butter.

  “I’m in training again,” Max complained mildly. “I should be on protein and complex carbohydrates.”