Кэрол Дуглас: Cat In An Aqua Storm

“I’m not a stripper! I’m a public relations specialist. I haven’t been abused, only mugged. Wilma, please—”

“No one will come down here now. Too much of a show going on upstairs. Even the guards and the hotel security men stop to rubberneck. Nothing distracts men’s attention like little girls made to perform for it. No one saw me. Not once. No one hardly ever notices me anyway. Too old, too ugly, too useful. My girls won’t have to suffer anymore. All my girls. I’m sorry I didn’t give you a birthday cake, but I can’t let you go on. You might say something, and I can’t stop until I find my own girls. I’m fast, and strong. It won’t hurt. Try not to think about it, and it’ll all be over.”

Temple quivered as she felt the bones in her wrist constrict within a relentless grip. The only thing that could still move was her mouth.

“Wilma, that’s just what abusers tell their victims. It won’t hurt. It’ll be fast. Try not to think about it. You don’t want to be like them, Wilma!”

“It won’t be like them. You’ll sleep. You’ll be at peace. You won’t ever hurt again.”

“But life hurts! You can’t stop pain by taking lives. Kitty Cardozo wanted to live. She had plans. Glinda was hoping to get her kids back. The twins were working out their problem their way, and you denied them that. You denied them their triumphs as well as their tragedies.”

Wilma’s strong hands forced Temple back into the chair by pulling her wrists down.

“Listen,” Temple said. “You’ll ruin your pattern. It’s Friday. Friday’s child is—” She blanked on the next words. She blankety-blank blanked, just when she needed them most!

“Friday’s child is loving and giving,” Wilma recited in a dulcet sing-song for her. “And you’re a Friday.”

“How can you know? Be sure?”

“I always had a head for figures. Not much school learning, and maybe not much sense, but numbers stick. I know the perpetual calendar like a nun knows her rosary beads. It’s all up here.”

Wilma released Temple’s left wrist to tap her forehead and then reached for the G-string she had freed.

No way, Temple thought. Her free hand flashed out, found the big shiny shears on the countertop and picked them up. She shuddered to imagine what would happen if Wilma got them away from her, so she slashed and thrust at the woman’s loose top like a mad Japanese chef, trying not to think of what she was attempting to do to flesh and bone.

Contact. Resistance. The shears bouncing off something hard only to dig into something soft. Temple moaned. Her restrained wrist felt as if it were caught in a meat grinder. Wilma’s grip was forcing her out of the chair and to her knees on the floor, as the woman’s other hand drew back to slap the scissors from her grasp.

Temple steeled herself and drove the blades toward the oncoming palm.

Then, plummeting from above, came a black tarantula, all dangling legs and falling furry bulk, plunging directly atop Wilma’s head.

Wilma screamed. Temple screamed. The tarantula screamed.

With a crack like a firing rifle, the closed dressing room door sprang open under the bulk of a man’s body. Two men’s bodies entered, followed by a familiar woman’s body.

Temple was sitting on the floor, holding her wrist.

The men had jumped Wilma, bearing her down beside Temple and pinioning her wrists. The shears lay—open and innocent of anyone’s blood—a short distance away.

Wilma’s face was bathed in bloody rivulets, though. Scarlet threads ran into her eyes and gasping mouth, soaked into her pink top.

Lieutenant Molina was standing in the doorway, a semiautomatic in her hand, looking very worried and a tad guilty.

The tarantula uncurled from its sinister ball-shape and strutted over to Temple, albeit a bit stiffly. One of its five furry legs hoisted aloft to brush Temple’s face as Midnight Louie rubbed back and forth along her shoulder, back and forth.

“Is she all right?” Molina asked her men. She was eyeing Temple, so they did, too.

“Looks okay,” one said, before grunting and bearing down on Wilma, who was fighting his partner’s handcuffs.

Midnight Louie began purring loudly enough to attract everyone’s attention.

“Give that cat a badge,” one of the men suggested out of the comer of his mouth.

Temple stared at the cat, then threw her arms around him. “Oh, Louie, I can’t believe I almost had you declawed!”

“Poor baby,” Electracrooned. “I brought you a Black Russian.”

She set the drink, which looked like motor oil on ice, on the counter and glared at Lieutenant Molina, as if daring her to object.

Temple sat in the same fatal chair that had originally been Wilma’s, her wrist wrapped in the G-string meant to throttle her. Thin strips of leopard-pattern spandex made an excellent support bandage, and Molina, born camp counselor that she was, had done the honors.

Louie, basking in the warm glare of the makeup lights, sprawled atop the counter, looking regal. The only trace of his recent heroic measures was the dried blood faintly visible on his claws, which were flexing in and out in perfect time to a soft baritone purr of satisfaction.

“I can’t believe”—the Lieutenant looked at Temple again—“that with all your fiddling with birth dates and birthday rhymes you never checked out your own.”

“I was too busy to fool around with that stuff.”

“I can’t believe,” Electra put in, glaring at Lieutenant Molina, “that you would set up Temple as a sitting duck down here.”

“I can’t believe”—Temple finally got her two cents in—“that Officer Choi was just a cat in wolfs clothing, an honest-to-badness double decoy.”

“I can’t believe,” Molina said in her turn, “that your cat is really going to drink that Black Russian.”

“Oops!” Electra pulled the glass away, but not before Louie’s whiskers had received a chocolate-colored coating.

“He deserves it,” Temple said stoutly, but she sipped the drink Electra put into her right hand. “You really had this place bugged?”

Molina shook her head. “Wasn’t necessary to bug it. The two-way system was already in. We just patched it into Savannah Ashleigh’s dressing room. And waited.”

“And waited until I was at death’s door,” Temple said. “A good thing Midnight Louie had decided to camp out here.”

“Cut the theatrics. We would have been in time,” Molina said. “We did need conclusive evidence.”

“Conclusive to me!” Temple objected. “I don’t get it. How did you know what to expect?”

“For one thing, you can be sure that I never would have seriously gone for the corny Catwoman decoy trick you two came up with. As it is, it’ll take years to live that one down in the department.”

Molina sat on the countertop and crossed her arms. “You’re a born magnet for murderers, Miss Barr. I figured that if I let you go about your unauthorized business, someone would get annoyed enough to try to off you.”

“Temple came too close,” Electra put in. She looked fierce in her fringed leather chaps and motorcycle jacket. “That’s her secret for attracting murderers, outsmarting them.”

“She almost outsmarted herself this time,” Molina retorted. “Okay. Same deal as last time. I’ll need a statement tomorrow morning. Think you can drive with that wrist? Or should I send a squad car to collect you?”

“I’ll be fine,” Temple said. “Do you want me to bring Louie?”

Molina stood. “That, thank God, won’t be necessary. Stay out of trouble until tomorrow. Please. We need your statement.”

Temple sighed raggedly when she left. “Gee, Electra, this drink is hitting me like a freight train. Am I still here?”