Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In An Aqua Storm

While she was sitting there puzzling it out, the corner of her eye caught a flurry of black leather coming in at seven o’clock low. Temple braced herself for Switch Bitch, but when the figure arrived, she got Motorcycle Moll. “Electra! You haven’t been home.”

‘‘Tell me about it. Listen, did you know that Glinda North—Dorothy Horvath—was lesbian?”

“No. Um, what has this to do with anything?”

“Well, she wasn’t great bait for a sex-crazed heterosexual serial killer.”

“Was that really why she was afraid of losing her kids?”

“You bet.” Electra’s black-lipsticked mouth took a grim downturn.

“But... she was a stripper.”

“You’ve met Switch Bitch?”

“Oh, yeah.”

“Don’t let the wrong half of that name fool you. She’s a work-in-progress. In the name as in the person, and the commercial, it’s what’s up front that counts,”

Temple’s preconceptions did a U-turn. “Switch...? You mean—?”

“This is strictly confidential,” Electra added. “Lifestyle necessities aren’t anybody’s business, and I don’t usually tattletale. But this is a multiple murder case.”

“Why would a transsexual and a lesbian work as strippers?”

“They’re both making a point without having to get down and dirty about it, like a prostitute,” Electra said. “The transsexual gets to show off the body work, and the lesbian gets to make money off men without having to get screwed by them. Makes a lot of sense. What doesn’t is that I have a funny feeling about the murderer, now that I’ve imbibed the ambience. Maybe it’s Marilyn. She was used long before she got any clout, you know, and she knew it. Poor kid. Poor tossed-around kid.”

“Electra, I hardly know ye.”

“Trust me. Marilyn says... my instincts say that this killer is totally loony.”

“You don’t need a doctoral degree—”

“Flush the killer out.”

“How?”

“Play the game. What if—what if one of the victims came back? Didn’t lie down and play dead?”

“That works on TV if the killer thinks he or she missed. But everybody in the competition saw the body bags go out of here.”

“You’re forgetting that the killer may be following a different logic. Even if I were only half loony, I wouldn’t like seeing my victim walking around. I might snap. Do something stupid.”

“Or dangerous. And how could you fool the killer? Oh.”

“An idea, dear?”

“Kitty Cardozo added a cat mask to her costume just before she was killed. It would be easy to resurrect her with someone the right height and weight.” Temple thought a moment longer. “Like me. I’d have to color my hair, though.”

“Can I interrupt this beauty discussion?” Molina’s voice came from over Temple’s shoulder. When the tall lieutenant wanted to eavesdrop, she could do it literally. She eyed Electra’s black leather “Wild Bunch” getup. “Haven’t I seen you before?”'

“It wasn’t in a lineup, honest,” Temple said. “This is my landlady, Electra Lark.”

Molina nodded slowly. “You were the J.P. who officiated, if you can call it that, at the parody of a memorial service for Chester Royal at the Lover’s Knot Wedding Chapel.”

“Sure was,” Electra admitted breezily.

Temple was amazed that Molina recognized her chameleon landlady, then recalled that Electra had colored her hair black on that occasion, too.

The lieutenant turned to her. “Well?”

“Well what?”

“ What did the library say about the Standish women’s birth date?”

“Oh. You don’t want to know.”

“I’m standing here, aren’t I?”

“A Thursday,” Temple said.

Molina digested that for a few seconds. “That makes Wednesday’s murder a day late and a dollar short.”

“Unless Wednesday’s child was killed elsewhere—and the Standish twins were killed after midnight, so both of them were Thursday’s victims.”

“Looks like they were killed around midnight, but I’ll need the medical examiner’s report to confirm that. And there weren’t any similar deaths in town last night. Besides, why would the killer change M.O.s now? Every victim was a contestant.”

“Too many police around? Too much attention?”

Molina shook her head. “The birth days must be a crazy coincidence. The killer is saying more by using elements of the victims’ costumes as weapons. Perhaps he’s expressing a hatred for their manner of work, for women as sex objects in general.”

“Say, Lieutenant,” Electra put in, “speaking of sex objects. We were just discussing an idea—”

“Electra, no!” Temple warned.

“Don’t you think that the killer would go ape if you had one of the victims parading around here in costume like she was alive? That kitty costume Temple was telling me about would work perfectly. In fact, Temple’s the right size—”

Molina’s face stiffened with rage. “Amateur theatrics belong in TV mystery shows. Nobody’d fall for that old chestnut, anyway. And if you think I’d let a civilian go traipsing around in a murder victim’s costume on some long shot that it might unnerve the killer, you’re crazier than the murderer.”

“I’d never do it,” Temple interjected hastily. “Thighs.”

Molina turned on her like a junkyard dog. “Thighs?” she barked.

“I don’t wear anything that makes my thighs look like flesh-colored Jell-O, and stripper costumes don’t leave anything to the imagination. Although I would wear the cat shoes,” she added meditatively. “They were really cool.”

By now Molina was trying to control laughter rather than anger. “It’s too bad vaudeville is dead,” she finally said. “You two would make quite an act.” She turned to Electra. “You knew Max Kinsella, then?”

“Oh, sure. He was such a doll.”

“Odd. Ms. Barr is a lot less enthusiastic about him.”

“Now,” Electra retorted. “All Max owed me when he left was a month’s mortgage, and Temple took that over, poor kid.”

“Yeah. I saw that the mortgage is in both their names.” She turned back to Temple. “That could make things inconvenient if you want to move in the seven years before he’s legally declared dead.”

“Seven years—I never thought of that.” Temple caught her breath. It was one thing to adjust to Max’s being gone for good, another to write him off as dead and figure out the legalities.

“Think about it,” Molina advised before walking away.

Electra chuckled as Molina left, shaking her head: “It’s a cackle to rattle her cage. I still think you’d make a great Kitty Two.”

“I don’t want the job, Electra. I’ve gotten into enough trouble lately. Darn. That Monday’s-child scheme is so close to perfect. It’s like having a quatrain where one line won’t rhyme no matter what you do.”

“Maybe that’s too clever, dear. I can see it’s distracting you. What about all the dirt you were digging up on Kitty City?”

Temple sat back down on the chair, staring at the phone. “What do you think of Ike Wetzel, Electra?”

“He better stay out of the bathtub if I’m anywhere nearby with a small electrical appliance plugged in.”

“Mad about the guy, huh?”

“God’s gift to the masochists among us. Maybe each of the dead strippers crossed him. I can see him taking pleasure in enforcing his will on the unwilling. Poor Lindy puts up with a lot.”

“Ike and Lindy?”

Electra nodded. “Didn’t you know? Oh, he’s made the rounds. Savannah Ashleigh, Kitty Cardozo. He always picked winners, though, at least in the early days, women who were going to climb out of the holes they were in.”

“That is odd, Electra. From what you said he ran a closed shop. His girls did what he said, or they didn’t dance at Kitty City. He was even down on the competition when hometown dancers didn’t have to put in travel days to get here. Then, this year, he changes his tyrannical tune and is all love and kisses with WHOOPE. Why?”