Douglas, Nelson - Cat in a Flamingo Fedora

"Maybe." Temple sighed and clasped her upper arms. "But now I've got to wonder if I--my rather uppity turndown--contributed to his death."

Matt had bent his head to read the article again, searching for revelations among the tersely worded statements. That wasn't going to happen, but she smiled at his earnest profile, the boyish way his blond hair brushed his forehead. He looked like a dedicated student puzzling out a particularly difficult problem.

Sensing her observation, the schoolboy looked up to reveal the dark pessimistic expression of a thousand-year-old man.

"Temple, if you were right, and my mysterious caller were Darren Cooke, I may have been the last person to speak to him alive. I may have heard him inviting the woman who drove him to suicide, or was his killer, into the room."

"You!"

"My caller got through to me around midnight. He was railing as usual, gibing me, in a really foul mood. I sensed that I shouldn't let him off the line, despite the abuse, and then he had a visitor. I heard him walk to the door. He sounded... pleased. Invited her in and hung up. Now I've got to wonder if something I did pushed him into an uncustomary vulnerability."

"Matt! You're saying we both might have had a hand in Darren's death! I asked you down to ease me off this guilt trip, and you heap a bigger one on yourself!"

His twisted smile was still engaging. "Yeah. I'm a real success as a counselor. Should we tell Molina or somebody?"

"No! God, no. It's speculation on both our parts. Someone else may have been calling you.

Maybe it was Darren's lost daughter's call that drove him to self-destruction. Those letters of hers did not sound well balanced. We'd be nuts to insert ourselves into this case on hasty conclusions."

"Maybe the police could allay our suspicions."

"Right, and charge us as accessories before the fact, or something. I do not trust the police to put our guilt trips into perspective. They don't have the time to take weird little exercises in blame into account."

"But we'll probably never know if our suppositions are right if we don't present them to the police and get their reactions."

"As for me, I don't want police reactions in a sticky celebrity death, do you? It wouldn't help your counseling career."

"Maybe not, but that job is worth nothing to me if I blew it and drove a man to suicide."

"Matt, I'm sure you didn't. You're much too conscientious for your own good. You said your caller sounded happy about his visitor. That doesn't sound like an imminent suicide victim."

"Nooo--"

"And maybe you could say something cheering to me now, like I should take it as a compliment that Darren Cooke asked me to do the bedroom tango. Like ... he reall y had been turned down before, and so just laughed at my indignant act. Besides, he didn't die until twelve hours after I kissed him off. It's obnoxiously self-important to think that what I did and said at noon would kill a man at midnight."

Matt was smiling again. "I don't know why you called on me. You can talk yourself into something better than anybody else. And, in the meantime, you've also managed to convince me that the coincidence would have been too much. I couldn't have been talking to Cooke.

There must be thousands of sex addicts in this town."

"Right," Temple said with a brisk nod. "And thousands of eager flamingos in the flock for Darren Cooke. No sense brooding over the one that got away."

"I'm glad you got away."

"Ditto."

They smiled at each other.

"I suppose you have to rush off to work now."

He checked his wristwatch. "Yup."

"Darn, no time for seduction. It'll have to wait until later."

Matt stood. "Still, I'll be waiting for another call from my man. If he never calls again--"

"We can't second-guess the living any more than we can the dead."

"I've certainly seen that in the case of Cliff Effinger. Can you get me a copy of that clipping?"

"Sure. I'll keep a few for myself too."

"Molina might--"

"No. I especially don't want Molina to know I walked into that Cooke setup thinking I was Nancy Drew."

"It'd be handy to know what the police were thinking."

"You think you can get that out of Molina?"

He shrugged. "She did suggest I contact a police artist about Effinger."

"And look how that turned out! About as well as my going to Darren Cooke's brunch and listening to his tragic tale of the letters from an unknown daughter."

"People do catch you up in their own agendas, don't they?"

"And you better realize that Molina is better at that than most. Why'd she point you to a police artist? She wanted you to do her footwork for her."

"But I might have heard something on the phone Sunday night that means more than I could guess."

"Do what you want. But don't expect to get from Molina anything like what you give to her."

"You're probably right. I wish I'd heard the mystery woman's voice."

"No, you don't. Besides, you can't get a sketch on the evidence of voice alone."

Matt stood. "Looks like we're stymied."

"Stymied, stalled and hip-deep in slush," Temple summed up as she walked him to the door.

There he turned to her. "Don't worry. I'm sure you had nothing to do with Cooke's suicide."

His hands rested on her shoulders.

"I'm sure you said nothing to encourage his self-destruction, either."

"We're both absolving each other," he noted.

"That keeps it between friends, at least."

His hand lifted from her shoulder as his face bent down. Temple expected a religious gesture, a blessing, even a sign of the cross.

She was confused when his free hand cupped and tilted up her chin, even more shaken when he kissed her. Not the way Max kissed her, but long and sweet and so deliberately she thought it would never stop, which was fine with her.

But it was over, and he was gone, in the same empty instant.

She had really hamstrung herself between two men, between two hot-and-cold-running relationships, Temple thought soberly. She felt like one of those insipid classical ballerinas, tippy-toeing en pointe from one side of the stage to the other, from one male partner to another. Back and forth, to and from. Make your mind up, girl! she admonished herself, always a fruitless exercise.

Kisses only confused her more, like too many hors d'ouvres before the main course. She would have to put her little arched foot down someday soon, stamp a definitive high heel and choose a dancing partner for real. But then somebody would get hurt, and she couldn't abide the idea of leaving either man out in the cold.

Brrrr. Temple shivered with indecision and self-disgust. She shut and locked her door as if to bar the north wind, then wandered into the living room. Louie had resumed full possession of the sofa, stretching out over all three cushions.

Temple picked up the newspaper again. Nothing in the story had changed. Darren Cooke was dead, and she was sorry. Matt's conversations with his mysterious caller might be over as well. Temple was sure that he would be sorry on some level too. Their separate but similar guilt probably made them the best mourners Darren Cooke would ever have.

Chapter 19

Gossip Never Dies

The next morning, Temple returned to Gangster's, Louie in his carrier beside her.

She was on time, 11:30 a.m., but she didn't expect to see much action today. Surely they would have to reshape the commercial tied into Darren Cooke's opening number.

She had not taken into account another famous musical number:

"The Show Must Go On."

Everyone was there: the chorus line, the choreographer, the commercial director, even the Divine Yvette in her pink tote bag, with her airheaded mistress, Savannah Ashleigh.

Savannah looked as shaken as anyone with so much plastic surgery could. The apples in her cheeks had slipped and the sagging skin around her eyes, normally drawn back into a slightly Asian tilt, looked as if it had been carved from sun-melted suet.