Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In An Aqua Storm

At the turn of a key she was home again. The condo was empty, cool, serene. She stood motionless beside the door, trying to sense any intruder. Then she slipped off her shoes and peeked into the office and the bedroom in turn, but the condo was secure. Hers alone. Sometimes that unplanned solitariness wasn’t too bad.

After rummaging in the refrigerator, she came up with a bacon-bit, tomato, lettuce and tuna sandwich. Had to polish off the open tuna can left over from— hah! —breakfast. A generous mound of Free-to-Be-Feline sat in the bowl, untouched.

She bent to haul the half-liter bottle of Blush Light from the bottom cabinet and pried off its metallic collar with her long, strong fingernails. Lacking the energy to stretch up for the wineglasses on the highest shelf, she paused. Inside the lower cupboard she found an odd, root-beer mug, filled it with ice and poured in the pale coral wine.

“So it’s crass to have wine over ice,” she told her ever-present Invisible Critic. “I am home alone, and I’m going to relax and enjoy it.”

She headed for the bedroom, dragging her tote bag over the crook of one arm, her hands full of tuna sandwich and a frosty mug of wine.

One high heel was left high and dry in the living room. The other was walked out of, left standing solitary in the bedroom doorway. The moment the tote hit the unmade bed, Temple pulled out the day’s notes. Cheyenne’s card fell to the coverlet. Did he do massages? Prob-ab-lee. She dropped the card on the nightstand and laid her glasses atop it.

The tiled bathroom awaited like a Big White Set from a thirties Astaire/Rogers movie—sleek, moderne and ready to reverberate. The elderly white porcelain tub was long, deep enough to drown in and had a divinely wide, old-fashioned rim.

She turned the faucets to the position where hot and cold blended into a pulsing stream of pure nirvana, set her sandwich and mug on the tub edge, and began peeling off her clothes—slowly, not like a stripper, but like someone whose muscles screamed at every motion.

For once Temple was grateful that the fifties bathroom did not, repeat, did not sport a full-length mirror. Temple leaned over the pedestal sink to check her face in the mirror-fronted medicine cabinet mounted above it. Thanks to the would-be Westmore brothers’ impromptu facial behind the Goliath, she could skip eye shadow for several days. Technicolor bruises tinted the skin around her eyes, and now were turning a rotten-banana yellow along the edges. Yellow Was a sign of healing, but also too ugly to disguise as a heavy hand with the magenta and purple eyeshadow.

She stood on tiptoe to peek at the bruises on her torso. Still at the blue-plum stage in size and color, ugly and deep. Temple winced to realize that, despite their best efforts, those men hadn’t really gotten around to seriously hurting her.

From the now-muffled rush of the faucet, she sensed that the bathwater was rising. She dipped in a toe, then climbed over the high edge and sat gingerly, her skin twitching at the sudden lap of hot water before settling into it like a nervous cat into a petting hand. Aaah . She lay back, munched some sandwich, sat up to chugalug a little wine.

She thought of Electra going undercover at a strippers’ convention, and laughed. Moll Philanders, indeed! Crazy old girl. And was Louie really still on the premises, or had she hallucinated him? Not to worry, not with two prime crime solvers like Louie and Electra on the scene in her stead. Sure.

Temple sighed as a sense of slow draining dripped down her arms like an IV of molasses-thick wine. Tension and worry were siphoning down her fingertips into the warm water. The tub was deep and long enough to float in when it was filled to the top. It would be, because she had bought this plastic thingamajig that sealed off the overflow drain, just so she could float like she had when she was a kid. The advantage of being petite.

So Temple drifted in the soapless, clear water like a fetus in amniotic fluid, detached, isolated, the seeds of future thoughts spinning disconnectedly around her.

This is Wednesday. The contest is Saturday, when Daddy Gold Dust is in for a big surprise. Three more days to get through before it’s all over. And it is all over for Dorothy and Kitty. Kitty. Another “y”-ending name. Had Kitty been the birthday girl on the cake? Was her real name Katharine? Sure. Katharine, that was what she had been called in grade school, the name that the scared kid peeking out from the costume niche had used. Kitty had come later, Kitty for short. Kitty was tougher, Kitty had reason to be. Poor kids. One dead on Monday, one on Tuesday.

Temple sat up with a splash. Monday’s death, and Tuesday’s. And Monday’s child is fair of face, but Tuesday’s child is... far to go? No. Works for a living? No. Monday’s child is fair of face, and Tuesday’s child is... all space. Ace. Mace. Place. Is bace/dace/face/gace/ hace/jace/case/lace! Is lavender and lace? Mace/nace/pace/ race/tace—trace/brace/grace. Grace.

Tuesday’s child is full of grace! Not anymore.

She leaned forward to jerk the faucets shut, then stopped, grabbing the porcelain tub grips, dripping onto her sandwich as she stepped down to the bath mat and pulled the towel off the chrome bar behind her.

The hotel-size Turkish towel swaddled her like a graceless sari. At six-four, Max couldn’t stand squinky towels. She waddled, wet and enervated, into the bedroom to dial the Goliath. Still knew the main switchboard number by heart.

She asked for Lieutenant Molina, and finally got her. Then she told her the theory.

Silence. “You think the killer is following this nursery rhyme?” Molina asked. “Just because you linked the two victims to the first couple lines?”

“Maybe! But that’s not the important thing. If the murderer is following the rhyme, there’ll be more deaths—or attempted ones.”

“You know the next lines?”

“No, but I could call the library. I wanted to tell you first.”

“Commendable, but the, ah, ordeal you went through could throw off your emotional equilibrium. You’re liable to see shadows behind every bush for a while.”

“And serial killers in every nursery rhyme?”

“I didn’t say that, but your theory is thin, to say the least. Anyone could twist the rhymes to apply to most of the women here. They’re all ‘fair of face and full of grace,’ or could pass for it on a cloudy day. Sorry. Get some rest, and leave the detection to the pros.”

Temple sat and dripped on her bedspread after Molina had hung up. She called the library anyway and jotted down the eight lines the librarian looked up. Wednesday’s child was full of woe. According to the tales she had heard about the strippers' pasts and private lives, that was probably another universal truth.

WOE. That was the name of the organization Ruth Morris belonged to. Was Ruth in danger? When had she been born? But no: she wasn’t a stripper. Far from it. What came next? Thursday’s child, she saw, scanning ahead, “has far to go.”

So do we all, she agreed with Molina. So do we all. Too bad Electra was at the Goliath, or Temple would try her theory out on her. Or on Matt.

But she didn’t have his number, she was too tired to go up to his apartment and she was probably all wet anyway.

She read ahead to Friday’s child. Loving and giving. Saturday’s child “has to work for its living.”

And Saturday all these children turned sex icons would be doing just that, gyrating for dollars. And for other, less tangible rewards that had their roots in the past.

She must have fallen asleep on the bed, wrapped in the damp towel. The room dripped with blinds-drawn, deep afternoon lethargy when she awoke to the sound of jangling. Not jangling, ding-donging. Her glorious doorbell.