Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In A Crimson Haze

She leaned back in the ivory leather chair, which leaned back with her.

"Oh! It even tilts and swivels. How nimble of it."

Temple's comment was not to inform the cat of the attributes of her chair, but to calm her nerves. At the sudden motion, her stomach had wrenched with a sudden fear of falling, probably a flashback to her bad tumble down the stairs. To the basement. To which there was no extant set of original architect's drawings.

Jersey Joe Jackson's basement.

All that was left of Jersey Joe's hotel now was his former rooms during the days of his decline and death, the Ghost Suite. Room 713. Where Jill and Johnny had discovered a hoard of stolen silver dollars in a mattress just a couple of years ago. What else was stuffing the mattresses in Jersey Joe's former suite?

Temple smartly tapped the intercom button.

"Yes, Ma'am?"

Good, Yancy was back.

''Can you get me some room keys?"

"All the rooms are entered with cards nowadays. Ma'am."

"Not 713, I believe."

"I'll have to check with Miss von Rhine."

"Fine."

Oops, she had made a Nostradamus style rhyme. About time.

Temple had a feeling. Temple had an itch in her instep. She grabbed her pumps off the table and donned them. While she waited to hear from Yancy, she tapped her toe instead of her pen, impatient to be off. Temple had an idea running around the back of her mind like a gerbil hunting for an exercise wheel.

Soon there came a tapping, as of someone gently rapping, "rapping on her chamber door.

"Yes?"

Yancy appeared, in his hand a genuine brass hotel key attached by a chrome beaded chain to a wooden oval with the number 713 carved into it.

"Great!" Temple stood to take custody of the key.

"The boss was out of the office, so one of the Fontana brothers dug it up for me."

As Yancy passed it over the desk, Louie bestirred himself to leap up between them and bat at the dangling wooden plaque.

"Always so playful," Temple said jovially as she jerked the key well beyond his reach.

Yancy did not leave the room.

''Is there something else?" she inquired.

"I've heard of that suite," he said darkly. ''It's haunted. Miss von Rhine won't rent it; she won't even have it mentioned. It's like the place is not supposed to exist."

"Then we'll pretend that this key doesn't exist, and I'll return it directly to the appropriate Fontana. Which one gave it to you?"

"I don't know!"

"And you work here full time? Tsk-tsk."

Temple sallied past the young man before his misgivings could get the better of his inertia.

"Don't worry. It's my job to come up with marketable angles on this hotel. Ghosts are very popular right now. Maybe I can cut a deal with this one."

She exited, twirling the key around her little finger.

Yancy, she hoped, would put his scruples on hold until she had some time to do a bit of serious snooping into the deep, dark past of the Crystal Phoenix.

Chapter 30

How Suite It Was!

Temple did not believe in ghouls, ghosts or even ghostwriters.

Still, as she jiggled the big brass key in the doorplate of suite 713, she was reassured by the warm, furry rub of Midnight Louie's solid sides along her calves.

The cat had leaped to follow her so fast that the architectural plans had half-spun off the desk.

She had been pleased to see him show a little pet-like loyalty after unaccountably deserting her and the Circle Ritz for the Crystal Phoenix these past weeks. Of course, she was spending a lot of time at the Phoenix herself nowadays, despite warnings to the contrary; perhaps Louie was simply following his meal ticket.

Temple had frowned as she hopped on an Up elevator and held the Door Open button while Louie sniffed the threshold, peered down the deep, dark slot between lobby and car, then ambled inside.

Several passengers had looked annoyed by the delay, or unnerved by the final passenger, but that didn't bother Temple. No, what gnawed at her conscience was worry: what was he eating instead of his Free-to-be-Feline nowadays? It wasn't good for a cat to lose access to his regular and nutritionally balanced to a fare-thee-well food.

Louie had left the elevator with much more speed than he had entered when the car paused at the seventh floor. In fact, he had led the way down the hall, while Temple lagged behind to squint at the room numbers indicated by the directional arrows.

Sure enough, Louie had taken the proper heading.

Temple hadn't liked that.

Cats were reputed to possess some special sixth sense, a kind of animal ESP. Why was the cat suddenly bent on keeping her such close company only now that she was about to enter a set of rooms purported to be haunted?

Temple looked down at her feet.

Midnight Louie's limpid eyes were gazing up, the irises as big as black marbles in the soft-lit hotel hallway, the green only a halo around the fathomless darkness of his expression.

"Ridiculous!" Temple told herself--or him. Or the so-called ghost. She wrenched the key right and turned the knob at the same time.

The door eased open with a truly corny creaking sound.

Oh, please.

She stepped inside, feeling her high heels sink even deeper.

The room was dark, its windows shaded. A scent of stale lemon-wax perfumed the dimness.

When Temple's palm patted down the wall for the light switch, all she felt was the slightly rough pattern of wallpaper.

Louie was no longer brushing her ankles.

A clock ticked with a showy sharpness of sound no longer allowed in battery-operated models of today. Apparently something in this room was plugged in, so maybe a lamp was too.

Temple shuffled her feet over the carpeting, wary of unseen barriers. Her eyes were adjusting enough to distinguish horizontal bars of faint light on the right wall.

Shadowy things shaped themselves to the dimensions of the room: a sofa in the center. Or a coffin ... A tall narrow cabinet against one wall. Or a mummy case ... A chair skirt snagging on her instep. Or the brush of spectral fingers at her ankle . . .

She glimpsed a shoulder-high shape near the sofa. Either a lamp shade . . . or a Chinese peasant in a coolie hat.

Hey, there was nothing spooky about a Chinese peasant in a coolie hat.

Temple delicately touched the silhouette, feeling her fingernails scratch taut-stretched taffeta . . . or the papery skin of a seated corpse!

She pawed below the brittle fabric, found the cool, urn-shaped outline of a porcelain lamp base . . . or the smooth bronze sides of a funerary urn containing ashes not quite cold, ...

She clutched at the phantom of a light switch, something plastic that would click. What she found was the shape of an ornate key, but it turned. Cherry-tinted light flooded down on her hands like diluted blood, but her fingernails looked gore-black.

A sudden rattling sound-- the clatter of skeletal bones? -- made her start, nearly overturning the lamp shade. The sound came from the shuttered windows, and then a broader streak of daylight broke through.

By its narrow band of brightness, Temple navigated her way to the window, where Midnight Louie was perched on a fragile-legged blond Hepplewhite table, one massive paw thrust into the light.

The window wasn't covered by shutters. Temple saw, but blinds--broad-vaned, industrial-strength wooden blinds that made thoroughly modern metal miniblinds and micro-mini-blinds look like effete little toothpicks.

Blinds were nothing. Temple edged to the side, found the cords and pulled until the vanes stood up and took notice of the sunny day outside.

In the greater light, she marched to the next window and performed the same chore, then dusted her palms. There wasn't any grit between them, but there should have been.