Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In A Crimson Haze

The paper bag was slowly slipping down her hip.

"I'll get it." Matt said. He turned to Frank. "Thanks for stopping by.''

Frank was eyeing the grocery bag in Matt's arm, then Temple, speculation running visibly wild.

"We'll talk again," he told Matt. He nodded at Temple in a way that was not quite farewell, got in the car and drove away.

"Well." Temple was eyeing Matt with equal curiosity. '*How do you know FBI Agent Bucek?"

"I went to school with him." Matt didn't feel like unreeling chapter and verse of the connection at the moment. ''And you?"

''He's the government goon who interrogated me along with Molina and Ferarro, the homicide twins from the LVMPD." She preceded him to the wooden gate, and pulled it open for him. "Hey, just kidding about the 'government goon' part. He was perfectly polite, but I got the impression he can be formidable when he needs to know something."

"He can."

"Sounds like the voice of experience, and isn't he a little old to be in your class?"

"I didn't say we were in the same class, just at the same school."

"Curiouser and cursiouser." Temple clattered into the building ahead of him.

Matt could feel the condensation on the frozen yogurt carton seeping through the brown paper, softening it to pulp. It wasn't the only thing that was sweating.

They were silent in the elevator, both facing forward as if the cubicle was crowded and they were on their best, most indifferent behavior.

"Matt," Temple said suddenly. "Did you hire Eightball O'Rourke to protect me?"

Chapter 29

A Ghost of a Chance

Temple surveyed her new home away from home. The first pair of high heels she had been able to wear in days sank past their plastic heel caps into plush carpeting the color of cafe au lait .

Beige grasscloth wallpaper was interwoven with silver strands. A computer screen cursor winked encouragingly from a neatly petite laptop floating on an otherwise empty sheet of inch-thick glass. A laser printer in the same ivory-color casing rested atop a nearby cart.

Against the wall, a row of walnut-veneer two-drawer file cabinets awaited the opportunity to conceal any clutter that Temple could generate.

Atop one file cabinet, steaming discreetly, sat a black coffee mug emblazoned with the gilded, feathered form of a rising phoenix.

Temple peeked into the cup. She had asked Van's secretary (male, but not a Fontana brother) to bring her coffee with milk.

Yup, the mixture within perfectly matched the color of the carpeting.

Temple sighed wistfully at her magnificent blank slate of an office. She would make it the clutter capital of America in a just day or two, she thought, unloading the essential contents of her tote bag onto the glass desktop.

She owed her elegant roost at the Crystal Phoenix to two people. Danny Dove had insisted that Temple rewrite the absent Crawford Buchanan's "abysmal scripts,'' his phrase, not hers, in front of Van von Rhine. And Van von Rhine, in turn, had insisted that Temple needed an office in which to master mind the Crystal Phoenix resurgence, as well as any little promotional project she might dream up for "dear Spuds"-- Van's phrase, not Temple's-- "and his offbeat lakefront fast-food emporium."

Temple suspected that the office served another, "unspoken purpose. It would help everyone at the Phoenix keep an eye on her, since she was the suspected target of the mischief now abroad. She frowned, remembering how Matt, hot, bothered and indignant, had denied any intention to protect her, other than by teaching her martial arts. He had not denied hiring Eightball O'Rourke. Interesting.

''All right," Temple told her gorgeous but empty office. "As long as I'm being kept after class for my own good, I might as well do a little homework."

She hit the intercom button on the desk, jumping when a disembodied masculine voice answered. For all she knew, a Fontana brother could now be manning the outer office. Or Crawford Buchanan.

''Could you find out if Van has the Crystal Phoenix renovation blueprints? I want to see a set."

"Yes, Ma'am," the young man, who answered to Yancy, replied. "Be right back."

Temple's coffee had barely cooled to drinking temperature when a light knock resonated on her door.

At her invitation, Yancy entered, bearing armfuls of rolled architectural drawings. They tumbled to the desk, like blue-blooded bones. Temple uncurled one, anchoring one corner with her coffee cup, another with a china dish of paperclips. They were the only possible paperweights in the sleek office.

Sighing, she took off one red leather Margaret Jerrold pump, then another, and laid them across the remaining two corners.

She had seen architects renderings before, but she had never tried to interpret them. She broke a nail while excavating her tote bag for her glasses case.

"Will that be all, Ma'am?" Yancy wanted to know.

He was a slight young man with a well-scrubbed face and dark, collar-dusting brown hair moussed into an oddly antique-looking pompadour.

"For now," Temple said grimly.

She sat on the desk chair and rolled it across the plastic carpet-protector until she could rest her elbows atop the slick glass surface and absently sip coffee.

Zillions of fine blue lines zigged and zagged across the plans expansive surface. She had enough sheets here to paper her condominium, if living inside the veins of someone else's walls appealed to her.

Hearing the door shut, she glanced up. Yancy was gone. She was alone with her secret treasure maps at last. Yo, ho, ho and a bottle of rum-flavored continental coffee.

**************

"Here they are, dearest dumpling."

Danny Dove had knocked before entering. Temple wasn't sure exactly what with. Both arms were loaded with sheaves of coffee-stained papers. But, after all, he was a toe- and tap-dancer, so he must be digitally dexterous with all limbs.

"An office to die for," he said with a melting look around.

"Not in , I hope."

"Of course not. You're far too important to knock off now."

"How can we--I--rewrite these skits at such a late date? Won't the performers go crazy if they have to relearn changes?"

"They would go crazier delivering Mr. Buchanan's garbage to an audience. Most of this mess"--Danny dumped the lot atop the desk as if unburdening himself of rubbish--"is salvageable with some editing and a modicum of real wit."

"I happen to have my modicum right here with me." Smiling, Temple reached into the ever-ready tote bag sitting at her feet.

Danny watched het extract a blue fine-line ballpoint pen, then eyed the tablecloth of architectural plans beneath the precious but putrid scripts.

''Riveting," he said. ''Architects and editors always use blue pencils, or pens. It must mean something."

"They are probably just depressed. Looking over these skits, I can see why. Crawford's only funny bone is in his left elbow."

"Too bad he didn't dive down those steps and break it."

"There haven't been any more rehearsal accidents?" Temple asked anxiously.

"Not since you've taken all the sunshine and yourself away."

"Hmm."

Danny braced his hands on the curling edges of the architectural plans and leaned forward for emphasis, reminding Temple of Michael Caine in one of his spy films. "Listen, ducks. I don't know what's going on around this hotel, but it's not normal. Watch yourself, love."

"Oh, I will," Temple promised. "I will."

Danny nodded and bounded, Gene Kelly style, to the door and out it.

By mid-afternoon Yancy had run the edited skits through the handy-dandy full-page scanner in the corner--nothing but class for the Crystal Phoenix, even in the office furnishings department.

Her blue pencil busily checked off skits that were already read into the computer memory.