Carole douglas: Cat in an Indigo Mood

"And this letter from the radio station," she went on. " 'Ambrosia.' Get real!"

"I thought I should at least listen to the tape, which is why I need your machine, and someone to run it. It sounds like a maybe-job offer."

"Radio counseling. Not too different from hotline work.

But

. . . radio's an entertainment medium." Temple shrugged, then jumped up. "Come on in the other room. The receiver's in there."

He knew it was in there, and he knew that a couple of weeks ago she would have called the other room the "bedroom."

He'd had visiting privileges there before, in the most casual way, once when they were going out together. Now it was taboo territory.

"It might take a while," he began to caution her.

"Hey, this is portable. We'll move it out."

"You can put a tape in this?"

"Sure. Tape. CD. You can even sing karaoke on it."

"No kidding?"

"Yup. Has a feature that strips the voice out but leaves the instruments. You sing solo."

"I just want to hear what WCOO is all about. Maybe this is just some advertising scam.

Offering everybody their fifteen minutes of fame on the air."

"I don't know." Temple returned, carrying the squat black machine. "The letter said someone recommended you."

"And they had to get my address somewhere."

"Probably from your boss at ConTact. Maybe that's the recommender."

"But why not mention it to me?"

Temple plopped the receiver on the living room floor near an outlet and plugged it in.

"Sorry this is makeshift. You put the tape in here, and there's your volume control. That's it."

Matt stared at the crowded faceplate of buttons and labels.

"Looks like the control com of the Starship Enterprise to me."

"You'll get used to it. Gotta go get ready for a buzz by the Crystal Phoenix. I've been neglecting my duties as freelance Public Relations Whiz Kid, and the theme-park makeover at my biggest client's hotel-casino."

"How's that going?"

"Great, I hear! But I'm a cynical ex-news reporter. I don't believe in anything l don't see for myself."

"Speaking of not believing in things you don't see for yourself, what's, uh, the Friendly neighborhood magician Max doing these days?"

Matt could have kicked himself for the ensuing silence. He had time to deliver about four swift ones before Temple answered.

"Uh . . . the usual Mystifying Max stuff. Being mysterious."

"I was just wondering, if he was going to vanish again."

"Not this time. I think he's back in Las Vegas for good."

Or ill , Matt mentally inserted into another long pause before Temple spoke again.

"I've really got to get ready. You don't mind if I leave you alone?"

She realized it was a loaded question the moment it left her lips. So she stood there, quizzical smile fading. She had already left him pretty conclusively alone by resuming her relationship with Max Kinsella, errant magician.

Matt moved to reclaim his mug of coffee. "Go ahead. Do what you have to. I'll be all right."

Talk about banal double meanings.

She gave him a last, wrenchingly uncertain smile and returned to the bedroom.

"Just hit 'Play,' "she advised, closing the door.

Matt sat before the stereo on the polished parquet, a faint lemon scent tweaking his nostrils, feeling vaguely like a worshiper in a media-age church. Louie came over to investigate the intruder on the floor: the machine, not him.

He punched "Play" and kept his fingers on the volume button, in case it was too loud.

A woman's voice floated into the room, mellow, the tones as pear-shaped as a Rubens nude.

Ambrosia welcoming her petitioners to the seven-to-midnight shift at WCOO--"We Care Only about Others Radio."

Matt braced himself for smut, at worst, or schmaltz, at second worst.

Oddly enough, Ambrosia avoided both traps. People called in, shared their troubles or joys at her mellow urging. A lost love. An anniversary. A sick baby in the hospital. Then Ambrosia picked some soft-rock anthem or bathetic ballad perfectly attuned to the moment: Kenny Rogers's crooning about a time you weren't there for a thirty-something wedding anniversary.

"You Light up My Life" for an absent girlfriend. "Feelings" for a lost love.

Despite her inciting radio handle, Ambrosia was romantic rather than raunchy, and managed to sound sincerely sympathetic.

After a few minutes, Matt turned down the volume. He could hear the muffled shut drawer, the muted hiss of running water: Temple going through whatever motions needed in her own little world, which was as removed from his now as the orbit of another planet. Yet the mundane sounds of her passing through time and motion so near and vet so far, made him edgy. His skin felt so supersensitive that his clothes irritated it as he stirred.

He realized he was staring at the closed door like a mute animal, gazing until it opened for him. Ambrosia's professionally hypnotic voice was no competition for Temple's slightest unseen gesture.

Nuts! The entire phenomenon was nuts.

Matt glanced at Midnight Louie, who was watching him with the same concentrated stare that he himself had given the bedroom door. The cat's pupils had dilated to fill half his irises.

"I guess you go through something like this regularly, despite your unelective surgery last fall, huh, fellah?"

Louie lifted a paw and patted his knee. Honest to God, like he understood.

Silent masculine commiseration, Matt could choose to think. But that idea was as ridiculous as the obsessive longing that gripped him now.

Maybe an operation could fix him too.

Chapter 7

Dead Dahlia

Molina faced an office full of loose ends: crime scene photos; detectives' reports; Alch and Su sitting across from her, asking as many questions as they answered.

She studied the overview photo now front and center again. A woman's body, twisting in death, her half-visible face frozen in an unvoiced scream. It reminded her of the artist Munch's agonized Expressionistic figure from the painting called "The Scream." the one that novelty manufacturers printed on large blow-up balloons and sold as a symbol of modern angst for entertainment value.

"I could see the ligature mark in the parking lot," she said.

"The . . . implement was gone, but not forgotten," Su noted. One of her mandarin--orange-enameled fingernails expertly flicked a photo from its place in the pile into Full view.

"Interesting. Some sort of cord, possibly wire with nodules along the length."

"Barbed wire."

Alch nodded. "You could call it that. But not as sharp as the varieties you customarily think of."

"Do you know how many varieties of barbed wire there ate?"

Su's dry but eager academic voice added. "Hundreds."

"And Nevada uses every one. I bet." Molina predicted.

"Maybe." Su had not yet finished her research.

"Stab wounds?" Molina asked. The medical examiner's report would contain it all, but the clinical detail often obscured the humanity of the death and the motive, the feel of the death scene.

Su leaned forward. Alch never did, but he answered. "Another oddity. Some tiny defense cuts on the hands. Not many. She was choked to semi-consciousness first. A slash in the throat after she was dead."

"Ah." Molina nodded at her detectives. The gratuitous blow, not the killing one, testified the most. Neck-slashers wanted to silence. Maybe they wanted to silence the victim. More often they wanted to silence the internalized voice in their own heads, the one that said they would die unless they killed.

"And did she leave anything?"

Alch shook his head. "We rousted the restaurant staff and the band within thirty hours.

None of them admit to recognizing her description, although we don't have a photo a civilian could see past to recognize someone with. They all left from the small employee parking lot on the west side of the building, just as you indicated, Lieutenant."