Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In An Aqua Storm

Molina joined her, looking harried. “Tell me about your encounter with the victim.”

“Her name,” Temple said pointedly, “was Katharine. With an ’a-r’ in the middle. I picked that up from her pronunciation, so... precise. Like a child’s who is lost and wants to make sure you understand perfectly so you can get her home again.”

“Katharine? You’re sure?”

Temple turned at Molina’s sharp tone. “Of course. I hadn’t been knocked half silly yet.”

“I don’t mean to contradict you—” Molina frowned, whether at her own train of thought or at what she was about to tell Temple wasn’t clear. Molina consulted her notebook in the spotlight glare that was both too intense and too diffuse to read by.

“That’s odd.” She pursed her lips. “Everyone I talked to said her name was Kitty. Kitty Cardozo. She’s well known around town, worked here for years. Has a kid attending UNLV.”

“A kid in college?” Now Temple was puzzled. “She didn’t look a day over twenty-four.”

Molina’s eyes stayed on her notebook. “Thirty-five. Started young.”

“Stripping or having kids?”

Molina sighed. “They usually start both too soon. Now tell me about her.”

“Did... anyone take off the mask?”

“For the final photographs, after the coroner arrived.”

“Then you saw—?”

“The bruises and contusions were present when you saw her, then—when was that?”

“Four-fifty. I was on my way out.”

“You stopped in the dressing room. Why?”

“Soaking up local color.”

“You seem to prefer your local color bloodred.”

“That’s below the belt, Lieutenant. Yeah, I was curious about the murder. I had a feeling—”

“Yes?”

“Something seems funny about it... them. Like they’re messages.”

“They’re messages that some sick men out there get off on killing women, especially those in sexually titillating lines of work.”

“You’re sure it’s a man?”

“Aren’t you?”

“Both victims were serious contenders for winning the contest. Dorothy had won before and her face would launch a thousand flashbulbs. Katharine—Kitty—had a body that would freeze film into Playboy-ready shots, and the skill and grace to show it off.”

“So you think a competitor killed them. I suppose a physically fit woman could have killed either one. But I’m not interested in your theories, Ms. Barr.”

“Just the facts, ma’am.”

“Exactly.”

“Okay. I found Katharine—Kitty, in the dressing room. Actually, I heard her sob first. She was hiding among the costumes, pressed up against the wall like a hurt child. You know how an animal hides when it’s scared, with its tail or ears sticking right out in plain sight, as if you can’t possibly see them. That’s the way she was hiding. I saw her shoes first.”

“You would,” Molina interrupted.

“What’ll happen to those shoes, and her costume? They were so clever. Kitty made them herself.”

“Police property room, until after the trial, if there is one. Go on.”

“Anyway, I coaxed her out, and that’s when I saw her face. Little did I know my own would look a lot like it in a few minutes. Kitty was afraid of a man. She kept asking if ‘he’ was out in the hall.”

“There goes your jealous vixen theory.”

“Maybe. Kitty could have had two enemies. She said that she would he all right, that she was ready to make the break from this guy. That’s why he hurt her. He wanted to ruin her chances of winning the contest, because the money would help her get on her own. But she was going anyway. I know it.”

“How?”

“By the way she spoke about her plans, her business.

She called herself an ‘entrepreneur.’ She sounded like a kid selling lemonade.”

Molina’s gaze dropped to her notes again. “ ‘Grin ’n’ Bare It.’ ”

Temple nodded soberly. “A gag stripping business. ‘Good clean fun,’ according to Kitty. She was heartbroken to have her face ruined for the competition. Even makeup wouldn’t cover everything, she said. I can see now she’s right.”

“Yeah. Your dark glasses indoors are a nice punk touch,” Molina said, not unsympathetically. “Anybody else been bothering you today?”

“Only the police and the ballroom security guards,” Temple answered, deadpan.

“Go on.”

“That’s it. I suggested a cat mask to match the rest of the costume, and she lit up like a kid who’s getting a Nintendo for Christmas. I left her happy and high on her act, only—”

“Yes?”

“Only she wanted me to know that she hadn’t been crying because she’d been hit, but because it hurt her chances to be in the contest. I wondered then why it was so important not to cry when you’re hit.”

“And now—?”

“Now I know.”

“So. You left her with so much hope that she went out and made the mask, then she returned after regular hours to work with it—why?”

“Privacy. She probably needed to find out if it would handicap her vision, make her clumsy. She was poetry in motion. And she didn’t want anyone to know what had happened. If she performed smoothly in the mask on a trial run, she could show up in it for the rest of the rehearsals and no one would ever suspect it hid something.”

Molina flipped her notebook shut. “Stay out of my investigation. If you think of anything more, tell me. See the self-help group. Go home now.” Molina paused. Her next sentence came out of the blue of suddenly angry eyes. “I’m going to get this bastard.”

Molina marched back to the knot of police.

Temple, aching all over, was tempted to take Molina’s advice. That was the problem, she was taking Molina’s advice on too many things lately. Time for a little authority-flaunting.

She went back to the cocktail lounge, where idle dancers were starting to order lunches and drinks. The gathering had the halfheartedly festive air of a picnic forced indoors on a rainy day. they had to be here, they might as well make the best of it.

So should Temple.

She avoided Lindy’s table. It was too easy to gravitate to someone she knew. A guide to a new milieu was useful, but not if the escort kept Temple from taking chances and learning something not in the guidebook.

Temple paused beside the table of the only silver-haired woman in the area who didn’t owe it to bleach. “Mind if I sit here?”

“Go right ahead.”

Temple sat down and sized up her table partner: a grandmotherly sort, her hair tightly permed, wearing one of those plaid cotton dusters that don’t constrict the wearer and pass for street wear among the Golden Age set. Front buttons, decorative bias tape trim on the pockets and a Peter Pan collar kept it from qualifying as a muumuu, but just barely.

“Are you competing in the Over-Sexty division?” Temple asked politely, managing to not even stumble over the coy title.

The woman’s scandalized look quickly turned into a chuckle. “Heavens, no! I’m much too old and fat for that in any category. What are you thinking of, girl? These contests have some standards.”

“Sorry. I don’t know much about it. I’m doing public relations work and am trying to get oriented.”

“PR?” A gleam brightened the woman’s pale hazel eyes. “Well, then, you’ll want to know about my Kelly. Here she comes now.”

Temple turned to look in the direction that attracted her tablemate’s beaming maternal gaze.

A long-stemmed brunette was mincing between the crowded tables, carrying two glasses and two bottles of beer from the bar, and a small bowl of popcorn clenched doggy-style in her teeth.

The prodigally endowed daughter made a professional waitress dip at the table to disencumber herself of the food and drink, then glanced curiously at Temple through the black fringe of false eyelashes top and bottom.