Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In An Aqua Storm

“No.” Molina cast Temple an amused glance as she stood there in her deadly dull navy suit. Navy or khaki or gray. Organization woman.

Molina abruptly returned to the closet and replaced the sweater. She retrieved the rolled-up poster from the bed. “I’ll get it back to you as soon as possible.”

Temple nodded, impatient for her to leave.

For once, Molina took the hint and stalked out of the bedroom into the light-drenched living room. She looked around as if memorizing it, then turned to Temple. “This neighbor of yours, Devine. Was he living here when Kinsella disappeared?”

“No. Why do you ask?”

“You two seemed to get along. I wondered if that was something new.”

“Awfully interested in the men in my personal life, for a police-person, aren’t you?”

“Maybe I’m just envious,” Molina said.

“Why?”

“Short women get all the tall men.”

“Matt isn’t that tall.”

“Tall enough.”

Temple’s mind flashed back to a mental picture of Matt rising to meet Molina at the emergency room. In her low work heels, Molina stood taller than his five-ten-or-so. Barefoot, they’d be dead even.

“Oh, come on!” Temple found herself saying disdainfully. “You beanpoles have nothing to complain about. You get to play basketball and be models.”

“Short girls get to be cheerleaders and prom queens.”

“I never was!”

“I never modeled.”

“That’s only because you never plucked your eyebrows!”

Molina reared back in surprise. “The natural look is in.”

“Not that natural. And not back then. Even with Hairy Ape eyebrows, tall girls get taken seriously and get voted to be class president and they marry basketball players! There isn’t one thing about short girls that tall girls envy, admit it!”

Molina considered, then shrugged. “Short girls get to wear high heels.”

Temple, speechless, stared back. Then she clapped her hand over her mouth before she began laughing.

Molina didn’t laugh... not quite. She waved the long white roll of the poster. “Thanks for the loan. Watch your step.”

Molina let herself out before Temple could pull herself together and do it. How did they get into eyebrows and high heels? And Matt as well as Max?

She looked around. And where the heck had Midnight Louie gone now? She could use some feline aid and comfort.

25

The Kitty City Connection

T he phone onthe nightstand had an electronic panic attack, jolting Temple wide awake. New-fashioned phones rang like a hysterical Moog synthesizer being choked off in the middle of an aria, she thought, grabbing the red plastic high-heeled shoe masquerading as a telephone. According to the amount of light filtering through the miniblinds on the French doors, morning had arrived.

Temple cradled the heel against her ear, hopeful that Molina had reconsidered and wanted to know more about her theory.

“Hi, kiddo!”

“Electra? I called you last thing last night, but you weren’t home. I was worried.”

“Piffle. You think anyone would give me trouble in that biker babe outfit? When did you do your last thing last night and call?”

“Nine-thirty. I was a little tired.”

“Heavens to Boadicea, dearie! I wasn’t done gossiping until midnight. Want to come up for some whole-wheat pancakes and tofu?”

“Yeah!” Temple’s enthusiasm expressed a hunger for the forthcoming information, not the menu. “I’ll be there as soon as I’m dressed.”

“Don’t bother to dress for breakfast.” Electra chuckled. “After a few hours in the Goliath dressing rooms and at Kitty City, clothes seem downright unnatural.”

Getting into them had struck Temple as unnatural lately, she told herself after she hung up and jumped out of bed. She was slightly cheered to find her right shoulder loose enough to wiggle into a pullover top.

Louie awaited in the kitchen. He lay on the black-and-white tiles making like a grinless Cheshire cat: parts of him faded into the black and stood out against the white. At his length and width, he sprawled over several tiles.

“How about some almost-fresh tuna on your Free-to-Be-Feline?” Temple scraped the last of the can’s contents atop yesterday’s allotment of dry food.

The cat leaned his nose nearer to sniff, but did not deign to rise.

“Louie, you need a better diet at your age! The vet is going to think you’re an incorrigible case.”

Taking her own nutrition lecture to heart, Temple swallowed her regular regimen of bullet-sized vitamin pills with a glass of tomato juice before snatching today’s fire-engine-scarlet patent-leather tote bag from the sofa and racing up to Electra’s penthouse apartment, her heart going pitty-pat. She was not only about to get inside information on the competition from a source she could trust, she would finally see the inside of Electra’s place. Even Max had never broached this holy of holies.

The elevator was particularly cranky that morning, clanking up the three floors. It disgorged her with a final, miffed metallic squeal. Temple walked the few steps to Electra’s set of double doors and rang the mother-of-pearl doorbell. Craftsmen still used touches like that in the fifties.

The heavy wooden double doors muted a mellow echo of her own doorbell, but in a moment one swept open.

The day’s muumuu was yellow and violet, splashed with tasteful streaks of lime green and turquoise. It flowed, a Technicolor wave of polished cotton, from Electra’s neck to her bare toes.

“Come in!” the landlady ordered. “Don’t you look snappy today! Let’s see.”

“Thanks.” Temple had coordinated her red-and-white knit sailor top with a short navy pleated skirt and white, navy and red Charles Jourdan pumps. Her outfit could give Molina a lesson in how to wear navy-blue. She spun decorously, until the pleats fanned out.

“Lovely. So normal, after what I’ve seen lately. I decided breakfast on the patio would be nice. It’s still shady.” Electra took Temple’s wrist to lead her through the mirrored vertical blinds that lined the entry hall, creating a fun-house effect.

In a room beyond, Temple stared at the blond fifties television cabinet she had glimpsed once before. Atop it still stood a huge, green glass globe on a tarnished brass base, whose design represented either colliding Studebakers or copulating elephants, Temple couldn’t decide which.

Even as Temple followed Electra into the next room, she was aware of drawn-blind dimness, of massive shadowy pieces of period furniture—several sofas, for instance—and the evasive scent of eucalyptus.

A genteel thump in a farther room made her stop, resisting Electra’s firm pull. “What was that?”

“Nothing,” Electra said.

“But I thought—” A movement brushed along the baseboard edging the parquet floors. Then the bottom fringe on a buxom forties sofa undulated like a hula skirt. “Electra, do you have pets?”

“You cannot own an animal,” Electra replied haughtily.

“Pests, then?”

“What kind of a landlady do you think I am?”

“Then ghosts?” Temple suggested in exasperation.

“I’m afraid not. Not that I haven’t tried. Séances have been held up here in the penthouse since the building was erected in 1953.”

“That’s fascinating. I’d like to—” Temple was jerked through an open French door into the rude shock of daylight.

This high, on the fifth floor, the low-lying clutter of Las Vegas vanished as if it had never been. Only the tall towers of hotels probed the sky as the desert’s faded rose, gold, azure and green bled toward the horizon like running watercolors. The mountains, hazy blue in their serene distance from the hot, yellow-white hurly-burly of the city, kept company with frothy clouds tinted with the exact flattering shade of a baby pink spotlight.