Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In A Crimson Haze

She stood alone in the dim-lit hall, infuriated,-struggling to take a logical approach to her illogical business.

''It sounded like the Second Coming right over my head,'* she muttered. Oops. Maybe what sounded like godawful chaos to her was just good fun to the offenders. How embarrassing to storm up to someone's door and discover that' she had interrupted a romantic moment in a rumpus room! Still, there , was no need to do anything with such gusto that it upset the other occupants.

Or maybe instead of making love, the offending tenants had been making war. With these thick old walls, it was often hard to tell the difference. Someone could have clobbered someone else. And she had heard it. Another murder? Right overhead?

Now she was afraid to pound on a door, any door. Her life was full up with dead bodies at the moment.

Maybe a TV had been turned on too loud . . . and it was tuned to a retrospective on the L.A.

earthquake, sure.

While she dithered, she moved down the carpeted hall. Her cooling ire still fanned a few bright embers of indignation. She was beginning to believe that it was her civic duty to find out what had happened.

She faced the short cul-de-sac leading to a door exactly like hers. All was quieter than Sunday morning at the moment. Too quiet. If whatever had produced the noise was a normal activity, it wouldn't have just . . . shut off like this. Would it?

She tiptoed down the narrow hall. The faint lamp beside the coffered wood door illuminated a number: eleven.

The heel of Temple's hand smacked her forehead. Now she knew where she was! Eleven was directly over her place. And it was Matt Devine's unlucky number, at the moment.

Oh, boy, she was going to look nosy, but what if something had happened to him? She glanced at her wristwatch, then thought. Use your brain, she told herself. Thursday night.

''Mystery" comes on at 10 p.m. Matt couldn't be at home. He would have been working at ConTact since seven. Temple bit her lip. Okay. So, what if something had happened to his apartment while he was gone? Had happened in his apartment?

She had a duty to investigate. How? She didn't have a key. She supposed she should. ...

Temple eyed the doorbell, then shrank from setting those mellow, old-fashioned chimes ringing. That seemed silly in an empty apartment, and Matt's place appeared empty even when he was there, so meager were its furnishings. So how was all that noise possible?

Temple's lifted fist rapped briskly on the door.

Ow! Forty-year-old mahogany was hard and thick. She had to rough up her knuckles to make a decent knock.

No sound. No answer. But then, she had expected none.

Rap again, longer and louder. Temple shook her stinging knuckles, waiting for the answer that she knew wouldn't come.

''Hello?" she tried. "Is anybody there?"

Should she call Electra? What if she was wrong? What if the sound had been caused by something perfectly normal--like Caviar bouncing off the furniture in a game of feline ping-pong (petite little Caviar?), or garbage collectors emptying the Dumpster out back. On Thursday night at ten p.m.? Still, she hated looking like a nosy neighbor, particularly with Matt's place.

Maybe she'd just forget it.

Temple edged a few steps back down the hall.

And if something were really wrong? She hated being indecisive worse than she hated being nosy.

While she stood there, ambivalent, she realized that she hadn't tried the obvious. The door itself.

Refusing to let any objections enter her head, she marched back to the door, grabbed the big brass knob, turned it and . . . walked into the unlocked apartment.

Dumb move. Fatally dumb move. If it wasn't locked . . .

No light was on, but a faint streetlamp glow shone through the glass panes of the naked French doors. The lurid, orange-pink aura reflected like spilled mercurochrome from the few things present in the room, outlining the figure standing directly in front of her.

A man's silhouette stood statue still a few feet farther into the room, as if he had walked in, stopped and frozen into a monochromatic image of himself.

Scared to death, Temple reached for the hall light switch--at the exact location as in her place. She pressed it, hoping that it would work.

It functioned so well that she blinked at the sudden brightness, which half blinded her just when she might need to turn and run.

Her eyes adjusted to an impression of Chaos Central. Matt Devine was standing in front of her, only his back visible, surveying the shattered ruins of his orange-crate bookshelves. His books had been scattered to the living room's oddly angled corners as if hurled by a demon censor.

"Matt. Why aren't you at work?"

He turned at her voice, but looked right through her . . . and she wasn't the one acting like a mute ghost of herself.

He shook his head, his eyes squinting in the brightness as he turned again to survey the damage. "Let go," he finally said, without glancing back to Temple. ''Not fired." At least he had anticipated her surprise. 'They didn't need me tonight."

"So you came home early to find . . . this?"

He just shook his head. Temple edged farther into the room. He was okay, she was okay.

Whatever had happened made a... mess, but she was an expert at cleaning up other people's messes.

"Doesn't look like any substantial damage to the apartment itself." Little Miss Optimist. "No windows or doors seem broken. And you didn't have a lot of fancy Memphis modern for anyone to trash."

She checked his face as she came alongside, but her smart remark hadn't thawed the frozen expression that deadened his eyes. Shock. Temple considered what it would be like to return home to find her place ruined, and winced. Violation. That was the only way to describe the sensation, no matter the motive.

"If they were looking for anything to steal, they were out of luck here," she said. "Maybe that's why they got mad and turned to vandalism. Have you checked the bedroom yet?*'

Matt shook his head again, his face still expressionless.

She clattered across the bare wood floors, then paused on the threshold to what was her bedroom a floor below. "This it?"

He nodded as she reached for the light switch. Dumb again, Temple lectured herself. What if an intruder had retreated at their entrance, but not left? Who would help her? At the moment, Matt looked about as useful as the statue of David at Caesars Palace.

Her finger had already flicked the switch upward. The room's central ceiling fixture spread wan light on a landscape as bare as the living room, but in apple-pie order.

Nodding satisfaction. Temple turned off the light and clicked back into the outer room, feeling like an interior decorator on a mercy mission.

"Okay in there. Where's Caviar?"

''She, ah, hasn't been around. Much. Lately."

He was still talking in jerky phrases, like someone whose brain was only partly plugged in. He frowned, struggling to recall a trying detail.

''She was here, though. But I think she must have . . . left. Again."

Temple decided to focus on the future.

"Look, Matt, this could be a blessing in disguise. We can get you some new stuff. I know a great unpainted furniture place and about six dozen thrift shops filled with kicky little furniture items at a low price--vintage Fifties Yuck, you name it. We'll redecorate."

He finally moved. Bent to pick a book from the floor, un-bend its pages, shut it.

"I'm sorry," Temple said, sinking under a sudden helpless feeling. Sometimes a stiff upper lip was not enough; sometimes it was an insult.

He sat on the arm of his overturned sofa. The cushions lay on the floor like giant playing cards,

"Who would have done this?" Temple's ever-ready indignation was rising again, this time in a serious cause. "Kids looking for electronic equipment to sell for drugs? Frustrated punks can be destructive, just for the hell of it. And how did they get in? Did you check the French door locks? We are three stories high here."