Douglas, Nelson - Cat in a Flamingo Fedora

"All done?" Michelle observed sadly. Perhaps she felt their somber moods had slighted the food.

Temple nodded and sipped the velvet-soft warm wine. Perfect. "Why did you call me here?"

she finally asked.

"You knew my husband."

"Very slightly. 'Knew' is too strong a word. Talked to him briefly on a couple occasions."

"And one of them was the day of his death." The faintly blue eyes rested unblinkingly on Temple's face.

"Yes. But how do you know about me?"

Michelle Bonard bit her bloodless lip, then reached into a side pocket of her lilac pants, which were so tight that Temple was amazed she would store anything there, or attempt to extract it. Ruins the designer lines, you know, like (shudder) cellulite.

What she withdrew was a business card. Temple's card.

Temple studied it, perplexed. "How did you get that?"

"I did not. Darren had it. And, see, he marked the date down himself."

Temple saw the scrawled numbers: eleven seventeen ninety-six. "I don't understand, I gave him this card on ... Saturday at Gangster's. So why did he write Sunday's date down?"

"Because Darren had a ... what you call a system. He always took a trophy from his conquests, then marked it with the date of their ... encounter. He couldn't stop using the system any more than he could help having these encounters. I knew where he concealed his

'evidence.' Not even the police have seen this."

"Wait a minute! I did give him my card, I did attend his Sunday brunch on his invitation, but I never was one of his 'conquests.' "

"You needn't spare my feelings, Miss Barr. I knew all about his past, and his present obsession. I simply want to know his mood on that last day, that last night. Find some reason why he would do it, throw his life away after all these years of struggling with his obsession. As long as the sex was safe, and he assured me it was, I understood that he couldn't stop, and I couldn't let jealousy destroy Cookie's life, and ours."

"I'm not 'sparing' you. I was not Darren Cooke's last lay, that's all. I spoke to him at the brunch, and I do have a clue to why he might have despaired that night. But it doesn't have anything to do with sex, believe me."

Michelle frowned. "He only marked the belongings of women with whom he had sex."

"Well, maybe it was wishful thinking in my case, because it sure didn't happen. Listen, I am currently caught between two men. I do not need any other liaisons cluttering up my already-subdivided heart, mind and body."

She leaned back in her chair, as if to reassess Temple, then sipped her silken wine. "For some reason, I believe you. He never much cared for petite women, or redheads. Then why were you at his brunch?"

"He'd heard Savannah Ashleigh"--Michelle rolled her eyes; that one she would never believe innocent of anything--"call me Nancy Drew."

"Nancy Drew?"

"All-American girl detective from the century's earlier decades. I've . . . stumbled into cases of wrongdoing and have a bit of a reputation as a crime-meddler, if not a crime-solver, around town."

"Crime?" Michelle's back straightened into a ramrod.

"Your husband thought I could help him; I said I'd try, but I warned him I was an amateur. He took me into the bedroom"--Michelle's back stiffened even further--"to show me some letters he kept in a manila envelope."

"Blackmail."

"In a sense. Maybe just vitriol. The writer claimed to be an adult daughter of one of his earliest liaisons. She was bitter, of course, and taunting. Sounded quite obsessed, and was certainly hounding him from city to city. I told him he needed the police to handle this, or a very expensive and discreet detective agency. He was... quite broken up about it, that he hadn't known about her and that now she hated him. I told him she could be a twisted fan who only imagined she's his daughter, but I agreed she might be dangerous, and must be found and charged with harassment."

Michelle had clapped her corded hand over her mouth early in Temple's recital, her eyes darkening with deep emotions, disbelief, regret, fear and sorrow.

"I don't know why he marked me a conquest," Temple said softly. "Oh, as I left, he made some sort of veiled suggestion, which I rather huffily rebuffed. But it was half-hearted, and nothing more than that ever happened between us. I maybe spent forty minutes with him, between some chitchat at Gangster's and the tete-a-tete at the Goliath."

"I disagree with your self-assessment, Miss Barr; you seem to be quite sensible on matters criminal. As for the date on your card, perhaps, I now think, it was wishful thinking. If he would do it once, I must wonder how many times since we have been married it was wishful thinking too. He was no longer young and perhaps other young women turned him down. How tragic, that he would keep up the lie of betrayal to me! But then, I always knew his obsession was more pride than need."

"Why would you take on a man with such a handicap?"

She shrugged in a graceful Gallic manner that said more than any number of sentences. He was as he was, it said, and I loved most of that.

"I know," Michelle added, "that he was an excellent father. Of course, having nannies takes much of the burden of parenthood away. But he loved our Padgett Cookie like no one on earth, not even me. She was so innocent, so trusting. She gave him what you call 'unconditional love.'

It made him feel secure, and I sense that he was making a genuine attempt to change his ways.

"Then, to hear of this unknown daughter who so reviled him! It would have hurt him very much, because he didn't know. He perhaps began to feel that Padgett would turn on him someday, no matter what he did. Yes, you did have a clue to his state of mind. It must have been very tortured." She turned her bland glance on Temple. "And so have I been, since learning of his death. Suicide. I would never have suspected it of him."

"I don't think that my turning him down was enough--"

"Of course not, Temple." She laid a cold, bony hand on Temple's forearm. "He had ego enough to bounce back from such a shock, and I suspect he'd had more than one such shock of that nature in recent years. As you said, he was automatically reverting to his seducer self. But these letters--have the police got them?"

"I don't know. They don't confide in me. I assumed they'd be found in his room."

She shook her head. "Darren was very clever at hiding things, from everyone. He had to be.

These he would have safeguarded more than anything. But I will ask the police. I will at least have them look for this . . . pathetic daughter."

"And how will you say that you knew about them?"

"Do not worry, my dear. I will not implicate you, not after you tried to help Darren with his problem. I will say he mentioned a letter once, casually, and that now I wonder."

"You're pretty clever yourself."

She nodded. "One had to be to marry Darren. Now--" She settled low in her chair and brought the mostly full wine goblet to her bloodless lips. "Tell me about these two men who divide your loyalties. Oh-la-la! What a love life. It sounds fascinating. Perhaps I can be of help."

Chapter 24

Fall of Another Card

Molina wanted to see them downtown. Now. Then she hung up.

Temple and Matt hung onto the phone in her kitchen, ears jammed against the shared earpiece, cheek to cheek, with a bundling board of molded plastic between them.

Temple had done all the talking. Not that there had been much to say. And now the line was dead.

"You're sure we have to do this?" Matt asked Temple.

"You're the arbiter of right and wrong. I thought you'd be cheerleading me to sell myself down the river."

"I'm in worse shape. I might have heard the last person to see Darren Cooke alive arrive at his suite."